Kakos' 4th Hour

Reactions and comments from my fourth hour Honors American Literature class.

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My favorite place in the world to be is underwater. My second favorite place is the front of a classroom.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Teaching Douglass/Letting Douglass Teach Us

Please design an opening activity for your assigned chapters. You can post discussion questions, provide links to relevant articles, paintings, or song lyrics, or design any other insightful activity that will get your classmates involved in discussing the text. Think about characters, symbols, themes, historical background, connections to contemoporary issues, or any other methods of analysis that engage you. Show off your creative side!

Remember that your post is due by 9 pm on the night before we discuss your assigned chapters.

9 Comments:

Blogger Kristin L said...

While rereading the first chapter,
I thought back to essays I read in a psychology class in college on the negative consequences of separating children from their mothers at early ages. I've attached a link to website that summarizes some of these studies.
http://childhood.families.com/bowlby-john-1907-1990-64-65-chdv

Perhaps separating slave children from their mothers was even more devastating than the slaveholders could have imagined...

9:09 PM  
Blogger JeffN said...

I am a big fan of listening to music and analyzing the lyrics to better further my knowlege of a concept. So I was looking through my music library and I found a song, "Hole in the World" that I thought represented the concept of slavery well. The song by The Eagles, was actually written after September 11, 2001 however the lyrics do a very good job in explaining this concept.

Hole In The World


[Chorus:]
There's a hole in the world tonight.
There's a Cloud of fear and sorrow.
There's a hole in the world tonight.
Don't let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.

They say that anger is just love disappointed.
They say that love is just a state of mind,
but all this fighting over who will be anointed.
Oh how can people be so blind

[Chorus:]
There's a hole in the world tonight.
There's a Cloud of fear and sorrow.
There's a hole in the world tonight.
Don't let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.

Oh they tell me there's a place over yonder,
cool water running through the burning sand,
until we we learn to love one
another we never reach the promise land.

[Chorus:]
There's a hole in the world tonight.
There's a Cloud of fear and sorrow.
There's a hole in the world tonight.
Don't let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.

5:57 PM  
Blogger ldowns said...

I'm blogging yeah! Anywhos...
My idea is cool and to relate back to the chapters I read for my blog (5,6,7) I thought that with my artistic side, colors and pictures help me and for most people remember certain detials, memories, feelings, etc. So creating a callouge (I think that's spelled right)is a perfect way to gather what you've read, seen, or heard into a warping play of color, pictures, and doodles, etc. Plus, something to ponder, Why does Douglas feel tortmented by his own gains of knowledge about slavery and how he feels pity for his own brothers that cannot learn to read or write? Personally, you ever get that feeling you know something but your friend doesn't get it? No matter how many times you explain it? Well, it's just like the slaves, they couldn't read or write thus all they know is hard work and rough teachings but Douglas found out and began a passion to pursue his freedom so he could help them, but he finds it difficult they can't stand up for themselves or realize they are stronger than they believe. But here I am typing an enormous blog and rambling on... well later days. :)

6:33 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Is knowledge a blessing or a curse? In Chapters 8 and 9, Frederick realizes that learning to read opened his eyes to the true mistreatment of slaves and prompted him to consider the morality of it. How can knowledge be a blessing and a curse? If for instance, you knew that your best friend would die in the next week, would you tell them? Would you rather know or not know? How would knowing this and not knowing this be good and bad?

Also, when Frederick was talking about is grandmother being left alone to die in her quaint little hut (haha.. quaint...), it reminded my of a poem I read in my 2nd ALIS book, Selected Poems by W.H. Auden called Ms. Gee. Here 'tis:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1298.html

I'm SO sorry this is late Ms. Kakos!!! It was just hard with swimming and I feel HORRIBLE so I'm REALLY sorry!

9:36 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

By the way Elizabeth I LOVE that song and I tried out for Ladies Select with it haha it was probably all little girl sounding or something because I was like 11 haha.

9:38 PM  
Blogger Amanda G. said...

Okay... I'm really mad because I just tried to post this really long thing... and it didn't work... so this time it'd better work. I'm going to test it before I do that WHOLE thing AGAIN. k?

1:47 PM  
Blogger Amanda G. said...

ARG!!! I can't believe it! k... here goes, again!

Look at these passages describing Captain Auld in Chapter 10:
"He was not even a good imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the power. Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency; and of consequence he was an object of contempt, and was held as such even by his slaves." and "In August, in 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there he experienced religion. I indulged in a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects....if it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways."

I made many connections to "The Crucible" in these passages. I would be interested in what connections all of you can make between Captain Auld and Abigail. Where do their mean-spirited attitudes come from? What drives them to corruptness? Are they similar? Different? How?

1:55 PM  
Blogger Amanda G. said...

Brittany... I think it's cuz you have to "preview" it first or something. At least that worked for me the next two times. Isn't that terrible!!!!?!?!?!?!?!?

1:57 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I was wondering how Douglas escaped so I searched it on google and here's what I found: http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/aa/activists/douglass/escape_1

4:23 PM  

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