Overview: Jordan Harrison's Marjorie Prime explores our relationships with family, much like Henrik Ibsen did in his time with A Doll House. However, Harrison also delves into the ways in which memory shapes our choices and future. By doing so, he attends to the new challenges we face in our psychologically conscious world. Today we finished reading Part I.
Questions to Ponder: By using the conceit of a Prime, how do the characters reinvent their loved ones into what and who they want them to be? How do the Primes and the living, in turn, reinvent themselves? How are we all like Marjorie, when it come to memory retrieval? How do the ideas of Existentialism apply to these ideas and this play? Are there any questions or concepts you found interesting or confusing that you would like to explore in class?
Overview: Jordan Harrison's Marjorie Prime explores our relationships with family, much like Henrik Ibsen did in his time with A Doll House. However, Harrison also delves into the ways in which memory shapes our choices and future. By doing so, he attends to the new challenges we face in our psychologically conscious world. Today we read Part I, Scene 1, pages 1-13.
Questions to Ponder: By using the conceit of a Prime, how do the characters reinvent their loved ones into what and who they want them to be? How do the Primes and the living, in turn, reinvent themselves? How are we all like Marjorie, when it come to memory retrieval? How do the ideas of Existentialism apply to these ideas and this play? Are there any questions or concepts you found interesting or confusing that you would like to explore in class?
TERM THREE GRADES IN ASPEN - YOU HAVE UNTIL TOMORROW TO EMAIL MISSING WORK.
Recap of Today's Class: We reviewed the last section of the play, and I explained its essence. We started reading the play on page 56, and finished. We see Vivian's last moments. There are no more flashbacks, as we have reached the present. Vivian is on a morphine drip and is no longer conscious. In a surprise moment, E.M. Ashford enters and sits with Vivian. She reads The Runaway Bunny" which, thematically, presents the same idea as Donne's Holy Sonnet, "If Poysonous Mineralls." Vivian need not hide from love. She can embrace it. Vivian dies and walks toward the light. Jason, unfortunately, calls the code team and makes a mistake. He is in the same place as Vivian, when she visited E.M. Ashford as a young student. Will Jason learn from his mistake? Or will he continue? I included the YouTube link, so you can see the film if you wish. It is also available on Amazon if you wish to see it in better quality.
Enjoy your vacation! We will begin Marjorie Prime when we return on Monday, April 27th.
Overview and Homework: As we discussed, below you will find materials to prepare you for our next class session. I provided a link for our Google Meet on Monday. With regard to late work, please email any work you complete to my K12 account, and make sure it is dated and labeled by Friday, April 17th. The last assignment is the close reading essay for Wit, titled "Just a Comma" (The essay may be posted to Turitin.com, also by the 17th). I provided the video of myself teaching the lesson, below. You will also find the complete prompt, assignment, and film clip to make it easy for you to proceed.
Mr. P. gives tips for writing this essay, from last week's post
"Just a Comma" Assignment, Prompt, and Film Clip
Essay Prompt: The following dialogue is an excerpt from Wit a play by Margaret Edson, produced in 1999. Read the passage carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Edson reveals her values about the importance between literary analysis and real life experiences through characterization and other literary devices.
VIVIAN. (Hesitantly) I should have asked more questions, because I knew there was going to be a test. I have cancer. Insidious cancer, with pernicious side effects – No, the treatment has pernicious side effects. I have stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five. And I have to be very tough. It appears to be a matter, as the saying goes...of life and death. I know all about life and death. I am, after all, a professor of seventeenth century poetry...specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne...which explore mortality in greater depth...than any body of work in the English language. And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn from a challenge. That is why I chose to study John Donne...while a student of the great E.M. Ashford. (Professor E.M. Ashford, fifty-two, enters, seated at the same desk as Dr. Kelekian was. The scene is twenty-eight years ago. Vivian suddenly turns twenty-two, eager and intimidated.)
Professor Ashford?
E.M. Do it again.
VIVIAN. (To the audience) It was something of a shock. I had to sit down. (She plops down).
E.M. Please sit down. Your essay on Holy Sonnet VI, Miss Bearing, is a melodrama with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you...to say nothing of Donne. Do it again.
VIVIAN. I, ah…
E.M. Begin with the text, Miss Bearing, not with a feeling.
“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not soe.”
You've entirely missed the point of the poem, because you've used an edition of the text that is inauthentically punctuated. In the Gardner edition –
VIVIAN. That edition was checked out of the library –
E.M. Miss Bearing!
VIVIAN. Sorry.
E.M. You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is metaphysical poetry, not the modern novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading...which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think that the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail?
The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the
enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death and eternal life. In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation.
And Death – capital D – shall be no more - semi-colon! Death – capital D – comma – thou shalt die – exclamation point!
If you go in for this sort of thing I suggest you take up Shakespeare. Gardner's edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 – not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
And death shall be no more, comma, Death thou shalt die.
