Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition, Mr. Orlando Joseph A. Gregori High School

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1 Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition, Mr. Orlando Joseph A. Gregori High School Summer Assignment--Due Monday, August 13, 2018, without exception! Congratulations on becoming the seventh senior class at Gregori High while I m sure you re looking forward to graduation, this year will set the tone, not just for future classes, but for your college career. I expect you to work hard and to always do your absolute best anything less is unacceptable! To prepare for next year, I'm asking you to complete two assignments: I. Read and annotate Native Son and Between the World and Me (I m including the poem below), both by Richard Wright, and answer some reading questions. II. Create flash cards for literary terms, and study them. Summer Assignment Part I Read and annotate Native Son and Between the World and Me. Please acquire the novel as I m asking for either annotations or a double entry journal. (Yesterday s Books is the best used book store in town, or you can get cheap texts used on Amazon; or use post-notes in a library copy.) If you have any trouble finding this text, talk to me immediately. As you read, if you have any questions, feel free to me at orlando.j@monet.k12.us. I will check my sporadically, so don't be offended if I don't respond right away, but I will respond (barring technological glitches, of course). I am providing you with guided reading questions to answer as you read. Let me emphasize that these are meant to help you understand the novel I strongly encourage you to answer these as you read, writing down your answers, so that you can easily review the novel immediately before the AP Literature course begins. At the very least you will have a test and a timed essay on the novel. Active participation in discussion is also essential to any AP Literature course. So, be prepared! Your success in this course is limited only by your own investment of time and energy; your grades will ultimately reflect the knowledge and skills you have learned throughout the semester rather than a simple willingness to go through the motions of coming to class and completing tasks. Your preparation as you read Native Son is step one. 1

2 Between the World and Me Richard Wright And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing, Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me... There was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes. There was a charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky. There were torn tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves, and a scorched coil of greasy hemp; A vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped shirt, a lonely hat, and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood. And upon the trampled grass were buttons, dead matches, butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a drained gin-flask, and a whore's lipstick; Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline. And through the morning air the sun poured yellow surprise into the eye sockets of the stony skull... And while I stood my mind was frozen within cold pity for the life that was gone. The ground gripped my feet and my heart was circled by icy walls of fear-- The sun died in the sky; a night wind muttered in the grass and fumbled the leaves in the trees; the woods poured forth the hungry yelping of hounds; the darkness screamed with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived: The dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves into my bones. The grey ashes formed flesh firm and black, entering into my flesh. The gin-flask passed from mouth to mouth, cigars and cigarettes glowed, the whore smeared lipstick red upon her lips, And a thousand faces swirled around me, clamoring that my life be burned... 2

3 And then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth into my throat till I swallowed my own blood. My voice was drowned in the roar of their voices, and my black wet body slipped and rolled in their hands as they bound me to the sapling. And my skin clung to the bubbling hot tar, falling from me in limp patches. And the down and quills of the white feathers sank into my raw flesh, and I moaned in my agony. Then my blood was cooled mercifully, cooled by a baptism of gasoline. And in a blaze of red I leaped to the sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs Panting, begging I clutched childlike, clutched to the hot sides of death. Now I am dry bones and my face a stony skull staring in yellow surprise at the sun... 3

4 Reading Questions: Answer the following questions thoroughly, in complete sentences, including textual evidence when necessary as support. You will want to read Wright s essay How Bigger Was Born, which is likely in your text, but is also here: All answers should be hand-written. 1. Briefly describe how Bigger kills the rat. In what ways does the rat s death mirror Bigger s final fate? 2. What are Bigger s choices in life? What are his dreams? 3. Why does Bigger pick a fight with Gus? 4. Support or refute the following statement: Mrs. Dalton is both physically and politically blind. 5. Based on the following quotation, what do Mrs. Dalton and Mrs. Thomas want from Bigger? his mother wanted him to do the things she wanted him to do, and he felt that Mrs. Dalton wanted him to do the things she felt that he should have wanted to do. 6. What does Mary do to make Bigger hate her? Why does he kill her? 7. Define parallelism. Find an example in the story. 8. What evidence is there that Bigger is an intelligent young man, far more intelligent than anyone gives him credit for? 9. In what ways is Bigger s life similar to Richard Wright s life? What does Wright himself say about his inspiration for the character? 10. Support or refute the following statement: Bigger is angry at both blacks and whites. 11. What is ironic about Bigger s plan to use the world s fear of communism to help frame Jan for Mary s disappearance? 12. Assume the color white is a symbol in this novel. What does the following passage from the novel suggest to the reader about its meaning? To Bigger and his kind white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead Summarize Bigger s relationship with Bessie. What evidence is there that neither one of them is capable of loving the other? Why does Bigger kill her? 14. List some instances in the novel where heads are injured or damaged in some way. What might they symbolize in this story? 15. What is ironic about the South Side Real Estate Company? 4

