E4: Food Inc Discussion Questions

Please remember, these questions are designed as starting points for discussions. Pick a few that go together and write a paragraph or two about content, bias, and general elements of film.

• What are the differences between farmers and ranchers? 
• What are the differences between family farms and corporate farms?
• Who is Food Inc meant for? How do you know?
• What information is Food Inc trying to convey? How do you know?
• How does the Robert Kenner (filmmaker) want the audience to feel about the topic? How do you know?
• What is the farming system? How has it developed? (Please make it obvious where your answers different from the film)
• What information was left out that should have been included?
• What was the most surprising piece of information? Why?

E2: Fantastic Lit and Speculative Fic Notes

Myth: early peoples attempts to understand the how and the why of the world around them—sacred stories

Folk Tales: oral stories to teach teenagers in the Middle Ages how to live in the world, how society worked and how to get along in life.

Fairy Tales: stories written by the literate for the literate to examine "modern society" and how to best survive in it. Connected to much folklore in that it was meant to help young people navigate a dangerous world

Fantastic Literature: incorporates elements of mythology and fairy tales (archetypes, coded language, rule of threes, the forest) with modern sensibilities and settings; meant to be read in order to provoke a change in perspective

• asks the same questions as mythology
• focuses on how the answers fit into today's world
• the most important question is: what does it mean to be human?
• often pulls ideas (characters and story-lines) from mythology and folklore
• grew out of fairy tales
• uses much of the same imagery, symbolism, and coded language as fairy tales (but with a modern twist)
• tries to make people view the world differently (like it is still full of Mystery and magic)
• how you read the story depends on whether or not you understand the code
• The Forest is anyplace that is new, with new rules, new people, new challenges.
• The fairy tale forest is sometimes the woods, or a small town, or a big city. Any place that is totally out of the main character's comfort zone. Any place where the main character is going to have to learn new rules, new skills, and how to grow up.
• The fairy tale forest (or town or city or school) is where the main character faces his or her shadow [everyone enters the forest, not everyone leaves]

Speculative Fiction (becomes Scifi): At the end of the nineteenth century people tried to figure out what the transition from rural life to urban life meant and how to deal with science as god

• asks the same questions as mythology
• focuses on how changing technology changes the answers
• the most important question is: what does it mean to be human?
• often will put characters (archetypes/tropes) from myth/folklore into hi-tech settings
• don't always seem to be the same characters (you have to search for the connections)
• grew out of the massive technological changes that came during and after the Industrial Revolution
• created its own imagery, symbolism, and coded language (to understand the stories before "the golden age" you had to be smart enough to figure out the code)
• how you read the story depends on whether or not you understand the code
• The Forest is anyplace that is new, with new rules, new people, new challenges.
• The fairy tale forest is space, a space ship, another planet, another plane of existence, etc...

Basic Archetypes: developed by Alfred Adler and Carl Jung using the work of Sigmund Freud

• Hero: Puts the well-being of his people above his own safety and from beginning to end, he learns important skills and changes as a person
• Mentor or Guide: Teaches and protects the hero; Gives the hero magical gifts to help complete the quest; Often tied to nature or religion; could be a failed hero who is trying to help the next generation
• Herald: gives the hero or anti-hero the quest; sends him or her on a journey that includes adventure, self-discovery, finding hidden talents, learning new skills, loneliness, and lots of fighting (is usually the mentor or dispossessed noble)
• Anti-hero: Never overcomes inner demons and is, instead, destroyed by them; can be an outlaw or villain to society, but is sympathetic to the audience; cynical or wounded
• Shapeshifter: Can change form, but usually appears to change from good to evil, mean to kind, friend to lover, etc.
• Gatekeeper: the person or people who guard a gateway or task; Sometimes they are part of the villain’s company or sometimes they can become allies or members of the hero’s group
• Shadow: Represents the hidden qualities (inner demons) of the hero; Represents the suppressed elements of the other characters – things that seem like weaknesses 
• Trickster: Element of chaos, curious to know how and why, practical joker; often causes problems for everyone by accident; Comic relief 
• Catalyst: the person or event that actually causes a change in the world or the life of the hero/anti-hero; can cause new powers or abilities to surface in others (oftentimes is also the trickster; sometimes the villain)

E4: Poster Girl Discussion Questions

Please remember, these questions are designed as starting points for discussions. Pick a few that go together and write a paragraph or two about content, bias, and general elements of film.

• Is there anything you have been planning to do your whole life? How does your image of this thing match Robyn's image of what life in the military would be like? Explain.
• Have you ever been broken/shattered/shocked by an event? How did your response compare to Robyn's?
• Is there anything from Poster Girl (lesson, idea, etc.) that you can connect to your own life? Explain.
• Who is Poster Girl meant for? How do you know?
• What information is Poster Girl trying to convey? How do you know?
• How does the Sara Nesson (filmmaker) want the audience to feel about the topic? How do you know?
• Why this topic? Explain.
• Why this approach? Explain.

