Today’s Agenda
For the next five-seven minutes, I want you to write about your favorite actor or speaker. What is it that makes them such a good actor or speaker? Do you like them because of the movies or speeches they have given, or is there something particular about the person? Post when you finish, and we will discuss in class.
Today’s Group Assignment:
Get into groups of three and discuss the following: Identify one major actor and talk about the differences between a ROLE that actor has played and the actual PERSON that that actor is. For example, Mel Gibson plays the ROLE of William Wallace, but Mel Gibson is NOT in real life a rebel warrior living in Scotland. Come up with your own example and a list of DIFFERENCES.
Lesson for The Day #1
When you interpret a poem, you can ask any questions you want to ask about the specific details. However, if you focus your questions on SPEAKER, AUDIENCE, and SITUATION, you will almost always come up with some useful questions and answers.
Speaker: Who is speaking?
Audience: Who is the poem speaking to?
Situation: What is going on in the poem?
Speaker:
The speaker is not necessarily the author.
They are not necessarily the same person.
For example, Seth Green is not Peter Griffin from The Family Guy.
Sylvester Stallone is not Rocky Balboa.
These are just characters these actors play.
For example, Emily Dickinson is not the speaker of “I’m nobody, who are you?”
The speaker is a CHARACTER Dickinson has CREATED
Who is it, then? Can we tell by just talking about our experience of the poem?
No. We need to interpret the poem to come up with an answer for that question.
Let’s read the poem
1) What are some specific questions we might have about the speaker? Look for specific details that tell you something about the speaker.
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ect…
Discuss questions.
What are some answers we might come up with for those questions?
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ect…
Notice that you were able to answer SOME of your questions, but not all of them.
This poem is very much on people’s minds, and is begin discussed across the country by students like you right now, in fact.
Here is someone’s interpretation of the poem: I’M NOBODY, WHO ARE YOU?
2) Spend five minutes either writing or posting an answer to this question: Did this interpretation help you understand the poem differently?
Did it help you understand something different about the speaker?
video answer any of the questions you yourself were not able to answer on your own?
2) In your groups, talk about how the interpretation of the speaker in the video is different than your own?
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ect…
Lesson for the Day #2:
Different people will come up with different interpretations, which is fine as long as they can find a way to justify their interpretations.
Let’s consider another poem: Edward Arlington Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy
Let’s Read the poem
3) What are the specific details that tell us something about the speaker?
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ect…
What are some questions we might come up with?
Which questions are we unable to answer right now?
5) How is this interpretation of the speaker different than yours?
Optional Lecture Videos (watch if you want a refresher)
Video One
Video Two
Video Three
Video Four
Video Five
Homework:
Your homework is to write a one page interpretation of the SPEAKER in either I’M NOBODY, WHO ARE YOU?, MINIVER CHEEVY, or I HEAR AMERICA SINGING. Remember, to write this paper you will need to FOCUS on specific details that RELATE to the speaker. You can choose to either hand this paper in to me in class, or you can POST it direclty to this webpage. Also, please remember to bring your laptop to class if you have one. It can help you keep track of the writing we are doing this semester.
Refresher
[...] Tuesday, September 9 [...]
Pingback by Your Syllabus « Approaches to Literature, Fall 2008 — August 13, 2008 @ 1:15 pm |
My favorite actor is Mel Gibson. The roles that he portrays demand high levels of charisma and Gibson shows his superior acting ability by how convincing he is. Whenever Gibson speaks, you know that he is going to say something important and he grabs your attention and doesn’t let go until he is done. He makes other actors/actresses seem better because of his ability to also play a supporting role in a film.
Comment by Gabe Cheney — September 9, 2008 @ 4:38 pm |
My favorite actor is actually a country singer as well, it is Reba Macentier (spelling). She is my favorite actor becuase the ways she develivers herself is very realistic. She is loud, funny, and seems like herself and not jsut the character she is playing. I like her not only for her acting, but i also like her for her music, she is a very talented singer that has many great songs that i adore. The show that i see her most on is actually a show called ‘Reba’ that is featured at night on lifetime. She has an upbeat personality in the show and her acting keeps you engaged and wanting more.
Comment by Jen Campbell — September 9, 2008 @ 4:39 pm |
My favorite actor is Heath Ledger. He played the lead role in one of my favorite movies, A Knights Tale. I like Heath in that movie because of the character he plays. Heath plays a squire turned knight that is motivated, funny, and daring. Recently Heath played the role of the joker in the new Batman movie. Heath’s performance as the joker was outstanding. He really got into the role, and did a good job of scaring me at the theatre. Its amazing that he can play both very different roles so well, a young squire in A Knights Tale, and a psycho villain in Batman. His performance in both films shows how dedicated, talented, and diverse of an actor he is, and why he is my favorite.
