1. Warming up with a revisitation: Grammar You Must Know #3: Subject-Verb Agreement
2. Making some visits to everyone named "Black":
- Flip through Oskar's chapters and list everyone he's visited so far named "Black."
- For each person, write one word that indicates your initial perception or Oskar's first impression of this character (one-word biography style).
- Why is each Black significant to Oskar's journey? What does each one help him question or understand differently?
- What do all of the Blacks have in common?
3. Enjoying EL&IC Fishbowl #4: Pages 174-207
HW:
1. For FRIDAY: Bring your personal artifact back to class.
*START THE NEXT READING ASSIGNMENT OVER THANKSGIVING BREAK.*
2. For TUESDAY AFTER BREAK: Read pages 208-259 in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; complete your journal entry. If you have fallen behind in your reading or journaling, please use break to catch up (and get ahead).
If you miss a Fishbowl or Socratic, you must make it up. Fishbowl: Read over the syllabus and blog comments, then add an extended comment to the class blog. Socratic: Read over the syllabus and the class notes, then add an extended comment to the class blog.
*START THE NEXT READING ASSIGNMENT OVER THANKSGIVING BREAK.*
2. For TUESDAY AFTER BREAK: Read pages 208-259 in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; complete your journal entry. If you have fallen behind in your reading or journaling, please use break to catch up (and get ahead).
If you miss a Fishbowl or Socratic, you must make it up. Fishbowl: Read over the syllabus and blog comments, then add an extended comment to the class blog. Socratic: Read over the syllabus and the class notes, then add an extended comment to the class blog.
In what ways do the Grandmas story differ from the Grandpas?
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think the Grandmother chose to write her entire life story blank? What do you think she thinks of the life she has lived?
ReplyDeleteI think she doesn't feel her life is important enough to write down, either that or she was just testing her husband to see if he actually cared about her feelings.
DeleteWhat connections can you make between Hiroshima and 9/11?
ReplyDeleteThey were both attacks that split families apart.
Deletethey both were devastating attacks to their countries that demolished the economy for a little bit and actually brought their citizens together to attempt ot help.
DeleteOn page 176 when grandma says"I hit the spacebar again and again and again. My life story was spaces." Is there a deeper meaning to this line?
ReplyDeleteI think she remembers her life in gaps and she only really remembers the big events.
DeleteI think the grandma was trying to say that her life is empty. She needs someone to fill her life or simply makes her life colorful.
DeleteI think the deeper meaning to this line is that the Grandmother didn't feel like she actually lived her life, she just went through the motions of living without experiencing it.
DeleteI believe so, when she was writing her life stories, she was recalling the memories that she could and thought that they had no meaning and she was just pressing the space key trying to skip to the new memory.
DeleteWhen I teach poetry, I always think of all the white space on the page as room for the reader to project his/her own thoughts and emotions. I wonder if Foer, in using so many pages with white space, is inviting the readers to consider their own response to trauma. Maybe it relates to the cover, where I feel like the art is inviting you to put your hand in someone else's?
DeleteOn page 179, the grandpa wrote "It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life." Why did the grandpa wrote this and what makes him wrote this?
ReplyDeleteYouth is wasted on the young, when your young you don't really know how to live life to it's fullest, so if you have a second life you could live a more fulfilled life.
DeleteWhy did Grandma react the way she did to the little girl dressed up on Halloween? "I told her to wait. I went to the bedroom. I took out two one hundred dollar bills and put them in a different envelope, which I gave to the ghost." (176)
ReplyDeletewhy did anas dad have his hand on his face
ReplyDeletehow do each of the people that Oskar meet help him resolve his own life problems
ReplyDeleteThey all teach him a certain life lesson in their own way. I think it was Abe Black that helped him with his fear of roller coasters and Abby Black was very sensitive to very insignificant things like Oskar and this might've given him a sense of comfort.
DeleteI feel like Oskar meeting new people is good for him because this is a new opportunity for him to connect to new people who can give him a new way to look at situations in life.
DeleteWhy did the Grandpa take pictures of all the doorknobs in the apartment?
ReplyDeleteTo me this symbolized a way to escape, in the pervious reading assignment the Grandfather was complaining about all the "Nothing spaces" in their apartment, that there were more Nothing's than Something's. So the door nobs were a way to escape all the rules of their relationship and all the Nothing's.
DeleteI think doorknobs are a way to reunite. People wait for their loved ones to open the doorknob. It's like a way to remember what their home looked like.
DeleteI like these interpretations! It's interesting, too, how each one has a lock on the knob, and our main character is on a journey with a key (two keys, actually--one to his home, and one to something he doesn't know of).
DeleteI think Oskar and his mom will get better after Oskar finishes solving his dads mystery. I feel like until he gets over his dad, he will love his mom more. Ryan Rundell
ReplyDeleteIt will or it won't. All I'm thinking about is what if there is no mystery, what if Oskar goes all the way to the last "clue" and there's nothing there. He could think that his mom must have gotten there before him and get even angrier towards her.
DeleteI think Oskar's relationship with his mom will get better once he shows her the recordings of his dad.
DeleteWill oskar continue to give himself bruises and act out or will he change after overhearing the conversation that his mom and therapist had
ReplyDeleteWhat will the relationship between Oskar and his mother look like after the events on pages 204-207
ReplyDeleteI feel like Oskar is now going to have a new sense of responsibility and won't need as much help as he needs now.
Delete"Yes, I held her in my arms. She said "I don't want to die." I told her, "You're not going to die." She said, "I promise I wont die before we get home" (189) I feel like this line reminds Oskar about the last voicemails from his dad. Guessing that his dad was trying to say comforting words like 'he was going to be home soon', knowing that the situation was getting worse and the outcome wasn't looking good.
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought of this connection before--really interesting.
DeleteI think Oskar opens up to strangers because he loves his mom so much and he wants to protect her. He needs someone to talk to, but his mom knows too much about the tragedy.
ReplyDeleteI think the of Hiroshima gives us a better review and understanding of what it's like to lost someone you loved.
ReplyDeleteAfter grandma feels the baby kick in her stomach, why does she release all the animals? "I brought the birdcages to the windows. I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages. I poured the fish down the drain. I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars. I released the insects onto the street. And the reptiles. And the mice. I told them, go. All of you. Go. And they went. And they didn't come back." (185-186)
ReplyDeleteI think she felt liberated because she was having a baby and the Grandfather left her so she didn't have any more rules to follow, so she let all of his animals go.
Deleteshe probably thought she was free from something because the grandfather wasn't around and she was finally having a kid so when she felt it kicking than she felt like she doesn't need to care for the animals anymore and just the baby.
DeleteI wanted to punch Dr. Fein in the face when he asked if any good could come out of his father's death.
ReplyDeleteI think this connects to the grandma and the grandpa's relationship. The grandma knew that it was time to let grandpa go because she broke the law.
ReplyDeleteDO you think Oskar's mom is hiding something from Oskar like Oskar is hiding the massages from his mom?
ReplyDeleteDo you think Oskar will ever share the messages with her mom or do you think he will never let her know about what he's saying
ReplyDeleteIs there a connection between the grandfathers experience in Dredsen and Oskar's experience in 9/11?
ReplyDelete