Homeschool · Diploma track · Grade 10

English 10

A full year of tenth grade English, built to be the student's whole course in the subject rather than a supplement. Fifty-two lessons covering the California ELA standards for the grades 9 to 10 band, moving from world literature into rhetoric: two epics, two Greek tragedies, a full unit on how persuasion actually works, the speeches and satire that use it, Frankenstein read whole, and a research and argument unit to close. Every text is public domain, so the whole reading list is free, and a week-by-week schedule shows exactly what to read when.

DIPLOMA TRACK CA CCSS ELA 9-10 GRADE 10 36-WEEK SCHEDULE MODEL ANSWERS 52 LESSONS 580 PRACTICE QUESTIONS 6 ESSAY PROMPTS English 9 or equivalent. This is a complete course and does not assume other instruction.

Course overview

What this year covers, and when to read what

Tenth grade is the year rhetoric arrives. California's ELA standards are written in two-year bands, so grades 9 and 10 share one set, and this course covers the same band as English 9 at a higher level of demand: longer texts, harder arguments, and writing that has to survive objection rather than merely explain. The reading widens from one national tradition into world literature, and the two halves of the year support each other, because epic and tragedy are full of characters making arguments under pressure and therefore supply the examples the rhetoric unit needs. THE READING SCHEDULE. Weeks 1 and 2, the conventions of epic and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Weeks 3 to 5, the Odyssey, concentrating on Books 1, 5, 9, 11, 19 and 22, with Beowulf in week 5. Weeks 6 and 7, Antigone read whole. Weeks 8 and 9, Oedipus the King read whole. Weeks 10 and 11, the literary analysis essay. Weeks 12 to 18, the rhetoric unit, which has no long reading and should be worked slowly. Weeks 19 and 20, the rhetorical analysis essay. Week 21, Swift's A Modest Proposal. Weeks 22 and 23, the speeches of Sojourner Truth, Patrick Henry and Lincoln. Weeks 24 and 25, Douglass's Narrative read whole. Weeks 26 to 31, Frankenstein, about four chapters a week. Weeks 32 and 33, the argument essay. Weeks 34 to 36, the research unit and the documented paper, which should be started in week 30 rather than begun from nothing at the end. Every text is in the public domain and none of them has to be bought.

  • U1Unit 1: The Epic9 lessons
  • U2Unit 2: Greek Tragedy8 lessons
  • U3Unit 3: Rhetoric10 lessons
  • U4Unit 4: Persuasive Nonfiction8 lessons
  • U5Unit 5: Frankenstein9 lessons
  • U6Unit 6: Research, Synthesis and Argument8 lessons

All six units are open, 52 lessons in all. Every lesson opens with the method, one extended worked example, and ten practice problems. Every problem has a full worked solution, so you can find the step where yours went wrong. Each unit closes with a ten-problem mixed review.

Free preview: open any 5 lessons without an account. The counter on the left keeps track.

Lesson 1.1 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.9

The conventions, and why each one exists

Epic conventions look like arbitrary rules until you know that these poems were composed and performed aloud, often over several nights, by people who could not consult a written text. Every convention solves a problem that condition creates.

The key ideas
  1. An epic is a long narrative poem about a hero whose actions matter to a whole people.
  2. The subject is national or cosmic in scale, which is what separates an epic from a long adventure poem.
  3. The invocation of the Muse opens the poem by asking a god for the story, which frames the poet as a transmitter rather than an inventor.
  4. In medias res means beginning in the middle, with earlier events supplied later as narration.
  5. The epithet is a fixed descriptive phrase attached to a name, such as swift-footed Achilles or resourceful Odysseus.
  6. Epithets and repeated lines are memory aids, supplying the performer with ready-made phrases that fill a metrical line.
  7. The catalog lists ships, warriors or ancestors, which preserves genealogy for an audience with no archive.
  8. The descent into the underworld, called a katabasis, appears across unrelated traditions and lets the dead deliver information the living cannot have.

Where students lose marks: listing conventions. "The poem uses epithets" earns nothing. Say what a particular epithet does at the particular moment it appears.

Worked example

The text. Homer, the Odyssey, opening lines, in Samuel Butler's 1900 English translation. Public domain.

Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.

Step one: identify the invocation. "Tell me, O Muse" is the first clause of the poem. The poet does not claim to be telling the story; he asks a goddess to tell it through him.

Step two: state what that framing buys. Authority. A performer claiming personal knowledge of events from centuries earlier would be making an unbelievable claim. A performer transmitting a goddess's account is making a different kind of claim, and the audience knows which one is being made.

Step three: notice the epithet. "That ingenious hero." Odysseus is identified by a quality before he is named, and the quality selected is intelligence rather than strength. In an epic tradition full of warriors, that is a choice.

Step four: find the plot summary. The opening gives away the sack of Troy, the wandering, the loss of every crewman, the cattle of the Sun, and the reason the men die. Sixty words contain the whole outcome.

Step five: state why the poem gives itself away. The audience already knew the story. Removing suspense about what happens directs attention to how it happens and to the performance itself, which is the same trade Shakespeare makes in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet.

Step six: read the moral claim. "They perished through their own sheer folly." Before a single scene, the poem has assigned blame for the crew's deaths to the crew. That verdict is not neutral and the rest of the poem will test it.

Step seven: locate the in medias res promise. "From whatsoever source you may know them" invites the Muse to begin where she likes, and she begins in the tenth year of Odysseus's wandering. The first four books do not even contain him.

Step eight: state what the conventions accomplish together. In ten lines the poem has established its authority, named its hero's defining quality, delivered the plot, assigned moral responsibility, and licensed itself to start anywhere. Nothing here is decoration; the opening is doing five jobs at once because a performed poem has one chance to do them.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define an epic.
    Show the full solution

    A long narrative poem about a hero whose actions matter to a whole people

  2. What is in medias res?
    Show the full solution

    Beginning in the middle, with earlier events supplied later

  3. What is an epithet?
    Show the full solution

    A fixed descriptive phrase attached to a name

  4. What is a katabasis?
    Show the full solution

    A descent into the underworld

  5. What quality does the Odyssey's opening line attach to its hero?
    Show the full solution

    Ingenuity, rather than strength

  6. Why does the poem begin by asking a Muse to tell the story?
    Show the full solution

    Because a performer claiming personal knowledge of events centuries old would be making an unbelievable claim. Framing the poem as transmission from a goddess makes a different and acceptable claim about where the knowledge comes from. The convention solves an authority problem that a written text with a named author does not have, and the audience understands exactly which claim is being made. It supplies authority a mortal performer could not claim

  7. Explain how epithets and repeated lines serve oral performance.
    Show the full solution

    A performer composing aloud in meter, without a text, needs ready-made phrases that fit the line. "Resourceful Odysseus" and "rosy-fingered dawn" occupy known metrical slots and can be deployed while the performer thinks ahead. What reads on the page as repetition was, in performance, the machinery that made continuous composition possible at all. They are prefabricated metrical units that free the performer to compose

  8. Why does the opening give away the plot?
    Show the full solution

    The audience already knew the story of Troy and its aftermath, so there was no suspense to protect. Stating the outcome at once redirects attention from what happens to how it happens and to the quality of the telling, which is what an audience at a performance is actually there for. It is the same trade Shakespeare makes with the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. The audience knew it already, so attention shifts to the telling

  9. What is not neutral about "they perished through their own sheer folly"?
    Show the full solution

    It assigns blame for the deaths of every crewman to the crew themselves, before a single scene has been narrated. Odysseus is described in the same sentence as trying to save them. The poem has delivered a verdict in advance, and a reader who notices that the verdict came first can then test it against the events, which include decisions Odysseus makes that put the crew in danger. It clears Odysseus of the crew's deaths before any evidence is given

  10. What do the opening conventions accomplish together?
    Show the full solution

    In about ten lines the poem establishes its authority through the invocation, names its hero's defining quality with an epithet, delivers the entire plot, assigns moral responsibility for the crew's deaths, and licenses itself to begin anywhere it likes. Five jobs in one passage. A performed poem gets one chance at an opening, and the conventions exist because that pressure is real. Authority, characterization, plot, judgment and license to begin anywhere

Lesson 1.2 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.2, RL.9-10.9

The oldest story we have, and what it wants

The Epic of Gilgamesh was written on clay tablets in Mesopotamia and is older than Homer by more than a thousand years. It is worth reading first because its concerns turn out to be recognizable, which is itself the interesting fact.

The key ideas
  1. Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving long narrative in any language, preserved on clay tablets in cuneiform.
  2. The standard version dates from roughly 1200 BC, drawing on Sumerian poems that are older still.
  3. It was lost for two thousand years and rediscovered in the 1850s in the ruins of a library at Nineveh.
  4. The plot has two halves: Gilgamesh and Enkidu together, then Gilgamesh alone after Enkidu dies.
  5. Enkidu is created as a rival and becomes a friend, which is the poem's central relationship and the reason the second half works.
  6. The turn is Enkidu's death, after which the poem stops being about adventure and becomes about mortality.
  7. Gilgamesh fails to obtain immortality, and the poem ends with him looking at the walls of his city.
  8. The flood narrative in Tablet XI parallels the biblical flood closely enough that the resemblance was the discovery's first sensation.

Where students lose marks: treating the poem as a curiosity because of its age. The question worth asking is why a story about a friend's death and the fear of dying is the oldest thing we have.

Worked example

The text. The Epic of Gilgamesh, from R. Campbell Thompson's English verse rendering of 1928 and the early prose translations of the tablets. Public domain.

Enkidu, my friend whom I loved, is turned into clay. Shall I not lie down like him, and never rise again through all eternity?

Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou? The life thou pursuest thou shalt not find. When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they allotted, life in their own hands retaining.

Step one: locate the poem's turn. Enkidu dies at the end of Tablet VII. Everything before is monster-killing and glory; everything after is a journey undertaken out of fear. One death changes the genre.

Step two: read the first passage for its logic. "Enkidu is turned into clay. Shall I not lie down like him?" The argument is inductive: a particular death is evidence about a general fact. Gilgamesh has known that people die and has just learned it.

Step three: state why the friend has to die rather than a stranger. Because a general truth about mortality persuades nobody. The poem makes the abstraction specific by attaching it to the one person Gilgamesh loves, which is the same technique the rhetoric unit will call pathos.

Step four: work the alewife's answer. "The life thou pursuest thou shalt not find." She does not argue that he should accept death; she states that the search will fail. It is a statement of fact rather than consolation, and it is offered before he has even begun.

Step five: notice the theology. "When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they allotted, life in their own hands retaining." Mortality is not a punishment or an accident. It is the design, and the gods kept the alternative for themselves.

Step six: state what that makes the quest. Not a heroic attempt at something difficult but an attempt at something the system was built to prevent. Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine and it makes no difference, which is the poem's point.

Step seven: examine the ending. He obtains the plant of rejuvenation and a snake eats it while he bathes. Then he returns to Uruk and shows a companion the walls of the city, describing their construction. The poem ends on masonry.

Step eight: state what the ending argues. What survives a person is what they built, not what they were. The poem's first lines and its last lines both describe the walls, so the structure closes on the only kind of permanence available. That is a complete argument about mortality made four thousand years ago, and it is the reason this is not merely an old text.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What was Gilgamesh written on, and roughly when?
    Show the full solution

    Clay tablets in cuneiform; the standard version dates from about 1200 BC

  2. How was the poem recovered?
    Show the full solution

    It was rediscovered in the 1850s in the ruins of a library at Nineveh

  3. Who is Enkidu, and what happens to him?
    Show the full solution

    A man created as Gilgamesh's rival who becomes his friend, and who dies

  4. What does Gilgamesh fail to obtain?
    Show the full solution

    Immortality; the plant of rejuvenation is eaten by a snake

  5. What does the poem end by describing?
    Show the full solution

    The walls of Uruk

  6. Why must Enkidu die rather than a stranger?
    Show the full solution

    Because a general truth about mortality persuades nobody. Gilgamesh has known that people die for his entire life and it has changed nothing about how he behaves. The poem makes the abstraction specific by attaching it to the one person he loves, so that a fact he already possessed becomes knowledge he cannot put down. That is the same mechanism the rhetoric unit will call pathos. A general truth persuades nobody; a particular death does

  7. What does the alewife's reply actually claim?
    Show the full solution

    Not that Gilgamesh should accept death, which would be consolation, but that the life he is pursuing does not exist to be found. It is a statement of fact delivered before the search has properly begun, and it turns out to be accurate. The poem gives its own conclusion to a minor character early, which means the remaining tablets are not suspense but demonstration. That the search will fail, stated as fact rather than comfort

  8. What does the poem's theology make of mortality?
    Show the full solution

    Not a punishment, not an accident and not a flaw to be corrected, but the design. "When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they allotted, life in their own hands retaining" says the gods kept the alternative deliberately. That makes Gilgamesh's quest an attempt at something the system was built to prevent, which is why being two-thirds divine makes no difference to the outcome. It is the design, with the gods keeping immortality deliberately

  9. Why does the poem end on the walls of the city?
    Show the full solution

    Because the walls are the only permanence available to a mortal. Having failed to keep himself alive, Gilgamesh shows a companion what he built, and the poem argues that what survives a person is their work rather than their person. The first lines and the last lines both describe the walls, so the structure closes on the answer it was always going to give. Building is the only permanence a mortal can have

  10. Why is the poem's age not the most interesting thing about it?
    Show the full solution

    Because age alone would make it a curiosity. What makes it worth reading is that the oldest long narrative in any language turns out to be about a man who cannot accept his friend's death and travels to the edge of the world to avoid his own. The concerns are immediately recognizable, which says something about what stories have always been for. Its concerns are recognizable, which is a claim about what stories are for

Lesson 1.3 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.2

A hero who wins by not being the strongest

The Iliad's hero is the best fighter alive. The Odyssey's hero is a man who talks his way out of things, and the difference is the whole point of reading the second poem after the first.

The key ideas
  1. The Odyssey covers the ten years after Troy, during which Odysseus tries to reach Ithaca.
  2. Its hero's defining quality is intelligence, named in the first line and demonstrated in nearly every episode.
  3. The poem's recurring epithet for him is polytropos, which means "of many turns" and can mean both much-traveled and cunning.
  4. Lying is a heroic skill here, and Odysseus lies to almost everyone, including his own family, without the poem disapproving.
  5. Athena is his patron precisely because she admires the same quality, and she says so directly.
  6. His flaw is the same as his virtue: the cleverness that saves him from the Cyclops is what makes him announce his name and earn Poseidon's hatred.
  7. The poem is structured around returns and recognitions rather than around battles.
  8. Butler's 1900 prose translation is public domain and is the version quoted throughout this course.

Where students lose marks: calling Odysseus a liar as if the poem agreed. The text treats deception as a skill, and an essay has to engage with that rather than importing a modern verdict.

Worked example

The text. Homer, the Odyssey, Book 9, in Samuel Butler's 1900 translation. Public domain.

"Cyclops," said I, "you ask my name and I will tell it you; give me, therefore, the present you promised me; my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my friends have always called me."

"Cyclops, if any one asks you who it was that put your eye out and spoiled your beauty, say it was the valiant warrior Ulysses, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca."

Step one: state what the first trick accomplishes. When the blinded Polyphemus calls for help, he tells the other Cyclopes that "Noman" is killing him, and they conclude that nothing is wrong and go away. The escape depends entirely on a pun prepared in advance.

Step two: note what kind of heroism this is. Odysseus does not fight the Cyclops. He cannot: the stone at the cave mouth is too heavy for his men to move even if Polyphemus were dead. The problem is solved by planning and by language.

Step three: examine the second passage. Safely at sea, Odysseus shouts his real name, his father's name, and his home island. Polyphemus can now name him in a prayer to Poseidon, who is his father.

Step four: state the consequence. Poseidon's hatred is what keeps Odysseus from home for ten years and kills every one of his men. The entire remaining plot follows from three sentences shouted across water.

Step five: ask why he does it. His men beg him not to. He does it because being Noman is intolerable to him: the trick that saved his life required erasing his identity, and he cannot leave it erased.

Step six: state the structural point. The same quality produces both events. Cleverness devises the name-trick and pride in that cleverness undoes it. This is not a hero with a virtue and a separate flaw; it is one trait doing both jobs, which is a more interesting construction.

Step seven: connect it to the poem's design. The Odyssey repeatedly tests whether Odysseus can keep quiet. He succeeds with Circe, with the swineherd, with the suitors and with his own wife, holding his name back for four books after reaching Ithaca. Book 9 is the failure that the rest of the poem makes him pass.

