Week of June 2 - June 6

Monday:

Finish discussion and movie.

Tuesday:

Finish movie. Read Kipling's "The White Man's Burden." Answer related questions. Discuss the novel.

Wednesday: Senior Seminar Day!

Thursday/Friday: Exam review

Exam Schedule:
Monday: Period 1 (a.m.) and Period 3 (p.m.)
Tuesday: Period 2 (a.m.)
Thursday: Period 6 (p.m.)

Part A of the exam:
Vocabulary 12-15 (matching)
Part B: Grammar--includes passive/active, parallelism, adding an article, and usage.
Part C: Short answers related to quotes. Select one from each category, including:
Aristotle
Selected poems (includes Petrarch, Yeats, Hardy, and Kipling)
The Odyssey
Medea
The Inferno
A Passage to India

An essay on A Passage to India

Week of May 27 - May 30

Tuesday/Wednesday
Reading quiz. Go over. Begin watching "A Passage to India."
Finish the novel for homework.

Thursday/Friday
Students will get exam review sheet.
Go over Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden." Tie to the novel.
Finish "A Passage to India" film.
Friday's classes: Discussion on the novel.

Week of May 19 - May 23

Monday/Tuesday

Begin reading from A Passage To India. You need to have read through page 191 (through chapter 18) by Wednesday/Thursday. I suggest that you use the Losennotes. There will be a reading quiz. You need to have finished "Caves" (read through page 314) by next Tuesday/Wednesday. Expect a quiz then too.

Wednesday/Thursday

Reading quiz. Continue with your reading and answering questions. We may begin the movie but we'll see how things go.

Usage words to know for Friday's quiz:
all right (is two words)
a, an
adverse, averse
advice, advise
affect, effect
allusion, illusion
can, may
capital, capitol
censor, censure
council, counsel
disinterested, uninterested
elicit, illicit
emigrate from, immigrate to
eminent, imminent
explicit, implicit
irregardless
mankind
media, medium
quote, quotation
raise, rise
respectfully, respectively
should of
there, their, they're
unique
utilize
wait for, wait on
who, which, that
who, whom
who's, whose
you

Friday

Usage quiz. Continue reading. We might watch more of the film.

WEek of May 12-May 16

Monday/Tuesday

We have enough copies of A Passage to India, so you may start reading the novel. Read through Section I by Monday/Tuesday.

We also have a special treat this week--parts of famous films that are parodied in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," an annual ritual for my class. You don't get to watch Monty Python, however, until you see what is being parodied. As a result, you will watch the first part of Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" and Akira Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" (a version of "Macbeth"). Look for the following in "The Seventh Seal": overall atmosphere, mood, the witch scene, the flagellants. Look for the following in "Throne of Blood": atmosphere, weather, sounds in the Spider-web forest, the "witch."

After watching these film excerpts, begin reading. You should have read through page 132 by Monday/Tuesday.

Wednesday/Thursday

Watch "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Look for parallels between the film and the excerpts watched in class. Continue reading assignment, taking notes. Use Losennotes as a guide.
Go over usage lesson (pp. 532-541).

Words to know:
accept, except
anyone, any one
awhile, a while
bad, badly
beside, besides
between, among
can, may
coarse, course
compare to, compare with
complement, compliment
conscience, conscious
could of
everyone, every one
farther, further
fewer, less
good, well
if, whether
imply, infer
in, into
lead, led
lie, lay
like, as
loose, lose
maybe, may be
precede, proceed
principal, principle

Friday

Usage quiz. We will catch up on any questions you might have about the novel. Continue reading and expect a reading quiz on Monday/Tuesday.

Week of May 12th

Depending upon whether A Passage to India is available for all students, we will begin with that. If it is not, I have a Plan B, which will be announced on this blog on Monday/Tuesday.

Bring your grammar books and workbooks on Wednesday/Thursday.

Keep checking my posts. I should have the update complete by the end of Monday.

Week of May 5 - May 9

Monday/Tuesday

Class discussion of Medea based on four different groups. Ms. Lyle will mark down each time someone speaks. If there is time left over, study for the test. By the way, you are also responsible for information about Aristotle and his Poetics.

Wednesday/Thursday

Unit test on Medea and grammar.

Friday

Grammar exercise 11.

Week of April 28-May 2, 2008

Monday/ Tuesday:

Take parts and read aloud from Euripides' "Medea." You will read from pages 743-759, ending before the stage directions, "Enter Aigeus, king of Athens, an old friend of Medea."

Someone needs to record which student reads which part. Students receive a 100 quiz grade fro reading aloud. Be sure to pay attention to the footnotes as you read aloud. The background information is important. This week, I will be posting some of the more important quotes and trying to provide a context for the play on this blog.

Parts to assign for Monday/Tuesday:

Nurse--a nurse maid--very likely nursed these children at her own breast so she probably loves them dearly. She also has compassion for her mistress, who has been mistreated. The nurse is also highly intuitive and senses what Medea is going to do and yet she will do nothing. The nurse part should be read by a strong, confident reader.

Tutor--He also loves the children. He is an old man. Take note of his attitude about what might befall the children.

Medea--We need a very strong, confident reader for her part. Medea left home and betrayed her family, and all for a man who is about to desert her. In the Greek world, women were nothing more than chattel--lower than children and maybe just above pets. Unfortunately for Medea and for the Greeks, she is also smart. Medea's intelligence makes her even more aware of the hopelessness of her situation. The Greeks, on the other hand, fatally underestimate her capabilities because she is "only" a woman.

Foreigners are also disliked and disrespected and Medea is a foreigner, one who because of her various betrayals, has no homeland.

Chorus--Break this up into three parts. Each student will read the next speech given by the chorus and then it starts over again.

Kreon--This part should be read by a strong, confident reader too. He is a king, after all, and rather full of himself. He acts tough but shows a fatally tender and maybe even stupid side (by underestimating Medea).

Jason--We won't get much into Jason today, but I still want a strong reader for this part. He is trying to justify his bad behavior and Medea runs circles around him rhetorically.

When you get to the end of today's reading, take out your grammar books, "Rules for Writers." Read pp. 92-96. Do exercise 10-1. In your workbooks, do exercises 10-1 through 10-4. All exercises should be completed for Friday, May 2, but get as much done in class as possible.

Wednesday/Thursday

Finish "Medea" by assigning new parts to the play. In addition to the Chorus (3 students alternating), the Nurse, Tutor, Medea, Jason, and Kreon, we also have:

Aigeus: an old friend of Medea's, a warrior. He is also not as smart as she is and she manipulates him beautifully.

Messenger-- He only has a couple of things to say, but because he has a relatively long speech, it is best read by a more confident reader.

One child--one student--very short part.

The other child--one student--very short part.

When the play is finished, continue to work on the grammar lesson.

Friday:

Check to see that students have done the grammar lessons and then go over. No homework but bring your grammar books to class on Monday/Tuesday of next week.

Also, begin to check the blog for "Medea" notes.

There will be a unit test next Wednesday/Thursday. The test will primarily cover "Medea" but also some grammar from units 8-10 in Rules for Writers:

1. active v. passive voice
2. replacing "to be" verbs in place of stronger verbs
3. making sentences parallel and complete

At least 85% -90% of the test, however, will cover Medea. You may have to identify characters and places. It will include quote identification and an essay. Also, make sure you know the back-story included in the footnotes. It is important to know what Medea gave up in order to fully understand her rage.

