Today you need a collection of art.  Here’s the link.

The beauty of literature is that it allows a writer to explore the truth of a struggle, without being caged by the truth.  Come, choose a novel, explore the question:  “What is the truth about war?”

 

In this box, I’ll put all the important stuff for this unit:

The official calendar of events

Your Book List

Your Lit Circle homepage

The assignment

A blank copy of the essay outline  with some commentary

Ms. Bradley’s sample essay outline on Snow Falling on Cedars

Essay outline rubric

The lit circle rubrics 

Research / Works Cited Resources

“Thou Shalts” of Works Cited

My sample Works Cited (I’ll also give you a paper copy.)

Sample of Annotations in a Works Cited

 

Recommended resources

Purdue OWL (bookmark this site forever!!!)

Mr. Gundy’s slideshow

Here are a pair of poems well worth considering as we dive into our study of war literature.

If We Must Die

BY CLAUDE MCKAY

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

 Source:  Poetry Foundation

Dulce et Decorum Est

BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Notes:
Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
Source: Poetry Foundation

The novels we could be studying

(no, not all of them, just one.  You’ll be asked to make a choice.)

A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khalid Hoseini)

All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)

Deafening (Frances Itani)

Eye of the Needle (Ken Follett)

In the Shadow of the Banyan (Vaddey Ratner)

People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks)

Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson)

The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Annie Barrows & Mary Ann Shaffer)

The Things They Carried (Tom O’Brien)

Three Day Road (Joseph Boyden)

 

Which one would you like to read?  I’m going to ask you to choose your top 3 and I’ll try to give you one of these choices.  Check out Goodreads.com to see what others have said about these books.