To wrap up the unit on identity, we will be reading The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. Published in 1951, this story features typical, poignant, and sometimes crude episodes from protagonist Holden Caufield’s searching journey to New York City. The story begins:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.”

We will be reading the novel together in class, though silent reading will occasionally be assigned. Students will be responsible for tracking themes and symbols throughout the book (by using a tracking sheet) and for completing study questions as we read.

Complete the following poll. You may select multiple answers.

Catcher resources:

Character Map

Click for an interactive map of Manhattan

Reading guide Ch 1-4

[goog doc="dc4kzt6f_55fzfc5hd6"]Catcher notes[/goog]

Catcher Pics

[Show as slideshow]

Allie's baseball mitt

American Museum of Natural History

Field of Rye

Carousel in Central Park

Central Park, N.Y.

Duck on a frozen pond

Red hunting cap

Old-time skates

Pencey Prep

Radio City Music Hall

Museum of Art

J.D. Salinger

Custom Cover

Catcher Videos

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Here are the notes on literary terms, or elements, that we went over in class.  For quick reference, here they are:

Literary elements

• Plot
• Character
• Point of View
• Setting
• Theme

Literary Devices

• Tone
• Simile
• Metaphor
• Imagery
• Allusion
• Irony
• Symbolism

[goog doc="dc4kzt6f_227g5qfxwgw"]Literary Terms Notes[/goog]

For practice, download and read the following story and answer the questions (if you didn’t in class).
Three Little Pigs Wolf Version

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[goog doc="dc4kzt6f_22gvbsdq64"]Class Notes[/goog]

Raisin Study Questions

Raisin Study Questions

19.31 KB, pdf, 2 hits, 2010-03-11

US Literature II, Handouts

A Raisin in the Sun was first produced in 1959 and anticipates many of the issues which were to divide American culture during the decade of the 1960s. Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright, was an unknown dramatist who achieved unprecedented success when her play became a Broadway sensation. Not only were successful women playwrights rare at the time, but successful young black women playwrights were virtually unheard of. Within its context, the success of A Raisin in the Sun is particularly stunning.

In part because there were few black playwrights—as well as few black men and women who could attend Broadway productions—the play was hindered by a lack of financial support during its initial production. Producers hesitated to risk financial involvement in such an unprecedented event, for had the play been less well-written or well-acted, it could have suffered an incredible failure. Eventually, however, the play did find financial backing, and after staging initial performances in New Haven, Connecticut, it reached Broadway.

Compounding the racial challenges the play posed was its length of nearly three hours as it was originally written. Because audiences are not accustomed to plays of such length, especially by a newcomer, a couple of significant scenes were cut from the original production. (These scenes are sometimes included in later renditions.) These scenes include Walter’s bedtime conversation with Travis and the family’s interaction with Mrs. Johnson. In addition, the scene in which Beneatha appears with a “natural” haircut was eliminated in the original version primarily because Diana Sands, the actress, was not attractive enough with this haircut to reinforce the point of the scene. This scene would become more crucial as cultural ideas shifted.

Lorraine Hansberry–>

Lorraine Hansberry was born in 1930, and was the first African-American woman to win the Best American Play award from the New York Drama Critics Circle. She was the fifth woman and the youngest American to ever have done so. She was given this award for her play, A Raisin in the Sun, which was written when she was in her twenties, and was first performed on Broadway in 1959.

Lorraine Hansberry started writing when she was a young woman. When she was 22 years old, she declared to her later-to-be husband, Robert Nemiroff:

I am a writer. I am going to write!

Her husband then later became her literary executor (the person in charge of handling her writing) after her early death due to cancer, when she was 34 years old.

When she was a college student, she wrote a piece for her school magazine which foretold the driving concerns which would form the basis for A Raisin in the Sun:

What is it exactly that we Negroes want to see on the screen? The answer is simple reality. We want to see film about a people who live and work like everybody else, but who currently must battle fierce oppression to do so.

Even so, when she had completed writing A Raisin in the Sun, Ms. Hansberry could not quite believe what she had accomplished. As described in her autobiographical work To Be Young, Gifted and Black:

…I had turned the last page out of the typewriter and pressed all the sheets neatly together in a pile, and gone and stretched out face down on the living room floor. I had finished a play; a play I had no reason to think or not think would ever be done; a play that I was sure no one would quite understand…

Where did Lorraine Hansberry get the impetus to carry forward her vision through her writing? As Robert Nemiroff related it, she “had herself as a child been almost killed in such a real-life story”4 as the one depicted in her play.

