Adolescent Fiction: Kevin's Identity

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Kevin's Identity

Shakespeare Bats Clean Up

To be or not to be that is the question

No more ball what am I supposed to do

Baseball is everything, an obsession

Sit here NO poetry is my breakthrough

I can’t believe she is gone, please come back

Stay focused man girls are the enemy

I wish I could give dad a fast jetpack

Shakespeare I am that is my identity

Cleared my mind time to show its time to go

I’m up, watch out I am batting again!

Sorry Mira it’s time for the big show

Friends are cheering; they have my back, amen!

Thanks to you poetry I overcame!

Shakespeare is my name, baseball is my game.

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Post #9 Shakespeare Bats Cleanup (due MONDAY, 4/30 by class time)

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup explores a number of themes, among them grief, identity, coming of age (Bildungsroman), friendship, love, and others. Kevin, our adolescent narrator, shares his story with us as a poetic narrative which includes poems written in conventional forms and free-form poems. Choose one theme which the book develops, and show its development through the text. As you do so, be sure to consider and articulate how the book's structure (as poems) affects whatever theme you discuss.

Post #7 Warriors Don't Cry (due Sunday 4/15 by 8 pm)

Choices for responses:

1. The title of this text refers to warriors. How are the characters warriors? Are you comfortable with that depiction? Why or why not? Be sure to offer specific description as you explore characterization.

2. While it could certainly be argued that the author of our last novel does place himself in the text, that book is fiction. This text is not; rather, it's a memoir. How does knowing that the book is non-fiction shape your reading of it? Does it cause you to respond differently? If so, how? If not, why not? Consider characters, events, and the historical context carefully as you respond.

Post #6 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (due Sunday, 3/25 by 8 pm)

Post #5 Annie on My Mind (part 2) due Sun 3/11 by 8 pm

You have several different options for your response:

1. How is social transgression framed and treated in the novel? Do you as a reader find that the characters are affirmed or punished for stepping outside of social conventions?

2. We've talked a bit about parallel spaces in texts, spaces in which characters encounter very different experiences. After reading this novel, can we argue that those parallel spaces never intersect? What function might those separate (or not so separate) spaces serve?

3. The story is written in the epistolary (letter writing) tradition. How does that framing affect your reading? Your interaction with characters? Your response?

Post #3 Due by Monday's class (2/20)

For this post, you have three options:

1. Respond to some theme you identify in the novel. Be sure that you make a claim and support it using specific examples from the book.

2. Apply the article's claims to the novel. Be sure that you make a claim and support it using specific examples from the article and the book.

3. Examine the novel as science fiction. How is it both utopic and dystopic in its function? What might it be warning us as a society against? Be sure that you make a claim and support it using specific examples from the text.

Post #1 Due by Thursday's class (1/26)

Ellen Raskin's novel The Westing Game is a detective novel, yes, but we can tease out many themes as we examine the text. A few we introduced and explored briefly in class today:

the Cinderella effect

the roles of women

identity construction

gaming and strategy

trust (as it relates to other themes or on its own)

oppressive/repressive (think Trites) parents

Choose from a theme on this list or choose a theme you've noted in the text, and write about the way the theme is introduced and developed through the novel. As you show how the theme works throughout the book, be sure to offer specific examples to support your ideas.