Building Sentences: Complex (The Death of Socrates)

ENGLISH 10H, Quarter 1: BUILDING SENTENCES (The Complex Sentence) - The Death of Socrates

On a day in 399 B.C., in Athens, Greece, a jury of 500 citizens found Socrates guilty, by a vote of 280 to 220, of “corrupting the youth” and “refusing to recognize the gods of the state.” Jacques-Louis David’s painting of the sentence shows his students’, friends’, and followers’ bitter, tear-filled agony, for the jury compelled Socrates to drink a cup of poison hemlock. At his death Socrates told his companions, “Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. . . . Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain, for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is a journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? . . . What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. . . . Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge.”

View the picture and follow the directions below to build sentences according to the directions. Refer to your notes if needed. Punctuate correctly. Use active verbs!

Dependent Clause (DC) – Even though dependent clauses contain a subject and a verb, they do not express a complete thought. A dependent clause cannot stand alone as a complete sentence. Subordinate conjunctions indicate the presence of a dependent clause.

Subordinate Conjunctions (SC), also called subordinators, join a dependent clause and an independent clause so that a writer can show a relationship between one or more ideas. Each word serves its function by creating and tying the dependent clause to an independent clause as well as providing meaning. The following words can function as subordinate conjunctions (each has its own meaning):

after, although, as, as if, as long as, as much as, as soon as, as though, because, before, even if, even though, how, if, inasmuch, in order that, lest, now that, provided that, since, so that, than, that, though, till, ‘til, unless, until, when, whenever, where, wherever, while

1. Write an independent clause (a simple sentence) using an active verb.

2. Add an adverb.

3. Add a proper noun, capitalized.

4. Using a subordinate conjunction, write a related dependent clause and attach it to the end of the independent clause. You may optionally include pronouns, adverbs, adjectives or other sentence elements to create the desired idea, emotion, or image. [IC DC.]

5. Using the same wording, invert the clause order. When the dependent clause comes first, we use a comma to separate it from the independent clause. [DC, IC.]

6. QUICK-WRITE: Even though you use the exact same words, what differences do you notice in the idea, emotion, or image when the dependent clause comes first?

EXAMPLE:

1. The men weep.

2. The men openly weep.

3. Plato and Glaucon openly weep.

4. Plato and Glaucon openly weep even though Socrates bravely faces death.

5. Even though Socrates bravely faces death, Plato and Glaucon openly weep.

The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David (1787), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York