Return of the Blogger

Welcome to my (belated) first blog of the new academic year!

During our last lesson with Mr Sadgrove for this half term we focused on the aspect of pathetic fallacy in reference to Wuthering Heights.

We started off the lesson by being asked to find suitable questions for this set of answers:

Horror

Terror

Liminal

Uncanny

Opposition

Heathcliff

Byronic hero

Fragmented Narrative

The questions I came up with go as follows:

What is psychological fear?

What is the word for mental fear?

Give the term for when something is in a state of "in-between".

What is the term for when two contrasting things are put side by side?

What is the name of the male protagonist in Wuthering Heights?

What is the term for an individual who can be described as bein "mad bad and dangerous to know"?

How can the narrative structure in Wuthering Heights be defined?

On to the actual aim of the lesson...

What we know:

Heathcliff's emotions are often reflected by his surroundings.

What we need to know:

Examples of pathetic fallacy in the novel

Literary symbols

We then watched an extract from the marveling Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where we examined how the surroundings of the characters influenced and contributed the overall atmosphere of the scene.

e.g. green = peace and tranquility

Here are Ruskin's views on pathetic fallacy:

Ascribing human feelings to the inanimate for Ruskin was a derogatory term in that it does not describe the "true appearance of things to us", rather than the extraordinary or false appearances.

We were then asked to use pathetic fallacy to create mood and atmosphere in a given scenario.

To conclude I shall reveal to you what the homework is:

Mr Sadgrove gave us a piece of paper with several extracts on it, we must write a paragraph on each of those looking closely at the language and commenting on the use of pathetic fallacy.

Pathetic fallacy can be any or a combination of these:

Sound

Colour

Wather

Light

Time of day

Season

(Animals also but they are a theme of their own)

Also re-read the Bloody Chamber (pathetic fallacy is also used in that)

Enjoy the holidays guys and girls

Much love,

Aleksandra.

Homework for over half term...

You will all be reading all your texts again. This is especially important for The Bloody Chamber.

As you're reading you will be making notes on the following gothic themes. You can do this any way you like, but I suggest having a page for each and making notes / brainstorm as you read through the texts. You should concentrate on your specialist subject which you'll be presenting to the class on first lesson back, Monday 1&2.

Your notes should explore links between your texts, not just Macbeth, but The Bloody Chamber and Wuthering Heights too!

Rosie - Liminality
Aleks - Opposition
Chris - Uncanny
Akanksha- Howwor and Tewwa
Emma - Ambiguity
Aisha - Twisted “gothic” love
Saways - Setting
Roman - Supernatural
Craney - Byronic Hero

Once you have eight pages of superb notes, which will include initial thoughts, quotes, and explicit links between texts and themes - you will flesh out your presentation on your specific theme to teach the rest of the class.

Saways G

We started the lesson by saying what we like/disliked about Heathcliff. Someone said how when Heathcliff was young we could sympathise with him because of how he would be attacked by Hindley, which may reflect why he grew to be the character he is. Sir then showed us a quote which links to this idea: 'the child is the father of the man'

Then we played the game just a minute.

And then we split Heathcliff as a character into four sections: Heathcliff as a child of the storms, as a demonic figure, as a product of his circumstances and as an outcast.

Heathcliff as a child of the storm: This links to to the house 'an arid wilderness'. However, could be seen as a romantic figure: 'my Heathcliff' 'my love for Heathcliff resembles the child benath'

Demonic figure: 'imp of satan' 'devild daddy'. However, we could say he was pushed to evil by his upbringing. He has some good sides to him: ' papa' 'father' 'uncle'

As a product of his circumstances: this could be linked to the 'the child is the father of the man' quote. We could see he is a product through his rejection by Catherine for Edgar. He could have married Catherine and be far better off. However we could say this is not true because Mr Earnshaw treated him like his own

As an outcast: Heathcliff is an outcast through what people call him 'devil daddy' 'frightful' 'vagabond' showing he has no place with the other characters. However, he could be shown as the opposite through 'my Heathcliff', 'capital fellow'

H/w: what contribution does Heathcliff make to our reading of 'Wuthering Heights' as a gothic novel?