On Monday, there will be a class discussion of "Medea." Before the discussion begins, you will break into four approximately same-sized-groups--chosen by Ms. Lyle. One group will say that Medea is entirely at fault and guilty of the crime. Another group will allege that Jason is the truly guilty part. A third group will say that it is the people of Greece--including the chorus, the tutor, and the nurse. A fourth group will say that the royal family is ultimately at fault for what happens (Kreon and his daughter). Each group must bring evidence from the text. Ms. Lyle will record each time a student speaks. This will be graded as a quiz so students must participate. You will be able to use the text, and even some of the passages I have put here. Each group will present its case, and then the class will move to a larger discussion about who is ultimately responsible. There is no right or wrong answer as long as you can back it up with the text. Your personal opinion is not important. You need to make your case based upon the facts and what you have been assigned.

Medea Notes

We will start with the Nurse and her interaction with the children's tutor. Pay attention to how much she knows. Does that make her responsible for what is to happen? You also get a lot of the background from the nurse. Pay attention.

How much is Jason to blame? How much is Kreon to blame? Keep this in mind as you read some of the upcoming quotes--not only here, but when Kreon or Jason speaks.

NURSE. How I wish the Argo never had reached the land/ of Colchis, skimming through the Symplegades,/ Nor ever had fallen in the glades of Pelion/ The smitten fir-tree to furnish oars for the hands/ Of heroes who in Pelias' name attempted/ The Golden Fleece! For my mistress Medea/ Would not have sailed for the towers of the land of Iolcos,/ Her heart on fire with passionate love for Jason; / Nor would she have persuaded the daughters of Pelias/ To kill their father, and now be living here/ In Corinth with her husband and children. She gave/ Pleasure to the people of her land of exile,/ And she herself helped Jason in every way./ This is indeed the greatest salvation of all,/ For the wife not to stand apart from the husband./ But now there's hatred everywhere. Love is diseased./ For, deserting his own children and my mistress,/ Jason has taken a royal wife to his bed, / The daughter of the ruler of this land, Kreon./ And poor Medea is slighted, and cries aloud on the/ Vows they made to each other, the right hands clasped/ In eternal promise. She calls upon the gods to witness/ What sort of return Jason has made to her love. / She lies without food and gives herself up to suffering, / Wasting away every moment of the day in tears (1-25).

Note the family betrayal and regret. Note the sort of "cannibalism"--devouring one's own kind. This comes back to Medea in this tragedy. She is in exile, alone, and the man for which she has devoured her own, has now betrayed her. She is more alone than ever.

NURSE. She listens when she is given friendly advice./ Except that sometimes she twists back her white neck and/ Moans to herself, calling out her father's name,/ And her land, and her home betrayed when she came away with/ A man who is determined to dishonor her. / Poor creatures, she has discovered by her sufferings/ What it means to none not to have lost one's own country. /She has turned from the children and does not like to see them. I am afraid she may think of some dreadful thing, / For her heart is violent. She will never put up with/ The treatment she is getting. I know her and fear her/ Lest she may sharpen a sword and thrust it to the heart,/ Stealing into the palace where the bed is made,/ Or even kill the king and the new-wedded groom, / And thus bring a greater misfortune on herself./ She's a strange woman. I know it won't be easy/ To make an enemy of her and come off best (29-45).

TUTOR. Has the poor lady given up crying?
NURSE. Given up? She's at the start, not halfway through her tears.
TUTOR. Poor fool,--if I may call my mistress such a name,--/ How ignorant she is of trouble more to come.
NURSE. What do you mean, old man? You needn't fear to speak.
TUTOR. Nothing. I take back the words which I used just now.
NURSE. Don't, by your beard, hide this from me, your fellow-servant./ If need be, I'll keep quiet about what you tell me (59-66).

Is it all right for her to keep quiet? What the tutor hears, of course, is that Kreon wants to send Medea and the children into exile.

NURSE. And will Jason put up with it that his children/ Should suffer so, though he's no friend of their mother? (74-75).

TUTOR. Old ties give way to new ones. As for Jason, he/ No longer has a feeling for this house of ours (76-77).

I find this play, in many ways, contemporary. Here is a husband and a father, and he basically deserts his family in favor of a new woman. He goes into a kind of denial about the repercussions. He tries to convince Medea that this will be best for everyone because, on some level, he seems to believe it himself.

It's easy to blame Medea for the murders she commits. But I think you can blame nearly everyone in the play. All of these characters fall victim to their passions. Medea's passion is for Jason; Jason's passion is his ambition. Kreon's passion is his power; he deludes himself into believing he has more than he actually has. And, he is not really a fit leader because he underestimates Medea, simply because she is a woman.

I also blame the servants, who see what is happening, but choose to say nothing to anyone in power. All they do is vent to each other. Everyone in this play is in some way complicit in these murders.

At this point in the play, the tutor makes the nurse promise that she won't tell Medea what he is about to tell her. The nurse responds:

NURSE. Do you hear, children, what a father he is to you?/ I wish he were dead,--but no he is still my master./ Yet certainly he has proved unkind to his loved ones.

TUTOR. What's strange in that? Have you only just discovered/ That everyone loves himself more than his neighbor?/ Some have good reason, others get something out of it./ So Jason neglects his children for the new bride (82-88).

Again, the nurse knows something is terribly wrong:

NURSE. Don't bring them near their mother in her angry mood/ For I've seen her already blazing her eyes at them/ As though she meant some mischief and I am sure that/ she'll not stop raging until she has struck at someone./ May it be an enemy and not a friend she hurts! (89-91).

NURSE. What did I say, dear children? Your mother/ Frets her heart and frets it to anger. / Run away quickly into the house,/ And keep her well out of sight./ Don't go anywhere near, but be careful/ Of the wildness and bitter nature/ Of that proud mind./ Go now! Run quickly indoors./ It is clear that she will soon put lightning/ In that clod of her cries that is rising/ With a passion increasing. Oh what she will do,/ Proud-hearted and not to be checked on her course, a soul bitten into wrong? (98-110).

MEDEA. Ah, I have suffered/ What should be wept for bitterly. I hate you/ Children of a hateful mother. I curse you/ And your father. Let the whole house crash (111-114).

NURSE. Ah, I pity you, poor creature. / How can your children share in their father's/ Wickedness? Why do you hate them? Oh children, / How much I fear that something may happen!/ Great people's tempers are terrible, always, / Having their own way, seldom checked,/ Dangerous when they shift from mood to mood./ How much better to have been born on equal terms with one's neighbors./ I would like to be safe and grow old in a/ Humble way. What is moderate sounds best, / Also in practice is best for everyone. Greatness brings no profit to people./ God in deed, when in anger, brings/ greater ruin to great men's houses (115-129).

Soon, we will see the extent of Medea's sufferings--her passion. She is consumed with passion for Jason and that passion quickly turns to rage. Now, on some level, she has good reasons. She will be abandoned, sent into exile, a stranger in a new place where she might be even less welcome than she is now. It might even mean death, and she knows this. Remember, she gave up everything and everyone she loved for Jason.

