Chief of Class Notes

Friday, May 11, y

English 1101 Section 12

We began class with excellent news- class was being dismissed early!

First Essay Primary Focuses

1. Your own experience

A. Class example: Hurricane Harvey

A.1. Scholarly questions that might arise: how many people died? How many homeless? Extent of damage? Cost of rebuilding? How did people behave before, during, and after?

A.2. Research: local news accounts; survivor interviews; video of the before, during, and aftermath; similar catastrophes from a hundred years ago (Galveston hurricane, 1910)

B. Theory of Campbell’s: Religion helps us navigate a lifespan that we know is going to end in death…and many times will seem (or actually BE) cruel and unfair.

1.1. (For the VAST majority of human history, life, as Thomas Hobbes said, was typically, “nasty, brutish, and short.”)

2. The film Gladiator—we see lots of terrible deaths in that film, but we chose to focus solely on Maximus’s trials as a slave whose primary purpose, after his family’s horrible murder, and his kidnapping by a cruel slaver, was to die a horrible death for someone else’s financial gain, and the crowd’s amusement. He was living moment-to-moment with death.

THESIS: What insight about life do your analysis of the observations from these three sources reveal?

Words We Learned in Class

1. Inexorable (adj.)- The quality of being unstoppable; a force of nature

A. Usually negative

B. Inarguable Friday, May 11, y C. Class example: Hurricane Harvey is not stoppable- observation (we cannot cause nor extinguish it)

2. Predecessor (n.)- a person or thing that has come before, like a grandparent, or a vintage car

“From Earth you were born, and to Earth you will return.” (Biblical quotation) – observation

- Maximus’s ritual of touching and smelling the Earth before he goes to battle reminds us of Rhea as Earth mother (Theogony) -

SO: in the case of this sample essay, your body paragraphs would examine how each source depicts examples of moral and physical strength in the face of death:

Heroes/villains in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey? Survivor stories? Accounts of people who died in order to save others?

Examples of Maximus’s and others’ heroism in the face of death…or maybe a contrast between Maximus’s acceptance of death versus Commodus’s fear of it, and his egotistical desire to make all of Rome love him (quest for unearned glory = corruption)

Possible quotations from the film: Maximus’s discussions about death with Juba, Lucilla, and/or Proximo. Maybe even Commodus and Marcus Aurelius

Quotes from Campbell regarding our mortality (Probably from “The Emergence of Mankind” from Myths to Live By that support your claims

SAMPLE THESIS: “We are all going to die someday; there’s nothing we can do to avoid it, so the only power we can exert over our mortality is to overcome our fears, and be faithful to our highest principles while we’re alive. That way, we at least have a chance of leaving our families, communities, or the world itself better for our having ever lived.”

- This is a thesis, not an observation, because people with differing explanatory frameworks regarding death and an afterlife might reasonably disagree.

(A recurring line in the movie: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” ← that’s a thesis, too) Friday, May 11, y