5 16. Wright is praised by critics for the wealth of imaginative symbolism in this novel. Briefly explain the symbolism of the white cat and the fire in the furnace. 17. How are other innocent black citizens hurt by Bigger s crime? 18. Why does Bigger reject his mother s religion? 19. What motivates Bigger to continue to fight on the rooftop even though he knows it is hopeless? 20. How does Bigger behave after his capture? 21. List four examples of negative stereotyping of black people by the newspapers. 22. When Jan visits Bigger in prison, Bigger sees a white man as a human being for the first time in his life. What possible solution to the hostility between the races is suggested by this scene? 23. Why does Max want to defend Bigger? Do you think Max ever really understands Bigger s motives for killing Mary? Does Bigger have any chance to escape execution? 24. What purpose is served by bringing Bessie s body into the courtroom? In what ways can this be viewed as a racist act? 25. List three ways the judicial system contributes to the oppression of the black people. 26. What meaning in life does Bigger finally discover? How does Max feel about Bigger s assessment of his crimes? 27. Support or refute the following statement: Wright sympathizes with the Communist Party but does not support its repression of individual achievement. 28. What do you think is the overall message of this story? Use examples to support your answer. 29. Briefly outline what progress you see that has been made toward ending oppression and racial hostility that has been made since the publication of this novel in Define naturalism. Discuss how the following incidents can be considered examples of naturalism in this story: Bigger kills Mary to avoid being accused of sexually molesting her. Bigger pulls a gun on Jan in the street. 31. How does Wright s poem Between the World and Me help inform the theme of the novel? 5

6 Summer Assignment Part II Below is an incomplete list of literary terms you need to know. For each one, make a flash card (3x5 index cards work well). On one side, write the term, and on the other, write the definition and a good example (it s best if you find an example from good literature). You should have no trouble finding these on the internet. 1. adage 2. ad hominem 3. allegory 4. alliteration 5. allusion 6. ambiguity 7. analogy 8. anaphora 9. antagonist 10. antecedent 11. antithesis 12. aphorism 13. apostrophe 14. archetype 15. aside 16. assonance 17. asyndeton 18. audience 19. balanced sentence 20. ballad 21. blank verse 22. cæsura 23. elision 24. characterization 25. chiasmus 26. clause 27. cliché 28. climax 29. colloquialism 30. complex sentence 31. compound sentence 32. conceit 33. concrete poetry 34. connotation 35. consonance 36. couplet 37. dactyl 38. declarative sentence 39. deductive reasoning 40. denotation 41. deus ex machina 42. diction 43. didactic 44. digression 45. dissonance 46. elegy 47. ellipsis 48. end-stopped 49. epic 50. epiphany 51. epithet 52. eulogy 53. euphemism 54. exclamatory sentence 55. expletive 56. exposition 57. fable 58. figurative language 59. first person (point of view) 60. flashback (~forward) 61. flat character foil 63. foreshadowing 64. frame device 65. free verse 66. genre 67. heroic couplet 68. hexameter 69. homily 70. hubris 71. hyperbole 72. hypothetical question 73. iambic pentameter 74. idiom 75. image 76. in medias res 77. inductive reasoning 78. invective 79. irony 80. jargon 81. juxtaposition 82. limerick 83. limited narrator 84. literal language 85. literary license 86. litotes 87. loose sentence 88. lyric 89. malapropism 90. metaphor 91. meter (iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest)