MEDEA. Behold Themis, lady Artemis, behold,/ The things I suffer, though I made him promise, / My hateful husband. I pray that I may see him, / Him and his bride and all their palace shattered/ For the wrong they dare to do me without cause. / Oh my father! Oh my country! In what dishonor/ I left you, killing my own brother for it (159-165).

NURSE. Do you hear what she says, and who she cries/ On Themis, the goddess of Promises, and on Zeus/ Whom we believe to be the Keeper of Oaths?/ Of this I am sure, that no small thing/ Will appease my mistress' anger (166-170).

CHORUS. Will she come into our presence?/ Will she listen when we are speaking/ To the words we say?/ I wish she might relax her rage/ And temper her heart./ My willingness to help will never/ Be wanting to my friends./ But go inside and bring her/ Out of the house to us./ And speak kindly to her: hurry, / Before she wrongs her own./ This passion of hers moves her to something great (171-182).

NURSE. Such a look she will flash on her servants/ If any comes near her with a message,/ Like a lioness guarding her cubs./ It is right, I think, to consider/ both stupid and lacking in foresight/ Those poets of old who wrote songs/ For revels and dinners and banquets,/ Pleasant sounds for men living at ease;/ But none of them all has discovered/ How to put an end with their singing/ Or musical instruments grief,/ Bitter grief, from which death and disaster/ Cheat the hopes of a house. Yet how good,/ If music could cure men of this...(186-199).

CHORUS. I heard a shriek that is laden with sorrow./ Shrilling out her hard grief she cries out/ Upon him who betrayed both her bed and marriage./ Wronged, she calls on the gods,/ On the justice of Zeus, the oath sworn,/ Which brought her away/ To the opposite shore of the Greeks/ Through the gloomy salt straits to the gateway/ Of the salty unlimited sea (203-211).

Note Medea's appeal to the women of Corinth. Medea is an outsider and a woman, and has no status at all:

MEDEA. Women of Corinth, I have come outside to you/ Lest you should be indignant with me; for I know/ That many people are overproud, some when alone,/ And others when in company. And those who live/ Quietly as I do, get a bad reputation./ For a just judgment is not evident in the eyes/ When man at first sight hates another, before/ Learning his character, being in no way injured,/ And foreigner especially must adapt himself./ I'd not approve of even a fellow-countryman/ Who by pride and want of manners offends his neighbors./ But on me this thing has fallen so unexpectedly, /It has broken my heart. I am finished. I let go/ All my life's job. My friends, I only want to die./ It was everything to me to think well of one man,/ And he, my own husband, has turned out wholly vile./ Of all the things which are living, and can form a judgment/ We women are the most unfortunate creatures. / Firstly, with an excess of wealth it is required/ For us to buy a husband take for our bodies/ A master; for not to take one is even worse./ And now the question is serious whether we take/ A good or bad one; for there is no easy escape/ For a woman, nor can she say no to her her marriage./ She arrives among new modes of behavior and manners,/ And needs prophetic power, unless she has learnt at home/ How best to manage him who shares the bed with her./ And if we work out all this well and carefully,/ And the husband lives with us and lightly bares his yoke, / Then life is enviable. If not, I'd rather die. / A man, when he's tired of the company in his home/ Goes out of the house and puts and end to his boredom/ And turns to a friend or companion of his own age./ But we are forced to keep our eyes on one alone./ What they say of us is that we have a peaceful time/ Living at home, while they do the fighting in war./ How wrong they are! I would much rather stand/ Three times in the front of battle than bear one child. / Yet what applies to me does not apply to you./ You have a country. Your family is here./ You enjoy life and the company of your friends. But I am deserted, a refugee, thought nothing of/ By my husband, --something he won in a foreign land / I have no mother or brother, nor any relation/ With whom I can take refuge in this sea of woe./ This much ten is the service I would beg from you:/ If I can find the means or devise any scheme/ To pay my husband back for what he had done for me,--/ Him and his father-in-law and the girl who married him,--/ Just to keep silent. For in other ways a woman/ Is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold/ Steel; but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love,/ No other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood (212-264).

Medea is in a state of despair. Remember: despair is an act of hubris. When we fall into despair, we lose hope. When we lose hope, we think we have the right to do whatever we want. When we lose control of our anger, and we lose hope, we, in a sense, "play God." Medea is going to do this when she takes the lives of her children.

At this point, however, Medea is still planning, and at the same time, manipulating. She asks Kreon why he is exiling her and the children. He answers her. Note how he acknowledges his power and, in spite of this, comes to underestimate her--primarily because of her gender.

KREON. I am afraid of you,--why should I dissemble it?--/ Afraid that you may injure my daughter mortally./ Many things accumulate tosupport my feeling./ You are a clever woman, versed in evil arts. /And you are angry at having lost your husband's love./ I hear that you are threatening, so they tell me,/ To do something against my daughter and Jason/ And me, too. I shall take precautions first. / U tell you, I prefer to earn your hatred now/ than to be left soft-hearted and afterwards regret it (280-289).

MEDEA. This is not the first time, Kreon. Often previously/ Through being considered clever I have sufered much./ A person of sense ought never to have his children/ Brought up to be more clever than the average. For, apart from cleverness bringing them no profit/ It will make them objects of envy and ill-will./ If you put ideas before the eyes of fools/ They'll think you foolish and worthless into the bargain;/ And if you are thouht superior to those who have/ some reputation for learning you will become hated./ I have some knowledge myself of how this happens;/ For being clever, I find that some will envy me,/ Others subject to me. Yet all my cleverness/ Is not so much. well, ten, you are frightened, Kreon/ That I should harm you? There is no need. It is not/ My way to transgress the au thority of a king. / How have you injured me? You gave your daugher away/ To the man you wanted. O, certainly I hate/ my husband, but you, I think, hav eacted wisely; / Nor do I grudge it you that your affairs go well. May the marriage be a lucky one! Only let me/ Live in this land. For even thou gh I havebeen wronged, / Iwill not raise my voice, but submit to my betters (290-312).

KREON. What you say sounds gentle enough. Still, in my heart, / I gently dread that you are plotting some evil,/ And therefore I trust you even less than before. A sharp-tempered woman, or for that matter a man,/ Is easier to deal with than the clever type/ Who holds her tongue. No. You must go. No need for more/ Speeches. The thing is fixed. By no manner of means/ Shall you, an enemy of mine, stay in my country...(313-320).

KREON. Your words are wasted. You will never persuade me... (322).

KREON. I will, for I love my family more than you (324).

MEDEA. O m country! How bitterly I remember you! (325).

KREON. I love my country too, --next, after my children (326).

MEDEA. O what an evil to men is passionate love! (327).

KREON. That would depend on the luck that goes along with it (328).

From this point, Medea continues her manipulations of Kreon. It's almost too easy. She wins a key point:

MEDEA. Allow me to remain here just for this one day,/ So I may consider where to live in my exile,/ And look for support for my children, since their father/ Chooses to make no kind of provision for them./ Have pity on them! You have children of your own./ It is natural for you to look kindly on them. / For myself I do not mind if I go into exile. It is the chidren being in trouble that I mind (337-344).

