The World According to Victor

Fifth hour, today you reviewed for your last vocab quiz of the class by playing last person standing, analyzed the Victor of chapters 1-4, a man searching to become the "creator" of his own version of mankind, a man still living in the denial of his mother's death, a man leaving behind his family for an obsessive directive to make an 8-foot human with yellow eyes (think Victor might like "The Yellow Wallpaper"?), a man who thinks, acts, and runs like a child in fright whenever life - or reanimation - does not go his way. We might pick on Victor a tad, but we sure have affection for our dear Elizabeth and our friend crush Clerval. We made it through over half of the individual close reads for chapters 5-8 and will continue forward on Friday. For readings, continue into chapters 9-14 as we move to our next narrator, our Creature - we shall pick a name for him next week.

Second hour, we finished our vocab today and then did all of the above too! Make sure to read 9-14 for tomorrow's class as you get to know our friendly neighborhood creature.

Father, Mother, Sister, Friend

I believe I mentioned this in both classes, so forgive the redundancy: make sure to attend all classes these last 2 weeks before break unless you have a justifiable emergency. We are moving quickly through Frankenstein, and you will want to be here for all the in-depth observations, Romantic connections, and minutia that pops up regarding our characters.

We continue to move forward with the world of Victor Frankenstein as he tells us all about the influences of his life: his caring father, his flower-like mother, his angelic sister, and his poetic buddy. With each character, we see some qualities permeate Victor's soul as other qualities slip away with his jaunt to Ingolstadt. Today, we divided up into for teams, each one bearing the title of Father, Caroline, Elizabeth, and Clerval. You chatted with your teams and then mixed and match with the other character teams to finalize the impressions of these four characters. If absent, you will need to show your character chart for your individual character to attain participation points.

For homework, have observations a ready for Victor's character, thoughts, behaviors, random acts of reanimation from chapters 1-4. Then, continue forth by reading chapters 5-8. Each student will then have 2 pages of that text in which to perform a thorough close read, over-analysis that will be shared tomorrow. Elliott, you have pages 90-91; Kaylynn, you have pages 92-93.

Team Walton & Team Victor

As a result of our little moratorium during fifth hour today, this will be the expedited version of today's agenda. For both classes, we looked at the reasons why it would be beneficial to sign up for the AP Literature exam and analyzed Frankenstein quotes creating Walton and Victor's characterization. If you were absent, you will need to show me your character charts from these two dashing, determined fellas for participation points. For homework, you are to read Chapters 1-4 and create a character chart for one of the following characters: Caroline, Victor's Father, Elizabeth, or Clerval. If you were not here, you will need to select one of the aforementioned characters and create a character chart. You will be expected to contribute to the discussion tomorrow.

In addition to all of the above, fifth hour continued with vocab and added the Estrella prompt to your portfolio.

Purplue

February 23, the day our beloved Keats left us, adrift in Rome, far from Fanny and home. Hence, the purplue shirt today to signify our elegiac thoughts to the man, the myth, the poet. Today has been a bit of a bummer otherwise. My favorite shoe company, Charlotte Olympia, has filed for bankruptcy and will be closing all of its U.S. stores. Well, at least I have Robert Walton's hubris to liven up our class today. In both classes, after vocab, we focused on pulling quotes from Letter 1 and then analyzing each one's characterization, significance to society, and how this may foreshadow a like character who shall be introduced in about two letters from now.

For homework, you are to read letters 2-4. You will then create a 2 column chart for Walton and a 2 column chart for Victor. In each box/line of the left columns, you will have quotes with citations. In each box/line of the right columns, you will have your analysis of the passage.

See you all on Monday for more talk about the AP Lit exam!

From Mother to Daughter

We are now into the world of Mary Godwin Shelley, the offspring of those radical philosophers Wollstonecraft & Godwin, the eventual wife of the ever-selfish Percy, the mother of scientific literary achievement in the form of Frankenstein. At this point, we have read background info on Mary, that fateful Geneva trip of inspiration, and the possible avenues that joined to create a student of the "unhallowed arts" usurping God and forging his own human specimen. We have also read her introduction to Frankenstein, which was purposed to share the genesis of her novel and validate her authorship. For this evening to prepare for our over-analysis (charts included!) tomorrow, read the Preface and Letter 1. You may want to pay close attention to why Frankenstein is not in this opening epistle and why Shelley would start off with our newly acquired friend Walton instead.

