AP English Literature & Composition: Americans in 20th Century Wars

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Among the wars America fought in the 20th century, three stand out for their significant impacts
on culture back home: the two World Wars and Vietnam. How the wars have been represented in pop
culture is often starkly different to how America’s novelists treated them. In “A Farewell to Arms” set in
WWI, and “Catch-22” & “Slaughterhouse-five” set in WWII, American soldiers find honor outside of the
battlefield. We will explore how these authors, drawing on their personal experiences in combat, had to
craft new literary tools to tell audiences back home about the absurd horrors of warfare. We will also
explore British author Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American,” an outsider’s study on America’s role in
Vietnam published before the Vietnam War.

SYLLABUS

In this course we will examine the thematic, structural, and stylistic characteristics of literature
that deals with Americans in 20th century wars. These wars were unprecedented in scale, and some
participants in those wars—like the authors we will read—turned to the art of fiction to represent some of
the real events they lived through. Alongside examining the literary craft on its own terms, this class will
also consider the interplay between fiction and other social issues of history, economics and politics; we
will do this through readings of supplemental non-fictional and other primary source materials that may
help us contextualize the production of literature.

Course Requirements:

Class Discussion: It’s a small class! Therefore, each of you has quite a large share in how discussion will
go. Please be courageous: share your thoughts, share your feelings, share your questions!

Each student must “lead” class discussion for one day during the semester. You may choose any day
on the course schedule, and you are welcome to request a specific text to discuss if you do so well in
advance of your actual discussion day. A class discussion leader is expected to create a set of discussion
questions (as many as you feel necessary, but at least two or three good ones) and distribute them to his
classmates one class before his discussion day.

Quizzes will be given if I feel like you are not doing the reading!

******** If you ever need extra time on an assignment, just let me know in advance! I’m happy to grant
an extension for any valid reason. Otherwise, you will lose three points for every day (meaning every
calendar day!) the writing assignment is late.

Informal Papers: Once a week you will prepare a one-page informal “response paper” based on your
thoughtful consideration of and reaction to the readings for that class, to be turned in at the beginning of
class. These papers must include thoughtful observations, reactions, reflections, analyses, syntheses,
questions, speculations, etc., related to whatever literature we are discussing that day. Consider studying a
particular detail of character, setting, structure, narration style, imagery, symbol or zoom out to a bigger
picture issue of what an author’s message may be, or how it relates to other
social/political/economic/historical issues. Alternatively you may turn in something creative – a poem or
microfiction or creative non-fiction (at least one assignment should be creative during the semester!)
These assignments should double as warm-ups for class discussion that day. Write me something
interesting! I’ll often offer suggestions about possible topics and questions for these informal papers, but I
believe that the best writing results from authentic expressions of the writer’s own reactions, curiosities,
and passions. Of course, NO PLOT SUMMARY!!!!!!!!!

Research Paper: Early and often over the course of the semester I’ll remind you of the research paper
(see the full prompt on the following pages), designed to be an ongoing, semester-long project.

AP Test Practice: A few times this semester I will assign AP essay prompts and/or AP multiple choice
questions to be completed during class.

Final Exam: Your final exam will likely include a section of AP-style multiple choice sections and two
AP-style essays.

Student Evaluation Breakdown:

Summer Reading Writing Assignment: 10%

Class lead project: 10%
In-class discussion and participation: 10%
Informal homework compositions: 30%
Formal Research paper: 30%
Final Exam: 10%

● Please be on time to class.

● I will accept late papers for partial credit (less credit for each day it’s late – within reason). Late
papers will lose three points for every calendar day they are late. You are responsible for keeping
track of all uncompleted work.
● The text(s) to be discussed that day must always be brought to class! Keep a folder/notebook for
handouts if that will help.
● Plagiarism: Cheating or plagiarism of any kind is unacceptable. All submitted assignments must
consist completely of your own work, except for content that is properly cited. Any student caught
cheating or plagiarizing on a test, quiz, essay, or homework assignment will receive a zero for that
assignment and will be subject to further discipline in accordance with the student handbook .
● It should go without saying, but please make sure to do the reading for each class. There are websites
and books that summarize and analyze novels, of course, and they can be valuable resources. In fact, I
encourage you to use them! Just make sure to consult these materials only as supplements, and only
after you have done the reading and writing on your own.

