“My Last Duchess” -- Margaret Atwood

Near the end of Margaret Atwood’s short story “My Last Duchess,” the narrator, frustrated with the female characters in the stories,  ponders the reason for studying literature with “hapless, annoying, dumb-bunny girls” (74). She even wonders if Bill may be right – maybe it all was a waste of time. 

However, she senses the importance of the literature even though she struggles with identifying the relevance.  Look carefully at the following lines where she imagines a group of teachers – Miss Bessie included — making decisions about the literature to be studied:

“They got together, they had secret meetings, they conferred, they cooked up our book list among them. They knew something we needed to know, but it was a complicated thing – not so much a thing as a pattern, like the clues in a detective story once you started connecting them together. These women – these teachers – had no direct method of conveying this thing to us, not in a way that would make us listen, because it was too tangled, it was too oblique. It was hidden within the stories” (75).

BLOG QUESTION:  Discuss what the something is that the teachers want them to know based on the story. Be sure to include specific references to the text (quotes!) in your response.

You will be writing an initial response and 2 comments responding to your peers' responses. Your initial response must be 8-10 sentences in length and thoughtful. Really explore the ideas here. There are 65 students in this class so there will be 65 initial posts. Of these 65, you must respond to or comment on a minimum of 2 of them. These must be thoughtful responses and/or comments, at least 2-3 sentences in length. Please identify the person you are responding to in your comment so that it becomes more of a connected conversation; for example, "I hadn't thought of the point Hermione Granger raised about the blah, blah, blah, etc."   Your initial response is due by Wednesday morning, March 23nd by 7:30 a.m.  Your responses will be due by Friday morning, March 25th by 7:30 a.m.

Reminder, be good citizens here -- no hurtful comments. You can respectfully disagree with others. And be good thinkers. I so enjoy reading your thoughts and discussion, truly!! 

Ms. Lucas

Beloved

BLOG QUESTION:

Ponder the quotations below (from Carolyn Denard, a literary critic, and Toni Morrison, herself) Choose one for your initial response: What are your thoughts about the quotation you have chosen? You can agree, disagree, or qualify your response. Provide textual evidence to support your point. (Remember to identify which one you are responding to at the beginning of your post).

1.  Interior History

“...history is not the sum total of the story Morrison tells in this novel.  She seeks to get at the interior of that history...”(Carolyn Denard).  “The novel is not about slavery. Slavery is predictable.  There it is and there’s  [information] about how it is, and then you get out of it or you don’t.  [The novel] can’t be driven by slavery.  It has to be the interior life of some people, and everything that they do is impacted on by the horror of slavery, but they are also people” (Toni Morrison).

2.  Love

“The largest portion of the self-defining humanity of the black characters in Beloved, surprisingly enough in a world filled with hatred, is their manifestation of love—thick love, tiny love, jealous love, thirty-mile love, self-love, family love, community love—the modification of it, the protection from it, the overindulgence in it, the guardedness of it, the insistence on it.  Loving the self, the family, the friend, the child, the natural world becomes a balm for the horror of slavery.  In the foreground of this text is a story of the varying ways in which a people tries to impart human love in inhuman times” (Denard).

3.  In Medias Res (Latin for "in the middle of the action)

“The in medias res opening that I am so committed to here is excessively demanding. It is abrupt, and should appear so.    No native informant here.  The reader is snatched, yanked, thrown into an environment completely foreign, and I want it to be the first stroke of the shared experience that might be possible between the reader and the novel’s population” (Morrison).

4.  Fact vs. Truth

“...and the crucial distinction for me is not the difference between fact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth.  Because facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot” (Morrison).

5. Art - Beautiful and Political 

“I am not interested in indulging myself in some private, closed exercise of my imagination that fulfills only my personal dreams...The best art is not just beautiful language and technique.   The best art is that which is irrevocably beautiful and unquestionably politcal at the same time” (Morrison).

Directions: You will be writing an initial response and 2 comments responding to your peers' responses. Your initial response must be 8-10 sentences in length and thoughtful. There are 65 students (both periods combined)  so there will be 65 initial posts. Of these 65, you must respond to or comment on a minimum of 2 of them. These must be thoughtful responses and/or comments, at least 2-3 sentences in length. Please identify the person you are responding to in your comment so that it becomes more of a connected conversation; for example, "I hadn't thought of the point Hermione Granger raised about the blah, blah, blah, etc. Initial response is due by Wednesday night, January 13th by 11.59 p.m.  Your responses will be due by Friday night, January 15th by 11:59 p.m.

Remember to be good citizens here -- no hurtful comments. Remember you can respectfully disagree with others. Show some thought here! I look forward to reading another great conversation!

Mrs. L