How This Works

Well, you've gotten this far, which is the first step.

As you proceed with your reading, I'd like you to leave some comments. Scroll down the page until you come to the book you're reading. Click on "Comments" at the end. Leave your comment. I'll look in occasionally, but what this should be is a place for you to meet and share ideas with your classmates.  Be sure to leave your name when you blog.

I expect everyone to post at least once for each book. That's the minimum. That will get you 37/50 (or less if your entries are extremely brief). The more entries you make, the more involved you are, the higher your score will be.  The people who get 50/50 are doing it for the fun of the exchanges, not for the grade.

Entries will not be accepted after 12 midnight on Tuesday, August 27th  (the night before the first day of school).

That's the easy part, the fun part. Now for the more difficult assignment (that's why they call it honors): a Formal Academic Essay (aka the "Five-Paragraph Essay"). Think 3-5 pages. If you need a refresher on the five-paragraph essay, go to my THS webpage for the necessary materials.

Suggested topics: Here are a few suggestions. Remember, these are only topics. You will need to narrow them down to find your particular thesis.

A)  The Importance of Faith in In the Beauty of the Lilies.      

Faith is what you believe in, where you find the guiding principles of your life.  It often is tied to God and religion, but it doesn't have to be.  You can have faith in science, faith in individuals, faith in systems.

For this paper, examine the role of faith in each of the four generations of the Wilmot family.  (That should provide a simple basic structure for your paper.  But you'll have to dig and think to come to your understanding of the topic.)

B)  The Doomed Relationship in A Moon for the Misbegotten.

          Jim loves Josie.  He sees through her pose of promiscuity; he is not put off by her size or looks.  And Josie loves Jim.  She can tolerate his womanizing, his drinking, his self-loathing.  Yet at the end of the play Jim walks away, and Josie doesn't try to stop him.

 Why is that?  Why does it have to be, given what we're told about the characters?  To write this, one reading will not be enough.  Make sure you have your facts straight.  What's Josie's father's role in all of this?  What exactly happened with Jim, and his mother, and the woman on the train?  What is the nature of the guilt which Jim can't seem to shake?  What would the future hold, if Josie decided that there could be a future for the two?

C)  Strong Women, Weak Men

 This seems to be the case in both A Moon for the Misbegotten and In the Beauty of the Lilies.  Mike Hogan, then Phil, then Jim in Moon.  And then there's Josie.  Clarence, Teddy, and Clark, in Lilies.  Then there's Stella, Emily, and Essie/Alma.  Not until Jesse comes into the story do we find a strong male figure (and look how that works out).

 That's a theme, but too broad to be a thesis one can build a paper on.  So you'll have to narrow down.  Is there a particular reason for the weakness in men.  The strength of the women?  Is this the result of a changing century, or the cause of a changing century?  Are men abdicating their positions of power, or are women usurping them?

 You may focus on one or both of the works.  Either way, don't try to fit too much in.  Less is often more. 

The Essay will be due no later than 3:00 p.m., Friday, August 30th.  (This applies whether you have English first semester or second – so don’t give me that.)  It may be turned in early at: jmacarthur@tolland.k12.ct.us

New Contemporary Poems

The Universe wants you to read these poems.  That's the message I was given one afternoon recently, when I came across this essay by the poet Tony Hoagland, who thinks that English teachers are generally unsuccessful at teaching poetry in schools. Hoagland thinks that we're going at poetry the wrong way 'round.   He feels that contemporary poetry is much more vital and accessible, and that if we teachers got students turned on to contemporary poetry, you would then be more open to the "old masters".  Hoagland suggested twenty poems that we could be teaching to achieve that end.

Now while I feel there's something to be said for his way of thinking, I didn't agree with his choice of poems.  And, as I happen to be familiar with a lot of contemporary poets, I came up with a list of twenty of my own selections.  There are twenty different poets with all sorts of different backgrounds.

As you read these poems, I don't want you to analyze.  Just react.  Respond.  If you find a line that you like, blog about that.  If you have a question, blog it.  If you have something to say pertinent to the theme of the poem, blog it.  (Read the introductory poem "Introduction to Poetry" for more advice.)

By the way, I encourage all of you to drop by the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival this summer.  Pictured above is the former Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky, reading there in 2008.  Other Poet Laureates who have read there include Billy Collins, Philip Levine, and Natasha Trethewey.  Many of the poets in your packet are Sunken Garden alumni.  There's food and drink. live music, then a poetry reading -- all in a beautiful setting on a lovely summer evening.  One can hardly get more civilized that that.

In the Beauty of the Lilies

John Updike is now considered one of the preeminent American novelists of the 20th century.  We'll have to see how that goes.  Literary reputations have a way of rising and falling.  Melville died a miserable failure, and look at him now.

In the Beauty of the Lilies (where did he get that title from, by the way?) is a saga that follows the fortunes of one American family down through four generations.  Two guiding threads throughout the novel -- religious faith, and the movies.  How are those intertwined, I wonder?

In the beginning (of the novel) the Reverend Clarence Wilmot suddenly loses his faith.  His problem then is: how to you continue preaching the word of God to people, when you don't believe in God?  And he can't.  So he becomes a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.  (Get it?  Secular knowledge substituting for religious faith?)  And so begins a slow decline for the family -- which is the opposite of how it's supposed to be in America.  With Clarence a shell of his former self, it's up to his wife to pick up the slack.  (And there's another thread for you to follow though the book.)

A Moon for the Misbegotten

When it comes to standing ovations, I'm old-fashioned. I think they should be reserved for truly outstanding performances. Nothing bugs me more than people who sit in their seat a while, then decide "Yea, I guess it's worth a standing ovation." If you're not absolutely propelled out of your seat by a performance, then sit down.When I saw A Moon for the Misbegotten a few years ago at the Hartford Stage Company, I leapt to my feet at the final curtain.

Here's why -- the love story, between Jim Tyrone and Josie Hogan, is beautiful, complex, and tormented. Now you take Romeo and Juliet: he was hot for her, she was hot for him; not much of a story, really. I can't tell you now about the nature of the characters or the relationship -- you'll have to discover that for yourself.

The play is set in Connecticut, of course, but back in the 1920's.  It's more of a rural, agricultural Connecticut, compared to our Connecticut of suburban commuters in their McMansions.

And the playwright, Eugene O'Neill is a Connecticut native. And he's a heavyweight.  As should become apparent as you read this.

Be sure to leave your name when you leave your response.