Holiday Homework for Seniors

You know that you're going to eat TOO much and sleep TOO much over this extended Thanksgiving break. And you know that you're going to pay for it, too, when your morning alarm rings on Tuesday, December 2.

However, in performing my role of teacher, I want to ensure that your MIND doesn't get too sluggish and thick during these six days and six nights. That's why I'm giving you this homework. Don't throw anything at the computer screen.

Read pp. 170-175 in the big white book (BWB). Make notes on terms and methods of characterization.

You should definitely read The Jilting of Granny Weatherall pp. 651-657. Since we're beginning our study of characterization, pay attention to the way Katherine Anne Porter "created" the character of Granny.

If you find yourself tired of turkey but craving more short stories, you may also read A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor, also in the "BWB" pp. 635-646. That will be the second story that we'll study during that first week back in school.

#2 Seniors--Life is Beautiful

One of the themes expressed in Life is Beautiful is the ability of man to find hope and beauty even in the midst of the most trying of times. Certainly that notion is personified in the character of Guido Orifice, and more directly, in the person who is Roberto Benigni, the actor who portrayed Guido and who wrote the screenplay for this award winning film. With a Schopenhauer will of steel and a heart of Italian gold, Benigni's Guido is able to find hope in the most unlikely setting of the Nazi concentration camp.

Here are your options for this journal assignment:

1. Describe a trying personal situation in which you were able to persevere. How did you keep thinking positively?
2. Relate a situation where you (or someone who know) was able to prevent a potentially troublesome situation from boiling over by using a good sense of humor.
3. Tell about a situation where someone (parent, sibling, friend, etc.) risked his own safety or reputation to protect you.
4. In your best imitation of a David Letterman Top Ten List, write a either a serious or mildly sarcastic (but NOT mean spirited) Top Ten Reasons Why Life is Beautiful at St. Mark's High School. .

Sophs #2--NATURE-teacher, soother, healer

The Romantic artists of the 19th century viewed nature differently from their neoclassic predecessors. To the Romantics, Nature wasn't just an orderly scientific force to be studied and predicted. The Romantics worshiped the beauty, the strangeness, the evolution, and the wildness of Nature. They looked to Nature as a teacher (To a Waterfowl), as a soother (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud), and as a healer (Thanatopsis).

What has been your experience with Mother Nature? Choose to write about one of these four topics.

1. I learned a lesson from this incident with or observing nature
2. This natural experienced solaced me
3. This natural experience exhilarated me
4. I have no such natural story. I prefer the indoors, and I'll tell you why

Need some brainstorming help? Think about your experience with animals, maybe your pets. The animals around your house. Your vacations at the beach, camping in the mountains, or just hiking through the woods. Nothing is too insignificant to write about. Remember, Wordsworth wrote about viewing a field a daffodils (see link) how can still dance with the daffodils.

#1 Seniors--In a Good Place

I'm not always up to date on the most novel vernacular, teen or otherwise. By the time I start using some "new" expression, it's bottomed out to the level of drab cliche. So if you get a "you go, girl" or an "atta boy" from me, try not to gawk in amazement at me like I'm some ancient mariner.

Within the last year, people my age and in my small circle of very cool friends have begun to use the phrase "in a good place," as in "his boss gave him a raise today, so he's in a good place," or "her Phillies won the World Series, so she's in a good place."

Where's your "good place?"

You can answer very literally and specifically, sparing no expense of travel. If so, then take me to some sunny exotic island in the Bahamas, send me schussing down the Rockies, or lead me to traverse your favorite hiking spot on the Appalachian Trail.

Maybe you're the more "stay at home" type, who like Henry David Thoreau, could make a full day out of bird watching, sitting in his cabin doorway. Then stay at home. Describe what it's like to be playing the guitar or "chewing the fat" with your friends. Take me on an easy five mile jog with your Ipod at full blast and with your eyes (and other senses) wide open.

OK, so I know that this is somewhat similar to your creative writing assignment. For one thing, though, it's shorter, so you can use this assignment to stretch your writing muscles before running the real race. Here at Schoolsville, I don't think you'll need to be as contrived in your description as much, either.

However, one requirement of your post at Schoolsville is that your "good place" MUST be a "good place." Please, I want no glimpses into any personal mansions of doom and gloom. As I might have said once or twice in the 70s, "Don't be such a downer, man."

For Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, listening to the music of the "two Italian ladies" took his soul to heights that not even two weeks of prison lockup could destroy. Can our "good places" do the same?

#1- Sophs-Your Favorite Stock Character

Who is your favorite "stock" character? Tell me the character type and then tell me something about the character. Choose a character from books, movies, short stories, and television shows.

I've provided an example for you, namely Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly misanthrope in the Charles Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol. His love of money and disdain for Christmas characterizes the original Scrooge. Scrooge overworks and underpays his loyal employee, Mr. Bob Cratchit. Cratchit, a good and holy family man, has bills to pay and a crippled son (Tiny Tim) to take care of, but he faces his responsibilities with Christian fortitude, and he refuses to admit to his poor family that Mr. Scrooge is a bad man. You might say that Cratchit is a stock character himself, the "poor but happy" fatherly figure whose religion and stoicism keeps his family in food and clothes.

Back to Mr. Scrooge, who grudgingly allows poor Bob to take the day off on Christmas Day, but orders him to arrive earlier the next. He greets holiday well wishers, like his kind nephew, with a "Bah, humbug" that of course, is now universally recognized as the reply of the Christmas Scrooge. Suddenly his world is turned inside-out when he is visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley, his former business partner and a scrooge like himself. The forlorn ghost, who now does penance by walking the earth in heavy chains, money boxes, and keys, warns Scrooge to mend his ways, lest he suffer the same fate.

Scrooge is shaken, but falls asleep. During the rest of the well known story, he is visited by three Christmas ghosts. He then undergoes a miraculous change. The new Christmas loving Scrooge sends a huge turkey to the Cratchit home, raises Bob's salary, and becomes a surrogate grandfather to Tiny Tim.

This Christmas tale is a story of faith, faith in humanity and the goodness that lies within us all. It was buried in Ebenezer Scrooge, and then unearthed in the joyful end of the novel.