AP Language and Composition - Winter Break Homework

Winter Break Homework, AP Language and Composition

Over break, you will read and write commentaries on Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. These assignments will help you maintain or increase your reading stamina, give you an opportunity to practice identifying arguments and analyzing rhetorical devices, and facilitate a more authentic academic discourse within our class and the texts that we read.

Introduction: Jon Krakauer prefaces each chapter of Into the Wild with an excerpt or two from a work of literature and occasionally a line of graffito written by Christopher McCandless. These epigraphs clearly position this book -- and Christopher McCandless himself -- within the context of a literary, intellectual, and thematic tradition. But what is that tradition? What are its themes and who are its central figures? These questions have complex answers that we will begin to explore through our commentaries.

Task: For each of your commentaries, read the epigraph(s) and your assigned chapter carefully. Then, write a commentary in which you analyze the epigraphs(s) and their significance within the context of the book and Krakauer’s larger argument.

In each post, be sure to:

1. Provide a clear explanation of the epigraph. What is it saying? (Use marker verbs in your explanation, such as “suggests”, “argues”, “claims”, “describes,” “compares” etc.) If there are two epigraphs in your assigned chapter, you may discuss how the meanings of the epigraphs compare and contrast and how their juxtaposition has a particular effect.

2. Analyze the effect of rhetorical devices the writer uses in his assertion. How do they help the writer make his point? (This is not an essay. Think 3-6 sentences)

3. Discuss the significance of the quotation within the context of the chapter or Krakauer’s larger argument about McCandless.

-OR-

     3.) Provide biographical or historical information about the writer of the quotation and discuss its significance in relation to Krakauer’s larger purpose.

Commentaries must be between 250-350 words and meet the requirements outlined in the last blog post. Each post must be responsive; since our goal is to build a large body of evidence, insight, and thoughtful questioning around the text, your contribution should add to and respond to previous posts.  These epigraphs are rich, so there shouldn’t be a problem finding new evidence, elaborating, or offering a fresh perspective. Therefore, repeating evidence will result in a lowered grade unless it is warranted by fresh insight and complemented by additional new evidence.

TIP: To help you identify and analyze the rhetorical techniques, I have made a list of them with corresponding chapters. Please discuss more than diction and imagery. While those may be good choices in some of the epigraphs, everyone’s posts should reflect a broader understanding of the rhetorical techniques. Commentaries are due at midnight of the date stated below. If you will be out of town or don’t have internet access, please let me know ASAP.

GROUP A - POSTING: 12/23, 12/29

GROUP B - POSTING: 12/26, 12/30

GROUP C - POSTING: 12/27, 1/2

GROUP D - POSTING: 12/28, 1/3

Group	Date	Chapters, Rhetorical Devices in Epigraphs, Writers, and Texts
A	12/23	Ch. 1: sentence length, diction, tone Ch. 2: Alexander the Great, Jack London, personification, simile
B	12/26	*Note –discuss how the epigraphs work together Ch. 3: anaphora, diction, polysyndeton, Leo Tolstoy, Wallace Stegner, The American West as Living Space Ch. 4: diction, descriptive imagery, parallelism, Paul Shepard
C	12/27	*Note –discuss how the epigraphs work together Ch. 5: The Call of the Wild, repetition, sentence length, diction, tone Ch. 6: personification, metaphor, repetition, parallelism
D	12/28	*Discuss how epigraphs work together Ch. 7: Pilgrim’s Progress, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, Anthony Storr, “pathology”, diction, sentence length, repetition, tone *Discuss how epigraphs work together Ch. 8: “The Big-Two Hearted River,” parallelism, asyndeton (catalog), sentence length, diction, tone
A	12/29	*Discuss how epigraphs work together Ch. 9: Antithesis, cumulative sentence, parallelism, rhetorical question, repetition, Everett Ruess, John Muir Ch. 10: Diction, tone, “obituary”
B	12/30	Ch. 11: Boris Pasternak, polysyndeton, em-dash, second person point of view, periodic sentence, sentence length *Discuss how epigraphs work together Ch. 12: parallelism, periodic sentence, antithesis, simile, diction and tone
C	1/2	*Discuss how epigraphs work together Ch. 13: John Haines, parallelism, diction, tone, imagery Ch. 14: Sentence length, figurative language (metaphor), descriptive imagery
D	1/3	*Discuss how the epigraphs work together Ch. 15: Donald Barthelme , diction, tone, rhetorical question, concrete imagery, second person point of view, dialogue, repetition, anaphora, periodic sentence *Discuss how the epigraphs work together Ch. 16: parallelism, antithesis, periodic sentence, figurative language

Everyone

1/4

Finish books, read over commentaries, and be prepared for a quiz on Monday and a discussion of the book. Discussion question: The epigraphs clearly position this book -- and Christopher McCandless himself -- within the context of a literary, intellectual, and thematic tradition. But what is that tradition? What are its themes and who are its central figures?