English 2, Section 10036: College Composition
Fall 2010: 9:30-10:45 Tu&Th in Room 801
Office Hours & Place: 11:00-12:20 Tu&Th in Room 717
Instructor Dave Badtke
(707)334-4882
[email protected]
Online Reference: www.Badtke.com or www.QCounty.com (follow link to Solano College classes)
Assignments
Week 3, beginning 2/1/2010:
l
tic
An
Emotional Engagement
Tuesday:
• I’ll do an accounting of First-Visit emails. Have we arrived?
• In your first paper, which may be due as early as Thursday, 2/18, you’ll examine in three to four pages how a
story’s theme is expressed through character, plot, POV, voice and style. Details will follow.
• Last week we graphed the plot of “Samuel” as a checkmark story structure, a structure consisting of exposition,
conflict, complications, turning point, climax,
anti-climax and resolution. While not all
stories will have such a linear plot structure,
Checkmark Story
the need for some level of tension – conflict
Structure
– is paramount if a writer is to maintain reader
Climax
interest, so even less linear stories like Sherman
Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight
Turning Point
in Heaven,” which you’re assigned to read
ax
over the weekend, will depend critically on
ns
o
plot because, as E. M. Forster pointed out, “.
ati
Resolution
lic
p
. . plot not only answers what happened next,
m
Co
but it also suggests why. The psychologist
Exposition
James Hillman has explained in Healing
Conflict
Fiction that plot reveals ‘human intentions.
Plot shows how it all hangs together and
Time
makes sense. Only when a narrative receives
inner coherence in terms of the depths of human nature do we have fiction, and for this fiction we have to
have plot. . . . To plot is to move from asking the question and then what happened? to the question why did it
happen?’” (Charters 9).
• But as Charters states, “If you are like most people, plot is what keeps you going when you first read a story,
and character is what stays with you after you have finished reading it” (11). This is to be expected since the
plot happens because of the characters’ actions and intents. If the boys had not been reckless, if the women had
not scolded the boys, if Samuel had not been imprudent, if the
man had not pulled the emergency cord, there would have been
Character
no story, at least no interesting story that we would be studying.
Properties
Characters need to act and the characters’ actions need to be
coherent relative to the plot and consistent with their nature for
verisimilitude to be achieved. But clearly we don’t need to know
Static
Dynamic
very much about the characters for a story to be compelling.
While the “Samuel” characters are static and flat, the story
remains compelling because we know what the characters did and
have enough of an understanding of why they acted as they did to
understand them. What Louis Menand says of the unity of effect,
the frisson a story strives to achieve, is also true of its characters:
“Every word in a story, Poe said, is in the service of this effect . . .
at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician’s
puff of smoke, an outcome that is both starling and anticipated”
(Charters 6).
• Whether a character is flat and static like Samuel or round and dynamic like Connie in “Where Are You
Going, Where Have You Been?”, each character action must be consistent with both plot and must enhance
the unity of effect as the plot plays out and as the character moves inexorably toward an epiphany. As Menand
states, “The difficulty of putting into words the effect a story produces is part of the point. The story is words;
the effect is wordless. . . . James Joyce called the effect an ‘epiphany,’ a term whose theological connotations
im
Round
Flat
have led, over theyears, to a lot of critical misunderstanding. What Joyce meant by an epiphany was, he said, just ‘a
revelation of the what-ness of a thin’ – a sudden apprehension of the way the world unmediatedly is (Charters 6).
• Epiphanies can also be understood by looking at the needs and impediments of a character, which may lead to a
character’s turning point and synthesis into someone new. We started this analysis with “Samuel” and will apply it more
thoroughly to Connie and the first-person narrators in Alexie’s, Updike’s, Packer’s and Carver’s stories.
• Using these ideas and adding setting, POV, voice and style, we’ll look in detail at Oates’s story as well as Eudora Welty’s
“A Worn Path,” but before we do, I’ll give you a short quiz on both stories.
Homework due Thursday:
1. Reading Assignment: 1) Read Chapter 26 in Literature and its Writers, pages 1743 to 1761, focusing on the student
paper on pages 1754 to 1755.
2. Journal Assignment: Address the following questions regarding the student’s paper: 1) What is the thesis of the
paper? 2) Is the information presented in the first paragraph consistent with this thesis? 3) What is the topic of the
second paragraph? How does it relate to the thesis? 4) What is the topic of the third paragraph? How does it relate
to the thesis? 5) What is the topic of the fourth paragraph? How does it relate to the thesis? 6) How does the final
paragraph relate back to the thesis and title? 7) What works in this essay? 8) What needs more work in the essay?
3. Extra: Memorize A. E. Housman’s “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,” page 765, and drop by during office hours
to recite the poem and discuss with me its journey.
“Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson.
Thursday:
• We’ll continue discussion of Chapters 3, 26 and Eudora Welty.
• Look in particular at the questions on pages 22-23 and the story elements on pages 22 to 23.
Homework due next Tuesday & Thursday:
1. Reading Assignment for Tuesday: 1) Read Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,”
pages 31 to 36, and 2) Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” pages 89 to 101. Of course be prepared for a brief quiz on
both these stories.
2. Journal Assignment: For each story do the following: 1) Detail the plot’s journey. 2) What is the POV and how
does this affect the story? 3) With whom does the protagonist primarily interact? 4) What role does setting play?
5) How do voice and style help you understand the characters and their conflicts? 6) If you were to interview
the protagonist at the end of the story, what might he or she tell you about what she learned from his or her
experience? 7) Is what they tell you consistent with what you think they should have learned?
3. Reading Assignment for Thursday: 1) Read John Updike’s “A & P,” pages 547 to 552, and 2) ZZ Packer’s
“Brownies,” pages 472 to 488.
4. Journal Assignment: Address the same questions above for these two stories.