Modern World Literature Quotation Seminar Assignment

Quotations Assignment: As you read, pay attention to important lines from each novel. Forthis seminar, choose 3 significant quotations to analyze. Type your responses to the information described below, and bring it to the seminar review days. Each assignment is worth 45 points, and it must be turned in on the day of each seminar. I will NOT accept late work for this assignment.

Due Dates:

Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (Wednesday, January 9, 2013)

The Kite Runner (Thursday, January 10, 2013)

Life of Pi (Friday, January 11, 2013)

You must include the following information for each quote:

  • The quote itself
  • Page number
  • Speaker
  • Context- brief summary
  • Develop one question that will lead to a discussion of the quote’s significance to the novel as a whole.
  • Develop one connection question that relates the meaning of the quote to the great world outside the novel (your life, other books, movies, world events, society, etc.)
  • You must also answer each question in 3-4 sentences.

Examples:

Book response question:

•Quote: “Oh! There are many kinds of pride,’ said Biddy, looking full at me and shaking her head; ‘pride is not all of one kind” (149).

•Question: What types of pride do Pip, Biddy, Joe, Estella, and Miss Havisham have, and how does their pride make them react to certain situations? Example- Estella not wanting to play with a commoner because of her pride of being uncommon.

Connection to world question:

•Quote: “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong” (160).

•Question: Why do people today make bad decisions that they know are wrong when they have the option to do something else that is right? For example, why do some people use drugs and not tell or seek help for their problem? Is it because they are afraid of what others in society might think of them?

“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

•If any one day in the history of America didn’t happen, how would that have affected us? For better or for worse? Give an example.