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An Approach to English Extension 1: Module B Texts and Ways of Thinking - Elective 1. ‘After the Bomb’
An Approach to English Extension 1: Module B Texts and Ways of Thinking - Elective 1. After the Bomb
Unpacking the syllabus description
Understanding the Module
q What is a paradigm - Students examine a range of textual fragments which reflect a set of values that illustrate religious, scientific, philosophical or economic paradigms. Analyse the key structures that shape this reflection. Students define what they have come to understand a paradigm to be through this activity.
q Construct a timeline of significant events of the 20th Century pertinent to each of the paradigms outlined. Form groups and carry out further research on a particular focus area that constructs the paradigm. Drawing on group presentations of findings, students should be encouraged to form links between the major events of this period to show the relationships between the paradigms and ways of thinking.
Examining the Elective/ unpacking the rubric
The following is a series of questions intended to develop a deeper level of engagement with and understanding of the central focus of this elective including the ways we think about life in a post apocalyptic world and how these responses are shaped in and by texts.
1) What do these texts suggest about our sense of security, our feelings of vulnerability, our sense of despair?
2) According to these texts, what is the role of the scientist? What do they say about the morality associated with the dropping of the bomb?
3) What future ethical issues associated with this according to your response to the texts?
4) How do they reflect the impact of the Cold War on our values, our sense of our place in the world, our spiritual & emotional state, and our interactions with others outside of our immediate community?
5) How do texts position the responder politically, socially and economically?
6) Specific genres reflect specific to these events; absurdism, nihilism, patriotism, satire, spy thriller. Consider each text and the attitude, perspective and vales attributed to the Cold War anxiety that permeated western society during this period.
7) All texts used WWII as a defining moment in 20th century thought. To what extent do your texts focus on this event and how is it portrayed? What is the attitude to this event?
8) What do the texts say about the human condition in a post apocalyptic era?
9) How do specific texts differ in their commentary and focus? For example, Catch 22 takes a satirical look at war, the impact on the individual, the bureaucracy, the disempowering of the individual, the loss of individuality, loss of ability to communicate and the sense of despair and isolation that accompany this condition.
10) How do your other texts relate to these concepts and perspectives? In what ways do they support / refute them?
11) What do these texts reflect about ways of thinking during this period?
q What values do they condone?
q What political stance do they promote
q How do they represent power relationships
q What ethics underpin events and the personalities that drive the action within the texts?
12) The texts explore the positioning of the individual in terms of the politics of fear.
q In what ways do they represent the diminution of the individual in the face of the power constructs which can determine the fate of the world?
q In what ways do these texts question or support the particular political, religious, economic and philosophical paradigms that governed this period?
Developing a deeper personal response to the elective
Different ways of thinking about this elective
Thinking about the social ramifications of the era; what does the bomb mean to us? Consider:
§ Apocalyptic
§ Foreshadowing of the Modern Age Political/social implications
§ Technological leaps
§ Environmental Impact
§ Human/civilian cost not just physical suffering, the depravity of the political system that ordered the bombing and the holocaust are watermarks for morality in the 20th Century.
§ Global outcome of a philosophical shift in relation to perceived “ethnic” Minorities, arising social awareness, questioning of Science, the rights of the individual, individuals perception of their place in the world, multiculturalism, examination of colonialist assumptions about power and ethics and the outcomes
What conclusions can you make about our philosophical paradigms in terms of:
§ The moral frameworks that have been used by the International community to determine which countries have the right to develop and/or possess Nuclear weapons
§ Nuclear weaponry as a symbol of power and dominance in the global arena.
Possible lines of argument
q An obvious consequence of this period and the events that shaped it is a loss of innocence which has been replaced with a sense of cynicism and despair.
q The inefficacy of protest in the face of the controlled media and bureaucratic administrations means a loss individual power; (we can rage against the machine but as a machine it won’t respond).
q The politics of fear thrives in a climate of Cold War.
q An extension of external paranoia born of Cold War anxiety is the emergence of internal paranoia typified by the McCarthy era and the Domino Principal that governed American international policy for the later part of the 20th Century.
q The texts studied have relevance beyond the socio/political context that gave rise to them. In fact, they discuss essential human reactions and responses to the world around them.
