Let me preface this project with a personal reverie. Out for grocery shopping yesterday afternoon I crossed the paths with some fellow shoppers who were elderly ladies. And each of these ladies was strikingly beautiful in my eyes, which made me wonder. Is there any unspoken rule about weekday afternoon shopping as opposed to hectic after-work shopping? 

Then, it dawned on me that their beautiful poise and deliberate deportment were what was striking and compelling me to look at them closely. And I saw in their eyes our common bond of fear, anxiety, and acquiescence about the current situation. At that very moment, they as well as I were truly alive and aware of our time and space in this universe and we were all in touch with our vulnerable humanity. 

The solemnity this pandemic brought to us makes me more aware of our human condition and I do not doubt that we will be better off for having this moment of "cultural vaccination," which gives us a better appreciation of our humanity and of the physical proximity with fellow humans. 

There is no reason to see gloom inside your eyelids, kids. Let's take this forced moment of personal isolation and social distancing as a cultural vaccination and come out of it stronger. 
_____________________________

Having said that, here is our final project for the spring semester of 2020.
We will use the five excerpts as the spring board in developing either a five-page, academic, literary, analytical essay or a creative project of visual, graphic, musical, poetic, or performing nature.
_____________________________

Option 1: A Five-page Academic, Literary, Analytical Essay 

Below are five texts (Texts A-E). Choose at least three of these texts to answer the question, “in what ways are these texts responding to their specific physical environment and humanity's relationship with nature?”

Whatever critical approach or perspective you adopt, you need to compose a thesis that takes all three texts into account—that is, you need to have a clearly conceptualized overall argument that is supported by your analysis of the texts.

You may pair two texts that deal with a similar theme or world view and compare and/or contrast the various ways these texts respond to their specific physical environment, the issue of solitude and social relations, and nature in general. You may also apply close reading and literary analysis to these texts.

If you find a text that does not fit in the analytical frame that you have adopted, you may use that text as a counterargument or a concession. 

Be sure to incorporate direct quotations and specific examples from all three texts.

This five-page academic, analytical essay should comply with the MLA formatting guidelines:
     Times New Roman font
     Font size 12
     Textual evidence with proper citations 
     A works cited page

____________________________

Option 2: One of Multi-modal Creative Projects

You need to go over the five excerpts thoroughly just as you would do to tackle Option 1. This will broaden up your perspective and deepen your appreciation of creative singularities, with which authors and thinkers respond to their environment, nature, and existential conditions. Now, ask yourself in what ways you reflect on and respond to the physical, social, and environmental foundation of your life and choose a creative mode that may showcase your talent or personality the best.

What creative medium you may choose, all works done to satisfy Option 2 should be authentic, meaning that you should not plagiarize or use another's work as a template.

2-1: Visual Representations + a 300-word Report
You may want to create book covers, digital paintings, or illustrations of the three texts of your choice. Please attach a 300-word report that illustrates your reasons to focus on specific literary elements and imagery you have singled out in those chosen texts. 

2-2: Authentic Poems + a 300-word Report
You may choose to write three poems (either handwritten or typed on a separate sheet of paper) while highlighting the content of each poem and enhancing its mood by adding visual or symbolic elements. Afterwards, please attach a 300-word written report in which you communicate what driving literary elements, mood, or imagery you have attempted to convey to your reader/ viewer.  

2-3: Authentic Song + a 300-word Report
You may also write and sing an authentic song; you need to film your performance of the song and submit the video/ audio file along with a 300-word report in which you communicate the creative reasons behind the specific lyrics, theme, style, tone, mood, and rhythm of this song.  

2-4: A Short Film/ Montage + a 300-word Report 
Finally, you may create a narrative short film or a visual montage (4-5 minutes) and submit the video file along with a 300-word report that communicates your decisions to utilize the specific content, theme, style, tone, mood, and filming techniques in creating this film. 

__________________________
5 Excerpts: shared reading assignments for both Option 1 and Option 2

Text A: a short story by Ray Bradbury
(pedestrian_1951_ray_bradbury.pdf)

Text B: a poem by Emily Dickinson
(www.drkaylee.us/romantic-literature/j-986-by-emily-dickinson)

Text C: a poem by William Wordsworth
(www.drkaylee.us/romantic-literature/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud-william-wordsworth-1804) 

Text D: Henry David Thoreau's Walden Chapter 5
(etc.usf.edu/lit2go/90/walden-or-life-in-the-woods/1546/solitude/)

Text E: A Satirical Video Clip from The Simpsons ​
(a composite video clip from Season 22 Episode 6; Season 4 Episode 21; and Season 9 Episode 3)

What makes an essay a good college application essay?
​

Prompt: the following excerpt describes the conversation Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby had on the night before Gatsby was to be killed. After close reading, illustrate your analysis of the fatal attraction Daisy Faye had on Jay Gatsby. Why do you think Gatsby fell in love with her? 

_______________________

It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody—told it to me because ‘Jay Gatsby’ had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice and the long secret extravaganza was played out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything, now, without reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.

She was the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions.

But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously— eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.

He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing behind him and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world.

But he didn’t despise himself and it didn’t turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a ‘nice’ girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt married to her, that was all.

When they met again two days later it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor. (Chapter 8)

Prompt:
The following passage depicts the moment in which Winston and Julia are arrested by the Thought Police. Select one key concept and provide your literary analysis while incorporating textual evidence that exemplifies the literary concept and its purported affect. 

Suggested literary concepts:
Characterization
Symbolism
Satire and dark humor 
Theme/ content
Global issue
Purpose/ audience
Literary/ stylistic devices
Tone/ mood
Structure 

1.​
‘You may as well say good-bye,’ said the voice. And then another quite different voice, a thin, cultivated voice which Winston had the impression of having heard before, struck in; ‘And by the way, while we are on the subject, ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head’!’


