NOVEL - JASPER JONES by Craig Silvey - VOCABULARY

VOCABULARY FROM ‘JASPER JONES’ by Craig Silvey

WORD	MEANING	SENTENCE
Contradictory
Applaud
Reviled
Reconciling
Scapegoat
Brutality
Facade
Sullied
Aspersions
Snide
Petty
Compromise
Hyprocrite
Abusive
Savage
Confine
Conflicting
Flawed
Egregious
Unrepentant
Misdemeanor
Convenient
Abrogate
Feral
Aloft
Aptitude
Pariah
Suspicion
Complicit
Intervene
Cowardice
Austere
Banter
Speculate
Irrefutable
Rumours
Debris
Malevolent
Morbid
Intimidate
Yobbish
monosyllabic
Moronic
Tolerance
Prejudice
Discrimination
Racism
prowess

http://www.sajones.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Reading-Guide-v22.pdf

PLAY - THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST - VOCABULARY

Vocabulary Study Sheet

The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde

(cover the right side of the sheet to quiz yourself)

allusion He alluded to Susan without mentioning her name. an indirect reference candid I gave them my candid opinion honest and direct capacious she carried a capacious bag large in capacity celibate celibate priests abstaining from (i.e., never having) sexual intercourse or: an unmarried person who has taken a religious vow of chastity contempt -- as in: feels contempt towards him Familiarity breeds contempt. lack of respect -- often accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike or disgust credulous The trick would fool none but the most credulous. gullible (being too willing to believe) domestic -- as in: domestic happiness They share the domestic chores. relating to a home or family eccentric The home was built and then abandoned by an eccentricbillionaire. unconventional or strange; or a person with such traits elaborate Will you elaborate on your comment that...? to have or pay attention to details and complexity; or to add details or: to exaggerate an action gravity -- as in: moment of utmost gravity She suddenly realized the gravity of her situation. serious -- typically a manner or feeling that is serious and solemn heresy a hard-line form of Sunni Islam that condemns all other strains as heresy opinions or actions most people consider immoral impetuous -- as in: an impetuous decision an impetuous display of spending and gambling impulsive (acting suddenly without much thought) -- often with an unfortunate consequence indifferent About a third are in favor of the change, a third are opposed, and a third are indifferent. without interest -- in various senses such as: unconcerned unsympathetic impartial not of good quality (which may imply average or poor quality depending upon context) indignant She was indignant, but agreed to be searched when they accused her of shoplifting. angered or annoyed at something unjust or wrong lax Lax safeguards contributed to the oil spill. lacking in strictness or strength metaphor He was speaking metaphorically when he referred to being mugged by reality. a figure of speech in which a word is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity -- as when Shakespeare wrote, "All the world`s a stage." ostentatious Although wealthy, the family is not ostentatious. intended to attract notice and impress others -- especially with wealth in a vulgar way philanthropy Her primary interests are family and philanthropy. helping others -- especially donating money to worthy causes; or an organization that does so pretense The country maintains a pretense of a free press. an appearance or action to help one pretend quixotic a quixotic law that was supposed to end excessive influence of special interests in government impractical due to excessive romanticism or idealism reconcile -- as in: reconciled their differences She reconciled her checking account statement. to bring into agreement refute The speaker refuted his opponent`s arguments to prove or attempt to prove that something is false reproach She reproached him for being thoughtless and lazy. a criticism; or to express criticism resignation -- as in: accepted it with resignation Come what may, she seems resigned to her fate. acceptance of something undesired as unavoidable or the lesser of evils speculate -- as in: don`t know, but I`ll speculate philosophers have speculated on the question of God for thousands of years to guess without certainty; or to reflect (think) deeply upon a subject supercilious Her mother eyed my clothes with a supercilious air. showing arrogant disdain of those one views as unworthy tedious endured another of her tedious lectures boring -- especially due to the amount of something that must be endured utilitarian -- as in: utilitarian furniture She likes plain utilitarian kitchenware. designed for usefulness rather than beauty or style vacillate She was determined and did not vacillate in the least. to change one`s mind back and forth between conflicting ideas or: to sway back and forth vulgarity Her vulgarity was a turnoff. of bad taste -- often crude or offensive or: of unsophisticated (or common) -- especially of taste

For more vocabulary, click here for online vocabulary

PLAY - THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, OSCAR WILDE. VICTORIAN ERA.

