Pick me!Pick me!What’s up

with the “live long and prosper” fingers???

Hey! Look what I can do with my fingers!

I think I can get extra points if I say her fingers are cooler than Janet’s!

Class Crasher

Whoa! Dumbassery plus!

I just love her!!!

I’ll just read while I wait for her to get to me….

I will just stare off into the distance and ponder life

J: wrudMe: nmjc

It is clearly a juxtaposition of the postmodern dichotomy that …

I mis

s yo

u ho

ney!

Oh hell…. I was thinking it was a travel narrative

Air quotes? Really?

It is “hopeless”! We are destined for failure! Why go on??? I feel so

happy!

That is just wrong!

If my family could see me now!

Yes I did! I ate your damn plums….right out of the fridge!

Hmmmm…Does she get another five points????

Why stand on a chair when I can command the room from here?

Score! Look at her rack up the points!

What do you think is she looking at?

Sometimes we get it right!

ELIT 48C CLASS 42

“All Right” and “Alright”

• Well, as grammarian Bill Walsh puts it in his book Lapsing Into a Comma, “We word nerds have known since second grade that alright is not all right” (4). He was talking about “alright” as one word. It's not OK.

Chair Poet?

  Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Aristotle

AGENDA

•The Road •Postmodernism•Critical Theory•The American Dream• Introduce Essay #2

Discuss

Five minutes!

The Road as a postmodern novel• To start, it’s clearly fragmented.• McCarthy also rejects quotation marks entirely, and uses the

contraction’s apostrophe selectively (absent for the contraction of “not”).• Why is there no indication of who is speaking when there is dialogue?

• Also it begins abruptly [. . .]And ending is unresolved• This story is both anti-metanarrative, and metanarrative. • There’s more confusion and doubt, less purpose.

• In the “Postmodernism” online article (Mary Klages) she says that one of the larger differences between modernism and postmodernism, is that modernism fights to create meaning anyway against apparent meaninglessness, and postmodernism just sort of bathes in the meaninglessness, saying “great! It’s meaningless! Let’s embrace that!”

• I also believe that the lack of names to identify the speaker may be a way that McCarthy wants us to think about his novel. If you attempt to imagine this as though you were God watching over the conversations taking place, you could see who was talking instead of being told who is talking. This very postmodern aspect of the novel is interesting because it forces you to read the entire novel without really taking time to think about it too much. There are no chapters and with the exception of periods and very few commas there is no punctuation. The entire novel rambles as if someone is writing this as a flashback of what they witnessed.

Past the Postmodern?• Talking about how The Road is post-modern, and how we are

trying to find out if it’s something beyond it, I feel that it has moved past post modernism. Postmodernism was a movement focused around the portrayal of of the individual stories within our lives, and the perfection of a medium through various means. What McCarthy accomplishes is something past post modernism. It returns to the “all story” in terms of structure, but the point is to look at our own contemporary follies as a people. Instead of getting people to think, he wants us to be afraid.

• Instead of saying “art for art’s sake” or using “personism(?)” he shows a world full of consequences and leaves the reader to identify for themselves what the action was. In this sense, I believe that he definitely surpasses post-modernism.

The Marxist lens

• I think it’s interesting to take Marxist criticism [. . .] and apply it to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where consumerism is the least of their worries. It makes me wonder how different consumerism can get and how even though there’s nothing left for them to consume but chemical toilets and canned peaches, the concept still exists.

The Feminist Lens• The majority role of women in this society stems back to

being a vessel of creation.• I thought about looking at The Road through a feminist

lens because the two protagonist are men and all the other main characters are men. Also, I was highly intrigued by the fact that is was The Man who decided to keep living, and that The Woman just gave up on life. Normally, women fight to survive for their children, and in this case that did not happen.

The American Dream in The Road• It’s rather puzzling to think of the American dream in

context of “The Road.” When society is stripped away, is the pursuit of the American dream still possible? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the “American Dream” as “an American social ideal that stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity; also : the prosperity or life that is the realization of this ideal.” The small family holds little to no possessions at times, and there is no foreseeable future where that would be possible.

• You can’t believe in the American Dream if you don’t have hope. You have to hope you can achieve more, you have to hope you can work hard to achieve great things. In this case you have to hope you survive but that hope also leads into hoping that you’ll see the world change and see something more for yourself and others.

