For Tuesday: Orwell, 1984, finish Part Two, Chapters II-X (2-10)

NOTE: Try to read as much of Part Two as you can, though I understand if you don't have time to finish it. Since we only have two days left, I want to read slightly larger chunks of the novel than we normally would. But again, I'm not worried about you finishing the book--just getting most of it ready before Thursday. 

Remember the Final Exam Paper is in the post below this one if you lose your hard copy. 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: What do you think drew Julia to Winston in the first place? Is she truly in love with him, as the original note says? Are we meant to trust her words and motives, considering that she's clearly a very accomplished actor?

Q2: For all his attraction to Julia, there are a few things that trouble Winston about her, namely that she takes no interest in history or anything about the Party that doesn't immediately relate to her. Why does this trouble him, and what might this say about the younger generation that grew up with the Party in charge?

Q3: Why does O'Brien give Winston a copy of Goldstein's book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism," which Winston had feared was an urban myth? What does he--and what do we--learn from his reading of the book? Does it answer the why beyond the how of the Party?

Q4: Writing about the first time he has sex with Julia, Winston observes, "Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act" (Chapter II). How could the mere act of sex be a political act, and why does he love the idea that she's had a great number of sexual partners? What does this prove for him? 

Final Exam Project: Judging a Book By Its Cover (due May 4th!)

Eng 2653: British Lit from 1800

Final Exam Project: Judging a Book By Its Cover

“A book cover demands our initial engagement with a work. You may not think a cover reflects your own thoughts of a book, but it evokes a response and inspires a reader’s imagination to begin building the world within the pages created by the author…A book cover is a key with which we open a world of storytelling…one page at a time, cover to cover.” (Elda Rotor, Classic Penguins: Cover to Cover)

This final exam is very simple: I want you to find new cover art for each of the 6 books in our class. The art can be come from the artists we discussed in class (or ones you wrote about in 3 of your papers), or can be something completely different, whether ancient or modern (or your own). However, instead of writing a paper about it, I want you to make a six-slide Powerpoint (or whatever visual aid you choose) that shows the work of art, lists the book and author, and contains a “book blurb” quote from the book that you think is especially significant. You don’t have to explain the quote, just find one that you think expresses the theme of the book and/or some aspect of the image. And that’s it!

Please e-mail these presentations to me no later than Thursday, May 4^th by midnight. I need to start grading immediately so I can get grades in by the weekend, since I have another class that starts the following Monday! So late presentations will not be accepted since I won’t have time to accept them!

This short project is worth 15 points (out of 100), so it should be an easy but enjoyable assignment. The only way you will lose points is if you don’t do all 6 books, show a certain laziness in your approach (in other words, you just use the exact same paintings we wrote about in class—go a little beyond that!), or you leave out the quotations from each book. So try to have fun and think about what art would not only help tell the story of the book, but also would help sell books! After all, we do judge a book by its cover—and why shouldn’t we?

For Thursday: Orwell, 1984: Read up to Part Two, Chapter 2

Try to at least get to Part Two of the book, and if possible, read to around Chapter 2. You'll have time to catch up on the weekend if you fall behind. The questions below will cover the entire book up until Part Two, Chapter 2, since we only touched on a few ideas in class today (Tuesday). 

Don't forget that I'll accept the Time Machine/Klee papers as late as Thursday, but after that we have to press on! 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: Winston's 'friend,' Syme, is ecstatic about the evolution of Newspeak, since it's "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year" (Chapter V). Why is Newspeak obsessed with reducing the words and the range of expression available to its speakers? How does this show the relationship between language and culture in a devious way?

Q2: One of Big Brother's greatest slogan's is, "Who controls the past...controls the future" (Chapter III). They call this "reality control," or "doublethink." How can you control the past or even really change it? Surely enough people would remember the past and object if you changed it. What else is required to make "reality control" a reality? 

Q3: Why Winston continually risk his life (or simply exposure) by journeying to the proles' area of town to buy rubbish and knicknacks? What is he looking for or trying to buy? Related to this, why is he so obsessed by the proles (the lower classes), since his friend Syme claims they are "not human beings"?

Q4: Why does Big Brother allow the proles to have sex, love, marriage, and even alcohol when the rest of society is supposed to abstain from having their "ownlife"? Why police the more educated classes so severely, but let the lower classes--the ones who outnumber the rest--free reign to do whatever they like? 

For Tuesday: start reading Orwell, 1984 (Chapters 1-7, or so)

 Since we're a bit behind, I want you to go ahead and start 1984 for Tuesday's class, reading the first 7 or so chapters (or as much as you can). We will still write about a new work of art, but we'll do so in tandem with the novel, so as not to waste any more time! (only 4 days are left of the semester!!) But I won't give you any questions so you can just enjoy reading for a change. 

Remember that your H.G. Wells & Klee Art & Lit papers are due on Tuesday if you want to (or have to) do them. 

Also, I'll be giving you the Final Exam assignment on Thursday, so you'll definitely want to tune in for that! 

More soon! 

For Thursday (No Class on Tuesday--see below): Wells, The Time Machine (finish!)

Klee, Fugue in Red (1921)

NOTE: Sadly, I have to CANCEL TUESDAY'S CLASS AS WELL, since my wife has to go to Norman for a minor procedure which will render her unable to drive home. So we'll have to pick this up NEXT Thursday. Sorry about this...but it gives you extra time to read and finish the questions! Don't forget, too, about the Art and Literature paper for Wells if you need to do it.

Answer two of the following:

Q1: Is the Time Traveler a reliable narrator? How might his own biases and beliefs color his narrative, particularly when describing the Eloi and the Morlocks? Is there anywhere we can tell that Wells might be critiquing the Traveler himself?

Q2: In Marina Warner’s Introduction to the Penguin version of The Time Machine, she notes that in many of Wells’ fictions, “He show an almost anorexic fascination with feeding, hunger, and abstemiousness.” Why do you think Wells (and the Time Traveler), as a late Victorian, is so drawn to the idea of eating in the novel? What might food—and the choice of food—have to do with taboos and the evolution of man? ALSO: any connections to our other novel about food, Alice in Wonderland?

Q3: Why does the narrator decide to take Weena back to his own time? And what exactly is the true nature of their relationship? Is he like a Peter Pan to her Wendy? Or is he merely interested in her scientifically, as a specimen to bring back as proof (like he does the flower she gives him)?

Q4: Toward the end of the novel the Time Traveler “grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.” Of course, since this is science fiction, Wells probably means that his own time had “committed suicide” in the same way. What do you think this means? How can an entire society decide to put an end to the “dream of the human intellect”? (Consider, too, that WWI is right around the corner, though he couldn’t quite see this…)