Summer Reading Writing Assignment:

Due Monday, August 28

Please compose an essay of three (or more) paragraphs that analyze Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.
Your essay should try to answer some of these questions: Does the book have a message? If so, what do
you think it is? If not, then what is the major contribution of the novel? If it has a message, does
Hemingway succeed in expressing this? If there is an identifiable message, do you agree with it or
disagree and why? What literary choices does Hemingway make?

Although it is possible to answer these questions without research, I strongly encourage you to do at least
some cursory research on the novel (JSTOR academic articles are a great resource).
Paragraph Organization:

You may have a formal thesis, and you can center your paragraphs around supporting this thesis if it helps
you organize your thoughts and writing. Sometimes you only discover a thesis after writing a bit, in
which case it helps to go back again and state the thesis explicitly at the beginning and then restructure
the other paragraphs towards supporting it. However, since this is such a short assignment, it is also ok if
you don’t come up with a singular thesis.

Nevertheless, please write your paragraphs so that each has a different purpose (although each paragraph
will inevitably relate to the others). Try to write your first two paragraphs so that they achieve or explain
separate goals, and then write your third paragraph so that it draws a conclusion from the first two
paragraphs.

For instance, one (or maybe both) of your first two paragraphs will probably present, explain, meditate
on, and/or interact with your response to the novel or an important element of it. Then the third paragraph
would conclude in some meaningful way: it could examine the implications of the first two paragraphs, or
offer an evaluation or synthesis of them, etc.

If that’s all you need to get started, then great! Hopefully that means my instructions haven’t been too
confusing and convoluted. Go forth and make this assignment your own. However, if you’d like some
more specific suggestions of how you might start to organize this paper, then read on!
Possible Suggestions

1) Do some cursory research on A Farewell to Arms and/or its reception and reflect on how your
research contributes to an understanding of the meaning of the work as a whole.

2) Explore possible ways of reading the novel as having one unified message or theme and examine
the implications of one of them.

3) Select an aspect or feature of the novel and explore how it might relate to the significance of the
novel as a whole.

Research Paper: Due (in hard copy form!) at the start of class on 11/25; rewrites due 12/12
Write an argumentative, original, thesis-driven essay, of approximately 2,000 words
(1,700-2,300), which incorporates research (using 6-10 scholarly sources). Make sure to follow
MLA guidelines for in-text citations and for your works cited page.
Your essay must include the following three components:
1) A clear statement of your thesis: your central question or central point.
2) Explanation of your point, and evidence from both the text(s) and secondary sources (in the
form of quotations) to exemplify and support it. Specific examples are encouraged!
3) A discussion of any larger implications implicit in your argument. Answer the all-important
question, “So what?”, about your own argument.
 This final writing assignment is simply a larger version of the first writing assignment,
except that it also requires you to use some research to augment and support your argument.
Along those lines, much of the same advice applies (see the prompt for the first writing
assignment): you may choose to focus your paper on a specific element of one work, or you
may choose to examine a connection among multiple works. However, the larger size of the
assignment, and the research requirement, open some extra possibilities for paper topics. In
that sense, then, you have two choices:
1) You treat this assignment as you would any literary analysis assignment, except
you incorporate research into your supporting examples, explanations,
demonstrations, etc.
This is a perfectly valid way of fulfilling the requirements of the assignment. If you choose this
option, then you may get to work! Explore possible topics, choose one, collect research,
generate potential thesis statements, begin composing, etc. Or:
2) You use the length and research allowed in the assignment to state and support a
thesis which explores some broader context that informs an interpretation of the
work (or works) that you want to examine.
If you choose this option, then you must decide on what kind of a context you would like to
explore. Some examples are:
⮚ Use culture or history as a context, showing how an understanding of some aspect of a
relevant time period (whether the author’s period of time or the period of time of the
work’s setting) provides an important way of understanding the work itself. Research for
this context is often cultural or historical (duh?), but it may follow along the lines of one
or more specific disciplines (journalism, music, painting, photography, popular culture,
sculpture, sociology, theater, etc.).

