Poetry and Younger Walter

Literature

Argument: gives a writer’s point of view about an issue or a problem.
Evidence: supports a writer’s idea with facts, statistics, data, and quotations.
Persuasive appeals: used by writers to convince readers that their ideas are true by using logic, emotions or beliefs. They use words that create strong feelings in the reader.
Logical or rhetorical fallacy: an appeal that doesn’t use evidence or logic.
Evaluate evidence:
Is the evidence biased, or prejudiced, by the writer’s own opinions and beliefs?
Does the evidence appeal to commonly help opinions or create false problems?
Does the evidence appeal to pity or include a personal attack?
Literary terms:
Dialogue: words that characters in play speak to each other.
Playwright: person who writes plays.
Conflict: problem or struggle that drives a story’s plot.
Verse: group of lines in a poem or a song.
Rhyme: repetition of the final sounds of words that creates a musical effect.
Rhyme scheme: pattern of rhymes. (ABCB)
Rhythm: musical quality that poets create by repeating sounds, words and lines.
Stanza: a section or verse of a poem.
Drama: writing that is meant to be performed for an audience.
Archetype: a familiar type of character (hero, villain, damsel in distress).
Motif: a dominant idea or pattern in a literary composition. (The American Dream).
Simile: a figure of speech that directly compares two things through some connective word, usually being "like", "as", "than", or a verb such as "resembles".
Onomatopoeia: the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named.
Alliteration: repetition of sounds.
Blank verse: verse without rhyme, especially that which uses iambic pentameter.
Couplet: a pair of verses that finish a sonnet. They work as one stanza.
Free verse: poem with no rhyme or rhythm.
Meter: the rhythm of a piece of poetry, determined by the number and length of feet in a line.
Iambic pentameter: structure in a poem where each line has 5 iambs (stressed and unstressed syllables). Each line has a total of 10 syllables.
Parallelism: repetition of words, phrases, or sentences that have the same grammatical structure or express a similar idea.
Sonnet: 14 lines poem written in an Iambic pentameter.
Tragedy: play, novel, etc that has an unhappy ending. A tragic hero is the character that dies at the end.
Tragic flow: a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine.

Imagery: poets use it to help readers “see” what the words describe.
Sensory: affects the reader’s five senses.
Literal: describes things exactly as they are.
Figurative: describes what things are like in a creative way.
Figurative language: use of words and phrases in imaginative ways to express ideas beyond the words’ direct meanings.
Metaphors: compare two different things by stating that one thing is the other thing.
Personification: describes animals, objects, or ideas as having human abilities or emotions.
Literary criticism: evaluation, analysis, description, or interpretation of literary works.
Biographical: shows how the author’s life affects the work.
Aesthetic: focuses on what makes a work appealing to read.
Historical: the writer researches a specific time period and shows how it influenced the work.

Lorraine Hansberry (1930 – 1965)
Born in Chicago, Illinois. Grew up on the city’s South Side.
A Raisin in the Sun  based on her family’s experiences moving to a white neighborhood.
Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee (1940)  her family won.
Decided to become a writer after attending a university play.
Moved to New York City (1950) and worked for a newspaper.
She wrote short stories, poetry, and plays.
A Raisin in the Sun  first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.
Died of cancer at 34.

Vocabulary

Denotation: exact meaning or definition of a word.
Connotation: meaning or feeling that is commonly added or attached to the word.
Reduced vowel: a vowel that is not pronounced completely. It promotes fluency. Compound and one syllable words are never reduced.
Stressed syllable: the strongest syllable in a word. It can be reduced, sounds like a schwa.
Silent letter: a letter that is not pronounced in a word.

Grammar and Writing

(Practice grammar worksheets on pages 49, 50, 51, and 52).

Letter to the Editor
1. Prewrite: decide where you stand on the issue. Organize thoughts and reasoning.
2. Draft: explain the issue briefly and state most important reasons.
3. Revise: modify reasons to make the argument clearer or more effective.

Literary Critique
1. Prewrite: write a topic sentence that states your opinion about the work. Decide which approach to take (biographical, aesthetic or historical).
2. Draft: list opinions and example from the play that support them.

Stories

Ad Power by Shari Graydon
“To the fish, the water is invisible”  saying from Ghana.
A young person growing up in North America will see 20,000 to 40,000 TV commercials every year.
We see up to 16,000 advertisements a day.
Advertisement comes from: the radio, signs, billboards, posters, logos, magazines, TV, etc.
Teens  80% read magazines, 29% trust magazine ads more than other ads, 28% buy products seen in magazines.
Ads can affect us emotionally and trick us into buying products for the wrong reasons.
A good slogan gets your attention, can be funny or serious, makes a good point, convinces, is unforgettable and timeless.

What’s Wrong with Advertising? By David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy  “Father of advertising” started out by selling kitchen stoves door-to-door.
1949  opened an advertising agency with two partners with $6,000.
40 years later the Ogilvy Group was sold for $864 million.
Advertising is an effective and efficient way to sell to the consumer.
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

A Long Way to Go: Minorities and the Media by Carlos Cortés
Contestants identified Mexicans with Gangs in “The $25,000 Pyramid” show.
The media creates stereotypes about minorities.
Only 40% of the nation’s 1,600 daily newspapers have minority editors.
Black Academy Award winners  Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Morgan Freeman, Jamie Foxx, etc).
Magazines by minorities  Ebony, Essence, Nuestro, Talking Leaf, etc.

The color green by Mark Punzalan
We should make better TV shows with minorities in them.
The color green (money) is more important to produces than the color black or white.
TV shows that has a mostly minority cast  The Cosby Show, The Jefferson’s, In Living Color.

What is news? From PBS’s My Journey Home
USA today was compared to as “McPaper.”
Examining the news is important because so many elements, resources, and money go into it.
Students get most of their political information from David Letterman, Jay Leno, The Daily Show, MTV, and online.
Priorities of the news: be current and mean something to people.
Stories that are more important go “above the fold”.

How to Detect Bias in the News by Jeffrey Schank
1. Study selections and omissions (what they’re not saying).
2. Look at item placement (first or last?).
3. Consider headlines (do they exaggerate?).
4. Look at names and titles (positive of negative connotations).
5. Study photos, camera angles, and captions
6. Consider sources.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Setting: Chicago in the 1950s.
Characters:
Walter Lee Younger Jr.  limo driver.
Ruth Younger  Walter’s wife and a maid.
Travis Younger  Walter and Ruth’s 10-year-old son.
Beneatha Younger  Walter’s younger sister.
Mama  Walter and Beneatha’s mother.
Karl Linder  man from a white neighborhood.
Bobo  Walter’s friend.
Willy  Walter’s friend.
Mrs. Johnson  a nosy neighbor.
Motif: money and the American dream.
Important aspects:
Walter wants to buy a liquor store and stop being a limo driver.
Mama inherits $10,000 dollars from her late husband’s insurance.
Beneatha wants to be a doctor.
When Mama and Walter senior moved into their “rattrap” they only planned to stay a year.
Mama doesn’t approve of the liquor store idea.
Mama gives Walter $6,500 and tells him to put $3,000 in the bank for Beneatha’s tuition.
Willy steals Bobo and Walter’s money.
Walter calls Linder to accept his offer to leave the neighborhood for money.
Walter doesn’t take Linder’s offer after all and they begin to move into their new house.

(Read poems).