(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture with a comma.)
Nothing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting. Very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something...to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma. A pause.
This way, the uncompromising way...one learns something from the poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death, soul, God...past, present. Not insuperable barriers. Not semicolons. Just a comma.
VIVIAN. Life, death, I see! (standing) It's a metaphysical conceit, it's wit! I'll go back to the library and re-write the paper –
E.M. (Standing, emphatically) It is not wit, Miss Bearing, it is truth. The paper's not the point.
VIVIAN. Isn't it?
E.M. (Tenderly) Vivian, you're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library, go out. Enjoy yourself with friends. Hmmm. (Vivian walks away. E.M. slides off.)
VIVIAN. I, ah, went outside. It was a warm day. There were students on the lawn, talking about, nothing, laughing. The insuperable barrier between one thing and another is…just a comma? Simple human truth. Uncompromising scholarly standards. They're connected. I just couldn't...
TERM THREE GRADES IN ASPEN - YOU HAVE UNTIL THE END OF THE WEEK TO EMAIL MISSING WORK.
Recap of Monday's Class: We reviewed the last section of the play, and I explained the essence of the scene. We started reading the play, again, and ended the session on page 56. In a series of flashbacks, we see how cruel Vivian could be in the classroom. She seeks kindness, now, but she was unable to show her students kindness. The last scene we read today shows Susie caring for Vivian, telling her that she must make a decision about the code team. Vivian chooses DNR. If her heart stops, she wishes it to stop. We will continue reading the play on Thursday.
Overview and Homework: As we discussed, below you will find materials to prepare you for our next class session. I provided a link for our Google Meet on Monday. With regard to late work, please email any work you complete to my K12 account, and make sure it is dated and labeled by Friday, April 17th. The last assignment is the close reading essay for Wit, titled "Just a Comma" (The essay may be posted to Turitin.com, also by the 17th). I provided the video of myself teaching the lesson, below. You will also find the complete prompt, assignment, and film clip to make it easy for you to proceed.
Mr. P. gives tips for writing this essay, from last week's post
"Just a Comma" Assignment, Prompt, and Film Clip
Essay Prompt: The following dialogue is an excerpt from Wit a play by Margaret Edson, produced in 1999. Read the passage carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Edson reveals her values about the importance between literary analysis and real life experiences through characterization and other literary devices.
VIVIAN. (Hesitantly) I should have asked more questions, because I knew there was going to be a test. I have cancer. Insidious cancer, with pernicious side effects – No, the treatment has pernicious side effects. I have stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five. And I have to be very tough. It appears to be a matter, as the saying goes...of life and death. I know all about life and death. I am, after all, a professor of seventeenth century poetry...specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne...which explore mortality in greater depth...than any body of work in the English language. And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn from a challenge. That is why I chose to study John Donne...while a student of the great E.M. Ashford. (Professor E.M. Ashford, fifty-two, enters, seated at the same desk as Dr. Kelekian was. The scene is twenty-eight years ago. Vivian suddenly turns twenty-two, eager and intimidated.)
Professor Ashford?
E.M. Do it again.
VIVIAN. (To the audience) It was something of a shock. I had to sit down. (She plops down).
E.M. Please sit down. Your essay on Holy Sonnet VI, Miss Bearing, is a melodrama with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you...to say nothing of Donne. Do it again.
VIVIAN. I, ah…
E.M. Begin with the text, Miss Bearing, not with a feeling.
“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not soe.”
You've entirely missed the point of the poem, because you've used an edition of the text that is inauthentically punctuated. In the Gardner edition –
VIVIAN. That edition was checked out of the library –
E.M. Miss Bearing!
VIVIAN. Sorry.
E.M. You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is metaphysical poetry, not the modern novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading...which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think that the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail?
The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the
enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death and eternal life. In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation.
And Death – capital D – shall be no more - semi-colon! Death – capital D – comma – thou shalt die – exclamation point!
If you go in for this sort of thing I suggest you take up Shakespeare. Gardner's edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 – not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
And death shall be no more, comma, Death thou shalt die.
(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture with a comma.)
Nothing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting. Very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something...to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma. A pause.
This way, the uncompromising way...one learns something from the poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death, soul, God...past, present. Not insuperable barriers. Not semicolons. Just a comma.
VIVIAN. Life, death, I see! (standing) It's a metaphysical conceit, it's wit! I'll go back to the library and re-write the paper –
E.M. (Standing, emphatically) It is not wit, Miss Bearing, it is truth. The paper's not the point.
VIVIAN. Isn't it?
E.M. (Tenderly) Vivian, you're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library, go out. Enjoy yourself with friends. Hmmm. (Vivian walks away. E.M. slides off.)
