Multi Genre Study

Grade 11 Multi-genre Study

For the multi-genre study you will explore a theme through a variety of texts (poems/songs, excerpts from plays, short fiction).You will be using the theme of guilt. You have been introduced to the theme of guilt through our study of A Streetcar Named Desire or Macbeth.

Description Assignment

Part 1 –Intro and Developing Guiding Questions

To begin this unit you must develop questions to guide your exploration. To begin, please read the 4 attached articles (see appendix) to get you thinking and help you come up with some questions.

You are provided with question starters (see appendix – “Bloom’s Taxonomy Question Starters”) to help you formulate the questions you will use throughout this study.

5 questions to guide your work due – written or typed neatly in list form

Part 2 – Analyzing Poetry and other lyrical texts

Read lyrical pieces provided (see appendix). Try and identify figurative language (appendix

– poetic terms) You can find and view the music videos for

each lyrical piece on YouTube if you wish. Write and annotate your own lyrical piece(see

appendix for assignment, poetry terms, and annotation guidelines)

Original lyric or poem, annotated. See assignment

Part 3 – Short Fiction After you have viewed a variety of different

pieces of short fiction on guilt (see appendix – short fiction links and short story titled “The Guilt”) you will use textual evidence from all 3 of these texts and/or any of the previous texts read to help you address/answer the questions you created.

5 paragraphs, 5-8 sentences each

Each one is a response, including textual evidence, answering or at least addressing each question you created at the beginning of this unit.

Part 4 – Work on transactional assignment

You will create an advertisement, tying in the theme of guilt (yes, it can be done!). See assignment handout.

See handout. Be creative!

Appendix (multi-genre unit – English 11)

1. Articles 2. Poetic/lyrical pieces3. Poetic terms4. Annotation guidelines – poetry5. Poetry writing assignment6. Bloom’s Taxonomy question starters7. Two Short fiction links (Edgar Allan Poe)8. Short fiction: The Guilt9. Transactional assignment: create an advertisement

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1. Articles

A moment's bad luck. A living death for my lovely mother. And 22 years of guilt for me 

Section: News A devoted daughter's impossibly moving story Her pain was so great I wondered if she'd be better off dead.The agony of even thinking it was awful  

STANDING on the banks of a river on a cold afternoon last month I stared into the water as the cloud of my mother's ashes vanished with the current. It seemed impossible her life was over.

For one mad moment I wanted to immerse myself in the river among her ashes — anything to keep her close a little longer, rather than face the pain of losing her again.

I say 'again' because, really, I lost my mother 22 years ago. On a similarly chilly morning in November 1991, Mum dropped me at school and then went home to go riding. Later, she fell from her horse when it slipped on concrete.

She was wearing a riding hat, but it provided little protection against the violent blow to her head. When my elder sister arrived at my school to tell me what had happened and that we needed to go to hospital to see my mother, I had no idea that life as I'd known it was about to change irrevocably. For the next two months, my mother, Charlotte, clung to life in a coma.

She emerged an unrecognizable person, severely brain damaged, unable to express any thought or opinions. Only now she is finally gone can I mourn the mother I actually lost all those years ago. I was only 16 when the accident happened, and am now 38.

I can't wish it had never happened, since that would be like wishing I was a different person.

It brought profound tragedy into my life, but I still consider myself a lucky person blessed with a life full of adventure. In a sense, I'm grateful for the fortitude and resilience the accident gave me — every ounce of which I needed when the authorities tried to withdraw funding for my mother's care, despite the fact that legally and medically she was fully entitled to it.

I grew up in a loving, bohemian family surrounded by chickens and ponies. Home was a rambling house with a huge garden surrounded by fields, where my mother had moved with her second husband, my father, a TV director.

There were five of us children — my sister and I plus three half-siblings from my mother's first marriage. I'd often hear my parents laughing over a shared joke, and I cannot imagine a more secure and loving childhood. With my mother's love surrounding me, I felt as though I could do or be anything. Her accident, when she was just 52, ended all that like an axe blow.

I'll never forget my last morning with Mum as she drove me to school dressed in her riding clothes. She told me she loved me as I bundled up my school bag and made plans to see her later. 'I love you more,' I said, before slamming the car door on life as I knew it.

I was in the final lesson before lunch when the headmaster stepped into the class to say something privately to my history teacher. 'Someone's in trouble!' the boy next to me laughed.

MY SISTER was here to see me, the headmaster told me, sounding formal. I went out into the corridor where she was waiting. Mum had had an riding accident, she told me, and we were going to drive to the hospital to see her.

'She will be all right, won't she?' I asked. At that time, we didn't know that nothing would ever be 'all right' for Mum again. Mum underwent hours of surgery to remove blood clots from her brain, her head swollen like a purple balloon. I sat at her hospital bedside, trying not to look at the crimson shadow of blood creeping across her bandaged head, nor at the tubes snaking from her mouth to machines beeping around her.

Mum remained unconscious in hospital for many hugely traumatic weeks.

The surgeon told us she'd suffered damage to both sides of her brain, and her chances of real recovery were poor. I don't know how we survived that time, but I remember that we constantly talked about 'when Mum gets better'. I was in the first term of my A-levels (the equivalent of Leaving Cert) but for the first months after the accident, I rarely went to school. When Mum finally awoke two months later, she had lost the use of one eye but stared at us with her good eye, her hair shaved, her skull criss-crossed with stitches.

The accident had left her incapable of speech or any other form of communication; she became epileptic and doubly incontinent, her life blighted by countless physical and mental conditions.

Strangely, she remained physically strong and could, at that time, walk around. But beyond that she was entirely incapable and totally irrational, unable to convey even her most basic needs since she couldn't write, or master any sort of sign language.

Nonetheless, the doctors considered Mum's surgery a success, since she was able to walk and perform certain functions, such as getting into a car or pouring tea.

She was sent home from hospital to live with my sister and me, even though we were just 18 and 16 at the time. My father worked around two hours away during the week, and would return home at the weekends to help us care for Mum. By then my elder halfsiblings were married, with homes and young families of their own, but we all did as much as we could on a rota of care for our mother.

We had nurses living with us, and Mum spent days in rehabilitation centres, funded by the public health system. I remember visiting her in mental health units, finding her tied to a chair to keep her still, hating the sound of patients moaning from other rooms. I also remember changing my mother's 'nappies' in the kitchen at home, and then going to my room to try to revise for my A-levels, my heart was absolutely breaking.

STUDY It is there are people in living effects became a refuge for me: I worked hard, and gained a place at Oxford University to study English. Two years after her accident, Mum, whose condition remained desperate, moved to a residential rehabilitation centre which the British government was paying for.

I left home: I felt a restless energy to move on, to close a door on the past and leave. Putting off my course at Oxford, I came to live with a boyfriend in Ireland and began my own adventures, always trying to shake off a sense of the homesickness and guilt that would remain with me throughout the next two decades.

As our house was now empty, my father decided to sell it. The decision was made to put Mum in a secure unit because she had started wandering and trying to run away from the rehabilitation centre. I think she knew that something truly terrible had happened to her, but couldn't communicate her response to it. She wasn't a 'vegetable', but she was also beyond saving.

The unit was filled with young men, as mad and damaged as she was. Motorbikes are responsible for as many brain injuries as horses.

Two years later, I started university and hoped life might take on a more normal hue, but instead I felt as though I was living a parallel life to my peers.

On the first day of my first term, the corridor was filled with the excited chatter of students delighted to be away from home, while I lay with my face pressed into my duvet, trying to quell the desperate homesickness inside me. I was in my second year at Oxford when Mum attempted suicide by taking an overdose of her medication.

She was in a coma for three days and, when she awoke, she was even more disabled. It was the cruelest blow. Mum had suffered so much, and I felt intense sadness for us both — for us all. How much more could she take? We moved her to a nursing home, then to a residential nursing home for elderly and disabled people.

