For those of you absent:

Write a character analysis of Miss Emily in “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner.  Include details from the story that reveal the following issues: what other people thought of her, what Miss Emily said and did, what the narrator tells us directly about Miss Emily, how Miss Emily’s setting reflects her character.  You must include your opinion on Miss Emily’s motive for her crime.

We are getting ready to begin our Boot Camp unit with short stories. Read and be prepared to discuss character in “A Rose For Emily“ (page 79-85 in Anthology) on Tuesday. There will be a reading quiz over the story.

This is the prompt I introduced you to last week. This will be a process essay rather than a timed-write. You will have until next Friday, October 26 to complete it.

1976The conflict created when the will of an individual opposes the will of the majority is the recurring theme of many novels, plays, and essays.Select a fictional character who is in opposition to his or her society.In a critical essay, analyze the conflict and discuss the moral and ethical implications for both the individual and the society.

Plan to use the text and your notes to support your ideas.

The following is the text of an article written by John Steinbeck in defense of Arthur Miller during the McCarthy trials. An excellent source for those of you looking for info for your intro to colonialism handout:

In the following essay from the June 1957 Esquire, John Steinbeck eloquently
defends American playwright Arthur Miller and excoriates the House
Un-American Activities Committee. Curiously, Steinbeck here uses the
rhetoric of patriotism to counter McCarthy’s and HUAC’s patriotic rhetoric.
This typifies Steinbeck’s approach to social problems, to turn the rhetoric
used unjustly against itself. The text comes from Contemporary Moral Issues
(Belmont, CA, 1963. 72-74).

The trial of Arthur Miller for contempt of Congress brings close to all of
us one of the strangest and most frightening dilemmas that a people and a
government has ever faced. It is not the first trial of its kind, nor will
it in all probability be the last. But Arthur Miller is a writer-one of our
very best. What has happened to him could happen to any writer; could happen
to me. We are face to face with a problem by no means easy of solution….

No man knows what he might do in a given situation, and surely many men must
wonder how they would act if they were in Arthur Miller’s shoes. I wonder
what I would do.

Let me suppose that I were going to trial for contempt of Congress as he is.
I might be thinking somewhat as follows:

There is no doubt that Congress has the right, under the law, to ask me any
question it wishes and to punish my refusal to answer with a contempt
charge. The Congress has the right to do nearly anything conceivable.

It has only to define a situation or an action as a “clear and present
danger” to public safety, public morals, or public health. The selling or
eating of mince pie could be made a crime if Congress determined that mince
pie was a danger to public health–which it probably is. Since many parents
raise their children badly, mother love could be defined as a danger to the
general welfare.

Surely, Congress has the right to ask me anything on any subject. The
question is: Should Congress take advantage of that right?

Let us say that the Congressional Committee feels that the Communist Party
and many groups which have been linked with it-sometimes
arbitrarily–constitute a clear and present danger to the nation. Now
actually it is neither virtue nor good judgment on my part that has kept me
from joining things. I am simply not a joiner by nature. Outside of the Boy
Scouts and the Episcopal choir, I have never had an impulse to belong to
things. But suppose I had. And suppose I have admitted my association with
one or more of these groups posted as dangerous. As a writer, I must have
been interested in everything, have felt it part of my profession to know
and understand all kinds of people and groups. Having admitted these
associations, I am now asked by the Committee to name individuals I have
seen at meetings of such groups. I hope my reasoning then would go as
follows:

The people I knew were not and are not, in my estimation, traitors to the
nation. If they were, I would turn them in instantly. If I give names, it is
reasonably certain that the persons named will be called up and questioned.
In some cases they will lose their jobs, and in any case their reputations
and standing in the community will suffer. And remember that these are
persons who I honestly believe are innocent of any wrongdoing. Perhaps I do
not feel that I have that right; that to name them would not only be
disloyal but actually immoral. The Committee then is asking me to commit an
immorality in the name of public virtue.

If I agree, I have outraged one of our basic codes of conduct, and if I
refuse I am guilty of contempt of Congress, sentenced to prison and fined.
One way outrages my sense of decency and the other brands me as a felon. And
this brand does not fade out.

Now, suppose I have children, a little property, a stake in the community.
The threat of the contempt charge jeopardizes everything I love. Suppose,
from worry or cowardice, I agree to what is asked. My deep and wounding
shame will be with me always.

I cannot be reassured by the past performance of the Committee. I have read
daily for a number of years the testimony of admitted liars and perjurers
whose charges have been used to destroy the peace and happiness of people I
do not know, and many of whom were destroyed without being tried.

Which path am I to choose? Either way I am caught. It may occur to me that a
man who is disloyal to his friends could not be expected to be loyal to his
country. You can’t slice up morals. Our virtues begin at home. They do not
change in a courtroom unless the pressure of fear is put upon us.

But if I am caught between two horrors, so is the Congress caught. Law, to
survive, must be moral. To force personal immorality on a man, to wound his
private virtue, undermines his public virtue. If the Committee frightens me
enough, it is even possible that I may make up things to satisfy the
questioners. This has been known to happen. A law which is immoral does not
survive and a government which condones or fosters immorality is truly in a
clear and present danger.

The Congress had a perfect right to pass the Alien and Sedition Act. This
law was repealed because of public revulsion. The Escaped Slave laws had to
be removed because the people of the free states found them immoral. The
Prohibition laws were so generally flouted that all law suffered as a
consequence.

We have seen and been revolted by the Soviet Union’s encouragement of spying
and telling, children reporting their parents, wives informing on their
husbands. In Hitler’s Germany, it was considered patriotic to report your
friends and relations to the authorities. And we in America have felt safe
from and superior to these things. But are we so safe or superior?

The men in Congress must be conscious of their terrible choice. Their legal
right is clearly established, but should they not think of their moral
responsibility also? In their attempts to save the nation from attack, they
could well undermine the deep personal morality which is the nation’s final
defense. The Congress is truly on trial along with Arthur Miller.

Again let me change places with Arthur Miller. I have refused to name
people. I am indicted, convicted, sent to prison. If the charge were murder
or theft or extortion I would be subject to punishment, because I and all
men know that these things are wrong. But if I am imprisoned for something I
have been taught from birth is a good thing, then I go to jail with a deep
sense of injustice and the rings of that injustice are bound to spread out
like an infection. If I am brave enough to suffer for my principle, rather
than to save myself by hurting other people I believe to be innocent, it
seems to me that the law suffers more than I, and that contempt of the law
and of the Congress is a real contempt rather than a legalistic one.

Under the law, Arthur Miller is guilty. But he seems also to be brave.
Congress feels that it must press the charge against him, to keep its
prerogative alive. But can we not hope that our representatives will inspect
their dilemma? Respect for the law can be kept high only if the law is
respectable. There is a clear and present danger here, not to Arthur Miller,
but to our changing and evolving way of life.

If I were in Arthur Miller’s shoes, I do not know what I would do, but I
could wish, for myself and for my children, that I would be brave enough to
fortify and defend my private morality as he has. I feel profoundly that our
country is better served by individual courage and morals than by the safe
and public patriotism which Dr. Johnson called “the last refuge of
scoundrels.”

My father was a great man, as any lucky man’s father must be. He taught me
rules I do not think are abrogated by our nervous and hysterical times.
These laws have not been annulled; these rules of attitudes. He taught
me–glory to God, honor to my family, loyalty to my friends, respect for the
law, love of country and instant and open revolt against tyranny, whether it
come from the bully in the schoolyard, the foreign dictator, or the local
demagogue.

And if this be treason, gentlemen, make the most of it.

Words relating to Friendly and Agreeable

1. affable
2. amiable
3. amicable
4. congenial
5. convivial
6. cordial
7. gregarious
8. jocular
9. levity

Penny-Pinching Words

1. austere
2. avarice
3. frugal
4. miserly
5. penurious
6. parsimonious

Here is the handout for our Colonialism unit. If you lost your copy, feel free to download:

Intro to Colonialism Handout

In response to the Puritan “Alphabet for Lessons for Children” and “Rules for Harvard College,” write a short (one page or less) analysis of 3 uses of rhetorical strategies found in the text. Due Thursday, Oct. 8.