English 8 WRITING JOURNAL QUESTIONS Professor Semeiks In your journal you will explore (in approximately 500 words or 1-1/2 typed pages) each of the following topics. This is exploratory writing—writing to learn—and hence what I am looking for is evidence of engagement with the texts as well as thoughtfulness and seriousness in performing your task. I am not looking for the “right” answer or the “correct” interpretation. So ruminate and explore different possibilities. Take some risks. Because this is exploratory writing, you do not need to follow the usual rules of writing, such as an introductory paragraph that contains a thesis, body paragraphs that develop that thesis, and a paragraph that concludes your discussion. You do not need to have perfect grammar or punctuation. Remember, however, I must be able to understand what you are saying. Each entry should be completed by the date given and should be headed by four things: your name, the date the assignment is due, the writer’s name about whose work you are writing, and the question number. You do not need to retype the question; I will have a record—this document—of your topic. Bring your current entry to the classroom on the date it is due, in order to refresh your memory of what you have written. We will base our classroom discussion partly on your journal writing. Swift. 1/24 (Choose 1a or 1b) 1a. Who are the various targets (there is more than one) of Swift’s satirical essay “A Modest Proposal”? Why? How have his “targets” behaved very badly or foolishly? 1b. After Swift’s essay was published, a number of his contemporaries, taking him seriously, called for him to be hung. How did you come to realize his work was satirical? Voltaire. 1/26 2. In nearly every chapter of Candide, Voltaire is providing us with a picture of human nature. What is Voltaire’s assessment of human nature? What are we like, according to him? Do you agree with his opinion? Why or why not? Voltaire, 1/31 3. How is Eldorado different from the rest of the world we see in Candide? How are the people there different from those elsewhere in the novella, and what are their lives and values like? Why does Voltaire make Eldorado so hard to find and so impossible to get back to? Voltaire, 2/2 4. How does Voltaire view religion in Candide? What does Voltaire suggest is the relationship between God and human beings? You might look particularly at Martin’s speeches. EACH JOURNAL SHOULD BE 250 WORDS DOUBLE SPACE Brontë. 2/9 5. What is the Earnshaw family like in Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights? Explore the family dynamics. What is it like to be a child in this household? Brontë. 2/14 6. Think about the two houses and properties in the novel Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights itself and Thrushcross Grange. Look carefully at some descriptions of them, think about what goes on in each place, how the adults’ shape the children who live there, and explore both places as symbols. What does each of these habitations represent? How are they different? Brontë. 2/16 7. Wuthering Heights is regarded as one of the most Romantic novels in English literature (if it doesn’t take first place); much of the drama and emotional intensity of the book is centered on the Romantic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. What is love, in your opinion? Does Catherine love Heathcliff and he, her? Wordsworth, 2/28 8. Explore Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us.” What “world” does he mean when he says it’s “too much with us”? What is the speaker’s relationship with the natural world? What is yours? Shelley and Keats, 3/7. Choose either 9a or 9b.. 9a. Explore Shelley’s “To a Sky-Lark.” What does it mean (how do you interpret it)? How does the poem reflect Romantic-period values? (Look up in a dictionary any words you don’t know before you begin.) What special insight does Shelley attribute to the bird? 9b. Explore Keats’s “On Melancholy.” This is a more difficult poem than Shelley’s poem but try to interpret it. Look for a way “in” and go from there. (Look up in a dictionary any words you don’t know before you begin.) What is Keats’s attitude towards melancholy (look up the word)? Why shouldn’t we want to escape emotional pain and try to do so? Nobody likes it, after all. Ibsen. 3/23 10. Explore the character of Hedda Gabler in Ibsen’s play. Who is she? Why does she do what she does? What does she want? What is her attitude towards the other people in Ibsen’s play? Modern Poems 3/30 Choose one of the following three, 11a, 11b, or 11c: 11a. The Latin title of Wilfred Owen’s poem says “It is sweet and appropriate to die for one’s country.” What is the attitude of the speaker of his poem towards this statement? What picture do we get of World War I? What is the speaker’s attitude towards whoever is reading his poem? 11b. How is T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” different from any love song’s lyrics you are familiar with? What kind of man is the speaker of this poem (J. Alfred Prufrock)? How might be it legitimate to call it a “love song”? 11c. “The Second Coming,” by William Butlet Yeats, contains an explicit religious allusion in its title. The poem was written between World War I and World War II, which followed twenty years after the first war. What is the glimpse of the modern world that we get in Yeats’s poem? What are some of the images Yeats uses to describe it? What kind of God might be coming, a God which people will fall down and worship? Conrad, 4/6 12. What is Conrad’s view of the colonial enterprise—the hunt for ivory, the enslavement of African natives to make this possible—in Heart of Darkness? How do you know? Conrad, 4/13 13. What kind of man is Kurtz? How is he an “exceptional man”? Why does Marlow, the narrator, admire him? Kafka, 4/25 14. The British Dictionary’s definition of “alienation,” which most critics identify as Gregory Samsa’s problem, is: “a turning away from (something or someone); estrangement; the state of being an outsider or the feeling of being isolated; (psychiatry) a state in which a person’s feelings are inhibited so that eventually both the self and the external world seem unreal.” Apply this definition to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Explore why the protagonist feels alienated? And alienated from what?