7 92. metonymy 93. mood 94. motif 95. motivation 96. myth 97. narrator 98. non sequitor 99. octet 100. ode 101. omniscient (point of view) 102. onomatopoeia 103. overstatement 104. oxymoron 105. parable 106. paradox 107. parallel structure 108. parody 109. pathos 110. pedantic 111. pentameter 112. periodic sentence 113. persona 114. personification 115. point of view 116. polysyndeton 117. prosody 118. protagonist 119. pun 120. quatrain 121. reversal 122. rhetoric 123. rhetorical question 124. rhyme (interior, slant) 125. rhythm 126. romantic 127. round character 128. sarcasm 129. satire 130. scan 131. scapegoat 132. scene 133. sestet 134. setting 135. simile 136. simple sentence 137. solecism 138. soliloquy 139. sonnet 140. stage direction 141. stanza 142. stereotype 143. stock character 144. stream-ofconsciousness 145. structure 146. style 147. surrealism 148. syllepsis 149. syllogism 150. symbol 151. synecdoche 152. synesthesia 153. syntax 154. tautology 155. tetrameter 156. theme 157. tone 158. tragedy 159. trite 160. turning point 161. understatement 162. unreliable narrator 163. vernacular 164. absolute 165. anadiplosis 166. zeugma 167. hyperbaton 168. conduplicatio 7

8 Objectives: To learn techniques for annotating a text To practice close reading skills To find patterns and contrasts in a text To practice a new kind of notetaking To analyze literature How to Annotate Annotating a text is like having a conversation with a book it allows the active reader to ask questions, comment on meaning, and mark events and passages he or she wants to revisit. The annotation of a text can also take place during a lecture or a discussion that is focused on a certain textual passage. Taking notes on the lecturer s remarks or about thoughts expressed during a class discussion has a marked advantage the reader won t misplace the notes, and the ideas will be readily available right beside the text they address. One way that AP students can look closely at a text is by finding patterns and contrasts in it. Examining the patterns in a work may even lead readers to the realization that their own lives are marked by patterns, and these patterns control their existence much in the same way that an author s patterns control a text. Students, then, should learn how to mark and annotate a text to discern patterns, contrasts, and relationships. When readers first begin to annotate in order to organize their understanding of a text, they may wish to begin by following these simple guidelines. Annotation Tips Make brief notes at the top of the page or on a sticky note to mark important plot events. Circle words that are unfamiliar or unusual. Try to figure out what the words mean through the way they are used; supplement your guesses by discussing the words with a teacher or by consulting a dictionary. When new characters are introduced, underline phrases that describe them. Underline words, images, and details that seem to form a pattern throughout the text. For example, if a large clock appears in the first chapter, and then you notice the author using the words timely or ticking in the text, and then an incident occurs in which a character breaks a watch or is late for an appointment, you may have uncovered a pattern of imagery which will lead the close reader to discover a thematic idea. Underline these related strands and observe the rest of the text closely to see if the author uses other linked words, images, or details. 8

9 Underline passages you think might be symbolic. Mark key ideas and note briefly your reflections about them. Underline passages in which figurative language appears. When you get an idea while reading the text, note it in a brief form in the margin. You may never think of this idea again unless you write it down. If you have a question about something in the book, write it on the page when it first occurred to you. While listening to a lecture or participating in a discussion about the book, write down insights you hear or discover. Writing these notes directly in the text assures you that you will be able to reference the exact passage that triggered the ideas. Also, it is less likely that you will lose track of the notes. Use brackets, checks, stars, bullets, or asterisks to mark very important items or things you want to come back to later. Annotation can be a permanent record of the reader s intellectual conversation with the text. It can help a serious reader to keep track of patterns, contrasts, plot events, and character development. It can assist a student in studying for a test or writing a paper that requires the use of quotes to support ideas. Some AP teachers ask students to submit their annotated books as reading checks. Students who learn to annotate become active readers and recursive thinkers who notice patterns, symbolic elements, and contrasts almost effortlessly as they absorb the text. When students become aware of these patterns, they often express amazement at finding patterns in everything that surrounds them. They will not be able to read any kind of text, literary or not, without noticing parallelism, for instance. They will even become aware of the patterns in television shows and films and in their music. Having become aware of these patterns and contrasts, students cannot help but notice that all forms of communication and entertainment contain them. For experienced students, many annotations should reflect analysis. That is, you should identify elements of literature, but also note their purpose. Why does an author use a metaphor in a particular place? Why have a character foil? Why use simple syntax versus complex? 9

Close Reading: Analyzing Poetry and Passages of Fiction. The Keys to Understanding Literature

Close Reading: Analyzing Poetry and Passages of Fiction The Keys to Understanding Literature Close Reading a. small details suggest larger ideas b. HOW does the meaning of a piece come about Close Reading