2018–2019 LITERATUREResource Guide Northwest Pa. Collegiate Academy - Erie, PA An Introduction to the Literature of the 1960s The vision of the United States Academic Decathlon® is to provide all students the opportunity to excel academically through team competition. Toll Free: 866-511-USAD (8723) • Direct: 712-326-9589 • Fax: 651-389-9144 • Email: [email protected] • Website: www.usad.org This material may not be reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, by any means, including but not limited to photocopy, print, electronic, or internet display (public or private sites) or downloading, without prior written permission from USAD. Violators may be prosecuted. Copyright ® 2018 by United States Academic Decathlon®. All rights reserved. Table of Contents SECTION I: CRITICAL READING ...... 4 Pirandello’s Enrico IV . 27 Pirandello’s Six Characters in SECTION II: ROSENCRANTZ AND Search of an Author . .27 GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD BY TOM Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea . 28 STOPPARD...................... 10 Introduction . 10 Act One Reading Guide: In Place with No Visible Character......................29 Overview of Tom Stoppard’s Life Act One: Short Summary ..................29 and Work............................ 11 Act One: Detailed Review . .29 The Origin of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act Two Reading Guide: Playing at Death . 34 Shakespeare’s Hamlet . 13 Act Two: Short Summary . .34 Literary Forebears: Realism, Modernism, and Act Two: Detailed Review..................34 Postmodernism........................15 Act Three Reading Guide: “You Can’t Not-Be The Influence of Realism...................15 on a Boat” ...........................39 The Influence of Modernism................16 Act Three: Short Summary . .39 The Influence of Postmodernism.............18 Act Three: Detailed Review . .39 John Barth and Jorge Luis Borges.........18 Rosencrantz Fifty Years Later ............42 Italo Calvino and other Influences on Postmodernist Literature.................19 Postmodernism and Parody..............20 SECTION III: SELECTED SHORTER Northwest Pa. Collegiate Academy - Erie, PA WORKS OF LITERATURE ........... 44 Postmodernism and the Chaos of Life and Language . .20 Introduction . 44 Postmodernism and “Play” . .21 Donald Barthelme’s “The Phantom of the Meta-Theater .........................21 Opera’s Friend”.......................45 Atmospheric Conditions in the 1960s . 22 Donald Barthelme: Life and Work ...........45 The Influence of Freudian Analysis and SELECTED WORK: “THE PHANTOM OF Existentialism ............................22 THE OPERA’S FRIEND” BY DONALD Stoppard and the “Theater of the Absurd” ....24 BARTHELME . 46 What’s Godot Got to Do with It?.........24 “The Phantom of the Opera’s Friend”: Stoppard and Pirandello . 27 Analysis . .48 2018–2019 Literature2 Resource Guide “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: An Enduring “A Hard Rain’s A’ Gonna Fall”: Analysis ......78 Plea for Action against Injustice ..........50 SELECTED WORK: “MASTERS OF WAR” Introduction .............................50 BY BOB DYLAN . 81 The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. .51 “Masters of War”: Analysis . .82 The Birmingham Campaign . .51 SELECTED WORK: “THE LONESOME DEATH Context of the “Letter” . .53 OF HATTIE CARROLL” BY BOB DYLAN . 83 SELECTED WORK: “LETTER FROM A “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”: BIRMINGHAM JAIL” BY DR. MARTIN Analysis . .84 LUTHER KING JR. 54 Joan Didion on Joan Baez: “Where the The “Letter”: Audience, Ethos, Pathos, and Kissing Never Stops”...................86 Logos . .62 Conclusion: Kairos and Telos ...............65 Introduction .............................86 New Journalism..........................86 Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson”.......65 Joan Didion: Life and Work . .86 Toni Cade Bambara: Life and Work . .65 SELECTED WORK: “WHERE THE KISSING SELECTED WORK “THE LESSON” NEVER STOPS” BY JOAN DIDION . 87 BY TONI CADE BAMBARA .............66 “Where the Kissing Never Stops”: Analysis ...93 “The Lesson”: Analysis . .69 Tim O’Brien: “Ambush”.................96 Etheridge Knight: “The Idea of Ancestry” ..71 Tim O’Brien: Life and Work . .96 Etheridge Knight: Life and Work . .71 SELECTED WORK: “AMBUSH” FROM THE SELECTED WORK: “THE IDEA OF THINGS THEY CARRIED BY TIM ANCESTRY” BY ETHERIDGE KNIGHT ....72 O’BRIEN ............................96 “The Idea of Ancestry”: Analysis ............73 Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried .......97 Three Early Songs of Bob Dylan . 