But it may ours.

We’ll be reading/journaling through chapter six for Monday. Find a quiet corner of the house (not too far away from safety, though) and curl up. If you haven’t popped into the story yet, devote a little more time than usual to get into it. Once you’re there, it’ll be smooth sailing.

You’ll need your journals for the discussion on Monday, so make sure you have it then.

Welcome back! (So it’s only been three days, but with the new semester and all…)

We began Frankenstein in a bit of a roundabout way today—with a discussion of what it means to be Gothic. While the first image that came to many of you was a pale kid in black with eyeliner¹, we eventually came up with this:

  Flying buttresses. It’s a good start.

Basically, things (be they art, architecture, literature, or music) that fall under the “Gothic” heading are eerie, ominous, looming, grotesque, and sometimes monstrous.² Coming out of the realism and social commentary that dominated the Age of Enlightenment (think Gulliver’s Travels and “A Modest Proposal”), authors writing Gothic literature in the 19th century turned away from such practical views of the world and focused on settings and the emotional experience of events.

This is exemplified perfectly by Schubert’s Erlkönig (1815)³, a piece based on Goethe’s poem (1782) of the same name, which in turn was based on a creature from Danish folktales.⁴ The Leid tells the story of a boy and his father traveling through deep dark woods, with the son becoming more and more frightened by a supernatural presence. Of course, the father doesn’t seem worried, and by the end of the journey, he finds he’s carrying a dead child. Emotional, terrifying, grotesque, sublime: Gothic.

Architecture, art, and music at the time emphasized these emotions and attempted to elicit feelings of awe and the sublime in their audiences. (Remember our awe discussions with the Existentialists and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead?)

As you read Frankenstein, keep this in mind. Shelley was certainly commenting on the effects of the Industrial Revolution (a solid insight by a few of you). But more than anything, she elicits a feeling of the sublime and grotesque in her audience.

Things to Journal:

• Scary, beautiful, sublime, etc. scenes
• Connections with the Prometheus myth
• Connections with Milton’s Paradise Lost (we’ll be looking at that in class tomorrow)
• Questions (and answers as you come up with them). Here’s a few to get you started:
  • How does the author view her work?
  • Why do you think she wrote it, after reading her foreword?
  • Why did she hide her authorship the first time around?

Before Class Tomorrow:

Read everything within and around the book (cover, title page, notes at the back, and foreword) that isn’t the story itself. Journal as you have with previous works. (See “Things to Journal” above if you need a kick-start.)

1. BTW, did you know there is a Goth Day at Disneyland? Something about all that black and the CA sunshine gives me images of streaking makeup… [↩]
2. There’s a great gallery of 19th century Gothic architecture at Boston College’s website. [↩]
3. You can thank your band teacher for this connection [↩]
4. I found this information, along with an English translation, on the wiki page. [↩]

We will begin discussing Lord of the Flies by Wm. Golding when we return from Fall Break. You may pick up a copy at Gardener’s on the cheap (though they may not have many copies in stock) or at any other fine bookseller in the area.

We will be journaling as we go, so start as soon as you open the book. We’ll be focusing on themes of power and democracy, as well as social interaction. Keep in mind our discussion of money in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead:

PLAYER: Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It’s the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn’t make any difference so long as it is honored. One acts on assumptions (51-52).

Here’s our schedule for the remainder of the semester. Of course, this is subject to change with advance warning:

All missing or reworked assignments must be turned in by Monday, the 26th of this month—there will be no exceptions.

We finished Hamlet today in fifth hour (we’ll finish tomorrow in third). Your completed journals are due the day after we finish (tomorrow for fifth hour, Wednesday for third). If you elected to write the essay, a draft is due before Thursday.

I’m very excited about how things are going. Journaling, like essay writing, is a skill that takes time and practice to master. For those of you with questions, I can offer practical advice: “Write your reactions to and questions about the work. Quote nearly as often as you react or question.” My longer answer can be found in the previous post.

