Monday's Slideshow

Please remember to have your homework complete for Tuesday/Wednesday. Information is available in the previous post.

We finished the Battle activity today and learned some important lessons:

1. Sometimes the "how" effects of different devices are similar. For example, both the "helmet and rifle" metonymy and the "sank like moles" simile have a dehumanizing effect. When this happens, it's fun to make these connections in our essays. Sometimes however, a "how" idea may not connect to any others. That's okay too. The main thing is to have as many how ideas as possible.

2. We also learned that because the evidence we use to form our "why" interpretation statements is the same for everyone, our interp statements are similar to others'. For example, both your classes and last year's classes developed similar interp "chains" for the Battle. The poem focuses on:

- dehumanization of soldiers
- depersonalization of soldiers
- physical and mental horrors of war
- lack of control for the soldiers
- failing hope and optimism

This helps us realize that poetry is actually a lot less subjective than we might think if we approach it as poetry scientists gathering data and constructing hypotheses based on our findings.

3. To encourage us to be brave and try to share all of our ideas, we also watched this motivational slide show on "speculative language." You may want to try some of these out on your interpretation practice homework.