Journals

Your journal is one place I get to have a good in-depth "conversation" with you about the issues and ideas that come up in class and in the readings. It's not a private diary; I give you assigned topics to write about. But you have freedom of expression when you write, and no worry that you will be graded on the form, spelling, or grammar of what you write. I am interested in what you think and what you have to say, always. The school day is a busy one, though, so the journal is the one place we'll both always have time to "listen" to each other.

I take your journal very seriously, and spend a lot of time on it--as you will discover. It's my favorite thing to grade, and it will become your favorite thing that I grade.

Journal Rules:

A journal response is complete if you write more than half of one page.
If you are absent when a journal is due, you should hand in the completed journal the day you return to class, or it will be late. You can always get the latest topic here online.
Once your journal is late, I'd rather good writing than quick writing. Late journals should be handed in as soon as possible, but with no deadline except the end of the quarter and that I want good, thoughtful writing; once it's late, it's late, one day or one week.
Late journal responses count only for half credit.
If you handed in your journal on time, and a topic comes back to you with an "incomplete" written on it, you don't have any credit for that journal...yet. You can add to or re-write that topic. If you write more than half a page, it will be given a check that counts as late.
DO express yourself in the way you want to. If you draw a picture, make a chart, or write a poem in response to my assignment, I'll find a way to count that in the "half page" requirement.
Except for Journal #1 and the final topic of the year, one of your topic choices is always to write whatever you want to write. You are not restricted to the topic(s) I give you, even though most people will write on the given topic.

The Topics (This list grows as the year goes on.)

#1: Introduce Yourself
You may remember, if you had me as a teacher in an earlier grade, my original first journal topic. It's the place to more formally introduce yourself to me. Tell me about your…

PAST: Your family, where you were born, where you've been, etc.
PRESENT: Describe yourself. What kind of person are you? What things do you like? What things do you dislike?
FUTURE: What are your plans for the future? Career plans? What would you like your life to be like in 10-15 years?

If you think you'll just be repeating yourself here, you can go ahead and write the alternative Journal #1: Tell me how you're different and how you're the same since the last time you were in my class. What's new? What will never change?

#2: Brave New World--Genetic Screening
At the moment, many diseases and conditions can be--and are--screened for genetically, before a baby is even born. Many more things will perhaps be able to be screened for in the future. Just a partial list: Huntington's Disease, many kinds of birth defects, skin color, hair color, Down Syndrome, homosexual tendencies, alcoholic tendencies, height, disposition to being obese, intelligence and intellectual capacity, a tendency to violence... (For some ideas about the issue, visit this page of chart-formatted issues developed by Jennifer Yadlowski; this short page on the issue, from the Berkeley Lab; or a slightly more technical overview here from David Devore at the Woodrow Wilson Biology Institute. Also of interest is the How Stuff Works article called, "How Designer Children Will Work".) The journal questions are: Do you believe such testing should be forbidden, mandatory, optional, or just what, for pregnant women and their partners? And: What are the implications for society of such screening? In other words, what aspects of society would change if such testing were accurate and widely available?

#3: Brave New World--The Future
You've read George Orwell's vision of a possible future, with governments keeping power using fear, intimidation, intrusion, mind control, and torture to keep citizens ignorant and devoted. You're reading Aldous Huxley's vision of a possible future, with governments adapting the techniques of genetics, assembly lines, drugs, and pleasure to create citizens who are in their own way just as ignorant and devoted. Now it's your turn. Imagine life 100 years in the future...200 years...600 years. What would your dystopian warning be? What might--or could--or probably will go wrong with government, society, technology, the environment, war, the economy, entertainment, etc.? Please assume that humans do survive in some form, so you can write about human society, and you're not just writing about a post-nuclear world of insects and mutated grass. Write your journal in essay form, or as a piece of fiction.

Journal #4 is to return your progress report, signed by your parent.

#5: First thoughts related to Things Fall Apart:

Freewrite on the topic of PRIDE. Pride has both a positive and a negative side; discuss both.
Freewrite on the topic of OBEDIENCE. Obedience has both a positive and a negative side; discuss both.
Freewrite on the topic of REVENGE. Revenge has both a positive and a negative side; discuss both.

#6: Oedipus topic choices:

Think of all the ways real people in the real world claim to tell the future: cards, dreams, a "flash" of a feeling that something is going to happen, horoscopes, etc. Do you believe in any of them? Have any of them ever happened to you, and come true?
The Greeks in their writings seem to believe quite a lot in omens and signs. When you go through a normal day, or when you're facing a decision or major point in life, do you ever see "signs" that you should do one thing or another? Do you ever look for a sign of what you should do? Do such signs exist, and are they useful, or do we just make them up in our own heads?

