Week 14, S2

 

A Separate Peace

This week we'll begin reading A Separate Peace, chapters 1-5.  We'll be using a study guide format for this last unit.  I know, I know, it slows you down, but I'm doing it for your own good. You generally do better on the guides than the quizzes, plus we'll use them as a base for discussion.

Save your own copy of each of these study guides and follow the directions before, during, and after your reading:

Reader Response Guide, Chapters 1-3

Reader Response Guide, Chapters 4-5 

 When you are finished, submit links to the guides here.

Poem of the Week: "Strange Fruit"

This past class, I touched upon the idea that almost anything can be inspiration for a poem--a book from your childhood, a red wheelbarrow, even a metro station.  I also mentioned that literature, poetry, and artworks are sometimes designed to make you angry or uncomfortable. 

For example, although I asked if you liked the end of Fahrenheit 451,  we weren't supposed to like it, were we? Though Granger, Montag, and the commune survive, we are still left to grapple with a world of mechanical hounds, a wife who betrays her husband, and the vast destruction of an atomic bomb.  

Continuing with this theme of protest, our poem this week is "Strange Fruit." It was composed by a Jewish schoolteacher named Abel Meeropol after looking at a 1930 photograph. This poem was first published as "Bitter Fruit" in 1937, then Meeropol set it to music and began to perform it with his wife among friends.  The black singer Billie Holiday was introduced to the song and first performed it in 1939.

Holiday made the song famous. Listen to her 1959 performance here. 

Abel Meeropol's story is also fascinating.  His life touches upon so many of the issues of this era--Communism, the atomic bomb, McCarthism, The Rosenbergs, racism, and the impending civil rights movement. Please listen to this NPR episode: The Strange Story Of The Man Behind 'Strange Fruit' ---look for the blue bar to click for the 7 minute episode and/or read the article below it. 

You can learn more about this history of this poem or the photograph that inspired it here.

Quoting Practice

Find your book, They Say/I Say and read the chapter about quoting, Part I, Chapter 3 "As He Himself Puts It." The book looks like this or this:

If you can't find your copy, here's a link to the 3rd edition online.  At the end of this chapter, complete Exercise #2 which asks you go back and analyze how you integrated a quote in a past piece of writing.  You could use your local history article for this or any other piece of writing in my class or any other.  Analyze a time you've quoted text and revise it to make it better.  Cut and paste the before and after

effort into a Google document and submit it at with the study guide work above.

Submit Fahrenheit Work

You should submit your work for Fahrenheit 451  here.  

This work includes:

Your F451 chart
Your childhood book poem.
A snapshot or scan of your annotated "How to Mark a Book."