02/24/20 — Monday

Post date: Feb 23, 2020 9:50:57 PM

Homework:

1. Read Chapter 2 by tomorrow.

Outcome Goals:

1. Examine how description may be used suggest themes, set the tone, act as symbols, foreshadow events, etc.

First Thing:

1. Get a Chromebook and take the Custom House/Chapter 1 Quiz

2. Turn in anticipation guide activity and start reading Chapter 2

(First period turn in synthesis essays)

Check out books

Agenda:

1. Consider how I might analyze one of the descriptive examples that I chose from Chapter 1.

“A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.”

In response, I might write:

It's telling that Hawthorne chooses to start his story—and by extension, his description of the setting—with the prison and the prison door; it suggests that he finds the town fairly austere, gloomy, and perhaps even oppressive. There is some natural imagery in this sentence, with the oak and the wood, but all the life has been beaten out of it, suggesting that man has tried to tame nature, and the result was this fairly sombre scene. He chooses words like edifice which while meaning a large building also means a complex system of beliefs. This is significant because it is the trespassing against this “complex system” of Puritanical beliefs that cause people to be imprisoned, perhaps both literally and metaphorically.

2. How about this one:

“Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful of their safety, against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings.”

3. With a partner take turns sharing and analyzing some of the passages that you took note of during your reading.

4. Complete the Custom House/Chapter 1 Description Analysis Assignment: Gutenberg Version of Scarlet Letter