5.8/5.11 FRI/MON

• Practice AP Test strategies• Due: Nothing

• SH5 Reading schedule. On these days we will have some sort of assessment (oral quiz, seminar, written prompt, reading check quiz or any combination thereof)

5.18/5.19: Ch. 1-3 5.22/5.26: Ch. 4-65.27/5.28: Ch. 7-9

5.8/5.11: synthesis essay (first lunch)5.12: Argumentation essay 5.13: AP test5.14/5.15: Slaughterhouse-Five assigned and intro.5.20/5.21: Vocab. 7 quiz5.29/6.1: Slaughterhouse-Five test6.2/6.3: Final lesson; Slaughterhouse-Five essay due6.4: 1st exam6.5: 2nd exam6.8: 3rd exam6.9: 4th exam

5.8/5.11 activity: Synthesizer essay

• Which one are we writing today?• I don’t know. Guess I should get up and look.

5.8/5.11 notes: SH5 intro

• Settings (there are multiple settings): • Germany during World War II. • Dresden, a non-military target that was “firebombed” by the Allies.

25,000 people were killed (Vonnegut erroneously claims that 130k were killed)• Other settings include Vonnegut’s home, Billy’s home, various other

locations. Timeframe is (basically) 1922-1976. Oh. I forgot one, didn’t I. • Tralfamadore. Alien planet full of Tralfamadorians. Well, they see all of

time at once. They’re aliens. They capture Billy Pilgrim. Um, they sorta look like this, I guess?

5.8/5.11 notes: SH5 intro

• That last one was Vonnegut’s painting Tralfamadore. • Characters:• Kurt Vonnegut: Appears at the beginning and end and (unless I’m miscounting)

at least two other places in the novel (maybe three or four?). He wrote the book!• Billy Pilgrim: Survived WWII and firebombing of Dresden (just like Vonnegut!).

Travels through time after he’s captured by the Tralfamadorians and put into a zoo. He’s an optometrist. He becomes very famous for telling the world the truth about death. Then he dies. For a little while.

• Bernard V. O’Hare: Vonnegut’s friend who also fought in the war. They make a trip to Dresden together. Vonnegut says he “really did go to see him” (11).

• He’s a real person. Here’s fun facts and mild discursive exercise.

5.8/5.11 notes: SH5 discursive exercise • What follows is a letter that the writer Kurt Vonnegut sent to family and friends

in 1945. It was made available to The Morning Call by Bernard V. O'Hare III of Nazareth, who first posted it on his blog, lehighvallyramblings.blogspot.com.• O'Hare's father, the late Bernard V. O'Hare Jr., was imprisoned with Vonnegut in

a German POW camp. He went on to have a law practice and serve as district attorney in Northampton County. His family kept in touch with Vonnegut until his death on April 11 of this year.• The younger O'Hare said his ''packrat'' brother found the letter after a

biographer asked the O'Hares for information about the friendship between the former soldiers. Vonnegut had sent it to his family not long after he and O'Hare were released at the end of World War II.• Do you want to read the letter???• You will. Let’s finish this up, first.

5.8/5.11 notes: SH5 intro• Roland Weary: captured and marched through Germany with Billy. Doesn’t survive. Sort of

delusional and violent. • Valencia: Billy’s rich and, um, plump wife. She’s rather simple. Doesn’t survive.• Barbara Pilgrim: Billy and Valencia’s daughter. She tries to care for Billy but believes he’s crazy. • Paul Lazzaro: a soldier in the war. He really, really, really likes revenge. Plans to get revenge on

Billy for supposedly causing Weary’s death.• Edgar Derby. ‘nother soldier. He’s older. He gets shot for stealing a teapot. So it goes.• Howard W. Campbell: he’s a Nazi. Billy and Edgar encounter him in Dresden. He’s trying to

recruit Americans to join the Nazis (he’s American). He stars in his book. It’s good.• Eliot Rosewater: is with Billy recuperating in a hospital following the war. He stars in his own

book, too. It’s good, too. He introduces Billy to . . . • Kilgore Trout: so much to say about him. Very bad sci-fi writer. He’s said to have great ideas

but can’t write (sound like anyone we know???). Depressingly cynical, cruel, lying. So Billy invites him to a party. Also has his own book about him.

• Montana Wildhack: Billy’s fellow captive in the Tralfamadorian zoo. They have a child together. You can see a picture of her on p. 209.

5.8/5.11 notes: SH5 intro

• Themes and motifs:• Purpose of life.• Free will.• Purpose of war.• Science fiction.• Purpose of literature. • Communication between people.• Empathy and lack thereof. • Paradoxical nature of being alive. If it’s pointless, then why bother? What’s the point?• Paradoxes litter one of pieces of literature included in the first chapter. Shall we look at

it?

5.8/5.11: SH5 intro

“The Waking” by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me; so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.

5.8/5.11 activity: Vonnegut’s letter

• Well, let’s read it.• Then we’ll discuss it and the poem.

5.8/5.11 FRI/MON

• Print and read “The Real Slaughterhouse Five” on my website. • Please note again the reading schedule for SH5. • We will begin discussing the novel next real class.• All in all, guys, good luck on Wednesday. You have done everything

you can and then some. Trust yourself and your knowledge. • Failing that, guess.