AND though shocking, the accident inspired me to reach out for things I might otherwise have missed out on. I graduated from university and then worked on a ranch in Texas for two years — something I had always dreamed of doing.

Searching for a sense of belonging, I got married at 24, but, within three years, the marriage was over. I had been too young, and neither of us understood the commitment we'd made, although the marriage provided the rich blessing of my two children, Jimmy and Dolly, now 13 and ten.

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I worried constantly about Mum, feeling guilty when I failed to visit her but miserable when I did. There were times I wondered if it might have been better for all of us if Mum had died. The price she was paying for continuing to live seemed so high.

She had been robbed of everything she had once loved — her big family, her animals, her beautiful home.

She was in so much pain, I wondered if death would have been preferable, for her and us. The guilt of even thinking this was awful.

At the same time, life did, miraculously, keep moving on. We all missed Mum terribly, and although the accident had changed our family life, since she had been so central to it, we remained very close as siblings.

My father remarried, and he and my stepmother were a constant support to me. I remain incredibly grateful to have had that support network. I became a journalist, juggling my career with life as a single mother, but at the back of my mind, the bleak story of my mother's accident played on a constant loop.

And then, in 2005, 14 long years after my mother's accident, estimated 30,000 Ireland with the brain a new enemy emerged when I received a letter informing me that the British government was withdrawing Mum's funding, meaning we would need to pay annual nursing bills upwards of €44,000 for her care. The authorities claimed her needs no longer fulfilled their criteria of being 'intense, complex and unpredictable', despite the fact she required full-time care, and that her condition was unchanged, if anything worsening as she aged.

I was astonished, angry and determined to fight for Mum's needs.

It was a complicated process, and only one of us could mastermind the administration that went with managing the fight, so I took it on.

Night after night, when my children were in bed, I'd sit up late, studying Mum's notes and grappling with the complex law around the funding package which paid for her nursing and care needs. I attended endless hearings and appeals, being grilled by officials about such things as whether my mother's faecal incontinence might be a sign of mental instability, or what pain the removal of all her teeth due to abscesses might have caused her.

After each hearing, I'd retreat to my car to scream with rage that we could be tortured and humiliated like this. After years of fighting my own personal battle against the demons of the accident, this war felt especially violent. My refusal to give in was, I believe, what helped me win my final appeal in 2008. I was in the street when I received a call to say the funding for my mother's care would continue.

I remember dropping my phone in shock, relief flooding through me that this appalling experience was finally over. At last, I could put my energy into visiting Mum, and life moved on. I fell in love and married for a second time, and was pregnant with my third child when I received another letter telling me telling me Mum had once more become ineligible for funding.

I reeled with disbelief that this could be happening again, dismayed the fight was back on.

The health assessments of my mother's needs were based on a deliberate misinterpretation of the truth.

FOR example, I'd been unable verbally to communicate with my mother for two decades, despite years of sitting beside her bed, desperately trying to prompt a word out of her with photographs, snatches of her favourite music or a scarf drenched in the perfume she used to wear.

She'd longed for me to be a mother, yet when I visited with my own children she was incapable of saying a word, or expressing anything. Yet the assessors told me Mum could clearly communicate. 'If that's the case, give me one clue of anything she's thinking, since I've been trying to work that out for 20 years,' I snapped.

The brutality of the assessment process exhausted me as, yet again, I found myself sitting in front of panels of health officials, defending my helpless mother. I had to neglect my children and my work. The process infuriated me, but made me more determined than ever to fight for Mum and for thousands of patients like her. Years of fighting my own demons have made me fearless; the accident hadn't broken me, and neither would this.

The fight was brought to a sudden end in April last year, however, when Mum fell critically ill with kidney failure.

A cocktail of medications caused frequent bladder infections which had probably damaged her kidneys, and she was given just three weeks to live.

Faced with irrefutable evidence of her failing health, the authorities were forced to back down and leave her care funding in place. But this time I felt no jubilation; my mother was dying.

Following a brave fight, on December 3, I was called to her nursing home at dawn. I held her hand and told her again and again that I loved her, until, finally, the spirit slipped from her poor, damaged body, and she died.

I am now pregnant with my fourth child, due in May, and while this baby will never meet my mother, I hope he or she will feel something of her spirit in his or her siblings.

As for me, I will always remember her as the beautiful and vivacious woman she was.

That is the legacy I will take forward from her for my own children.