In addition to these works, Ms. Hansberry also wrote another play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, a novel Les Blancs, and Lorraine Hansberry: The Collected Last Plays, in addition to numerous magazine and newspaper articles, and other work in progress, left unfinished when she died. No matter how famous Ms. Hansberry became, though, and no matter how much she achieved during her brief lifetime, she never forgot her commitment to carrying forward her ideals to the young people who would follow her.

When she died, her ex-husband inscribed these lines from her Brustein play on her tombstone:

I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care…the why of why we are here is an intrigue for adolescents; the how is what must command the living.

Historical Overview

Into what milieu was Lorraine Hansberry born? What was America like when she was growing up? What experiences would she have had as a student? What was this country like when she reached adulthood?

In order to understand the historical background of A Raisin in the Sun, it is necessary to understand the impact of the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision. That law changed the previous “separate but equal” status of education in the South.

“Separate but equal” meant that until the 1954 ruling, black children and White children were separated into different schools. There were no exceptions to this segregationist policy. Also, public facilities such as parks, theaters, etc., had sections and utilities segregated by race. This was because of what were known as “Jim Crow laws,” which were not real laws, but local statutes which everyone followed.

Until the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling and other civil rights activity in the 1950s, it was very dangerous for people of different races to be friends. Works of literature from that time, such as Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith, depict the outrageous injustice of that time.

In addition, any black person who challenged these Jim Crow statutes in any way was subject to abuse, arrest, or lynching (being hung by a lawless mob). Heroes such as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mrs. Rosa Parks, however, challenged these Jim Crow laws and “separate but equal” protocols through boycotts, marches, and other nonviolent means, which often originated in black churches.

At the time Ms. Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, then, the country was being forced for the first time to truly put into practice Abraham Lincoln’s words in reference to the Civil War freeing the slaves about a century before:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.”

Even after the school desegregation ruling, however, it took quite some time for the schools in the South to be integrated. Children who tried to go to schools previously off-limits to them were harassed, humiliated, had rocks thrown at them, were set upon by dogs, and otherwise threatened and persecuted. Churches with predominantly black congregations were bombed, and church members, including children, were killed. Families who moved into previously all-white neighborhoods had crosses burned on their front lawns by the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups, and were subject to being terrorized in many other ways.

This situation occurred mainly in the South, but the North was not that much better off when it came to these kinds of injustices; they were just more subtle. It has been said that one of Lorraine Hansberry’s purposes in writing A Raisin in the Sun was to show that things were not much better in the North in the 1950s than they were in the South.

Jewell Handy Gresham-Nemiroff said this of Hansberry’s vision:

…She had to possess a powerful cosmic sense of the magnitude of human struggle in the modern world waged by ordinary men and women. Such battles against themselves and others, against wretchedness, and against fate she believed to be of comparable worth as dramatic material to the woes of ancient kings and queens in whom grave flaws of character led to disaster.

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When you read a work of literature in an English class, however, you’re being asked to read in a special way: You’re being asked to perform literary analysis. To analyze something means to break it down into smaller parts and then examine how those parts work, both individually and together. Literary analysis involves examining all the parts of a novel, play, short story, or poem—elements such as character, setting, tone, and imagery—and thinking about how the author uses those elements to create certain effects.

A literary essay isn’t a book review: you’re not being asked whether you liked a book or whether you’d recommend it to another reader. A literary essay also isn’t like the kind of book report you wrote when you were younger, where your teacher wanted you to summarize the book’s action. A high school- or college-level literary essay asks, “How does this piece of literature actually work?” “How does it do what it does?” and, “Why might the author have made the choices he or she did?”

The following notes provide a definition and explanation for writing a literary analysis. Writing about literature is the only way to really learn how to do it, but this presentation provides the background.

[goog doc="dc4kzt6f_12ff395nfv"]Writing a literary analysis[/goog]

One skill necessary for writing a literary analysis is summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting.   Also, refresh yourself on quoting material (quote sandwich).

An example is presented below. We will go over it in class. Use the practice sheet to select the right quotes and create your quote sandwiches for each main idea.

Writing an Analysis

Goldilocks lit analysis practice

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[QUIZZIN 7]
The following presentations contains the notes for argument (logos, ethos, and pathos) and logical fallacies and the homework that goes with it. Remember, this is the foundation for most types of communication will help you to not only be a good student, but a good voter, citizen, consumer, employee, etc.
[goog doc="dc4kzt6f_109gtph32dm"]Logical Fallacies Notes[/goog]

These worksheets were completed in class and rely on the notes.

Name that Fallacy
How do they persuade

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[goog doc="dc4kzt6f_218hncsnrft"]Literary Movements (U.S.)[/goog]

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