75 Tim O’Brien’s “Ambush”: Analysis ...........98 Bob Dylan: Life and Work . .75 NOTES . .100 SELECTED WORK: “A HARD RAIN’S Northwest Pa. Collegiate Academy - Erie, PA A-GONNA FALL” BY BOB DYLAN.......77 BIBLIOGRAPHY . .103 2018–2019 Literature3 Resource Guide Section I Critical Reading Critical reading is a familiar exercise to students, an period, its values and its limitations. A selection from exercise that many of them have been engaged in since Thomas Paine in the eighteenth century is written against the first grade. Critical reading forms a significant part of a different background and has different concerns from a the PSAT, the SAT, the ACT, and both Advanced Placement selection written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prior to the Tests in English. It is the portion of any test for which passage of the Civil Rights Act. Toni Morrison writes against students can do the least direct preparation, and it is also a different background from that of Charles Dickens. the portion that will reward students who have been lifelong readers. Unlike other parts of the United States Academic Passages are chosen from many different kinds of texts— Decathlon® Test in Literature, where the questions will fiction, biography, letters, speeches, essays, newspaper be based on specific works of literature that the students columns, and magazine articles—and may come from a have been studying diligently, the critical reading passage diverse group of writers, varying in gender, race, location, in the test, as a previously unseen passage, will have an and time period. A likely question is one that asks readers element of surprise. In fact, the test writers usually go out to speculate on what literary form the passage is excerpted of their way to choose passages from works not previously from. The passage itself will offer plenty of clues as to its encountered in high school so as to avoid making the genre, and the name of the writer often offers clues as critical reading items a mere test of recall. From one point well. Excerpts from fiction contain the elements one might of view, not having to rely on memory actually makes expect to find in fiction—descriptions of setting, character, questions on critical reading easier than the other questions or action. Letters have a sense of sharing thoughts with a because the answer must always be somewhere in the particular person. Speeches have a wider audience and a passage, stated either directly or indirectly, and careful keen awareness of that audience; speeches also have some reading will deliver the answer. particular rhetorical devices peculiar to the genre. Essays and magazine articles are usually focused on one topic of Since students can feel much more confident with some contemporary, local, or universal interest. background information and some knowledge of the types of questions likely to be asked, the first order of business is Other critical reading questions can be divided into two for the student to contextualize the passage by asking some major types: reading for meaning and reading for analysis. Northwest Pa. Collegiate Academy - Erie, PA key questions. Who wrote it? When was it written? In what The questions on reading for meaning are based solely social, historical, or literary environment was it written? on understanding what the passage is saying, and the questions on analysis are based on how the writer says In each passage used on a test, the writer’s name is what he or she says. provided, followed by the work from which the passage was excerpted or the date it was published or the dates In reading for meaning, the most frequently asked question of the author’s life. If the author is well known to high is one that inquires about the passage’s main idea since school students (e.g., Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, distinguishing a main idea from a supporting idea is John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jane Austen), no dates will be an important reading skill. A question on main ideas is provided, but the work or the occasion will be cited. For sometimes disguised as a question asking for an appropriate writers less familiar to high school students, dates will title for the passage. Most students will not select as the main be provided. Using this information, students can begin idea a choice that is neither directly stated nor indirectly to place the passage into context. As they start to read, implied in the passage, but harder questions will present students will want to focus on what they know about that choices that do appear in the passage but are not main writer, his or her typical style and concerns, or that time ideas. Remember that an answer choice may be a true 2018–2019 Literature4 Resource Guide statement but not the right answer to the question. toward the subject, the appropriate tone he or she assumes, and the way language is used to achieve that tone. Of Closely related to a question on the main idea of a passage course, the tone will vary according to the passage. In is a question about the writer’s purpose. If the passage informational nonfiction, the tone will be detached and is fiction, the purpose, unless it is a digression—and even matter-of-fact, except when the writer is particularly digressions are purposeful in the hands of good writers— enthusiastic about the subject or has some other kind of will in some way serve the elements of fiction. The passage emotional involvement such as anger, disappointment, will develop a character, describe a setting, or advance the sorrow, or nostalgia. He or she may even assume an ironic plot. If the passage is non-fiction, the writer’s purpose might tone that takes the form of exaggerating or understating a be purely to inform; it might be to persuade; it might be situation or describing it as the opposite of what it is.