Shakespeak - Understanding Shakespeare's Technique

As you knew before this class, Shakespearean works can be difficult for us modern folk to grasp. Differences in sentence order, word meaning, omitted letters, etc., can confuse even the most well-read students. To help understand the Bard's work, we discussed all of these elements. In your groups, you looked for examples in Shakespeare's work of his unique style of writing including variance in meter, archaic language, omissions/contractions, and "Shakespearean" sentence order.

Your assignment:
A. Choose one (best) example of each of the 4 style elements listed above that you found in your excerpt
B. Explain how each example contributes to the meaning of that piece - whether it is the meaning of the entire excerpt or if it contributes to the importance of one particular line

You can answer in one to two sentences for each example, so you will have a total of 4 items to discuss, one for each style element.

Be sure to post this correctly so that you receive credit!

Identifying Symbols with "The Simpsons"

Today we watch The Simpsons episode title "Das Bus," a parody, as most of you astutely discovered, of the book Lord of the Flies.

What I want you to do is to list all of the symbols you saw in the episode in your blog and write down for what ideas these characters, items and actions stood.

Go beyond just the items and their specific meaning, look to which characters are associated with these items and how the characters use the items.

Also, look how each character acts throughout the episode. If you know anything about that character on the show, why is it important that these characters were chosen to portray the parts that they do?

A link to the episode is provided at the top right of the page ("Das Bus").