Unit 4 Lesson 2 Donn 2016
Progression of Tasks & Adaptions for NHS English II GT and Pre-AP
Ronald Donn, Week of April 11 2016
Day 1:
Bellringer: Name three ways the Igbo communicate:
a. Drums
b. Proverbs
c. Rituals (the kola nut)
WC: Library Lab: AL, annotations of Things Fall Apart. Give students choice of essay topics to help guide annotations:
- FOCCUS ON PLOT STRUCTURE:. How does Achebe use the elements of a classical tragedy to attempt to convey both sides of Nigeria’s colonization?
- FOCUS ON CHARACTERIZATION: How is Okonkwo a gangsta-warrior archetype, and how has this kept the book relevant to readers unfamiliar with Nigerian culture?
- FOCUS ON SPEECHAND COMMUNICATION: How does Achebe combine Igbo and English ways of communicating to tell a story that represents the both culture’s point-of-view?
Home:
Day 2: TT: Fishbowl: Okonkwo, Warrior Thug or Tragic Hero? (See PPT)
Bellringer: Prep for fishbowls
Day 3: TT: Unit 4 Lesson 2: Things Fall Apart, Part I Study Guide Questions (See PPT)
Bellringer: What is revealed by the fact that he not only attends the killing, but deals the killing blow?
EXEMPLAR Answer: Okwonkwo is a man of complex inner conflict. He is torn between his need to be known and his need to serve the needs of his community. For example, Okwonkwo attends the killing both out of love and out of looking weak—even though this action defies the oracle. This reveals his lack of regard for the spirituality of his people, and demonstrates that he believes that he alone can determine his fate and those around him. This motive on his part reveals the theme of individuality (as opposed to societal expectations). He does not want to give up personal control, even if it means he will damage his own reputation, which creates more inner conflict. It is this same pride that leads him to cut down the boy even though he did not initiate the boy’s killing. Note that Achebe never states plainly that Okwonkwo did not want the boy to die; we only learn this through his actions.
Day 4: TT: Unit 4 Lesson 2: Things Fall Apart, Part I continued
Bellringer: Share answers from yesterday.
Day 5: TT: Unit 4 Lesson 3: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by L. Hughes
TEACHER’S NOTES:
______
Food for Thought, before the task:
Remember: Part of Achebe’s purpose is to tell the story of his people while showing as many sides of the story as possible. His work is a criticism of his own people, a criticism of Africa, as well as a criticism of Western nations who engaged in a hostile takeover of his homeland little more than 50 years before Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart. Achebe mixes storytelling techniques. He mixes the classical novel—which includes the tragic hero and a recognizable linear plot structure that begins with an exposition and ends with a symbolic climax—with African storytelling—which includes characters defined by tradition and proverbs when we would expect explanation, insertion of folklore where we would normally expect factual background or moralization, stories about storytelling itself, and many nods to the relevance of social customs, geography, beast and plant life.
In Things Fall Apart, the world and its values are not black and white (no joke intended). As with any good novel, you must start with the rules of storytelling. In a novel. Conflict in a story reveals what a character’s values are. Must ask: Who is creating conflict, and what does that conflict stand for? What is the external and internal conflict, and what does the difference tell the reader? For example, in Chapter 8, the external conflict is the fact that Ikemefuna has to be killed to follow the instruction of the Oracle. The internal conflict (for Okwonkwo) is that he is torn between feeling love for Ikemefuna and the fear of looking weak before his community. This conflict is further complicated by the fact that he is not allowed to kill the boy himself, which presents a conflict for him as it combines the worst of Okwonkwo’s particular internal and external conflict: It does not allow him to take action, or demonstrate his strength.
Inflexibility and the African Man
This situations puts Okwonkwo in a no-win position. Again, he acts in defiance of the gods, putting his own pride ahead of social and religious rules, by insisting that he witness the boy’s sacrific e. Achebe does, however, take a compassionate position toward the boy, letting us know of his struggle with his own tribal pride and personal terror. Again, these implies a conflict between personal belief and social expectations, and echoes this theme in the novel. Achebe’s writing then uses dramatic irony: Because Okwonkwo’s feelings of pride are mixed with social embarrassment over shame connected to his father, he is trapped in a repeating cycle wherein the values that make him a great man in his community (strength, family loyalty, and masculinity) are the same values that, when taken to excess, destroy the very traditions that he is fighting to uphold. Ultimately, shame is dangerous in this novel—especially when it comes to Okwonkwo’s over-compensation for his untitled upbringing. While it does reveal that in Igbo society a man is allowed to define his own destiny, we see Okwonkwo as a man who wants to define that destiny by any means necessary.
