Wednesday, February 19, 2014

We're AP Lit Nerds and Loving It: February 19, 2014

Focus: How can we synthesize our analyses of Beloved?

1. Warming up: Looking over your Invisible Man writings and highlighting a few successful moments (of which there were many):

Emma's thesis: The recurring image of the Sambo represents the narrator's inability to escape the stereotype as a black man throughout his self-discovering and self-empowering life journey.

Mackenzie's topic sentence: This series of "battle royals" always leave the narrator harmed in one way or another; every "battle" takes something away from him.

Nick's close reading: The quest into the subconscious resumes later, when the nameless narrator faints in a paint factory. This scene shows the darkness lying in the fear the black community keeps. This scene introduced itself with imagery straight from Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," describing "Fields of green, red roses, too..clouds of white," etc. There is a dark twist, however, as the "clouds of white" describe a frightening swarm of gnats, signifying the oppressive white community and ruining the scene. The otherwise peaceful scene abruptly shifts to a cold, dark, sterile hospital, with a doctor wishing to experiment on him. A frightening truth is shown here, as doctors would experiment black patients pre-1950s. Here, the doctor wishes to try a lobotomy, which causes brain death, essentially. The narrator finds himself unable to speak for himself out of fear, directly connecting to the fear of rebuke and the silenced state of the black of community.


2. Composing your timed writing on Beloved; you have FOUR choices today

HW:
1. Start thinking about what poem you'd like to explore for your poetry paper or project (remember that this semester's poem must be from a different movement/time period that your poem from first semester).

2. Compose your next poetry response by next Monday.

3. Enjoy a light week in A.P. Literature...it's so rare, and you've earned it.

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