Step eight: state the theme this supports. The poem argues that identity is something a person can put down and pick up, and that knowing when to do each is the skill it values. Odysseus's growth is not from weak to strong but from a man who must be known to a man who can wait.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What name does Odysseus give the Cyclops?
    Show the full solution

    Noman

  2. Why does that name work?
    Show the full solution

    The other Cyclopes hear that "noman" is hurting him and conclude nothing is wrong

  3. What does Odysseus do once he is safely at sea?
    Show the full solution

    Shouts his real name, his father's name and his island

  4. Who is Polyphemus's father, and why does that matter?
    Show the full solution

    Poseidon, who can now be asked by name to punish Odysseus

  5. What does polytropos mean?
    Show the full solution

    Of many turns: both much-traveled and cunning

  6. What kind of heroism does the Cyclops episode demonstrate?
    Show the full solution

    Not physical. Odysseus cannot fight Polyphemus and could not escape even if he killed him, because the stone sealing the cave is beyond his men's strength. The problem is solved by preparing a pun in advance, by getting the Cyclops drunk, and by hiding under sheep. Every step is planning and language, which is the poem's answer to the Iliad's idea of a hero. Planning and language rather than strength

  7. Why does Odysseus shout his name, against his crew's advice?
    Show the full solution

    Because being Noman is intolerable to him. The trick that saved his life required erasing his identity, and having survived he cannot leave it erased and unclaimed. The poem presents this as a need rather than a miscalculation, which is why it reads as characterization rather than as a plot device. He cannot leave the identity he erased unclaimed

  8. Explain why this is one trait rather than a virtue and a separate flaw.
    Show the full solution

    The cleverness that invents the name-trick is the same cleverness he is proud of when he announces himself, and the pride is not separable from the skill. A hero with a virtue and an unrelated weakness is a simpler construction. Here one quality produces both the escape and the ten-year punishment, which means the poem cannot simply recommend the quality. The same cleverness produces both the escape and the catastrophe

  9. How does the rest of the poem respond to Book 9?
    Show the full solution

    By repeatedly testing whether Odysseus can keep quiet. He conceals himself from the swineherd, from the suitors, from his old nurse and from Penelope, holding his name back for four books after landing on Ithaca. Book 9 is the failure and the second half of the poem is the same test passed, which makes the structure a course of instruction rather than a series of adventures. It repeatedly retests his ability to withhold his name, and he passes

  10. What theme does this support?
    Show the full solution

    That identity is something a person can put down and take up again, and that knowing when to do each is the skill the poem values. Odysseus does not grow from weak to strong; he grows from a man who must be known into a man who can wait. That reading accounts for the Cyclops, the disguises on Ithaca and the delayed recognition by Penelope. Knowing when to withhold identity, not growing stronger

Lesson 1.4 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.4

In medias res, invocation and epithet, in use

Lesson 1.1 named the conventions. This lesson shows them operating on a single passage, which is the only way to write about them for marks.

The key ideas
  1. The Odyssey begins in the tenth year, with Odysseus on Calypso's island and Telemachus at home in trouble.
  2. Books 1 to 4 do not contain Odysseus at all, which is an extreme use of in medias res.
  3. Books 9 to 12 are told by Odysseus himself, so the most famous adventures reach us as a character's own account.
  4. That embedded narration is worth suspecting, since the poem's most accomplished liar is the only witness to the Cyclops.
  5. Epithets can be functional or pointed, and the useful question is whether a particular one fits the moment it appears in.
  6. A Homeric simile is an extended comparison, usually drawn from ordinary peacetime life and often much longer than the thing it describes.
  7. The similes import a whole world of farming, weather and craft that the war narrative otherwise has no room for.
  8. Repetition of whole scenes such as arming, feasting or sacrifice gives the performer rest and the audience a rhythm.

Where students lose marks: treating the embedded books as neutral narration. Odysseus is telling the Phaeacians a story in order to be given ships, and that purpose is a legitimate thing to analyze.

Worked example

The text. Homer, the Odyssey, Book 5, in Samuel Butler's 1900 translation. Public domain.

As a man covers a brand with black ashes to keep the seed of fire alive, and it smoulders in a desolate place where there are no neighbours, so did Ulysses cover himself up with leaves.

By this time the sun had set, and the darkness was over all the land. The gale grew stronger and stronger, and Ulysses was carried along on the waves for two nights and two days, and many a time did he expect to perish.

Step one: identify the simile's two halves. The vehicle is a man banking a fire under ashes in an isolated place. The tenor is Odysseus burying himself in leaves to survive a night.

Step two: work out what carries across. Preservation of something small and essential; covering as protection rather than concealment; and the fact that a banked fire is not extinguished but waiting.

Step three: notice what else the simile smuggles in. "A desolate place where there are no neighbours." Nothing in the literal situation required that detail. It is in the vehicle, and it imports Odysseus's isolation without the narration having to state it.

Step four: state the general principle. A Homeric simile does more than clarify. It brings a second scene into the poem, usually one of ordinary domestic or agricultural life, and the qualities of that scene attach themselves to the subject.

Step five: ask why this one is placed here. Book 5 is the reader's first sight of Odysseus, after four books of hearing about him. He arrives not as a warrior but as a naked man hiding in leaves, and the simile that introduces him is about survival at the lowest possible level.

Step six: connect it to the poem's structure. A poem that opened with Odysseus in glory would be a different poem. Delaying his entrance for four books and then presenting him at his worst makes the entire return a climb, which is what in medias res was for.

Step seven: examine the pacing of the second passage. Two nights and two days compressed into one sentence, while the single night in the leaves gets a simile. The poem slows for significance rather than for duration.

Step eight: write the analytical sentence. "By introducing Odysseus through a simile about banking a fire in a place with ‘no neighbours’, Homer establishes both his isolation and the fact that he is preserved rather than finished, so the reader's first sight of the hero already contains the poem's promise that he will return." That names the device, the evidence and the effect.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Where in the story does the Odyssey begin?
    Show the full solution

    In the tenth year, with Odysseus on Calypso's island

  2. Which books does Odysseus narrate himself?
    Show the full solution

    Books 9 to 12

  3. What is a Homeric simile?
    Show the full solution

    An extended comparison, usually drawn from ordinary peacetime life

  4. Name the two halves of the fire simile.
    Show the full solution

    Vehicle: a man banking a fire under ashes. Tenor: Odysseus covering himself in leaves

  5. How is Odysseus first shown to the reader?
    Show the full solution

    Shipwrecked and hiding in leaves, not in glory

  6. What does the simile smuggle in beyond the comparison?
    Show the full solution

    "A desolate place where there are no neighbours" is in the vehicle and nothing in the literal situation required it. The detail imports Odysseus's isolation without the narration stating it. A Homeric simile does not only clarify; it brings a second scene into the poem, and the qualities of that scene attach themselves to the subject. Isolation, carried by a detail belonging only to the vehicle

  7. Why is the poem's first sight of Odysseus significant?
    Show the full solution

    Four books have described him through other people before he appears, and when he does he is naked, shipwrecked and burying himself in leaves. A poem that opened on him in glory would be a different poem. Delaying his entrance and then presenting him at his lowest makes the whole return a climb, which is what the in medias res structure exists to produce. He arrives at his lowest, which makes the return a climb

  8. Why is Odysseus's narration in Books 9 to 12 worth suspecting?
    Show the full solution

    Because the poem's most accomplished liar is the only witness to most of its famous episodes, and he is telling the story to the Phaeacians in order to be given ships home. He has a motive and a demonstrated skill. Treating the embedded books as neutral narration ignores what the poem has already established about the man doing the narrating. The poem's best liar is the sole witness, and he wants something

  9. What does the pacing of Book 5 reveal?
    Show the full solution

    Two nights and two days on the waves are compressed into a single sentence, while one night in the leaves receives an extended simile. The poem slows for significance rather than for duration. That is a general principle worth carrying into any narrative: where a text spends its words tells you what it thinks is happening. It slows for significance, not for elapsed time

  10. Write a sentence of analysis about the fire simile.
    Show the full solution

    "By introducing Odysseus through a simile about banking a fire in a place with no neighbours, Homer establishes both his isolation and the fact that he is preserved rather than finished, so the reader's first sight of the hero already contains the poem's promise that he will return." It names the device, quotes the evidence, and states the effect. Device, evidence and effect in one sentence

Lesson 1.5 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.2, RL.9-10.9

The value the poem exists to enforce

Every episode in the Odyssey turns on how a host treats a guest or how a guest treats a host. Once you see that, the poem stops being a collection of adventures and becomes a single sustained argument.

The key ideas
  1. Xenia is guest-friendship: the reciprocal obligation between host and traveler in the Greek world.
  2. The host's duties are to feed and bathe the stranger, give gifts, and ask who they are only afterwards.
  3. The guest's duties are to be courteous, not to overstay, and not to abuse the household.
  4. Zeus is the god of guests, so violating xenia is not rudeness but impiety.
  5. The suitors are the poem's central violation, having consumed another man's household for years while courting his wife.
  6. Polyphemus is the extreme violation, eating his guests, and the poem makes his punishment fit that exactly.
  7. The Phaeacians are the model, feeding and equipping Odysseus and delivering him home before asking anything of him.
  8. Every episode can be scored on this one axis, which makes xenia the poem's organizing value rather than one theme among several.

Where students lose marks: treating the killing of the suitors as disproportionate by modern standards without acknowledging what the poem has spent twenty-two books establishing.

Worked example

The text. Homer, the Odyssey, Books 9 and 14, in Samuel Butler's 1900 translation. Public domain.

"We are Achaeans coming from Troy, and we beseech you, therefore, in the name of Jove, to show us some hospitality... fear the wrath of heaven; Jove is the avenger of suppliants and strangers."

"Stranger," said he, "you are a fool, or else you know nothing of this country. Talk to me, indeed, about fearing the gods! We Cyclopes do not care about Jove."

"Stranger," said Eumaeus, "it is not right for me to turn any one away from my door, not even a poorer man than yourself, for all strangers and beggars are from Jove."

Step one: notice what Odysseus asks for. Not mercy or food but xenia, and he names Zeus while doing it. He is invoking a legal obligation, not requesting a favor.

Step two: read the Cyclops's refusal precisely. He does not say he is hungry or cruel. He says "we Cyclopes do not care about Jove." The refusal is theological: he rejects the authority behind the obligation.

Step three: state what that makes him. Not a monster who happens to eat people but a being outside the system the poem is built on. His size is incidental; his lawlessness is the point, and the poem says so when it describes the Cyclopes as having no assemblies and no laws.

Step four: compare the swineherd. Eumaeus is poor, he is a slave, and he has almost nothing. He gives Odysseus food, a bed and a cloak, and explains that all strangers are from Zeus. The same obligation, honored by the person least able to afford it.

Step five: state what the comparison argues. Xenia is not a function of wealth or power. The Cyclops has abundance and refuses; the swineherd has nothing and gives. The poem places these two encounters in the same book-structure so the contrast cannot be missed.

Step six: apply the axis to the suitors. They are guests who have stayed years, eaten the household's stores, courted the host's wife, and plotted to kill the host's son. Every duty of a guest is violated in order.

Step seven: assess the killing. By the poem's own standard the suitors are not merely rude but impious, and they have been warned repeatedly and by omens. A modern reader may still find the slaughter excessive, but the argument has to engage with what the poem has spent twenty-two books establishing rather than ignore it.

Step eight: state the theme. The Odyssey argues that a society is held together by obligations to strangers, because in a world without law between households nothing else protects a traveler. That reading accounts for the Cyclops, the Phaeacians, Eumaeus, the suitors, and the fact that the hero spends most of the poem as a guest.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define xenia.
    Show the full solution

    Guest-friendship: the reciprocal obligation between host and traveler

  2. Name three duties of a host.
    Show the full solution

    Feed and bathe the stranger, give gifts, and ask their identity afterwards

  3. Which god enforces xenia?
    Show the full solution

    Zeus, called Jove in Butler's translation

  4. Who models xenia perfectly in the poem?
    Show the full solution

    The Phaeacians, and the swineherd Eumaeus

  5. How do the suitors violate it?
    Show the full solution

    They overstay for years, consume the household, court the host's wife and plot to kill his son

  6. What exactly is the Cyclops refusing?
    Show the full solution

    Not a request for food but an obligation, since Odysseus names Zeus as the avenger of suppliants and strangers when he asks. Polyphemus replies that the Cyclopes do not care about Jove, which rejects the authority behind the obligation rather than the request itself. The refusal is theological, and that is what makes it the poem's extreme case. The authority of Zeus behind the obligation, not just the request

  7. Why is Polyphemus's size not the point?
    Show the full solution

    Because the poem locates his monstrousness in lawlessness rather than in scale. It describes the Cyclopes as having no assemblies and no laws, each living apart and caring nothing for his neighbor. Polyphemus is a being outside the system the poem is built on, and eating guests is the consequence of that rather than the cause of the poem's judgment. He is lawless rather than merely large

  8. What does Eumaeus prove?
    Show the full solution

    That xenia is not a function of wealth or power. He is poor and a slave and possesses almost nothing, and he gives Odysseus food, a bed and a cloak while explaining that all strangers are from Zeus. The Cyclops has abundance and refuses. Placing the richest refuser and the poorest giver in the same poem makes the contrast the argument. That the obligation does not depend on having anything to spare

  9. How should an essay handle the killing of the suitors?
    Show the full solution

    By engaging with the poem's own standard before applying a modern one. On the text's terms the suitors are impious rather than merely rude, they have violated every duty of a guest, and they have been warned repeatedly and by omens. A reader may still find the slaughter excessive, but an argument that ignores twenty-two books of preparation is arguing with a poem it has not read. Engage with the poem's standard first, then judge it

  10. State the theme xenia supports.
    Show the full solution

    That a society is held together by obligations to strangers, because in a world with no law operating between households nothing else protects a traveler. That reading accounts for the Cyclops, the Phaeacians, Eumaeus, the suitors, and for the fact that the hero spends most of the poem as a guest rather than as a warrior. Obligations to strangers are what hold a society together

Lesson 1.6 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.2

What the dead are allowed to tell the living

The descent to the underworld appears in Gilgamesh, in Homer, in Virgil and in Dante, which makes it the most persistent structure in Western narrative. This lesson asks what the device is for.

The key ideas
  1. A katabasis is a journey to the land of the dead undertaken by a living person.
  2. It solves an information problem, letting a character learn things no living witness could supply.
  3. In Book 11 Odysseus goes to consult Teiresias, a dead prophet, about how to get home.
  4. He meets his own mother there and learns she died of grief waiting for him, which he did not know.
  5. He meets Achilles, who delivers the most quoted lines in the poem about the value of being dead.
  6. Achilles's speech contradicts the Iliad's values directly, which is why it is placed in this poem rather than that one.
  7. The dead must drink blood to speak, a detail that makes memory and speech physical rather than spiritual.
  8. The episode sits at the poem's center, in the middle book of the twenty-four, which is unlikely to be accidental.

Where students lose marks: summarizing the parade of ghosts. The examinable content is what two or three specific encounters do to the poem's argument about heroism and homecoming.

Worked example

The text. Homer, the Odyssey, Book 11, in Samuel Butler's 1900 translation. Public domain.

"Say not a word," he answered, "in death's favour; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead."

"My son," she answered, "it was not that the goddess Diana, whose arrows are so gentle, came and killed me... it was longing for you, Ulysses, and for your wise counsel and your gentle ways, that brought my life with all its sweetness to an end."

Step one: establish who is speaking in the first passage. Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Iliad, who chose a short glorious life over a long obscure one and knew he was choosing it.

Step two: state what he now says. That he would rather be a hired laborer for a poor man and alive than king among the dead. He is repudiating the exact trade the Iliad is built on.

Step three: state why this is in the Odyssey. Because the Odyssey is the poem of homecoming rather than glory, and its hero's project is to survive and return. Having the Iliad's hero argue for survival puts the Iliad's own greatest figure on the Odyssey's side.

Step four: notice the audience inside the scene. Odysseus hears this. He is a man who has been offered immortality by Calypso and refused it in order to go home to a mortal wife. Achilles is confirming a choice Odysseus has already made.

Step five: work the mother's speech. Anticleia died of grief, waiting. Odysseus did not know she was dead, and learns it here, and learns simultaneously that he caused it.

Step six: state what that adds to the poem. A cost. The wandering has been presented as suffering endured by Odysseus; this is the first accounting of suffering caused by him to someone who was not on his ship. The homecoming he is fighting for is already partly lost.

Step seven: work the detail about blood. The dead cannot speak until they drink sacrificial blood, and Odysseus must hold them off with a sword until Teiresias has drunk. Memory and speech are physical resources that run out, which makes the underworld a place of scarcity rather than of judgment.