• Another part of the American Dream is hope. There is a lot of hope in the novel as discussed in class. The American dream works differently in the novel than it did in the other novels. The papa and the son do not want to be rich or care about money, the dream revolves around surviving to see a better future and creating a better future.

The Dream

The Dream• The idea of the American Dream was created based on a

great deal of optimism and hope. The father and son in The Road embody this idea during their journey to the south. [. . .] Their journey is obviously not the traditional journey towards the American Dream, but their journey embodies the effort and hope necessary to achieve the dream. Some may thing that this entire story is an extreme version of the failure of the American Dream, but I do not believe that the American Dream can fail while people still have that hope and fire inside of them.

the novel as an abstraction of a journey through purgatory (Christian Biblical symbolism).

• All the religious symbolism/language in the novel points toward a metaphor for Purgatory. Purgatory (which has an early idea of “burning away sins”, and I’ve even heard of it as a “baptism of fire”) is a transitional place in Christian mythos (and a number of other religions have a similar idea of a temporary waypoint before the eternal afterlife) – and no one stays there forever (the young boy asks about the meaning of “Ever” a few times – they won’t be in Purgatory “for ever”). You either move up to Heaven or down to Hell depending on your actions (and on your specific religion and interpretation). With the death of the man, the boy was finally able to leave Purgatory behind – he refused to leave the side of his father who was not able to leave Purgatory due to his inability to trust others

THE ESSAY

Prompt IntroductionIn this second half of our quarter, we have read and

discussed multiple texts, theories, and opinions on both literature and literary analysis, and for this reason, I offer you many choices for your first essay. In a thesis driven essay of 500 to 750 words, respond to one of the prompts I have offered or one of your own. You need only the primary text for this essay, but you may incorporate other stories, manifestos, or critical theory as additional support. Remember, you can also draw on your own experiences and knowledge to discuss, explain, and analyze your topic.

Topics for Essay #2 There are many essay topics to choose from.

On the webpage, click on “Essay Prompts” and then “Essay #2”

You will see another list of choices specific to our texts. Click on any of them to explore topics

You may write an essay on any of these topics. You may write an essay on a topic of your choice. You may use fodder from one of your posts. The essay is due Thursday, June 27th before 7:00 am.

Send it as a word document to palmorekim@fhda.edu

The Road

Topic #2Using a close reading strategy and specific textual evidence argue for how the world was most likely devastated. Consider climate change, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, the explosion of nuclear bombs, or?

Topic #15Examine both the concept and reality of cannibalism in The Road. Consider motivations and outcomes of the behavior.

“Battle Royal”One does not need to look very deeply in Ralph

Ellison's short story "Battle Royal" to find different elements and examples of racism. Use African American literary criticism to make an argument about “Battle Royal.”

Examine the theme of “American Dream” in “Battle Royal.” Consider how the story defines the concept of “success”?

Death of a SalesmanDescribe how Willy has taken Ben’s life and his philosophy of the

“jungle” as models for success. How has Willy shaped that philosophy to encompass life as a salesman?

Linda says that “attention must be paid” to Willy despite his faults. Write an essay in which you either support Linda’s claim or argue against it. If Willy is a “fake,” as Biff calls him, then does he deserve respect?

Should Willy be “happy right here, right now,” as Linda says? Willy has a wife and two sons who love him, so why should he be unhappy? Examine how Willy continually plans for his own success and happiness but always seems unsatisfied, even angry. Willy says “the sky’s the limit” when “it’s who you know and the smile on your face,” but who does Willy know and what has his smile earned him?

Postmodernism EssayDiscuss the work in terms of its postmodern construction. Consider the postmodern manifestos or the Mary Klages article on Postmodernism to ground your argument.

Discuss two or more of the manifestos, working to define the ever-elusive idea of postmodernism. Consider using the Klages essay on postmodernism to support your argument.

Discuss the American Dream with regard to the postmodern condition.

End of Days

• Thursday: • The quarter in review• Self-Assessment• Discuss Exam #3

• Monday: Optional Class: Make-up Exam #1 or #2• 8:30 am showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

• Thursday, June 27: Final: 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.• Exam #3• Due electronically before class:

• Essay #2• Essay revision• Honors project.

HOMEWORKMEWORK

•Begin Essay #2•Honors Project•Work on your Revisions•Study for make up exam #1 or #2•Tomorrow is the last Chair Poet Day