Lesson Plan for Week 5: General Thoughts and Notes

Patrick Mooney, TA
Eng 150, Prof. Duffy
23 October 2013

Major topics:

1. Thought for the day:

   There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.

   —Raymond Williams, Culture and Society

2. Administrative Issues:
   1. Attendance.
   2. Tonight at 11:45 is the last chance to drop classes without a petition.
   3. Other administrative issues?
   4. I've caught up on posting links to the section Twitter stream -- including links to songs and other texts mentioned by Professor Duffy in lecture.
   5. For next week: Think about what you think is likely to be on the midterm, and bring in several ideas for review.
3. Recitations this week:
   • 5 p.m.
     • Ray Gylys and Steve Ortiz, O’Casey
   • 6 p.m.
     • Jenn Chu, Synge
     • Becka Estrada, O’Casey
4. Other points for discussion, depending on time:
   • We discussed stereotypes of Irish masculinity, and how Synge presents them, in lecture. What can be said about presentations of Irish femininity in Synge's The Playboy of the Western World?
     • PEGEEN (contemptuously). She [the Widow Quin] did not [kill her father]. She hit himself [her husband] with a worn pick, and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way he never overed it, and died after. That was a sneaky kind of murder did win small glory with the boys itself. (28)
     • WIDOW QUIN [to Shawn] (jeeringly). It's true all girls are fond of courage and do hate the like of you. (45)
     • WIDOW QUIN (looks at him for a moment). If I aid you, will you swear to give me a right of way I want, and a mountainy ram, and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the time that you'll be master here? (53)
   • If not discussed by presenters:

     You have disgraced yourselves again. Is this to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius? Once more you have rocked the cradle of genius.

     —W.B. Yeats, addressing the crowd at a performance of O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars

   • How would you characterize O'Casey's portrayal of the following characters in The Plough and the Stars: Nora Clitheroe, Jack Clitheroe, The Young Covey, Rosie Redmond? Overall, how does O'Casey portray the Irish? What is his "point"?