English Language Arts: Take Home Assignment

Part One

1. Manipulative: This is to influence or control someone or something in an underhanded or unfair

way to achieve a personal goal (often selfish goal).
2. Disdainful: showing contempt or lack of respect towards someone
3. Loving: feeling or showing great affection or care
4. Sarcastic: It is marked by using irony to mock or convey contempt.
5. Gloomy: unhappy and without hope
6. Melancholy: a feeling of sorrow, deep sorrow or sadness, typically with no obvious cause
7. Hopeless: feeling or causing despair about something
8. Humorous: causing lighthearted laughter and amusement; comical
9. Arrogant: ‘strong headed’; having an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance, worth or
abilities
10. Lustful: having or showing strong feelings of sexual desire
11. Wry: This is an expression of dry, especially mocking humour.
12. Ribald: referring to sexual matters in an amusingly coarse or irrelevant way
13. Mocking: This is to make fun of someone or something in a cruel way; derisive
14. Inquisitive: curious or tending to inquire or investigate
15. Childish: immature behaviour; behaviour like that of a child
16. Contradictory: mutually opposed or inconsistent
17. Passive: accepting or allowing what others do, without active response or resistance
18. Obnoxious: rude or annoying, usually due to being a show-off or attracting undue attention to
oneself
19. Testy: easily irritated or annoyed; impatient and bad tempered.
20. Passionate: To be passionate about something is to allow one’s actions to be caused by strong
feelings or a strong belief.

Compound sentences

1. Julia is passionate about sports; She bought a soccer ball.

2. Carson is hated by everyone; Everyone considers him as an obnoxious person.
3. Heather is so childish; She still sleeps with a night light.
4. Jim is so passionate about helping others; It annoys me.
5. Abby has been so gloomy ever since the break-up; I have tried in vain to console her.

Complex Sentence

1. Since Mia is so passionate about basketball, I will allow her to try out for the team.
2. Because you are so obnoxious, I will not give you the money.
3. I am inquisitive about his whereabouts because he is my brother.

Stylistic devices

1. Neither Jim, nor Mike, nor Samuel could be as loving as Tim.

2. In order to be wise, you must first be childish.

Part Two

Theme statement

It is important to value oneself as you are more valuable than you make yourself out to be.

Constance

Strength: ‘’Book smart’’

Flaws: Obsessed with Shakespeare, debases herself, and is not ‘’street smart’’

Motivation:

Values: values Shakespearian text.

Strengths

‘…there’s much to live for yet.’

‘…count your lucky stars.’

Epiphany

‘…transforms base metal into pure into precious gold’

‘…capable of greatness…’

‘…every answer spawns another question’

‘For those who have the eyes to see:

Take care – for what you see, just might be thee.’

Uncertainty and belief

Cruelty

‘…grind my mind to pulp, …’

Wise fool

Pet

The writer uses the following stylistic devices:

Symbols: The writer uses symbols such as ‘Hector the turtle’, ‘the fool’s cap’ and so on to convey a
message to the audience. It is used as a way of representing a much deeper concept.
Juxtaposition: The writer is seen to put together certain opposite concepts in the course of the text,
the most notable being ‘the wise fool’.

Word play: In the course of the text we can see the writer play with certain concepts such as ‘to lie
to’ and ‘to lie with’ through the course of the text.

Symbols found during the text

‘Foolscap’: This is a representation of the folly that was present in Constance’s life. She needed to
‘take of the fool’s cap’, that is, recognise her value and self-worth.

‘Green fountain pen’: The author uses this to demonstrate that Constance is the author of her life,
and that she should not let what others say or do to her to determine her course of actions.’

Part three

Ann-Marie MacDonald is an author, actor and playwright. She was born in the former West
Germany, where she lived her first years on Royal Canadian Air Force Station, 4-Wing. Her parents
were from Cape Breton Island – her father of old Scottish stock, her mother the child of Lebanese
immigrants. Her paternal grandparents spoke Gaelic as their first language, and her maternal
grandparents’ mother tongue was Arabic. Ann-Marie is proud of all sides of her heritage.

Ann-Marie trained as an actor at the National Theatre School of Canada, English Section, graduating
in 1980. She moved to Toronto where she immersed herself in the vibrant alternative theatre scene,
and simultaneously pursued a career in television and film. Her work has always been funny,
narrative, feminist, welcoming and queer. She has acted in many new Canadian plays such
as Dreaming and Duelling (Young People’s Theatre), Generals Die in Bed (Theatre Passe Muraille)
and St Sam and the Nukes (Blyth Festival); as well as in celebrated productions of Cloud
Nine (Mirvish Productions) and Top Girls (Soulpepper Theatre). She has performed featured and
lead roles in numerous TV series and several independent Canadian films including The
Wars and Better Than Chocolate, earning a Genie nomination for her role in I’ve Heard the
Mermaids Singing, and winning a Gemini Award for Where the Spirit Lives.

