Thursday, September 8th, 2011

7th Graders 1st Draft of Speech Story Due Monday


8th graders - Keep working on Final Drafts of Speech



7th Grade Literature

Homework for Friday, September 9th

Read Alice Walker’s ‘The Flowers.”

Read it again. Think about what the author is trying to say by telling us this short narrative about Myop and her experience near the stream. Explore the deeper meaning, or theme, the author is exploring.

Remember: a theme is a unifying or dominant idea in a work of art; a message or abstract idea in a story; the deeper meaning of a given narrative

In this exercise, analyze “The Flowers” by writing a paragraph on what theme the author is exploring. Begin your essay with a statement of your idea and then provide several pieces of SPECIFIC evidence that prove your theory.

For example (from Mary Oliver’s FARM COUNTRY):

THEORY: Mary Oliver’s FARM COUNTRY explores the importance of empathy.

EXPLANATION: In the poem, the “I” voice speaks to another character about what he/she must do in order to provide food for the other. While one character sits with a bowl of chicken soup, the other describes walking—with knife and apron -- out of the safety of the house into the henhouse where a chicken will be killed. The speaker believes that the person eating the soup thinks that life is “chicken soup, served in blue willow-pattern bowls…”, or in other words, that life is easy. But the speaker knows what it takes to provide that soup and through the poem, asks the “you” character and the reader to have empathy and begin to understand what the experience of making the soup/killing the chicken is really like.

Make sure that your concept of the theme describes an abstract idea rather than a specific moment of the plot. Here, in “Farm Country,” the theme deals with empathy and understanding. The theme is not killing a chicken to make chicken soup (that’s the plot).

Please type and double space your response. Please avoid one or two sentence explanations.

Remember: There is no wrong or right in this literature class. I welcome all ideas BUT you must thoroughly explain your answers.