CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: 2 REQUIRED READING: 2 BOOK # 1: CLASSIC NOVEL OF ADVENTURE 3 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn BOOK #2: LITERARY CLASSIC (SUMMER OR THE FALL) 4 Of Mice and Men How AND WHY TO ANNOTATE A BOOK 6 1 - EVERY TRIP IS A QUEST (EXCEPT WHEN IT'S NOT) 8 "FOUND" POEMS 12 THEME STATEMENTS 13
INTRODUCTION Welcome to AP English! Mark Twain once said, "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." If you are receiving this packet, it means you've either signed up, or expressed an interest in, Advanced Placement in Literature and Composition. Congratulations on your decision to challenge yourself academically. This class will prepare you for future Advanced Placement courses, college, and ultimately, life. You will be challenged to think outside the "norm" and set high expectations for yourself. This is not an easy course, but once the year is complete, you will have learned and accomplished a great deal. Ultimately, the primary goal of this program is that you read, and that you do so voraciously. The research on reading reveals that those students who read get better at reading. They also increase their vocabulary and their fluency. Based upon these considerations, the AP program at FCHS/AHSFA, along with countless other AP programs require students to participate in Summer Reading as a vehicle to promote literacy. As you progress, you will get more choice over your summer reading. One of the best things we can do to prepare you for your exit exams is to give you exposure to a wide breadth of outstanding literature as well as hone your critical thinking and analytical writing skills. Over the course of the academic year, we will be reading and writing at a rapid pace. Therefore, the summer assignments are designed to keep you active as readers and writers REQUIRED READING: Informational Reading: Literary Reading: "Introduction to Annotation Handout" (Nick Otten) - Read First "Every Trip is a Quest" (Foster) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (William Goldman) Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
FOR THE START OF THE YEAR: BOOK #1: CLASSIC NOVEL OF ADVENTURE THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN - MARK TWAIN The guiding focus of this course is The Hero's Quest and Bildungsroman texts (tales of growing up). Please read the novel (and if you have time access the film. When finished, complete the following assignment. Read Thomas C. Foster's essay/chapter, "Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It's Not)," found in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor (Attached). Using the 5 point example based on the Crying of Lot 49 as a guide, and using examples from the novel to support your opinion, discuss the following question: In what way/s does Huck Finn align with Foster's definition of a quest? Summaries must be typed, double-spaced, in 12-point font, with one inch margins. You should give me what you believe is an Academic Title Page. This should be no more than 2 pages in length double spaced. This assignment is to be collected the first day of the school year.
BOOK #2: LITERARY CLASSIC (SUMMER OR THE FALL) "OF MICE AND MEN" BY JOHN STIENBECK One of the key skills you will practice in AP is annotating and close annotating. Formally, we call this "annotation." Yet, marking a book is rather personal and unique to you as an individual. This is a daunting process at first, but once mastered, it will become an essential strategy for managing increasingly complex texts. At its basic level, an annotation is a selection of text and some of your own thoughts attached to that text. It is important that you create a system that works well for you. Consider the possibilities of highlighters, colored pens or pencils, and post-it notes as some of your options. Your personal book-marking system will develop over time. However you decide to do it, marking your books is not a recommendation-it is required for AP English Literature. There are three ways that you can annotate and make connections to text: text to self/world; text to itself (Formalism); text other text. We are going to start with the first of these, and the rest once the course begins. Read the attached introduction to annotation, and highlight what you believe are significant passages (the color is up to you right now - even if he does recommend yellow). Using a pencil, in the margins, comment on how the idea in the passage relates to you? To the world? I am interested in your personal reaction to texts. Comment on it. How does something make you feel? Is there a turn of phrase that you like or dislike? What are your thoughts. I do not want you to be critical here (no looking at symbol, or theme, or anything of that nature). I want you to have a conversation with the book. You need to say at least one thing every page. It does not have to be much; but it is not polite to let a person monopolize a conversation, so please do not let your book do so. You can say more than that if you would like. I am not sure how talkative you are. So if you wish to say more, feel free. Things you can consider doing are:» Have a reaction Ask a question Have an opinion Can you make a connection? Can you relate to anything?
During the first week of class, I will wander the classroom thumbing through your summer reading books. I will be looking for evidence that you have interacted with the summer reading texts. One of the first grades you receive for AP Literature and Composition will be for completing annotation of the book you read over the summer. See the attached annotation rubric. When completed, I would you to write a found poem and attempt a theme statement. Instructions are in the attached handouts. PLEASE NOTE: The poem will be due within a few days of starting the second semester. The Mythology package will be due at the beginning of our discussions on Mythology (our third unit in the course). Feel free to ask me about any of the second semester - feel free to come and discuss them with me if needed when you start school in the Fall if necessary).
