English 1B J David Moton

Overview: For every reading we do, you will now complete a reading response instead of taking a reading quiz. Every reading response (RR) will follow the same basic formula I set out here, so practice it and get familiar with it. If you’ve read the piece, these will be rather simple. If you have not, please don’t turn one in and waste my grading time with guesses and shots in the dark.

Tasks: You will follow three basic steps for each RR. Keep in mind that in each question you answer, you have one goal: prove to me you’ve read it. If you’ve written an answer and wonder if you’ve proved that you read the piece, you probably didn’t prove it yet!

1) You will make a clearly defined list of three terms, and you will set out to define what these terms are and why they are important for the piece of literature. These terms could be names of characters, places, or even items of symbolic importance.

2) You will generate two questions I can use during the next test. One question should be a short answer (how did a character die, what is the importance of this object, etc. The other should be a much deeper essay questions (see our poetry test for examples here).

3) You will briefly tell me what you found to be the most interesting part of the story. This answer must include a quote that helps support your point.

Format: Clearly identify each part of the RR. Label each task and use underlines and bolds to let me know what terms you’re defining, etc.

When: An RR is due for every single reading assignment for the remainder of the semester. For longer pieces such as Being There and A Raisin in the Sun, you will turn in an RR to cover what is due for that day (if we read half a longer piece one day and the second half another day, you’ll turn in an RR for each section of the book the day we cover it in class.

Note: As with quizzes, these RR’s will seem insignificant, but if you skip many of them, your grade will truly suffer. The difference between 30/100 and 80/100 is immense when final grades come out at the end of the class.

Example: Note that this example is single spaced, and I want it to be double spaced instead.

Term 1--Drunken Friends: Nathan Shapiro and his friends (*Buster, Felix E., and Tiger Montaigne*) are all drinking malt liquor and driving around town naked right after Nathan’s sixteenth birthday. Drunk and in various states of undress, they dare each other to sneak into the “easy girl’s” room to try and have sex with her. Nathan volunteers to go since he knows the girl. While Nathan has an adventure with the girl (*Chaya*), his friends all pass out drunk in the Ford LTD parked on a front lawn. He lied to them when they woke up and made up stories of wild sex.

Term 2—Chaya Feldman: Chaya is the “skeezer” in the story. They boys go to her house to try and get lucky, and Nathan goes in because he knows her. At first, Nathan thinks he got the wrong room since a very mature, well developed girl is in the bed, but he soon realizes it’s Chaya, all grown up. Chaya is leaving for Jerusalem the next morning and has no plans to come back. The two characters promise to write each other, and while Nathan thinks she’s lying, she does send him a letter from across seas right away.

Term 3—Letters: Nathan gets a letter from Chaya after they sit half naked talking in bed for a while. He never opens it, and he hides it in a bird feeder, away from his friends, so they don’t read something in it he’d be embarrassed by (such as a confession of love). When he returns the next night, the letter is gone, and he’s upset that he’ll never know what the letter says. A few weeks later, the letter arrives, and when Nathan opens it, he learns it was sent from over seas, and he feels much better about his strange night with Chaya.

Long Question: How do you know that Nathan and Chaya are stuck between still being children and growing into sexually active adults?

The best part of the story was when Nathan snuck into Chaya’s rooms, and they’re both worried about her father coming in. They aren’t doing anything but talking, but if the Dr. came in and found a wet, naked 16 year old boy on his teenage daughter’s bed, there would be trouble. The Dr. thinks his two daughters are talking in the middle of the night: “Chaya! Mara! Called Dr. Feldman from somewhere in the house. His voice resounded like an axe-blow.” The fact that it resounds like an axe blow implies violence and anger, and it makes Nathan worried about getting caught.

In fact, it makes him so nervous, that he starts to picture the Dr. using a weapon on him. In fact, as Nathan leaves the house, he “ran the rest of the way, all the while trying to determine if Dr. Feldman and his Uzi were in pursuit.” Surely, Dr. Feldman isn’t stalking Nathan with a machine gun, but when he’s been made this nervous, it’s a funny and realistic reaction.