The Literary Essay

For this (our possibly final blog post),

list the theme(s) you plan on analyzing in your literary analysis;

-OR-

list the literary device(s) you plan on analyzing in your literary analysis.

On Monday, come to class ready to discuss which works you will use in your analysis; you must compare/contrast at least two, but after that, you may use as many as you'd like.  At least one text you analyze must be either Rhinoceros, Waiting for the Barbarians, or The World Without Us.

For example, if I were to write this essay, I might focus on "ruins" as a symbol (or perhaps "ruination" as a theme), and I might use The World Without Us, Waiting for the Barbarians, Ozymandias, and "Powwow at the End of the World" in my analysis.

Waiting for the Barbarians and Kant

The three formulations of the Categorical Imperative in Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals are as follows:

The First Formulation
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction."

The Second Formulation
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. ”

Third Formulation
“Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.”

You assignment is to find a quote from Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians that is relevant to one of these three formulations.  Write the quote, provide the page number, and provide a brief explanation.

Waiting for the Barbarians

Choose one symbol from Coetzee's work, and explain what abstract ideas/emotions/concepts that object represents.  Use a quote (and provide a page number) in your explanation.

Be sure not to repeat a symbol another student has already discussed.

Practicing Thesis Statements

Hello All,

For this entry, just post a thesis statement you could use to compare/contrast one literary device across two different works we've studied in class.

Here's the template to use:

While both these works use this literary device in order to express this idea, work 1 uses it like this and work 2 uses it like that.

Here's the template in practice:

While both Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" and Wislawa Szymborska's "Reality Demands" use historial allusions to explore the idea of catastrophe, Szymborska uses those allusions to emphasize a positive acceptance of tragedy while Shelley remains focused on ruin and decay.

Enjoy your weekend !

Oh, and Tina asked what I thought the message of "The Missing Scarf" might be . . .

Since I am choosing to think positively, I'll choose to think the message is to seize the day and enjoy life as I live it (as opposed to spending it worried on events I cannot control).

What do you think?

Songs for the End of the World

Readings from Around the Internet

Hello All,

This post will be an on-going list of readings from around the internet that have relevance for our discussions of The End of the World.  Read these at your leisure and interest; you will not be tested on them for class

"The Stalkers: Inside the bizarre subculture that lives to explore Chernobyl’s Dead Zone" is about tourists and interested witnesses traveling to the Exclusion Zone surrounding the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl.

"The Dystopian City and Urban Policy" argues how city planners can learn from depictions of dystopian cities in science fiction novels describing the end of the world.

"How to Raise Your Zombie Baby: An Illustrated Guide" is exactly what it sounds like.

"The ABCs of the Sudden Departure" is an illustrated ABC book tie-in with the HBO show "The Leftovers."

"The Ebola Story: How Our Minds Build Narratives out of Disaster" is about how our visions of reality has been shaped by the fictions that entertain and frighten us.

"How Will the Universe End" is a question-and-answer interview with a cosmologist about the end of the universe.

On the Day the World Ends . . .

The Waste Carpet

Choose an example of a literary device at work in William Matthews's "The Waste Carpet."  Do not repeat an example another student has already taken.

Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!

Yeats and the Sphinx

Hello All,

For this post, explain why Yeats makes an allusion to the sphinx in "The Second Coming."  Pay close attention to these lines (but feel free to refer to any others you feel may be relevant):

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Egyptian Sphinx

Greek Sphinx

Oedipus solving the riddle of the Sphinx

Post #2: Literary Devices

Hello All,

In the poems I gave you today, find and explain an example of one of the following:

Allusion
Symbol
Metaphor
Implied Metaphor
Simile
Synecdoche
Metonymy
Parallelism or Antithesis
Hyperbole or Meiosis

Have fun!

Entry #1: Motion Poems

For this first entry (which we will discuss the first day of class, so be sure to post your response in the comments section below by the 15th), you need to complete two tasks.

1.  Choose which ONE of the course selected books you will read, and write a brief note (one or two sentences) explaining your selection. The list is on the syllabus, but here it is again if you don't have it with you:


Children’s Hospital by Chris Adrian (novel)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (novel)
Zone One by Colson Whitehead (novel)
The Plague by Albert Camus (novel)
Blindness by Jose Saramago (novel)
Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko (novel)
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (novel)
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (novel)      
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut (novel)
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (novel)
Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis (nonfiction)
House of Rain by Craig Childs (nonfiction)
Collapse by Jared Diamond (nonfiction)
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (nonfiction)
A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit (nonfiction)
The Disaster Diaries by Sam Sheridan (nonfiction)
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (drama)
After the Apocalypse: Stories by Maureen McHugh (short fiction)
Innocent Erendira and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (short fiction)
One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin (short fiction / poetry)
The World Doesn’t End by Charles Simic (poetry)
The Tales by Jessica Bozek (poetry)
Render: An Apocalypse by Rebecca Gayle Howell (poetry)

2.  Watch the following Motionpoems (which are like film adaptations of poems), and choose your favorite.  Write a brief note (one or two sentences) explaining your preference.

"Sea Salt" by David Mason, adapted by Amy Schmitt
"The Trees -- They Were Once Good Men" by Todd Boss, adapted by Emma Burghardt
"Just As, After a Point, Job Cried Out" by K.A. Hays, adapted by Emma Burghardt
"Ecclesiastes 11:1" by Richard Wilbur, adapted by Faith Eskola
"Circles in the Sky" by Bob Hicok, adapted by Keri Moller
"Either Or" by Maxine Kumin, adapted by Adam Tow