SYRACUSE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

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1 SYRACUSE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT Grade 11 Unit 04 Assessment Level A 1170 / 890 L Literary and Informational Text Overcoming Adversity Reading Standards: RL.11.1, RL.11.2,RL.11.4, RL.11.5, RL.11.11, RI.11.1 RI.11.2, RI.11.4, RI.11.5, RI.11.8 Embedded Writing Standards:W.11.9, W Embedded Speaking and Listening Standards: SL.11.1, SL.11.2, SL.11.3, SL.11.4 Name Date Directions: Read the following article and poem about adversity. Feel free to annotate both texts. Once you have finished reading, answer the short response questions that follow. Victor Frankl: The power to choose our response to adversity Posted by stories August 31, 2008 Victor Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can t do much about it. Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even repeat them. His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be among the saved who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated. One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called the last of the human freedoms the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Victor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very own involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response. In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the classroom, in his mind s eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture. ELA-Grade11-unit04-AA-LevA Page 1

2 Through a series of such disciplines mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and imagination he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence. In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Simon & Schuster, 1989, p. 69 ELA-Grade11-unit04-AA-LevA Page 2

3 Still I Rise by Maya Angelou You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame Up from a past that's rooted in pain I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.. ELA-Grade11-unit04-AA-LevA Page 3

4 1) Develop a central theme about adversity as seen in Victor Frankl: The power to choose our response to adversity by Stephen Covey and Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Use textual evidence from both passages to support the central theme that has been identified. _ ELA-Grade11-unit04-AA-LevA Page 4

5 2) Identify and discuss the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone in ONE of the provided works. Be sure to identify a specific tone and analyze the development of this tone in the chosen passage by providing textual evidence. _ ELA-Grade11-unit04-AA-LevA Page 5

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