I lost my mother once through the accident and again through death. The actions of the British government meant I also lost all the precious years in between.

~~~~~~~~

By Clover Stroud

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Guilt as a Natural Body Function If we view guilt as simply a natural part of our day-to-day experience, rather than shaming ourselves for feeling it or trying to fight it off, we can diminish the suffering it tends to cause.

By Christopher R. Edgar

Humans have a seemingly endless capacity to feel guilty.  We can attack ourselves for the stupid, wrong or inappropriate things we think we've done, again and again.  Although many of the events we feel guilty about occurred long ago, from the sensations we feel when we dwell on them, you'd think they happened just yesterday.  We can still feel the ugly heat and tension in our bodies when our minds dredge up those events, and we can still cringe and bury our faces in our hands.

We often have mixed feelings about whether guilt is serving us.  On one hand, guilt is obviously unpleasant and distracting to experience.  On the other, we have the nagging sense that guilt plays an important role in our lives.  Isn't guilt the feeling we get when our consciences punish us for the immoral or inappropriate things we've done?  And if our consciences are disciplining us, isn't that because we deserve it?

I actually question the idea that, when we feel guilty, our consciences are rightfully punishing us for the bad things we've done.  Instead, I suggest it's best to see feelings of guilt as a routine part of the circadian rhythm—our bodies' daily cycle—much like fatigue and hunger.  If we view guilt as simply a natural part of our day-to-day experience, rather than shaming ourselves for feeling it or trying to fight it off, we can diminish the suffering it tends to cause.

Before I detail the reasons I see guilt this way, I want to examine the notion that guilt is essentially the voice of our consciences condemning us for our sins.  This view of guilt has a strong hold on many of us, and we'll need to loosen its grip before we can explore some novel perspectives on guilt.  To do this, I'll take you through a few observations about the way guilt manifests itself in our lives.  As you read these observations, notice whether they change your perspective on the role of guilt, and whether you begin feeling more freedom from guilt in your life.

The guilt never stops.  It seems you can keep feeling guilty about the same incident indefinitely.  Even ten or twenty years after an event, you can still find yourself reliving the event in your mind, with accompanying discomfort in your body.  Sometimes, you can forget about an old guilt-inducing event for a while, but when something happens that reminds you of the event again, you return to the same old pattern of suffering over it.

But if guilt is your conscience punishing you for doing something wrong, wouldn't you expect your conscience to understand the idea of fair punishment?  Wouldn't you expect

it to have a sense of when you've “done your time,” enough is enough, and you don't deserve to suffer anymore?  The fact that you can suffer indefinitely over the same old episode suggests that guilt isn't simply your conscience giving you your just desserts.

If you're continually agonizing over the same past events, I invite you to try this exercise.  Consider how many times you've suffered over the same event.  If you have trouble remembering how often you've relived the incident, start keeping a journal or just marking a piece of paper to record how frequently it comes up.  I think you'll find you've been recalling the event at least once per day, and you'll be disturbed by the possibility that you've been anguishing over it every day since it happened.  Now, ask yourself whether you really deserve this amount of punishment for what you did.  Also, ask yourself whether you would “sentence” someone else who did the same thing to such a massive amount of suffering.

Guilt is stronger at certain times of day.  Another strange aspect of guilt is that we tend to remember more painful events, and the guilt surrounding those events seems more agonizing, at specific times of day.  My own “guiltiest” time of day is between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning.  If I wake up at this hour, I know I'm in for a tour of the shameful and embarrassing events of my past.  Now that I have this awareness, though, I'm more prepared for the mental onslaught and it doesn't hit me as hard.

Take a look at your own experience.  Is your guilt more painful depending on what hour of the day it is?  If you answer yes, as I think you will, consider a few more questions.  If guilt is really your conscience condemning you for your sins, why would your conscience punish you more severely at particular times of day?  Are you more deserving of punishment early in the morning than you are late at night?  Wouldn't you expect your conscience to keep up a steady level of punishment throughout the day, until you'd “served your sentence”?

You feel guilty even when you haven't done anything wrong.  You may notice that you feel guilty even about events in which you did nothing that could possibly be called immoral.  I used to feel the sensations I associate with guilt when remembering many such incidents.  I would remember a significant other breaking up with me, and feel the tightness in my chest and shoulders that—for me—signal the presence of guilt.  I would feel guilty about making a joke at a social occasion that nobody laughed at.  I would feel guilty about times when I played poorly in a sports game.  And so on.  Although it would be hard to characterize the things I did in these situations as unethical, I was plagued by guilt over them nonetheless.

If guilt is a sign that your conscience is punishing you, why does your conscience discipline you even when you've done nothing wrong?  Why does it attack you when you simply embarrass yourself or make a minor mistake?  These experiences suggest that, when you're being ravaged by guilt, you are not simply suffering for your transgressions.  Something else is going on—guilt is playing a different role in your life.

I've talked about the misconceptions we hold about guilt, but not about what guilt actually is.  Perhaps the fact that our guilt's severity depends on factors like the time of day suggests that guilt isn't simply what we experience when our consciences reprimand us.  But what does that fact say about what guilt really is?  As I said earlier, it suggests to

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me that guilt, like hunger and fatigue, is a natural, regularly occurring biological process.

In other words, just as you get hungry at around your regular mealtimes, and you get tired at around your regular bedtime, your body has regular times of day when it naturally feels most guilty.  Just as we have mealtimes and bedtimes, we also have “guilt-times.”  The main difference between guilt and other regular physical sensations like hunger and fatigue lies in the way we perceive it.  We take our feelings of guilt as a sign that there's something wrong with us, and we create unpleasant sensations in our bodies by shaming ourselves.

Put differently, when our stomachs growl, we interpret it to mean we need more food.  But we don't view our need for food as proof that we're inadequate.  We don't perceive ourselves as bad people because we happen not to have enough in our stomachs.  But when we start ruminating on painful past events, we do interpret it to mean there's something wrong with us.  Or, perhaps, we spend time and energy defending ourselves against guilt, devising reasons why we aren't so bad after all to try to make the unpleasant sensations go away.  Either way, our interpretation of guilt causes us to suffer, while our interpretation of hunger does not.

I've come to believe we can transform our experience of guilt by treating it more like hunger and fatigue.  The next time you feel guilty, try saying to yourself “oh, it's guilt-time again”—just as you might think “oh, it's time for bed” when your eyelids start feeling heavy.  Try perceiving guilt as a routine bodily function that, regardless of what you do or think, will recur again and again.  Guilt simply arises at certain times of day, and subsides during others.

This practice has changed the way guilt affects me.  Before, when I'd dwell on the ways I felt I'd screwed up in the past, I would feel unwelcome sensations in my body.  My upper back would tense up, and a prickly feeling would creep across my skin.  My perspective on guilt—that guilty feelings proved I was a bad person—was actually causing those physical sensations.  When I changed my perspective, and started to view guilt as a natural biological process, those painful feelings began fading away.

When you simply accept your guilt and allow it to move through you, without shaming or judging yourself, you reduce the suffering it used to create.  This acceptance is key to changing your emotional life for the better.

 

Copyright © 2007 Christopher R. Edgar.  All rights reserved.

My brother ate himself to death - and I will never get over the guilt 

Section: News; Opinion, Columns THE LAST time I saw my big brother was in 2008, when I was on tour promoting a new novel. Throughout the reading, I hadn't been able to concentrate. Scanning the audience, I hadn't located Greg.

Though he wasn't tall, any man who weighs 28 stone tends to be easy to spot.

I was frantic that he might not come — and not because I wanted to show off. I had promised to take him to dinner that night and his health was so poor I didn't know how many more evenings together we had left.

Finally, at the very end of the signing queue, a lumbering figure emerged leaning heavily on a cane, taking small, careful steps, huffing through the tubing at his nose and dragging a portable oxygen tank.

The sight was utterly heartbreaking, but seeing my beloved brother I went limp with relief. At that moment, another man happened to be telling me he'd gone to school with my older brother.

Nodding towards the end of the queue, I said: 'There's Greg now.' His old classmate looked over, but his face remained blank.