How AND WHY TO ANNOTATE A BOOK by Nick Otten Note-Taking vs. Annotation Most serious readers take notes of some kind when they are carefully considering a text, but many readers are too casual about their notetaking. Later they realize they have taken notes that are incomplete or too random, and then they laboriously start over, re-notating an earlier reading. Others take notes only when cramming for a test, which is often merely "better than nothing." Students can easily improve the depth of their reading and extend their understanding over long periods of time by developing a systematic form of annotating. Such a system is not necessarily difficult and can be completely personal and exceptionally useful. First, what is the difference between annotating and "taking notes"? For some people, the difference is nonexistent or negligible, but in this instance I am referring to a way of making notes directly onto a text such as a book, a handout, or another type of publication. The advantage of having one annotated text instead of a set of note papers plus a text should be clear enough: all the information is together and inseparable, with notes very close to the text for easier understanding, and with fewer pieces to keep organized. What the reader gets from annotating is a deeper initial reading and an understanding of the text that lasts. You can deliberately engage the author in conversation and questions, maybe stopping to argue, pay a compliment, or clarify an important issue much like having a teacher or storyteller with you in the room. If and when you come back to the book, that initial interchange is recorded for you, making an excellent and entirely personal study tool. Below are instructions adapted from a handout that I have used for years with my high school honors students as well as graduate students. Criteria for Successful Annotation Using your annotated copy of the book six weeks after your first reading, you can recall the key information in the book with reasonable thoroughness in a 15- to 30-minute review of your notes and the text.
Why Annotate? Annotate any text that you must know well, in detail, and from which you might need to produce evidence that supports your knowledge or reading, such as a book on which you will be tested. Don't assume that you must annotate when you read for pleasure; if you're relaxing with a book, well, relax. Still, some people let's call them "not-abnormal" actually annotate for pleasure. Don't annotate other people's property, which is almost always selfish, often destructive, rude, and possibly illegal. For a book that doesn't belong to you, use adhesive notes for your comments, removing them before you return the text. Don't annotate your own book if it has intrinsic value as an art object or a rarity. Consider doing what teachers do: buy an inexpensive copy of the text for class. Tools: Highlighter, Pencil, and Your Own Text 1. Yellow Highlighter A yellow highlighter allows you to mark exactly what you are interested in. Equally important, the yellow line emphasizes without interfering. Before highlighters, I drew lines under important spots in texts, but underlining is laborious and often distracting. While you read, highlight whatever seems to be key information. At first, you will probably highlight too little or too much; with experience, you will choose more effectively which material to highlight. 2. Pencil A pencil is better than a pen because you can make changes. Even geniuses make mistakes, temporary comments, and incomplete notes. While you read, use marginalia marginal notes to mark key material. Marginalia can include check marks, question marks, stars, arrows, brackets, and written words and phrases. Create your own system for marking what is important, interesting, quotable, questionable, and so forth.
1 - EVERY TRIP IS A QUEST (EXCEPT WHEN IT'S NOT) OKAY, SO HERE'S THE DEAL: let's say, purely hypothetically, you're reading a book about an average sixteen-year-old kid in the summer of 1968. The kid let's call him Kip who hopes his acne clears up before he gets drafted, is on his way to the A&P. His bike is a one-speed with a coaster brake and therefore deeply humiliating, and riding it to run an errand for his mother makes it even worse. Along the way he has a couple of disturbing experiences, including a minorly unpleasant encounter with a German shepherd, topped off in the supermarket parking lot where he sees the girl of his dreams, Karen, laughing and horsing around in Tony Vauxhall's brandnew Barracuda. Now Kip hates Tony already because he has a name like Vauxhall and not like Smith, which Kip thinks is pretty lame as a name to follow Kip, and because the 'Cuda is bright green and goes approximately the speed of light, and also because Tony has never had to work a day in his life. So Karen, who is laughing and having a great time, turns and sees Kip, who has recently asked her out, and she keeps laughing. (She could stop laughing and it wouldn't matter to us, since we're considering this structurally. In the story we're inventing here, though, she keeps laughing.) Kip goes on into the store to buy the loaf of Wonder Bread that his mother told him to pick up, and as he reaches for the bread, he decides right then and there to lie about his age to the Marine recruiter even though it means going to Vietnam, because nothing will ever happen for him in this onehorse burg where the only thing that matters is how much money your old man has. Either that or Kip has a vision of St. Abillard (any saint will do, but our imaginary author picked a comparatively obscure one), whose face appears on one of the red, yellow, or blue balloons. For our purposes, the nature of the decision doesn't matter any more than whether Karen keeps laughing or which color balloon manifests the saint. What just happened here? If you were an English professor, and not even a particularly weird English professor, you'd know that you'd just watched a knight have a not very suitable encounter with his nemesis. In other words, a quest just happened.
