Learning Targets...
When editing my own writing, I can apply strategies for writing clear prose.
I can reflect on historical connections/influences on literature.
Scarlet Letter Essay
When editing my own writing, I can apply strategies for writing clear prose.
I can reflect on historical connections/influences on literature.
Scarlet Letter Essay
Activity 1: Wordsmithing your own paper...
- Avoiding “This” openings
- Scholarly transitions
- Advice for Improving Sentence Clarity
- Avoiding the passive voice and other verb of being constructions
Example Essay #2
- Before printing, carefully edit your draft tonight using the strategies for writing clearer sentences as your guide.
- Make edits as necessary.
- Print two copies of a complete essay. Bring those tomorrow. No name, just your id#.
Journal
1.
Put your name, today’s date, and your
class period in the upper right-hand corner of your paper.
2.
Label your paper: October 2, 2014 The Crucible pre-reading journal
3.
Respond to the question below with at
least ¾ page writing.
4.
Focus on writing as much as possible in the
time given. Spelling, paragraph, and punctuation don’t count!
Summary of the Salem Witch Trials
The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.
TOPIC:
Why do you think the Salem
witch trials have not been forgotten?
What makes them interesting to people today? Do you think it would be possible for this to
happen in modern society? Explain your answers.
Beloved: Exploring Independence and Love
In the literary narration of American
history, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved
stands out. The book is an intimate look
at the emotional scars left behind by slavery, and Morrison evokes and closely examines
the myriad of emotions—strong, basic, and natural—that her characters
experience. In one poignant passage from
Beloved, Morrison explores the
definition of freedom and slavery in terms of independence and love.
Early in the passage, Sethe explains
to Paul D the wonder of independence that she found in her escape from
slavery. Before she speaks of the
“miracle” of her escape, Sethe “cover[s] the lower half of her face with her
palms” in a gesture of wonder and reverence.
That same reverential tone carries into her actual narrative. Speaking in short, cut-off sentences, Sethe
ponders the wonder of her escape and her own self-sufficiency in lines five
through ten. She marvels that the escape
“came off right, like it was supposed to,” all through “Me using my own
head.” The entire passage is in an
active voice, further highlighting Sethe’s newfound independence. Also, many of the sentences begin with “I,”
reinforcing the passage’s focus on independence and self-sufficiency. Morrison emphasizes Sethe’s realization of
self-sufficiency in order to underscore the most basic importance of that
aspect of humanity. Independence and
free will is the defining element of the individual. Without that independence to make decisions,
the individual loses his or her identity to whatever or whoever else is making
those decisions instead. Sethe’s wonder
at having achieved such a basic right draws the reader into an exploration of
self-reliance and humanity, which ultimately serves to support the theme of
dehumanization central to Beloved.
Another powerful theme of the passage
is the exploration of how independence relates to love. Both Sethe and Paul D agree that slavery
denied them the right to love others through the denial of independence. Freedom was “to get to a place where you
could love anything you chose—not to need permission for desire.” Sethe says that she could never “love [her
children] proper in Kentucky because they wasn’t mine to love.” As a slave, denied the right even to her own
body, Sethe would not be allowed even the slightest stake of ownership that
love implies. Morrison has Sethe
describe this freedom to love as “a kind of selfishness,” which would under
other circumstances have a negative connotation. “Selfishness” implies the exclusion of the
consideration of others from a person’s mind.
In Sethe’s case, selfishness takes on a new, positive meaning; it means
“ownership of oneself.” A second reason
that Sethe could not afford to love her children was the danger of becoming too
emotionally invested in them. She had no
control over their futures, and the horrors of having them sold, abused, or
killed, would be too great to bear. As
Paul D says: “So you protected yourself and loved small. [. . .] Grass blades,
salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn’t do. A woman, a child, a brother—a big love like
that would split you wide open.”
Morrison chooses grass blades and insects, the smallest, most
insignificant things, to demonstrate the level to which the slaves were
reduced. More interesting, however, is
to note Paul’s negative use of the word “wide.”
Earlier in the passage, Sethe rejoiced in the wideness of her love: “I
was big [. . .] and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my
children could get in between. I was that wide.” While Sethe rejoices in the new world opened
up to her in freedom, Paul is still trapped by fear of opening himself to such
deep emotions and the potential loss of that which he loves. Morrison’s use of “wide” is a subtle way to
highlight these conflicting views, which reinforce the novel’s main purpose by
demonstrating the emotional scars of slavery.
Morrison’s exploration of the
intertwining of love, independence, and freedom is central to the seminal work
that is Beloved. She takes on these complex, abstract concepts
and wrestles with them within the framework of the African American experience,
with dramatic and touching results.
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