AGENDAVocabulary Test: (Chapters 1-4)

The Hunger Games: Themes and Concepts

Discussion:

A Well-Told StorySentence length.

Constructing an action sequence

Reflecting on the Event's Significance pp. 48-49

In-Class Writing1. Focus on the climax of your event. Write a paragraph describing the action

using short and long sentences to control the intensity of your narrative.

2. Recalling Your Remembered Feelings and Thoughts

3. Exploring Your Present Perspective

4. Formulating a Tentative Thesis Statement

VOCABULARY TEST

The test covers the

words from Chapters

1-4.

You will have 15

minutes to complete

the test.

There are 20 words.

DISCUSSION:

THEMES AND CONCEPTSFRIENDSHIP

FAMILY

SURVIVAL

FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION

MATERIALSIM AND CLASS

???

• A Well-told storyTo create suspense,, Wolff uses a combination of short and long sentences. Reread this paragraph and consider how they work here.

I snapped awake at 2:18 A.M., the bloodshot numerals staring at me from the nightstand. For yearson end, I woke up at this exact time every night, regardless of what time zone I was in. But afterseventeen years I had just started sleeping through the night. I had finally outrun the old fears. Or so Ihad convinced myself.Remote sirens warbled in the night. At first I figured they were in my head, the soundtrack to thedream. But the distant wail got louder instead of fading. I hadn’t awakened on my own.I ran through what I remembered from the previous evening – the presidential debate had closed outprime time, and after the commentariat finished yammering, I’d fallen asleep watching a high-speedchase on the news. A guy in a beat-to-shit Jeep Cherokee, hauling ass down the 405, a legion ofblack-and-whites drawn behind him like a parachute.I blinked hard, inhaled, and looked around. Same Lemon Pledge scent of my third-floor condo. Mysweat imprint on the sheets and pillow. Breeze rattling palm fronds against my balcony in the nextroom.And a watery blue light undulating across the bedroom ceiling.I sat up.The TV, across the room on the steamer trunk, was off. But the distant sirens continued.And then, along with the light on the ceiling, the sirens abruptly stopped.I threw off the sheets and padded across the carpet, stepping over a discarded Sports Illustrated andsloughed off dress shirts form the job I’d left a week ago. In my plaid pajama bottoms, I ventured intothe all-purpose living room, heading for the balcony. The police lights had flickered through thelocked sliding glass door. Halfway to it I froze.A thick black nylon rope was dangling from the lip of the roof, its end coiled on my balcony.Motionless.No longer groggy, I opened the sliding glass door and stepped silently out onto the balcony, rollingthe screen shut behind me. My balcony with its Brady Bunch-orange tiles overlooked a narrow SantaMonica street populated by other generic apartment buildings. Streetlights were sporadic. Iconfronted the rope for a quiet moment, then looked around, expecting who knows what.Bulky shadows of cars lined the gutters. An SUV was double-parked, blocking the street. Noheadlights, no dome light. Tinted windows. But a huff of smoke from the exhaust pipe. A sedan, darkand silent, wheeled around the turn and halted, idling behind the SUV.Terror reached through seventeen years and set my nerves tingling.I squinted to see if I could make out a police light bar mounted on either roof. In my peripheralvision, the tail of the rope twitched. The roof creaked. Before I had a chance to think, a spotlightblazed up from the SUV, blinding me. A zippering sound came from above, so piercing that my teethvibrated. Then a dark form pendulumed down at me, two boots striking me in the chest.

Use Sentence

Length to

Control the

Tension in

your story

1. Focus on the climax

of your event. Write a

paragraph describing the

action using short and

long sentences to control

the intensity of your

narrative.

Show that the event was important

• Dramatize the event so readers can understand your feelings about it.

• Show scenes from your point of view so readers can identify with you.

Tell us that the event was important

• Tell how you felt at the time of the experience

• Tell how you feel about it now, in reflection.

The Goal: Indicate the Event‟s

Significance

Before the opening ceremonies, Katniss meets with her stylist, Cinna, to prepare.

Cinna presses a button and a fancy meal of “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked

in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and

onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey”

appears (65). Katniss thinks about how difficult it would be to get a meal like this in

District 12:

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the

press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the

woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all

day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting

around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?

I look up and find Cinna‟s eyes trained on mine. „How despicable we must

seem to you,‟ he says. (65)

Katniss doesn‟t respond to Cinna‟s statement, but she agrees in her head. “He‟s

right, though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable” (65).

Although our world does not really consist of a Capitol and many districts, there

are still some people who live more comfortably than others. For people like me who

live in privilege, life is easy. Food is readily available if I want to eat. Outside of

school, I don‟t really have many responsibilities. I don‟t have to worry about how I will

survive day to day. My family has told me on many occasions to think about how lucky

I am to live the way I do. In other countries, life is hard. In Africa, children starve to

death as a result of famine and poverty. People my age in some countries are working

more than my parents do. Katniss‟s disgust for the extravagant Capitol is similar to

the disgust I felt for myself when I listened to an account of one man‟s visit to

factories in China.

The Strategy: Recall Remembered Feelings and Thoughts: Answer

These Questions:

1. What were your expectations before the event?

2. What was your first reaction to the event as it was happening and

right after it ended?

3. How did you show your feelings? What did you say?

4. What did you want the people involved to think of you? Why did you

care what they thought of you?

5. What did you think of yourself at the time?

6. How long did these initial feelings last?

7. What were the immediate consequences of the event for you

personally?

Pause now to reread what you have written. Then write another sentence

or two about the event‟s significance to you at the time it occurred.

The Strategy Continued: Explore Your Present Perspective

1. Looking back, how do you feel about this event? If you understand it

differently now than you did then, what is the difference?

2. What do your actions at the time of the event say about the kind of

person you were then? How would you respond to the same event if

it occurred today?

3. Can looking at the event historically or culturally help explain what

happened? For example, did you upset racial, gender, or religious

expectations? Did you feel torn between identities or cultures? Did

you feel out of place?

4. Do you see now that there was a conflict underlying the event? For

example, were you struggling with contradictory desires? Did you

feel pressured by others? Were you desires and rights in conflict

with someone else‟s? Was the event about power or responsibility.

5. Pause to reflect on what you have written about your present

perspective. Then write another sentence or two, commenting on

the event‟s significance as you look back on it

Goal: Formulating a Tentative

Thesis

Readers do not expect you to begin your narrative essay with the kind of explicit thesis statement typical of argumentative or explanatory writing. If you do decide to tell readers explicitly why the event was meaningful or significant, you will most likely do so as you tell the story, by commenting on or evaluating what happened, instead of announcing the significance at the beginning. Keep in mind that you are not obliged to tell readers the significance, but you must show it through the way you tell the story.

The Strategy

Review what you wrote for Reflecting on the Event‟s Significance,

and add another two or three sentences, not necessarily

summarizing what you already have written but extending your

insights into the significance of the event, what it meant to you at

the time, and what it means to you now. These sentences must

necessarily be speculative and tentative because you may not

fully understand the event‟s significance in your life

HOMEWORK

Read: HG through chapter 12. SMG p 37 “Commentary: Autobiographical Significance,” and 625-633.

Post #5: Post your draft: Long quote; transition; thesis; intro to event, description of place(s), description of people, a dialogue or two, the climax (with short and long sentences working to achieve your goal), and a paragraph that speaks to the significance or your event (use the list of answers to the questions on slide #10 and #11); end with framing plan.

Study: Vocab

Bring: HG and SMG; A copy of post #5