2. 1.29/1.30 Mon/Tue warm-up: poetry activity 1: understanding Modernism
activity 2: Analyzing Gatsby
activity 3: Gatsby ch. 1 debrief
close: FRQ practice? If time permits.
HW DUE:
Vocab 6 (in folder)
“Defining Modernism.” In tracker as Modernism intro.
HW Tonight:
Reading Gatsby and working through your syntax study guide
UPCOMING:
1.29/1.30: vocab. 6 due
2.6/2.7: Gatsby 1-3 assessment (syntax worksheet due)
2.8/2.9: grammar 4 due
2.14/2.15: Gatsby 4-6 assessment
2.16/2.20: vocab. 7 due
2.23/2.26: Gatsby 7-9 assessment
2.27/3.2: Rhetorical analysis FRQ
2.28 (“B” day)/3.1 (“A” day): Diction, syntax, tone test
3.6: ACT day
5.16: AP Lang test

3. 1.29/1.30 warm-up: Poetry “The Valley of Ashes” by Francis Scott
The road shrinks away from a certain desolate area of land.
This is a valley of ashes—
a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat
into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens;
5 where ashes take the forms
of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men
who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track,
gives out a ghastly creak,
10 and comes to rest,
and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up
with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud,
which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
This valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river--
15 This is the valley of ashes.
Identify the sentences in the poem. How many sentences do you find?
In the first stanza, identify any and all modifiers (recall Grammar #3) you find. Explain the effects of those modifiers.
In the first stanza, identify any similes or metaphors you find. Explain the effects of those rhetorical devices.
Do you notice Scott’s love of the word “and,” how he stretches out descriptions using the conjunction? Why do you think he does this?
I am fascinated by the “your” in line Why should I be?
Have you read ch. 2 of The Great Gatsby yet? You should probably read the first paragraph of that chapter right now.

4. 1.29/1.30 activity: Gatsby ch. 1 debrief
What does it mean to be “unusually communicative in a reserved way” (1)? What does this tell you about Nick’s relationship with his father?
How does Nick characterize his relationships with his college peers?
Why are the young men characterized by feelings that “are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions” (2)?
What is “gorgeous” about Gatsby (2)? Why is that so?
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on trees, [ ] I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer” (4). Ahh. Nick. He’s sentimental, right? But I excerpted something, didn’t I?
Nick says “life is much more successfully looked at from a single window” (4). What does the metaphor tell us about him?
What can we tell about Tom based on his description at the top of p. 7?
What can we tell about Jordan Baker based on her description at the top of p. 11?
What book is Tom reading? And what great insights does he have to “ ‘civilization’ ” (13)?
What can we tell about Daisy based on her conversation with Nick on p ?
What can we tell about Gatsby based on the description of him on 20-21?

5. 1.29/1.30 notes: Dissecting Modernism
“A central preoccupation of Modernism is with the inner self and consciousness.”
Rahn makes the claim that this was in response to the horrors of WWI.
John Green agrees:
intro skip to 4:50. End at 7:40.

6. 1.29/1.30 notes: Dissecting Modernism
Rahn also notes how Modernism is also a reaction to Romanticism and Victorianism. (The two, in many ways, go hand in hand.)
Those of you in APUSH know a surprising great deal about Romanticism and its philosophical heart here in America, Transcendentalism.
For those of you who have not studied Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau, let me introduce you to the concept of . . .

7. 1.29/1.30 notes: Dissecting Modernism
In his essay “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said the following about his experiences in nature:
“I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part of God.”
In other words, he saw himself connected to everyone and everything, and that was a good thing.
I guess he didn’t know anything about machine guns, trench warfare, tanks or mustard gas . . .

8. 1.29/1.30 notes: Dissecting Modernism
The Victorian Era (in England, named after the monarch who ruled during the 1800s) was a period of stability, properness and military and economic expansion.
The surface belied a tension beneath the surface, and the tension erupted in WWI.
The generation of soldiers, civilians, artists and politicians emerging post-WWI felt, generally, lost.

