AP Language & Comp. Outside Read Assignment
As you read your novel question the text… Continue to focus using the critical lens you chose. The relevance of the author’s message will evolve as you continue to focus on the answers to the questions. Once you finish the novel you should be able to answer the questions completely and support your answers from the text. Take a look at the answers and write up a critical review of the author’s position on the topic- Feminism, Marxism, Psychoanalysis (Resolving fixation), Psychoanalysis (Hero’s Journey)
The following should be included in the final turn in:
*Complete an author study (1 page max)
*Answer 5 questions (your choice) under your literary lens’ category.
*An essay that examines the author’s position on the chosen literary lens.
*Include the questions/ answers you asked as you were reading- pre write
Psychoanalytic Lens (resolving fixations/ personal conflict)
1. How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?
2. Are there any oedipal dynamics- or any other family dynamics- at work here?
3. How can characters’ behavior, narrative events, and or images be explained
in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example… fear or
fascination with death, sexuality- which includes love and romance as well
as sexual behavior-as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the
operation ego-id- superego)?
4. What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
5. What might a given interpretation of a literary suggest about the
psychological motives of the reader?
6. Identify prominent words/ images in the piece that could have different or
hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author
using these “problem words/ images”?
Psychoanalytic Lens (hero’s journey)
1. How is the individual called to action/ to change/ to fix something?
2. Is there a spiritual guide?
3. How can characters’ behavior, narrative events, and or images be explained
in terms of a psychological quest (for example… overcoming obstacles/
fear , transitioning from a unknown to known, archetypal symbols-
seasons, colors, fire, water, lightness, darkness)?
4. What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
5. What might a given interpretation of a literary suggest about the
psychological motives of the reader?
6. Identify prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden
meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using
these “problem words”?
Feminist Lens
Like other ideological readers, feminists focus on gender representations of all kinds, particularly, but not always, representations of women
1. How are the relationships between men and women portrayed?
2. How are male and female roles defined?
3. What constitutes masculinity and femininity? How do characters embody
these traits?
4. Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this
change others’ reactions to them?
5. What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically,
socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
6. What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?
7. What does the work say about women's creativity?
8.What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary
tradition?
Marxist Lens
Every text reveals something about economic forces
and social hierarchies, about individual struggles and larger class interests.
1. Does the work raise fundamental criticism about the emptiness of life in
bourgeois or middle-class society? How is meaning to life restored?
2. What are life's conflicting forces? What threatens order? What restores
order?
3. Are characters from all social levels equally sketched? What values,
attributes, qualities, attitudes are associated with these social levels? Who
do the reader identify or sympathize with?
4. Is there a class of virtuous people? What makes them "virtuous"?
5. Which values bring about positive social change? What is valued most?
Sacrifice? Assent? Resistance?
6. What social class is the author affiliated with? How does his or her social
class influence the representation of the characters? i.e. Is the author
empowered or disenfranchised? Does the author express any desire to
Move into another social class or is he or she critical of the social "elite"?
7. Who has the power to govern and what is that power based on?
Plan A- December 18, 2009
Plan B- January 8, 2010
Plan C- January 15, 2010
Your paper must be turned in at the beginning of your class period of your chosen due date option to be evaluated on the plan you choose. Late papers will be knocked down to the next plan, no exceptions!!