KREON. There is nothing tyrannical about my nature. And by showing mercy I have often been the loser,/ Even though I know that I am making a mistake. / All the same you shall have your will. But this I tell you,/ That if the light of heaven tomorrow shall see you/ You and your children in the confines of my land,/ You die. This word I have spoken is firmly fixed. But now, if you must stay, stay for tihs day alone. / For in it you can do none of the things I fear (343-353).

He has just totally underestimated her and she recognizes it:

MEDEA. Do you think that I would ever have fawned on that man/ Unless Ihad some end to gain or profit in it?/ I would not even have spoken or touched him with my hands./ But he has got to such a pitch of foolishness/ That, though he could have made nothing of all my plans/ By exiling me, he has given me this one day/ To stay here, and in this I will make dead bodies/ Of three of my enemies,--father, the girl and my husband (364-371).

She considers the ways. She has to be careful or she will be killed. Besides, she is skilled in the magic arts. She will poison them. Meanwhile, however, she will need to find sanctuary somewhere else.

MEDEA. Bitter I will make their marriage for them and mournful,/ Bitter the alliance and thedriving me out of the land./ Ah, come, Medea, in your plotting and scheming/ Leave nothing untried of all those things you know./ Go forward to the dreadful act. The test has come/ For resolution. You see how you are treated. Never/ Shall you be mocked by Jason's Corinthian wedding,/ Whose father was noble, whose grandfather Helios./ You have the skill. What is more, you were born a woman,/ And women, though most helpless in doing good deeds, / Are of every evil the cleverest of contrivers (396-406).

CHORUS. You sailed away from your father's home,/ With a heart on fire you passed/ The double rocks of the sea. / And now in a foreign country/ You have lost your rest in a widowed bed,/ You are driven forth, a refugee/ In dishonor from the land (421-427).

CHORUS. Good faith has gone, and no more remains/ In great Greece a sense of shame. It has flown way to the sky. / No father's house for a haven/ Is at hand for you now, and another queen/ Of your bed has dispossessed you and/ Is mistress of your home (428-434).

JASON. This is not the first occasion that I have noticed/ How hopeless it is to deal with a stubborn temper./ For, with reasonable submission to our ruler's will,/ You might have lived in this land and kept your home./ As it is you are going to be exiled for your loose speaking./ Not that I mind myself. You are free to continue/ Telling everyone that Jason is a worthless man./ But as to your talk about the king, consider/ Yourself most lucky that exile is your punishment./ I, for my part, have always tried to calm down/ The anger of the king, and wished you to remain./ But you will not give u your folly, continually/ Speaking ill of him, and so you are going to be banished./ All the same, and in spite of your conduct, I'll not desert/ My friends, but have come to make some provision for you,/ So that you and the children may not be penniless/ Or in need of anything in exile. Certainly/ Exile brings many troubles with it. And even/ If you hate me, I cannot think badly of you (435-453).

MEDEA. O coward in every way,--that is what I call you,/ With bitterest reproach for your lack of manliness,/ You have come, you, my worst enemy, have come to me!/ It is not an example of over-confidence/ Or of boldness thus to look your friends in the face,/ Friends you have injured,--no, it is the worst of all/ Human diseases, shamelessness. But you did well/ To come, for I can speak ill of you and lighten/ My heart, and you will suffer while you are listening (454-462).

MEDEA... I saved your life, and every Greek knows I saved it/ Who was a shipmate of yours aboard the Argo,/ When you were sent to control the bulls that breathed fire/ And yoke them, and when you would sow that deadly field./ Also that snake, who encircled with his many folds/ The Golden Fleece and guarded it and never slept,/ I killed, and so gave you the safety of the light./ And I myself betrayed my father and my home,/ And came with you to Pelias' land of Iolcos./ And then, showing more willingness than wisdom, I killed him, Pelias, with a most dreadful death/ at his own daughters' hands, and took away your fear. / This is how I behaved to you, you wretched man,/ And you forsook me, took another bride to bed/ Though you had children; for, if that had not been, / You would not have had an excuse for another wedding/ Faith in your word has gone. Indeed I cannot tell/ Whether you think the gods whose names you swore by then/ Have ceased to rule and that new standards are set up,/ Since you must know you have broken your word to me./ O my right hand, and the knees which you often clasped/ In supplication, how senselessly I am treated/ By this bad man, and how my hopes have missed their mark!/ Come, I will share my thoughts as though you were a friend,--/ You! Can I think that you would ever treat me well? /But I will do it, and these questions will make you/ Appear the baser. Where am I to go? To my father's?/ Him I betrayed and his land when I came with you/ To Pelias' wretched daugthers? What a fine welcome/ They would prepare for me who murdered their father!/ For this is my position,--hated by my friends/ At home, I have, in kindness to you, made enemies/ Of others whom there was no need to have injured../ And how happy among Greek women you have made me/ On your side for all tihs! A distinguished husband/ I have, --for breaking promises. When in misery/ I am cast out of the land and go into exile,/ Quiet without friends and all alone with my children,/ That will be a fine shame for the new-wedded groom,/ For his children to wander as beggars and she who saved him. O God, you have given to mortals a sure method/ Of telling the gold that is pure from the counterfeit; / Why is there no mark engraved upon men's bodies,/ By which we could know the true ones from the false ones? (464-507).

Note Jason's argument against everything she did and the way he attacks "foreigners" as inferior. He actually calls her people "barbarians." According to Jason, Medea should be grateful. Jason is morally bankrupt--thinking only of himself. Part of him must feel some guilt, however, because he works so hard at justifying his actions:

JASON. Since you insist on building up your kindness to me, my view was that Cypris was alone responsible/ Of men and gods for the preserving of my life./ You are clever enough,--but really, I need not enter/ Into the story of how it was love's inescapable/ Power that compelled you to keep my person safe....But on this question of saving me, I can prove/ You have certainly got from me more than you gave. / Firstly, instead of living among barbarians,/ You inhabit a Greek land and understand our ways,/ How to live by law instead of the sweet will of force./ And all the Greeks considered you a clever woman. / You were honored for it; while, if you were living at/ The ends of the earth, nobody would have heard of you./ For my part, rather than stores of gold in my house,/ Or power to sing sweeter songs than Orpheus, I'd choose the fate that made me a distinguished man. There is my reply to your labors./ Remember it was you who started the argument. Remember, it was your attack on my wedding with the princess:/ Here I will prove that, first it was a clever move,/ Secondly, a wise one, and finally, that I made it/ In your best interests and the chidlren's. Please keep calm, / When I arrived here from the land of Iolcos,/ Involved, as I was, in every kind of difficulty,/ What luckier chance could I have come across than this,/ An exile to marry the daughter of the king?/ It was not,--the point that seems to upset you--that I/ Grew tired of your bed and felt the need of a new bride;/ Nor with any wish to outdo your number of children./ We have enough already. I am quite content./ But, --this was the main reason--that we might live well,/ And not be short of anything. I know that all/ A man's friends leave him stone-cold if he becomes poor./ Also that I m ight bring my children up worthily/ Of my position, and, by producing more of them/ To be brothers of yours, we would draw the famiilies/ Together and all be happy. You need no children./ And it pays me to do good to those I have now/ By having others. Do you think this a bad plan?/ You wouldn't if the love question hadn't upset you./ But you women have got into such a state of mind/ That, if your life at n ight is good, you think you have/ Everything; but, if in that quarter things go wrong,/ You will consider your best and truest interests/ Most hateful. It would ha ve been better far for men/ To have got their children in some other way, and women/ Not to have existed. Then life would have been good (514-563).

