Class Twelve
Journaling:
This week we have been thinking a lot about tone and what tone is, and how important it is for us to consider concepts like character, setting, and plot before we take up tone directly.
For today, you had to write a two-page blog post on the issue of whether or not your reading has been shaped by your cultural background. You were to reflect on how this may have impacted your understanding of tone in the stories we have read so far.
In your responses, many of you said that your cultural background has had a significant impact on your reading experiences.
So, today, as we come to the end of our first unit, I want to begin the class by asking you to expand on your writing by considering the following question:
When we talk about “boredom,” what are we talking about? Is it possible that “boredom” is a word we use to describe things that our cultural background has trained us to ignore? Why or why not? Bonus question: How might this relate to the income level or class we self-identify with? (10 min)
Mini-Lecture:
Stories are told to us by narrators. Like you, narrators have all kinds of cultural and class presumptions and prejudices. If we pay attention to the way a narrator communicates a plot and sets a tone, we can learn a lot about the “character” we are dealing with. This is crucial for analysis.
Why is this important? Well – we need to realize that all the character, setting, plot and tone details we get in a story come from a source, and we need to understand this source before we can get a really good idea of who is telling us what.
The narrator is NOT the author. We need to make that distinction right off the bat. The narrator is a PERSONA or even a CHARACTER that the author CREATES. We all create different characters for different aspects of our lives…let’s think about some of these characters:
Journal:
How is your play persona different than your work persona? How is your student persona different than your hanging out at home persona? Why do we have these different personalities? What are the different stories they tell? (20 mins)
No Homework.
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