AP American Studies Independent Reading Assignment

2017-2018 Santagata

What is It?

You will be reading one book per six weeks and completing an independent reading assignment. This assignment counts as 10% of your overall average (see grading).

Term / Book Selection / Book Approval
1st / You may pick your selection* / See 6 weeks calendar
2nd / You may pick your selection* / See 6 weeks calendar
3rd / The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass / See 6 weeks calendar
4th / You may pick your selection* / See 6 weeks calendar
5th / The Great Gatsby*** / See 6 weeks calendar
6th / The Catcher in the Rye*** / See 6 weeks calendar

*IR books chosen by the student MUST be grade appropriate. You must obtain approval for the book by the date given on the reading calendar, otherwise, the highest grade you can receive is a 70.

*** These books have a specific focus for reader response quotes. Please see below.

The Assignment

You will turn in four reading responses. These reading responses should show your progress throughout the book. They CANNOT be from the same section of the book. I would suggest dividing your book up.

Your four reading responses will together count as 10% of your overall average (see grading).

This assignment must be typed and submitted to turnitin.

See procedure below for how to complete the reading response.

For Each Reading Response

  1. Set your document up per MLA style (see handbook for model)
  2. Find a passage that is a good example of language (3-4 sentences in length minimum, could be longer) and copy the passage and document per MLA.
  3. Underneath the quote, begin an informal analysis. Analyze why you think the quote is important.
  4. Analyze the rhetoric or literary strategies the author used and how they advance purpose, theme, tone, or mood. This will help you prepare for the rhetorical analysis essay (think of this as informal rhetorical analysis).
  5. You might note an interesting assertion or claim.(for nonfiction)
  6. If you have a text with historical significance, write about HISTORICAL connections that you find.
  7. You might question what you have read….write about something that had grabbed your attention, but you aren’t sure what it means.
  8. DO NOT WRITE A SUMMARY OF WHAT YOU READ. You will not receive credit.
  9. See below for length of analysis.

Method / RR Length*
Typed / ½ a page double spaced

* RR length DOES NOT include the quote.

For The Great GatsbyCatcher in the Rye

We will be focusing on a major theme for each novel. The work we do in class with the novel will aid you in completing your IR assignment. Your quotes and responses will have to have a specific focus for these novels. See chart below for the focus of each novel.

Novel / Focus
The Great Gatsby / Quotes should be focused on the discussion of character archetypes. In addition to rhetoric, you will be looking at how each character serves as an archetype for the history of the 1920s/30s. You may use your character journal to aid you.
Catcher in the Rye / Quotes should be focused the character of Holden Caulfield, how he is a representation of childhood and adolescence, and the historical context of the novel.

Grading:

Independent reading will be graded on a scale of 0, 70, or 100 per the rubric below. Please read this rubric carefully.

Grade / Descriptors
100 (not easy to receive) / These assignments demonstrate clear and consistent competence as well as an insightful and intricate analysis of the passages chosen, though there may be occasional errors. To receive a grade of 100, you must meet ALL of the below requirements.
Paper is formatted in MLA format.
Quotes meet length requirement of at least three sentences.
3+ quotes have CORRECT MLA in text citation.
Responses meet ½ page minimum.
Responses offer an insightful analysis of the passage, focusing on elements of rhetoric and literary devices.
Responses are distinguished by varied sentence structure, effective word choice, and a sense of voice.
Have no more than three (3) errors in grammar, spelling, capitalization, and/or punctuation.
70 / These assignments demonstrate developing competence. While these assignments do fulfill the requirements in the directions, the analysis is less insightful or precise as an assignment receiving a 100. A grade of a 70 would contain one or more of the following weaknesses (please keep in mind that if you have one of the below bullet points in your paper, you will receive a 70).
Formatting of paper is incorrect and does not follow MLA guidelines.
Quotes do not meet minimum length requirements.
2 or more quotes have incorrect MLA in text citations.
Responses meet ½ page minimum.
Reponses are superficial and offer thin analysis of the passage. These responses may rely heavily on what the author’s personal response was without referencing the language of the passage itself.
Responses border on summary.
Responses have almost no examples of varied sentence structure and/or effective word choice.
Have more than three (3) errors in grammar, spelling, capitalization, and/or punctuation.
0 / These assignments are incomplete, off topic, or not submitted to turnitin. A grade of a 0 would contain one or more of the following egregious errors.
Assignment is not turned in (to be turned in, the assignment MUST be turned in to turnitin.com; it cannot be emailed to Santagata). Assignments not turned in are ineligible for corrections.
Assignment is incomplete: fewer than four passages analyzed, analysis does not meet ½ length requirement.
Reponses do not address the passages provided.
Responses are summary.
The assignment, overall, represents a lack of effort and attention to detail (this includes repetitive mistakes in grammar, spelling, capitalization, and/or punctuation).