Jason offers some help from his friends and Medea refuses. It shows that she is only thinking of herself--her own pride--not her children. The Chorus, of course, recognizes the folly of this excess of passion. But again, they do nothing but speak to each other.

Much of what we have read this year involves a balance between head and heart, between reason and passions. Excesses either way are not good. "Moderation" and "passion" are two themes in this play. Exile, of course, is another theme of this play and other works we have studied this year. One can be exiled from one's country, one's family, or even the understanding of one's self.

CHORUS. When love is in excess/ It brings a man no honor/ Nor any worthiness./ But if in moderation Cypris comes,/ There is no power at all so gracious./ O goddess, never on me let loose the unerring/ Shaft of your bow in the poison of desire (615-621).

CHORUS. Let my heart be wise./ It is the gods' best gift. On me let mightly Cypris/ Inflict no wordy wars or restless anger/ To urge my passion to a different love./ But with discernment may she guide women's weddings,/ Honoring most what is peaceful in bed (622-628).

CHORUS. There is no sorrow above/ The loss of a native land. I have seen it myself,/ Do not tell of a secondhand story./ Neither city nor friend/ Pitied you when you suffered/ The worst of sufferings./ O let him die ungraced whose heart/ Will not reward his friends,/ Who cannot open an honest mind/ No friend will he be of mine (636-646).

Note how Medea manipulates King Aigeus. She wraps him around her finger. Because of Aigeus, she has a place where she could go and be safe. At this point, she is assuring her safety because she knows that she will kill her children. Aigeus, of course, does not realize this. But he has made an oath, and oaths are a big deal in this culture.

AIGEUS. Then let him go, if as you say, he is so bad (683).

MEDEA. A passionate love,--for an alliance with a king (684).

AIGEUS. Indeed, Medea, your grief was understandable (687).

MEDEA. I am ruined. And there is more to come: I am banished (688).

Now, she gets him to make an oath. Though she is filled with passionate rage, she systematically uses her powers of reason in order to get what she wants. This seals the deal for her safety:

AIGEUS. Do you not trust me? What is it that rankles you? (717).

MEDEA. I trust you, yes. But the house of Pelias hates me./ And so does Kreon. If you are bound by this oath,/ When they try to drag me from your land, you will not/ Abandon me; but if our pact is only words,/ With no oath to the gods, you will be lightly armed,/ Unable to resist their summons. I am weak,/ While they have wealth to help them and a royal house (718-724).

"Weak" is not a word I would use to describe Medea....

AIGEUS. You show much forsight for such negotiations (725).

MEDEA. Swear by the plain of Earth, and Helios, father,/ Of my father, and name together all the gods...(730-731).

AIGEUS. That I will act or not act in what way? Speak (732).

MEDEA. That you yourself will never cast me from your land,/ Nor, if any of my enemies should demand me,/ Will you, in your life, willingly hand me over (733-735).

AIGEUS. I swear by the Earth, by the holy light of Helios,/ By all th egods, I will abide by this you say (736-737).

MEDEA. Enough. And, if you fail, what shall happen to you? (738).

AIGEUS. What comes to those who have no regard for heaven (739).

MEDEA. Go on your way. Farewell. For I am satisfied,/ And I will reach your city as soon as I can,/ Having done the deed I have to do and gained my end.

She then proceeds to tell the chorus exactly how she will carry out her dreadful act. What is their responsibility in this? Does Medea make the chorus complicit in her act? Note how she connects with their own oppressed state as women:

MEDEA. Say nothing of these decisions which I have made,/ If you love our mistress, if you were born a woman (806-807).

Medea then manipulates Jason into thinking all is forgiven. Does that make Jason responsible? Shouldn't he be more wary? Isn't it his responsibility to be aware--for the sake of his children and even for the sake of his new bride? Talk about denial--and its consequences! He sees Medea in tears and reads it all wrong:

MEDEA. ...We have made peace, and all our anger is over (875).

JASON. I approve of what you say. And I cannot blame you/ Even for what you said before. It is natural/ For a woman to be wild with her husband when he/ Goes in for secret love. But now your mind has turned/ To better reasoning. In the end, you have come to/ The right decision, like the clever woman you are./ And of you, children, your father is taking care./ He has made, with God's help, ample provision for you./ For I think that a time will come when you will be/ The leading people in Corinth with your brothers./ You must grow up. As to the future, your father/ And those of the gods who love him will deal with that./ I want to see you, when you have become young men,/ Healthy and srong, better men than my enemies. Medea, why are your eyes all wet with pale tears?/ Why is your cheek so white and turned away from me?/ Are not these words of mine pleasing to hear? (894-900).

MEDEA. It was nothing. I was thinking about these children (901).

JASON. You must be cheerful. I will look after them well (902).

MEDEA. I will be. It is not that I distrust your words,/ But a woman is a frail thing, prone to crying (903-904).

JASON. But why should you grieve so much for these children? (905).

MEDEA. I am their mother. When you prayed that they might live/ I felt unhappy to think that these things will be (906-907).

At the point that the princess accepts the beautiful dress and crown, and Kreon reacts, these characters are acting out of passion (excitement and pain) and Medea is cold, calculating, and logical. This gives her the upper hand.

MESSENGER. As for your interests, I will say nothing of them,/ For you will find your own escape from punishment./ Our human life I think and have thought a shadow,/ And I do not fear to say that those who are held/ Wise amongst men and who search the reasons of things/ Are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves./ For of mortals there is one who is happy./ If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps/ Luckier than one's nei ghbor, but still not happy (1197-1205).

CHORUS. Heaven, it seems, on this day has fastened many/ Evils on Jason, and Jason has deserved them./ Poor girl, the daughter of Kreon, how I pity you/ And your misfortunes, you whave gone quite away/ to the house of Hades because of marrying Jason (1206-1210).

Medea has hardened her heart--a sign of hubris. Her speech is almost like a prayer:

MEDEA. Women, my task is fixed; as quickly as I may/ To kill my children/ To be slain by another hand less kindly to them./ Force every way will have it they must die, and since/ this must be so, then I, their mother, shall kill them./ O arm yourself in steel, my heart! Do not hang back/ From doing this fearful and necessary wrong. O come, my hand, poor wretched hand, and take the sword,/ Take it, step forward to this bitter starting poitn,/ And do not be a coward, do not think of them,/ How sweet they are, and how you are their mother. Just for/ This one short day be forgetful of your children,/ Afterwards weep; for even though you will kill them,/ They were very dear,--O, I am an unhappy woman! (1211-1225).

Note how Medea chooses her own unhappiness and even increases it deliberately. Those children were never really dear to her; if they were, she could not have done what she did.

