6 Word Memoir Riddles

How is this for fun?  Choose 4 characters from AP Literature and write their 6 word memoirs.  You must choose at least one character from Hamlet, but the rest are up to you.  When you comment on your classmate's post, take a guess about whom the memoirs are written.  Be creative!  Have fun!  And do not give us the answers.  You can reveal your characters in class on Monday.

The Brangwens Family!

The following passage is from D. H. Lawrence’s 1915 novel, The Rainbow, which focuses on the lives of the Brangwens, a farming family who lived in rural England during the late nineteenth century.  Read the passage carefully.  In your blog, analyze how Lawrence employs literary devices to characterize the woman and capture her situation.  Do not be afraid to look up some literary devices.  If you do not start using the terminology, you will forget it.  Think back to our poetry unit.  And if you saved it, you should have a nice list of literary terms from the beginning of the year.  If not, they are easy to find on line.  Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was enough for the men, that the earth heaved

and opened its furrow to them, that the wind blew to

dry the wet wheat, and set the young ears of corn

wheeling freshly round about; it was enough that they

5 helped the cow in labour, or ferreted the rats from

under the barn, or broke the back of a rabbit with a

sharp knock of the hand. So much warmth and

generating and pain and death did they know in their

blood, earth and sky and beast and green plants, so

10 much exchange and interchange they had with these,

that they lived full and surcharged, their senses full

fed, their faces always turned to the heat of the blood,

staring into the sun, dazed with looking towards the

source of generation, unable to turn around.

15 But the woman wanted another form of life than

this, something that was not blood-intimacy. Her

house faced out from the farm-buildings and fields,

looked out to the road and the village with church and

Hall and the world beyond. She stood to see the far20

off world of cities and governments and the active

scope of man, the magic land to her, where secrets

were made known and desires fulfilled. She faced

outwards to where men moved dominant and creative,

having turned their back on the pulsing heat of

25 creation, and with this behind them, were set out to

discover what was beyond, to enlarge their own scope

and range and freedom; whereas the Brangwen men

faced inwards to the teeming life of creation, which

poured unresolved into their veins.

30 Looking out, as she must, from the front of her

house towards the activity of man in the world at

large, whilst her husband looked out to the back at sky

and harvest and beast and land, she strained her eyes

to see what man had done in fighting outwards to

35 knowledge, she strained to hear how he uttered

himself in his conquest, her deepest desire hung on

the battle that she heard, far off, being waged on the

edge of the unknown. She also wanted to know, and

to be of the fighting host.

40 At home, even so near as Cossethay, was the vicar,

who spoke the other, magic language, and had the

other, finer bearing, both of which she could perceive,

but could never attain to. The vicar moved in worlds

beyond where her own menfolk existed. Did she not

45 know her own menfolk; fresh, slow, full-built men,

masterful enough, but easy, native to the earth,

lacking outwardness and range of motion. Whereas

the vicar, dark and dry and small beside her husband,

had yet a quickness and a range of being that made

50 Brangwen, in his large geniality, seem dull and local.

She knew her husband. But in the vicar’s nature was

that which passed beyond her knowledge. As

Brangwen had power over the cattle so the vicar had

power over her husband. What was it in the vicar, that

55 raised him above the common men as man is raised

above the beast? She craved to know. She craved to

achieve this higher being, if not in herself, then in her

children. That which makes a man strong even if he

be little and frail in body, just as any man is little and

60 frail beside a bull, and yet stronger than the bull, what

was it? It was not money nor power nor position.

What power had the vicar over Tom Brangwen—

none. Yet strip them and set them on a desert island,

and the vicar was the master. His soul was master of

65 the other man’s. And why—why? She decided it was

a question of knowledge.

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Hamlet's Speech Writer

Write a dramatic speech advising Prince Hamlet on what his course of action should be as a Christian prince and the rightful  heir to the throne of Denmark.  You may assume the character of Horatio or Marcellus in your work or of some unnamed courtier.  Extra credit if you write it in iambic pentameter. 

Time to Think About It

Well, it is time to face the music and choose a topic for your literary specialist assignment.  In your blog this weekend, I want to you talk out some ideas about the project.  You may also pose questions or concerns in regards to the assignment.