Step eight: state the structural function. Book 11 sits at the center of twenty-four books and delivers the poem's thesis from the mouths of the dead: that being alive and at home is worth more than glory, and that the price of the journey is being paid by people who are not on it. Everything after it is Odysseus acting on that information.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Why does Odysseus go to the underworld?
    Show the full solution

    To consult the dead prophet Teiresias about how to get home

  2. What must the dead do before they can speak?
    Show the full solution

    Drink sacrificial blood

  3. What does Achilles say he would prefer?
    Show the full solution

    To be a paid servant in a poor man's house and alive, rather than king among the dead

  4. How did Odysseus's mother die?
    Show the full solution

    Of longing for him

  5. Where does Book 11 sit in the poem?
    Show the full solution

    At the center of the twenty-four books

  6. Why is Achilles the right person to say what he says?
    Show the full solution

    Because he is the one figure whose authority on the question cannot be questioned. He chose a short glorious life over a long obscure one, knew he was choosing it, and received exactly what he bargained for. Having him repudiate the trade puts the Iliad's greatest hero on the Odyssey's side of the argument, which no other speaker could accomplish. He made the trade knowingly and can testify to its value

  7. How does the speech relate to Odysseus's own situation?
    Show the full solution

    Odysseus has been offered immortality by Calypso and has refused it in order to return to a mortal wife on a small island. Achilles is confirming a choice Odysseus has already made, which means the scene functions as reassurance rather than instruction. The poem arranges for its hero to hear his own decision endorsed by the one person qualified to judge it. It endorses the choice Odysseus already made in refusing Calypso

  8. What does Anticleia's death add to the poem?
    Show the full solution

    A cost borne by someone who was not on the ship. Up to this point the wandering has been presented as suffering endured by Odysseus and his crew. Learning that his mother died of waiting, and learning it from her, is the first accounting of damage he has caused at home. The homecoming he is fighting for is already partly lost before he arrives. The first cost paid by someone who was not on the voyage

  9. What does the blood-drinking detail establish?
    Show the full solution

    That memory and speech are physical resources rather than spiritual properties. The dead are silent until they drink, and Odysseus must hold them back with a sword so Teiresias can drink first. That makes the underworld a place of scarcity rather than of judgment or reward, which is a very different conception from the later Christian one Dante will use. Speech is a scarce physical resource, so the underworld is not a place of judgment

  10. State Book 11's structural function.
    Show the full solution

    It sits at the center of twenty-four books and delivers the poem's thesis from the mouths of the dead: that being alive and at home is worth more than glory, and that the price of the journey is being paid by people who are not on it. Everything in the second half is Odysseus acting on that information, which is why the episode is placed where it is. It states the poem's thesis at the exact center, from the dead

Lesson 1.7 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.5

The epic's other two plots

About half the Odyssey has nothing to do with sea monsters. Two other people are conducting long campaigns of their own, and the poem is careful to make both of them versions of the same skill it admires in Odysseus.

The key ideas
  1. The Telemachy is Books 1 to 4, in which Odysseus's son leaves Ithaca to look for news of his father.
  2. Telemachus begins passive and ends capable, which makes his plot a coming-of-age story embedded in an epic.
  3. Penelope holds the household for twenty years against over a hundred suitors, with no army and no legal protection.
  4. The shroud trick is her best known stratagem: she weaves by day and unpicks the work at night, delaying for three years.
  5. Her cleverness is the same kind as her husband's, which the poem notices and approves.
  6. The bed test in Book 23 is her recognition scene, and she conducts it on Odysseus rather than the reverse.
  7. The poem withholds their reunion for four books after he reaches Ithaca, which is structurally deliberate.
  8. The three plots converge in Book 22, where father and son fight together in the hall Penelope preserved.

Where students lose marks: describing Penelope as passively waiting. She runs a twenty-year holding action with no force available, and the shroud and the bed are both her operations.

Worked example

The text. Homer, the Odyssey, Books 2 and 23, in Samuel Butler's 1900 translation. Public domain.

"She set up a great tambour frame in her room, and began to work on an enormous piece of fine needlework. 'Sweet hearts,' said she, 'Ulysses is indeed dead, still, do not press me to marry again immediately; wait, for I would not have my skill in needlework perish unrecorded, till I have completed a pall for the hero Laertes.'... So we gave our consent, and she began her great web. In the daytime she worked at it, but at night she unpicked it."

"Euryclea," said she, "move the bed out of the room that he himself built. Bring the bed outside this room, and put bedding upon it with fleeces, good coverlets, and blankets."

"Wife," said Ulysses, "this is a very serious matter. Who has been taking my bed away? ... There is an olive tree growing in the yard; ... I built my room round this with strong walls of stone."

Step one: examine the shroud stratagem. Penelope cannot refuse the suitors outright, because her husband is presumed dead and custom is against her. So she does not refuse; she accepts and then makes the acceptance conditional on a task she secretly prevents from finishing.

Step two: name the technique. She agrees in order to delay. This is exactly the structure of the Noman trick: solve an unwinnable confrontation by supplying a form of words that satisfies the other party and does something else.

Step three: notice who reports it. The passage is a suitor complaining to the assembly. The poem gives her best trick to an enemy to describe, which makes it testimony rather than boasting.

Step four: turn to the bed test. Odysseus has killed the suitors, been washed and dressed, and is standing in his own hall identified by his nurse and his son. Penelope still does not accept him.

Step five: work out what she actually does. She instructs the nurse to move the bed, knowing it cannot be moved, because Odysseus built the bedroom around a living olive tree that forms one bedpost. If the man in front of her agrees to move it, he is not her husband.

Step six: state who is testing whom. Odysseus has spent the whole poem testing other people with disguises. Here he is the one examined, and he fails to notice until he has already given the answer. Penelope runs the only successful deception practiced on Odysseus in the poem.

Step seven: examine the bed as a symbol. It is rooted, literally, in a living tree that grows out of the ground under the house. A marriage that cannot be moved is the image, and the secret of it is shared by exactly two people, which is what makes it a usable test.

Step eight: state the theme. The poem argues that the household is held together by the same intelligence that gets Odysseus home, and that Penelope's twenty years of holding are the equal of his twenty years of traveling. The reunion is delayed four books so that she can demonstrate it rather than simply be found waiting.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What are Books 1 to 4 called, and what happens in them?
    Show the full solution

    The Telemachy; Telemachus leaves Ithaca to seek news of his father

  2. Describe the shroud trick.
    Show the full solution

    Penelope weaves a burial pall by day and unpicks it at night, delaying for three years

  3. What is unmovable about the bed?
    Show the full solution

    One bedpost is a living olive tree, and the room was built around it

  4. Who knows the secret of the bed?
    Show the full solution

    Odysseus and Penelope

  5. How long after reaching Ithaca does Odysseus reveal himself to Penelope?
    Show the full solution

    Four books later

  6. Why can Penelope not simply refuse the suitors?
    Show the full solution

    Her husband is presumed dead after twenty years, custom expects a widow to remarry, and she has no force available: over a hundred armed men are in her house and her son is a boy. Outright refusal is not an option she can enforce. So she accepts in principle and attaches a condition she secretly prevents from being met, which is the only move her position allows. She has no force and custom is against her, so she must delay rather than refuse

  7. How is the shroud trick structurally like the Noman trick?
    Show the full solution

    Both solve an unwinnable confrontation by supplying a form of words that satisfies the other party while accomplishing something else. Odysseus gives a name that is technically true and useless to his enemies; Penelope gives a consent that is technically real and indefinitely deferred. The poem values the same skill in both of them, which is why it is careful to show her using it. Both give a form of words that satisfies an opponent and does something else

  8. Why does it matter that a suitor reports the shroud trick?
    Show the full solution

    Because it makes the account testimony rather than boasting. A suitor complaining to the assembly has no interest in making Penelope look clever, and his complaint is that she outmanoeuvred them for three years. Praise from an enemy is the strongest form available, and the poem arranges for her best stratagem to reach the reader that way. Praise from an enemy is stronger than the poem's own claim

  9. Who is testing whom in Book 23, and why is that significant?
    Show the full solution

    Penelope tests Odysseus. He has spent the entire poem testing other people with disguises and false stories, and here he is the one examined, and he does not notice until he has already given the answer. Penelope runs the only successful deception practiced on Odysseus anywhere in the poem, which is the strongest possible statement of her competence. She tests him, and it is the only deception that works on him

  10. Why is the reunion delayed four books?
    Show the full solution

    So that Penelope can demonstrate her intelligence rather than simply be found waiting. An immediate reunion would make her the object of the homecoming; delaying it gives her a scene in which she designs and executes a test her husband cannot detect. The poem argues that her twenty years of holding the household are the equal of his twenty years of traveling, and the delay is how it makes that case. To let her prove her equality rather than be found waiting

Lesson 1.8 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.9, RL.9-10.4

The same form in a colder country

Beowulf is an epic written in Old English about Scandinavian heroes, by a Christian poet, about a pagan world. Every one of those tensions shows up in the text, and reading it after Homer makes the differences legible.

The key ideas
  1. Beowulf survives in a single manuscript that was damaged by fire in 1731 and is now in the British Library.
  2. The poem is in Old English, which is a different language from modern English rather than an older spelling of it.
  3. Its line is alliterative rather than rhymed, with four stresses to a line and a pause in the middle.
  4. A kenning is a compound metaphor used in place of a noun, such as whale-road for the sea or ring-giver for a king.
  5. The comitatus is the warrior band, bound to a lord by gifts in exchange for loyalty to the death.
  6. Wergild, the man-price, is compensation paid for a killing, and the feud resumes when it is refused.
  7. The poem has three fights across two time periods: Grendel, Grendel's mother, and fifty years later the dragon.
  8. Francis Gummere's 1910 verse translation is public domain and preserves the alliteration, which is why it is quoted here.

Where students lose marks: treating the dragon fight as a repeat of the first two. Beowulf is old, he is a king rather than a retainer, he dies, and his people are left undefended. The third fight reverses the first two.

Worked example

The text. Beowulf, in Francis Gummere's 1910 verse translation. Public domain.

Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!

So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel
a winsome life, till one began
to fashion evils, that field of hell.
Grendel this monster grim was called,
march-riever mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness.

Step one: hear the line. "March-riever mighty, in moorland living" has four stresses and three of them alliterate on m. The organizing sound is at the start of stressed syllables, not at the end of lines.

Step two: compare with Homer's opening. Homer asks a Muse to tell him. Beowulf begins "we have heard", claiming communal memory rather than divine transmission. The authority is the tribe's, not a goddess's.

Step three: identify the kennings. "March-riever" means border-raider. Elsewhere the sea is the whale-road and a king is the ring-giver. Each names a thing by its function or its relation rather than directly.

Step four: state what a kenning does. It forces a small act of interpretation and it supplies alliteration on demand, since a poet needing an m-word for the sea has several available. The device serves the meter and the meaning at once.

Step five: read Grendel's introduction for what it emphasizes. He lives in moor, fen and fastness, outside the hall. The poem's geography is binary: inside the hall there is light, mead, poetry and gift-giving; outside there is darkness and a creature. The monster is defined by exclusion.

Step six: connect that to the comitatus. A society organized around a lord distributing gifts in a hall makes the hall the whole of civilization. Grendel attacks the hall specifically and for twelve years, which is an attack on the social order rather than on individuals.

Step seven: compare the value systems. The Odyssey's organizing value is xenia, the obligation between strangers. Beowulf's is the comitatus, the bond between lord and retainer. One imagines a world of travelers who must be protected; the other imagines a world of warbands that must hold together.

Step eight: state what the third fight does. Beowulf kills the dragon and dies, all but one of his retainers run away, and the poem ends with a woman predicting the destruction of his people. The comitatus fails at the exact moment it is most needed, which makes the ending a judgment on the system the poem has spent three thousand lines describing.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What is the metrical principle of Old English verse?
    Show the full solution

    Alliteration, with four stresses to a line and a pause in the middle

  2. What is a kenning? Give an example.
    Show the full solution

    A compound metaphor used for a noun, such as whale-road for the sea

  3. Define comitatus and wergild.
    Show the full solution

    The warrior band bound to a lord by gifts, and the man-price paid as compensation for a killing

  4. Name the three fights.
    Show the full solution

    Grendel, Grendel's mother, and fifty years later the dragon

  5. How does the poem's opening differ from the Odyssey's?
    Show the full solution

    It claims communal memory, "we have heard", rather than invoking a Muse

  6. What does a kenning accomplish beyond naming?
    Show the full solution

    It forces a small act of interpretation, since the reader must work out that the whale-road is the sea, and it supplies alliteration on demand. A poet needing an m-word or an h-word for the same object has several compounds available. The device serves the meter and the meaning simultaneously, which is why the poetry is full of them rather than merely decorated with them. Interpretation for the reader and alliteration for the poet

  7. What does Grendel's location establish?
    Show the full solution

    The poem's geography is binary. Inside the hall there is light, mead, poetry and gift-giving; outside, in moor, fen and fastness, there is darkness and a creature. The monster is defined by exclusion rather than by any particular evil, which is why he attacks the hall specifically rather than picking off travelers. A binary geography in which the monster is defined by being outside

  8. Why is attacking the hall worse than attacking individuals?
    Show the full solution

    Because in a society organized around a lord distributing gifts to retainers in a hall, the hall is the whole of civilization: it is where loyalty is created, poetry is performed and the social order is enacted. Grendel attacks it for twelve years and empties it. That is an attack on the system rather than on the people who happen to be inside it. The hall is where the social order exists, so emptying it destroys it

  9. Compare the organizing values of the two epics.
    Show the full solution

    The Odyssey's is xenia, the obligation owed between host and stranger, which imagines a world of travelers who must be protected by rules operating between households. Beowulf's is comitatus, the bond between lord and retainer sealed by gifts, which imagines a world of warbands that must hold together or be destroyed. Both are answers to the question of what holds people together without law. Obligations to strangers against loyalty within a band

  10. What does the third fight do to the poem's argument?
    Show the full solution

    It reverses the first two. Beowulf is old, he is a king rather than a retainer, he kills the dragon and dies of it, and all but one of his own comitatus run into the woods. The poem then ends with a woman predicting the destruction of his people. The system the poem has spent three thousand lines describing fails at the moment it is most needed, which makes the ending a judgment rather than a lament. The comitatus fails when it is most needed, so the ending judges the system

Lesson 1.9 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.9, RL.9-10.2

One form, two value systems

Standard RL.9-10.9 asks students to analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material, and more broadly to read texts against each other. This lesson gives a method and applies it to the two epics in this unit.

The key ideas
  1. A comparison needs a basis, which is a single feature both texts possess and use differently.
  2. The strongest basis for comparing epics is the value system, since the form is largely shared and the values are not.
  3. Organize by idea, not by text, so each paragraph holds both poems rather than one.
  4. Similarities of form are the setup, not the argument, and an essay that lists shared conventions has not started yet.
  5. Ask what each culture was afraid of, since an epic's values usually answer a specific danger.
  6. The Odyssey fears the traveler's vulnerability; Beowulf fears the dissolution of the band.
  7. Endings are the best evidence, because a poem's last hundred lines usually state what it thinks survives.
  8. A comparative conclusion must be a claim, not an observation that both poems are epics.

Where students lose marks: writing two summaries with a transition between them. If a paragraph could be deleted without affecting the discussion of the other poem, the essay is not a comparison.

Worked example

The texts. The Odyssey in Butler's 1900 translation and Beowulf in Gummere's 1910 translation. Both public domain.

Step one: choose a basis. Both poems end by stating what survives a hero. That is one feature both possess and treat differently, which is what a basis has to be.

Step two: establish the Odyssey's answer. Odysseus reaches home, kills the suitors, is recognized by his wife, is reconciled with his father, and the poem ends with Athena imposing peace between him and the dead men's families. What survives is the household, restored and at peace.

Step three: establish Beowulf's answer. Beowulf kills the dragon and dies. His retainers flee. A barrow is built on a headland so that sailors can see it. A woman sings a lament predicting invasion, slavery and slaughter. What survives is a mound and a prediction of ruin.

Step four: state the difference precisely. One poem ends with a continuation and the other with a terminus. Odysseus's line goes on; Beowulf leaves no heir and his people are told they are finished.

Step five: connect the difference to the values. Xenia protects individuals moving through a world of separate households, so the Odyssey can end by restoring one household. The comitatus binds a band to one man, so when that man dies with no successor the whole structure has nothing to attach to.

Step six: ask what each culture feared. The Odyssey fears the traveler's vulnerability: the man far from home with no protector. Beowulf fears the dissolution of the band: the moment the retainers run. Each poem's central value is an answer to its own specific fear.

