Washington Irving

Read "The Devil and Tom Walker" (177-185).

Answer the following questions:

• Fill out a chart to show the elements of the plot. Add as many key events as you think are necessary. Include at least the basic situation (conflict), complications, climax, and resolution.
• Irving's characters in this story are one-dimensional people who represent one or two character traits. In fact, Mrs. Tom Walker is a stereotype of the nagging wife, still a source of comedy today. What character traits are represented by Tom Walker? Why do you think Mrs. Walker met with such a nasty end?
• This story opens in Puritan New England in 1727. The Salem witch trials had taken place in 1692, only thirty-five years earlier. Identify five details describing the setting that suggest something sinister and supernatural.
• How does the physical setting of the story reflect the moral decay of the characters and, indeed, of the whole society presented in this story?
• How would you describe the mood or atmosphere created in the story? What details help to create the mood?
• As the narrator tells the story--which certainly has its gruesome and fearful aspects--what tone prevails? Is it comic, frightening, bitter, romantic, or something else? Find details from the story that support your response.

Romanticism Introduction

Read the introduction on American Romanticism in the textbook (pp. 162-173).

Add the characteristics of Romanticism/Dark Romanticism/Transcendentalism to your notes. See the bullet points on pp. 167, 168, 171, and 172.

Using the information from the introduction, answer the following questions:

• What were the values of the Romantics, and how did these values affect the American imagination?
• Who were the Transcendentalists, and how do their beliefs still influence American life?
• What darker side of human life was recognized by some major American Romantics?

Persuasive Speeches

Work day in the IMC.

Goal: find and read at least 3-5 sources on your topic. One or two of  your sources can be published by your organization, but at least one or two should be outside sources about your group or organization.

Method for online notetaking: Evernote.com.

Next week: Turn in Annotated Bibliography for sources.

Puritanism and Rationalism QUIZ

Final quiz on Puritans and Rationalists.


Be able to identify the Puritan or Rationalist features in various works of literature.

Other terms covered:

• plain style
• parallelism
• logos/pathos/ethos

REVIEW: Puritanism and Rationalism

With your partner, match the correct traits, authors, and titles to the correct ideology. You'll be able to use the review sheet you create on the quiz tomorrow.

Puritan and Rationalist QUIZ, Friday, Oct 4

Patrick Henry, Persuasive Review

Read Patrick Henry's "Speech to the Virginia Convention" (82).

Persuasion is a form of speaking or writing that aims to convince an audience to take a specific action. A good persuasive speaker or writer appeals to both head and heart--or logic and emotion--to win over an audience. To be persuasive, a writer or speaker must provide reasons to support a particular opinion or course of action. In the final analysis, audiences are often won over by the speaker's ability to address their concerns as much as by forceful arguments and a powerful personality.

For each of the following speeches, answer the questions below.

Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (46)

Thomas Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence” (100)

Patrick Henry, “Speech to the Virginia Convention” (82)

What is the speaker’s purpose and who is the intended audience?

What is the main idea of each of these works?

Identify one example of a logical appeal

Identify one example of an emotional appeal

Identify one example of metaphor

Identify one example of parallelism

What is the overall effectiveness of the persuasion?

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

“The Declaration of Independence” (99)

1.       State the main idea/purpose in the first section of the declaration (Section 1 begins on p. 100 with “When, in the course of human events…”).

2.       In the first main section, Jefferson lists 27 Abuses and Usurpations of power committed by King George III of England.  Put five of these in your own words. (Abuses and Usurpations begin with “He has refused” on p. 101. They continue, mostly one per paragraph, over the next two pages.)

a.        

b.        

c.         

d.         

e.         

3.       Abuse 27 was entirely removed from the Declaration. How would the course of American history have been changed if it were included?

4.       State the main idea/purpose in the second section of the declaration (Section 2 begins on p. 104 with “In every stage of these oppressions…”).

5.       State the main idea/purpose in the third section of the declaration (what are the colonists resolved to do?). (Section 3 begins on p. 105 with “We, therefore, the representatives…”)

6.       Find two examples of parallelism within the text.  For each, state the example and the effect it has on the text.

a.         

b.        

7.       What Rationalist characteristics are reflected in “The Declaration of Independence”?