English: To Be Or Not to Be or Maybe What to Be????

Pray tell... what should a 21st century honors 11/12th grade English course concern itself with? What do you want to learn? What do you need to know? Great books? Brit lit? Lit crit? Rhetoric? Public speaking? Blogs and tweets? Communications? Public relations? Journalism?

What do you need to know? What do you want to learn?

Girls: Tell me here by 7:30 am Monday morning, January 9th.

Cinderella

Cinderella

Cinderella is a young woman who lives with her cruel family. She has two ugly stepsisters who make Cinderella do all their work. They wear beautiful clothes and she has to wear rags. They get an invitation to the ball, but Cinderella does not, and she is very upset. Suddenly, a fairy godmother appears and helps Cinderella get to the ball by turning her rags into a beautiful gown and a pumpkin into a coach. At the ball Cinderella dances with the prince, who falls in love with her. However, at the stroke of midnight Cinderella must leave the ball as her clothes will turn back to rags. As she rushes out, she leaves one of her shoes behind. The prince tries the shoe on lots of women throughout the land until he finds Cinderella whose feet are small and dainty enough to fit. They get married and live happily ever after.

The Assignment

Retell this story in at least about as many words as the above, but with a twist. Choose your bias/point of view/style of writing from the list below. Change the story's events, tone of voice, diction, syntax etc. to emphasize your bias. Label the paragraph with your bias and leave your name underneath your submission. Due: Wednesday, December 7th at 7:30 am.

• Retell as comic satire.
• Retell as social realism
• Retell as an advertisement for a product.
• Retell as a story from the Bible
• Retell as a feminist tale
• Retell as propaganda for the the Prince and his kingdom
• Retell in purple prose (over-written, flowery language with scads of adjectives)
  

The Invisible Poor

In "Evaluation," the final chapter of Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich observes:

Some odd optical property of our highly polarized and unequal society makes the poor almost invisible to their economic superiors. The poor can see the affluent easily enough -- on television, for example, or on the covers of magazines. But the affluent rarely see the poor or, if they do catch sight of them in some public space, rarely know what they're seeing, since --thanks to consignment stores and, yes, Wal-Mart -- the poor are usually able to disguise themselves as members of the more comfortable classes.

Write a paragraph based on personal observation and experience that supports or challenges Ehrenreich's analysis. Girls: due Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7:30 am. Boys due Wednesday, Nov.16 at 7:30 am.

POST-ASSIGNMENT COMMENT FROM MRS. J:

I've been very interested to read all your comments here. I especially want to recommend Carmit Soleman and Dylan Cooper's response -- Carmit's because she engages in some very interesting speculation about the causes of the invisibility of the poor and Dylan's because he presents his position so cogently (yes, I know there's a glitch in his third line ... another testament to the importance of proofreading ... but get over it...)

Two Birds With One Stone

This cartoonist has taken out two birds with one stone.

Analyze the rhetorical mimicry
and satire at work in this New Yorker cartoon. What's being mimicked? What's being satirized? Explain why this cartoon is both apt and funny. What are the two birds I have in mind here? Present your answer as a well written and carefully proofed paragraph.
Girls: Due Thurs. morning, Nov. 10, at 7:30 am.

(Sorry. There's no better way to kill a joke than to analyze it...)

TWO MODEL RESPONSES

I

When surfing through channels, one can easily come across commercials or infomercials that feature overly enthusiastic salespeople pitching new, innovative diet pills or other methods for losing a tremendous amount of weight in a very short time. These ads are loaded with clichés and platitudes, much like political speeches. When running for office, candidates tend to promise a higher quality of life and a better country for the citizens. Particularly in our current economic situation, candidates are offering budget cuts and programs that will create a flurry of job openings. By portraying a man watching a politician deliver a trite speech containing a number of classic weight loss commercial lines, the cartoonist has cleverly satirized weight loss commercials and political speeches.

The rhetoric of the speech alludes to current issues that our government faces each day. The speaker, who vows to “trim ugly fat and waste from government,” is clearly a target of mockery due to his overzealous language. He includes phrases that allude to extreme weight loss commercials in his address regarding government. The picture elicits chuckles and smirks because this is a concept that we all know too well. We are all familiar with the jargon of politicians, the ever reassuring and far-fetched ideas that they present to their voters. Just turn on a television and one can listen to any politician claiming that they will solve the world’s biggest problems. At the same time, turn on the television to find infomercials with salespeople bragging how they can transform an overweight man into a trim and healthy figure. This is most appropriate now because we are on the verge of the 2012 presidential election, and we are already beginning to see such far-fetched bids for election from many candidates. (BY SADE COOPER)

II.

