Lesson Plan for Week 5: General Thoughts and Notes

Major topics:

1. Thought for the day:

   For example, I live in the North now. So the first question come to mind is North of what? Why, north of the South. So North exists because South does. But does that mean North is different from South? No way! South is just south of North.

   — Guitar Bains in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, ch. 5

2. Administrative Issues:
   • Though the midterm is probably what's most on everyone's mind right now, it's not a bad idea to start thinking about what you want to write on for your first paper, which is due on Monday, 19 May.
   • The bookstore is planning to begin returning books to publishers on 5 May. If there are books you're planning on buying from them, you should do so soon.
   • This week on the section Twitter stream: H.L. Mencken's essay The Sahara of the Bozart; Richard Wright's FBI file; an extra-credit question.
   • There will be an optional pre-midterm review session from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday, 5 May, in South Hall 1415. You should come prepared with questions, and should also come prepared to help other people answer their questions — this is not a session in which TAs will be giving a formal presentation; we are simply mediating discussion. Because we were not able to schedule a room big enough to hold interested people from the entire class, please do not bring people from other TAs' sections. You may also want to get there early, as it is a rather small room.
   • The course midterm will, of course, be in class on Tuesday 6 May.
3. Questions for discussion:
   1. Picking any two authors of short stories that we've read so far, describe how you can identify their writing styles if presented with a passage they wrote for identification on the midterm.
   2. Choose one of the three anaphoric sections in Richard Wright's Black Boy (pp. 7-9, ch. 1; pp. 45-46, several pages into ch. 2; pp. 71-72, not quite at the end of ch. 2). What common elements recur, with or without variations, in the section you chose? What effect does the use of anaphora have on you as a reader and on your reading practices for these sections? How are these sections related structurally to the text in which they occur?
   3. In Chesnutt's Dave's Neckliss, why is Dave's punishment structured in exactly the way that it is? Why does the punishment affect Dave in the way that it does? Is his death a suicide?