Aim: How does Kurt Vonnugut Jr.s’ background and choice of literary devices provide greater insight and clarity to his work, “Harrison Bergeron”? (Day 2)
Do Now: Now that you’ve been introduced to Harrison Bergeron, with your teams create a possible alternative ending to the story.
Passage Link: HB short story [1-10].docx - Google Docs
The possible alternative ending my group came up with was how Harrison Bergeron could take off his restraints and revolt against the government, as everyone else would be under restraints since others are still trying to be “equal”. Sooner or later, due to his escape, society will soon turn back into the dark ages where everyone would have to be competitive again.
Class Discussion:
Alternative endings other teams came up with was how when Harrison got into the broadcasting room, where he is able to spread messages and cause a revolution. Another could be that he is caught and is then killed five minutes later.
Theme:
A central message, concern, or insight into life expressed through a literary work.
Can be expressed by one or two sentence statements about human beings or about life.
May be stated directly or implied.
Interpretation uncovers the theme.
Dialect:
The spoken language used by a large group of people. It is the way in which language or words are spoken on a religious, age, geographic location, gender and economic level.
Conflict: a struggle between two opposing forces.
Reminder: There are two main kinds of conflict in a story, internal and external.
Internal Conflict:
A struggle that takes place in a character's mind is called internal conflict. For example, a character may have to decide between right and wrong or between two solutions to a problem. Sometimes, a character must deal with his or her own mixed feelings or emotions.
An example can be Character vs. Self
External Conflict:
A struggle between a character and an outside force is an external conflict. Characters may face several types of outside forces. The outside force may be another character. It may be the community. The outside force may also be forces of nature. For example, a story might have the main character struggling against the arctic cold.
Some examples can include: Character vs. Character (Harry Potter vs. Voldemort), Character vs. Nature (Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz), Character vs. Society (Shrek from Shrek).
Team Challenge: Is it internal or external?
The class then has to discuss among their teams and decide whether the video shows an internal or external conflict and then share with the class.
Video Links:
The Ruby Slippers - The Wizard of Oz Movie CLIP (1939) HD - Copy.mp4 - Google Drive
The Day After Tomorrow Movie Clip New York Storm Surge.mp4 - Google Drive
After the teams discussed among themselves, we all concluded that it was an external conflict for the Wizard of Oz clip. The external conflict here was a character vs. character. This is because the Witch of the East wants to take the ruby slippers away from Dorothy for herself.
During the Day After Tomorrow clip, we concluded it was external conflict as it was character vs. nature. This is because in the clip, you can see that the character is running away from the tsunami.
In the Alice in Wonderland clip we concluded that it was internal conflict where it was character vs. self. This is because in the clip, Alice was contemplating whether she should drink the potion or not, showing that she is thinking about her decision.
Unfortunately, we were not able to finish watching the last clip and discuss whether it was an internal or external conflict.
Reflection:
What did I learn?
In today’s lesson, I learned about themes, dialects, and conflicts. I learned that the theme was the message or main point of the story that the reader is trying to find out. I also learned that dialect is the way someone speaks, like the use of vocabularies. One example can be the way some people say different words, like y'all. Throughout the lesson, I also learned about conflicts, especially internal and external conflicts. We were given a team challenge to apprehend our knowledge on these types of conflicts, as whether it was an internal conflict(Character vs. Self), or an external conflict(Character vs. Character, Character vs. society, and Character vs. nature).
Why did I learn it?
I learned these in order for us readers to fully understand a story, as themes, dialects and conflicts are essential to the story. Furthermore, learning about conflicts allows me to distinguish whether a conflict is an internal or external conflict. For example, you can distinguish an internal or external conflict very easily, as an internal conflict usually involves the character itself, and some examples could be their decision or thoughts. Some examples of external conflicts could be a conflict with another character, society or even nature itself.
How will I use what I learned?
I will use what I learned while reading stories, interpreting texts and even in real life situations. The skills to distinguish internal and external conflict is a very useful skill as it allows the person to easily distinguish the conflict. Furthermore, I will also use the skills of understanding theme and dialect to better my understanding of the text, as different and unusual use of vocabularies can easily mess a reader up, just as a confusing theme can be quite problematic too.
No comments:
Post a Comment