Cartoons are created for many purposes: to engage the audience, provoke questions, satirize societal tendencies, etc. In this New Yorker cartoon, the cartoonist depicts a presidential candidate blabbering to the television viewer about a crash program that will turn government waste into super services. The cartoonist not only mimics the over-promising rhetoric used by politicians, but also satirizes the similar platitudinous rhetoric of dietary programs and commercialization.
This cartoon is funny because of the obvious exaggeration, the genuineness of the presidential candidate portrayal, and how bona fide his figure and flag placement appear. It is apt because it attacks both diet programs and elections very accurately in the diction it uses, such as "super services," "for you the American people," "natural mechanism" and others.
The two birds that are being killed by the one stone are diet commercials and presidential candidates popularity attempts. The cartoon is very comparable to an exercise program because it indicates that government will lose all its fat and waste to make it look beautiful and natural. It seemingly equates presidential candidates, such as the "Herman Cains" and "Mitt Romneys," to exercise program representatives.
Both commercials over-promise and make guarantees that are virtually impossible or totally unfeasible to fulfill.
This cartoon is a commentary on how politics have reached a new low in terms of media. Presidential candidates just do whatever pleases the American people. The cartoonist uses his cartoon to send the message that the age of candidates being over-promising must terminate, or else the American government will become the new, effective exercise program.

(BY DYLAN COOPER)

Visual Rhetoric #2

What we have here, regardless of your politics, is an effective example of street art: a protest poster anonymously created for the recent protests taking place on (and against) Wall Street in Manhattan.

This poster is graphically dramatic and instantly "readable." It references ideas and images familiar to most Americans, but does so in a fresh way. It deploys only three words, but gets a lot of mileage out of them.

In a brief paragraph, analyze everything that's going on here. (You may need to zoom in on the image to capture the details.) Comment due Tuesday morning, 10/25/11 by 7:30 am.

BEST OF BATCH (according to student vote and Mrs. J ... truly a consensus affair!)
By Sade Cooper

America was founded in the spirit of democracy and liberty. These unique and distinct values can be seen whenever an individual asserts his right to freedom of speech, religion, press, and protest. Occupy Wall Street, the manifestation of the people’s frustration with the economic crisis, showcases the rights of the people outlined in the First Amendment of America’s Constitution. In the past few months, people have formed a grassroots movement, camping out in the financial district of New York City in order to express their discontent with the income inequality, unemployment, and collapse of the housing market, for which many of the protestors allege Wall Street is at fault.

The picture of the larger fish seemingly eating the little fish, dubbed Wall Street, symbolizes the goal of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Upon looking closely at the larger fish, one can easily see that it is comprised of many smaller fish, all working together to form one big fish. This depicts the mission of this demonstration: when all the individuals come together, they can be successful in defeating what they regard as the all-mighty, powerful Wall Street.

The poster urges people to “Organize!” themselves in order to create a movement strong enough to have an impact on Wall Street. This battle cry is written on the poster in order to show people that with organization, the movement can be effective. The sense of organization is conveyed through the combination of smaller fish, which creates one dynamic unit.

Wall Street is depicted as a smaller fish that lacks the idea of the “pieces of a whole” that the larger fish so clearly stresses. According to this drawing, Wall Street is comprised of identical corrupt and power-hungry corporate businessmen that all share a common goal. They are not complex or multifaceted; instead, they are one evil being responsible for the current economic crisis and the crimes committed on the people at the grassroots level.

Through this poster, one can see several of the primary goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It displays the people’s desire to unite in order to conquer their targeted enemy and change the economy and America as a whole.

The Rhetorical Flourish

The Coffee House Orator by Edgar Bundy

Ladies and Gentlemen: You have been assigned the task of creating an overblown mini-oration staggering under the weight of as many of the tropes and schemes we have learned to recognize as you can possibly cram in! Your oration must be limited to 250 words. Please blog these blowsy speechlettes as comments to this post. I will then recompile the best among them in a post of their own. I look forward to reading your orations and expect to be deeply moved. They should be full of rhetorical flourishes and well inflated with hot air.

Rhetoric in Literature

Read this passage out loud, noting the diction (word choice) and syntax (word arrangements), including the rhythm and length of its sentences. What effect does the passage have on you as you move through it? Is the speaker involved or uninvolved, moved or indifferent? How are horror and grief being handled? Keeping in mind sentence length and structure, diction, tone of voice and attitude of the narrator, write a paragraph assessing the speaker's frame of mind as evidenced through rhetoric.

Look at his bed covering. His leg lies under a wire basket. The bed covering arches over it. I kick Muller on the shin for he is just about to tell Kemmerich what the orderlies told us outside: that Kemmerich has lost his foot. The leg is amputated. He looks ghastly, yellow and wan. In his face there are already the strained lines that we know so well, we have seen them now hundreds of times. They are not so much line as marks. Under the skin the life no longer pulses, it has already pressed out the boundaries of the body. Death is working through from within. It already has command of the eyes. Here lies our comrade, Kemmerich, who a little while ago was roasting horse flesh with us and squatting in the shell holes. He it is still, and yet it is not he any longer. His features have become uncertain and faint, like a photographic plate from which two pictures have been taken.* Even his voice sounds like ashes.

* the features look uncertain like a double-exposed photograph.