Heavy and barely able to walk after two nearly fatal accidents, my brother at 55 bore so little resemblance to the slim, energetic child he'd once been that he was unrecognisable.

Later, at the restaurant, we were seated in a dark corner, while staff made it seem a lot of trouble to find Greg a larger chair. The waiter rolled his eyes, though his supersized diner ordered no more food than I did.

We traded breezy anecdotes about our parents, with me trying not to convey the horror I felt at seeing my brother so obese, so ill.

By the time I'd escorted him back to his studio flat, lined with tins of chilli con carne and bottles of fizzy drinks, I couldn't keep it in any longer. Hugging him goodbye for what would turn out to be the last time, I burst into tears.

But I said nothing and we parted, me in tears and my brother bemused.

I'd always looked up to my big brother. When we were children, he was my protector. As a teenager, he fought with our socially conservative parents for more freedom, paving the way for me to live on the wild side three years behind him.

When he scored as a 'genius' in an IQ test, my younger brother Timothy and I were a little jealous (what were we, dullards?). Later, though, I came to treasure his achievement.

Greg dropped out of school at 14 and taught himself to be an audio engineer by reading books — most people study for years to do the same.

By 19, he had established his own company, which built sound systems and recording studios. In his 20s, he worked as a soundman for legendary composer Philip Glass and toured Europe with Harry Belafonte — all with no formal education.

In his 30s, Greg decided to build my parents a house. He'd never built a house before, but that didn't stop him. He read up on it and taught himself how to do it. Our parents holiday in that house to this day.

GREG was a good-looking guy, too. Indeed, weight had never been a big issue for any of us growing up.

My mother was starlet beautiful; my father, a handsome academic who taught religion at the local university and easily shed the odd extra pound or two with vigorous tennis games.

Timothy and I preferred playing outside to being dragged in for meals. Greg grew a bit fleshy around his middle at puberty, but scrounging to support himself once he left home rapidly starved off that little roll.

Still, Greg and I had opposite inclinations in one respect: exercise. I've worked out daily one way or another since my teens. In school, I ran around the football field while my classmates ate lunch.

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Greg spurned sport of any kind. And in adulthood he seemed to find my making time for a ten-mile run before dinner faintly amusing.

For Greg was greedy. Sometimes he was greedy in a good way — hungry for life, ambitious — but also greedy in that way that gets you into trouble. He had appetites — for women and drink.

My temperament goes the other way: I'm prone to suppress my appetite. Careful about what I eat, I exert all the control he scorned.

I was always in awe of his capacity for abandon, though I'd never want to pay the price for all that excess. Inevitably, once he really started hitting the booze in his late 30s he started to thicken.

In the Nineties, two catastrophes nearly killed him: first thugs set upon him with a metal baseball bat and later a car broadsided him on his moped.

Once he'd recuperated a year later, he was clinking with titanium and could hardly keep the pounds off with a morning jog. And by some horrible twist of fate, around the point Greg's life went to hell, mine picked up.

By 2005, when Greg was 51, his company had gone bust. Not one but two marriages had imploded. Often broke, he'd fallen behind on child support payments, so his ex cut him off from Nick and Joyce, his teenage children.

This is when I, after years of frustration, published my first best-selling novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin.

He was still so improbably happy for me. Greg read all my books and gave them as presents to his friends, to whom he boasted, I'm told, about his sister the novelist.

Had our situations been reversed, I wonder whether I could have marshalled such grace, generosity and delight on another family member's account. You'd think he'd never heard of sibling rivalry.

Because on top of a host of other troubles, by then he was getting seriously fat. He'd given up drink, but replaced bottles of Grand Marnier with pain medication and barbecued pork.

His limited mobility curtailed his career, further inclining him to seek what gratification lay within reach (large jars of pickled sausages). Greg gave me an appreciation for how easily weight gain can snowball.

If you're in good trim, it's pretty easy to decline a cupcake. You value your looks. But when you're already big, there seems to be nothing to lose from getting bigger.

FOR my brother, passing on a cupcake was pure self-denial with no reward. Once you're so many stones overweight, eat it or don't eat it, what difference does it make? When Greg visited our parents, Mum would make half-hearted stabs at portion control, but he was a grown-up, and you don't tell adults, no, they can't have another biscuit.

He'd get defiant, and angry if you withheld his food. Anyway, wouldn't he just eat himself silly once he got home? Family members rarely addressed his weight directly: a combination of cowardice and caring for his feelings, I suppose. The one time I felt able to say something was when Greg said in passing: 'Sure, I know I'm fat!' So I asked if he'd consider a gastric bypass.

He sounded surprisingly open to weight loss surgery — theoretically. Most of the time, however, he seemed less ashamed of his size than resigned to it. He'd decided not to care.

By 2009, Greg had diabetes, hypertension and such swelling in his feet hat some mornings he couldn't get his boots on. Not long before, he'd nearly ed from congestive heart failure. When he decided to visit our parents New York City for Thanksgiving that year, he opted to take the 500-mile train de from North Carolina rather than fly. Negotiating airports and narrow economy seats had become too demanding. I learned about Greg's much-awaited rival when my parents rang me in London the following day.

According to my mother, shuffling a mere 30 metres between his taxi at the curb and the lift in the lobby, he had to stop and to rest twice. He'd been able to rag only so much medical paraphernalia on the train along with his ever present oxygen tank. So, when he fell asleep in the armchair he didn't have his sleep apnea machine. Another bane of obesity, sleep apnea causes sufferers to cease breathing for alarmingly long periods during the night The next morning, my parents were unable to rouse their son. He was disoriented and incoherent. My distraught mother rang Greg's doctor, who urged her to get him to hospital immediately.

Sleep apnea can build up poisonous levels of carbon dioxide in the blood, and that's why he was delirious.

Yet getting Greg to hospital was easier said than done. Once the ambulance crew arrived, they were unable to lift him and had to call for a second crew to help. As they knelt to hoist their unconscious, wide-load patient, my mother overheard one paramedic whisper to another: 'How does this happen?' If only we knew.

In hospital, things got even more distressing.

Greg was sedated, because he hated to be constrained and whenever he awoke he fought the nurses and tore out the tubes. His condition worsened when he contracted an infection, which the poor c i r c u l a t i o n a n d overburdened heart of a man his size made it hard for him to fight.

Years before, Greg asked me to be his 'health proxy', designated to take medical decisions on his behalf if he was incapacitated.

He said I was the only one he trusted 'to pull the plug' if his life no longer seemed worth living. I'd been so touched that, of course, I said yes, but I never imagined I'd have to take serious decisions on his account.

And so it was that eight days after he entered intensive care, his doctor rang me to say Greg was out of the woods and to consult me on what came next.

He told me the hospital would carry out a gastric bypass on two conditions: Greg would need someone to take care of him for many months and he would need somewhere to live in New York.

Standing in my London kitchen, I took a deep breath. My husband and I have a house in Brooklyn. It even has a granny flat with a separate bathroom and kitchenette.

Was I being called to put him up? But my brother was very difficult! Did I love him that much? Would my husband Jeff put up with him? Could I put up with him? Would Greg fit through our doorways? Would our little downstairs toilet crack under the strain? In times like these, even an atheist reaches for the metaphors of a Christian upbringing, and I thought: 'Take this cup from me.' As it happened, Greg's condition abruptly plummeted again and he died two days later. I never had to confront if I was kind enough, loving enough, self-sacrificing enough to take my brother in. That single moment was the inspiration for my novel, Big Brother. I was relieved that my willingness to try to rescue Greg was never tested. But that relief makes me feel incredibly guilty.

Should I have offered to supervise a gastric bypass recovery back when he first said he'd consider it — before it became too late? Why did my brother have to be on the brink of death before I considered how I might help him? Why didn't I talk to him more forcefully about the perilous state of his health? SO MUCH of our interaction in those last, dispiriting years was over the phone, and it had been all too easy to put out of mind what he looked like. But was I not my brother's keeper? About a sister who risks her marriage by setting up house with a morbidly obese older brother to help him lose weight, the novel is a fantasy of sorts. It was a pale substitute: if I couldn't save my brother in real life, I could save him on paper.

I'd often been enraged on Greg's behalf when all strangers seemed to see was a huge guy they hoped wouldn't squeeze next to them on the bus. Because my brother was a remarkable person — the rebel of the family, the iconoclast.

He was funny, clued up and beloved — his memorial was crowded with devoted friends who revered him.