Step seven: test the claim against a counter-example. The Odyssey's ending requires divine intervention to stop a feud, which suggests its system is also fragile. That strengthens the comparison rather than weakening it, because it shows both poems know their answers are provisional.

Step eight: write the comparative claim. "Both epics end by naming what outlasts a hero, but the Odyssey names a restored household and Beowulf names a barrow and a prophecy of ruin, because a value system built on obligations between households can be repaired while one built on loyalty to a single man cannot survive him." That is one sentence containing both texts, the shared feature, the difference, and its cause.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What does a comparison need to be a comparison?
    Show the full solution

    A basis: one feature both texts possess and use differently

  2. How should a comparative essay be organized?
    Show the full solution

    By idea, so every paragraph holds both texts

  3. How does the Odyssey end?
    Show the full solution

    With the household restored and Athena imposing peace

  4. How does Beowulf end?
    Show the full solution

    With a barrow on a headland and a lament predicting invasion and slaughter

  5. Name each poem's organizing value.
    Show the full solution

    Xenia in the Odyssey, comitatus in Beowulf

  6. Why are shared conventions a weak basis for comparison?
    Show the full solution

    Because both poems are epics and therefore share invocation, epithet, catalog and the rest by definition. Listing them establishes only that the genre label is correct, which nobody disputes. A comparison needs a feature the two texts treat differently, and with epics the values are where the difference lives because the form largely does not vary. They are shared by definition, so listing them proves nothing

  7. State the difference between the two endings precisely.
    Show the full solution

    One is a continuation and the other a terminus. Odysseus reaches home, is recognized, is reconciled with his father and leaves a son; the line goes on. Beowulf dies childless, his retainers flee, and a woman predicts invasion and slavery for his people. The Odyssey ends by restoring something and Beowulf ends by announcing that nothing can be restored. Continuation against terminus

  8. Explain how each ending follows from its poem's value system.
    Show the full solution

    Xenia protects individuals moving between separate households, so a world organized that way can be repaired one household at a time, which is exactly what the Odyssey's ending does. The comitatus binds a band to one man, so when that man dies without a successor the structure has nothing left to attach to. The endings are not arbitrary; each follows from what the poem said held people together. A repairable system can restore a household; a system built on one man cannot survive him

  9. What did each culture fear, and how does the poem answer it?
    Show the full solution

    The Odyssey fears the traveler's vulnerability, the man far from home with no protector, and answers it with an obligation enforced by Zeus that any host owes any stranger. Beowulf fears the dissolution of the band, the moment the retainers run, and answers it with gifts, oaths and the shame of the survivor. Each central value is a response to a specific danger. Vulnerability of the traveler against dissolution of the band

  10. Write a comparative claim and name its parts.
    Show the full solution

    "Both epics end by naming what outlasts a hero, but the Odyssey names a restored household and Beowulf names a barrow and a prophecy of ruin, because a value system built on obligations between households can be repaired while one built on loyalty to a single man cannot survive him." It names both texts, the shared feature, the precise difference and the cause of the difference. Both texts, shared feature, difference, and its cause

Unit 1 review · 10 questions · all lessons

Unit 1 review: The Epic

Shuffled across all nine lessons. Several questions ask you to apply a point from one poem to another, which is what the comparison lesson prepared you for.

  1. Define an epic, and name four of its conventions.
    Show the full solution

    A long narrative poem about a hero whose actions matter to a people; invocation, in medias res, epithet, catalog, katabasis

  2. Why does the Odyssey open by asking a Muse for the story?
    Show the full solution

    A performer claiming personal knowledge of events centuries old would be making an unbelievable claim. Framing the poem as transmission from a goddess makes a different and acceptable one, which solves an authority problem a written text with a named author does not have. It supplies authority a mortal performer could not claim

  3. Explain how epithets serve oral performance.
    Show the full solution

    A performer composing aloud in meter without a text needs ready-made phrases that fit the line. "Resourceful Odysseus" occupies a known metrical slot and can be deployed while the performer thinks ahead. What reads as repetition on the page was the machinery that made continuous composition possible. Prefabricated metrical units that free the performer to compose

  4. Why does the Epic of Gilgamesh end on the walls of Uruk?
    Show the full solution

    The walls are the only permanence available to a mortal. Having failed to keep himself alive, Gilgamesh shows a companion what he built, and the first and last lines both describe the walls, so the structure closes on the answer it was always going to give. Building is the only permanence a mortal can have

  5. Why does Odysseus shout his name at the Cyclops?
    Show the full solution

    Because being Noman is intolerable to him. The trick that saved his life required erasing his identity, and having survived he cannot leave it unclaimed. The poem presents this as a need rather than a miscalculation, which is why it reads as characterization. He cannot leave the identity he erased unclaimed

  6. What does the fire simile in Book 5 smuggle in?
    Show the full solution

    "A desolate place where there are no neighbours" belongs only to the vehicle; nothing in the literal situation required it. The detail imports Odysseus's isolation without the narration stating it, which is what a Homeric simile does beyond clarifying. Isolation, carried by a detail belonging only to the vehicle

  7. Define xenia and explain what the Cyclops is actually refusing.
    Show the full solution

    Xenia is the reciprocal obligation between host and traveler, enforced by Zeus. Odysseus names Zeus when he asks, and Polyphemus replies that the Cyclopes do not care about Jove, which rejects the authority behind the obligation rather than the request. The refusal is theological. Guest-friendship; he rejects the authority of Zeus behind it

  8. Why is Achilles the right speaker for the underworld's most famous lines?
    Show the full solution

    He chose a short glorious life over a long obscure one, knew he was choosing it, and got exactly what he bargained for. Having him say he would rather be a living servant than king among the dead puts the Iliad's greatest hero on the Odyssey's side of the argument, which no other speaker could do. He made the trade knowingly and can testify to its value

  9. Who is testing whom in Book 23, and why does it matter?
    Show the full solution

    Penelope tests Odysseus with the bed. He has spent the whole poem testing others with disguises, and here he is examined and does not notice until he has given the answer. It is the only successful deception practiced on Odysseus anywhere in the poem. She tests him, and it is the only deception that works on him

  10. Compare the endings of the two epics and explain the difference.
    Show the full solution

    The Odyssey ends with a restored household and imposed peace; Beowulf ends with a barrow and a prophecy of invasion. Xenia protects individuals between households and can be repaired one household at a time, while the comitatus binds a band to one man and cannot survive him. Continuation against terminus, following from each poem's values

Lesson 2.1 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.7

Festival, mask, and what performance permitted

Greek tragedy was written for a specific building, a specific festival and a specific set of physical limits. Several features that look like artistic choices are consequences of those conditions, and knowing which is which prevents a great deal of wrong analysis.

The key ideas
  1. Tragedies were performed at the City Dionysia, a religious festival in Athens held in the spring.
  2. It was a competition, with playwrights submitting three tragedies and a satyr play and judges awarding prizes.
  3. The audience was enormous, with the theater of Dionysus holding thousands in the open air on a hillside.
  4. Actors wore masks, which meant no facial expression and made doubling of roles possible.
  5. There were only three speaking actors, so no scene can contain more than three characters in conversation.
  6. Violence happens offstage and is reported by a messenger, which is a convention rather than squeamishness.
  7. The chorus of about fifteen sang and danced in the orchestra between episodes.
  8. All performers were men, including those playing Antigone, Jocasta and the chorus of women in other plays.

Where students lose marks: praising a playwright for a "subtle decision to keep the violence offstage" when the convention applied to every play. The interesting question is what a particular messenger speech does with the convention.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Antigone, messenger speech, in Sir Richard Jebb's prose translation of the 1880s. Public domain.

And we looked, and in the farthest part of the tomb we saw her hanging by the neck, slung by a thread-wrought halter of fine linen: while he was embracing her with arms thrown around her waist, bewailing the loss of his bride who is with the dead, and his father's deeds, and his ill-starred love.

Step one: establish what the convention requires. Antigone's death and Haemon's cannot be shown. A messenger enters, addresses the chorus, and narrates what happened somewhere else.

Step two: state the practical reasons. Masked actors cannot convincingly die in view of thousands of people seated on a hillside, there are only three of them available, and the festival was religious. The convention is a solution to physical constraints.

Step three: notice what the constraint produces. The audience receives catastrophe as narration, in the past tense, from someone who watched it. That is a different experience from witnessing it, and the difference is not a loss.

Step four: work the passage's perspective. "We looked, and we saw." The messenger describes seeing, so the audience sees a man seeing. The horror is doubled by being mediated: we watch someone who cannot stop watching.

Step five: examine the ordering of details. The rope is described before the body's position, and the material of the rope, fine linen, is specified. Precision about an irrelevant detail is how the speech signals shock, since a witness under pressure reports what he cannot stop seeing.

Step six: notice the list at the end. Haemon bewails three things in order: his bride, his father's deeds, and his own love. The messenger reports grief as an itemized list, which is what an eyewitness can actually supply.

Step seven: state the advantage over staging. Staged, the scene is two bodies. Narrated, it contains the sequence, the sounds, the witness's reaction and the attribution of blame to Creon, all of which arrive at once and none of which a tableau could deliver.

Step eight: state what this means for analysis. Do not credit Sophocles with inventing offstage violence, because every tragedy used it. Credit him with what this speech does inside the convention: making the audience watch a witness, and letting the report carry a judgment the scene itself could not.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. At what festival were tragedies performed?
    Show the full solution

    The City Dionysia in Athens

  2. How many speaking actors were available?
    Show the full solution

    Three

  3. Why did actors wear masks, and what did it allow?
    Show the full solution

    They were visible at distance and allowed one actor to double roles

  4. Where does violence occur, and how does the audience learn of it?
    Show the full solution

    Offstage, reported by a messenger

  5. Who performed in Greek tragedy?
    Show the full solution

    Men only, including in women's roles and in the chorus

  6. Why is offstage violence a constraint rather than a choice?
    Show the full solution

    Because it applied to every play by every playwright. Masked actors cannot convincingly die in front of thousands seated on an open hillside, only three speaking actors were available, and the occasion was a religious festival. Praising a particular playwright for the decision credits him with a rule he did not make; the analysis has to be about what he does inside it. It applied universally, so no individual playwright chose it

  7. What does narration give an audience that staging cannot?
    Show the full solution

    Sequence, sound, the witness's own reaction and an attribution of blame, all delivered at once. A staged tableau can show two bodies and nothing else. The messenger's speech in Antigone contains the discovery, the rope, Haemon's words, his attack on his father and his death, together with a bystander's horror, and none of that survives being shown instead of told. Sequence, reaction and judgment, which a tableau cannot deliver

  8. Analyze the effect of "we looked, and we saw".
    Show the full solution

    The messenger describes the act of seeing, so the audience watches a man who cannot stop watching. The horror is mediated and doubled rather than diminished: the reaction arrives packaged with the event, and the audience's response is guided by someone who was there. It is the same reason a modern film often shows a face rather than the thing the face is looking at. The audience watches a witness, so the reaction arrives with the event

  9. Why does the speech specify that the halter was of fine linen?
    Show the full solution

    Precision about an irrelevant detail is how the speech signals shock. A witness under pressure reports what he cannot stop seeing rather than what matters, and the material of the rope is exactly the sort of thing that fixes itself in a memory. Sophocles uses an unnecessary specific to make the account read as testimony rather than as summary. Irrelevant precision is how a shocked witness actually reports

  10. What does the three-actor rule imply for reading a scene?
    Show the full solution

    No conversation can contain more than three characters, so any scene with a fourth figure has that figure silent. When a character in a Greek tragedy says nothing for a long stretch, the first question is whether an actor was available rather than what the silence means. The constraint also explains why confrontations are so often between exactly two people. Never more than three speakers, so silence may be practical rather than meaningful

Lesson 2.2 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.3

The vocabulary, applied to a play rather than defined

Aristotle wrote the Poetics about a century after Sophocles, describing plays that already existed. His terms are useful because they are precise, and they go wrong when students treat them as rules a playwright was obeying.

The key ideas
  1. The Poetics, written about 335 BC, describes Greek tragedy rather than prescribing rules for all drama.
  2. Aristotle's model tragedy is Oedipus the King, which is why the terms fit that play better than any other.
  3. Hamartia is the error that brings the fall, and "mistake" is closer to the Greek than "tragic flaw".
  4. Hubris is overreaching pride, a common but not universal form of hamartia.
  5. Peripeteia is the reversal, where an action produces the opposite of its intended effect.
  6. Anagnorisis is recognition, the change from ignorance to knowledge, and the best tragedies combine it with the reversal.
  7. Catharsis is the purging of pity and fear, which Aristotle names as tragedy's purpose and never fully explains.
  8. The tragic hero should be neither wholly good nor wicked, because we pity neither the saint destroyed nor the villain punished.

Where students lose marks: naming a flaw and stopping. "Creon's tragic flaw is pride" earns almost nothing. Name the flaw, cite three decisions that display it, and show what each one cost.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Oedipus the King, in Jebb's prose translation. Public domain.

MESSENGER: I thought to have freed thee, my king, of this fear touching thy mother.

OEDIPUS: And who is he of whom thou speakest?

MESSENGER: Polybus was nothing to thee in blood.

OEDIPUS: O light, may I now look on thee for the last time, I who have been found accursed in birth, accursed in wedlock, accursed in the shedding of blood!

Step one: identify the peripeteia exactly. A messenger arrives from Corinth to relieve Oedipus's fear that he will kill his father and marry his mother. He does this by revealing that Polybus was not Oedipus's father, which is the piece of information that destroys him.

Step two: state why this is Aristotle's model. The reversal is produced by an action intended to accomplish the opposite. The messenger comes to comfort and delivers ruin, and he does it in good faith. That is peripeteia in its purest available form.

Step three: locate the anagnorisis. A few hundred lines later, when the shepherd confirms the birth. Oedipus moves from ignorance to full knowledge in a single exchange.

Step four: state why the two coincide. Aristotle says the finest tragedy combines reversal and recognition in the same movement, and Oedipus does: the fact that reverses his fortune is the fact that reveals his identity. They are not two events but one.

Step five: test for hamartia carefully. Oedipus's error is not pride in general. It is specifically that he killed a stranger at a crossroads in a quarrel and married a widow without asking enough questions, and then, as king, pursued an investigation past every warning to stop.

Step six: note what the investigation shows. The pursuit of truth destroys him and it is also the best thing about him. Teiresias, Jocasta and the shepherd all try to stop him, and he overrules all three. A quality that is admirable and fatal at once is exactly what hamartia means.

Step seven: apply the "neither wholly good nor wicked" test. Oedipus saved Thebes from the Sphinx, rules well, and is trying to end a plague when the play opens. He is also arrogant with Teiresias and killed a man on the road. Neither a saint nor a villain, which is what makes the ending pitiable rather than satisfying.

Step eight: write the analytical sentence. "Oedipus's error is not pride but the refusal to stop asking, so the quality that saved Thebes from the Sphinx is the same quality that identifies him as the city's pollution, which is why Sophocles lets three separate characters beg him to leave the question alone." That names the term, the evidence and the effect.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. When was the Poetics written, and what does it describe?
    Show the full solution

    About 335 BC; it describes Greek tragedy rather than prescribing rules

  2. Define hamartia and give the better translation.
    Show the full solution

    The error that brings the fall; "mistake" is closer than "tragic flaw"

  3. Define peripeteia and anagnorisis.
    Show the full solution

    The reversal of fortune, and the change from ignorance to knowledge

  4. What is catharsis?
    Show the full solution

    The purging of pity and fear, which Aristotle names as tragedy's purpose

  5. Why should a tragic hero be neither wholly good nor wicked?
    Show the full solution

    We pity neither the saint destroyed nor the villain punished

  6. Explain the peripeteia in Oedipus precisely.
    Show the full solution

    A messenger comes from Corinth specifically to relieve Oedipus's fear that he will kill his father and marry his mother, and relieves it by revealing that Polybus was not his father. That single fact is what destroys him. The action produces the exact opposite of its intended effect, and the messenger acts in complete good faith, which is why Aristotle uses this play as his model. A messenger comes to comfort and delivers ruin, in good faith

  7. Why does Aristotle prize the combination of reversal and recognition?
    Show the full solution

    Because when they coincide the play delivers one event rather than two. In Oedipus the fact that reverses his fortune is the same fact that reveals his identity, so the audience experiences the catastrophe and the understanding simultaneously. A play where fortune turns in one scene and the hero understands in another dilutes both, which is Aristotle's practical point about construction. Coinciding, they are one event rather than two diluted ones

  8. State Oedipus's hamartia precisely and defend it.
    Show the full solution

    Not pride in general but the refusal to stop asking. He killed a stranger at a crossroads and married a widow without asking enough, and then as king pursued the investigation past every warning. Teiresias, Jocasta and the shepherd each try to stop him and he overrules all three. The error is specific, it is displayed in named decisions, and it is inseparable from what makes him a good king. The refusal to stop asking, shown in overruling three people who beg him to stop

  9. Why is it significant that his error is also his virtue?
    Show the full solution

    The pursuit of truth is what saved Thebes from the Sphinx and what makes him a ruler worth having, and it is also what identifies him as the city's pollution. A flaw that is simply a weakness produces a cautionary tale. A quality that is admirable and fatal at once produces tragedy, and that inseparability is what Aristotle's term is actually pointing at. An admirable quality that destroys is what makes it tragedy rather than a lesson

  10. Apply the "neither wholly good nor wicked" test to Oedipus.
    Show the full solution

    He saved Thebes from the Sphinx, rules competently, and opens the play trying to end a plague at his own expense. He is also arrogant with Teiresias, threatens Creon with death on no evidence, and killed a man in a quarrel on a road. He is neither a saint whose destruction would merely be unjust nor a villain whose punishment would satisfy, which is precisely why the ending produces pity. Genuinely good and genuinely at fault, which is what makes the ending pitiable

Lesson 2.3 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.1

Two arguments, both of them defensible

Read the whole play before this lesson. Antigone is often taught as a heroine against a tyrant, which flattens it. Sophocles gives both sides a real case, and the play is only interesting if you can state Creon's.

