We will be continuing our discussion of Civil Disobedience and nonviolent protest tomorrow, using the current situation in Burma (Union of Myanmar). Check the article listing on this site for a few I’ve looked over, or check out the Burma Newsladder for more stories.

Choose an article from one of these sources to discuss tomorrow. If your article is persuasive in intent, analyze the rhetoric:

• What is the intended argument?
• How is it presented?
• Give examples.
• Write a reaction of its effectiveness.

If your article is informative, focus on the events.

• Why are there protests?
• What are the protesters trying to change/accomplish?
• How are the protests undertaken?
• Give examples.
• Are the measures being taken by the protesters effective?
• How could/should they be protesting?

Also, answer the two questions from the board. Correct me if I’m wrong:

• When/where was “Letter from Birmingham Jail” first published? What was the impact?
• Who objected to the question of whether the leaders of Project C should ask people to give up their lives for the cause?

Remember to read chapters 9 and 10 over the weekend and journal what you read.

We will begin the Civil Rights Unit on Monday. This weekend, research your assigned role (and read over the handouts) for the role play exercise. Consider the following:

• Why did the group (and your person specifically) choose to act the way they did?
• Was the project successful?
  • If not, how could it have been?
  • If so, why?
• Print any important material on your person to share with the class.

Begin reading Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience.” Print it out, and begin annotating as we have been doing with King’s letter. Keep in mind the following:

• Why did Thoreau write this piece?
• What is “civil disobedience”?
• Who is his intended audience?
• What are his main points?

  And, as always,

• Highlight his uses of ethos, pathos, and logos
• Mark any T-DIDLS passages that you recognize

Here is an excellent resource on King. It is an interactive timeline of his life. It includes speeches (audio and text; listen to the audio sections to help you understand what made him such an inspiring speaker) and a few of his writings. Another, from the same group, is an encyclopedia of his life and the events surrounding the movement.

Reminder: Essay on Friday. We will discuss the prompt in class tomorrow, and an outline for the essay will be due/graded on Friday along with your journals.

While going over your quizzes I have noticed that some of you are confused by what exactly constitutes the “tone” of a passage.  I have described tone as how a piece “feels” or what “mood” the author seems to be in when he or she writes a piece.  To help you discover the tone of future pieces, here is a list of tonal words (in no particular order):

How many do you already recognize from Lord of the Flies? Tone can be an important aspect of an analysis, and you can write an entire essay defending a thesis statement such as: “Although the island in Lord of the Flies seems to be a paradise at first, the author foreshadows later events through the oppressive tone used when he describes the boys’ surroundings.”

[This post was WinsomeWiki’d on 4 Jul. 2009.]

The Monday quiz has been moved to Tuesday 2nd. We will be reading chapters 3-5 for Wednesday, so don’t be thrown by the change in dates.

If you are having trouble with your reading journals, look over your symbolism notes from today. The conch, Piggy’s glasses, the scar, the fire, the main characters, and (later) the pigs are all very symbolic. Imagine what they could represent, then look for proof in the book. Copy these passages and write a comment for each. For example:

“[Jack’s] mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness” (Golding 63).

Jack is slowly becoming more savage. The island (mud) is slowly covering any sense of civility he has. By becoming “liberated,” he removes what he feels to be the shackles of civilization and reverts to a more primitive state, free of morality (“shame”) and responsibility (“self-consciousness”).

[Edit: Just in case you want to read ahead, the essay on Friday will be over chapters 1-8. Reading journals will also be due at that time.]