Chronicle of a Death Foretold & 100 Years of Solitude

Introduction to "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"

Overview

This part of the course looks at language as something alive and social because it is shaped by people, cultures, histories, and communities. We'll explore how the world around us influences the texts we read and create, and how those texts, in turn, reflect or challenge the world.

You’ll consider questions like:

How does where and when a text is written affect what it says and how we read it?
How do our own identity and culture shape the way we interpret stories, poems, articles, or ads?
Can we truly understand a text from another time or place?
How do texts carry ideas across cultures and generations?

We’ll look at texts from different periods and parts of the world, and examine how they engage with social issues, politics, traditions, and identities. You'll see that context matters, but not in a simple, fixed way. A text can speak to universal themes even when it’s firmly rooted in a specific moment.

We’ll focus on how texts themselves invite us to think about culture, power, society, and human experience.

Big Questions We’ll Explore:

Why does historical or cultural context matter?
How should we approach texts from cultures or times different from our own?
What can texts teach us about other ways of living and thinking?
Why can a text’s meaning change over time?
How do texts take part in cultural practices or social movements?
How does language express identity, belonging, or difference?

Ultimately, this area helps us see texts as dynamic conversations across time and space.

General Introduction

Persepolis

English 1B - PERSEPOLIS

Marjane Satrapi - The Author & Her Work

Guide to the Novel

Introduction to "Persepolis"

persepolis Geographical Context.pdf

The Graphic NovelThe graphic novel has entered the literary world and with its entry forces the reader to reconsider how a story can be told. The introduction of the image into any novel presents a new set of possi…

Extended Reading

Reviews

Persepolis, Iran and the News

Muslim Women and the Politics of the Headscarf - JSTOR DailyFor many women, wearing the hijab was—and is—an element of piety, but it's been coopted into a political symbol.

Your Analysis of Graphic Technique

Theme Organiser

The Photography of Maryam Zandi

Are there parallels between the experiences of the protagonists in 'Persepolis' and 'Chinese Whispers'?

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography

Introduction to "The Great Gatsby"

Atkinson, S. (2016). The literature book: Big ideas simply explained. NY, NY: DK Publishing.

Geographical Context of the Novel

Sands Point

Sands Point is a village located at the northernmost tip of the Cow Neck Peninsula on the North Shore of Long Island in Nassau County, New York, United States. This is Fitzgerald's East Egg!

King's Point

Kings Point is a village and a part of Great Neck in Nassau County, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island. In the 1920s, Fitzgerald lived in Great Neck, at 6 Gateway Drive in Great Neck Estates. It was a modest house, not dissimilar to that of Nick. This is Fitzgerald's West Egg.

Corona Park

The town of Flushing was founded in 1645. The area -- located in Queens between Long Island and New York City -- was a tidal basin and estuary, as well as the bridge between two different ecosystems: aquatic and terrestrial. In 1909, officials in Tammany Hall gave a man named John “Fishhooks” A. McCarthy permission to use the site as a dumping ground for ashes retrieved from Brooklyn’s coal-burning furnaces via his company Brooklyn Ash Removal. By the 1920s the area had been transformed into a giant ash dump. This is Gatsby's Valley of Ashes.

MyVoucherCodes, a UK coupon website, calculated how expensive it would be to live like Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby.

They took into account Gatsby's home, parties, servants, and even the cost of maintaining the vast estate described in "The Great Gatsby," and then translated that price to what it would cost today.

The total cost of living like Gatsby would be $34,320,880. The cost of fruit and champagne alone was estimated at $81,300, not to mention his planes, boats, and car.