Upcoming--
Continue to work on the three short papers due next week; see Tuesday's post.

Here are a few additional guidelines to consider as you are working:

• These essays are to be considered "microthemes" because although they will require deftly incorporated text-based support that includes some direct quotations, you are not expected to provide a complete funnel introduction or significant "global" conclusion. You need some sort of contextual starter sentence before your thesis, but do not produce a hook and several sentences of  background or setting up before you get to the thesis. Get directly into the argument of the essay as soon as you can.  For the conclusion, a single "clincher" sentence will be enough.
• The message is, then, that the essay will be nearly all meaningful content.
• It is not an MLA essay; use the standard heading.
• Running header not required.
• DO have a title 
• DO include parenthetical citations; page numbers only.
• Double-space.

You do not need a Works Cited for the first two essays.  See below.

Look at the writing samples in section XII at the beginning of your book.  The second example is a short literary analysis, so you might as well look at that one (43).  You are going to modify this format for the first two essays.

• For Essay 1, you are going to follow the general idea of what is shown, but you will need to incorporate the author and title of in your own sentence and then supply the following information as shown in the example:  (Trans. ??? [Place of publication: Publisher, Date])
• For Essay 2, simply do what is shown, plugging in the accurate information for "Sonny's Blues." 
• For Essay 3, it will be easier to have a Works Cited simply so you can practice a different format--but I'm going to let you do this by continuing on the same page after a double double-space.   You might have two stories within the Perrine text, or you might have one plus the online "Chrysanthemums."  I'm going to spell this out more tomorrow . . . you don't need it yet.  If you're working on the papers, just keep track of the page numbers as you go.

/TODAY IN CLASS

We finished Part I.  That included reverting to the "Grove of Death" passage briefly to consider the difference between addressing Conrad's own writing--his use of allusion, diction, and imagery--and something about Marlow's own attitudes.  Conrad's language included various ways of dehumanizing the overworked natives by honing in on allusions to the underworld to show their precarious hold on an earthly existence, selecting diction that dissected still-living individuals into both geometric shapes and discrete [separate] body parts, and animal imagery that reinforced their function as beasts of burden. If you are asked to focus on Marlow, it would probably miss Conrad's point if you were to say that Marlow was being negative, or prejudiced, or showing European superiority by dehumanizing them.  A better strategy, noting especially the transitional comment "I wanted no more loitering in the shade. . . ," would be to follow up on Marlow's expressed observation of the abject weakness and suffering.  Imagine how he might have felt; students mentioned his feelings of discomfort at seeing such pain as well as the guilt by association of realizing that the company he now works for is the underlying cause of their suffering.  But Marlow's response on being confronted with it is to distance himself as much as he can from them, and from his own feelings, so he can get on about his work.  Detachment is easier if those suffering are perceived more as objects, or non-human living beings, than as humans.  It's all about sparing himself and focusing on his job.

The point is to be able to discuss both the "how" of what an author does with language as well as to speculate meaningfully on "why" such choices would be made at a given point in the work.  But in a very short timed write, I'm not likely to ask you about both at once!

Part II:  we talked about the conversation between the manager and his uncle, what Marlow overhears about Kurtz laid against what his comment had been at the end of Part I, and the fate of the donkeys. 3rd period had a moment for some early style analysis of the Going up that river . .. . passage . 4th didn't.

FOR TOMORROW

Please look over the 4 long paragraphs of the "going upriver" section for some discussion of what's there (why does Conrad dwell so long on this when "nothing happens"??).  After that, we'll use the rest of the Part II quiz as the frame for what will be a truly amazing race to the Inner Station. 

AND . . . expect a very short quiz on Part III.  I sincerely hope that means you only need to look it over briefly to refresh yourself since reading it last week.  But if you have to read it tonight, so be it.