Comment by Jana Craig — September 9, 2008 @ 7:08 pm |
The speaker in “I Hear America Singing” seems like an ordinary person who is just comparing all the different types of people and saying their occupations. I picture the speaker just taking a walk while writing thi poem. I don’t really know what the point of this poem is, but when I read it, it really doesn’t seem to have any meaning except all the men and women and their jobs singing. In another way, one could interpret the speaker as maybe saying this poem in a patriotic way.
Comment by Leah Narbus — September 10, 2008 @ 9:06 pm |
The speaker in the poem ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’ is a character who in a way doesn’t want to be known. They want to be unseen. The speaker doesn’t want to me revealed because once her or she is, there name will be known to the public. If they were known to the public then they would, in a way, be a ‘somebody’. A ‘somebody’ as we talked about was someone who could be well known and liked, thus if they are revealed then more people will have knowledge of the speaker. The speaker in this poem could possibly be a person who might have been a ‘somebody’ as a child then drifted away from the crowd in order to lead a life of a ‘nobody’ and now is wanting to be a part of the ‘somebody’ events, just not the status of them. The speaker doesn’t want their name to stay around for years and years such as famous actors and actresses do when they pass on, he or she wants to be remembered by those who knew her as a ‘nobody’. A good saying for this is “The only people we need in our lives are the ones who need us in theirs”. So she wants the people to like her for who she is and not a ‘somebody’. When I think of this interpretation I think of the TV show, Hannah Montana. She is a teenage pop start that wants to live a normal life so when she goes on stage she wears a wig and has a different name on stage, then she does when she goes to school and goes about the town. She is hiding herself from the ‘somebody’s’ so she can be a ‘nobody’.
Comment by Jen Campbell — September 11, 2008 @ 12:22 pm |
The speaker in the poem “I’m Nobody! who are you” is a person who dosnt want others to know who they are. They want to remain undercover or dosnt want the public to know thier real idenity. The person is nobody becasue the public dosnt know who they are but if the public were to know then they would be a somebody. The speaker is not known to be a male or female. They could have been a somebody at one time but drifted from that and wants to remain a nobody. A couple lines in this poem lead me to beleive that the speaker believes that they dont need a lot of people in thier life and only want the ones who need them in thiers. The speaker dosnt need all the attention that others need and i think that makes her a stronger person.
Comment by megan clement — September 11, 2008 @ 2:30 pm |
The Speaker of the poem “I Hear America Singing” seems as if they may be an individual who is new to the country and is admiring the different sounds of America. I feel it may be someone new because the everyday American doesnt seem as if they would notice the “noise” of our everyday lives. The speaker seems to be traveling through the country and really listening to the sounds and work that goes into these jobs and really admiring them. To turn the daily sound that Americans are used to into music, it really seems as if it would need to come from new ears who does not experience this on a regular basis. The speaker seems as if they really admire and apprecieate the the work that these people do to go as far as to call the labor music.
Comment by Selina Staples — September 11, 2008 @ 3:49 pm |
The speaker in the poem “I Hear America Singing,” he seems like a a regular person in this world that we all live in just writing a poem while taking a walk around town or so and as he is doing this looking around at all the different jobs that people have and do. Im not really sure what the meaning of this is suppose to be but the men and woman are doing their jobs either while singing or maybe the speaker thinks or hears in his head something that he wants to hear.
Comment by Tammie Arsenault — September 11, 2008 @ 4:13 pm |
In the poem I hear America singing I think that the author is taking on and immigrant’s point of view. I think the poem is what the person is seeing when he coming off Elis Island. I can just picture the families getting off the boat and seeing this new world at their finger tips. The boatman working to get the boat ready for the long trip back and the deck hands running around the peer trying to get the cargo loaded before the boat has to set sail again. Than as the family walks off the peer they see the rest of the work force doing their daily jobs.
As the author says “the carpenter sings his song as he cuts the plank or beam” (I hear America singing by Walt Whitman). But I can picture the tussle or the morning commute in the city all the working class man and women trying to get to work on time and the upper class people are going out for breakfast and whatever they do be for their work day starts. Then as they move off the street and get to where they are staying they see a young wife doing house work and the noise of the children running around and playing in the streets.
Comment by Michael Austin — September 11, 2008 @ 5:01 pm |