The Theme of Balacne
Starting the novel with a wrestling scene, the theme of balance pervades thenovel. Achebe makes his protagonist into an antagonist whose own heroism has thrown him out of balance. In his efforts to be a respected and powerful man, he crushes anything he perceives as unmanly. That which he loves, he hates because love is weakness. Tha which causes his emotions to swell he turns and crushes, in part symbolized by the metaphor of the bow that has been pulled so tight it breaks. At one point he describes the difference between Chielo’s ordinary life as a widow and her spiritual life as the priestess of Agabala, and when describing her spiritual life and the ceremonial rites connected to her spiritual status his description of the setting also changes to reflect the atmosphere as it responds to her status in Chapter 7: “The drummers took up their sticks and the air shivered and grew tense like a tightened bow.” Achebe pictures the spiritual life of the Igbo as a tension, a fusion of rhythem and meaning, expressed in the metaphor of the bow.
Okwonkwo pulls these rythems out of sync with his community. In his efforts to uphold sacred tradition, he deliberately picks and chooses only the values that represent the strength required to pull the bow tight. His values are rigid and fixed, and he ignores or dismisses as womanly those that call for negotiation and compromise: “When did you become a shivering old woman?” he asks himself in Chapter 8, trying to shake off his depression over Ikemefuna’s death. His actions, and the ironies of his family life, reflect this: His daughter is more “manly” than his son; he uses wise proverbs not to raise up his inferioros but to belittle and shame those he views as unmanly or unaccomplished. When we do see his compassionate side—in Chapter 11 when he tracks Ekwefi to the cave of Agbala, and does not beat her for her disobedience but rather reminisces with her of their first night together—we realize that Okwonkwo is capable of compassion, but only in the most private and extreme circumstances. This contrasts heavily with the opening of the book where the reader learns of his first achievement as a man, symbolized by a sport in which he must stay literally on his feet and not let his back touch the ground. This scene serves as a metaphor for his entire life, and also serves as a grim foreshadowing of how he will die, disconnected from the life-giving earth, disgraced and cursed by the earth. In this way Achebe criticizes his culture for too often promoting inflexible, extremist views that will not negotiate or adapt to change—and thus the author warns that, like the tightened bow, his people’s own inflexibility will cause them to snap therefore cause “things”—people and culture included—to fall apart. He seems to warn that Africa will suffer Nwoye’s fate: “Nwoye knew that Ikemefuna had been killed, and something seemed to give way inside of him, like the snapping of tightened bow.”
Summary and Archetypal Analysis
Even though the culture of Achebe’s novel differs greatly from Western culture, these are classic, archetypal personality traits for the tragic hero whose bravery makes him a villain, whose patriotism makes him a murderer, whose ambition leads him to destroy that which he fights to protect, and whose great suffering ends in disgrace, exile, mutilation, and ultimately death after having had his manhood symbolically or literally removed as a poetically appropriate punishment. And whether it is Shakespeare’s Othello or Achebe’s Okwonkwo, the reader is often left wondering how such characters can fall so greatly, whether they crash and burn as result of choices and free will, or if they are actually victims of a larger cosmic irony, a bloody political drama in which they have no choice but play the part of the hero, then villain, and finally the tragic sacrifice and object lesson for future generations. Either way, the tragic hero always loses both body and soul because he cannot balance his personal laws with the laws of both his society and his god. Western drama is built on this story. Drama as we think of it originates with heroes whose ambition serves as a warning to the future: Drama begins not only in the flawed heroes of ancient Greece but in ancient Israel’s captivity narratives, ancient Sumeria’s narratives of civilization-building heros dogged by their own shadows, and ancient Africa itself. . . in any area where human civilization first sprang up. They all taught each other back in those days, and as such all drama originates in the rites of sacrifice, and the one is sacrificed is the one who most represents the crimes and flaws of the people they lead. All entertainment originates in politics, and all entertainment originates in blood.
Prepare for next lesson: Re-read Chapters 12 and 13, focusing on Okwonkwo’s motivations and how they imply themes. Students should locate and record THREE pieces of evidence that show Okwonkwo’s motives, and the themes that arise from these motives. Start using left sides to take notes on major characters as you read, EMPHASIZING proverbs and sayings used by the characters. Explain, illustrate, or connect those proverbs to themes in the book.
For your left-side processing tasks, begin looking for mottos, sayings, slogans, or any PROVERBIAL language whose goal seems to be communicating wisdom or advice. THESE SELECTIONS SHOULD BE IMPORTANT TO YOU. AT THE END OF THE WEEK YOU WILL POST YOUR SELECTION ON EDMODO. Focus on SPECIFIC words or phrases that have more than one meaning. Use a semantic map to explore the meaning of words, metaphors, and imagery used by these proverbs. THIS INFORMATION WILL BE PART OF YOUR RESEARCH TASK.
Day 2
HOME PRACTICE:
· Language Tasks Completed Independently and Checked as WC
TMAT: Teacher made Materials
21: 21st Century Tools
LDOE: Louisiana Department of Education Guidebook Task
WC: Whole Class discussion or lecture
TT: Talk Team or Paired Task
Ind: Independent Task