Honors American Literature: Harrison High School Required Reading * 2011/12
For more information, contact English department chair Nora Moulton at [email protected].
Required Reading Philosophy: The Harrison High School English Department believes that the required reading assignment is an opportunity for students to establish a broad
literary foundation and exercise independent reading and thinking skills. Each student entering Advanced Placement Literature must follow the directions below and on the
attached assignment sheets. Students will read a total of two books.
Assessment: Bring your completed sticky note annotations to class by the fifth day of the semester. You will write an in-class literary analysis assessment based on the
notes you take for each book. (Accommodations will be made for students who enroll late or who have special circumstances.) Each curriculum team will determine the weight
and assessment date of the project and will inform the students prior to the assessment date (see the rubric attached to this document). You may find all books in the library or
may purchase them from a bookstore. We suggest the latter since it allows you the opportunity to annotate as you read (making notes in the margins, highlighting passages, etc.).
This annotation will help you remember the text whether your reading is completed for a fall or spring course.
Mandatory Reading:
The Crucible by Arthur Miller (read and prepare to analyze in class during the first week—annotation suggested)
Choice: (Complete the sticky note entries using one of the selections listed below.)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway 730L
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver 900L
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 1080L
Sticky Note Choice Novel Assignment
1. Read your choice novel.
2. As you read your choice novel, identify quotes and write comments on your sticky notes that identify and explain the major literary devices. (See “Suggestions for
Sticky Notes” attached to this document—20 total notes are required and all categories on the suggestions page must be represented.) Place the notes on the
appropriate page in your choice novel.
3. Each comment should be hand-written, at least 2-3 sentences/bullets long, and detailed. On the bottom of the note, cite the author and page number in parentheses.
Notice—there is no punctuation between the name and number.
4. To help you organize and prepare for the in-class, written assessment, you may wish designate a particular color of sticky notes for each topic listed on the
“Suggestions for Sticky Notes” page. For example, Characterization—pink sticky notes; Setting—blue sticky notes, etc. Make thoughtful responses that will contribute
to class discussion and ensure your success on the in-class written assessment.
From Novel of Choice: Total Notes 20
A connection to the Georgia Performance Standards: The student reads a minimum of 25 grade-level books or book equivalents (approximately 1,000,000 words) per year from a variety
of subject disciplines. The student reads both informational and fictional texts in a variety of genres and modes of discourse, including technical texts related to various subject areas.
Sticky Note—Characterization: How does the author introduce and develop the major and minor characters?
Consider the following:
-physical descriptions
-thoughts and actions
-the character’s place in society (social rank/class)
-other characters’ reactions to the character
-relationships between/among characters
-how characters change from the beginning to the end
-character foils (a character who by his or her contrast serves to accentuate another character’s distinctive qualities or characteristics)
-conflicts (internal and/or external)
Sticky Note—Setting (Time and Place): How does the setting contribute to the character development, conflicts, theme, etc.?
Time—refers to the when of a story. There are four different kinds of time to consider:
Clock time: can be used to provide suspense or create certain moods or feelings
Calendar time: the day, month, year, or more generally a day of the week or time of the month that provides an understanding of what takes place in the literature
Seasonal time: the seasons or a span of time associated with a particular activity that is important
Historical time: the historical context that establishes a psychological or sociological understanding of behaviors and attitudes
Place—the physical and nonphysical part of the story where the action takes place
The physical environment, including weather conditions, may be specifically described.
The nonphysical environment includes cultural influences such as education, social standing, economic class, and religious belief. These may be revealed by physical properties in
the scene or through the characters' dialogue, thoughts, statements, and behaviors.
Sticky Note—Literary Elements: What is the impact of the technique on the overall work?
-Irony: a contradiction or incongruity between appearance or expectation and reality
-Satire: uses irony, wit, and sarcasm to expose humanity’s vices and foibles, giving the push for change or reform through ridicule
-Symbolism: something that, although it is of interest in its own right, stands for or suggests something larger and more complex—often an idea or a range of interrelated ideas,
attitudes, and practices
-Allusions: an indirect reference to a person, event, statement, or theme found in literature, the other arts, history, mythology, religion, or popular culture
-Imagery: the actual language that a writer uses to convey a visual picture or to create or represent a sensory experience through any of the five senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell,
and taste
-Diction: the author’s word choice—consider the denotations and connotations of particular words and explain their effectiveness.
-Simile: a comparison of two unlike things, using the words like or as
-Metaphor: associates two unlike things without the use of like or as in which one thing is made equal to another
-Personification: human characteristics applied to anything non-human such as an abstract idea, a physical force, an inanimate object, or a living organism
Sticky Note—Connections
-Evaluate the characters, conflicts, style of writing in the story and make a connection to any of the following that applies: 1.) another writer/poet 2.) movie 3.) tv show 4.)
famous/infamous person 5.) another culture 6.) another novel.
Sticky Note—Questions
-Ask a specific question about the story or about why an author wrote the way he/she did.
Sticky Note—Summary
-Divide the novel into four sections and provide a summary of each one.
Honors American Literature
Honors American Lit Sample Post It Assignment
"The Story of An Hour" Kate Chopin (1894)
Characterization:
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to
Heart trouble may mean
her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that
emotional problems.
revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he
(Chopin 1)
who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received,
with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure
himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less
tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its
significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent
itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a
physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all
Setting:
aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street
Spring images—new life;
below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was
rain—cleansing . She is
singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
enthusiastic about
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that
having her own life now
had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
that her husband is dead.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless,
(Chopin 1)
except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to
sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now
there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not
a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was
too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the
scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to
possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have
been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over
under the breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They
stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed
every inch of her body.
Characterization:
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear
Louise is changing here.
and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she
She is just realizing that
would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had
her husband’s death will
never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that
mean freedom for her.
bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And
(Chopin 1)
she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for
herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they
have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less
a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What
Questions:
could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which
Why didn’t she love him
she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
sometimes? Was he a
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
bad husband?
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring
(Chopin 1)
for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are
you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life
through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days
that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a
shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes,
and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended
the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained,
composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know
there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view
of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.
Connections:
This reminds me of the
movie Bridges of Madison
County because the main
character feels stifled in her
marriage.
(Chopin 1)
Literary Elements/Irony:
They think she dies from
the joy of realizing he is
alive, but she dies from the
devastation that she won’t
have the new life she
dreamed about.
(Chopin 1)