Ann-Marie has co-created and performed original theatrical work such as This is For You,
Anna; Nancy Prew: Clue in the Fast Lane; The Attic, The Pearls, and Three Fine Girls, and More Fine
Girls. Her first solo-authored play, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) premiered at
Nightwood Theatre and was honoured with the Chalmers Award, the Governor General’s Award, and
the Canadian Authors’ Association Award. It is published by Knopf Canada. Her works for the stage
have been produced by numerous theatres in Toronto as well as by the major regional theatres
across the country and by both of Canada’s major festivals, The Shaw Festival and The Stratford
Festival. Her plays include The Arab’s Mouth, the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, book
and lyrics for the musical Anything that Moves (three Dora Awards, including Outstanding New
Musical), Belle Moral: A Natural History (published by Knopf Canada) and, most recently, Hamlet-
911 for the 2022 Stratford Festival season, a play directed by, and based on an idea by, Alisa Palmer.
 The play ‘Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)’ was written in 1988 which features
Constance Ledbelly, who goes on a journey of self-discovery.

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is an exuberant comedy and feminist revisioning of
Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet. It takes us from a dusty office in Canada’s Queen’s
University, into the fraught and furious worlds of two of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and
turns them upside-down. Constance Ledbelly is the beleaguered “spinster” academic, and unlikely
heroine who embarks on a quest for Shakespearean origins and, ultimately, her own identity. When
she deciphers an ancient and neglected manuscript, Constance is propelled through a very modern
rabbit hole and lands smack in the middle of the tragic turning points of each play in turn. Her
attempts to save first Desdemona, then Juliet, from their harrowing fates, result in a wild
unpredictable ride through comedy and near-tragedy, as mild-mannered Constance learns to love,
sword-fight, dance Renaissance-style, and master a series of disguises… Goodnight Desdemona
(Good Morning Juliet) a gender-bendy, big-hearted and crazily intelligent romp, where irony and
anger sing in perfect harmony with innocence and poignancy.

About - Ann-Marie MacDonald

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) - Ann-Marie MacDonald

 Why did Ann-Marie Mcdonald write this book? Was it a reflection of her own life and trying
to recognise her self worth, or was she just writing for pleasure? Because it is seen that she
knows much about Shakespeare. So one can argue that maybe she too was obsessed with
Shakespeare.
 Why was Iago carrying buckets of waste?

This is to emphasize the role that he played as ‘the shadow’ and as a manipulator and deceiver. The
waste can be seen to represent his lies and how he tries to deceive others.

 Why was Iago and Tybalt, the two people depicted as shadows in the text, unwilling or
rather to change?
 This is because as in the case of us human beings, our shadows do not change. The things
that we have done in the past haunt and follow us, like or shadow, but we cannot change
them, the same way we cannot change our shadow.

Part Four

CRT

‘…the tension between an individual’s doubts and convictions.’

An individual’s perception on oneself can affect their way of reasoning, behavior or actions. In the story
‘Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)’ by Ann-Marie Mcdonald, Constance Ledbelly, the
Assistant Professor, always considered herself as ‘worthless’ or ‘not good enough’. She didn't realize that
she was ‘capable of greatness’, and that she should not let others to bring her down. She was often
treated as ‘garbage’ and was often oblivious of the way others put her down. Sadly, this is the way most
of us treat ourselves. We often debase or put ourselves down because we doubt our potential or
abilities. Like Constance, we lack the confidence to express ourselves and our self-worth because of
various reasons. But, we never know how high we can jump unless we actually jump. We have to value
ourselves so that others can value us.

Constance had the privilege of taking a journey into her subconscious and it was then she realized how
poorly she had been treating herself. She was at first looking for the one whom she called ‘The Wise
Fool’ only to realize that she was the fool herself. Sometimes, it takes a trip into our inner self before we
realize certain things about ourselves. Constance believed that she was ‘too old to be loved’. It was only
after she navigated her subconscious that she realized that she is not ‘base metal’ as she considers
herself, unworthy of love, but ‘precious gold’, worth more than she could ever realize.

After Constance had been humiliate by the one she loved, she planned to die. She believed that she was
the one with the problem and that she wasn’t good enough. Sadly, this is also the way we think of
ourselves. We often times feel that we are the ones with the problem and we are always trying to paint a
false picture for others to see. But like Constance we have to learn that a diamond shines the brightest in
the light. Constance only needed to realize that she is indeed good enough and that she wasn’t doing
herself any good by constantly belittling herself.

As human beings, sometimes, we have to face our uncertainties and come out stronger than we
previously were. Certain things that we believe about ourselves can either make or mar us, and like
Constance, sometimes we have to take off our ‘fool’s cap’ and realize just how valuable we are. Only us
have the ability to decide our destinies. We are the author of our lives, we alone can dictate our
destinies. We should stop allowing people to scribble their beliefs and way of thinking on the story of our
lives. Like the peacock, we should learn to spread our feathers and recognize just how beautiful they
truly are. In life, only one thing can stop us: ourselves. We just need to ‘count [our] lucky stars’, and only
the can we realize how valuable we are.