Blog 27 - May 4th, 2020 - Thomas Sfraga - Period 9
Thomas Sfraga
Blog 27
Period 9
May 4th, 2020
Sophomores 2020
Aim: How do George Orwell's themes of literary protest transcend time?
Do Now: THINK/PAIR/SHARE
- Elitism is leadership by a socially superior minority group. In what ways is elitism fostered among the pigs of Animal Farm?
To start off today’s class we were given the question of “In what ways is elitism fostered among the pigs of Animal Farm? To the class it was quite unanimously said that the pigs had life best on the farm and that they used their authority on the farm in order to obtain food without really doing much for it. The pigs were given better food than the other animals (milk and apples) and were given more privileges and were dealt with in an extremely lenient manner when it came to rules.
- Is there evidence that Elitism still exists in our society? If so, how?
Our second starter question addressed the evidence of Elitism existing in our society today. Our class decided that Elitism is common in our society today with many advantages given to the wealthier while the large middle class is not able to live that lifestyle. We came up with a few examples of this which were larger houses, fancier clothes, and better education. What was interesting about the correlation between Elitism in AF and in our real world is that both the Pigs and the Wealthy do not have to work as hard yet receive more.
Lesson:
After completing the Do now a moral dilemma situation was presented to the class:
The response to this situation was definitely similar class wide. Many of the responses either included checking on the student who was being bullied or standing up to the bully to tell them that what they did wasn’t right.
On the next slide, we discussed the work of Richard Wright who was an American author who mostly wrote literature concerning the “plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, who suffered discrimination and violence in the South and the North.”
Following this slide was one in which we conducted a whole class discussion on the George Wright quote “All literature is protest. You can't name a single novel that isn't protest.”. Once again the class was mostly in agreement in terms of their ideas. An interesting point was made by Russell Koshkin who said that the ideas presented within a work of literature are bound to sit wrong with someone. It’s not that the ideas were presented with the intent of igniting protest; it is the pure fact that it’s nearly impossible to please everyone in literature.
After this we were faced with Group work
- What themes are elicited from George Orwell’s Animal Farm?
Our class decided that some prominent themes elicited from Animal Farm are: absolute power corrupts government, ignorance can be detrimental, and propaganda can be used to manipulate others.
- Watch the two videos posted from the syllabus about “Thorny Situations.”
After watching these two videos we moved onto a different presentation that addressed Satire and Theme within AF.
Blog Content:
Working from home in quarantine is very odd, however it is working and that’s what is most important. All of our teachers are able to easily converse with us over platforms such as google meets and naviance. I feel like through this it is evident to see that we are as a community and even as a world closer than we all think. During this time everyone feels the same importance of coming together and defeating this virus so that we can go back to “normal life”. Hopefully this unity will continue into the future. Currently, the curve continues to flatten however over the past few days it has stagnated which can be concerning. I personally feel as if this virus has given us a lot of bad, yet a lot of good. For the first time the skies in China are clear, certain exotic species are reappearing worldwide, and we as a world have come together in this unannounced unity of nations and people that is great to see.
Reflection:
What Did I Learn?
In today's lesson I learned about some of the prominent themes within Animal farm and the real life importance that they have. An extremely notable theme within AF is that absolute power leads to corruption.
Why Did I Learn It?
The reason for learning these themes is to make sure that it does not happen in our world, and if it does we stop it before the worst can get to us. I feel like learning the themes at the end was a good wrapup to the novel and really allowed us to understand why Orwell Wrote this novel.
How will I use what I learned?
As previously mentioned we don’t want what happened in AF to happen to the real world. And with that said I feel that in order to use what I learned today I will look out for warning signs that something like this could happen and alert as many as possible in order to stop the movement in its tracks.
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