What do you mean, you think it's complicated? (I think this is pretty cool. It's like a quilt, a wiring diagram, a medieval illuminated manuscript, an aerial photo, and the inside of a giant digital Rolex watch all at once.)
TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, KNOW WHY YOU'RE DOING IT!
Think about your sense of purpose in life.
A life lived to fulfill the desires of your body and your emotional self is a truly purposeless life--all of your 'happiness' and 'accomplishments' will perish.
A life lived in trying to fulfill other people's ideas and opinions is a truly purposeless life--scripture says 'don't be judged by another man's conscience' and 'only the spirit of a man knows the things that are proper to him'.
A life lived according to a merely human understanding of scripture is also a truly purposeless life--scripture itself says 'the natural man does not receive the things of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned'.
Only a life lived by the guidance of an inner connection with God has real purpose. Only a life lived in communication with the Holy Spirit has real purpose.
Just as you have to have a sense of purpose to live a truly worthwhile life, so you need a sense of purpose in your writing.
Think about what effect you want to have on your reader. What do you want him or her to think, feel, believe, or do in response to what you write?
In many cases, you should conclude your essays with a call to action, either a statement of what you yourself plan to do, or an exhortation encouraging your reader to do something specific.
Class notes and homework:
10th
Types of world view we’ll need to recognize as we study the development of literature in America:
Traditional
Modern
Postmodern
Many of us think of the Pilgrims/Puritans who founded the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies as having a ‘traditional’ type of world view, but in fact they had many of the traits of a modern world view: commercialism, revolutionary social attitudes, and a quest for ideological purity.
The stages of American Modernism include:
Religiosity (Puritan church structures, persecution of Indians and Quakers, Salem witch trials, complaints before 1700 about the decay of values under the influence of materialsm)
Rationalism (Jefferson and Franklin; emphasis on ‘Natural Law’, governments are established by men not God, solving problems through technology not prayer, hypocrisy about the problem of slavery)
Romanticism (importance of imagination and feeling, love of mystery, inflation of the ego, tendency to transcendentalist ideas about 'oneness with nature' and a 'world soul')
Realism (skepticism about religion and patriotism, prevalence of social criticism and satire, emphasis on gritty aspects of life)
Homework: Vocab 1D; work on your edited drafts of the ‘American Dream’ essay.
11/12
Work on first drafts of personal narrative essays.
8th
No homework. Enjoy! (But be ready to work hard tomorrow!!)
9th
Revised Deadline Alert!
No homework—most of you have been working hard all week so far, and have lots of work in other classes. I’ll return your drafts tomorrow, final edited draft now due next Tuesday.
I’m happy to say that almost everyone would have completed the assignment by Friday as originally assigned. Good job staying ahead of the deadline. Do well in your other classes.
Rhetoric
In-class writing assignment for today (Thursday) was to outline and draft an answer to the following question:
Discuss and evaluate Aristotle’s views about 'the art of persuasion'—rhetoric.
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