By Saways (Written by Roman because his computer wasn't working...thought I should take some credit.)
P.S Title also by Saways.

Macbeth in the modern world.

Drew the four apparitions with quotes, read up to Act 5 discussing specific points in the play and watched a movie. That is all.

Homework: - Mark Essays.

Roman A.

Heathcliff

Sorry for the late blog everyone,

Now in this lesson we looked at Heathcliff, his character and how he is described. For the start sir asked us to write three things we know about Heathcliff. Although most of us knew much about him, yet we knew little, he seemed like a mystery to us. Sir then gave us a sheet with descriptions of HEathcliff from the book and asked us to put them in order of least respectful to the most. We all had them in similar orders, "papa" and "my Heathcliff" being at the top and "imp of satan" and "dark devil gypsy" at the bottom. We then discussed what the words mean and what they represent.

We then, began to write an essay about Heathcliff. In the essay we focused on AO2 and how they create effect, we also DRIPPED in a bit of AO4 not CHUNKS. But most importantly, we focused on the narrative structure and how it is linked to Heathcliff.

Homework:
Finish the model answer essay so it flows well. Continue your reading of Wuthering Heights

Thats all
Aisha

The witches again

We started off reviewing gothic themes in Macbeth - and the witches / supernatural / evil were central to these.

Then we read through A1s4 and discussed the four apparitions.

We then reviewed iambic pentameter and introduced trochaic tetrameter, which the witches' verse mostly appears as. This distinction between iambic pentameter and trochaic tetrameter can be used for AO2 in essays, because it highlights the othernesss of the weird sisters.

STRESS
Banana is not pronounced BAR-NAR-NAR, it is b'NAR-na. So the stress is on the second syllable. Compare Canada. Native speakers have an ear for these natural rhythms, but people who are not native English speakers can fluff up the stress and pronounce things like BAR-NAR-NAR.

IAMBIC PENTAMETER
An iamb is a unit of meter (or foot) made of two syllables – unstressed then stressed. EG:
He said - goodbye - instead.
We speak using iambs in day to day English.
The pentameter bit means there are five iambs per line (ie 10 syllables).

TROCHAIC TETRAMETER
A trochee is a “foot” consisting of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed (the opposite of an iamb). Eg ENGland.
Tetrameter means there are four feet (ie 8 syllables).

MAIN TASK
Writing a spell with “ingredients” of gothic genre in Macbeth.
In pairs... Write it in trochaic tetrameter. Include all of your gothic elements from your starter and anymore you can think of.

HOMEWORK
Mini Essay on Macbeth’s relationship with the supernatural.

semantic fields

We started the lesson carrying on from Fridays looking at liminal images and discussing what they showed. We then came up with 3 liminal elements in Wuthering Heights, 2 questions we wanted to know about oppositions in the text, as well as an analogy. My analogy was Wuthering heights is like reverse skittles where the outside is juxtaposed to the flavour inside.

We then held a long discusiion based upon the oppositions and the liminal that existed in Wuthering Heights and bloody chamber. We discovered oppositions are fixed whereas the characters who have liminal aspects can alternate between the two.

We were then all given a sheet where we linked characters with an adjective or a noun, and compared our opinions with one another and how they related, or opposed eachother. On the other side of the sheet was a critic's intepretation of Wuthering Heights with all the words we involved.

We then read two extracts where we had to find a pattern of words with similar meanings and group them up, these are known as semantic fields, some of the semantic fields found within the two extracts were; hidden, battle, household/domestic, colours and luxuries.

Our last task of the lesson was to read an article called Life on the Edge - opposition and fragmentation in Wuthering Heights, we then repeated our initial task of the lesson; findind 3 oppositions, 2 questions and an analogy. 'Lockwood is like an X factor contestant he has more potential than he knows'.

Our homework was to comment on this blog and to sum up each article in 10 bullet points.

Leigh