9. 1.29/1.30 notes: The lost generation
Lost means not vanished but disoriented, wandering, directionless—a recognition that there was great confusion and aimlessness among the war's survivors in the early post-war years.
The literary figures of the Lost Generation tended to use common themes in their writing.
These themes mostly pertained to the writers' experiences in World War I and the years following it.
One of the themes that commonly appears in the authors' works is decadence and the frivolous lifestyle of the wealthy.
Another is the loss of the American dream.
The reaction to this feeling of lostedness was characterized by introspection.
If the world is bogus and pointless, then maybe you can find meaning by looking within.
The art of this time period reflected this looking-in-ed-ness.
So it became more personal but also weirder.

10. 1.29/1.30 : Modernism??? The Three Musicians (1921)
The Banjo Lesson (1893)

11. 1.29/1.30 notes: Walt Whitman (1860)
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
5 The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
10 The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

12. “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” by ee cummings (1923)

13. By the way . . .

14. 1.29/1.30 notes: The lost generation
A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!”
He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.
Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust.
That’s from a novel you don’t have to read (but your friends might have) called The Awakening. It was written in 1899.
You can tell it’s about a guy who is annoyed by parrots or something.
Let’s play the game again and fast-forward about 25 years.

15. 1.29/1.30 notes: The lost generation
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner- ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur — nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. 
This is from the beginning of a novel by James Joyce called Finnegan’s Wake, and I have no idea what’s going on. Other people, however, have tried . . .

16. 1.29/1.30 notes: The lost generation
I’ll make the case that Fitzgerald can be equally weird (well, not Finnegan’s Wake weird, but at least like Picasso weird).
Re-read the paragraph that begins on the bottom of p. 7 and continues to p. 8 (“We walked through wind does on the sea”)

17. We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
You have many tools, now, for dissecting this passage.
Modifiers.
“bright rosy-colored”; “fragilely bound”; “gleaming white.”

18. We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
Metaphorical language.
“like pale flags”; “frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling”; “making a shadow on the sea.”

19. We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
Basic syntax. Look, for example, at the third sentence (“A breeze blew on the sea”). What are some things you notice about this sentence?
Length? 49 words.
What is the subject?
“breeze.”
Predicate?
It has a compound predicate, with the first verb being “blew”; the second predicate is 29 words later with “rippled.” So the main action in this sentence is that a breeze blew and rippled. It is, in fact, dominated by the things the wind interacts with even though it seems to be about “we” (Tom and Nick) walking through the house.
Now that you’ve identified, how do you analyze? How do you make meaning from what Fitz has given us here? What is he trying to tell us?

20. We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The rich live in a literally different world from the poor. For Fitz, those differences need to be heightened figuratively. When Nick first enters the Buchanans’ house, it swallows him into its “rosy-colored space”: a different world. Metaphorically, this space is transformed into a wedding, a ship on the sea, a country unto itself complete with its own flags. The descriptions are gorgeous and the room moves with verve and life and energy. There is no sense of mockery from Fitz here; rather, it is a description of envy so much that even the grass “seemed to grow [ ] into the house”—everything wants into this world.

21. Let’s try this again by looking at the next few paragraphs.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor. [ ]
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."
Modifiers, metaphorical language, interesting syntax. As you’re identifying, consider the effect this has, the purpose it has in advancing Fitz’s meaning.

22. 1.29/1.30 activity: writing groups day #2
Each group will receive a prompt (“blogs and public opinion”) and an essay.
Read the prompt. Individually plan the essay you would write using the abstraction ladder outline.
Collaborate together to create a common outline. Your common ladder will have one thesis that each member of your group will agree to and will (ideally) have contributed to.
Individually, from this point, write the first BP that would follow from that thesis.
When you are done, staple together in this order:
New prompt/released essay/thesis worksheet thing
New BP
Wilde prompt and essay

23. CLOSE and HW 1.29/1.30 HW: Syntax notes and activity (Gatsby version)
2.6/2.7: Gatsby 1-3 assessment (syntax worksheet due)
2.8/2.9: grammar 4 due
2.14/2.15: Gatsby 4-6 assessment
2.16/2.20: vocab. 7 due
2.23/2.26: Gatsby 7-9 assessment
2.27/3.2: Rhetorical analysis FRQ
2.28 (“B” day)/3.1 (“A” day): Diction, syntax, tone test
3.6: ACT day
5.16: AP Lang test