Name:______Period: 1 6

Socratic Seminar—What can literature teach us about violence and prejudice?

Rationale:

The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote in The Uses of Enchantment that the purpose of literature is to help us discover deeper meaning in our lives. Literature, through the choices its characters make and the consequences its characters endure, gives us a vicarious opportunity to explore the lives of others and, in so doing, learn more about ourselves. In short, literature teaches us about the deeper truths of who we are.

Review:

In this narrative unit, we have read many stories and analyzed each for theme by examining the elements of fiction, such as: changes in the character, conflict and resolution, mood and tone, topics and message, allusions, and cues and clues in the text or title. You selected one of those stories and examinations for theme and created an MLA formatted literary analysis of the theme, citing evidence to support your opinion. Now, we are going another step deeper!

Extension:

For this activity, you will prepare for a Socratic Seminar by independently reading an additional series of short narratives—some fiction and some non-fiction, thinking critically about the readings and guiding question, developing open-ended questions relevant to violence and prejudice, and finding direct evidence in the text to support your responses to those questions. Finally, you will engage in an academic conversation with your peers in response to the overarching prompt: What can literature teach us about violence and prejudice?

Details:

  1. The narratives we will focus on are:
  • We Are Each Other’s Business by Eboo Patel
  • The Joy of Reading and Writing by Sherman Alexie
  • The Flowers by Alice Walker
  • The Possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson
  • The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty
  • All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
  1. During Reading: take Cornell Notes or make a list of:
  • Actions / attitudes held by characters.
  • Choices characters make in response to violent / prejudicial behaviors.
  • Consequences resulting from those choices—do they end or perpetuate the cycle of violence and / or prejudice?
  1. Make sure that you have specific evidence from the story to back up your stances. Be prepared to reference paragraph number (shorter essays) or page number (longer stories) as you offer support for your opinion.
  2. Post-Reading: prepare at least 4 questions you could ask during the course of the seminar. These should be open-ended questions—that is, questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. These questions should be drawn from the material you’ve gathered and designed to get your classmates talking about the discoveries you’ve made.
  3. Opening Questions start a conversation off, like this from The Most Dangerous Game: “How does General Zaroff use violence to solve his problems?”
  4. Core Questions ask for interpretation: “Does the violence Zaroff uses help him, or hurt him?”
  5. Closing Questions draw conclusions from the evidence discussed and make connections to the larger world, like this: “What do the characters in these narratives have in common as they respond to prejudice?”
  6. Before the seminar, read over the Socratic Seminar guidelines.
  7. Also, familiarize yourself again with the “Let’s Talk” sentence stems and starters posted on the walls.
  8. Review the Socratic Seminar rubric!