Indeed, my biggest reservation about writing Big Brother was that I was loath for him to be remembered solely as fat. Wilful, brilliant and entirely self-made, Greg Shriver was larger than life in a grander sense than girth.

Countless friends have said he was 'the cleverest man they'd ever met'.

As for what readers might take from the book, I refer to my remarks at Greg's memorial: 'It's worth remembering that behind all that bloat and disability was an extraordinary person — a brother, a son, a father, a friend and, yes, a genius — if only to remember that inside other damaged bodies there are unusual people whom families and friends desperately love.' Because Greg didn't regain consciousness, I never conducted that last conversation you miss so fiercely when loved ones die.

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As I told him in my closing tribute: 'If you'd only woken up, I'd have whispered in your ear that you were always the renegade, the outlaw, the real revolutionary in our family who had not only talent and brains but guts, and I was proud to be your sister.'

By Lionel Shriver

QUESTIONS OF GUILT  By: Gottfried, Ted, Children of the Slaughter, 2001

Who can imagine a thirteen-year-old girl stupid enough never to have heard of the horrors of concentration camps and naive enough to believe everything her parents told

her? The first shock was to find out what had happened; the second, to find out that my father had played a part in it. Of course I knew that there had been concentration camps and that six million Jews had been murdered. We'd been told about it in school. But I had also been told fairy tales in school ... who could believe that the baker next door or the English teacher or that nice policeman ... participated in the murders during the war? And one's own father!(n1)

--A German woman describes how she felt as a young girl when she learned that her father had

worked in a concentration camp.

Her name was Anna. She was born in 1947, two years after the war ended, in Munich, Germany. It was 1960 when she learned the truth about her father. Her description of how it made her feel was first published in 1987 in Germany. It is part of a book called Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families by Peter Sichrovsky, which appeared in the United States the following year.

By that time, like Anna, most of the children of Germans who had been in the war were in their forties. Today a third generation--grandchildren--are college age or older. But they, like their parents, are faced with questions of responsibility and guilt.

The Question of Collective Guilt The hardest question has to do with collective guilt. If, as a matter of policy, the Nazi government that was elected by the German people systematically murdered six million Jews, then are the German people guilty as a nation? Does each adult German alive during those years share in the guilt?

Was the genocide the result of a flaw in the German character? Is that defect still there today, lurking in the hearts of Germans born decades after the Holocaust? For how many generations must the blame be borne?

Yes, there was a history of anti-Semitism in Germany before the Nazis came to power. There is still bigotry in Germany today; vandalism in Jewish cemeteries and violence by skinheads against minority populations demonstrate that. But does that mean that all young Germans must share the guilt for all atrocities, past and present?

"The Deeds of Their Fathers" Many people--Germans, Jews, and others--do not believe in the idea of collective guilt for Germans. They point out that bigotry and violence today are problems in many countries, including the United States, not just Germany. Looking at the Holocaust, they find that Austrians, Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Hungarians, French, Dutch, and others took part in the slaughter. If non-Nazi Germans are guilty because they turned their backs, then so are those in other countries who did not want to know--countries such as Great Britain and the United States.

Former West German chancellor Helmut Kohl addressed these concerns during a visit to Israel in 1984. "The young German generation does not regard Germany's history as a burden," he said, "but as a challenge for the future. They are prepared to shoulder their responsibility. But they refuse to acknowledge a collective guilt for the deeds of their fathers."(n2)

For young Germans, however, it is often not that simple. For them it is not just a matter of what Germany did. It is much more personal than that. It is what their own parents or grandparents did, what defect in their character made them do it, and how that flaw may have been passed on to them. The issue for them is more than just guilt. It is that there may be a monster inside them capable of unspeakable acts.

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The Burden of Knowing The fear was felt most deeply by the first generation born of Nazi parents. Often the deeds of their parents were hidden from them, but not always. Sometimes the knowledge was too much to bear.

According to Rudolf, son of a major Nazi war criminal who escaped prosecution, "the dreams are worst of all."(n3) Rudolf was born in 1950, and by 1960, when he was ten years old, he and his parents had moved four times to elude Nazi hunters. Once, when his father was drunk, he told Rudolf how terrible it had been to have to shoot Jewish children with a handgun because subordinates had aimed their automatic weapons over their heads to avoid killing them.

When Rudolf describes one of his dreams, it sounds startlingly like some of the fantasies of children of Jewish Holocaust survivors: "They tear me from my bed, drag me through the room, down the stairs, and push me into a car.... We arrive at a house I don't recognize. I'm pushed down the stairs into a cellar, they rip my pajamas off and push me into a room. The door closes behind me.... There are showerheads on the wall, and through the openings something streams out with a soft hiss, like air from a defective bicycle tire. I have trouble breathing; I think I'm choking. I rush to the door, try to open it, rattle it, scream, my eyes are burning. Then I wake up."(n4)

Rudolf acknowledged his parents' guilt and hated them for what they had done. After they died, he took their guilt for his own. He has thought about suicide. "At times," he says today, "I wish it were all over."(n5)

Not to Blame? Sometimes the guilt about the action of Nazi parents is so intense that it causes an opposite reaction in the second generation of children. Throughout her teens, Stefanie has had nothing but contempt for the guilt her father feels about the things done by her grandfather. She wants no part of his guilt, and so she denies the legacy of the Holocaust.

Stefanie's father was twelve years old when his father was hanged as a war criminal. When he realized the horror of his father's crimes, he turned to religion for help in dealing with the knowledge. He and his wife brought up both Stefanie and her older sister to face the facts of the Holocaust and of their grandfather's role in it. Atoning was a responsibility that he passed on to them. Stefanie's sister accepted the responsibility. Stefanie did not.

She rejected the idea that her generation must somehow share in the guilt. She objected to having to learn about Nazi horrors in school. "Enough that we Germans are always the bad ones," she fumed. "What does that mean--we started the war, we gassed the Jews, we devastated Russia. It sure as hell wasn't me. And no one in my class and none of my friends and certainly not my father.... They executed all the guilty ones back then at Nuremberg.... What do they want from me?"(n6)

Her reaction, like a pebble in a pond, causes ripples that distort her views of the Holocaust in other ways. She looks at the Nazis as having been strong and glamorous figures who "looked great" in their uniforms.(n7) She regards her Nazi grandfather as one who "sacrificed himself living and fighting for the fatherland, and the reward is a rope around his neck."(n8) She disapproves of the idea of "restitution"--the German government giving Jews money to make up for what they have lost and what they have suffered.(n9)

"Look at the Jews today," she sneers. "They say none survived. But today they're again all over the place. Do I know any personally? ... How can I tell? Nowadays so many dark types are running around here: straight noses, crooked noses, Turks, Italians, Yugoslavs. How's one to tell who's a Jew and who isn't?"(n10)

"Nicht Nazi!" Stefanie is not a skinhead, or even a neo-Nazi, but it seems highly unlikely that she would do anything to stop such people from persecuting or physically abusing a person from a minority group. She and Rudolf are the extremes of their generations, the children and grandchildren of Germans who were adults during the Nazi years. They represent the opposite ends of the spectrum--deeply felt guilt and indignant rejection--of the feelings experienced by their peers. Most young Germans today position themselves somewhere toward the center of the area between those two positions.

Generally, today's young German people are less defensive about the Nazi atrocities than their parents were. That previous generation, which had to deal with the possibility of very real guilt on the part of their parents, came up with a variety of strategies to cushion the shock. Initially, those who had been children during and just after the Nazi era painted both Germans and Jews as figures in a much larger picture of anti-Semitism. "Not only Jews were victims, but also Gypsies and Communists," they pointed out. "Not only Germans were victimizers but also Ukrainians and the Allies."(n11)

Shrugging off the six million Jewish dead, they would insist that "everybody is a victim of the Nazi regime." Not just the Germans, they would protest, but "all humans are capable of doing evil." As for any obligation to the Jews who survived, they would add that "everybody is a survivor of some sort." Viewing genocide as a universal sin, they would speak of the slaughter of Native Americans, and of the dropping of atomic bombs by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Many denied personal involvement. "Nicht Nazi!" ("I am not a Nazi!") they would insist. "The Nazis did it, but nobody in my family was involved." And sometimes they claimed that the Holocaust had simply never happened. "There are no victims; we Germans were not involved."(n12)

The majority of today's young Germans, a middle group that neither is tormented by guilt nor denies the Holocaust reality, mostly just show "signs of boredom and disinterest in Holocaust-related issues."(n13) They regard the Holocaust much as the present generation of young Americans relates to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Such events are long ago and far away from personal experience.

The Holocaust seems ancient history to them.

CHAPTER NOTES (n1). Peter Sichrovsky, Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families, Trans. Jean Steinberg (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988), p. 22.

(n2). Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History (New York: Continuum, 1996), p. 578.

(n3). Sichrovsky, p. 39.

(n4). Ibid., pp. 39-40.

(n5). Ibid., p. 47.

(n6). Ibid., p. 32.

(n7). Ibid., p. 30.

(n8). Ibid., p. 33.

(n9). Ibid., p. 34.

(n10). Ibid., pp. 32-33, 36.

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(n11). Bjorn Krondorfer, Remembrance and Reconciliation: Encounters Between Young Jews and Germans (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 31.

(n12). Ibid., pp. 31--32.

(n13). Ibid., p. 24.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): A woman accused of collaborating with the Nazis when they occupied Laval, France, is made to wear a swastika and is paraded through the streets of the town.

Copyright of Children of the Slaughter is the property of Lerner Publishing Group and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

2. Poetic/lyrical pieces____________________________________________________

"Little Lion Man"Mumford and Sons

Weep for yourself, my man,You'll never be what is in your heart

Weep, little lion man,You're not as brave as you were at the start

Rate yourself and rake yourselfTake all the courage you have left

And waste it on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head

But it was not your fault but mineAnd it was your heart on the line

I really fucked it up this time

Didn't I, my dear?Didn't I, my...

Tremble for yourself, my man,You know that you have seen this all before

Tremble, little lion man,You'll never settle any of your scores

Your grace is wasted in your face,Your boldness stands alone among the wreck

Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck

But it was not your fault but mineAnd it was your heart on the line

I really fucked it up this timeDidn't I, my dear?

But it was not your fault but mineAnd it was your heart on the line

I really fucked it up this timeDidn't I, my dear?Didn't I, my dear?

[harmonizing]

But it was not your fault but mineAnd it was your heart on the line

I really fucked it up this timeDidn't I, my dear?

But it was not your fault but mineAnd it was your heart on the line

I really fucked it up this timeDidn't I, my dear?Didn't I, my dear?

"Mockingbird"(Eminem)

YeahI know sometimes things may not always make sense to you right now

But hey, what daddy always tell you?Straighten up little soldierStiffen up that upper lipWhat you crying about?

You got me.

Hailie, I know you miss your mom, and I know you miss your dadWhen I'm gone but I'm trying to give you the life that I never hadI can see you're sad, even when you smile, even when you laugh

I can see it in your eyes, deep inside you want to cry'Cause you're scared, I ain't there?Daddy's with you in your prayers

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No more crying, wipe them tearsDaddy's here, no more nightmares

We gon' pull together through it, we gon' do itLainie Uncle's crazy, ain't he?

Yeah, but he loves you girl and you better know itWe're all we got in this worldWhen it spins, when it swirlsWhen it whirls, when it twirls

Two little beautiful girlsLookin' puzzled, in a dazeI know it's confusing you

Daddy's always on the move, mamma's always on the newsI try to keep you sheltered from it but somehow it seems

The harder that I try to do that, the more it backfires on meAll the things growing up as daddy, that he had to see

Daddy don't want you to see but you see just as much as he didWe did not plan it to be this way, your mother and me

But things have got so bad between usI don't see us ever being together ever againLike we used to be when we was teenagers

But then of course everything always happens for a reasonI guess it was never meant to be

But it's just something we have no control over and that's what destiny isBut no more worries, rest your head and go to sleep

Maybe one day we'll wake up and this will all just be a dream

[Chorus:]Now hush little baby, don't you cry

Everything's gonna be alrightStiffen that upper lip up, little lady, I told yaDaddy's here to hold ya through the night

I know mommy's not here right now and we don't know whyWe feel how we feel inside

It may seem a little crazy, pretty babyBut I promise mama's gon' be alright

It's funnyI remember back one year when daddy had no money

Mommy wrapped the Christmas presents upAnd stuck 'em under the tree and said some of 'em were from me

'Cause daddy couldn't buy 'emI'll never forget that Christmas I sat up the whole night crying

'Cause daddy felt like a bum, see daddy had a jobBut his job was to keep the food on the table for you and mom

And at the time every house that we lived inEither kept getting broken into and robbed

Or shot up on the block and your mom was saving money for you in a jarTryna start a piggy bank for you so you could go to college

Almost had a thousand dollars 'til someone broke in and stole itAnd I know it hurt so bad it broke your mamma's heart

And it seemed like everything was just startin' to fall apartMom and dad was arguin' a lot so momma moved back

On the Chalmers in the flat one bedroom apartmentAnd dad moved back to the other side of 8 Mile on Novara

And that's when daddy went to California with his CD and met Dr. Dre

And flew you and momma out to see meBut daddy had to work, you and momma had to leave me

Then you started seeing daddy on the T.V. and momma didn't like itAnd you and Lainnie were too young to understand itPapa was a rollin' stone, momma developed a habit

And it all happened too fast for either one of us to grab itI'm just sorry you were there and had to witness it first hand

'Cause all I ever wanted to do was just make you proudNow I'm sitting in this empty house, just reminiscing

Lookin' at your baby pictures, it just trips me outTo see how much you both have grown, it's almost like you're sisters now

Wow, I guess you pretty much are and daddy's still hereLainnie I'm talkin' to you too, daddy's still here

I like the sound of that, yeahIt's got a ring to it don't it?

Shh, mama's only gone for the moment

[Chorus]

And if you ask me toDaddy's gonna buy you a mockingbird

I'mma give you the worldI'mma buy a diamond ring for you

I'mma sing for youI'll do anything for you to see you smile

And if that mockingbird don't sing and that ring don't shineI'mma break that birdie's neck

I'll go back to the jeweler who sold it to yaAnd make him eat every carat don't fuck with dad (ha ha)

Modern Guilt (Beck)

I feel uptightWhen I walk in the cityI feel so coldWhen I'm at home

Feels like every thing'sStarting to hit meI lost my bedTen minutes ago

Modern guiltI'm staring at nothingModern guiltI'm under lock and key

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It's not what I have changedTurning into conventionDon't know what I've doneBut I feel ashamed

Standing outsideThe glass room sidewalkThese people talk aboutImpossible things

And I'm falling downThe conversationsAnother palm beats in aHuman shield

Modern guiltIs all in our handsModern guiltWon't get me to bed

Say what you willSmoking my cigaretteDon't know what I've doneBut I feel afraid

"Woman"(John Lennon)

Woman I can hardly express,My mixed emotion at my thoughtlessness,

After all I'm forever in your debt,And woman I will try express,

My inner feelings and thankfulness,For showing me the meaning of success,

oooh well, well,oooh well, well,

Woman I know you understandThe little child inside the man,

Please remember my life is in your hands,And woman hold me close to your heart,

However, distant don't keep us apart,After all it is written in the stars,

oooh well, well,

oooh well, well,

Woman please let me explain,I never mean(t) to cause you sorrow or pain,So let me tell you again and again and again,

I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,

I love you (yeah, yeah)....

3. Poetic terms

Poetic TermsA. Sound

Alliteration – the repetition of the initial consonant sound in two or more words close together. Ex: Sixteen springs and sixteen summers.Assonance – the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in neighbouring words. Ex: And round about the keel with faces paleConsonance – the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighbouring words whose vowel sounds are different. Ex: coming home, hot footOnomatopoeia –the use of words that seem to imitate the sounds they refer to. Ex: fizz, crackle, hiss.

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Rhyme scheme – the pattern in which the rhymed line-endings are arranged in a poem. This is often expressed by giving each line ending with the same sound the same letter in reference. Ex: the rhyme scheme of a sonnet is ababcdcdefefggRhythm– the pattern of sounds perceived as the recurrence of equivalent beats at more or less equal intervals. Ex: iambic pentameter

B. Comparison Metaphor – an implied comparison. Does note use “like” or “as”, rather says something is something. Ex: The sun is a brilliant diamond.Personification – a figure of speech by which animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate things are referred to as if they were human. Ex: Murder, the armed sentinelSimile – comparison using “like”, “as”, or “than”. Ex: He is as tall

as a giraffe.