The key ideas
  1. Antigone was produced about 441 BC and is the earliest written of Sophocles's three Theban plays, though last in story order.
  2. The situation: Eteocles and Polyneices have killed each other fighting over Thebes, and Creon has buried one and forbidden burial of the other.
  3. Antigone buries Polyneices anyway, is caught, and is condemned to be walled up alive.
  4. Her argument is that divine law outranks a king's decree, and that burial is owed to the dead by the gods.
  5. Creon's argument is that a state cannot survive if a traitor who attacked the city receives the same honors as its defender.
  6. Both are defensible, and Hegel's famous reading treats the play as a collision of two goods rather than good against evil.
  7. Ismene is not a coward but the voice of what ordinary people do, and her position is the one most of the audience would have taken.
  8. The play's judgment arrives through consequences, not through either character being refuted in argument.

Where students lose marks: writing an essay in which Creon is simply a tyrant. If your version of his position is one nobody could hold, you have built a straw man and the play has nothing left to be about.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Antigone, in Jebb's prose translation. Public domain.

CREON: Whoever is chosen to govern should be obeyed, in small things and great, in just things and unjust... There is nothing worse than disobedience to authority. It destroys cities, it demolishes homes, it breaks and routs one's allies.

ANTIGONE: Nor did I think thy edicts strong enough, that thou, a mortal man, shouldst o'erpass the unwritten laws of God that know not change. They are not of to-day nor yesterday, but live for ever, nor can man assign when first they sprang to being.

Step one: state Creon's position at full strength. A city that has just survived an assault cannot honor the man who led the assault. If treason and defense are treated identically, there is no reason for anyone to defend the city next time. That is a real argument about how states survive.

Step two: find the overreach in it. "In just things and unjust." Creon does not argue that his decree is right; he argues that obedience is owed regardless. He has moved from a defensible claim about civic order to an indefensible one about authority.

Step three: state Antigone's position at full strength. The obligation to bury the dead is older than any city and was not made by anyone, so no ruler has standing to suspend it. Polyneices is her brother and dead, which ends his war and leaves only the obligation.

Step four: find the weakness in it. Antigone acknowledges no limit whatever on divine law and shows no interest in the consequences of her act for the city or for anyone else. She never engages Creon's argument; she overrides it.

Step five: notice that they never actually debate. Each states a principle and neither answers the other's. This is deliberate. The play is not staging a discussion that could be won, which is why the collision has to be resolved by events rather than by reasoning.

Step six: place Ismene correctly. She refuses to help, and her reasons are that they are women in a world run by men, that they are outnumbered, and that the dead will forgive what the living cannot survive. That is the position most of the original audience would have held, and the play gives it a voice rather than a sneer.

Step seven: state how the play judges. Not by refuting Creon but by destroying him. Teiresias arrives, Creon relents too late, and he loses his son and his wife. The verdict is delivered by consequences, and Creon himself pronounces it.

Step eight: state the theme. The play argues that a legitimate authority becomes illegitimate at the point where it demands obedience in unjust things, and that the person who resists is not thereby made right about everything. Antigone is vindicated and still dies, and the play does not pretend that those two facts cancel.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What is the situation at the play's opening?
    Show the full solution

    Eteocles and Polyneices have killed each other; Creon has buried one and forbidden burial of the other

  2. State Antigone's argument.
    Show the full solution

    That unwritten divine law, which no one made and which does not change, outranks a mortal's decree

  3. State Creon's argument.
    Show the full solution

    That a city cannot survive if a traitor receives the same honors as its defender

  4. What is Ismene's position?
    Show the full solution

    That they are outnumbered and powerless, and the dead will forgive what the living cannot survive

  5. What does Creon lose by the end?
    Show the full solution

    His son Haemon and his wife Eurydice

  6. Where exactly does Creon's argument overreach?
    Show the full solution

    At "in just things and unjust." Up to that phrase he is making a defensible claim about civic order: a city that has just survived an assault cannot honor its attacker without removing the reason anyone would defend it. The phrase converts that into a claim that obedience is owed regardless of justice, which nobody can defend, and locating the exact sentence is what analysis means here. At "in just things and unjust", which abandons the defensible claim

  7. What is the weakness in Antigone's position?
    Show the full solution

    She acknowledges no limit whatever on divine law and shows no interest in what her act costs the city or anyone else in it. She never engages Creon's argument about civic survival; she overrides it. Being right about the obligation to bury the dead does not make her right about everything, and the play declines to pretend otherwise. She overrides Creon's argument rather than answering it, and ignores consequences

  8. Why do the two never really debate?
    Show the full solution

    Because Sophocles is not staging a discussion that could be won. Each states a principle and neither addresses the other's, which is what happens when two genuine goods collide rather than when a right position meets a wrong one. The design forces the play to resolve the collision through events, and that is why the last third is consequences rather than argument. It is a collision of two goods, which cannot be settled by argument

  9. Why does Sophocles include Ismene?
    Show the full solution

    Because her position is the one most of the original audience would have taken: that they are women in a world run by men, that they are outnumbered, and that the dead will forgive what the living cannot survive. Giving that a voice rather than a sneer means the audience's own likely instinct is represented on stage, which makes Antigone's choice a real choice rather than the only visible option. She voices the audience's own likely position, making Antigone's choice a real one

  10. How does the play deliver its judgment?
    Show the full solution

    Through consequences rather than refutation. Nobody defeats Creon in argument. Teiresias arrives, Creon relents too late, and he loses his son and his wife and pronounces the verdict on himself. Antigone is vindicated and still dies. The play refuses to let vindication and survival be the same thing, which is what keeps the ending from being satisfying. Creon is destroyed rather than refuted, and vindication does not save Antigone

Lesson 2.4 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.5

Creon's fall and the shape of a tragedy

A question worth asking about this play is whose tragedy it is. Antigone dies offstage two-thirds of the way through and is not on stage for the ending, which is not how a protagonist is usually treated.

The key ideas
  1. Antigone leaves the stage for the last time around line 940 of a play that runs past 1350.
  2. Creon is present for the entire last third and delivers the closing speech.
  3. By Aristotle's pattern the tragic figure is Creon, since he is the one who errs, reverses, recognizes too late and is destroyed.
  4. Haemon's scene with Creon offers him a way out that is both political and personal, and he rejects it.
  5. Teiresias is the turning point, because Creon has always believed prophets before and cannot dismiss this one.
  6. Creon relents and still loses, because he goes to the body before the tomb and arrives minutes too late.
  7. The order of his errands is the play's cruelest detail, and nothing in the text forced it.
  8. The chorus's closing lines name wisdom, and specifically not irreverence toward the gods, as what the day has taught.

Where students lose marks: assuming the title character must be the tragic hero. Argue it from the structure, and be willing to conclude that the play gives the tragic shape to Creon.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Antigone, in Jebb's prose translation. Public domain.

HAEMON: Do not wear, then, one mood only in thyself; think not that thy word, and thine alone, must be right... Whoso thinks that he alone is wise, that in speech or in mind he hath no peer, such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty.

CREON: Am I to rule this land by other judgment than mine own?

CREON: Lead me away, I pray you; a rash, foolish man; who have slain thee, ah my son, unwittingly, and thee, too, my wife, unhappy that I am!

Step one: apply the Aristotelian pattern. Error: the decree, and then the refusal to withdraw it. Reversal: relenting under Teiresias's warning and arriving too late. Recognition: the closing speech. Destruction: son and wife dead. Every element belongs to Creon.

Step two: check the same pattern on Antigone. She does not err, does not change her mind, learns nothing she did not know at the start, and is not present for the ending. She is the play's cause rather than its subject.

Step three: work the Haemon scene. Haemon does not argue that the decree is wrong. He argues that the city thinks so and will not say it, and that a ruler who cannot take counsel is empty. He offers Creon a face-saving route out.

Step four: read Creon's answer. "Am I to rule this land by other judgment than mine own?" He converts a question about advice into a question about sovereignty, which is a rhetorical move and a mistake. Nothing Haemon said required that reading.

Step five: state why Teiresias succeeds where Haemon fails. Creon has always believed this prophet and says so. The warning is not new information about the city's opinion but about the gods, and Creon's whole authority rests on a civic order the gods underwrite. He cannot dismiss it without dismissing himself.

Step six: examine the order of his errands. Having relented, Creon goes first to bury Polyneices and then to the tomb, and arrives after Antigone has hanged herself. Had he reversed the order, both would have lived. Nothing in the play forces the sequence, which makes it a choice by Sophocles.

Step seven: state what that choice accomplishes. Creon is not destroyed for refusing to relent. He is destroyed after relenting, by a decision about order that looks reasonable. That is harder and worse than being punished for stubbornness, because it removes the comfort of a clean moral lesson.

Step eight: read the recognition speech. "A rash, foolish man; who have slain thee, ah my son, unwittingly." He takes responsibility, names himself the killer, and says "unwittingly", which is accurate and no help at all. Anagnorisis in this play is not insight arriving but a man correctly describing what he has already done.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. When does Antigone leave the stage for the last time?
    Show the full solution

    Around line 940, with the play running past 1350

  2. What does Haemon argue?
    Show the full solution

    That the city disagrees with the decree and will not say so, and that a ruler who takes no counsel is empty

  3. Who finally changes Creon's mind?
    Show the full solution

    Teiresias

  4. What does Creon do first after relenting?
    Show the full solution

    Buries Polyneices, before going to the tomb

  5. Who dies as a result?
    Show the full solution

    Antigone, Haemon, and Eurydice

  6. Argue from structure that Creon is the tragic figure.
    Show the full solution

    Every element of the Aristotelian pattern belongs to him. He commits the error, he reverses under Teiresias, he recognizes in the closing speech, and he is destroyed by the loss of his son and wife. He is also present for the entire last third and speaks the final lines. Antigone does not err, does not change, learns nothing new and is absent for the ending: she is the play's cause rather than its subject. Error, reversal, recognition and destruction all belong to him

  7. What does Creon's reply to Haemon reveal?
    Show the full solution

    "Am I to rule this land by other judgment than mine own?" converts a question about taking advice into a question about sovereignty. Nothing Haemon said required that reading; he offered a face-saving route out by reporting the city's opinion rather than asserting his own. Creon manufactures a challenge to his authority so that he can refuse it, which is the mechanism of his fall in one line. He manufactures a challenge to his authority in order to refuse it

  8. Why does Teiresias succeed where Haemon fails?
    Show the full solution

    Because Creon has always believed this prophet and says so, and because the warning concerns the gods rather than public opinion. Creon's whole authority rests on a civic order the gods underwrite, so dismissing Teiresias would mean dismissing the ground he is standing on. Haemon's argument could be refused as a son's partiality; this one cannot be refused at all. The warning comes from the authority his own power rests on

  9. What does the order of Creon's errands accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    It destroys him after he has relented rather than because he refused to. Had he gone to the tomb first, both Antigone and Haemon would have lived. Nothing in the play forces the sequence, so it is Sophocles's choice, and it removes the comfort of a clean moral lesson: Creon is not punished for stubbornness but ruined by a reasonable decision about order taken a few minutes too late. He is ruined after relenting, which denies the play a clean lesson

  10. What kind of recognition does Creon's final speech contain?
    Show the full solution

    Not insight arriving but a man correctly describing what he has already done. "A rash, foolish man; who have slain thee, ah my son, unwittingly" takes full responsibility and names himself the killer, and the word "unwittingly" is accurate and of no use whatever. Anagnorisis here delivers understanding at the exact moment understanding cannot change anything, which is what makes it tragic rather than redemptive. Accurate self-description arriving when it can change nothing

Lesson 2.5 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.4

A commentator built into the form

The chorus is the feature of Greek tragedy with no modern equivalent, and students usually skip its odes. That is a mistake, because the odes are where the play says what it thinks is happening.

The key ideas
  1. The chorus is a group of about fifteen who sing and dance in the orchestra between episodes.
  2. They are characters in the play, usually elders or women of the city, with an interest in the outcome.
  3. They are not the playwright's mouthpiece, and treating them as an oracle produces bad readings.
  4. They are frequently wrong, and in Antigone they change sides more than once.
  5. An ode divides into strophe and antistrophe, sung while moving one way and then the other, in matched meter.
  6. The odes often step back to a general subject, so the ode after a scene about burial may be about human achievement in general.
  7. That generalization is the point, since it invites the audience to apply the episode to their own city.
  8. The chorus also manages the audience's response, telling them when to fear, when to hope and when both are warranted.

Where students lose marks: quoting a chorus line as the play's verdict. Ask who is speaking, when, and whether the play later proves them wrong.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Antigone, the Ode on Man, in Jebb's prose translation. Public domain.

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him... Speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself... Only against Death shall he call for aid in vain.

Cunning beyond fancy's dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good. When he honours the laws of the land, and that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold, proudly stands his city.

Step one: establish the placement. This ode is sung immediately after the guard reports that someone has buried Polyneices, and before Antigone is brought in. The chorus does not yet know who did it.

Step two: notice the word being translated as "wonderful". The Greek deinos means wonderful, terrible, and strange at once. Jebb chooses "wonderful"; the ambiguity is in the original and the whole ode depends on it.

Step three: read the catalog. Sailing, plowing, hunting, taming horses, building shelter, medicine, and speech and thought and the moods that mould a state. The ode lists human capability in ascending order from the physical to the political.

Step four: find the limit. "Only against Death shall he call for aid in vain." One exception, placed at the top of the ascent. Everything is available to human skill except the one thing the play is about.

Step five: read the turn. "Now to evil, now to good." The ode has praised human ingenuity for thirty lines and then states that the same skill goes either way. It does not resolve which; it states the condition.

Step six: apply it to the situation. The chorus is describing an unknown person who has just defied a decree. The ode fits Antigone, whose skill was to bury a body under guard, and it fits Creon, whose skill built the order she defied. That double application is deliberate.

Step seven: state what the generalization accomplishes. By stepping back from burial to human capability in general, the ode invites the audience to apply the play to Athens. A specific quarrel in a mythical Thebes becomes a question about what any city's cleverness is for.