E2: Rough Draft Revision Questions (CitR)

1. Read a partner's introduction: 
• What will the paper be about? 
• Do you want to read more about that topic? Why? Why not? 
• Is it at least five sentences long? 
• Does it make sense? 
• Give your partner one way to improve it after answering all the questions.
2. Read a partner's body paragraphs: 
• Does each paragraph have a topic? 
• Does each topic have an example from the book or from the Core? 
• Is each example's importance explained? Do the explanations make sense? 
• Is it at least five sentences long? 
• Does the last sentence wrap it up and prepare the reader for the next paragraph/idea? 
• Give your partner one way to improve each body paragraph after answering all the questions. 
3. Read a partner's introduction and conclusion only: 
• What should be in the body based on those two paragraphs? 
• Do the two paragraphs go together? Why or why not? 
• Does the introduction seem like a beginning? How? 
• Does the conclusion seem like an ending? How? 
• Identify and underline the thesis/claim in each paragraph—are they the same? They shouldn't be. 
• Give your partner one way to improve the introduction and conclusion after answering all the questions

E4: Scifi Essay

Q&D Outline:

1. Write a claim (use my samples for inspiration).
2. Write out the main idea for each body paragraph based on the claim you wrote
3. Come up with two examples from the book to support each main idea 
• Explain how the examples from the book make sense and fit
4. Make a connection (or two) between the book and the modern world 
• Explain how the core examples make sense and fit 

Friday we will be typing the first draft.

Next week we will revise, edit, and type the final draft.

Sample Claims:

• Aldous Huxley's Brave New World explores how people change and adapt to their environment based on genetic manipulation and government control. Huxley compares "modern" people like John from the Reservation to future, happier people like Lenina and Bernard. No one is truly happy in the book; although, they are miserable for different reasons.
• Many people have recently compared the way the NSA monitors computers and cell phones to Big Brother from George Orwell's 1984. These comparisons only work on the surface. The NSA isn't trying to control American citizens behavior or thinking through its data collection unlike Big Brother who was so obsessed with having the loyalty of the people that it would test citizens like Winston Smith, break them, and send them back out into the world to show what it could do.
• People have been fascinated by Mars since Percival Lowell first claimed to have seen canals on the red planet. Ray Bradbury used Mars as the backdrop from several short stories in The Martian Chronicles in order to look at human nature, the American government, and the possibility of nuclear war.
• Ray Bradbury was fascinated and repulsed by the way technology changed over his lifetime and the way people became more reliant and more obsessed by it. He feared that people would lose their creativity and curiousity as they gave over "thinking" to machines. Fahrenheit 451 explores a world and people who fear ideas, who fear differences, and who are taught not to think for themselves.
• Guy Montag, the main character in Fahrenheit 451, is a fireman although the profession is very different from what it is now. Now, firemen are heroes who fight fires and save lives. In Fahrenheit 451, firemen are part policement, part pyromaniacs, and part agents of destruction who hunt for readers, thinkers, and libraries in order to keep people from thinking too much.
• Science fiction and mythology explore the same basic ideas: the rules of the universe, the rules of living with other people, and what it means to be human. In Childhood's End Arthur C. Clarke focuses on what it means to be human; he uses aliens and evolution to talk about how important creativity, curiousity, and love are to the average person.

E2: Catcher in the Rye Outlines & Word Vomit

1. Claim (use one of mine or make your own): this goes at the end of the introduction
2. Three examples from the book with explanations and connections
3. Two core (consensual reality) examples with explanations and connection

Thursday and Friday you will turn your notes in a five-paragraph essay. Remember the class discussion regarding claims, and q&d outlines. At the end of the period Friday, print out whatever you have done (12-pt. font, double-spaced, name) and turn it in.

Possible Claims:

• Mark David Chapman, the mentally ill man who killed John Lennon in 1980, used The Catcher in the Rye as his excuse. He felt mentally ill, without any anchors, and as though he was just a vessel for his actions instead of a person who made choices.
• Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye's protagonist, is obviously suffering from some sort of depression after his brother Allie's death; he is also suffering from anxiety at being separated from his older brother, who is off in Hollywood, and his younger sister, who lives in New York City. Many people today can relate to feelings of depression and anxiety, although the treatments and triggers are different.
• People who suffer from depression and anxiety often view the world a little differently. Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in the Rye, is a good example of how these people perceive the world and people around them—they have a hard time trusting themselves and others. 
• Holden Caulfield was sent off to boarding school after boarding school by his parents, so he could learn the rules of the world. According to The Catcher in the Rye, boarding school rules are: make partnerships, not friends; smarter kids do the work, stronger kids are the muscle; money and family name are more important than actions; find ways to be useful—you are as valuable as what you contribute.

E4: Scifi Novel

Answer each set of questions with a full paragraph. Each question set is due by the end of class; if you were gone and making up a set, turn it in asap.

Tuesday:

• What are the five most important rules of the society you live in? Fully explain with examples.
• What are the five most important rules of the book you are reading? Fully explain with examples

Wednesday:

• What does it mean to be human? Explain with examples.
• How does the government in your book change what it means to be human? Explain with examples.

Thursday: 

• What technologies from your book are similar to common technologies today? Fully explain with examples
• How is technology changing what it means to be human? Fully explain with examples

Friday: 

• What is the best thing about the novel you are reading (character, plot, science, trippiness)? Fully explain with examples
• What is the worst thing about the novel you are reading? Fully explain with examples
• What idea or lesson does the author want you to take away from your book? Fully explain with examples.

E2: Catcher in the Rye Prewriting

This should help you expand your answers. Remember you need at least three questions with paragraph long answers for tomorrow's class.