VIVIAN. I, ah, went outside. It was a warm day. There were students on the lawn, talking about, nothing, laughing. The insuperable barrier between one thing and another is…just a comma? Simple human truth. Uncompromising scholarly standards. They're connected. I just couldn't...
Recap of Thursday's Class: We reviewed the opening sections of the play, and I explained the essay assignment in full. We started reading the play, again, and ended the session on page 47. Vivian asks Jason about his choice of work, and if he ever misses being around people. We will continue reading the play on Monday.
Overview and Homework: As we discussed, below you will find materials to prepare you for our next class session. I provided a link for our Google Meet on Monday. With regard to late work, please email any work you complete to my K12 account, and make sure it is dated and labeled by Friday, April 17th. The last assignment is the close reading essay for Wit, titled "Just a Comma" (The essay may be posted to Turitin.com, also by the 17th). I provided the video of myself teaching the lesson, below. You will also find the complete prompt, assignment, and film clip to make it easy for you to proceed.
Mr. P. gives tips for writing this essay, from last week's post
"Just a Comma" Assignment, Prompt, and Film Clip
Essay Prompt: The following dialogue is an excerpt from Wit a play by Margaret Edson, produced in 1999. Read the passage carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Edson reveals her values about the importance between literary analysis and real life experiences through characterization and other literary devices.
VIVIAN. (Hesitantly) I should have asked more questions, because I knew there was going to be a test. I have cancer. Insidious cancer, with pernicious side effects – No, the treatment has pernicious side effects. I have stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five. And I have to be very tough. It appears to be a matter, as the saying goes...of life and death. I know all about life and death. I am, after all, a professor of seventeenth century poetry...specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne...which explore mortality in greater depth...than any body of work in the English language. And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn from a challenge. That is why I chose to study John Donne...while a student of the great E.M. Ashford. (Professor E.M. Ashford, fifty-two, enters, seated at the same desk as Dr. Kelekian was. The scene is twenty-eight years ago. Vivian suddenly turns twenty-two, eager and intimidated.)
Professor Ashford?
E.M. Do it again.
VIVIAN. (To the audience) It was something of a shock. I had to sit down. (She plops down).
E.M. Please sit down. Your essay on Holy Sonnet VI, Miss Bearing, is a melodrama with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you...to say nothing of Donne. Do it again.
VIVIAN. I, ah…
E.M. Begin with the text, Miss Bearing, not with a feeling.
“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not soe.”
You've entirely missed the point of the poem, because you've used an edition of the text that is inauthentically punctuated. In the Gardner edition –
VIVIAN. That edition was checked out of the library –
E.M. Miss Bearing!
VIVIAN. Sorry.
E.M. You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is metaphysical poetry, not the modern novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading...which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think that the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail?
The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the
enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death and eternal life. In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation.
And Death – capital D – shall be no more - semi-colon! Death – capital D – comma – thou shalt die – exclamation point!
If you go in for this sort of thing I suggest you take up Shakespeare. Gardner's edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 – not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
And death shall be no more, comma, Death thou shalt die.
(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture with a comma.)
Nothing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting. Very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something...to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma. A pause.
This way, the uncompromising way...one learns something from the poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death, soul, God...past, present. Not insuperable barriers. Not semicolons. Just a comma.
VIVIAN. Life, death, I see! (standing) It's a metaphysical conceit, it's wit! I'll go back to the library and re-write the paper –
E.M. (Standing, emphatically) It is not wit, Miss Bearing, it is truth. The paper's not the point.
VIVIAN. Isn't it?
E.M. (Tenderly) Vivian, you're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library, go out. Enjoy yourself with friends. Hmmm. (Vivian walks away. E.M. slides off.)
VIVIAN. I, ah, went outside. It was a warm day. There were students on the lawn, talking about, nothing, laughing. The insuperable barrier between one thing and another is…just a comma? Simple human truth. Uncompromising scholarly standards. They're connected. I just couldn't...
Overview and Homework: As we discussed, below you will find materials to prepare you for our next class session. I provided a link for our Google Meet on Thursday. With regard to late work, please email any work you complete to my K12 account, and make sure it is dated and labeled by Friday, April 17th. The last assignment is the close reading essay for Wit, titled "Just a Comma" (The essay may be posted to Turitin.com, also by the 17th). I provided the video of myself teaching the lesson, below. You will also find the complete prompt, assignment, and film clip to make it easy for you to proceed. We will go over the writing assignment and I will answer questions on Thursday. I will also go over the next assignment and give you time to work on the essay with me in the chat so you can ask questions while you work. If you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the comment section of this post. See you Thursday!
Mr. P. gives tips for writing this essay, from last week's post
"Just a Comma" Assignment, Prompt, and Film Clip
Essay Prompt: The following dialogue is an excerpt from Wit a play by Margaret Edson, produced in 1999. Read the passage carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Edson reveals her values about the importance between literary analysis and real life experiences through characterization and other literary devices.