C. Word PlayAllusion – a passing reference to a person, story, or situation in literature, history, or the Bible. Assumes prior knowledge. Ex: She was as much a tomboy as Scout Finch (literary allusion).Anadiplosis – a figure of speech in which a word or phrase appears both at the end of one clause, sentence, or stanza and the beginning of the next. Ex: “As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.”Anaphora – a figure of speech in which the same word or phrase is repeated in – and usually at the beginning of – successive lines, clauses, or sentences. Apostrophe - a figure of speech in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or an abstract or inanimate object. Ex: “Oh wind, why must you mess up my hair?”Caesura – a pause in a line of verse, often coinciding with a break between clauses or sentences. It is usually placed in the middle of a line (medial caesura), but sometimes near the beginning (initial caesura) or end (terminal caesura).Hyperbole – exaggeration for effect. Ex: I told you a million

times.Imagery – a technique poets and writers use to appeal to the senses. Usually arises from striking word choice.Irony – 3 types:-verbal: when the opposite is said from what is meant (think

sarcasm)-situational: when the opposite occurs from what is expected

-dramatic: when the reader or audience knows what is going to happen before a character doesMetonymy – a figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it. Ex: the bottle for alcohol, the press for journalismOxymoron - a pair of single word opposites placed side by side for dramatic effect. Ex: jumbo shrimp, “cold fire,” “sick health”.Paradox - A large oxymoron. An apparently contradictory

statement that, despite the contradiction, has an element of truth in it. Wordsworth’s “the child is the father of the man” is a paradoxical statement.

Repetition - Deliberately repeated words, sounds, phrases, or whole stanzas. Repetition is used to make a point in the poem.

Tone – a poet or writer’s attitude toward his/her subject and/or audience.

D. Other Terms

Speaker - The voice used by a poet to speak a poem. The speaker is often a created identity (a made up self) and should not automatically be equated

with the author. The speaker is not the same as the author—poets and storytellers make

things up (fiction). The speaker does not necessarily reflect the author’s personal

voice; however, authors sometimes use speakers as masks to protect themselves when

they are writing about controversial ideas and/or criticizing politics or religion.

Theme – The main message of a poem. Ask yourself, “what does the poet want me to take away from this?”

E. Types of Poems

Ballad - A long poem that tells a story, usually a folk tale or legend, in rhyme.

Often set to music, the traditional ballad typically has a refrain or chorus, which

adds to its musical qualities. Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line, in a stressed/unstressed pattern).

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Concrete - Concrete poetry experiments with the very materials of the poem itself:

words, letters, format. The final product does what it says in that its words, letters,

and format demonstrate the poem’s meaning. Concrete poems rely heavily on the

visual or phonetic to get across their meaning. Free Verse - Modern poetry that has no regular pattern of rhythm, rhyme or line

length. Free verse poems experiment with words to create images for the reader. Lyric - Shorter poems of intense feeling and emotion. Some are modern free

verse poems and others are more “old-fashioned” poems that have rhythm and

rhyme. Types: sonnet, ode, and elegy. Narrative - A poem that tells a story. Narratives may or may not rhyme, but they

almost always follow the plot structure of a short story.

4. Annotation guidelines – poetry

Annotating Poetry

Annotating is the act of marking up a text to bring attention to words, phrases, and structure that may have some importance to the overall mood or theme of a poem.

Steps to Annotate a Poem

1. Initial reading of the poem. Write any questions that pop into your head while doing the initial reading.

2. Identify any words that you do not understand and look them up. Write the definitions on the poem.

3. Discover and mark rhyme scheme using a new letter for each end rhyme within the poem.

4. Count the amount of syllables in each line and mark the number at the end of the line.

5. Identify figurative language used within the poem. Think about the literal meaning of each figurative device.

6. Identify sound devices such as alliteration, assonance, and consonance. How does it impact the text?

7. Identify text that is repeated. Is there any reason the author would repeat the text?

8. Look closely at punctuation. Does it reveal anything about the speaker of the poem? (Example: Does it make them seem rambling, confident, nervous?)

9. Circle any words that are impactful or interesting. Determine connotative meaning. Are their any patterns? What does it reveal about the speaker’s attitude towards the topic?

10. Reread the poem. If you are still having a hard time understanding the poem, repeat the annotation process!

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Questions you should be able to answer after annotating a poem:

1. What is the theme of the poem?2. What kind of strategies does the author use to point out the

theme?3. What is the mood of the poem? 4. What kind of strategies does the author use to make the mood

clear?5. How does the figurative language impact the poem as a whole?6. How does the punctuation/number of syllables/ rhyme scheme

impact the poem as a whole?

5. Poetry writing assignment

Poetry writing assignment – multi-genre unitFor this assignment, you are required to write a poem of at least 14 lines related to the theme of guilt.

o The poem may or may not rhyme, but you must indicate the purpose (that is, why) you chose to have it rhyme or not.

o The poem must contain a minimum of four different poetic devices. This includes – but is not limited to:

-anaphora -anadiplosis -alliteration -assonance -consonance -imagery -metaphor -metonymy -paradox -oxymoron -personification -simile

o *Please note that you must indicate the poetic device used, and explain HOW it works (in terms of theme, for example).

o There must be a title.o The poem can be handwritten (neatly, of course) or typed (12 point, Times

New Roman). o You must indicate the theme, and how you feel you were able to convey that

theme (refer to hand out on annotation).o Your poem should answer or address at least one of your guiding questions;

please indicate which question you are addressing at the top of your final copy.

6. Bloom’s Taxonomy question starters

Bloom’s Question StartersFor Higher Order Thinking

Bloom’s Question Starter List – This list moves through 6 levels of questions. The first three levels are considered lower order questions; the final three levels are considered higher order. Higher order questions are what we use for Critical Thinking and Creative Problem Solving. I have written what each level of questions are about, given lists of key words that can be used to begin a question for that level, and I have listed Question Starters. You can use this chart to create questions that are specific to your novel.Level 1: Remember – Recalling Information

List of key words: Recognize, List, Describe, Retrieve, Name, Find, Match, Recall, Select, Label, Define, Tell

List of Question Starters: What is...? Who was it that...? Can you name...? Describe what happened after... What happened after...?

Level 2: Understand – Demonstrate an understanding of facts, concepts and ideas

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List of key words: Compare, Contrast, Demonstrate, Describe, Interpret, Explain, Extend, Illustrate, Infer, Outline, Relate, Rephrase, Translate, Summarize, Show, Classify

List of Question Starters: Can you explain why...? Can you write in your own words? Write a brief outline of... Can you clarify...? Who do you think? What was the main idea?

Level 3: Apply – Solve problems by applying knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a unique way List of key words: Apply, Build, Choose, Construct, Demonstrate, Develop, Draw, Experiment

with, Illustrate, Interview, Make use of, Model, Organize, Plan, Select, Solve, Utilize List of Question Starters:

Do you know of another instance where...? Demonstrate how certain characters are similar or different? Illustrate how the belief systems and values of the characters are presented in the

story. What questions would you ask of...? Can you illustrate...? What choice does ... (character) face?

Level 4: Analyze – Breaking information into parts to explore connections and relationships List of key words: Analyze, Categorize, Classify, Compare, Contrast, Discover, Divide,

Examine, Group, Inspect, Sequence, Simplify, Make Distinctions, Relationships, Function, Assume, Conclusions

List of Question Starters: Which events could not have happened? If ... happened, what might the ending have been? How is... similar to...? Can you distinguish between...? What was the turning point? What was the problem with...? Why did... changes occur?

Level 5: Evaluate – Justifying or defending a position or course of action List of key words: Award, Choose, Defend, Determine, Evaluate, Judge, Justify, Measure,

Compare, Mark, Rate, Recommend, Select, Agree, Appraise, Prioritize, Support, Prove, Disprove. Assess, Influence, Value

List of Question Starters: Judge the value of... Can you defend the character’s position about...? Do you think... is a good or bad thing? Do you believe...? What are the consequences...? Why did the character choose...? How can you determine the character’s motivation when...?

Level 6: Create – Generating new ideas, products or ways of viewing things List of key words: Design, Construct, Produce, Invent, Combine, Compile, Develop,

Formulate, Imagine, Modify, Change, Improve, Elaborate, Plan, Propose, Solve List of Question Starters:

What would happen if...? Can you see a possible solution to...? Do you agree with the actions?...with the outcomes? What is your opinion of...? What do you imagine would have been the outcome if... had made a different choice? Invent a new ending. What would you cite to defend the actions of...?

7. Short fiction links

The Black Cat – Edgar Allan Poehttps://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Poe/Black_Cat.pdf

The Tell-Tale Heart – Edgar Allan Poehttps://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Poe/Tell-Tale_Heart.pdf

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8. Short Fiction: The Guilt

THE GUILT (short story)Yes. She’s there again.