I can also offer more experimental advice: “Play around with your journal. After all, it is yours. I’m only grading on coverage (did you write about the whole story), so the rest is up to you. Choose a cool notebook; use page tabs; use colors for different ideas, themes, characters, questions/responses, or vocab; draw pictures… I may look over it, but your only audience is you. Literature means nothing without a reader; it’s just words on a page, but a good journal can make a dusty work relevant and alive. Make yourself proud; it’s your education.”

I’ll follow this up tomorrow in class, before we begin our foray into existentialism.

On Monday I proposed a deal: If you keep a detailed (definition of “detailed” below) reading journal for our current work, one that includes as much or more information than an average essay, and turn it in at the end of the reading, you do not have to write a paper.

My hypothesis: A few of you would decide to just write the paper, as you are familiar with that routine and comfortable with your writing process; most of you would write down a few words you don’t know, perhaps a summary of the reading, a few questions, and be through with it; and a few would run with the idea, draw character maps, look up outside information, learn new words, come to class with questions about weird sentences and quote interesting passages.

The bell curve, right? Shame on me; I should have known better.

The past few days in class have blown me away. Nearly all of you have come to class with questions about the reading (or viewing, in Brit Lit), words you’re not sure about, connections you’ve made with outside works, points I’ve missed, and interpretations I hadn’t considered. You all seem to be enjoying the readings more (even though you have to write as you go), and understanding them in more depth. I’ve practically thrown out all my prepared questions for the past few days; yours are much better. I can’t wait to sit down with your journals at the end.

While I wrote this on the board, here is the list of things to look for or record in your journal:

• Questions about the work. We read so we can learn. If we don’t have questions, we need to read more difficult material.
• Figurative language: metaphors are always important, but so are all of the other words we reviewed at the beginning of the year. Check your handout.
• Words you don’t understand. If they might be vital for you to understand a passage, look them up immediately. Otherwise, look them up afterward.¹
• Interesting passages with citations—this does two things:
• Helps you keep track of the important parts of the story, so when someone asks “When did the character do this?” you can quickly save the day. Also helpful when writing papers…
• Helps you develop as a writer. Writing down cool sentences (not copy-and-pasting them) helps you get a feel for the language (and grammar, and punctuation) and helps you remember quotable lines.
• Connections with other works, ideas, philosophies, medical conditions, etc. The great thing about English classes is that we can write about anything. Do Hamlet’s actions match the symptoms of a medical condition mentioned in the ICD-9? What about Meursault’s? How closely does the plot of The Lion King sync with Hamlet? etc. Go nuts with this one; the crazier the comparison (if solid), the better the paper.
• Sketches, drawings, diagrams. I don’t draw much in my own journal, but if you are a visual person, go nuts! The only person who needs to be able to understand your journal is you.
• For all of the above: write down your reactions. I can’t emphasize this enough: write down your reactions. If a character does something hilarious, crazy, confusing, terrifying, completely out-of-character, make note of it. If it reminds you of something, write it down. Books are meant to be interacted with, not simply absorbed.

You will turn in your journals the day after we finish the work. I will read them over that night, and return them to you the next day. I will not write in them, but simply give you advice on organization, some things you should focus on, etc. (I might steal some ideas for my own journal, too. Hope you don’t mind.)

If your journal is detailed enough (covers the entire work, or Act III through the end of Hamlet), you will be excused from the final essay. If you chose not to create a journal, or it seems a bit sparse (or is simply a list of quotations without your reactions), I will ask you to write the paper.

We will be creating reading journals for every reading assignment from here on out. For our next unit, I’ll show you how to write most of your essay in your journal before we even finish the novel.

Send me an email if you have questions, or post them below.

This is going to be an amazing year.

1. Ninjawords.com is great for this. Simply put all of the words, separated by commas, into the search box, and you’ll have a list of definitions. For the truly adventurous, try this online etymology dictionary for where it came from and related words. [↩]