Possible related texts
Documentary
Paul Robeson (Old Man River) ABC TV
An Englishman Abroad
Research historical texts which provide an Eastern Bloc perspective on The Cold War and a Japanese perspective on the bombing of Hiroshima
Biography
Scoundrel Time - Lillian Hellman
Novel
The Road – McCarthy Cormac
Slaughter House Five - Kirk Vonnegut
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Going After Cacciato - Tim O’Brien
Song
Russians, Sting
God Save the Queen, Sex Pistols
Blowing in the Wind, Bob Dylan
Resource Text
Restrained Response: American Novels of the Cold War and Korea, 1945-1962- Arne Axeisson
This work provides an overview of American war and military novels set between 1945 and 1962. These novels are informed and inspired by the conditions and background of postwar occupation, the Korean War, and the early phases of the Cold War.
Film
The Front - Woody Allen
The Falcon and the Snowman
Doctor Strangelove OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb -
Stanley Kubrick
Fail Safe - Sydney Lumet
Another Country - David Lean
The Osterman Weekend - Sam Peckinpah
Little Nikita - Richard Benjamin
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches/Perestroika
Goodbye and Goodnight - George Clooney
Daniel
On the Beach - Stanley Kramer
V for Vendetta
Drama
Copenhagen - Michael Frayn
Approaches to the texts
The following are key questions designed to open up the texts in relation to this module, Texts and Ways of Thinking, with specific focus on the elective ‘After the Bomb:’
Generic questions for consideration on each text:
- Whose views are presented in each text?
- What is the motivation behind this perspective?
- In what ways does this text enhance your understanding of the scientific, religious, philosophical or economic paradigms of this historical period?
Plath
- How does Plath’s poetry as intensely personal/confessional verse fit into this module?
- What 20th Century events does Plath appropriate in her work? How does she give them personal resonance?
Beckett
- In what ways does Beckett’s play reflect thinking of this period? Consider loss of faith, loss of purpose, inability to communicate.
- How does the Absurdist drama reflect the fears and concerns of the Cold war period? Consider use of humor, the play’s structure, characterization and staging.
Hersey
1. To what extent does Hersey’s factual style force us to consider the event beyond the socio/political and economic climate in which it occurred?
2. In what ways does Hiroshima critique the philosophical and scientific ways of thinking during this period?
3. What connections can you make between the specific details of Hiroshima and the Cold War anxiety that followed the event?
Heller
1. What aspects of mid Twentieth century life is Heller satirizing in this text?
2. What is the “catch” to Catch 22?
3. How does Heller respond to and critique patriotism and purpose as aspects of the traditional war experience?
LeCarre
- How does the portrayal of the protagonist in the “spy” explore the moral dilemmas of the period?
- In what ways do the “opposing” blocs of power utilize the negation of the individual to exert control?
Possible Assessment Task Overview
Responding
Task One
Drawing on TWO of the prescribed texts and ONE of your own choosing create a visual representation.
Integrate into the representation significant textual references to pertinent events from 1945-1989 to show the relationship between your representation and the texts.
Along with this you must include a rationale of between 500 & 800 words explaining thee choices of language and image in relation to this elective, After the Bomb.
Task Two
Select excerpts from your prescribed texts and two related texts of your own choosing, which illuminate your understanding of the major issues that underpin this elective, After the Bomb.
Use these excerpts to frame a speech you will deliver to your peers to heighten their knowledge and understanding of this module and the elective.
You must focus on not just the ideas conveyed, but also how they are conveyed through specific textual features.
Composing
Task One
“The End is Nigh”
Write a series of opening chapters for a range of short stories which explore diverse perspective and reactions to this statement.
Task Two
Create a narrative based on the series of snap shots in which you demonstrate your understanding of the paradigms that shaped ways of thinking in the aftermath of the bomb.
Hutchinson, Perry, Phipps & Sullivan, December 2007.