2.
Something crashed on to the bed behind Winston’s back. The head of a ladder had been thrust through the window and had burst in the frame. Someone was climbing through the window. There was a stampede of boots up the stairs. The room was full of solid men in black uniforms, with ironshod boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands.


3. 
Winston was not trembling any longer. Even his eyes he barely moved. One thing alone mattered; to keep still, to keep still and not give them an excuse to hit you! A man with a smooth prize-fighter’s jowl in which the mouth was only a slit paused opposite him balancing his truncheon meditatively between thumb and forefinger. Winston met his eyes. The feeling of nakedness, with one’s hands behind one’s head and one’s face and body all exposed, was almost unbearable. The man protruded the tip of a white tongue, licked the place where his lips should have been, and then passed on. There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone.


4.
The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like a sugar rosebud from a cake, rolled across the mat. How small, thought Winston, how small it always was! There was a gasp and a thump behind him, and he received a violent kick on the ankle which nearly flung him off his balance. One of the men had smashed his fist into Julia’s solar plexus, doubling her up like a pocket ruler. She was thrashing about on the floor, fighting for breath. Winston dared not turn his head even by a millimetre, but sometimes her livid, gasping face came within the angle of his vision. Even in his terror it was as though he could feel the pain in his own body, the deadly pain which nevertheless was less urgent than the struggle to get back her breath. He knew what it was like; the terrible, agonizing pain which was there all the while but could not be suffered yet, because before all else it was necessary to be able to breathe. Then two of the men hoisted her up by knees and shoulders, and carried her out of the room like a sack. Winston had a glimpse of her face, upside down, yellow and contorted, with the eyes shut, and still with a smear of rouge on either cheek; and that was the last he saw of her.


5.
He stood dead still. No one had hit him yet. Thoughts which came of their own accord but seemed totally uninteresting began to flit through his mind. He wondered whether they had got Mr Charrington. He wondered what they had done to the woman in the yard. He noticed that he badly wanted to urinate, and felt a faint surprise, because he had done so only two or three hours ago. He noticed that the clock on the mantelpiece said nine, meaning twenty-one. But the light seemed too strong. Would not the light be fading at twenty-one hours on an August evening? He wondered whether after all he and Julia had mistaken the time—had slept the clock round and thought it was twenty-thirty when really it was nought eight-thirty on the following morning. But he did not pursue the thought further. It was not interesting.


6. 
There was another, lighter step in the passage. Mr Charrington came into the room. The demeanour of the black-uniformed men suddenly became more subdued. Something had also changed in Mr Charrington’s appearance. His eye fell on the fragments of the glass paperweight.


7.
‘Pick up those pieces,’ he said sharply.


8.
A man stooped to obey. The cockney accent had disappeared; Winston suddenly realized whose voice it was that he had heard a few moments ago on the telescreen. Mr Charrington was still wearing his old velvet jacket, but his hair, which had been almost white, had turned black. Also he was not wearing his spectacles. He gave Winston a single sharp glance, as though verifying his identity, and then paid no more attention to him. He was still recognizable, but he was not the same person any longer. His body had straightened, and seemed to have grown bigger. His face had undergone only tiny changes that had nevertheless worked a complete transformation. The black eyebrows were less bushy, the wrinkles were gone, the whole lines of the face seemed to have altered; even the nose seemed shorter. It was the alert, cold face of a man of about five-and-thirty. It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.

(1984 Book 2, Chapter 10)

In what ways does Carraway characterize West Egg, and to what extent has his experience in the East affected his perspective and character?  (I have bolded some diction and selections of detail to guide your annotation process.)

Grading: 
The expectation is for you to provide a literary response with a minimum of 150 words and provide comments to at least two other postings (each response should be at least 4 sentences long). Your responses should be helpful, supportive, and insightful. In order to receive full credit, your writing should be insightful and written in a professional, academic manner.  

How to Post Your Writing:
First, you need to click on "comments," which will prompt you to provide your name and comment. The others (email address and website information) are not mandatory. 
Once you have provided your name and commentary, simply click on "submit."
You can reply as many times as you wish, but you cannot revise an already-posted message. 
​

"Vista de Toledo" (1596-1600) by El Greco
Medium:         oil on canvas
Dimensions:  121.3 cm × 108.6 cm 
Location:        Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

​        Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old—even then it had always for me a quality of distortion. West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.
​        After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.
​(Chapter 9)

Answer the questions posed below, making sure that you fully explain your answers.

What are your thoughts about having online learning?
What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Would you consider Online College courses?

Grading: 
The expectation is for you to respond to the questions with a minimum of 150 words and provide comments to at least two other postings (each response should be at least 4 sentences long). Your responses should be helpful, supportive, and insightful. In order to receive full credit, your writing should be insightful and written in a professional, academic manner.  

How to Post Your Writing:
First, you need to click on "comments," which will prompt you to provide your name and comment. The others (email address and website information) are not mandatory.
Once you have provided your name and commentary, simply click on "submit."
You can reply as many times as you wish, but you cannot revise an already-posted message. I am yet to meet some of you in person, so using a nickname is bound t o complicate the grading process for me. 
​

​Compose a short paragraph describing one of the following topics while employing one of the following literary devices.

Topics:
Sleeplessness
Nature
1984 theme: Protest
1984 theme: Rewriting or revising history 

Stylistic, literary devices:
Assonance
Consonance
Irony
Rhetorical question  

*Assonance, consonance, and other deliberate repetition of sounds: 
the_use_of_deliberate_repetition.docx
*Irony: https://www.drkaylee.us/figures-in-action/irony-oxymoron-and-antithesis