Step eight: check the chorus's reliability. These same elders flatter Creon earlier, hedge when Antigone is condemned, and urge him to relent only after Teiresias frightens them. They are elderly men managing a dangerous ruler, and the ode is magnificent and comes from people whose judgment the play does not endorse.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Who are the chorus in Antigone?
    Show the full solution

    Elders of Thebes

  2. What are strophe and antistrophe?
    Show the full solution

    Matched sections of an ode sung while moving one way and then the other

  3. What does deinos mean?
    Show the full solution

    Wonderful, terrible and strange at once

  4. What single limit does the Ode on Man name?
    Show the full solution

    Death

  5. When is the ode sung?
    Show the full solution

    After the guard reports the burial, before Antigone is caught

  6. Why does the ambiguity of deinos matter?
    Show the full solution

    Because the ode's entire argument rests on it. A word meaning wonderful, terrible and strange simultaneously lets the opening line praise humanity and warn about it in the same breath, which is exactly what the rest of the ode does when it says the same skill brings man now to evil and now to good. Any English translation has to choose, and choosing loses half the line. It lets the ode praise and warn in the same word

  7. Why is "only against Death" placed where it is?
    Show the full solution

    At the top of an ascending catalog that runs from sailing and plowing up through medicine to speech and the moods that mould a state. Everything human skill can do is listed, and then one exception is named. The ode is sung in a play about a woman defying a decree over a corpse, so the single limit on human capability is precisely the subject of the drama. It names the one limit at the summit of a list of capabilities

  8. Who is the ode about?
    Show the full solution

    Deliberately, both. The chorus is describing an unknown person who has buried a body under guard, so the ode fits Antigone's skill. It equally fits Creon, whose political cleverness built the order she defied, and the line about honoring the laws of the land and the justice sworn by the gods names the exact conflict between them. The double application is the point. Both Antigone and Creon, by design

  9. What does stepping back to a general subject accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    It invites the audience to apply the play to themselves. A quarrel about one corpse in a mythical Thebes becomes a question about what any city's cleverness is for, and the Athenians watching were citizens of a state that had recently built an empire on exactly the capabilities the ode lists. Generalizing is how the odes convert a story into an argument. It turns a mythical quarrel into a question about the audience's own city

  10. How reliable is this chorus?
    Show the full solution

    Not very. The same elders flatter Creon when he first speaks, hedge when Antigone is condemned, and urge him to relent only after Teiresias has frightened them. They are old men managing a dangerous ruler, and their positions track their safety. The Ode on Man is magnificent and it comes from people whose judgment the play repeatedly declines to endorse. They shift with their own safety, so the ode is not the play's verdict

Lesson 2.6 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.6, RL.9-10.5

Dramatic irony at full strength

Read the whole play before this lesson. Oedipus the King is the reason dramatic irony is a term, and it works because the audience knew the story before the play began, exactly as with the prologue to Romeo and Juliet.

The key ideas
  1. The myth was already known to every Athenian in the theater, so the play has no secret to keep.
  2. Dramatic irony means the audience knows what a character does not, and here it operates continuously for the whole play.
  3. Almost every line Oedipus speaks is double, meaning one thing to him and another to the audience.
  4. He curses the murderer of Laius in detail and at length, not knowing he is cursing himself.
  5. Sight and blindness run through the play as a sustained figure, with the blind prophet seeing and the seeing king blind.
  6. The self-blinding at the end completes the figure by making his body match his condition.
  7. The audience's discomfort is the effect, since watching a man confidently investigate himself is the experience the play sells.
  8. Sophocles never lets Oedipus be stupid, so the audience cannot escape into feeling superior.

Where students lose marks: defining dramatic irony and stopping. Quote a specific double line and explain both meanings, because that is the whole analytical task.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Oedipus the King, in Jebb's prose translation. Public domain.

OEDIPUS: I pray that that man's life be consumed in evil and wretchedness. And for myself I pray that if, with my knowledge, he becomes a dweller in my house, I may suffer the same things which I have just called down upon others.

TEIRESIAS: Thou hast eyes, yet seest not in what misery thou art, nor where thou dwellest, nor with whom.

Step one: read the curse twice. On Oedipus's understanding, he is promising to punish an unknown murderer and swearing that he would not shelter him even in his own house. On the audience's understanding, he is describing his own destruction with precision.

Step two: identify the most loaded phrase. "A dweller in my house." He means a man he might unknowingly be harboring. He is one, and he is also the house's master, its previous master's killer, and its mistress's son.

Step three: state what the curse does to the plot. It is binding. When the truth arrives, Oedipus has already publicly sworn the penalty and cannot exempt himself without proving that the curse was never sincere. He has built his own cage.

Step four: work Teiresias's line. "Thou hast eyes, yet seest not" states the play's central figure outright. The literal sense is that Oedipus does not know the facts; the figurative sense is that sight and knowledge are different things, which the play then proves by having a blind man hold the truth.

Step five: trace the figure. Oedipus mocks Teiresias for blindness, boasts that he solved the Sphinx's riddle with his own wits while the prophet failed, and ends the play blind and led by a child. The figure is not decoration; the plot delivers it.

Step six: ask why the self-blinding rather than suicide. Jocasta hangs herself. Oedipus takes the pins from her dress and destroys his eyes, and he says he does it so that he will not have to look at what he has done or be looked at. It is a punishment designed to be survived.

Step seven: state why the audience cannot feel superior. Oedipus is intelligent, he investigates competently, he follows the evidence, and every inference he draws is reasonable on the information he has. The audience knows more, not better, so the experience is dread rather than contempt.

Step eight: write the analysis sentence. "When Oedipus prays that the murderer's life be consumed in wretchedness and swears the same fate on himself should he harbor the man, the audience hears a sentence he will spend the play proving accurate, so the investigation is not a search for a criminal but a slow public confession the speaker cannot hear." That names the device, the evidence and the effect.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define dramatic irony.
    Show the full solution

    The audience knows something a character does not

  2. Why does the play have no secret to keep?
    Show the full solution

    The myth was already known to every Athenian in the theater

  3. What does Oedipus swear about the murderer?
    Show the full solution

    That his life be consumed in wretchedness, and that Oedipus suffer the same if he knowingly shelters him

  4. What figure runs through the play?
    Show the full solution

    Sight and blindness

  5. How does Oedipus blind himself, and with what?
    Show the full solution

    With the pins from Jocasta's dress

  6. Give both meanings of "a dweller in my house".
    Show the full solution

    Oedipus means a murderer he might unknowingly be harboring under his roof, and swears he would accept the curse himself in that case. The audience hears that he is that dweller, and more: he is the house's master, the previous master's killer, and the mistress's son. One phrase holds the situation he is describing and the situation he is in, which are the same. A sheltered stranger, and the man himself in four relations

  7. Why is the curse structurally important?
    Show the full solution

    It is binding. Oedipus has publicly sworn the penalty in detail before he knows who the murderer is, so when the truth arrives he cannot exempt himself without revealing the oath as insincere. The play arranges for him to build his own cage in the first scene, which means the ending is not imposed on him but executed by him. He publicly binds himself before knowing, so he cannot later escape

  8. Trace the sight and blindness figure through the plot.
    Show the full solution

    Teiresias, who is blind, holds the truth and states it. Oedipus, who can see, mocks him for the blindness and boasts that he solved the Sphinx's riddle with his own wits where the prophet failed. By the end Oedipus has destroyed his own eyes and is led away by a child. The figure is not decoration laid over the story; the plot delivers it as an event. The blind man sees, the seeing man is ignorant, and the plot swaps them

  9. Why self-blinding rather than suicide?
    Show the full solution

    Jocasta takes the other route, so the play offers both and Oedipus chooses. He says he cannot bear to look at what he has done or to be looked at, and blinding is a punishment designed to be survived rather than escaped. It also completes the figure the play has been building, making his body match the condition Teiresias described in the first act. A punishment meant to be survived, which also completes the figure

  10. Why can the audience not feel superior to Oedipus?
    Show the full solution

    Because Sophocles never lets him be stupid. He investigates competently, follows the evidence, cross-examines witnesses and draws reasonable inferences from the information available to him. The audience knows more, not better. That converts the experience from contempt into dread, which is the whole difference between dramatic irony and watching a fool. He reasons well throughout; the audience knows more, not better

Lesson 2.7 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.3

The play as an investigation

Oedipus the King is structured like a detective story written two thousand years before detective stories, and the resemblance is not a coincidence: both forms are about a man assembling evidence toward a conclusion.

The key ideas
  1. The play covers a single day and takes place in one location, which is the unity Aristotle praised.
  2. Nothing in the plot happens on stage except discovery, since every violent event occurred years earlier.
  3. Oedipus is the detective and the criminal, which is the structural joke the whole play rests on.
  4. The investigation proceeds by witnesses: Creon, Teiresias, Jocasta, the Corinthian messenger, and the shepherd.
  5. Each witness supplies one piece and none of them knows the whole thing.
  6. Jocasta works it out first and tries to stop the investigation, which Oedipus misreads as snobbery about his birth.
  7. The shepherd has to be threatened into speaking, which makes the last piece of evidence extracted by force.
  8. The play's tension comes from wanting him to stop, which is the opposite of how a detective story usually works.

Where students lose marks: retelling the sequence. Track what each witness adds and what Oedipus concludes from it, because the play is an argument about evidence and inference.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Oedipus the King, in Jebb's prose translation. Public domain.

JOCASTA: Nay, by the gods, if thou hast any care for thine own life, forbear this search! My anguish is enough.

OEDIPUS: Be of good courage; though I be found the son of servile mother, aye, of three descents, thou wilt not be shown base-born.

JOCASTA: Yet hear me, I implore thee: do not thus.

OEDIPUS: I must not hear of not discovering the whole truth.

Step one: map the evidence. Creon brings the oracle's demand. Teiresias names Oedipus outright. Jocasta mentions a crossroads, which frightens Oedipus. The Corinthian reveals he was not Polybus's son. The shepherd confirms who gave him the baby.

Step two: notice what Teiresias does to the structure. He states the answer in the first third of the play, correctly and plainly. Oedipus rejects it as a conspiracy with Creon. The play gives away its solution early and the tension is undamaged.

Step three: state why that works. Because the question was never what happened. The audience knew the myth and Teiresias has confirmed it. The question is how a man reaches a conclusion he cannot bear, and that is a process rather than a fact.

Step four: track Jocasta's realization. The Corinthian's news about the pierced ankles is the moment she understands. From that point she stops arguing and starts begging, and her language changes from reasoning to entreaty.

Step five: read the misunderstanding. Oedipus hears her pleas as shame about his possible low birth and reassures her that she will not be shown base-born. He is confident, generous and completely wrong, and the passage is unbearable for exactly that reason.

Step six: state what the misreading accomplishes. It removes the last person who could have stopped him. Jocasta cannot say the true reason without delivering the knowledge she is trying to prevent, so her only available argument is one he will dismiss. The trap closes on both of them.

Step seven: examine the final witness. The shepherd refuses, is threatened with torture, and speaks. The last piece of the investigation is taken by force from a man who spared the baby out of pity, which means the play's conclusion is produced by Oedipus coercing the only person who was ever kind to him.

Step eight: state the structural inversion. In an ordinary detective story the reader wants the investigator to continue. Here the audience wants him to stop, and the play's tension comes from watching competence applied to a question that should be dropped. Sophocles built the form and then reversed its motive.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Over what period does the play take place?
    Show the full solution

    A single day, in one location

  2. Name the five witnesses in order.
    Show the full solution

    Creon, Teiresias, Jocasta, the Corinthian messenger, the shepherd

  3. Who works out the truth first?
    Show the full solution

    Jocasta

  4. How is the shepherd made to speak?
    Show the full solution

    By the threat of torture

  5. What does Oedipus think Jocasta is afraid of?
    Show the full solution

    That he will turn out to be low-born, and that she will be shamed by it

  6. Why does Teiresias naming the answer early not spoil the play?
    Show the full solution

    Because the question was never what happened. The audience knew the myth before the play began, and Teiresias merely confirms it plainly in the first third. What remains is how a man reaches a conclusion he cannot bear, which is a process rather than a fact, and processes can be watched even when their outcome is known. The subject is the process of reaching the conclusion, not the conclusion

  7. Why is Oedipus's misreading of Jocasta so effective?
    Show the full solution

    He hears her desperate pleading as embarrassment about his possible low birth and reassures her generously that she will not be shown base-born. He is confident, kind and completely wrong, and the audience knows exactly what she is actually asking. The scene is unbearable because his misunderstanding is entirely reasonable on the information he has. He responds generously and reasonably to a fear she does not have

  8. What trap does Jocasta find herself in?
    Show the full solution

    She cannot state her true reason for wanting the search stopped without delivering the very knowledge she is trying to prevent. Her only available argument is therefore one Oedipus will misread and dismiss. The last person who could have stopped him is silenced by the content of what she knows, which closes the trap on both of them. Saying why he must stop would tell him the thing she is preventing him from learning

  9. What is significant about how the last evidence is obtained?
    Show the full solution

    The shepherd refuses, is threatened with torture, and speaks. He is also the man who spared the baby out of pity rather than exposing it as ordered. So the play's conclusion is extracted by force from the one person who was ever kind to Oedipus, which makes the final discovery an act of coercion by the man it destroys. It is tortured out of the one person who once showed him mercy

  10. How does the play invert the detective form?
    Show the full solution

    In an ordinary detective story the reader wants the investigator to continue and shares his curiosity. Here the audience wants him to stop, and three characters on stage are asking him to. The tension comes from watching real competence applied to a question that should be dropped, so the same structure produces dread instead of satisfaction. The audience wants the investigation abandoned, not completed

Lesson 2.8 · Unit 2 · RL.9-10.9, RL.9-10.5

Scale, time, and what each form can show

Aristotle compared these two forms directly and preferred tragedy, which is a position worth testing rather than accepting. This lesson sets the two units of this course against each other.

The key ideas
  1. Epic is narrated and tragedy is enacted, which is the difference every other difference follows from.
  2. Epic has unlimited scope, since narration can cross oceans and years in a sentence.
  3. Tragedy is confined to what can be performed, which in practice meant one place and about one day.
  4. Epic can enter minds and comment; tragedy has only speech and action.
  5. Tragedy is more concentrated, which was Aristotle's argument for preferring it: the same effect in a fraction of the length.
  6. Epic can show consequences over a lifetime, which tragedy must compress into report or leave to the audience.
  7. Both were performed aloud to a large audience, so neither was originally a private reading experience.
  8. The two forms share material, since Greek tragedians took most of their plots from the epic cycle.

Where students lose marks: asserting one form is better. Argue what each can do that the other cannot, with an example from each, and let the comparison stand without a verdict unless the question asks for one.

Worked example

The question. What can each form show that the other cannot?

Step one: choose the basis. Both forms handle the same situation, a man discovering a disastrous truth about his own past. The Odyssey has Odysseus learning of his mother's death; Oedipus has its whole plot. That is a feature both possess and treat differently.

Step two: state what epic does with it. Anticleia's death occupies perhaps forty lines in Book 11 and then the poem moves on to other ghosts. The epic can afford to make a devastating revelation one episode among many, because it has twenty-four books to spend.

Step three: state what tragedy does with it. Oedipus spends its entire length on a single discovery, and every scene is either evidence toward it or an attempt to prevent it. The play cannot move on, which is a limitation and the source of its force.

Step four: name the first difference. Epic distributes and tragedy concentrates. A reader of Book 11 experiences grief among many other things; an audience at Oedipus experiences one thing for two hours with no relief.

Step five: state what epic can show that tragedy cannot. Consequence across time. The Odyssey shows twenty years, three generations, and a homecoming that repairs what the war broke. A tragedy confined to one day can only report such things, and reported consequence is weaker than shown consequence.

Step six: state what tragedy can show that epic cannot. Real time. When Oedipus questions the shepherd, the audience waits exactly as long as Oedipus does. Epic narration always stands at a distance and in the past tense, which no amount of vividness removes.

Step seven: test Aristotle's preference. He argued that tragedy achieves the same effect more concentratedly, so it is better. The counter-argument is that concentration is not the only value: an epic can make an audience live with characters long enough to care about a homecoming, which two hours cannot do.

Step eight: write the comparative claim. "Both forms stage a man learning something ruinous about his past, but epic can treat such a discovery as one episode among many while tragedy must build its entire structure around a single one, so epic buys breadth of consequence at the cost of concentration and tragedy buys the reverse." That contains both forms, the shared feature, the difference and its cost.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What is the root difference between epic and tragedy?
    Show the full solution

    Epic is narrated; tragedy is enacted

  2. What was Aristotle's argument for preferring tragedy?
    Show the full solution

    It achieves the same effect more concentratedly, in a fraction of the length

  3. Where did Greek tragedians get their plots?
    Show the full solution

    Mostly from the epic cycle

  4. What can epic do with minds that tragedy cannot?
    Show the full solution

    Enter them directly and comment on them

  5. How long does Oedipus the King cover?
    Show the full solution

    A single day, in one location

  6. Contrast how each form handles a ruinous discovery.
    Show the full solution

    Anticleia's death occupies about forty lines of Book 11 and the poem then moves on to other ghosts, because an epic with twenty-four books can afford to make a devastating revelation one episode among many. Oedipus spends its entire length on a single discovery, with every scene either evidence toward it or an attempt to prevent it. Epic distributes; tragedy concentrates. Epic makes it one episode among many; tragedy makes it the whole structure

  7. What can epic show that tragedy can only report?
    Show the full solution

    Consequence across time. The Odyssey shows twenty years, three generations and a homecoming that repairs what a war broke, and the reader watches all of it happen. A tragedy confined to one day and one place can only have a character describe such things, and reported consequence carries less weight than consequence an audience has lived through. Consequences unfolding over years, which a single day can only describe

  8. What can tragedy do that epic cannot?
    Show the full solution

    Operate in real time. When Oedipus questions the shepherd, the audience waits exactly as long as Oedipus does, with no narrator between them and the delay. Epic narration always stands at a distance and in the past tense, and no amount of vividness removes the teller. Shared duration is the one thing performance has and narration never does. Real time, with the audience waiting exactly as long as the character

  9. Give the counter-argument to Aristotle's preference.
    Show the full solution

    Concentration is not the only value. An epic can keep an audience with its characters long enough that a homecoming matters, and the emotional weight of Odysseus reaching Ithaca depends on the reader having traveled twenty-four books to get there. Two hours cannot build that, so tragedy's efficiency buys intensity and sells accumulation. Concentration costs the accumulated attachment length buys

  10. Write a comparative claim about the two forms.
    Show the full solution

    "Both forms stage a man learning something ruinous about his past, but epic can treat such a discovery as one episode among many while tragedy must build its entire structure around a single one, so epic buys breadth of consequence at the cost of concentration and tragedy buys the reverse." It names both forms, the shared feature, the difference and what each trade costs. Both forms, shared feature, difference, and the cost on each side

Unit 2 review · 10 questions · all lessons

Unit 2 review: Greek Tragedy

Shuffled across all eight lessons. Aristotle's terms appear throughout, and every question wants them applied rather than defined.

