Making Sense of Background Knowledge: Building Understanding of the Essential Question
After watching a movie or listening to a TEDtalk or reading a piece of literature, a poem, or any other piece of writing, fill in the chart below. When complete, file into your “Inquiry” folder OR print and keep for future reference. Your teacher may ask to keep your work as an example to expand understanding in the class
Title Building Understanding Hubris (SD&MJ) Your name:Adelyn H
Which Essential Question(s) is addressed in this piece of literature? / Content:a)What happens in the text/movie/Talk?
b)What is the main message/theme? / Understanding:
How does the text answer the EQ?
Answer in full sentences. Record relevant quotes and page numbers/lines if needed.
In times of trouble, what gives us hope? / In both pieces of literature, the protagonists faced adversity but met different ends. Both travel and journey in solitude when they should've known better than to do so, and they both encounter forces of nature. The setting in which the stories occurs in are fairly similar as well; the unnamed protagonist in the Sea Devil is fishing by himself in the waters of Florida at night in autumn, while Dave Conroy in the Mountain Journey treks alone through the woods in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta in the winter. However, while Dave traps for a living, the unnamed protagonist does it for pleasure. The stories take a turn for the worst when the unnamed man faces trouble and is dragged into the water by a manta ray. He is flung along the seabed and would've been killed, but a stroke of luck in the form of a porpoise comes along and he survives. Dave Conroy is not as lucky. After he fell into an air pocket and continued to journey on, he gets hypothermia and loses sensation in his fingers. The cold weather is too much and he tries to start a fire, but is incapable and decides to leave his belongings and make his way to the next cabin instead. Eventually his weary body calls for him to rest, and he listens. Dave Conroy doesn't get back up and he dies. The main message of both stories are that nature will always be more powerful that the humans that inhabit the earth. Like the video embedded below of "Nature is speaking" by Julia Roberts, they all clearly convey the theme of how nature will rise above. / The text answers the essential question in the sense that both protagonists found hope in their loved ones. The unnamed protagonist in the Sea Devil draws strength in knowing that survival would mean he could come home to his wife and family, and that alone is so powerful. The unnamed fisherman mentions his wife waiting calmly for him at home on pg. 37 and it drives him to believe in his survival. In times of trouble, love will bring hope. In the mountain journey, Dave Conroy was just as hopeful. All along, he firmly thought that someone who loved and cared for him and his safety would come save him; whether it be one of his friends or an acquaintance. Even towards death, he speaks of Macdonald or MacMoran coming to get him (p.98). He believes he can conquer nature, and that nature doesn't have the power to overcome his will to live. Both protagonists believe that hope will ensure their survival and that nature is below them. That would be their fatal flaw. Dave Conroy and the unnamed protagonist are not stronger than nature; they cannot master or control it. Like in the video ‘Nature is Speaking-Julia Roberts’, nature only tolerates us. Nature doesn't need meek humans, humans need nature. “Your future depends on me. When I thrive, you thrive and when I falter, you falter.” The narrator mentions in the video. To prosper and survive as the human race, we need to cherish nature and be grateful for everything it provides us.The video foreshadows what could happen, and ‘the narrator/mother nature’ warns us. We are in troubling times, and nature will always carry on, with or without humans. Believing in humanity and always carrying that faith is quite hopeful and reassuring, but it is only through our actions will change occur. Like the protagonists, if we all thought of our loved ones and the future for them, perhaps we would change our perspectives and acknowledge how much trouble we are in; as well as what we could do to help.