Woden s Day, May 13: Writing To Be a Self EQ: What does it mean to be?

Transcription

1 Woden s Day, May 13: Writing To Be a Self EQ: What does it mean to be? Welcome! Gather Wits! pen/cil, paper, wits! Writing To Be a Self: Descartes, Hamlet, You o Compose a Synthesis Piece, typed or handwritten, using Descartes and Hamlet to help explain what it means to be ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop ELACC12RL4-RI4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text ELACC12RI5: Analyze and evaluate effectiveness of the structure an author uses ELACC12RI6: Determine an author s point of view or purpose in a text ELACC12RI7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources to address a question or solve a problem ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal British texts ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames ELACC12L1: Demonstrate standard English grammar and usage in speaking and writing. ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases

2 English 1102 Synthesis: Writing To Be a Self 40 point Major Assessment due at the end of class Thor s Day, May 14 We began the year considering this from the Danish Christian Existentialist Søren Kierkegaard: The self is the conscious unity of the infinite and the finite, the temporal and eternal, freedom and necessity. Not to be oneself is despair. Since then you have read, written, and lived a lot. So what are you? In a lengthy freewrite, to be graded only for engagement with topic and material and for formatting of assigned quoted material, you must do two things: o Answer the question: What does it mean to Be? How you answer that what the question, and its terms and implications, mean to you is up to you. But do it. o Engage the texts quote at least four times, as directed: René Descartes, Discourse on the Method (the cogito, ergo sum piece). Quote at least once from the brief selection I gave you (reproduced below). William Shakespeare, Hamlet at least once each from the scenes discussed yesterday and reproduced below: I, ii, ( Seems, Madam? Nay, it is; I know not seems ) II, ii, ( Oh, I could be bounded in a nutshell ) III, i, ( To be or yadda yadda yadda) This need not be structured as an essay (though of course it can be); I simply want you to engage Shakespeare, Descartes, and the idea as directed, and to quote properly. Rubric below. Standard or Component score NO EVIDENCE Rewrite Required No Credit NOT YET MET Rewrite Urged 20-60% credit BARELY MET Rewrite Suggested 70-79% credit STANDARD MET Rewrite Welcomed 80-89% credit CRUSHED IT! You may gloat! % credit MLA Format: Quotations /50 pts Cogency & Content: quality of argument and text support /50 pts Lacks discussion of one or more required quotations; WORK RECEIVES NO CREDIT MAY BE RESUBMITTED FOR LATE GRADE Lacks discussion of one or more required quotations; WORK RECEIVES NO CREDIT MAY BE RESUBMITTED FOR LATE GRADE 4+ errors exist: - Q format - Q citation - Q integration LOOK AT THE BLOODY EXAMPLE, DRAT YOU!! Does not engage idea Errors of fact in evidence / examples Quotations relevance not explained 2-3 errors exist: - Q format - Q citation - Q integration LOOK AT THE BLOODY EXAMPLE, DRAT YOU!! Vague, timid, disengaged on idea Errors of logic in evidence / examples Examples/evidence vague in ref to question Quotations relevance somewhat explained 1-2 error exists: - Q format - Q citation - Q integration LOOK AT THE BLOODY EXAMPLE, DRAT YOU!! Specific and fully engaged evaluation idea Sound discussion of evidence / examples Quotations relevance clear All quotations cited, formatted and integrated perfectly (+5 pts) THANK YOU!! Exceptional work: Evaluation of idea original, surprising Philosophical discussion rich Strong discussion of point in text & life Quotes plentiful Comments: Essay Grade

3 Format, Integration, Citation: Prose Write a short essay formatting, integrating and citing ONE LONG and ONE SHORT passage of prose from your book or show this properly done in an essay. Remember what you must do: FORMAT o short quotations (1-3 lines) use quotation marks. o long quotations (3+ lines) are indented; use NO quotation marks. INTEGRATE your quotation smoothly into your own prose. CITE author/title in text, page number (usually) in parentheses after quotation. SAMPLE There are many different beliefs about prayer, and one of the most controversial topics is whether prayer ought to be part of the public school day. Jerry Falwell, for instance, has insisted that school without prayer is dangerous (Falwell 28). But oddly enough, almost nobody looks to Jesus' words on the subject. In a speech to his disciples, Jesus said: When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly (Matthew 6: 5-6). Debate must confront this passage if those arguing are to begin on common ground; otherwise, both sides are ignoring a crucial piece of evidence.

4 Format, Integration, Citation: Shakespeare FORMAT short quotes (1-3 ll.) with quotation marks ; if verse, slash ( / ) at line breaks. FORMAT long quotations (3+ ll.) with NO quotation marks; NO slashes. If verse, show line breaks by indenting so lines look EXACTLY as they do on source page. INTEGRATE your quotation smoothly into your own prose. CITE author/title in text, act, scene, line in parentheses after quotation. SAMPLE William Shakespeare s Macbeth features witches, ghosts, devils, and blood and, scariest of all, a man who believes in nothing. Soldiers think he is a fearsome warrior, his wife thinks he is a sweet teddy bear; but Macbeth speaks of himself as a nihilist who believes that nothing is / But what is not (I iii 126-8) [SHORT PASSAGE OF VERSE]. Never happy with what he has, even things he wants, Macbeth is always working for, killing for, believing in, and even seeing and hearing things that do not actually exist. Nihilism literally, belief in nothing is central to the imagery and meaning of the play. Early on, a Porter drunkenly pretends to be a devil (which he is not) at Hell s Gate (where he is not), welcoming into Hell a farmer who gambled his future on riches he did not yet actually have: Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you'll sweat for't (II iii 1-3) ) [LONG PASSAGE OF PROSE]. The Porter finally snaps back to reality by realizing that, whereas Hell is famously hot, this place is too cold for Hell (II iii 12) ) [SHORT PASSAGE OF PROSE]. Like most of the play s characters, this Porter, drunk and stupid though he is, spends most of his life in sober confrontation with life as it really is. But Macbeth s focus on what does not exist things he wants, things he fears increases until he comes to believe that life itself is Nothing. In his most famous soliloquy, Macbeth contemplates his long life, which has been full of honor and bravery as well as horror and treachery, and decides that Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing (V v 24-28) [LONG PASSAGE OF VERSE]. Macbeth begins the play having everything admiring friends, great wealth and power, and the most perfect marriage in all of Shakespeare but proceeds to risk and lose it all for things he does not have and, in many cases, does not even want to have. He is perhaps Shakespeare s most profound treatment of nihilism, and of the terrible consequences of believing in nothing.

5 William Shakespeare, Hamlet: What It Means To Be QUEEN GERTRUDE Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. HAMLET Ay, madam, it is common. QUEEN GERTRUDE If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee? HAMLET Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe. I, ii, HAMLET To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. III, i, HAMLET What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord! HAMLET Denmark's a prison. ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one. HAMLET A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst. ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my lord. HAMLET Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison. ROSENCRANTZ Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind. HAMLET O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. II, ii,

6 From René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, 1637: When I decided to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions which I could doubt at all, in order to determine whether after that there remained anything in my belief that could never be doubted. Accordingly, realizing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that nothing they showed us really exists. And perceptions which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, and not at that time be true; so I supposed that all the objects that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who was thinking that thought, should exist somehow. I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the skeptics capable of shaking it. I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking.