11: Millay sample practice
[gallery]
7: Roll speeches
Here's the assignment.
Here's a text of the sample speech I gave in class:
Here's an online activity about oral competency.
7: grammar fun
[gallery]
And some short cartoons about some grammatical terms:
conjunctions:
predicates:
10: Middle English videos
A clip about English spelling and the Great Vowel Shift:
12: hamlet links
Online text of Hamlet
No Fear Shakespeare Hamlet
Scansion of Act III soliloquy
'In Search of the Perfect Hamlet'
10: about Streetcar
More resources:
10: paragraph planning
Click the image above to see the notes more clearly.
Here are some other helps (also in the sidebar):
- a guide to structured paragraphs
- a template to help organize structured paragraphs
10: Glass Menagerie set
Here you can see the fire escape, the living room in front and the dining room in the back.
How to use this site
Welcome to kilmer@ish! This blog-formatted website is where you will find information about Mr. Kilmer's classes.
In the right column, you will find some class-specific links, mostly the class calendars and syllabi. In the column on the left, there are archive links for each class.
The webpage seems to work best using Firefox.
Let me know if you have any questions.
How to use this site
Welcome to kilmer@ish! This blog-formatted website is where you will find information about Mr. Kilmer's classes.
In the right column, you will find some class-specific links, mostly the class calendars and syllabi. In the column on the left, there are archive links for each class.
The webpage seems to work best using Firefox.
Let me know if you have any questions.
How to use this site
Welcome to kilmer@ish! This blog-formatted website is where you will find information about Mr. Kilmer's classes.
In the right column, you will find some class-specific links, mostly the class calendars and syllabi. In the column on the left, there are archive links for each class.
The webpage seems to work best using Firefox.
Let me know if you have any questions.
11 HL: Dalloway and Eliot links

a copy of the modernism handout
online text of Mrs. Dalloway
Annotated text of 'Prufrock' and 'The Wasteland'
An article about 'Prufrock' from Poetry X
A Cummings study guide for 'Prufrock'
A radio programme called 'The Wasteland and Modernity'
11: sample analytical paragraph
We looked at this in class. This is half of a body paragraph from an student's essay about moral inversion in Mother Courage:
War heroes emerge throughout the play, each of them revealing the theme of moral inversion of war. War heroism is encountered already in scene one, where recruiting soldiers emphasize the “good money in it, glory too.” (p.7) The promise of glory persuades Eilif to abandon his family for the military, showing how alluring the idealism of being a war hero is. Eilif soon gains the recognition he was promised: “Hacked ‘em to pieces, did you, so my gallant lads can get a proper bite to eat? What do the Scriptures say? ‘Whatsoever thou doest for the least of my brethren, thou doest for me.’” (p.17) The moral inversion of Eilif’s ‘heroic’ act is clear: Eilif is being praised for a sinful act due to the benefit it gave his country. The strong connotation of ‘hacking’ accentuates the brutality of the act, emphasizing the irony of Eilif’s heroism. The reference to Christianity also ludicrously embellishes the inversion, since the general is twisting the moral in the recited scripture to fit Eilif’s ironic heroism.
8: writing a thesis for Midsummer essays
The assignment is here.
sample intro 1:
If two people are in love and one thinks love is a crazy adventure and the other thinks love is a way to find contentment in life, the relationship probably won’t work out. The perception a person has with love can determine the way love works for them. According to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love can be fulfilling or frustrating depending upon the way the person perceives it.
sample intro 2:
Bette Midler, an American singer, once said, ‘Some say love, it is a river.’ What Midler is showing is that there are different ways of seeing love, and those different perspectives might affect the way love works in a person’s life. According to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love can be fulfilling or frustrating depending upon the way the person perceives it.
sample conclusion:
In the play, how a person sees love determines how he or she experiences it. In today’s world, some people see love as a wild exciting ride, and as a result their love life is more likely to be chaotic; likewise, a person who sees love as a way of finding peace and contentment will have romantic experiences that give them that opportunity. Love usually turns out the way a person looks at it.
10: P&P essay
Choose one of the prompts below. Write a 4-5 paragraph essay (600-1000 words) on that topic.
- How does the author use foils in the novel? Use two or three examples in your analysis.
- Discuss why and how a novelist would use caricatures, using some examples from this novel.
- Discuss the use of the letter as a plot device and its unique function in a novel, as applied to Pride and Prejudice.
- How does the author hold the readers’ interest in the novel? Focus on one technique or a few related techniques.
- Discuss the point of view, or narrative voice, of the novel, and how the author uses it to affect the way we read the novel.
Draft due: Friday 7 May
Essay Moodled in: Monday 10 May
Name your file last name + pride. Mine would be called kilmerpride.docx.
Here's the sample we wrote together in class on Wednesday:
Why are details of setting important in the novel?
setting as reflection of character
Authors often provide information about settings for their novels, and those descriptions add to the mood of the novel and a sense of realism. However, one reason to provide setting details is to provide a sense of characterization for those associated with that setting. Because of the limited third person point of view and the thematic significance of perspective in Pride and Prejudice, the narration does not allow the reader to perceive characters in an objective manner, and that objective view is important to the foreshadowing and the readers' expectations. Therefore, Austen uses the details of specific settings to give information about characters that bypass Elizabeth's perspective of those characters or suggests an outcome of which Elizabeth herself is not aware.
topic sentence:
One example of this is Pemberly.
