ENG 4UI  April 8th

Now that you know how to use your "chalkboard," you can use this wiki to your advantage for the ISU process.

The next step is to narrow down your ISU essay topic. 

To help you to figure out what to write about, ask yourself:  what did the novel mean to me?  You will remember, no doubt, from the handout in the first week of class, that what we're trying to do when we analyse literature is to figure out how it affects us:  what it means to us, and how it achieves that meaning.  Take a look at the handout (called "the Meaning of Literature") just on the off chance that you don't remember it fully. 

What does your novel "mean" to you?  Remember the five questions on the handout that will help you to figure out what the novel means to you:

1.       What aspects of the story, the characters, the writing,  had the greatest impact on me?

2.       What did the author or a character seem to be saying?  How did they say it?  (or what did they make me think that seemed new to me?  How did they make me think it?)

3.       How did other aspects of the work support or contribute  to my response? (think devices here -- symbolism, imagery, metaphor, writing;  think also about things about the work that surprised, shocked, moved you -- love, violence, grief, fate...)

4.       How did these particular aspects help create the work's total effect?

5.       Did anything that I found out later about the work or its author change my feelings about it? 

(source:  adapted from Ray Saitz's website www.outtarayshead.com)

Please post your answers to those questions on your page.  (don't post answers as "comments" -- instead, go to your page, click edit, write your answers then click save)

DUE DATE:  Tuesday  (but the sooner the better)

Ms. B