Last Name #

Student Name

AP American Studies

Santagata

Month Day, Year

Independent Reading: Voices From Chernobyl, Svetlana Alexievich

RR#1 Quote: “It’s impossible to write down! And even to get over. The only thing that saved me was, it happened so fast; there wasn’t any time to think, there wasn’t any time to cry. I loved him! I had no idea how much! We’d just gotten married. When we walked down the street – he’d grab my hands and whirl me around. And kiss me, kiss me. People are walking by and smiling, It was a hospital for people with acute radiation poisoning. Fourteen days. In fourteen days a person dies” (12).

In this quote, the speaker is lamenting her husband’s death by radiation poisoning (he was a firefighter in the Chernobyl blast). What stood out to me here is that the speaker uses a lot of short sentence fragments. The use of “and kiss me, kiss me” and the succinct “fourteen days” creates a feeling in the reader that this lady is struggling emotionally with telling her story. Her prose style mimics that of an oral history. I also noticed that the speaker juxtaposes a memory of her husband dying with the happy memories of their early marriage. While the death is “impossible to write down,” the speaker wistfully remembers how he would “grab [her] hands and whirl [her] around.” The speaker then shifts again in her narrative back to her husband’s death but stating with concise finality that “in fourteen days a person dies.” The factual statement of “fourteen days” betrays the speaker’s resentment for her husband’s death (which was swept under the rug by the USSR). I also noticed that the author shifts tenses a lot. She moved from present tense – “it’s impossible…” to past tense – “we’d just gotten married…” to present tense – “people are walking…” back to past tense “it was…” This mixture of tenses represents the author’s emotional state. The overall tone seems confused, hysterical, and melancholy as evidenced in the abrupt shifting of tenses, the use of exclamation, and the erratic shifting in time.

RR#2 Quote: “What do I pray for? Ask me: what do I pray for? I don’t pray in church. I pray to myself. I want to love! I do love! I pray for my love. But for me – Am I supposed to remember? Maybe I should push it away instead, just in case? I never read such books. I never saw such movies. At the movies I saw war. My grandmother and grandfather remember that they never had a childhood, they had the war. Their childhood is war, and mine is Chernobyl” (100).

The speaker automatically starts off using rhetorical questions to draw the reader in. She does not expect us to answer “what do I pray for,” but there seems to be an almost pleading tone as she repeats her questions and then quickly answers them. This usage creates a mood of resentment and a tone of bitterness as if she demands that the audience understands her predicament, but knows that this will never happen. The speaker develops her tone with the statement “I want to love! I do love!” which begs the question that we, as the reader, believe that she is not capable of love. The speaker then continues to ask rhetorical questions such as “Am I suppose to remember” and “Maybe I shoud…” At this point in the quote, the feeling of bitterness and resentment disappears and is replaced with a feeling of bleak resignation. At the end of the passage, the author juxtaposes her childhood with Chernobyl to that of growing up in war, emphasizing the atrocity of Chernobyl to readers who may be unfamiliar with or removed from the event.

RR#3 Quote: “And they were a real bride and groom, they weren’t even actors – they’d already been evacuated, they were living in another place, but someone convinced them to come back and film the wedding here, for history. Our propaganda machine in motion. A whole factory of daydreams. Even here our myths were at work, defending us: see, we can survive anything, even on dead earth. What do I remember from those days? A shadow of madness. How we dug. And dug” (161).

The speaker in this passage uses a metaphor to compare propaganda to “daydreams” and “myths” in the wake of the Chernobyl incident. The USSR was known for its intense propaganda programs – how the State promoted itselfsharply contrasted reality. Here, the speaker emphasizes that this indoctrination by comparing propaganda to a “factory” which didn’t even stop for a nuclear emergency that effected not only the people, but also the land. In addition, the connotation of a factory is something that is inhuman and mechanical – it pumps out its product without thought of the human condition. Likewise, the USSR, which was so desperate to save face with the West, did not think of the long-term ramifications of Chernobyl, but was more concerned with showing life as “normal.” The effects of this propaganda becomes clear on the reader when the speaker states “we can survive anything, even on the dead earth.” The people who were exposed to this propaganda believed in their invincibility, their “myths,” but deep down, they knew that to believe propaganda is “madness.”

RR#4 Quote: “We – I mean all of us – we haven’t forgotten Chernobyl. We never understood it. What do savages understand about lightening” (178)?

The author does two really interesting things in this quote. First, the use of first person, “we,” creates a sense of unity with the reader. She could be speaking about “we” and “us” as in her and the people in her town, but also the “we” and “us” extends to the reader, as there is still so much for society to learn about the Chernobyl blast. Just like the author, society, as a whole, still has not fully grasped the severity of the blast and its effects on people and the environment, thus “we never understood it” then and we don’t understand it now. The metaphor in the last line compares the working class in the USSR to “savages” and nuclear technology to “lightening” to suggest that a lack of education and transparency underlies the whole issue of nuclear technology. Again, the “we” here could be the author and her family, or the “we” can be extended to include the reader. This quote spoke to me because there is more and more research coming out about the effects of Chernobyl and the Hartford Plutonium plant here in the United States.