Class 15 EWRT 1B

AGENDAO Presentation: TermsO Peer Revision: You must have

two copies of your essay. If you do not, you may leave now and return in one hour for our class discussion.

ODiscussion: “The Passing of Grandison” and “Transformation”OAuthor Introduction: David Henry Hwang

13.⥀ Male Privilege: Benefiting from the higher status of men and attributes associated with men and masculinity within the larger culture.

14.⥀ Multiple Identities: The concept that a person’s identity does not rest solely on one factor (e.g., sexual orientation, race, gender, etc.). Therefore, no single element of one’s identity is necessarily dominant, although certain identities can take precedence over others at certain times.

15.⥀ Dialect: the language of a particular district, class, or group of persons. It encompasses the sounds, grammar, and diction employed by a specific people as distinguished from other persons either geographically or socially. Dialect, as a major technique of characterization, is the use by persons in a narrative of distinct varieties of language to indicate a person’s social or geographical status, and is used by authors to give an illusion of reality to fictional characters. It is sometimes used to differentiate between characters.

16.Euphemism: the use of an indirect, mild, delicate, inoffensive, or vague word or expression for one thought to be coarse, sordid, or otherwise unpleasant, offensive, or blunt.

17.Hyperbole: obvious and deliberate exaggeration or an extravagant statement. It is a figure of speech not intended to be taken literally since it is exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbole is a common poetic and dramatic device.

18.Imagery: the forming of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things. It is also the use of language to represent actions, persons, objects, and ideas descriptively. This means encompassing the senses also, rather than just forming a mental picture.

19.Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to a person, idea, or object to which it is not literally applicable. It is an implied analogy or unstated comparison which imaginatively identifies one thing with another.

20. Novel: a lengthy fictitious prose narrative portraying characters and presenting an organized series of events and settings. Novels are accounts of life and involve conflict, characters, action, settings, plot, and theme. This is considered the third stage of the development of imagination fiction, following the epic and the romance.

21. Pathos: A quality of a play’s action that stimulates the audience to feel pity for a character. Pathos is always an aspect of tragedy, and may be present in comedy as well.

22. Personification: a figure of speech in which abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are endowed with human form, character, traits, or sensibilities.

23. Protagonist: the leading character of a drama, novel, etc. This is not always the hero, but is always the principal and central character whose rival is the antagonist.

24. Scene: the place where some act or event occurs. Sometimes the term is used for an incident or situation in real life. It is also the division of an act of a play or a unit of dramatic action in which a single point is made or one effect obtained.

25. Drama: A prose or verse composition, especially one telling a serious story, that is intended for representation by actors impersonating the characters and performing the dialogue and action. A serious narrative work or program for television, radio, or the cinema.

Terms Exam 3ODay: Class 16OFormat: matching, fill in the

blank, multiple choice, and definition writing.

ONumber 25 to get 25.

Essay 3: Peer Revision Day

1. Get into pairs and exchange papers2. Read your partner’s essay silently3. Write a one-sentence summary of the

essay’s thesis in the margin, near the thesis.

4. Carefully and thoughtfully, mark the rubric to show the writer where he or she is successful or needs work.

5. Then perform the MLA work on slide 11

MLA Formatting: As you read, make notes on the essay. Check the following:

The header and heading are correct The essay is double-spaced throughout. Book titles are italicized. Essays, articles, and short stories are in quotation

marks. The first time the writer refers to the author or a

character, he or she uses both the first and last name: Leslie Feinberg; Jess Goldberg. Later references to the author should be by last name.

References to the literature are in present tense. In text citations are present and correct. Each

citation is introduced properly. Commas and periods are INSIDE of quotation

marks UNLESS they are after the parenthetical. A Works Cited page is present and entries are

correctly formatted. There is an original title to the work.

OReaders: when you finish, return the draft and the completed rubric to the writer.

OWriters: read the comments and revise your essay accordingly.

In your groups, discuss “Grandison” and Trickster characters and their traits. Then, identify specific traits of the trickster you saw in “Grandison.” Look for textual evidence.

“The Passing of Grandison”

OWho can offer a brief summary of Grandison?

OWho can offer a brief summary of “Transformations of the Trickster”?

“Transformations of the Trickster”

Traits of the Trickster

possible traits of the trickster • Deceitful (“truth-eluding ambiguity” according to

Lock) : The trickster uses trickery to bring about change. According to Lock, the trickster “shifts and disguises the boundaries, undoes and redraws the traditional connections” (III).

• Self-Serving: The trickster often feels that he or she has been wronged and is therefore justified in taking action to bring about change and/or to defeat “the enemy.”

• Shape Shifter: The trickster may change forms, sex, and so forth as an element of surprise to his victim. The change may also be psychological instead of (or in addition to) a visual change. According to Lock, “Trickster is not gendered—only cultural perceptions of the freedom and mobility necessary to be trickster. Thus, premodern tricksters were imagined as primarily masculine, though with gender-changing abilities” (III)

Cultural Hero: The trickster may be idealized as a cultural hero when, as the agent of transformation, he or she overturns a cruel or unfair leader or political/social system or reverses the fortunes of the more powerful party. According to Helen Lock, this characteristic separates the fool from the trickster. “The true trickster’s trickery calls into question fundamental assumptions about the way the world is organized, and reveals the possibility of transforming them (even if for ignoble [shameful] ends)” (Lock III). Michael J. Carroll includes cultural hero as an attribute as well; he characterizes the trickster as “a transformer who makes the world habitable for humans by ridding it of monsters or who provides those things [such as fire] that make human society possible (“Levi-Strauss, Freud, and the Trickster” 305). Hardy characterizes the trickster as the source of unexpected changes in a world where change is not always comfortable and as a symbol of the uncertain world in which we live.

• Solitary creature: Many tricksters are solitary animals (or humans), working alone rather than with a partner or within a group – to undertake change. Michael P. Carroll notes that “Ravens are usually sighted singly or at most in pairs; coyotes forage independently…; hares have long been noted for their solitariness…Spiders generally associate with members of their own species on only two occasions: when they are born and when they mate” (“Trickster as Selfish Buffoon” 115).

• Physically, intellectually, or socially weak creature: The trickster is often portrayed as a much weaker character than his prey, and yet through cleverness and trickery, he is able to overcome all obstacles and prevail. In some cases the trickster may appear to be weaker physically in order to confuse his prey (false frailty).

• Special tools: The trickster may have special tools or abilities that enable him to perform his acts. Often these tools include magic and/or supernatural powers.

• Teacher: The trickster is a purveyor of life lessons through the stories, from manners to ethics. T

• “Trickster discourse is the process whereby language negotiates the boundaries of the crossblood’s world, deconstructing the fixed, authoritative beliefs and definitions that Vizenor has called “terminal creeds” (Bearheart xiv)” (Qtd. In Lock III).

• Some “tricksters work to transform the limitations and boundaries of language in ways that can have real-world consequences for the ethnic American” (Lock III).

David Henry Hwang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6_g37E4yw

OStudy: Vocab/terms for Exam 3OFinish Chinglish ORead: Defining the Trickster: This is posted under "Secondary Readings." It is very brief and easy reading. O Post # 19: QHQ Using

either or both "Transformation of the Trickster” and “Defining the Trickster,” discuss Chinglish by identifying traits of the trickster that correspond to characters, motivations, and outcomes in the play. Use textual evidence!

Revise Essay 3 and submit it through Kaizena before our next meeting.