Today’s Agenda
1) Let’s start today by getting out our books and journals.
2) Last time, I wanted you to think about the endings of these novels, and one of the things we noticed as we are reflecting on what we had read is the idea that these books all deal with the concept of submission in one way or another. We might today note how Crusoe decided that he will not submit to a middle class life style. Frankenstein decides that he will not submit to the Monster’s request that he build him a wife. Jane Eyre avoids marriage until she is ready to take it on under her own terms. If you think back to some of the earlier texts we read, you can see a similar theme. The Wife of Bath does not want to submit to one husband – though she demands the submission of men. And Dante willfully submits to Virgil as a guide to help him escape the terror or his own life.
While these authors all approach the concept of submission in different ways and for different reasons, it appears to be an issue that they are all taken up with. What I’d like you to do over the next ten minutes is to comment in your journal on the following subject:
Journal:
Identify a moment or moments from one of the novels we have read this semester that deals with the concept of submission in one way or another. I want you to explain to me how it deals with submission, and if the passage makes a comment on what it means to submit to someone, or to have someone submit to you. I will give you a few more moments than normal to write this response, as you will need to page around a bit.
Group Work:
Now that we have written on submission in a novel, I want you to get into groups and discuss the following:
Last time I told you that literature tends to generate more questions about its content than it does answers about that same content. Now that you have reflected a little on the role of submission in a text, I’d like you to identify some of the unanswered questions you have about one of the novels we have read this semester. These do not need to be questions about plot, exactly, but they should focus on when and why certain things happen in these novels. What is it that, even though you have finished book, you do not understand fully?
Okay, now let’s get out our papers. For today, you were to finish your draft of this paper. Let’s turn this draft over and talk about how successful you think you have been articulating your argument. We will be work shopping these papers with the time we have.
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