The Conclusion to Your Blog

The Conclusion to Your Blog

To prepare for you final blog post, read over every blog you have posted over the course of the 2016-2017 school year.  Look back on your writing: what have you learned, what have you written, what is your blog all about and how have you evolved as a writer?

Write a comprehensive conclusion to your blog - consider your English blog as a body of work and reflect on the meaning and significance of it all. How do your blog posts reflect who you are as a student and as a writer? What have you learned this year and how have you grown since September? This should be a creative, complex, and encompassing post: the more you write and the more you reflect on, the better your grade will be. This blog will be assessed for quality and content rather than just completion. Consider a minimum of 400 words as a guideline for length. 

Also, include a quotation that supports your message as to the meaning and conclusion of your blog. This quotation can be from anywhere - a novel, a poem, a lyric from a song...anything that reflects the meaning of the body of work that is your blog. Be sure to embed your quotation in a way that clarifies its relevance to your message.

This blog post is meant to give a clear, reflective conclusion to the year-long blog assignment. The more reflecting you do on your posts, the higher your grade will be. If you have fewer posts than were required, go into more detail to compensate for your lack of assignments on which to reflect. Be sure to comment on how you have grown as a student and as a writer throughout this past school year. Feel free to include photos, videos, or other enhancements to wrap up the blog with a bang!

This post is worth 10 points in Evaluation and will be assessed for quality, content, complexity and thoughtfulness. Due Sunday, June 11. This assignment will not be graded if completed late. Any and all late blogs are all due no later than Sunday, June 11 to receive credit for this semester.

The Importance of Being Earnest

We've just finished reading Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in class. Think about the topics from discussion and write two paragraphs about whichever topic you find most interesting.  Or, if you have a different idea, go ahead and write about your own idea. Within your two paragraphs, showcase your ability to make inferences about what you read and show your understanding of the play. Also, this play is a comedy - what did you find funny? How is reading comedy different from reading more serious literature? 

Due  Tuesday, June 13.

1.  The Importance of Being Earnest can be enjoyed simply as a silly comedy of manners.  However, at deeper inspection, it is obvious that Wilde satirizes many Victorian institutions and/or societal expectations.  Identify one of those major institutions and discuss Wilde’s serious message behind his trivial treatment.  How does Wilde invert well-known proverbs and use epigrams and aphorisms to comment on Victorian attitudes? What connections can you make to Great Expectations?

2.   Wilde suggests that his Victorian contemporaries should treat trivial matters with greater respect and pay less attention to what society then regarded as serious.  Discuss how Wilde expresses this philosophy with reference to one of the following: death, money, property, food or marriage

3. There are three major male/female relationships in The Importance of Being Earnest: Algernon/Cecily, Jack/Gwendolyn, and Prism/Chasuble.  Each relationship is stylized with its own particular type of dialogue.  In fact, the two members of each pair go together in part because they share a type of language.  Analyze the conversations of one of these couples, examining how they speak and what sorts of epigrams or social commentaries they make, What do you conclude?

4. Dishonesty is a theme that pervades The Importance of Being Earnest.  There are different levels on which this dishonesty is expressed throughout the play. Choose one type of dishonesty and discuss its significance to the theme.  Why is this an important theme to the play as a whole?