To read the play online as an e-book, click here.

Victorian Life and The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest, written in 1895, acts as a play set in the present, that is, 1895. This comedy's humor sources in poking fun at society and its members. The play was not widely popular when it was first produced simply for the fact that people do not enjoy laughing at themselves. However, the humor of this play transcends time because the more time passes the more we are able to laugh at the traditions and customs, that once seemed all important, which are now trivial. Although, over one hundred years later, modern audiences still find The Importance of Being Earnest comical, there are some references that we do not understand since we have not experienced the political context. For instance, the characters make several political references to late 1800s British government and political powers. 

The Importance of Being Earnest acts as a depiction of daily life in the Victorian Era of England. 

Gardens: Wilde sets much of this play in the garden at the country house which accurately fits in with new trends of the Victorian Era. During this time, gardening had become a new fad in the upper class. Many public gardens were being built because the upper class felt that gardens would help the lower classes decrease their drunkenness and improve their social skills. 

Tea: One custom that became increasingly popular in Victorian England was the tradition of taking afternoon tea. This practice was displayed predominately by the upper class. One of the main scenes of Wilde's play takes place while enjoying afternoon tea. 

Vacation: During the Victorian Era, people were increasingly able to take vacations to other cities. This was in part due to the development of the train system, a move from an agricultural society and the creation of bank holidays, days that were designated by the government as public holidays. Increased ability to travel and take holidays help the reader to understand why Jack and Algernon are able to take off for the country to go Bunburying as they please.

Mourning Clothes: Wearing black to display mourning for a loved one was customary in Victorian England. A widowed wife would wear black for up to two years to mourn her husband's death. The house would also be prepared to mourn: clocks would be stopped, window curtains would be closed, and mirrors would be covered. When Jack arrives to tell Miss Prism and Cecily about his brother's death, the stage directions tell us that he is dressed in mourning clothes and wearing black gloves.

Education: As we see with Cecily and Miss Prism, education for the upper class students took place in the home with a private tutor. Schooling was not mandatory throughout the 1800s, but the richer children normally received schooling in the home just as Cecily does.

Religion: Religion played a large part in the daily lives of the Victorian English people. Many people during this time period attended church regularly. Baptism is a sacrament of the Christian Church and Wilde illustrates this aspect of Victorian culture through both Jack's and Algernon's desires to be baptized as Ernest. 

A Review

"Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it," wrote Wilde in one of his first plays, Veraor The Nihilists. Long interested in the combination of the serious with the trivial, Oscar Wilde experimented with different proportions of each in his plays like a baker trying to get the perfect sugar to salt ratio in chocolate chip cookies. By the time Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest he had perfected his recipe.

The Importance of Being Earnest is funny all the time. There is nothing earnest about this play, at least on the surface. It’s a satire of the Victorian era, when an intricate code of behavior governed everything from communication to sexuality. The most important rules applied to marriage – always a popular topic in Victorian plays, and one that interested Wilde, who was married to a woman but sexually involved with men.

During the Victorian period, marriage was about protecting your resources, and keeping socially unacceptable impulses under control. We can see this at work in the The Importance of Being Earnest, usually when the social referee, Lady Bracknell, blows her whistle. Her two main concerns are class and money. Jack is a no-go because he doesn't know who his parents are (i.e., his class is unknown). Lady Bracknell is concerned that he might be a butler in disguise who will squander her daughter Gwendolen’s wealth. One character in particular, Cecily, becomes a lot more interesting when her fortune is mentioned. The ridiculous end of the play – three engagements in five minutes – is a "happy" one because everyone gets together. But think about it – they only get together because their social and economic fitness for each other is demonstrated.

 Why Should I Care?

Who are the people in The Importance of Being Earnest, who do they want to be, and how does the identity they choose affect their choice of a spouse? Generally speaking, the characters are young, unattached people looking for the future. They have the ability to define themselves. Jack knows nothing about his past. Algernon can’t remember what his father looked like and says they weren’t on speaking terms. Cecily is an orphan, creating herself in a diary full of fictitious events. Jack and Algernon are ready to change their names. Only Gwendolen has a strong link to the past (i.e., to Lady Bracknell). With perhaps the exception of Gwendolen, these characters could choose to recreate themselves in a unique and unconventional way.

