The Awakening and Invisible Man

Blog Post #1

To receive full credit for this blog post, you may answer one of the following questions or record your impressions of the novel through Chapter 7 or Chapter 2.  Responses should be detailed with specific examples from the text (INCLUDE PAGE or CHAPTER #) illustrating your knowledge and understanding of the text.  In addition, you must respond to at least one other response.

The Awakening:  Respond to one of the questions below, or post your impressions of the book so far (through Chapter 7). 

1. What is important about the title? 

2. How essential is the setting to the story? Could the story have taken place anywhere else?

3. What types of conflict (physical, moral, intellectual, or emotional) have you noticed in this novel so far?

4. How does Kate Chopin reveal character in The Awakening?

Invisible Man:  Respond to one of the questions below, or post your impressions of the book so far (through Chapter 2).

1.  Why has Ellison omitted the article the or an from his title?

2.  The narrator distinguishes between civilization and culture.  What is the difference?

3.  Like Dante's descent in The Divine Comedy, the narrator's experience with marijuana takes him down into music that reveals parts of the black experience in America.  What are the three levels through which he passes and why are the levels significant?

4.  In what ways is Norton like the men of Greenwood who attended the Battle Royal?

DUE:  Friday, 2/8, at midnight

The Great Gatsby

Read the following statements/questions.  Respond to one using text evidence to support your thinking.  Reply to at least one of your friends.

Scene analysis:  select a key scene and interpret its significance in the text's larger meaning.  What does that scene allow Fitzgerald to express - or what attitudes or intentions are expressed unintentionally by it?

OR

The American Dream.  What does Fitzgerald criticize?  What does he value?  

OR

Discuss Nick's unreliability as a narrator.  What doesn't Nick see?

Huck Finn: Chapters 29 - 38

Two different types of morality are demonstrated in the novel.  Compare Huck's morality with Tom's.  How are they different?  Explain the origins of each boy's sense of morality.  Cite examples from the novel to support your answer.

Huck Finn: Chapters 19 - 28

What is the most important thing that Huck learns from the Duke and the King?  Support your answer with text evidence.