Frankenstein

Mary Shelley
Prometheus

Points to Ponder

• Who is the narrator?
• Sex 
• Age
• Status - Education, skills, class
• Passions
• Motives
• unreliable narrator
• first-person narrator 
• third-person limited narrator
• third-person omniscient narrator 
• What is the context?
• What goes on before, after and "around"
• Science vs religion
• Man being God
• What is the passage's purpose?
• Contemplative to show both sides
• Creates tension
• Sentence Structure?
• Simple
• Compound
• Complex
• Vocabulary?
• Technical - jargon?
• Abstract or concrete
• Powerful or week
• Grammatical patterns?
• Alternatives/paradoxes/Back and forth
• Cadence

Philosophies

• Why do we die?
• Why Prometheus as alternative title?
• What human needs did she tap into?

Imagery

Figures of Speech

Exercise:

Write a short piece between two people at a restaurant where the one is indifferent and the other resigned to them slipping apart.

He passed the salt even though she hadn't asked.

The way he efficiently poured her drink irritated her. 

A waiter appeared and he ordered the same boring burger he always did. 

Across the way a couple were debating the merits of the calamari over the Pork fillet.

His cold fish like hands lay on the cloth and she felt an urge to stab it with a fork, to surprise the fish and have it flap and writhe or even try to escape. She smiled to herself and he smiled back, his brow slightly furrowed.

She ordered a salad she didn't want and saw the clock had moved on another ten minutes.

" I was thinking" he said, and she dragged herself back to the buzz and warmth of the restaurant.

Margaret Atwood Drills

Describe her poetry
To try to get students integrating superficial learning with the true understanding of a poet's style and genre, we tried these drills. Firstly they explained the poets overall style and technique. This was dry and boring and full of platitudes and academic claptrap.

Then they tried to describe it without explanations. This worked well as they started to emulate her style.
 Then they tried to rip it off. This provoked the most intensity and focus, forcing them to see how the poem really worked and how she made her impact through her devices.

We then read a number of other poems by her and it all became clear that the more you read a poet, the better you understand their works without having to resort to second hand internet crits and essays.

http://www.poemhunter.com/margaret-atwood/

Describe her poetry without explanations.
Margaret Atwood: Burning rubber on the road. The spot between the tire and the tarmac. Evoking sounds and senses in montage shards. She watches from the cupboard, hidden in platitudes, but waiting for the light to go out. She waits for the reader to come closer for and explanation, then pounces into the crevices of the brain and probes, her golden needles, clinical and clumsy, Knives wielded by the amateurs in her productions.  Have I got a lead role?

Write an Atwood Poem (My rather poor attempt was really overshadowed by Timara's who seemed to click with the style easily)

She sits and knits
Time clicking past her fingers
and the hall clock waits
as it has for past faces and figures
the men who wandered through the hallway
Bringers of children and beer breath
the older then, the boy child now.

and one day she will lie with gathering clouds
and antiseptic tiles in the departure lounge
with no visitors, but the crisp nurse,
who understands but cannot wait to get home
and wait for her date

Assignment 1

Backdrop Addresses Cowboy

Starspangled cowboy sauntering out of the almost- silly West, on your face a porcelain grin, tugging a papier-mache cactus on wheels behind you with a string, you are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. Your righteous eyes, your laconic trigger-fingers people the streets with villains: as you move, the air in front of you blossoms with targets and you leave behind you a heroic trail of desolation: beer bottles slaughtered by the side of the road, bird- skulls bleaching in the sunset. I ought to be watching from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront when the shooting starts, hands clasped in admiration, but I am elsewhere. Then what about me what about the I confronting you on that border you are always trying to cross? I am the horizon you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso I am also what surrounds you: my brain scattered with your tincans, bones, empty shells, the litter of your invasions. I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. Margaret Atwood Analysis by; Free Association Imagery Narrator Paradox Icons Stereotypes Myths Line by line Metaphor Rhyme, Rhythm Enjambment Grammmatical Structure Structure Stanza Style Genre Steps Get the "big Idea' Decide on angle, perspective, attitude, theme Refine into two or three thesis statements Decide on 5 main ideas that reinforce the big idea,  link them to specific text Write the opening funnel paragraph Start with general and  finish with thesis statement Create paragraphs Linking statement Emotional  Reference Objective statement Bias Linking sentence Write conclusion: Rephrase thesis statement End with general perspective for meaning.