Friday, April 13, 2012

Over Vacation

Nothing will be due on the Monday we return but there are two assignments you could work on.

1. Work on the third set of AP Language multiple choice questions. (The one that begins "With Imagination in the popular sense...") This will be due on Tuesday, April 24.

2. Work on the assignment pasted below. It will be due on Monday, April 30.


Directions:
Over the next two weeks you will read a narrative (options are listed below*) in which depictions of Gloucester -- or parts of Gloucester -- play a significant role.

While you read you will maintain a double-entry journal, which will be collected on Monday, April 30.

Read the directions carefully.


On the left side of your journal you will record quotations from throughout the book -- at least ten.

Select quotations in which some aspect of Gloucester -- people in or from Gloucester, places in Gloucester, the history of Gloucester, etc. -- is depicted or in which a direct statement about Gloucester is offered. Choose passages that seem significant in presenting a particular perspective on Gloucester and set of perceptions about Gloucester. (Note: If your book has sections that do not deal with Gloucester you may select up to five quotations that are not directly related to Gloucester people, places, history, etc. These quotations should still be significant in some way to the book as a whole.) Also, make sure you choose passages from the beginning, middle, and end of the book. You will write down each quotation and the page on which you found it.

On the right side of your journal you will respond to the quotation.

Make inferences. What does the depiction of Gloucester suggest? How is it significant? What does it seem to mean?

Respond to how the way the book is written contributes to its meaning, especially its depiction of Gloucester. Think about narrative voice, characterization, imagery, selection of detail, conflict, theme, etc. Think about the connection between the quotation and the book as a whole.

Respond personally. Do you agree or disagree with the depiction? Are you skeptical? Are you surprised? Do you have a personal or family connection to the way Gloucester is depicted in the quotation? (Show me that you are reading with your head and your heart.)

Ask and suggest answers to questions of your own.

To help generate responses remember the essential questions:
How do writers depict Gloucester? How are the differing depictions significant? What's at stake in differing projections of the polis? (How is Gloucester used by the writer? What does the writer suggest about Gloucester? Does Gloucester seem to represent something -- an ideal, an alternative, a warning, a trap, a set of values -- in the book? Does Gloucester’s identity seem static (staying the same) or fluid (always changing)?




* Some Gloucester-Related Narratives
All of these works can be found at Sawyer Free Library. Many can be found in the GHS library.

FICTION
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
Out of Gloucester by James B. Connolly
The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant (three copies in the GHS library)
Broken Trip by Peter Anastas
Decline of Fishes by Peter Anastas (two copies in the library)
The Siege of Salt Cove by Anthony Weller (in library)

NONFICTION
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (four copies in the library)
The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky (seven copies in the library)
The Finest Kind: the Fishermen of Gloucester by Kim Bartlett (copies in the library)
Cape Ann, Cape America by Herbert Kenny (copies in the library)
Hammers on Stone (quarrying) and A Village at Lane's Cove by Barbara Erkkila
Voices  (an ethnographic study of Fiesta in the 1970s) by Richard M. Swiderski
When Gloucester Was Gloucester (a series of oral histories about Gloucester in the mid
and early twentieth century) edited by Peter Anastas and Peter Parsons
The Hungry Ocean by Linda Greenlaw (copies in the library)
Gone Boy by Gregory Gibson (one copy in the library)
At the Cut by Peter Anastas
The Lone Voyager (about Howard Blackburn) by Joseph Garland (twenty-four copies in
the library)
The Fish and the Falcon (about Gloucester's involvement in the War (formerly called
Guns Off Gloucester) by Joseph Garland (two copies in the library)
History of Gloucester by John Babson (copies in the library)
Pringle (copies in the library)

DRAMA
New England Blue: 6 Plays of Working-Class Life by Israel Horowitz (in GHS library)

There are other books in which depictions of Gloucester plays a significant role. If you’d like to read something not on this list ask me or send me an email. I’ll let you know if the book is appropriate for the assignment.

Postscript
Here a couple collections of poetry you could read to fulfill the assignment’s expectations.

POETRY
The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson (in GHS library)
Know Fish by Vincent Ferrini (in GHS library)

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