But they don’t. According to Wilde: if you give a person an opportunity to invent himself, he will choose to be exactly who he should, according to social rules.

What a relief we don’t live in Victorian England. No rules in America, man, no rules in Australia? Aren’t we free to be who we want to be?

Really? There are no expectations? No unspoken rules? No opportunities to disappoint your family with your choices – of school, of career, of romantic partner? Maybe there are expectations and rules after all. The question of how much control we have over our identity – and the life path that comes with it – is still incredibly relevant to us today.

YEAR 11 - DOCUMENTARY - REPRESENTING ‘REALTIY’ – the world of the documentary

Film, whether based on fiction or fact, is an unique storytelling medium that can perpetuate and shape the attitudes and beliefs of their audiences. The full ideological power of film is more fully available when the genre doesn’t ask the audience to suspend belief, but rather asks the audience for their attention as they endeavour to reveal a factual recount of actual people and events. This perceived realism is the power of documentary film.

It is up to the audience to decode the conventions upon which some of Australia’s best storytellers draw in order to manufacture a sense of objectivity—to seemingly remove their voices from the text—in the service of constructing a specific version of realty that advocates a particular ‘truth’. A documentary is the ultimate realist genre as a vehicle for cultural reproduction and change.

When you view a documentary, you need to interrogate it by considering the following:

·         KEY WORDS FROM THE TITLE THAT MAY REVEAL MUCH ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY ·         SUBJECT MATTER – Does the film address issues that you feel are significant ? ·         PERSPECTIVE – Does the film provide a unique insight or offer a non-dominant point of view (POV) regarding its   subject matter? ·         AESTHETIC FEATURES – Is the overall look and feel of the film culturally significant? ·         DOCUMENTARY CONVENTIONS – Does the film make innovative use of the codes of documentary?

THE TWO CENTRAL QUESTIONS OF DOCUMENTARY FILM ANALYSIS:

Documentaries are non-fiction film texts that aim to document or record subject matter based on factual or actual people and events. Regardless of the style, genre or mode of documentary under analysis, first you need to ask:

1.      What types of evidence are being used, and how reliable are they? (For example: eye witness reports, use of statistics, sourcing.)

2.       To what extent are the conventions of documentary film being employed to document, interpret, modify, manipulate or fictionalize the subject matter, and for what purpose? (For example: inclusion or exclusion of subject matter.)

Why are we cynical regarding documentary films? We always need to remember that every mode of representation, whether romance novels or the news, involves a certain degree of intervention in reality—even if it’s as simple as what to include or exclude from the frame or the fact that the presence of a camera affects how people behave.

Essentially, you might ask yourself whether the filmmaker is revealing or distorting the ‘truth’ of the image through their use of techniques such as staging action, cinematography, adding music or commentary, or structuring the narrative during editing. How does this distortion challenge or support the dominant invited reading of the subject?

It’s also important to remember that depending on the subject, documentaries might employ everything from stunt work or animations to creatively represent aspects of the ‘real’ –think about ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’. The sheer diversity of styles and genres emerging from the documentary tradition is possible because documentary itself has always encompassed a wide range of topics.

TYPES OF DOCUMENTARIES: SIX DEGREES OF MANIPULATION

Despite their diversity, it is possible to divide documentaries into six main sub genres based on the different strategies and types of evidence they use to represent and make claims about reality. These categories are not water-tight and it is possible for one film to incorporate several modes.

1.       The Poetic Mode interprets reality creatively and experimentally. Based on the assumption that it’s not possible to document reality objectively, the filmmaker aims to honestly express an aspect of subject perception.

2.       The Expository Documentary assumes a position of authority, telling the audience about the meaning and importance of footage, with the assumption that there is one objective true account of the subject matter and it is the job of the documentary to communicate or expose the facts. Voiceover commentary is central to expository documentaries – eg David Attenborough.

3.       In the Observational Mode, the filmmaker records events like a surveillance camera, without apparent intervention or interpretation of the material for viewers. Traditional observation documentary have no voiceover, no added music or sound effects, no titles, no re-enactments, no behavioural repeats for the camera and no interviews – eg Jesus Camp.