#7: A Bunch of Oedipus Choices:

How important to you is your "family reputation"? In other words, do the actions of other people in your family reflect on you? And do your actions reflect on the other people in your family because you are in the same family? If your ancestors did something especially great or especially horrible in the past, does this have any effect on the way you think about yourself or your family?
Which do you believe in: Fate or in free will? This is a big question in the play, as it is in life. Are events in life determined somehow ahead of time? Is your future wife or husband out there waiting to be discovered? Are your future career and life out in your future somewhere, just waiting to be lived out by you? Does God know what's going to happen in the future? If you could see into the future…would it be there? OR Is the future just one big blank? Will you determine what's going to happen, through the choices you will make in life?
How just or fair is the world we live in? How often are the bad punished, and the good rewarded? Can you think of examples to support your point of view?
Write a parody of the Oedipus story. You can include predictions, blindness, incest, suicide, whatever you want. You're gently poking fun of the story, the situation, and the characters.
People in Greek tragedies sometimes make huge, gigantic mistakes, and then commit suicide or poke their eyes out or some other self-inflicted death or suffering. In real life, is there any mistake or situation so bad that death is better? I think not. What do you think?
Sigmund Freud's famous "Oedipal Complex" is described in his Interpretation of Dreams: "The dream of having sexual intercourse with one's mother was as common then as it is today with many people, who tell it with indignation and astonishment. As may well be imagined, it is the key to the tragedy and the complement to the dream of the death of the father. The Oedipus fable is the reaction of fantasy to these two typical dreams, and just as such a dream, when occurring to an adult, is experienced with feelings of aversion, so the content of the fable must include terror and self-chastisement." [He is speaking about young males; maybe young females feel the opposite?] Is Freud just a crazy crackpot, or is there any truth to this idea?

#8: Some choices related to the writings of Edgar Allan Poe:

For a challenge, write a pastiche of Poe--a paragraph or so in the style of Poe, trying to be as accurate as possible to his style, tone, vocabulary, subject matter, and atmosphere. Kind of like the first--or some random--paragraph of a long-lost, newly-discovered, Poe story.
Hypnotism features in a couple of the stories you're reading--and (possibly; it's hard to tell) in the performances of modern illusionists like David Blaine and Criss Angel. Click here to read the Wikipedia entry on hypnotism. What do you think? Is there any reality in hypnotism, or is it all just fakery?
Here's an easy question for you: What happens to you after you die?

Journal #9 was to hand in a signed progress report for the second quarter.

#10: These topics are all related to Blood Wedding and other works we'll read this quarter:

What is love?
What is love worth? How important is it?
How is love related to sex? How is it related to marriage?
What is the relationship of sex to sin?

#11: Heat & Dust, preconceived notions, Orientalism:
When you hear some words that apply to groups of people--Black, Muslim, Japanese, Indian, British, African, Christian, Venezuelan, Jewish--it's hard not to have some picture jump into your mind. The news media, television shows and movies, personal experiences, our parents, all have put images and ideas in our heads, whether we want them or not. Even the mention of a country you may never have been to--India is a perfect example--can conjure all kinds of things. For this journal entry, tell me what you think of, or imagine, or have heard stereotypes about, or you believe, about these things: India, the people of India, England, the people of England, Hindus, Christians.

Journal #12 is to hand in a signed progress report.

#13: Pick one or both of these topics related to Heat & Dust:

An important incident in the novel involves the narrator's sudden concern for a beggar on the street. When you see a beggar on the street, what's your reaction? Do you give money or food? Is it better not to give money (some people say, "They'll only spend it on alcohol or drugs," for example, or that it encourages laziness to give someone money)? Is it better to give money (because it's nice or helpful)? Why do people beg on the streets? Are there societies with no one living or begging on the streets? If a society has beggars on the street, what should be done?
One of the novel's starting points is that there is a difference between the West (in this case England) and the East (in this case India)-people don't recognize each other as individual humans in the novel, but tend to say "they" are like that, whatever "it" is. Do you think this is true? Is there a European mindset or type, a Chinese mindset or type, a Latin American mindset or type, a North American mindset or type, etc.? Are they all just stereotypes, or do they really exist?

Return to the TallMania home page.