EWRT 1A CLASS 4

AGENDA Presentation: Vocabulary chapters 3-4

Discussion: The Hunger Games: Stories

Presentation: Essay #2

In-Class Writing: page 46 SMG 1. Beginning with a quotation/transitioning to your remembered event. 2. Vivid presentation of a place: Using sensory details: 643-6483. Describe a person central to your event. Include a physical description and gestures or behaviors.4. Writing Dialogue.5. Framing: beginnings and endings

The Hunger Games: Their Stories

Katniss

Gale Hawthorne

Peeta Mellark

Prim Everdeen

Mrs. Everdeen

Rue

Haymitch Abernathy

Cinna

Effie Trinket

Essay 2The Personal Narrative

The Writing Assignment Using The Hunger Games as your starting point,

write an essay about an event in your life that will engage readers and that will, at the same time, help them understand the significance of the event. Tell your story dramatically and vividly in three to five pages.

Format: MLA style (For help, see “MLA Formatting” on the website”). Please give your paper an original title; don't underline or put quotation marks around your own title.

The Goal: Writing a Good Introduction

The Strategy: Choose a provocative or interesting quotation (four typed lines

or more) from The Hunger Games and integrate it into your introduction. You can start with the quotation, or you can work it in after a few sentences.

Summarize what is happening in the novel at the point of your quotation, and then explain the context (particular setting) for the quotation. This is important because it sets up the connection to your own experience.

Then, write a transition paragraph, making a connection between the quotation and the event in your life. Your thesis sentence will likely be the sentence in which you clearly make that connection (we will talk more about theses in our next meeting).

Before the opening ceremonies, Katniss meets with her stylist, Cinna, to prepare. Cinna presses a button and a fancy meal of “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey” appears (65). Katniss thinks about how difficult it would be to get a meal like this in District 12:

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?

I look up and find Cinna’s eyes trained on mine. ‘How despicable we must seem to you,’ he says. (65)Katniss doesn’t respond to Cinna’s statement, but she agrees in her head. “He’s right, though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable” (65). Although our world does not really consist of a Capitol and many districts, there are still some people who live more comfortably than others. For people like me who live in privilege, life is easy. Food is readily available if I want to eat. Outside of school, I don’t really have many responsibilities. I don’t have to worry about how I will survive day to day. My family has told me on many occasions to think about how lucky I am to live the way I do. In other countries, life is hard. In Africa, children starve to death as a result of famine and poverty. People my age in some countries are working more than my parents do. Katniss’s disgust for the extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt for myself when I listened to an account of one man’s visit to factories in China.

How Despicable We Must Seem

1. Choose a provocative or interesting quotation (four typed lines or more) from The Hunger Games that you can connect to an experience in your own life.

2. Summarize what is happening in the novel at the point of your quotation.

3. Then, write a transition paragraph, making a connection between the quotation and the event in your life.

4. Now make a quick narrative ladder:

Where and when did your event take place? Setting Rising action Climax Resolution

The Goal: Create A Vivid Presentation of Places

Recreate the time and place of the event

Ground readers in specifics: • When? Christmas morning; one day in late fall, Saturday night• Where? At a 7-11 in San Jose, at my Aunt Helen’s Easter party, In the

back alley of a club in Sunnyvale

Name specific objects• White, spherical snowball• City clothes• Translucent skin• Dirty sidewalk

The Strategy: Listing Key Places

Make a list of all the places where the event occurred, skipping some space after each entry on your list.

In the space after each entry on your list, make some notes describing each place. What do you see (except people for now)? What objects stand out? Are thy large or small, green or brown, square or oblong? What sounds do you hear? Do you detect any smells? Does any taste come to mind? Any textures?

The Goal: Make A Vivid Presentation of People

Descriptive details of behaviors or actions• She stuck her hand in the bag and picked up the

poor, little dead squirrel.• He drew his hands through his long, greasy hair

A bit of dialogue• “Poor dear,” she murmured• “Get out of my house,” he screamed

Detail the person’s appearance• A thin woman: all action• He wore dress clothes: a black suit and tie

The Strategy: Recalling Key People

List the people who played more than a causal role in the event

Describe a key person: Write a brief description of a person other than yourself who played a major role in the event. Name and detail a few distinctive physical features or items of dress. Describe in a few phrases this person’s way of moving and gesturing

The Strategy Continued: Use dialogue to convey immediacy and drama

• Try to remember any especially memorable comments, any unusual choice of words, or any telling remarks that you made or were made to you.

• Try to partially re-create the conversation so that readers will be able to imagine what was going on and how your language and the other person’s language reveal who you were and your relationship.

Reconstruct one important conversation

The Goal: Writing a Good Conclusion

The Strategy:

Leave your readers with a sense of the overall impression that you wanted to make about the experience.

Complete the essay for the reader; that is, give them a sense of how it all ended for you and how you managed your feelings, even if the encounter was never fully resolved.

Conclusion

I heard some people around me breathe sighs of relief. The captivating story about factories in China was no longer real to them. The mood was noticeably lighter as Mr. Mustard finished the last few minutes of class talking about how presentation is important when talking. However, I didn’t feel the same as some of my classmates. Their feelings vanished as soon as they heard that the story wasn’t entirely true, but I felt that just because the parts were taken from different sources didn’t mean the situation was different for those workers. I still felt that I was to blame for their suffering.

Just as Katniss felt disgust for the Capitol, I felt disgust for myself. In The Hunger Games, the districts suffer as the Capitol citizens enjoy their extravagant lives. In real life, people in other countries suffer as a result of people like me who like fancy electronics. Once again, I thought about how lucky I was to have a comfortable life. Hours and hours of SAT classes or tutoring were nothing compared to what other people my age endured. I pictured myself talking to factory workers just as Cinna talked to Katniss: “How despicable we must seem to you.”

Conclusion: The Strategy

Try to connect your event back to your quotation in the last paragraph.

Consider the meaning of the experience (avoid tagging on a moral)

Show that the conflict was/was not fully resolved

Contrast your remembered and current feelings and thoughts.

Pick an approach and try writing your conclusion now!

Writing Tips Use present tense when describing the events in

a novel or film or story: “Katniss volunteers” or “Haymitch is drinking heavily.”

Your thesis for this paper will be the transition sentence: “Katniss’s mother’s complete breakdown reminds me of what happened to my aunt.” Or “Katniss distrusts Peeta even though most of his actions should make her trust him – I can relate.”

Use chronological order to tell your story.

Use past tense to describe the event(s) in your life: “I was camping with my family up in Yosemite.”

HOMEWORK• Read: HG through chapter 9

• Post #4: finish and post your in-class writing 1. Beginning with a quotation/transitioning to your remembered event.

2. Vivid presentation of a place: Using sensory details: 643-6483. Describe a person central to your event. Include a physical description

and gestures or behaviors.4. Writing Dialogue.5. Framing: beginnings and endings

• Study: Vocab test next class (Chapters 1-4) • Bring: HG, SMG, and a printed copy of your Post #4 or an

electronic device on which you can access your post. Cell phones are not acceptable for this task.