⮚ Use the author’s work as a context. You might identify and describe a pattern in the
author’s work, a concept, image, theme, character type, formal quality, etc., which
appears in more than one work by that author, and then make an argument about its
importance. As far as research for this context, you might use biographical information,
literary criticism, information that provides a cultural context, or even statements from
the author in the form of letters, interviews, etc.

⮚ Use literary tradition as context. You might examine how a work interacts with
(imitates? satirizes? alters?) a traditional form or theme. You might examine how a work
draws on a traditional belief, character, culture, event, myth, symbol, or story for some
of its meaning. You might examine how a work interacts with another work of literature,
arguing that it alludes to, alters, imitates, or responds to that work in a meaningful way.

⮚ Use literary criticism as a context. You might begin with a central question or
statement about a text, and then research what critics have said about that question or
statement. You might instead begin with the research itself, and search for an issue in
 the literary criticism and formulate your own position in relation to that issue (weigh in
on a controversy or take sides in a debate that exists within the body of literary criticism
about a particular work or works).

⮚ Use another discipline as a context. You might examine how an understanding of a

particular subject can illuminate the meaning present within a work, or how such an
understanding might lead to a way of interpreting the work and its context.
Anthropology, art, biology, economics, geography, history, music, philosophy, politics,
religion, sociology, theology, and many other disciplines, have all made important
contributions to the study of literature.
One last note!

Integrate supporting quotes into your essays so that the quotes flow smoothly out of your own words.
That way, the quotes are given a context, they become part of your argument, and they do not distract
the reader from your ideas. Below is one of the most common mistakes made in English essays:

o Do not leave your quotes "naked." Make sure they are clearly connected to the
argument you are trying to make.

NO: After June's humiliating piano recital, Waverly adds insult to injury.
"You aren't a genius like me" (Tan 151).

YES: After June's humiliating piano recital, Waverly adds insult to injury
by declaring, "You aren't a genius like me" (Tan 151).

Class Schedule

8/22
Thursday: Class introduction, distribution of summer reading essay assignment, assign class lead dates
HW: Review A Farewell to Arms, be ready to discuss, start thinking about a potential topic for your paper
due Wednesday, August 28.

8/23
Friday: Discuss A Farewell to Arms
HW: Summer reading assignment due Wednesday

8/26
Monday: Discuss A Farewell to Arms
HW: Summer reading assignment due Wednesday

8/28
Wednesday: Debrief summer reading assignment, finish discussion AFA
HW: Read Zinn 301-312

8/29
Thursday: Discuss Zinn, Read Spanish-American war poems
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 1-2

8/30
Friday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 3-4

MONDAY 9/2 LABOR DAY, ENJOY!

9/4
Wednesday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch 22 Chapters 5-6

9/5
Thursday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 7-8

9/6
Friday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 9

9/9
Monday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 10-11

9/11
Wednesday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 12

9/12
Thursday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 13-15

9/13
Friday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 16-17

9/16
Monday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 18-19

9/18
Wednesday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Catch-22 Chapters 20-21

9/19
Thursday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapters 22-23

9/20
Friday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapters 24-25

9/23
Monday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapters 26-27

9/25
Wednesday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapters 28-29

9/26
Thursday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapters 30-31

9/27
Friday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read chapters 33-34

9/30
Monday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapter 35-37

10/2
Wednesday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapter 38-39

10/3
Thursday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: Read Chapter 40

10/4
Friday: Discuss Catch-22
HW: FINISH Catch-22!

10/7
Monday: Final Discussion Catch-22
HW: Read Zinn 407-419

10/9
Wednesday: Discuss Zinn
HW: Read S5 Chapters 1-2

10/10
Thursday: Discuss Slaughterhouse-five
HW: Read S5 Chapter 3-4

10/11
Friday: Discuss Slaughterhouse-five
HW: Read Chapter 5

10/14 Indigenous People’s Day No School

10/16 and 10/17 Parent Teacher Conferences
Generate some planning, research, and/or writing in preparation for your research paper.
Research. Brainstorm about your possible topic, and possible thesis statement(s), questions, etc.
Better yet, write an outline (and/or find some quotations or passages). Better still, write an
introduction, or start on a full rough draft.

10/18
Friday: Discuss Slaughterhouse-five
HW: Read Chapter 6-7

10/21
Monday: Discuss Slaughterhouse-five
HW: Read Chapter 8

10/23
Wednesday: Discuss Slaughterhouse-five
HW: Finish Slaughterhouse-five

10/24
Thursday: Final discussion Slaughterhouse-five
HW: Read Jakarta Method 24-29

10/25
Friday: Discuss Jakarta Method
HW: Read Quiet American Part 1, Chapter 1

10/28
Monday: Discuss Quiet American
HW: Read Chapter 2

10/30
Wednesday: Discuss Quiet American
HW: Read Chapter 3

10/31
Thursday: Discuss Quiet America
HW: Read Chapter 4

11/1
Friday: Discuss TQA
HW: Read Chapter 5

11/4
Monday: Discuss TQA
HW: Read Part 2, Chapter 1

11/6
Wednesday: Discuss TQA
HW: Read Part 2, Chapter 2 I and II
11/7
Thursday: Discuss TQA
HW: Read Part 2, Chapter 2 III and IV

11/8
Friday: Discuss TQA
HW: Finish Part 2, (all of Chapter 3)

11/11 Veteran’s day, NO SCHOOL

11/13
Wednesday: Discuss TQA
HW: Read Part 3, Chapter 1, I and II

11/14
Thursday: Discuss TQA
HW: Finish Part 3

11/15
Friday: Discuss TQA
HW: Read Part 4, Chapter 1

11/18
Monday: Discuss TQA
HW: Finish TQA!

11/20
Wednesday: Final Discussion TQA
HW: Read Kolko xi-xii and 3-10

11/21
Thursday: Discuss Kolko, Dr. Strangelove
HW: Read Bevins 9-19

11/22
Friday: Discuss Bevins, Dr. Strangelove
HW: Read Bevins 19-29, FINISH FINAL PAPER

11/25:
Monday: Discuss Bevins, Dr. Strangelove: FINAL PAPER due
HW: Read Heart of Darkness – parts 1 & 2, pages 3-50

11/27 to 12/1 HAPPY THANKSGIVING (NO SCHOOL)

12/2:
Monday: Finish discussion of Bevins, Strangelove; Discuss Heart of Darkness
HW: Finish Heart of Darkness

12/4
Wednesday: Discuss Heart of Darkness
HW: Work on research papers

12/5
Thursday: Watch Apocalypse now
HW: Note similarities/differences Heart of Darkness & Apocalypse now for reaction paper comparing
two, WORK ON REWRITE

12/6
Friday: Watch Apocalypse Now
HW: WORK ON REWRITE

12/9
Monday: Watch Apocalypse Now
HW: WORK ON REWRITE

12/11
Wednesday: Finish Apocalypse Now
HW: FINAL PAPER DUE 12/12

12/12
Thursday: Discuss Apocalypse Now vs HOD, TURN IN FINAL PAPER REWRITE
HW: Read Of Windows and Doors, Mohsin Hamid,

12/13
Friday: Discuss Of Windows and Doors, Mohsin Hamid
HW: Study!

12/16-12/20 UPPER SCHOOL EXAMS