Vindicating

We finished up the Vindication presentations and turned in your paragraphs and close reads for me to evaluate. We do have a couple of absentees yet to present, so that will occur prior to our Frankenstein work.

Wollstonecraft The Beginning Chapters

With great intentions, we made it through the first third of Wollstonecraft presentations today, so that means we will continue forward tomorrow!

Brevity

Block Day = Our Bon Voyage Parties, which were incredibly clever, disturbing, heartwarming, and a whole other set of emotions!

Friday = New vocab for Unit 8 and work day for Wollstonecraft paragraphs and presentations for Tuesday.

Packing Time

We're about to commence our trip, which means the Bon Voyage party will be during our next class! I'll keep this short as I need to work on finishing up the Underworld Prologue and need all those precious minutes to craft something worthy for you.

In class today, we had your vocab quiz, analysis of Wollstonecraft's opening letter, and the Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Assignment, which is due next Tuesday.

Hello, Ms. Wollstonecraft

Since all of my classes had perfect attendance today, this will be a brief synopsis of our events in class today: review vocab, finished Romanticism notes, talked about the Feminist critical lens, looked at Mary Wollstonecraft's biography https://www.biography.com/people/mary-wollstonecraft-9535967, and began the dedication to A Vindication. Finish up the letter and the intro for tomorrow's class. 

I'm heading home to work on my prologues :)

The Romantics

Friday found us finishing up vocab unit 7. We will have only one more unit of vocab for this class, so I hope you are ready to incorporate all of these words into your upcoming Wollstonecraft work. She would expect nothing less than the best of language to exhibit her ideas.

Our next two months (maybe more, maybe less?) will be revolving around the Romantic Era with its emphasis on individuality, nature, emotion, intuition, imagination, escapism, and Romantic & Byronic heroes exhibiting the time period of Wordsworth (walking), Coleridge (imbibing), Byron (trying to think of a euphemism that he would appreciate - exploring, maybe), Shelley (ugh), and Keats (longing).

I love this website about the Victorian Era, which also features a whole section on "Pre-Victorians," or what we would call the Romantics: http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/misc/authors.html. If you want to know more about those rascals, lovers, and fools, this is a wonderful place to start.

Meanwhile, we will be finishing up the Romantics and their background, meeting Mary Wollstonecraft, and reading the dedicatory letter and opening introduction to her landmark expression of equality, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Make sure you pay close attention to the details of her argument as you will eventually be in charge of her text for the class and how mother and daughter (Mary Shelley) construct a similar, not same, view of the world.

We Going on a Pilgrimage

Before I go home and buy something high-end designer from The RealReal to celebrate mid-term grade completion, I thought a recap of our day would help remind you where we are in AP Lit Land. After four more vocab words in unit 7 - we stand at a total of 8 now - I spent the hour meeting with each of your individually and hearing your about your character's physiques, hobbies, regrets, random minutia that varied from the macabre to the churlish to the quirky! We will finish up any outstanding meetings tomorrow. And since I neglected to give you the rangefinders for our prose prompt, guess what we will be doing tomorrow? If you have not taken this prompt, tomorrow is the last day, so be ready with pencil/pen and paper and a desk in the hallway!

Don't forget you have one week (and a few additional hours) to write your prologue and tale for next week's Bon Voyage shindig! I'll be the one with the tale prologues.

Prose Prompting

Since a surprise prompt was supposed to be last week, it was inevitable that your prose prompt would be today. Tomorrow will be our character meetings, one more frame tale, and then the set-up for Wollstonecraft.

The Characters Are Set

After bringing in 4 new vocab words, the rest of the hour was dedicated to our voting for the overall purpose of our pilgrimage, the selection of your characters, the identity of my character (a soccer mom and a funeral director). For homework, you are finishing up your character background handout for Monday's class. 

Oh, That Pardoner

At this point, we have copied down the next unit of vocab, shared our last allusion posters, and read "The Pardoner's Tale" of three thieves and their plans for each other.

For homework, you are to come up with a few possible reasons for our class to be going on our pilgrimage. Plus, bring in a few options for your character too. If absent, send me your ideas so that you can be assigned a character tomorrow.