CHORUS. Vain waste, your care of children;/ Was it in vian you bore the babes you loved,/ After you passed the inhospitable strait/ Between the dark blue rocks, Symplegades?/ O wretched one, how has it come,/ This heavy anger on your heart,/ This cruel bloody mind? For God comes from mortals asks a stern/ Price for the stain of kindred blood/ In like disaster falling on their homes. Do you hear the cry, do you hear the children's cry?/ O you hard heart,/ O woman fated for evil (1236-1247).

CHORUS. O your heart must have been made of rock or steel,/ You who can kill/ With your own hand the fruit of your own womb (1254-1256).

Jason approaches the chorus and asks them if Medea is still there or if she has fled.

JASON. Does she imagine that, having killed our rules,/ She will herself escape from this house? (1274-1275).

Theanswer to that would be yes--it has happened before--with her own family. It's interesting that men are supposed to be logical and women overly emotional. Medea is the calculating one here and Jason appears to be an idiot. He's oblivious! Again, does that make him responsible? It does in my book! Parents cannot afford to be oblivious. Not only that, but Jason turns this into being about him, not his children. He's the victim. His children are an extension of his own ego, not beings in their own right.

CHORUS. O Jason, if you but knew how deeply you are/ Involved in sorrow, you would not have spoken so (1281-1282).

JASON. What is ist? That she is planning to kill me also? (1283).

CHORUS. Your children are dead, and by their own mother's hand (1284).

JASON. What? This is it? O woman, you have destroyed me (1285).

JASON [to Medesa]. You hateful thing, you woman most utterly loathed/ By the gods and me and by all the race of mankind,/ You who have had the heart to raise a sword against/ Your children, you, their mother, and left me childless,-/ You have done this, and do you still look at the sun/ And at the earth, after these fearful doings?/ I wish you dead. Now I see it plain, though at that time/ I did not, when I took you from a foreign home/ And brought you to a Greek house, you, an evil thing,/ A traitress to your father and your native land./ The gods hurled the avenging curse of yours on me./ For your own brother you slew at your own hearthside,/ And then came aboard that beautiful shilp, the Argo. That was your beginning. When you were married/ To me, your husband, and had borne children to me,/ For the sake of pleasure in the bed you killed them./ There is no Greek woman who would have dared such deeds/ Out of all those whom I passed over and chose you/ To marry instead, a bitter destructive match,/ A monster not a woman, having a nature/ Wilder than that of Scylla in the Tuscan sea (1298-1318).

JASON. Ah! no, not if I had ten thousand words of shame/ Could I sting you. You are naturally brazen. Go, worker in evil, stained with your children's blood. / For me remains to cry aloud upon my fate,/ Who will get no pleasure from my newly-wedded love,/ And the boys whom I begot and brought up, never,/ Shall I speak to them alive. Oh, my life is over! (1319-1325).

MEDEA. Long would be the answer which I have made to/ These words of yours, if Zeus the father did not know/ How I would have treated you and what you did to me./ No, it was not to be that you should scorn my love,/ And pleasantly live our life through, laughing at me;/ Nor would the princess, nor he who offered the match, Kreon, drive me away without paying for it./ So now you may call me a monster, if you wish,/ O Scylla housed in the caves of the Tuscan sea/ I too, as I had to, have taken hold of your heart (1326-1335).

JASON. You feel the pain yourself. You share in my sorrow (1336).

MEDEA. Yes, and my grief is gain when you cannot mock it (1337).

JASON. O children, what a wicked mother she was to you! (1338).

MEDEA. They died from a disease they caught from their father (1339).

JASON. I tell you it was not my hand that destroyed them (1340).

MEDEA. Is love so small a pain, do yo uthink, for a woman? (1343).

JASON. For a wise one, certainly. But you are wholly evil (1344).

MEDEA. The children are dead. I say this to make you suffer (1345).

JASON. The children, I think, will bring down cureses on you (1346).

Hasn't Medea already been cursed, by Jason's betrayal? What more can the gods do to her?

MEDEA. The gods know who was the author of this sorrow (1347).

JASON. Yes, the gods know your loathesome heart (1348).

MEDEA. Hate me. But I tire of your barking bitterness (1349).

JASON. And I yours. It is easier to leave you (1350).

MEDEA. How then? What shall I do? I long to leave you (1351).

JASON. Give me the bodies to bury and to mourn them (1352).

MEDEA. No, that I will not. I will bury them myself,/ Bearing them to Hera's temple on the promontory;/ So that no enemy may evilly treat them/ By tearing up their grave. In this land of Corinth I shall establish a holy feast and sacrifice/ Each year forever to atone for the blood guilt. And I myself go to the land of Erectheus/ To dwell in Aigeus' house, the son of Pandion,/ While you, as is right, will die without distinction,/ Struck on the head by a piece of the Argo's timber,/ And you will have seen the bitter end of my love (1353-1363).

JASON. May aFury for the children's sake destroy you,/ And justice, requitor of blood (1364-1365).

MEDEA. What heavenly power lends an ear/ To a breaker of oaths, a deceiver? (1366-1367).

JASON. O, I hate you, murderess of children (1368).

MEDEA. Go to your palace. bury your bride (1369).

JASON. I go, with two children to mourn for (1370).

MEDEA. Not yet do you feel it. Wait for the future (1371).

JASON. Oh, children I loved! (1372).

MEDEA. I loved them, you did not (1373).

JASON. You loved them, and killed them (1374).

MEDEA. To make you feel pain (1375).

Jason acted without regard to Medea's feelings; he acted more on instincts, like an animal.

JASON. Oh wretch that I am, how I long/ To kiss the dear lips of my children! (1376-1377).

MEDEA. Now you would speak to them, now you would kiss them. / Then you rejected them (1378-1379).

JASON. O God, do you hear it, this persecution,/ These my sufferings from this hateful/ Woman, this monster, murderess of children? / Still what I can do that I will do:/ I will lament and cry upon heaven,/ Calling the gods to bear me witness How you have killed my boys and prevent me from/ Touching their bodies or giving them burial./ I wish I had never begot them to see them/ Afterwards slaughtered by you (1383-1392).

Week of April 21

I've moved the due-date of the paper until Friday, the 25th, but no later than that, so get it done. Remember that you must turn in all work, including any notes you might have taken, research you might have printed out (along with a bibliography), outlines (you should all have them) or mind-maps--anything that contributed to the process. Remember, no matter what your level of skill, you can potentially earn 100 as a test score on one component--the process or effort component. In order to get 100, however, I will expect to see research. If you look at my blog, you can see how important research is to me as a writer, and I've been writing for many years and have more years of experiences from which to draw. In spite of this, I find research even more important than I ever have before. It's important to know what things are called--not just as writers--but in terms of your future careers. Great writers are also great observers and great listeners and mostly, great learners.

Other than the papers, there will be no homework this week. There will also be no homework next weekend, so that you can turn your papers in and take a deep breath all weekend long.

Bring your grammar books and workbooks to class on Wednesday/Thursday.

Monday/Tuesday

Take 1/2 hour to peer-edit or work individually. Get Norton Anthologies from the back of the room and start reading about Aristotle (pp. 842-847).

Know the following information from that:

Dates of birth and death and place of origin

Name of his school

Areas of research

From Poetics:

Definition of tragedy

Constituent parts of tragedy and what they mean

What are two natural causes of actions?

What are the six constituent elements of tragedy?