Like a rule. No - a ritual. She stands at my gate as I come out holding my coffee mug. It’s been almost a year since she started coming. I’ve still not gotten used to her.

Her presence sends a chill down my spine. She never speaks. But probably a silent curse has been bestowed on me.

“Bindu! ”I shout, calling my household help. “Ask the guard to shoo her away,” I tell her.

But Bindu, my young and enigmatic maid, doesn’t tell the guard. She herself walks down and gently leads the woman away from my house.

Bindu has a heart. A golden one. “Memsahib, she is just a bit mad, but not dangerous,” she tells me.

I believe her. I try offering the woman some money. She takes it, then throws it down, laughs, and runs. To where I don’t know. Only to come back again in the morning.

I tried to trade my guilt for money. Big mistake.

But not my first one. I had made another mistake. Much bigger than this one.

———————-

Krishnaa and I were friends.

Good friends.

Childhood friends.

So when she told me she was getting married I was elated!

I brought a shiny red and green dress for myself to wear for the special day. Gold earrings to match. Gosh! It had been so long since I had dressed up!

Coming back home, when I was looking at the piles of clothes and other things I had brought for the occasion, memories of Krishnaa and me, sitting on my grandma’s veranda piled on as well.

I was in Mussorie then.

At the age of five years, when my parents were trying to make a decent living in Delhi, I was sent to my Nani’s place to live. Nani was old and lived alone in a small house in Mussorie. I was admitted in a school, and thus, began a friendship that stood the test of time, distance and memory.

Krishnaa was in the boarding in the same school.

She used to come to my house on weekends and Nani cooked her favourite delicacies. We spent hours sitting in the verandah, chatting. We never got bored of each other, and our talks never ended. After school, when we took our separate ways, we pledged, we’ll be always there for each other.

And so we were.

Through phone or e-mails yes, but we were there for each other.

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Multi Genre Study

Krishnaa left for UK for her business studies. I went ahead to fulfil my parents’ dream of becoming a doctor. I had just started my practice, when one fine day, Krishna called me and told me that she was getting married.

Krishnaa! My shy, sober friend was getting married!

I had to go!

A month before the marriage my own personal celebrations began. I managed to escape early from the hospital and then roamed the streets of Delhi to look for things I knew not! Anything, which I would like, or Krishnaa would like.

By the end of the month I had various things from probably every shop in Delhi!

At night, Krishnaa used to call me and tell me, with excitement, the pre-wedding preparations at her place, in Hyderabad. I, in turn, told her of my shopping sprees.

The day I was to catch my flight for Hyderabad my excitement knew no bounds. I literally bubbled with energy and was intoxicated with euphoria. In my over-enthusiasm, I had even done my packing a fortnight ago!

I couldn’t sleep the night prior to my flight. The next day when I got up, I danced and sang alone in my apartment. It was Krishnaa’s wedding! My flight was in the evening. I had taken my leave for two weeks from the hospital, so I had nothing to do, but to sit and think of the reunion that lay ahead.

I was blissful. Little did I know that the events that lay ahead would forever leave a mark on my memory. And that too, not in a very pleasant way.

In the evening, at about 4, when I was checking my luggage for the hundredth time, my phone rang. It was from hospital. The receptionist informed me that I was called. Urgently.

I was irritated. My flight was in four hours, plus, I was supposed to be on leave. I stuffed my luggage in my car and left for hospital, thinking that from there, I would straight away make a move for the airport.

—————

The hospital was in chaos.

The head nurse upon seeing me rushed towards me. Before I could even ask, many voices started telling me what had happened, in a desperate attempt to instill the urgency of the matter.

What I could decipher amongst the buzzing of many voices was this – A boy was hit by a truck while driving his scooter. He had severe head injuries, and two of his leg bones had been powdered. There had been excessive blood loss. But the problem was he was brought to the hospital almost two hours after the accident. A blood clot had formed in his skull, which, in turn, was affecting flow of blood towards his brain. A surgery had to be performed urgently to remove this clot if the boy was to be saved.

Dr. Solanki, my senior, and the head neurologist, was on a week-long tour to Japan. The situation was such that I was the sole neuro-specialist then.

By the time, I was aware of the whole scene. I was almost on the verge of passing-out myself due to sheer pressure and anxiety.

I had assisted Dr.Solanki in some surgeries, but those too were minor ones. To suddenly become the in-charge, that too, in such a serious case was beyond my calibre. My hands were sticky with perspiration and fine beads of sweat now adorned my forehead too.

I was perplexed. Why wasn’t the boy referred to some other hospitals when there’s no doctor here?

“Because none of the other hospitals are ready to take the case,” said the head nurse. “It’s a fifty-fifty situation,” she whispered in my ear.

I knew I wasn’t capable of performing this single-handedly. I could not. Plus, I had a flight to catch.

Humans, they say, are the most beautiful creation of God. Here lay a man who could die anytime, and there my mind thought of my best-friend in her wedding costume, dancing on Bollywood songs. Where is the beauty?

I looked around helplessly, seeking a way out.

It was then that a woman came running towards me, screeching.

“The doctor’s here?” the blue sari clad screeching voice said. “Please save my son. I have gone to five hospitals, no one takes him. I am poor. But if you save him, I’ll pay you any amount you say. Just save my son,” she said and fell on my feet. I was moved.

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Multi Genre Study

“It’s not about the money, Mataji,” I replied, trying hard to control my emotions. “ But I am new. I haven’t performed any such major surgeries.”

“Then call someone who knows how,” wailed the woman. Her blue sari was smeared in dirt and sweat and what not. I took a step back from her.

“Rajeev is to get married next month. He is just 24. Please save him,” she said, as I signaled the ward-boy to pick her up from the cement floor.

She was made to stand on her feet. I looked at my watch. 6:30. I had to leave for the airport.

I panicked. I peeped inside the small window of the room in which Rajeev lay. He was covered in blood. Had it not been for the oxygen-mask, I would have mistaken him for dead.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t do this. I am new. The boy needs another doctor. And Krishnaa………

“Mataji,” I said calmly. “I am writing a letter to my friend who is in A****** Hospital. They have good doctors there. They’ll do the surgery and I’m sure Rajeev will be fine. What’s the use of me doing the surgery when there are other good and experienced doctors to do so?”

She sobbed silently. “But they say he can’t be moved now. He’s too critical. And A***** is almost 40 minutes from here……..”

I cut her sentence mid-way and shot a piercing glance at the head-nurse. There was no need to give such extra-information to the patients’ relatives. “Mataji, a team of sisters and a junior doctor will be with you. The hospital ambulance will take you there. Don’t worry.”

The woman still sobbed uncontrollably. She looked at me for a while, probably looking for some hint of humanity in them. But they were lost in the flashing lights of the marriage ahead.

Hastily, I wrote a letter to a doctor I knew in A**** Hospital. The ward boys put Rajeev in a stretcher. His mother still sobbed and looked at me. I consoled her and hurriedly made my way outside.

—————-

Krishnaa got married. It was a lavishly laid out grand affair carried out with great pomp and show. She is now settled in the US.

Rajeev never made it, I’m told.

I am still in Delhi, planning to move to some other city now.

A woman in blue sari appears at my doorstep every morning. Her sari is in tatters and her face has lines running from every corner. Bindu tells me she’s mad and roams the area aimlessly.

Haha. Bindu laughs observing me squirming with discomfort as the lady appears at the gate. “Maybe she wants some treatment from you memsahib.”

I am not able to appreciate the joke.

__THE END__

http://yourstoryclub.com/short-stories-social-moral/short-story-the-guilt/Written by: username Fickle

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Multi Genre Study

9. Transactional assignment: create an advertisement

Part One – The Pitch (GCO 8)You will begin developing an ad by first outlining your goals as if you were an ad agency executive pitching the ad to a client:

1. Describe the product or service as you understand it. (50-100 words)2. Describe your target audience. (50-100 words)3. Explain how you want your audience to feel about the ad and

product/service. (50-100 words)4. Explain how you will connect verbally with your target audience. (50-

100 words)5. Explain how you will connect visually with your target audience. (50-

100 words)

Your pitch will be organized with headings (Product; Audience; Emotion; Verbal; Visual) and will total 250-500 words in length.

Part Two – The Ad (GCOs 5 and 10)You will create an ad for your product or service. This portion of the assignment will include:

1. Your choice of a print ad (magazine), a video ad (TV or internet), or a sign ad (billboard).

2. Your ad will make use of at least part of your own original lyric or poem (think tag line; testimonial)

3. Your ad will relate to our theme of guilt. This could be in the form of an ad for a counsellor, a vitamin or mineral type supplement, art

therapy, an exercise class, a nutritionist, a self-help book, etc.

Both parts of the assignment (good copies – typed in 12 font TNR for the pitch or written neatly in blue or black ink) by

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