But it just looked like a trip to the store for some white bread. True. But consider the quest. Of what does it consist? A knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail (whatever one of those may be), at least one dragon, one evil knight, one princess. Sound about right? That's a list I can live with: a knight (named Kip), a dangerous road (nasty German shepherds), a Holy Grail (one form of which is a loaf of Wonder Bread), at least one dragon (trust me, a '68 'Cuda could definitely breathe fire), one evil knight (Tony), one princess (who can either keep laughing or stop). Seems like a bit of a stretch. On the surface, sure. But let's think structurally. The quest consists of five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there. Item (a) is easy; a quester is just a person who goes on a quest, whether or not he knows it's a quest. In fact, usually he doesn't know. Items (b) and (c) should be considered together: someone tells our protagonist, our hero, who need not look very heroic, to go somewhere and do something. Go in search of the Holy Grail. Go to the store for bread. Go to Vegas and whack a guy. Tasks of varying nobility, to be sure, but structurally all the same. Go there, do that. Note that I said the stated reason for the quest. That's because of item (e). The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. So why do they go and why do we care? They go because of the stated task, mistakenly believing that it is their real mission. We know, however, that their quest is educational. They don't know enough about the only subject that really matters: themselves. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That's why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered. Forty-five-year-old men either have self-knowledge or they're never going to get it, while your average sixteen-to-seventeen-year-old kid is likely to have a long way to go in the self-knowledge department. Let's look at a real example. When I teach the late-twentieth-century novel, I always begin with the greatest quest novel of the last century: Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 (1965). Beginning readers can find the novel mystifying, irritating, and highly peculiar. True enough, there is a good bit of cartoonish in the novel, which can mask the basic quest structure. On the other hand, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late fourteenth century) and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen (1596), two of the great quest narratives from early English literature, also have what modern readers must consider cartoonish elements. It's really only a matter of whether we're talking Classics Illustrated or Zap Comics. So here's the setup in The Crying of Lot 49:
Our quester: a young woman, not very happy in her marriage or her life, not too old to learn, not too assertive where men are concerned. 2) A place to go: in order to carry out her duties, she must drive to Southern California from her home near San Francisco. Eventually she will travel back and forth between the two, and between her past (a husband with a disintegrating personality and a fondness for LSD, an insane ex-nazi psychotherapist) and her future (highly unclear). 3) A stated reason to go there: she has been made executor of the will of her former lover, a fabulously wealthy and eccentric businessman and stamp collector. 4) Challenges and trials: our heroine meets lots of really strange, scary, and occasionally truly dangerous people. She goes on a nightlong excursion through the world of the outcasts and the dispossessed, of San Francisco; enters her therapist's office to talk him out of his psychotic shooting rampage (the dangerous enclosure known in the study of traditional quest romances as "Chapel Perilous"); involves herself in what may be a centuriesold postal conspiracy. 5) The real reason to go: did I mention that her name is Oedipa? Oedipa Maas, actually. She's named for the great tragic character from Sophocles' drama Oedipus the King (ca. 425B.C), whose real calamity is that he doesn't know himself. In Pynchon's novel the heroine's resources, really her crutches and they all happen to be male are stripped away one by one, shown to be false or unreliable, until she reaches the point where she either must break down, reduced to a little fetal ball, or stand straight and rely on herself. And to do that, she first must find the self on whom she can rely. Which she does, after considerable struggle. Gives up on men, Tupperware parties, easy answers. Plunges ahead into the great mystery of the ending. Acquires, dare we say, self-knowledge? Of course we dare. Still... You don't believe me. Then why does the stated goal fade away? We hear less and less about the will and the estate as the story goes on, and even the surrogate goal, the mystery of the postal conspiracy, remains unresolved. At the end of the novel, she's about to witness an auction of some rare forged stamps, and the answer to the mystery may appear during the auction. We doubt it, though, given what's gone before. Mostly, we don't even care. Now we know, as she does, that she can carry on, that discovering that men can't be counted on doesn't mean the world ends, that she's a whole person. 10
So there, in fifty words or more, is why professors of literature typically think The Crying of Lot 49 is a terrific little book. It does look a bit weird at first glance, experimental and super-hip, but once you get the hang of it, you see that it follows the conventions of a quest tale. So does Huck Finn. The Lord of the Rings. North by Northwest. Star Wars. And most other stories of someone going somewhere and doing something, especially if the going and the doing wasn't his idea in the first place. A word of warning: if I sometimes speak here and in the chapters to come as if a certain statement is always true, a certain condition always obtains, I apologize. "Always" and "never" are not words that have much meaning in literary study. For one thing, as soon as something seems to always be true, some wise guy will come along and write something to prove that it's not. If literature seems to be too comfortably patriarchal, a novelist like the late Angela Carter or a poet like the contemporary Eavan Boland will come along and upend things just to remind readers and writers of the falseness of our established assumptions. If readers start to pigeonhole African-American writing, as was beginning to happen in the 1960s and 1970s, a trickster like Ishmael Reed will come along who refuses to fit in any pigeonhole we could create. Let's consider journeys. Sometimes the quest fails or is not taken up by the protagonist. Moreover, is every trip really a quest? It depends. Some days I just drive to work no adventures, no growth. I'm sure that the same is true in writing. Sometimes plot requires that a writer get a character from home to work and back again. That said, when a character hits the road, we should start to pay attention, just to see if, you know, something's going on there. Once you figure out quests, the rest is easy.
