A. Read and annotate chapters 7 - 11.
B. Final draft of speeches due (typed, MLA format, OR very neatly composed in blue or black ink).
C. One page critical analysis on something that you find interesting in chapters 7 - 11. After reading the assigned chapters, think about an idea/concept/theory/theme that you find interesting. Take, say, in chapter 8, how a few days after the bloody executions, the animals discover that the commandment reading "No animal shall kill any other animal" now reads: "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." You may take the previous quote, for instance, and discuss how people with privilege and power can tweak, change, and/or completely alter certain laws/rules/regulations to benefit them, to the detriment and suffering of others.
Or, using the same quote, you may, in your critical response, reflect on the connections between and differences in morality and law. For example, are there moral absolutes? Do these absolutes find their way into American law? Why or why not? If there are no moral absolutes, then who or what determines what is and is not considered morally good in a particular society? Can one's moral perspectives be altered? How? As you can see, this sort of writing can get complex real fast, but be not alarmed.
What I am looking for is a thoughtful engagement with the topic of your paper that is at once clear and rational; what I am
not looking for is a cute, weak rendering of something that you heard on the Internet. I am not looking for generalities or superficial conversations. I am looking for curious, imaginative declarations of thought and judgement, articulations of the intrinsic in ways that wake me up. Look at the following example written by a former student to guide your own responses (Note that this is not Daisy's first
critical analysis; it took one academic year, including hundreds of hours spent after school on multiple drafts and engaging in writing conferences with me to get her essay pared down to what you see below. And even as is, her writing is not perfect, and many of her ideas can more be more clearly articulated.)
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Daisy Lopez-Ruiz
English 10b
September 11, 2009
A
Few Thoughts On Race
To
me the origins of racism remain relatively unclear. From what I have read,
"the evidence suggests that the roots of racism lie intertwined with more
general repressive attitudes toward nature and the body, and with concomitant
associations of dark skin color with filth, death, and radical evil
generally" (Drinnon xxvii). In reading both Drinnon and Orwell, I have
been thinking about how Anglo-European settlers first defined natives as
nonpersons within the settlement culture and was in a real sense the enabling
experience of the rising American empire: Indian-hating was closely tied
with republic’s Manifest Destiny.
Orwell’s
Animal Farm dovetails with Drinnon’s
take on racism in that power structures take on an imperialistic presence in
that they enslave, repress, and abuse the “lower” forms of life. The “elite”
animals (i.e., pigs) of Manor Farm, for instance, trick the “stupider” animals
into believing in the legitimacy of their (the pigs’ power). And in so doing,
the pigs get all the apples and the milk, and slowly become the tyrants that
they once protested in the beginning. These issues of power challenge me to ask
a very unsettling question: Is it human nature to become tyrannous if afforded
enough power? If it is not in our nature, then what are the ways in which we as
a culture can unlearn this abusive tendency so that we may live in a free and
just society.
