h157: November 2010

Fitzgerald/O'Connor Paper

Here is the link to my slide show:
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dc5hmxp4_367cgcn8pdp

Winter Dreams

Winter Dreams is on page 742 of your textbook.

You can also find it here: http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/winterd/winter.html

While reading, compare it with Gatsby.

Flannery O'connor

Print the following stories
The Life You Save May Be Your Own
http://faculty.smu.edu/nschwart/2312/lifeyousave.htm

A Good Man is Hard to Find
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~surette/goodman.html

While reading it, look for archetypes, allusions, and reoccurring images.
Look for other striking literary devices as well. Lastly, note elements of style of this amazing southern author.

You will get points for your notes ON your print out, so every paragraph should be laced with them.

You will turn in a hard copy (in case technology fails me and keeps me from being able to use my iPad to grade your papers).

Drop it in my file on the H drive after you've converted it to a PDF.
I would suggest you save your paper on Google Docs or on a flash drive before coming to school.

To convert a word document to a PDF, follow the steps below (these instructions are for mac computers):

Open the document
Click FILE
Click PRINT
Click SAVE AS PDF (bottom-left corner)
RENAME IT AS FOLLOWS: PERIOD Last First NAME TOPIC (For example: 1st Davis Ben Gatsby OR 7th Davis Ben Twilight)
Save it to the HDrive dropbox under my name

OR you can share it with me via GOOGLE DOCS

Intro/Conclusion

Below you will find an example of an intro and a conclusion. These are on two different topics, but I assume that the structure will give you some direction.

Intro
Archetypes appear in every piece of literature. They equip readers with a filter through which they can pass texts for better understanding. The more experience a one has with stories, the better equipped he/she is to analyze characters in novels. In Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, the incorporation of fairytale archetypes give the reader a pretext for better understanding why Gatsby's dream must fail.

Conclusion
Fitzgearald teaches the reader that the American dream a consuming disease. There is never an end to the dream because the dreamer always wants to add to it. Gatsby's dream was not to have Daisy. His original grail was to be wealthy; she was the embodiment of that wealth. He assumed he could win her over with shiny luxuries, but he did not realize that he (the Cinderella figure) was the one calling Daisy (the Prince figure) down from her royal palace to his peasant's home. No matter how much he decked out his house in purple velvet or Victorian furniture, he still remained a lower class citizen. He planned every moment around his grail. Every party, every bulb in his house, and every stitch on his clothing was all for Daisy. This selfish trap to lure her in to had her to his collection was just a consuming dream, and to this dream he was faithful to the end.

Bonus points

Finish your essay and email it to me by Saturday at 11 p.m. That will get you 4 bonus points on you essay. NOTE: That is almost half of a letter grade.

Text your friends to spread the word.

Good, Outline! Good boy! Sit! Sit, Outline! Roll over!

Here are some examples of outlines that need a bath.
The RED writing is the original. The one following the red one is mine.

Topic: Gatsby as a Christ Figure
I.A. Platonic Conception (page 98)
B. About my Father's Business (page 98)
C. The mattress (page 161)

II.A. Hard rock on the wet marshes (page 2)
B. Gatsby's book (page 173)
III. A. Communion (Page 11)
B. Eckleberg (page 160)
IV. A. The valley of ashes (page 23)
B. No one came to Gatsby's funeral (page 164)

CRITIQUE:
This outline has no main points. All it has are concrete details. Therefore, we do not know what point is trying to be made. For all we know, this is a dog that has a tail growing out of its head. That would look like a unicorn dog, and those do not exist, as opposed to real unicorns which...well, perhaps the comparison is lost...but the point is that the reader of the outline cannot make heads or tails of what the writer is planning for the essay. So how is the reader going to be able to follow the writing?
Below you will find a better way to organize it.

I. Gatsby's Conception
a. platonic conception
i. platonic can mean without intimacy
ii. platonic can mean ideal
iii. Gatsby was both. He rejected his parents and recreated himself "just the way a 17 year old boy would. And to that conception he was fateful to the end" (98).
b. Contrast this with what Christ's conception
i. One is man made; one is God made.
ii. One rejected his father; the other embraced him.

II. Gatsby's Youth
a. He was about his father's business.
i. his father's business is of a "vast vulgar and meretricious beauty" (98).
ii. explain why he did everything he did (for himself...to fulfill the dream of having Daisy)
b. Contrast that with what Christ was in the service of.

Conclusion: (Note: this is not a paragraph, I am just connecting some dots for you.)
Wealth, in the novel, causes people's hearts to decay. They become cold toward those below them. Gatsby was so focused on his grail that he became consumed by it. Every decision he made served to fulfill that dream. Fitzgerald is trying to emphasize the futility of the American dream.

QUESTIONS FOR YOU?
1. HOW IS THE STRUCTURE OF MY OUTLINE DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER ONE?
2. WHAT DO ALL THE SUB-TOPICS HAVE IN COMMON? IN OTHER WORDS, WHO DO ALL OF THE As DEAL WITH? WHAT DO ALL OF THE Bs FOCUS ON?
3. DO THE SUBTOPICS RELATE TO THE MAJOR TOPICS (BY THE ROMAN NUMERALS)?

Changing size of iFrames

If you are embedding a document from Google Docs, the default size is rather small. To increase the size, simply type the following AFTER the final quotation mark in your iframe: height="500" width="500"

Click on the image below to see it in code form:

h157