1. Allegory Part II

2. Bellwork
Describe one motif that you found from the text A Worn Path.
How did you find it?
How does it help to build the theme?
Finally, what do you think is the theme?

3. Half a Day by Naguib Mahfouz (GB)
Learning Targets
Read an allegory by Naguib Mahfouz that teaches about life as a journey. (9.RL.RRTC.10)
Complete a timeline that both traces a character’s conflicts and records motifs used by the author. ( RL.KID.3)
Explain how a character’s point of view affects both the conflict and the resolution. (9-10.RL.CS.6)

4. Audio Recording of Half a Day

5. Questions to consider when re-reading.
What words stick out to you?

6. Relevance
What words and phrases have a lot of or strong meaning to you?

7. What is the author trying to say?
What similarities do you notice about all the words you selected?
What do those words have in common?

8. Theme
Why might the author have selected those words? What message is the author trying to send?

9. Word Choice creates meaning.
How does the author’s choice of words impact your understanding of the text?

10. Connotation Word Groups
You can write your connotation word pairs like this.
The words ___ and ____ remind me of ___.
The words ___ and ____ create a ___ mood.
The words ___ and ___ don’t seem to go together.
The words ___ and ___ make me think ___.

11. Location+Time=Setting
How much time passed during the course of the story?”
“What effect does the author’s manipulation of time have on the story?”

12. Directions: Only complete the first two rows of the handout at this point,
It is up to you and your partner to decide which four events are most important to the story. Make sure to move chronologically through the text.
Chronologically- (of a record of events) starting with the earliest and following the order in which they occurred.

13. Ways to find the main conflicts faster:
[1] Answer these questions of the story: Who, what, when, where, why, how.
[2] Summarize the story with your partner. You will most likely say the important part out loud.

14. Motifs vs Symbols
Sometimes, examples of motif are mistakenly identified as examples of symbols..

15. Symbols are images, ideas, sounds, or words that represent something else, and help to understand an idea or a thing.

16. Dead Trees Dead Leaves Dead Fields of Corn
Motifs, on the other hand, are images, ideas, sounds, or words that help to explain the central idea of a literary work – the theme.
Dead Trees
Dead Leaves
The author could be painting a gloomy picture to show danger and make her more of a hero.
Dead Fields of Corn

17. Motifs vs Symbolism
Also, a symbol may appear once or twice in a literary work, whereas a motif is a recurring element

18. Questions to Consider in Choosing Motifs●
What words, phrases, images, ideas, objects, events repeat or are emphasized throughout the story?●
What could these symbolize?●
Can you categorize any of the symbols into recurring motifs?

19. Questions to Consider in Writing Commentary
What is this story about on a literal level?
How is the narrator’s experience representative of the wider human experience?
How do the language and structure of the story create surprise for the reader?
Upon rereading the story, how do these elements provide clues to the surprising ending?
What does the story suggest about human experience?
Consider the title of the story.
Why does the author suggest that the events of the story occur in “half a day” despite the final quotation of the story?

20. Lesson Complete!