Because Elizabeth's perspective is so significant to the novel, if Austen wants to develop characterization that disagrees with that perspective, she can use details from a setting associated with the character to do so.
If you remember, we started with a fairly simple idea and found more and more complexity as we explored the possiblke examples. Notice the bad topic sentence and the better topic sentence.
8: Midsummer fairies assignment
Do a search for images of fairies from Midsummer Night's Dream. Use Google images and use terms like 'midsummer', 'fairy,' 'Puck,' 'Oberon' and 'Titania.'
Choose two images from your search. For each one, identify whether or not you think it is a good way of portraying the fairies generally or the character specifically. Write an explanation of why, using lines from act II as a way of explaining what you think of the images.
Make sure you reference the play correctly: (II.i.83) = Act, Scene, Line number
Due on Moodle by Thursday 29.4.
8: help with Midsummer Night's Dream
(try to identify all of these characters from act I scene i.)
an annotated version of the play
No Fear Shakespeare: the original text and a modern 'translation' side by side
A charming 1935 film version of the play
10: different ways of punctuating a quote
Some alternative ways of presenting a quotation from the text:
Elizabeth doesn’t want to go to Pemberley. When Mrs. Gardiner suggests it, she thinks, ‘It would be dreadful!’ (p. 186)
Notice the use of the comma after 'thinks' because the phrase before is a fragment.
When Mrs. Gardiner suggests it, she rejects the idea: ‘It would be dreadful!’ (p. 186)
Here the colon works because 'she rejects the idea' is an independent clause.
When Mrs. Gardiner suggests it, she says that ‘[i]t would be dreadful’ (p. 186).
This is the integration of the quotation into your own sentence: the square brackets indicate a change from the original text.
Elizabeth finds Mrs. Gardiner’s suggestion to go to Pemberly ‘dreadful’ (p. 816).
This, in many ways, is the best choice. It doesn't say anything less than the others and allows you as a writer to move on to other ideas. The more targeted the evidence, the better.
11: World literature assignment
Here are the notes on the aspects in the tree world literature works:
The wiki for signing up for a World Literature 1 topic is available on Moodle. It opens Monday 19 April at 16:30 and closes Wednesday 21 April at 21:00.
12: getting ready for study leave
meter handout
link to literary terms (Sparknotes)
reading for paper 1
planning for paper 2
sample paper 2 planning
intro to Huck Finn
intro to 1984
intro to Hour of the Star
11: Mother Courage YouTube clips
Actress Meryl Streep talks about playing Mother Courage.
8: intro to Homecoming
Much Ado About Nothing act III quotations
For the quotations below, explain the significance of each passage. Relate it to a theme, the development of character or the development of conflict.
For each passage, you must cover the needed analysis in less than 200 words.
Due Friday 19 February. Moodle it with the file name last name + ma3.
Here are the quotes:
10: MA act 2 assignment
For each of the quotations below, explain the significance of each passage. Relate it to a theme, the development of character, the use of techniques and/or the development of conflict.
For each passage, you must cover the needed analysis in less than 200 words.
Moodle the assignment. Name the file last name + ma2. Mine would be called kilmerma2.docx.
DUE by Friday 12.2
Here are the passages:
12: paper 2 planning
Look at the slide show and think and plan your way through one of the prompts that we looked at last week Thursday as a preparation for a full paper 2 practice on Thursday.
Much Ado About Nothing act 1 quotations

For each of the quotations below, explain the significance of each passage. Relate it to a theme, the development of character or the development of conflict.
For each passage, you must cover the needed analysis in less than 200 words. Plan carefully what you will include and consider the criteria.
"Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is (for the which I may go the finer), I will live a bachelor." (I, i)
"Claudio: Can the world buy such a jewel?
Benedick: Yea, and a case to put it into." (I, i)
Due Monday 1 February
Sample paragraph:
8: An Inspector Calls sample paragraph
The paragraph we did in class today:
In the play An Inspector Calls, Edna, the maid, is described on page 2 as ‘walking with a pronounced limp.’ The author does this in order to identify her as working class, emphasize her weakness and create a sense of sympathy from the audience. The limp emphasizes her working class status because of all of the middle class characters, none of them limp, and in fact they show their confidence by the way they stand and walk. For instance, on page 5 Mr. Birling … By having these two descriptions, the author emphasizes the differences between the two characters. In addition, the limp emphasizes her weakness. ...
12: The Hour of the Star links
An Introduction to Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star
Babelguides: The Hour of the Star
Words Are Living Tissue: The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
Crackling Embers II: The Hour of the Star
10: Much Ado help
Here's a link to the side-by-side version of the play from No Fear Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Globe has a website called Playing Shakespeare about aspects of their production of Much Ado About Nothing. Interesting and useful, I think.
11: introduction to Greek drama
2. Add to your notes from this slide show:
3. Read about Classical Unities and Aristotle's unities.
4. Read the story of Oedipus and his crazy family. Make a family tree in your notes.
8: detective stories
If you liked the story we watched today, here are more Poirot stories.
Keep looking for those things we expect in detective stories.