Happy Christmas, Merry Holidays, and a Wicked Awesome New Year

from Mr. G

on a side note

details for assignment

over break are below

and I will email you

your averages when I grade

your Camus papers

click here for the gallagher's christmas card

Winter Break Assignment

So you will obviously need to finish your independent reading book over the break. You should know the book very well. I expect you to have post-it notes and be able to find moments in the book at will.

As you were well aware, the books that you were able to choose from also had movies that accompanied them. You will need to see the movie before January 4th. You will also need to take notes--look especially for moments that either differ from the book or that were dealt with in an interesting way on film. You will need to take notes during the movie to do this effectively. Don't depend on your recall abilities! If seeing the movie before the 4th is a major problem, I will give you a more traditional assignment--but I think this one is more interesting.

Anyway, we have computer lab time set up for the 4th, and your assignment, worth a major paper grade, will be due soon after this. The quarter closes a couple after the second week in January! Please be prepared for this.

Albert Camus’ The Stranger

due: December 20th, 2008

For this Essay on Albert Camus’ The Stranger, you need to combine two passage explications to create an original thesis.

• You need to title the paper.
• One passage needs to be from Part 1 and one passage needs to be from Part 2.
• This should be 4-6 pages, typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman.

A passage explication is an essay that takes apart the pieces of a prose passage to demonstrate how it creates meaning – its main question can be reduced to the simple idea of “What does the passage mean? What is its purpose? How does it create that meaning and achieve its purpose? How does it fit in with the rest of the text(if available)?” The creation of meaning comes through literary techniques, like simile and metaphor, through argument, through imagery, and through word choice.