  1. Name three conditions of Athenian performance and one consequence of each.
    Show the full solution

    Masks, so no facial expression and doubling was possible; three actors, so no scene has four speakers; open-air scale, so violence happened offstage

  2. Why is offstage violence a constraint rather than an artistic choice?
    Show the full solution

    It applied to every play by every playwright, because masked actors cannot convincingly die before thousands on an open hillside and only three speaking actors were available. Praising a playwright for the decision credits him with a rule he did not make. It applied universally, so no individual chose it

  3. Define hamartia, peripeteia and anagnorisis.
    Show the full solution

    The error bringing the fall, the reversal of fortune, and the change from ignorance to knowledge

  4. Explain the peripeteia in Oedipus precisely.
    Show the full solution

    A messenger comes from Corinth specifically to relieve Oedipus's fear about his parents, and relieves it by revealing that Polybus was not his father, which is the fact that destroys him. The action produces the exact opposite of its intended effect, in complete good faith. A messenger comes to comfort and delivers ruin

  5. Where exactly does Creon's argument overreach?
    Show the full solution

    At "in just things and unjust". Up to that phrase he makes a defensible claim about civic survival: a city cannot honor its attacker without removing the reason anyone would defend it. The phrase converts that into a claim about obedience regardless of justice, which nobody can defend. At "in just things and unjust"

  6. Argue from structure that Creon rather than Antigone is the tragic figure.
    Show the full solution

    Every Aristotelian element belongs to him: he errs, reverses under Teiresias, recognizes in the closing speech, and is destroyed. He is present for the last third and speaks the final lines. Antigone does not err, does not change, learns nothing new, and is absent for the ending. Error, reversal, recognition and destruction are all his

  7. How reliable is the chorus, and what follows for analysis?
    Show the full solution

    Not very. The elders flatter Creon, hedge when Antigone is condemned, and urge him to relent only after Teiresias frightens them; their positions track their safety. So the Ode on Man is magnificent and is not the play's verdict, and quoting a chorus line as the author's view is unsound. They shift with their own safety, so their lines are not the play's verdict

  8. Give both meanings of Oedipus's phrase "a dweller in my house".
    Show the full solution

    He means a murderer he might unknowingly be sheltering, and swears he would accept the curse in that case. The audience hears that he is that dweller, and also the house's master, the previous master's killer and the mistress's son. One phrase holds both situations, which are the same. A sheltered stranger, and the man himself in four relations

  9. How does Oedipus invert the detective form?
    Show the full solution

    In a detective story the reader wants the investigator to continue. Here three characters on stage are begging him to stop and so is the audience. The tension comes from watching genuine competence applied to a question that should be dropped, so the same structure produces dread instead of satisfaction. The audience wants the investigation abandoned

  10. State one thing epic can do that tragedy cannot, and one thing tragedy can do that epic cannot.
    Show the full solution

    Epic can show consequences unfolding across years and generations, which a play confined to one day can only report. Tragedy can operate in real time, so the audience waits exactly as long as Oedipus does while the shepherd is questioned, with no narrator standing between them and the delay. Epic shows long consequence; tragedy shares real time

Lesson 3.1 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.6, RI.9-10.5

What rhetoric is, and the situation that produces it

Rhetoric has a bad reputation because the word is used to mean empty talk. In its actual sense it is the study of how persuasion works, and it is as morally neutral as the study of how fire works.

The key ideas
  1. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and Aristotle defined it as the ability to see the available means of persuasion in any case.
  2. It is neutral, so identifying a rhetorical technique is not an accusation of dishonesty.
  3. The rhetorical situation has five parts: speaker, audience, purpose, occasion and message.
  4. Exigence is the problem the speech exists to address, and every real speech has one.
  5. Constraints are the limits the speaker works under, including what the audience already believes and what cannot be said.
  6. Audience is the most useful of the five to analyze, because almost every other choice follows from it.
  7. Kairos is the fitness of an argument to its moment, and a speech perfect in one week can be useless in another.
  8. Analysis means explaining effect, so the question is always what this choice does to this audience in this situation.

Where students lose marks: using "rhetoric" and "rhetorical device" as insults. A text that persuades effectively is doing its job, and your analysis should explain how rather than complain that it tried.

Worked example

The text. Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 4 March 1865. A work of the United States government and in the public domain.

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Step one: identify the speaker. A president being sworn in for a second term, five weeks before the enemy's surrender, who has personally directed the war being described.

Step two: identify the audience. Two at once. Northerners expecting a victory speech and a promise of punishment, and Southerners who will shortly be citizens again. Anything satisfying one risks losing the other.

Step three: identify the exigence. The war is nearly over and the country has to decide what to do with the defeated. That decision has not been made, and the speech exists to influence it.

Step four: identify the constraints. Lincoln cannot say the war was unnecessary, cannot appear to excuse slavery, and cannot promise leniency in terms that look like weakness to a public that has buried six hundred thousand people.

Step five: read the occasion's effect on form. An inaugural is a ceremony rather than a debate. That licenses a register closer to a sermon than to a policy speech, which is why the passage is biblical rather than legislative.

Step six: work the passage's hardest move. Lincoln says the war may justly continue until every drop of blood drawn by the lash is repaid by one drawn by the sword. He is describing the deaths of his own soldiers as payment owed for slavery, which is not a comforting thing to tell a victorious nation.

Step seven: state why he can say it. Because the occasion is religious in register and the claim is framed as God's judgment rather than Lincoln's policy. The constraint that he cannot lecture the North is evaded by attributing the verdict to scripture.

Step eight: assess the kairos. This speech works in March 1865 and would have been impossible in 1861, when the North was not yet prepared to hear the war described as national punishment, and unnecessary in 1866, when Lincoln was dead and the decision was being made by others. The moment is part of the argument.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define rhetoric.
    Show the full solution

    The art of persuasion; the ability to see the available means of persuasion in any case

  2. Name the five parts of the rhetorical situation.
    Show the full solution

    Speaker, audience, purpose, occasion, message

  3. What is exigence?
    Show the full solution

    The problem the speech exists to address

  4. What is kairos?
    Show the full solution

    The fitness of an argument to its moment

  5. Name two of Lincoln's constraints in this speech.
    Show the full solution

    He cannot call the war unnecessary, excuse slavery, or promise leniency in terms that look like weakness

  6. Why is calling something "rhetoric" not a criticism?
    Show the full solution

    Because rhetoric is the study of how persuasion works and is as neutral as the study of how fire works. Every text that sets out to convince anyone uses it, including honest ones, and identifying a technique says nothing about whether the claim is true. An analysis that treats "rhetorical device" as an accusation has confused describing persuasion with catching someone at it. It describes how persuasion works, not whether it is dishonest

  7. Why is audience the most useful part to analyze?
    Show the full solution

    Because almost every other choice follows from it. What evidence is offered, what is conceded, what is left unsaid, what register is used and what can be assumed all depend on who is listening. Establishing that Lincoln is speaking to two audiences with opposite expectations explains nearly every feature of the address, which no other single fact about the situation does. Nearly every other choice in a text follows from it

  8. What is the hardest thing Lincoln says, and to whom?
    Show the full solution

    That the war may justly continue until every drop of blood drawn by the lash is repaid by one drawn with the sword. He is telling a victorious North that the deaths of its own soldiers are payment owed for slavery, five weeks before the surrender and after six hundred thousand deaths. That is not a comforting claim and it is addressed to the side that won. That Union deaths are payment owed for slavery, said to the victors

  9. How do the occasion and register make that possible?
    Show the full solution

    An inaugural is a ceremony rather than a debate, which licenses a register closer to a sermon than to a policy speech. Lincoln frames the verdict as God's judgment and quotes scripture for it, so the claim arrives as something he is reporting rather than asserting. The constraint that he cannot lecture the North is evaded by attributing the lecture elsewhere. A ceremonial occasion licenses scripture, which lets him attribute the verdict to God

  10. Assess the kairos of this speech.
    Show the full solution

    It works in March 1865 and nowhere else. In 1861 the North was not prepared to hear the war described as national punishment and the speech would have been intolerable. By 1866 Lincoln was dead and the decision about the South was being made by other people, so the argument would have arrived too late to shape anything. The moment is part of the argument rather than its background. Impossible in 1861 and useless by 1866; the moment is part of the argument

Lesson 3.2 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.6

How a speaker earns the right to be believed

Aristotle thought ethos was the most powerful of the three appeals, and the reason is practical: an audience that does not trust a speaker will not evaluate the evidence at all.

The key ideas
  1. Ethos is persuasion through the speaker's character as the audience perceives it during the speech.
  2. Aristotle divides it into three: practical wisdom, virtue, and goodwill toward the audience.
  3. Extrinsic ethos is the reputation the speaker brings; intrinsic ethos is what the text itself builds.
  4. Intrinsic ethos is what you analyze, since it is made of sentences you can point at.
  5. Conceding a point builds ethos, because a speaker who grants something appears to be weighing rather than selling.
  6. Precision builds ethos, since exact figures and named sources suggest a speaker who has checked.
  7. Ethos can be borrowed by quoting a respected source or imitating a revered document.
  8. Ethos is fragile, and one detectable exaggeration can cost a speaker the rest of the speech.

Where students lose marks: writing "the speaker uses ethos because he is a doctor." That is extrinsic and requires no analysis. Find the sentence in the text that builds trust and explain how.

Worked example

The text. Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?", Rochester, 5 July 1852. Public domain.

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day.

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects... Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment.

Step one: examine the opening move. Douglass begins by confessing nerves. The most celebrated Black orator in America opens by saying he has rarely felt less confident.

Step two: state what that accomplishes. It converts an audience that might have come to judge a performance into an audience disposed to help him through one. Aristotle would call this goodwill, and it is manufactured in two sentences.

Step three: notice what it also does. A man about to accuse his audience's country of monstrous hypocrisy has established that he is not arrogant. The humility is real and it is also clearing ground.

Step four: read the praise of the founders. "Your fathers were wise men." Douglass spends the first third of a very long speech praising the Revolution sincerely and at length.

Step five: state what the concession buys. Nobody can accuse him of hostility to the country's founding, because he has just spent twenty minutes on its virtues. Every defense his audience might have raised has been granted before it was offered.

Step six: notice the pronoun. "Your fathers", not our fathers. He praises them while marking that they are not his, which prepares the division the speech will make explicit later.

Step seven: state the principle. Concession is the strongest ethos-building move available, because it demonstrates that the speaker is weighing rather than advocating. Douglass concedes more than he has to, and it is the reason the attack lands.

Step eight: write the analysis sentence. "By opening with a confession of nerves and then praising the founders at length before naming a single grievance, Douglass establishes both goodwill and impartiality, so that when he divides the holiday into 'yours' and 'mine' the audience has already conceded that he is not speaking out of hostility." That names the technique, the evidence and the effect.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define ethos.
    Show the full solution

    Persuasion through the speaker's character as the audience perceives it

  2. Name Aristotle's three components of ethos.
    Show the full solution

    Practical wisdom, virtue, and goodwill toward the audience

  3. Distinguish extrinsic from intrinsic ethos.
    Show the full solution

    Extrinsic is the reputation brought in; intrinsic is what the text itself builds

  4. Name two things that build ethos inside a text.
    Show the full solution

    Conceding a point, and precision such as exact figures and named sources

  5. How does Douglass open the speech?
    Show the full solution

    By confessing nervousness and distrust of his own ability

  6. Why is intrinsic ethos the kind worth analyzing?
    Show the full solution

    Because it is made of sentences you can point at. Saying a speaker has ethos because he is a senator or a doctor identifies something true about the world and nothing about the text, and it requires no reading. Intrinsic ethos is built by particular choices, which means it can be quoted, explained and disagreed with, and that is what analysis is for. It is built from quotable sentences rather than from facts about the speaker

  7. What does Douglass's confession of nerves accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    It converts an audience that might have come to judge a performance into one disposed to help him through it, which is Aristotle's goodwill manufactured in two sentences. It also establishes that a man about to accuse the country of monstrous hypocrisy is not arrogant, so the humility does real work while being perfectly sincere. Goodwill, and a demonstration that the coming accusation is not arrogance

  8. Why does he praise the founders at such length?
    Show the full solution

    Because it removes every defense his audience might raise. Nobody can accuse him of hostility to the country's founding once he has spent twenty minutes sincerely on its virtues, so the accusation that follows cannot be dismissed as the resentment of someone who never valued the thing. He concedes more than he has to, and that surplus is exactly why the attack lands. It grants every defense in advance, so the attack cannot be dismissed

  9. Why is concession such a strong ethos move?
    Show the full solution

    Because it demonstrates that the speaker is weighing rather than advocating. An audience assumes a persuader will present only helpful material, so a speaker who grants a point that costs something appears to be following evidence instead of selling a position. The concession is evidence about the speaker's method, which is precisely what ethos is a judgment about. It is evidence that the speaker is weighing rather than selling

  10. What is doing work in "your fathers were wise men"?
    Show the full solution

    The pronoun. Douglass praises the founders genuinely while marking that they are "your" fathers and not his, which plants the division the speech will make explicit when it declares the Fourth of July "yours, not mine". A single possessive carries both the compliment and the exclusion, and the audience absorbs the second while accepting the first. "Your" praises and excludes in the same phrase

Lesson 3.3 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.6, RI.9-10.8

Emotion as a legitimate argument, not a trick

Students are often taught that appealing to emotion is manipulative. That is not Aristotle's view and it is not defensible: some facts are only comprehensible when felt, and a description that produces the appropriate feeling is doing intellectual work.

The key ideas
  1. Pathos is persuasion through the audience's emotions, and Aristotle treats it as one of three legitimate appeals.
  2. Emotion is not opposed to reason in rhetoric, and a person who feels nothing about an injustice has not fully understood it.
  3. Pathos depends on specificity, since a named individual moves an audience that a statistic does not.
  4. Concrete sensory detail is the main technique, because emotion arrives through the senses rather than through categories.
  5. Restraint often intensifies, and a flat sentence about a terrible thing usually beats an emphatic one.
  6. Pathos becomes illegitimate when the feeling produced is not warranted by the facts, or when it substitutes for evidence.
  7. The appeal to fear is legitimate when the danger is real and proportionate, and a fallacy when it is not.
  8. Analysis must name the emotion, because "the speaker uses pathos" does not say whether the audience is meant to feel pity, anger, shame or fear.

Where students lose marks: writing "this creates pathos" and stopping. Say which emotion, which words produce it, and what the emotion is being used to accomplish in the argument.

Worked example

The text. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845. Public domain.

I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose... It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass.

Step one: name the emotion precisely. Not "sadness". Horror, and behind it outrage. The passage is designed to make a reader unable to think about slavery as a policy question.

Step two: identify the specificity. Not "slaves were beaten" but an aunt, a named relation, at dawn, tied to a joist, on her naked back, and the boy Douglass awakened by the sound. One person, one room, one time of day.

Step three: state why that is more effective than a statistic. Numbers describe a category and a reader can process a category without imagining anyone. A named relation in a specified position at a specified hour cannot be processed without being pictured, and picturing is what produces the feeling.

Step four: notice the sensory channel. The passage arrives through hearing before sight. Douglass is awakened by shrieks, so the reader is placed where he was, in another room, listening. That is a more frightening position than watching.

