EWRT 1A WEEK 3: CLASS 11

AGENDA• Grammar: Me, Myself, and I

• The Hunger Games: Themes and Concepts• Review: Recalling remembered feelings and thoughts• Writing Discussion: “Exploring your present

perspective” and “The Thesis Statement”• In-Class Writing: Finding your present perspective

Formulating a Thesis

Grammar Practice

I versus Me• John and me/I went to the store

• Me went to the store• I went to the store

• John and I went to the store

• Maria went to the store with Chase and I/me.• Maria went to the store with I• Maria went to the store with me.

• Maria went to the store with Chase and me.

Me versus MyselfMe

• Me is an object pronoun, which means that it refers to the person that the action of a verb is being done to, or to which a preposition refers.

• They want me to study more.• Tell me a story.• Between you and me, he's right.• Carol wants to meet with John and

me tomorrow.• The book was written entirely by

me.• Please call Hillary or me with any

questions.

Myself• Myself is a reflexive or stressed

pronoun, which means that, generally speaking, it should be used in conjunction with the subject pronoun I, not instead of the object pronoun me.

• I bought myself a car.• I myself started the company.• I did the laundry by myself.• I feel like myself again.• Tired of waiting, I just did it

myself.

In your groups

• Take five minutes to discuss the various themes and concepts that appear in The Hunger Games.

• Try to identify particular passages from the text that support your assertions

DISCUSSION: THEMES AND CONCEPTS

• FRIENDSHIP• FAMILY• SURVIVAL• FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION• MATERIALSIM AND CLASS• ???

THINKING ABOUT YOUR OWN EVENTExploring your perspective

Review• Introduction• Long quotation• Description of places• Description of people• Dialogue• Online review: Indicate the significance of the event

• The Strategy: Recall Remembered Feelings and Thoughts

The Strategy: Recall Remembered Feelings and Thoughts Answer these Questions in Detail

• What were your expectations before the event?• What was your first reaction to the event as it was happening and right after it

ended?• How did you show your feelings? What did you say?• What did you want the people involved to think of you? Why did you care

what they thought of you?• What did you think of yourself at the time?• How long did these initial feelings last?• What were the immediate consequences of the event for you personally?•Pause now to reread what you have written. Then write another sentence or two about the event’s significance to you at the time it occurred.

•Let’s explore the significance by adding your present perspective

The Strategy Continued: Explore Your Present Perspective

• Looking back, how do you feel about this event? If you understand it differently now than you did then, what is the difference?

• What do your actions at the time of the event say about the kind of person you were then? How would you respond to the same event if it occurred today?

• Can looking at the event historically or culturally help explain what happened? For example, did you upset racial, gender, or religious expectations? Did you feel torn between identities or cultures? Did you feel out of place?

• Do you see now that there was a conflict underlying the event? For example, were you struggling with contradictory desires? Did you feel pressured by others? Were you desires and rights in conflict with someone else’s? Was the event about power or responsibility.

• Pause to reflect on what you have written about your present perspective. Then write another sentence or two, commenting on the event’s significance as you look back on it

Where is my thesis? Do I have it in my transition?

Keep in mind that readers do not expect you to begin your remembered event essay with the kind of explicit thesis statement typical of argumentative or explanatory writing. You are not obliged to announce the significance, but you must convey it through the way you tell the story and through the dominant impression you create.

Goal: Formulating a Tentative Thesis

The Thesis: If you do decide to tell readers explicitly why the event was meaningful or significant, you will most likely do so as you tell the story, by commenting on or evaluating what happened, instead of announcing the significance at the beginning.

The Strategy• Review what you wrote for Reflecting on the Event’s Significance, and add another two or three sentences, not necessarily summarizing what you already have written but extending your insights into the significance of the event, what it meant to you at the time, and what it means to you now.

Before the opening ceremonies, Katniss meets with her stylist, Cinna, to prepare. Cinna presses a button and a fancy meal of “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey” appears (65). Katniss thinks about how difficult it would be to get a meal like this in District 12:

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?

I look up and find Cinna’s eyes trained on mine. ‘How despicable we must seem to you,’ he says. (65)

Katniss doesn’t respond to Cinna’s statement, but she agrees in her head. “He’s right, though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable” (65). Although our world does not really consist of a Capitol and many districts, there are still some people who live more comfortably than others. For people like me who live in privilege, life is easy. Food is readily available if I want to eat. Outside of school, I don’t really have many responsibilities. I don’t have to worry about how I will survive day to day. My family has told me on many occasions to think about how lucky I am to live the way I do. In other countries, life is hard. In Africa, children starve to death as a result of famine and poverty. People my age in some countries are working more than my parents do. Katniss’s disgust for the extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt for myself when I listened to an account of one man’s visit to factories in China.

HOMEWORK

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Post #13: Post your working draft: Long quotation; transition; intro to event, description of place(s), description of people, a dialogue or two, the thesis, the significance of your event, and end with your framing plan. (Remember, this is still just drafting.) Bring: HG and SMG; draft of your outline/writing