Which elements make up the media?

Which elements make up the manner?

Which elements make up the objects?

"...tragedy is not an imitation of men but of __________ and __________."

"...without action there could not be a tragedy, but there could be without ______________."

What makes a thing whole?

"...the poet's function is not to report things that have happened, but rather to tell of _________________________________."

What is the difference between the poet and the historian?

Which type of plot does Aristotle consider "the worst"?

What is peripety?

Give an example.

What does Aristotle mean by "recognition"?

Give an example.

"...good men ought not to be shown passing from prosperity to misfortune, for this does not inspire either pity or fear, but only revulsion; nor evil men rising from ill fortune to prosperity, for this is the most untragic plot of all--it lacks every requirement, in that it neither elicits __________________ nor stirs ________________________."

Why shouldn't wicked men be seen falling from prosperity into misfortune?

What is "hamartia"?

What, then, really makes for a good plot?

What is the chorus' role in a tragedy?

Next: Read background of Euripides (pp. 741-743).

Know the following information:

Dates of his life and which war was occurring around the time that Medea was produced. The year that Medea was produced.

How does Medea have "an attitude characteristic of modern literature"?

How was Euripides like "so many of the great modern writers"?

What makes Medea different from many other Greek tragedies?

What makes Medea different from others in her world?

Who is Medea's husband?

What is the purpose of the play? What is it intended to do to the audience?

What makes the play "more than a feminist melodrama"?

"The play creates a world in which there is no relation whatsoever between the powers which rule the universe and the fundamental laws of ____________________________."

"The play dramatizes ____________________________."

After students have finished this, they may go back to working quietly on Infernos. Remember to bring your grammar books and workbooks on Wednesday/Thursday.

Wednesday/Thursday

Take out your grammar books / workbooks.

Turn to chapter eight in spiral books. Read pp. 84-92. Do exercises 8-1 & 9-1 in spiral books.

Do exercises 8-1, 8-2, 8-3, 8-4, 9-1, 9-2, 9-3, & 9-4 in your workbooks.

If you finish early, you may work on your Infernos or consult with classmates on that work.

Friday

Placing the newest work on top--to the oldest, first work you did on the bottom, place your Infernos in a file folder with your full name on the outside front and on the tab and turn it in.

Students may choose to share what they have done before doing so, but I'll leave that up to Ms. Lyle and students.
No homework this weekend.

Draft 1 of Canto II--the Atheists

We have just arrived at the Tottenham  Court tube station and we find ourselves standing in front of some three-story Georgian mansions.

"Virginia," I find myself saying, instantly regretting the lack of formality.

"You may call me Virginia," she says, and her eyes twinkle and her mouth widens into a Cheshire-cat grin.

"Virginia," I say, only half-believing the word or my senses.

"Not to be mistaken with the Commonwealth or the Virgin Queen," she says, her eyes full of mischief. She opens her arms and enfolds me in them.

"I know this must be a shock," she says. "It was for Dante too, but look what he did with the experience. The Woman Upstairs, the one the earth has called God for centuries--and 'God' is appropriate still--just felt that the process needed an update, that new times called for new interventions. After all, a woman is now running for president of the United States!"

"Woman Upstairs," I repeat. "Woman Upstairs?"

"A rose is still a rose by any other name," says Virginia. "Woman Upstairs. God. Allah. The Big Cheese. It's all the same. I don't know why people make such a big deal about the nomenclature. It's one of the problems with the human race, I suppose, that thing you call 'Free Will.' First, one takes a bite of some forbidden fruit, then another one kills his own brother, which angered his mother to no end, mind you. Boys will be boys. Whatever. It made his earthly mother mad but his divine one even angrier. She sentenced him to wander, with a mark upon him so that he would not be killed. I guess it was all part of her plan, something I still don't understand, but all that did was cause him to tell others about how dangerous women were, how they needed to be controlled."

"Does Hillary eventually win?" I ask. "Does she even win the primaries?"

"I can't tell you that. Well, actually, I could, but I won't," she says.

"Besides," says another voice, and I recognize the figure as none other than Kurt Vonnegut, "you have bigger fish to fry."

"Kurt--Sinead, Sinead--Kurt," says Virignia. [My narrator got christened Sinead because of my bald head, like 1980s pop-star Sinead O'Conner. I hope you like it.]

"Pleased to meet your acquaintance," says Kurt. He extends his hand like a banker about to close a big deal.

I am speechless.

"We are here in Bloomsbury," says Virginia, "because this is a place where we atheists thrived back in the 1920s. If we had time, you'd get to talk to the likes of artists Duncan Grant, Dora Carrington, Roger Frye, and my own sister, Vanessa Bell. Or you could hear John Maynard Keynes talk about current economic policies and why the world is in such a mess. Or, since you will be teaching his novel, A Passage to India, this year, you could engage in a discussion with my friend E. M. Forster."

"I wouldn't know where to begin," I say.

"Just ask questions. That is why you are here," she says.

"Is it painful," I ask.

"No, it is fitting," says Virginia. "Look about us. We are in a beautiful setting, in these elegant homes and we are surrounded by the best and the brightest of our generation and even other generations," she says, nodding at Kurt.

"What about God?" I ask.

"God is God," she says. "I know She's there and I know I'm supposed to be in despair because I can't be with Her, but I'm not. The experience is very much like what it was when I was on earth, except that now I no longer have to suffer those lengthy bouts of depression or mania."

"It's more like the Greek underworld, neither here nor there," says Vonnegut, which makes me remember that Vonnegut's master's degree was in anthropology. "It's like being a perpetual student, one that never graduates. And you have all these cool people all around you all the time, fighting and arguing and having a good old time. What could be better than that?"

"You have a point," I say, though I am tempted like Eve to go further. In deference, however, and because I have no wish to make them consider their own situation undesirable, I say nothing.

More Preparation for Canto II

Since I am going to start Canto II with the atheists, I am going to place in Bloomsbury, a part of London where Woolf lived and shared ideas with other brilliant minds of her generation. Besides, I thought Vonnegut might enjoy this area too.

I always picture the setting of the Virtuous Pagans as being like the Harvard University campus--not such a bad place to be. That is why I think Bloomsbury will be fitting. It will not be a sad place, but a place that Woolf and others enjoyed while they lived on this earth and a world that she can continue to enjoy in the afterlife. Creative pursuits are often done in private but they need to be nourished with public discourse. Ideas bounce off other ideas; surrounding yourself with bright people (especially if they are bright in areas that you are not) is a way of enhancing your own intelligence and creativity.

Since I want to describe what is around us, I have had to do some research--not only on Bloomsbury and its history but also on architectural terms so that I can adequately and simply describe it.

Creative writing goes way beyond pulling stuff out of your head. In order to bring it to life, you need an adequate vocabulary. The other benefit to this, is that you become more knowledgeable about the world at the same time.

Brainstorming for Canto II--and Some General Rules

Since this is now the second canto, I will probably use some of the transitional material I have already prepared in the original second canto--now the third, so forgive the repetition. This will also mean that I will have to change the beginning of the third canto, however, so you will have new material there.

By the way, notice how I do quotes. I rarely write like this:

Virginia said: "Let's go to the party."