4.       Participatory Documentaries rest on the belief that the filmmaker is best able to create an authentic representation of events if they are personally involved and have intimate knowledge of the subject; it is a filmmaker’s attempt to recount their own experience with the world, engaging in social issues via interviews and footage of historical events – eg Michael Moore’s documentaries such as Supersize Me.

5.       Reflexive Documentaries call the process of presentation and the techniques of realism into question by self-consciously showing the audience that they are watching a representation of the truth. Dramatizations are common in this mode as are self-reflexive techniques, such as direct addresses to the camera – eg Forbidden Lie$.

6.       Performative Documentaries address the audience emotionally and expressively, seeking to communicate different experiences of reality from a subjective position, freely utilizing expressive techniques such as cinematography and music – eg Touching the Void.

Now you understand the constructed nature of the ‘truth’ in all documentaries, you are in a better position to assess the representation constructed in your chosen text and the various ways in which conventions unique to the screen medium have contributed to the documentary’s invited readings. In order to develop a persuasive argument regarding the nature and the intentions of your chosen documentary, you should answer the following questions”: What ‘truth’ regarding Australian culture is this film trying to convey? Whose attitudes and values does this version of reality endorse? Whose does it offend? What documentary conventions have been used in the construction of this ‘truth’?

With thanks to Kelvin Grove State High School handout - Australian Film Festival.

YEAR 12 - NOVEL - METAMORPHOSIS by Frank Kafka - BOOK REVIEW

This short novella is told in three parts...

Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect (BUG). It was as if he was suddenly armor-plated. When he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position. He was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. (Paraphrase of the first few lines of the story.)

With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. The opening sentence is regarded as one of the best in literature. 

This novella is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. 

As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man." Not that modern man is in danger of waking as an insect, but the dissociation between mind and body is something to ponder--what makes us human?

Read it free online, thanks to the Gutenberg Project.

YEAR 12 - NOVEL - THE METAMORPHOSIS by Frank Kafka - KEY FACTS

FULL TITLE · The Metamorphosis

AUTHOR · Franz Kafka

TYPE OF WORK · Short story/novella

GENRE · Absurdism

LANGUAGE OF ORIGINAL TEXT · German

TIME/PLACE WRITTEN · Prague, Eastern Europe, 1912

DATE FIRST PUBLISHED · 1915

 PUBLISHER · Kurt Wolff Verlag

 NARRATOR · The narrator is an anonymous figure who recounts the events of the story in a flat, neutral tone.

POINT OF VIEW · The narrator speaks exclusively in the third person, focusing primarily on the thoughts, feelings, and actions of Gregor Samsa. The narrator only describes events that Gregor sees, hears, remembers, or imagines from the actions around him.

TONE · The narrator’s tone is flat and unchanging, describing even the most outlandish events in a neutral fashion.

TENSE · Past tense

SETTING (TIME) · Unspecified, though references to trains and streetcars suggest the late-nineteenth century or early twentieth century

SETTING (PLACE) · The Samsa family’s apartment in an unspecified city

PROTAGONIST · Gregor Samsa

OTHER MAJOR CHARACTERS · His parents and sister, GRETE.

MAJOR CONFLICT · Gregor Samsa struggles to reconcile his humanity with his transformation into a giant bug (insect).

RISING ACTION · When Gregor Samsa wakes up inexplicably transformed into a giant bug, he must handle the consequences in terms of his understanding of himself and his relationship with his family

CLIMAX · Unable to bear the thought that all evidence of his human life will be removed from his room, he clings to the picture of the woman in furs, startling Grete and the mother and leading the father to attack him

FALLING ACTION · Gregor, injured in the father’s attack, slowly weakens, venturing out of his room once more to hear Grete play the violin and dying shortly thereafter

THEMES · (Topical issues that run through the story.) The absurdity of life; the disconnect between mind and body; the limits of sympathy; alienation

MOTIFS · (A recurring element of symbolic significance.) Metamorphosis; sleep and rest; money

SYMBOLS · (A symbol is a person, place, or object that has a literal meaning and also stands for something larger, such as an idea or an emotion.) The picture of the woman in furs; the father’s uniform; food

FORESHADOWING · Gregor is seriously injured after he leaves the room a second time and he stops eating and sleeping, foreshadowing his eventual death; the family gradually takes less interest in Gregor, foreshadowing their decision to get rid of him.