VIVIAN. (Hesitantly) I should have asked more questions, because I knew there was going to be a test. I have cancer. Insidious cancer, with pernicious side effects – No, the treatment has pernicious side effects. I have stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five. And I have to be very tough. It appears to be a matter, as the saying goes...of life and death. I know all about life and death. I am, after all, a professor of seventeenth century poetry...specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne...which explore mortality in greater depth...than any body of work in the English language. And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn from a challenge. That is why I chose to study John Donne...while a student of the great E.M. Ashford. (Professor E.M. Ashford, fifty-two, enters, seated at the same desk as Dr. Kelekian was. The scene is twenty-eight years ago. Vivian suddenly turns twenty-two, eager and intimidated.)
Professor Ashford?
E.M. Do it again.
VIVIAN. (To the audience) It was something of a shock. I had to sit down. (She plops down).
E.M. Please sit down. Your essay on Holy Sonnet VI, Miss Bearing, is a melodrama with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you...to say nothing of Donne. Do it again.
VIVIAN. I, ah…
E.M. Begin with the text, Miss Bearing, not with a feeling.
“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not soe.”
You've entirely missed the point of the poem, because you've used an edition of the text that is inauthentically punctuated. In the Gardner edition –
VIVIAN. That edition was checked out of the library –
E.M. Miss Bearing!
VIVIAN. Sorry.
E.M. You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is metaphysical poetry, not the modern novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading...which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think that the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail?
The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the
enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death and eternal life. In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation.
And Death – capital D – shall be no more - semi-colon! Death – capital D – comma – thou shalt die – exclamation point!
If you go in for this sort of thing I suggest you take up Shakespeare. Gardner's edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 – not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
And death shall be no more, comma, Death thou shalt die.
(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture with a comma.)
Nothing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting. Very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something...to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma. A pause.
This way, the uncompromising way...one learns something from the poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death, soul, God...past, present. Not insuperable barriers. Not semicolons. Just a comma.
VIVIAN. Life, death, I see! (standing) It's a metaphysical conceit, it's wit! I'll go back to the library and re-write the paper –
E.M. (Standing, emphatically) It is not wit, Miss Bearing, it is truth. The paper's not the point.
VIVIAN. Isn't it?
E.M. (Tenderly) Vivian, you're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library, go out. Enjoy yourself with friends. Hmmm. (Vivian walks away. E.M. slides off.)
VIVIAN. I, ah, went outside. It was a warm day. There were students on the lawn, talking about, nothing, laughing. The insuperable barrier between one thing and another is…just a comma? Simple human truth. Uncompromising scholarly standards. They're connected. I just couldn't...
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OVERVIEW: Welcome back to school! I hope this blog post finds you and your family well. I miss seeing you, and I hope to make our time together as meaningful and stress free as possible.
In this space, I want to prepare you for our first day back. You should have received a letter from the district about our return to learning. Below, you will see a grid with the weekly schedule. We will meet twice a week for class. I plan to use Google Meet and our class blog. I will also be available during H-block and Wednesdays on Google Meet for office hours.
Below, I provided a list of "options" for your continued learning. Our first class will involve checking-in and making decisions about how to proceed. I want you to be part of this process.
If you are friendly with anyone in the class, please let them know that there is an expectation that they will be engaging in work, again.
HOMEWORK DUE MONDAY: When you finish reading this post, please post a quick comment below to let me know: 1) You are alive and well, 2) Will I see you in our first Google Meet, and 3) What would you be interested in doing with our time (again, see list below). Note: All class sessions will be recorded and posted on my blog, so you can still enjoy class even if you do not make it for the live session.
See you on Google Meet!
AHS School Schedule
Curriculum Possibilities
1. Late Work: The first order of business. If you have not done so, please complete any work assigned before March 13th. This work will be graded and will count for graduation. Send all completed late work to my email for evaluation. Final district due date is Friday, April 17th.
2. Wit by Margaret Edson: As we were almost finished reading the Margaret Edson's Wit, I think that would be the best place to resume classes. When you finish reading the last two sections of the play, you can compose your response in the appropriate blog space when you can. I have provided quick links, below:
3. Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison: I have a pdf of the play. We could read it together during our class sessions. The film is available on Amazon Prime. See film trailer, below.
4. Mr. Pellerin Daily Lessons: I could always just share poems, favorite pieces of literature, review past material, walk through my Teaching Global Classroom Blog, and we can have a discussion on Google Meet during our class time. The assignments can come organically from these sessions.
5. College Prep: Is there anything you would like me to help you with on your way to college? More grammar work? Writing instruction? Writing literary research papers? Life lessons? Use me as a resource.
6. Creative Writing: Poetry, short fiction, novels, personal essay writing? I can help guide you. FYI: Watch the video of Poetry Night at Cafe Azteca!