"FOUND" POEMS Of Mice and Men Directions: Create a 'found' poem - at least 10 lines long - from Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. As you do so, pay close attention to Steinbeck's use of language. Use your poetic skills to craft your discoveries into an effective poem. Getting started: 1. Find parts that you can visualize, with strong sensory details or charged dialogue. 2. Select a Theme that you would like to say something about: Love, Guilt, Dreams, Loneliness. I am not concerned about what your poem says thematically, only that it says something. You will put a single line explaining your theme on the back of the poem (keep it generalized). What is your poem trying to say about the subject that you picked. For Example: Theme Word: Loneliness What I am trying to say: People need companionship to feel complete. 3. Copy down Steinbeck's words. Then re-arrange the words to create a 'found' poem. Re-order words so that you communicate images or emotions clearly. Omit words that aren't necessary. Change punctuation, capitalization, verb tense, plurals, or possessives, as necessary. Add up to four words of your own, if you absolutely need to add something to make the poem flow more smoothly or to make sense. Space or arrange the words so they are poem-like. Pay attention to line breaks, layout, and other elements that will emphasize important words or significant ideas in the poem, Read your draft aloud as you rearrange the words. Test the possible line breaks by pausing slightly. If it sounds good, it's probably right. - Arrange the words so that they make a rhythm you like. You can space words out so that they are all alone or allruntogether. You can also put key words on lines by themselves. You can shape the entire poem so that it's wide or tall or shaped like an object (say a heart?) 3. Choose a title. Type your poem. 5. Select or draw a complementary image to accompany the poem.
THEME STATEMENTS 1. When you finish reading, use the enclosed directions to write a thematic statement for the novel. Pay close attention to those directions so that you avoid writing thematic topics or generic, underdeveloped thematic statements. 2. Based on the thematic statement that you write, choose a 3 moments from the text that develop that idea. List them in point form, under the theme statement. How to Write Thematic Statements: A Four Step Process A common mistake many readers make is to confuse topic and theme. Topic is what the piece of writing is all about. Theme is what the author has to say about the topic. A topic may be expressed in one word. A theme, however, cannot. Here's an easy way to create an effective thematic statement: STEP 1: STEP 2: STEP 3: What is this novel/film/piece about? (one word answers: words like justice, courage, friendship, love, etc.) What does the writer believe about? (The one word answer from STEP 1) Begin writing your thematic statement: The author believes that STEP 4: Cross off "The author believes that." What follows should be your thematic statement.
EXAMPLE: From Romeo and Juliet Step 1: Step 2: Step 3: Step 4: What is the story about? LOVE What does the author believe about LOVE? The author believes that love is a beautiful but potentially tragic thing when entered into impulsively. Love is a beautiful but potentially tragic thing when entered into impulsively. (This is the statement you will put in the center of your theme triangle. It should be the statement that determines your choice of film and your third piece) Thematic Topic Examples DO NOT WRITE THESE! Poorly Written Thematic Statements BE IVIORE SPECIFIC THAN THIS! Well-Wrrtten Thematic Statements WRITE LIKE THIS! Jealousy Jealousy causes problems. In most cases. Jealousy can cloud the conscience and make people commit acts against their better judgment. Deception Deception is a bad thing. Deception is usually the product of a cunning nature, but usually backfires and causes pain to the deceiver. Monstrous behavior Monstrous behavior can make you ugly. A monster is not defined by one's appearance but by one's actions and thoughts. Manipulation People in large crowds are easily manipulated. A crowd is easy to manipulate by appealing to its sense of fear, ambition, and prfcse.