Honors 4: 2015 Summer Assignments

• Rationale
• I need to know how you think, collect information, and write. This assignment will give me a feel for all of those things. It will also help me know which areas need to be addressed to help you do the best you can on the Personal Research Project (which can be used in the WR121 portfolio).
• Pre-reading Information
• 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. To truly understand these stories, the reader/listener must know the coded language of the stories. 
• Restoration Tales: the dispossessed noble has trials, adventures, and with help gets a better situation
• Rise Tales: the poor rises to greatness through trials, adventures, and rescue/ing
• Actual Fae (Tuatha): beings from a dimension next to ours where time and reality run differently
• The Rule of Threes 
• Three trials, three people, three chances to change 
• Each seemingly needy person or animal has the potential to help later on down the line 
• There are always three obstacles to overcome or three tries at the big obstacle (sometimes both) 
• The Forest 
• Where chaos reigns 
• Where the jaded warrior becomes the green man 
• Where people see the self through the mirror of nature 
• Everyone enters the forest, not everyone exits 
• No one comes out of the forest the same 
• Symbolism 
• The  language of fairy tales is metaphor to lead to misdirection 
• Don’t eat or drink when taken out of the world, it’ll get you stuck where you don’t want to be 
• Old people have power, be nice to them. 
• Poor people might be rich, be nice to them 
• The Metamorphosis (1915)
• Read the book and determine if it fits the definition of a fairy tale using the information above and any information you can gather from other sources (keep those sources close).
• It might be helpful to find out a little about Franz Kafka.
• The Essay
• The Questions: Is The Metamorphosis a fairy tale? OR How does Kafka’s life feed into the characterization and themes in The Metamorphosis?
• The essay must have two quotes (cited) and two paraphrases (cited). It must include direct references to The Metamorphosis and to two articles the student finds to support his or her thesis.
• Minimum of four well-written paragraphs with a bibliography for sources used in the essay.
• The articles and the essay (with a bibliography) must be emailed to mthouvenel@pendletonsd.org by August 20, 2015 (for any student who is registered for Honors 4 before July 1, 2015) or by August 27, 2015 (for any student who is registered for Honors 4 after July 1, 2015).
• Failure to complete the assignment or a failure to turn in original work will result in the student being removed from Honors 4. Please feel free to contact me at the above email address or to check my school blog (phs242.blogspot.com) for information or help.