Spring Break Reading

Please finish your reading of Wuthering Heights over break.

People absent on Thursday will also need to outline one of the following prompts on WH over break. Additionally, you will need to ask about the introduction activity when you return.

Prompts to choose from:


In retrospect, the reader often discovers that the first chapter of a novel or the opening scene of a drama introduces some of the major themes of the work. Write an essay about the opening scene of a drama or the first chapter of a novel in which you explain how it functions in this way.


Choose an implausible or strikingly unrealistic incident or character in a work of fiction or drama of recognized literary merit. Write an essay that explains how the incident or character is related to the more realistic of plausible elements in the rest of the work. Avoid plot summary.

“You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you.” —Sonsyrea Tate
Sonsyrea Tate’s statement suggests that “home” may be conceived of as a dwelling, a place, or a state of mind. It
may have positive or negative associations, but in either case, it may have a considerable influence on an individual. Choose a novel or play in which a central character leaves home yet finds that home remains significant. Write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the importance of “home” to this character and the reasons for its continuing influence. Explain how the character’s idea of home illuminates the larger meaning of the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.


Many plays and novels use contrasting places (for example, two countries, two cities or towns, two houses, or the land and the sea) to represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of the work. Choose a novel or play that contrasts two such places. Write an essay explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their contrast contributes to the meaning of the work.


In his essay "Walking," Henry David Thoreau offers the following assessment of literature:
In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and The Iliad, in all scriptures and mythologies, not learned in schools, that delights us.
From the works that you have studied in school, choose a novel, play, or epic poem that you may initially have thought was conventional and tame but that you now value for its "uncivilized free and wild thinking." Write an essay in which you explain what constitutes its "uncivilized free and wild thinking" and how that thinking is central to the value of the work as a whole. Support your ideas with specific references to the work you choose.


In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a major soical or political factor. Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which acts of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay analyzing how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what the cruelty reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim.





Outline guide:

1. Number off the Prompt
2. Brainstorm Plot References that you would use in the discussion of your prompt (the more the merrier)
3. Write some interesting insights, ironies, parallels, etc. into your prompt topic or plot references.
4. Write a causal connection statement between your prompt topic and the MOWAAW. For this activity you can write the word MOWAAW or speculate on a WH MOWAAW.

Due Thursday

Please read Wuthering Heights through Chapter 20 for Thursday.

WH Focus Topics

Choose a focus topic (or more than one if you are inclined) and gather as many plot references for your focus topic as you can while you are doing your reading. Although you are not responsible for other focus topics, feel free to take note of other topics if you are so inclined. Once you have written down a plot reference, take a moment to engage in the analysis cycle about it: What is interesting, inferential, ironic, etc. about this reference? How is it helping to develop thematic or MOWAAW ideas? Jot these ideas down along with your plot references.

Focus Topics:

Animals (dogs!)
Interior setting descriptions
Exterior setting descriptions
Physical violence
Emotional violence
Explicit or implied social expectations
Female gender role expectations
Male gender role expectations
Defiance of social or gender expectations
Physical character descriptions
Character parallels
Character foils
Irony: dramatic or situational
Object symbolism
Self harm

Weekend Homework and Wuthering Heights

For Monday we will be doing a study of four 19th century prose passages to get us ready for Wuthering Heights. Please print this packet that you will use for marking the text. I'm sorry that it is so long! If you need to conserve paper, please change to a smaller font before printing. If you can't print, please read the passages online and do the assignment as best you can on a separate sheet of paper.

1. Read all passages and mark the text writing down insights into character, inferences, identifying quotations, or anything that would help you develop a complex response to the prompt.

2. Re-read the passage that you are to become an expert on. (Listed by alpha below). Expect that you will be asked to make a comment about your focus passage in class, so make sure you have extra fancy insights for this one.

3. Be prepared to turn your all 4 marked texts in for points.

Period 2:

Ad-El: Passage 1
Fa-Ki: Passage 2
Le-Og: Passage 3
Pe-Zh: Passage 4

Period 3:

Ar-He: Passage 1
Ji-Ma: Passage 2
No-Se: Passage 3
Sh-Wo: Passage 4

Wuthering Heights:

We will be discussion chapters 1-8 of Wuthering Heights on Tuesday. Please feel free to get started on you reading over the weekend. If you do not have a copy of the text, an online version is available here. (and is probably free or cheap through iBooks or Kindle)

Drama Test Study Guide

Not the best study guide ever, but something to get you started with.