Instead, I will usually write like this--when doing prose. If you are doing poetry, it's another story. You may take such liberties, especially if they contribute to the meter or rhyme scheme. You are also braver than I am. Poetry requires a great deal more editing, as you know. 

"Let's go to the party," Virginia said.

OR:

"Let's go to the party," Virginia said, "because it will be so much fun."

OR:

"Let's go to the party," Virginia said. "I know lots of people there."

Note that there is no period after "party." It's a comma. 

Style-wise, if I'm having a character ask a question I'll do it as follows. First, I'll never say "questioned." Remember George Orwell. Keep it simple. Just say "said" or "asked" as follows:

"Should we go to the party," she asked.

OR:

"Should we go to the party?" she asked.  

OR:

"Should we go to the party?" she said.

Do not say "queried," "requested," or anything else like that. Keep it simple. Simple is good. 

And please remember that different speakers have their own paragraphs. It's easier to keep track of which character is speaking that way.

And also remember that I want you to paint a picture for me. That is why research is important for all students. You need to know what things are called. 

Use my work as a model for yours if you are doing prose--at least in terms of its picturesque qualities, the way it follows the rubric, and the punctuation. I recommend that you read your own work aloud. As an experienced writer, I learn a lot about what isn't right with my own work, just by the way it sounds. 

General and important comments about outlines

I have been going over your outlines and have seen some common issues that need to be addressed.

1. Your narrator has to be a living human being--not a god and not a deceased person. The narrator may be mostly you or a composite of you and others that you know that have qualities that you like. The narrator may also be a well-known person, someone that you admire. It is important that your narrator is likable, though flawed in very human ways.

2. Even if the narrator is someone else, you must write in first-person voice.

3. Make the guide a real person that has died, preferably a famous person so that I will have a frame of reference. That way you will have to do research to get accurate information.

4. Research is part of the process part, which is part of a test grade. I want a bibliography, or pages you might have printed out. I use research also to learn what things are called. If I am trying to describe a particular building, for example, I might need a particular vocabulary in order to describe it.

5. Do not have you narrator wake up at the end. That is a cliche and I hate cliches.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Quotes

Since I plan on meeting Kurt, I thought I would include some of his quotes. Again, this is part of my process.

• Any person who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
  
• I want to stay as close to the edge without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see in the center.
  
• If you can do a half-a_ _ ed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
  
• Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer laugh, since there is less cleaning up afterward.
  
• Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
  
• Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
  
• Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before....He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. --Cat's Cradle
  
• Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. ''Cold Turkey," In These Times, May 10, 2004
  
• There is a tragic flaw in our Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. --"Cold Turkey," In These Times, May 10, 2004
  
• Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."--Man Without a Country
• Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. --Man Without a Country
  
• I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. --Man Without a Country
  
• 1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• I can have oodles of charm when I want to. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything. --Cat's Cradle
  
• Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. --Cold Turkey
  
• Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. --Hocus Pocus
  
• During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American soldiers. Not one of them, however, ever had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice. --Hocus Pocus
  
• Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful. --Interview, Mcsweeneys.net
  
• We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. --Mother Night  (He is speaking of the novel's tragic hero, Howard Campbell, an American playwright who moved to Germany, married a German, and eventually became a talk-radio guy who speaks hateful words about Jews while encrypting Nazi secrets to the Allies)
• Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. --Hocus Pocus
  
• A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. --The Sirens of Titan
  
• Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. --Slaughterhouse Five
  
• All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. --Slaughterhouse Five
  
• How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. --Slaughterhouse Five
  
• And so it goes. --Slaughterhouse Five
  

Revising my outline

I just realized that I did not have a place for a Virginia Woolf or Kurt Vonnegut--the brilliant writers who are atheists. Besides, I want to use Vonnegut's voice as well as Woolf's. I think they would have fun and that I will have fun with them.

I'll put the Atheists in the first canto because I do not want them to suffer. I want them to have a kind of life that they would have had on earth, to be surrounded by other brilliant minds. Even though Woolf committed suicide, I will not assign her to a lower realm because she had a biochemical disorder that could not be properly treated back then.

This will mean, of course, that I will have to eliminate another canto. I have not yet decided which one but I will keep you posted.

I really hope that by going through the process myself you get a better idea about what I expect from you. Writing can be fun and rewarding, but it's hard work and it's always a good idea, even when writing fiction, to start with research. Fiction, after all, has to tell the truth....

More Quotes from Parker and Others

So much of what I do before I write, is research. 

I'm beginning to think that famous writers' quotes will be a source for inspiration. I am planning to include Hemingway and Fitzgerald and maybe even Joyce so I looked up some of what they said.

I found many of the quotes funny, others inspiring to me as a writer. I hope that this works for you too!  As I was typing these in, I found myself thinking about how to incorporate them, how to develop characters. 

After I finish, I plan to go for a walk. That is one way that I can start to bring my ideas together. There is something about the fresh air--especially in weather like this, that helps me to think, to clarify ideas, and to put them in order. Perhaps this might work for you. 

By the way, some of the writers use mild profanity. In order for you to have access to this page, I am going to have to make substitutions. You will be able to tell, however, because I haven't changed the word--just filled in some blanks with the right number of letters. 

First, however, I'm going back to Parker:

Quotes from Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

I don't care what is written about me as long as it isn't true.

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations from minds profound--if I can remember any of the d_ _ _ things.

I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant--and let the air out of the tires.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lately. It should be thrown with great force.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, it was against her better judgment. 

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Quotes from James Joyce (1882-1941):

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and the portals of discovery.

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America. 

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

I want to work with the top people, because only they have the courage and confidence and the risk-seeking profile that you need.

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors bus for centuries arguing over what I mean, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Nations have their ego, just like individuals.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. 

Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. 

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.

There is no heresy or philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not. 

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart. 

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reasons why.

Your battles inspired me--not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940):

• A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.
  
• A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
  

Action is character.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I supposed for older people, the love of youth in others.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding our breath.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the net, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material. 

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Forgotten is forgiven.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.

I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope they won't. 

I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

It's not a slam at you when people are rude, it's a slam against the people they've met before.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. 

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest--that would be like a blind man willing to see.

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since childhood.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

The victor belongs to the spoils.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

There are no second acts in American lives.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it, three minutes; to collect the data in it, all my life.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

You can stroke people with words.

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Quotes from Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961):

You lose it if you talk about it.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. 

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

All things truly wicked start from an innocence.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

Courage is grace under pressure.

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Every man' s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bit_ _ed from the start and you especially have to be hurt like he_ _ before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it--don't cheat with it.

The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

You must always be prepared to work without applause.

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

Survival with honor, that outmoded all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer.

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

About F. Scott Fitzgerald: His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true--it is all true.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

I never choose a subject--my subject rather chose me.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

In modern war...you will die like a dog for no good reason.

It's none of their business that you have learned how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

Madam, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

Never mistake motion for action.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

Pound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best--make  it all up--but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

The terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. 

The first panacea for a misguided nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole da_ _ life and one is as good as the other.

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.

The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

The world  breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.

The world is a fine place and worth fight for and I hate very much to leave it.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.  

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than the man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

All are apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea. 

When writing a novel a writer should create living people--people, not characters. A character is a caricature.

You can wipe out out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.