Step five: examine the triple negation. "No words, no tears, no prayers." Three attempts at appeal, all failing. The structure enacts exhaustion of every possible recourse, which is the argument the sentence is making about the institution.

Step six: ask whether the pathos is legitimate. Apply the test: is the feeling warranted by the facts? The facts are that this happened and that Douglass witnessed it. Horror is the accurate response, so the passage is producing a proportionate emotion rather than an inflated one.

Step seven: state what the emotion is used for. Douglass is arguing that slavery cannot be discussed as an economic arrangement. The passage makes abstraction impossible for the length of a page, and that is an argument rather than an interruption of one.

Step eight: write the analysis sentence. "By placing the reader in the next room, awakened by sound rather than watching, and by naming the victim as his own aunt, Douglass produces a horror that is proportionate to the facts and that makes it impossible to continue treating slavery as a question of policy, which is precisely what the abolitionist argument required of its readers." That names the emotion, the technique and the purpose.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define pathos.
    Show the full solution

    Persuasion through the audience's emotions

  2. What does pathos depend on?
    Show the full solution

    Specificity: a named individual rather than a statistic

  3. When does pathos become illegitimate?
    Show the full solution

    When the feeling is not warranted by the facts, or substitutes for evidence

  4. What must analysis of pathos always name?
    Show the full solution

    Which emotion, which words produce it, and what it accomplishes

  5. Through which sense does the Douglass passage arrive first?
    Show the full solution

    Hearing; he is awakened by shrieks

  6. Why is emotion not opposed to reason in rhetoric?
    Show the full solution

    Because some facts are only fully comprehensible when felt. A person who can contemplate a description of torture without any emotional response has not understood it, they have categorized it. A description that produces the appropriate feeling is doing intellectual work, which is why Aristotle lists pathos as one of three legitimate appeals rather than as a corruption of the other two. Some facts are not understood until they are felt

  7. Why does the specificity work better than a statistic?
    Show the full solution

    Numbers describe a category, and a reader can process a category without imagining any particular person in it. An aunt, tied to a joist, on her naked back, at dawn, heard from the next room, cannot be processed without being pictured, and picturing is what produces the feeling. Douglass chooses one person, one room and one hour for exactly that reason. A category can be processed unpictured; a specific scene cannot

  8. What does the auditory channel accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    It places the reader where Douglass was, in another room, listening and unable to see or intervene. That is a more frightening position than witnessing, because the imagination supplies what the ear cannot resolve and because it establishes helplessness as the reader's own condition. The choice of sense is a choice about where the reader stands. It puts the reader in the next room, helpless and listening

  9. Analyze "no words, no tears, no prayers".
    Show the full solution

    Three attempts at appeal listed in ascending order of desperation, all of them failing. The structure enacts the exhaustion of every possible recourse, so the reader experiences the closing off of options rather than being told about it. It is also the sentence's argument about the institution: that within it, appeal of any kind is unavailable. It enacts the exhaustion of every recourse, which is the sentence's argument

  10. Is this passage's pathos legitimate? Apply the test.
    Show the full solution

    Yes. The test is whether the feeling produced is warranted by the facts, and the facts are that this occurred and that Douglass witnessed it. Horror is the accurate response rather than an inflated one, and the passage supplies evidence rather than substituting for it. Pathos becomes a fallacy when feeling replaces facts, not when facts produce feeling. Yes: the emotion is proportionate to facts the passage supplies

Lesson 3.4 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.8

Evidence, reasoning, and the forms of inference

Logos is usually taught as "facts and statistics", which is half of it. The other half is the reasoning that connects evidence to a claim, and that is where most arguments actually succeed or fail.

The key ideas
  1. Logos is persuasion through reasoning and evidence, covering both what is offered and how it is connected.
  2. Deduction reasons from general to particular, and if the premises are true and the form valid the conclusion must follow.
  3. A syllogism has two premises and a conclusion, and the classical example is that all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
  4. An enthymeme is a syllogism with a premise left unstated, which is the form arguments actually take in speech.
  5. The unstated premise is where arguments hide, which is why finding it is the most useful analytical move in this unit.
  6. Induction reasons from particular to general, and its conclusions are probable rather than certain.
  7. Analogy argues that two cases are alike in the relevant respect, and it fails when the likeness does not extend to the point at issue.
  8. Evidence comes in kinds: fact, statistic, example, testimony and precedent, each with its own weaknesses.

Where students lose marks: saying an argument "uses logos because it has statistics." Identify the claim, the evidence, and the unstated premise joining them, because that is where the argument can actually be evaluated.

Worked example

The text. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls, 1848. Public domain.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

Step one: set out the deduction. Major premise: all people are endowed with inalienable rights. Minor premise: women are people. Conclusion: women are endowed with inalienable rights.

Step two: find the unstated premise. The minor premise is never stated. Stanton inserts "and women" into a sentence her audience already accepts and lets the inference run. That is an enthymeme, and it is the document's central move.

Step three: state why leaving it unstated is stronger. A stated premise can be disputed. An assumption smuggled into a familiar sentence has been accepted before the reader notices there was anything to accept, and disputing it afterwards means disputing the Declaration of Independence.

Step four: identify the inductive half. The eighteen paragraphs beginning "He has" are particulars: no vote, no voice in the laws, civil death on marriage, and fifteen more. From these, a general conclusion about systematic exclusion.

Step five: test the induction for sufficiency. Eighteen instances drawn from law, property, education, employment, religion and marriage. The sample is large and it spans domains, which is what makes it evidence of a system rather than a list of anomalies.

Step six: classify the kinds of evidence. These are facts about the law of 1848, verifiable and not in dispute. That is the strongest kind available, because an opponent cannot argue about whether women could vote.

Step seven: identify the analogy. The whole document is an analogy: the relation of women to men is like the relation of the colonies to the Crown. It holds where the point at issue is government without consent, and an opponent would have to argue that the likeness fails there specifically.

Step eight: state the full structure. A deductive frame borrowed from a revered document, with its key premise left unstated; an inductive body of eighteen verified facts; and a sustained analogy that determines what kind of objection is available. That is logos operating at three levels in about a thousand words.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define logos.
    Show the full solution

    Persuasion through reasoning and evidence, both what is offered and how it is connected

  2. Distinguish deduction from induction.
    Show the full solution

    Deduction reasons general to particular with certainty; induction reasons particular to general with probability

  3. What is an enthymeme?
    Show the full solution

    A syllogism with a premise left unstated

  4. Name five kinds of evidence.
    Show the full solution

    Fact, statistic, example, testimony, precedent

  5. When does an argument from analogy fail?
    Show the full solution

    When the likeness does not extend to the point at issue

  6. Set out Stanton's deduction and name its missing premise.
    Show the full solution

    Major premise: all people are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. Minor premise, never stated: women are people. Conclusion: women are endowed with inalienable rights. Stanton inserts "and women" into a sentence her audience already accepts and lets the inference run, which is an enthymeme and the document's central move. The minor premise that women are people, which is never stated

  7. Why is leaving that premise unstated stronger than stating it?
    Show the full solution

    A stated premise invites dispute. An assumption smuggled into a familiar sentence has been accepted before the reader notices there was anything to accept, and objecting afterwards means objecting to the wording of the Declaration of Independence. The enthymeme places the burden of disagreement somewhere the audience does not want to stand. It is accepted before it can be noticed, and disputing it means disputing the Declaration

  8. Test the inductive half for sufficiency.
    Show the full solution

    Eighteen instances, drawn from law, property, education, employment, religion and marriage. The sample is large and, more importantly, it spans domains. A dozen examples from marriage law alone could be dismissed as one bad statute; eighteen across six areas of life is evidence of a system rather than a collection of anomalies, which is exactly the conclusion being drawn. Eighteen instances across six domains, which shows a system rather than anomalies

  9. Why is the kind of evidence chosen particularly strong?
    Show the full solution

    These are verifiable facts about the law of 1848 rather than statistics, testimony or examples. An opponent cannot argue about whether women could vote or whether a married woman had legal standing, because the answer is a matter of record. Choosing the one category of evidence that cannot be contested removes the easiest route to disagreement. Verifiable legal facts cannot be disputed the way statistics or testimony can

  10. Identify the document's analogy and say what it forces an opponent to do.
    Show the full solution

    The whole document argues that the relation of women to men is like the relation of the colonies to the Crown. It holds where the point at issue is government without consent. An opponent cannot simply reject the comparison; they must argue that the likeness fails at that specific point, which means defending the proposition that consent is owed to colonists and not to women. They must argue the likeness fails specifically on government without consent

Lesson 3.5 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.5

How a classical speech is built

The Romans divided a speech into named parts and taught the sequence as a discipline. The scheme is two thousand years old and it still describes how effective arguments are organized, which is why it is worth learning.

The key ideas
  1. The exordium is the opening, whose job is to secure attention and goodwill.
  2. The narratio states the facts, giving the background the audience needs before any claim is made.
  3. The partitio announces the structure, telling the audience what will be argued and in what order.
  4. The confirmatio is the positive case, where the speaker's own reasons and evidence are presented.
  5. The refutatio answers objections, and omitting it tells an audience you could not.
  6. The peroratio closes, usually summarizing and then raising the emotional register.
  7. The order is flexible, and refutation before confirmation is standard when the opposing view is the one the audience holds.
  8. The strongest argument goes last in the confirmatio, since an audience remembers endings and the sequence builds toward them.

Where students lose marks: labeling the parts of a speech and stopping. Say why a particular part is longer, shorter, moved or omitted, because that is where the speaker's judgment shows.

Worked example

The text. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 19 November 1863. A work of the United States government and in the public domain.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field... It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground...

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work... that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Step one: locate the exordium. The first sentence. It secures attention by beginning at the founding rather than at the battle, and it secures goodwill by saying "our fathers", placing speaker and audience on one side.

Step two: locate the narratio. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war... We are met on a great battle-field." Two sentences of facts, and the audience already knows all of them.

Step three: state why the narratio is so short. Because everyone present is standing on the field four months after the battle. A narratio exists to supply what the audience lacks, and here they lack nothing, so it is compressed to a reminder.

Step four: find the refutatio. "But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate." Lincoln is refuting the premise of the ceremony he was invited to perform, including his own previous sentence.

Step five: state what placing refutation there accomplishes. The objection being answered is the audience's own assumption about why they came. Addressing it before the positive case means the audience is not holding a contrary idea while the argument proceeds.

Step six: locate the confirmatio. "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work." The positive case is that the obligation transfers to the living, and it occupies the final third.

Step seven: locate the peroratio. The last clause: government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The register rises, the rhythm becomes triple, and the sentence ends on the largest possible stake.

Step eight: state what the proportions show. Two hundred and seventy-two words, with the narratio reduced to two sentences and more than half the speech given to confirmatio and peroratio. Lincoln spends nothing on what the audience knows and everything on what he wants them to do, which is what analyzing arrangement is for.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Name the six classical parts of a speech.
    Show the full solution

    Exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, refutatio, peroratio

  2. What is the job of the exordium?
    Show the full solution

    To secure attention and goodwill

  3. What does the refutatio do?
    Show the full solution

    Answers objections

  4. Where should the strongest argument go?
    Show the full solution

    Last in the confirmatio

  5. Which part of the Gettysburg Address is the refutatio?
    Show the full solution

    "But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground"

  6. Why is the narratio of this speech so short?
    Show the full solution

    A narratio exists to supply facts the audience lacks, and this audience lacks nothing: they are standing on the battlefield four months after the battle, at the dedication of its cemetery. Lincoln reduces it to two sentences of reminder. Length in a speech should track what the audience needs rather than what the subject contains, and the compression here is a judgment about that. The audience is standing on the field and needs no facts supplied

  7. Why does refutation come before the positive case here?
    Show the full solution

    Because the objection Lincoln is answering is the audience's own assumption about why they came, namely that the ceremony consecrates the ground. An audience holding a contrary idea cannot properly receive a positive case, so it has to be cleared first. The classical order is flexible precisely for situations where the opposing view is the one the listeners already hold. The objection is the audience's own belief, so it must be cleared first

  8. Why does the strongest argument belong last?
    Show the full solution

    Because an audience remembers endings, and because a sequence that builds toward its strongest point feels like reasoning while one that starts strong and declines feels like retreat. The placement is not only about memory; it shapes the impression of whether the argument is gaining or losing ground as it proceeds. Endings are remembered, and ascending order reads as gaining ground

  9. What does omitting a refutatio tell an audience?
    Show the full solution

    That the speaker could not answer the obvious objection. An audience that can think of a counter-argument the speech never mentions will assume it was avoided rather than overlooked, and the unanswered objection then does more damage than it would have if raised and addressed. Omission is read as inability, which is why the part exists in the scheme at all. That the objection could not be answered, which does more damage than raising it

  10. What do the Gettysburg Address's proportions reveal?
    Show the full solution

    Two hundred and seventy-two words, with the narratio cut to two sentences and more than half the speech given to the positive case and the close. Lincoln spends nothing on what the audience already knows and everything on what he wants them to do. The distribution of length is the clearest available evidence of a speaker's judgment about their situation. Nothing spent on known facts, more than half on the obligation

Lesson 3.6 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.4, L.9-10.5

The schemes and tropes worth knowing by name

Classical rhetoric named several hundred figures. About a dozen account for nearly everything you will meet, and knowing their names is useful only because it lets you say precisely what is happening in a sentence.

The key ideas
  1. A scheme changes the arrangement of words; a trope changes their meaning.
  2. Anaphora repeats a word at the start of successive clauses, and it accumulates force.
  3. Antithesis sets two contrary ideas in parallel structure, so the grammar performs the opposition.
  4. Parallelism gives matching grammatical form to items in a series, and breaking it is audible.
  5. Chiasmus reverses the order of a repeated pair, as in "ask not what your country can do for you" and its answer.
  6. Asyndeton omits conjunctions for speed; polysyndeton adds extra ones for weight.
  7. Metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche are the main tropes, substituting one thing for another by likeness, association or part-for-whole.
  8. The rhetorical question asks without expecting an answer, and its force comes from making the audience supply one.

Where students lose marks: naming figures. "The speaker uses anaphora" is an observation. The analysis is what the repetition does to a listener by the fourth occurrence.

Worked example

The text. Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?", 1852. Public domain.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.

Step one: identify the rhetorical question. "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?" Douglass answers it himself, which means the question exists to frame the answer rather than to seek one.

Step two: identify the anaphora. "Your celebration... your boasted liberty... your national greatness... your sounds of rejoicing... your denunciations... your shouts." Six repetitions of the same possessive pronoun.

Step three: state what the repetition accumulates. Each item is something the audience is proud of, and each is named and then destroyed in the same clause. By the fourth, the listener knows the shape of the sentence and can hear the next demolition coming, which makes the effect worse rather than predictable.

Step four: identify the parallelism. Every clause has the identical structure: your X, a Y. Noun phrase, then a two or three word verdict, with the verb omitted. The grammar is a machine and the items are fed through it.

Step five: name the omission. The verb "is" is missing from every clause after the first. That is a scheme called ellipsis, and it makes the verdicts arrive faster than complete sentences would.

Step six: notice the asyndeton. The clauses are separated by semicolons with no conjunction. Nothing joins them, so there is no pause for the listener to recover in, and the list can stop only when Douglass decides.

Step seven: work the pronoun. "Your", six times, in a speech that opens by addressing the room as fellow-citizens. The figure's whole force is in that pronoun, which is a single word carrying the argument that the holiday belongs to some of the people present and not others.

Step eight: write the analysis sentence. "By running six parallel clauses with the verb elided and no conjunctions between them, each naming something the audience is proud of and condemning it in three words, Douglass builds a rhythm the listener learns to anticipate, so that by the fourth clause the audience is hearing its own patriotism destroyed on a schedule it can predict and cannot interrupt."

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Distinguish a scheme from a trope.
    Show the full solution

    A scheme changes word arrangement; a trope changes meaning

  2. Define anaphora and antithesis.
    Show the full solution

    Repeating a word at the start of successive clauses; setting contrary ideas in parallel structure

  3. Define asyndeton and polysyndeton.
    Show the full solution

    Omitting conjunctions for speed; adding extra ones for weight

  4. What is chiasmus?
    Show the full solution

    Reversing the order of a repeated pair

  5. How many times does Douglass repeat "your" in the quoted passage?
    Show the full solution

    Six

  6. What does the anaphora accumulate?
    Show the full solution

    Each item is something the audience takes pride in, and each is named and destroyed within the same clause. By the fourth repetition the listener has learned the shape of the sentence and can hear the next demolition arriving. Predictability usually weakens an effect; here it strengthens it, because the audience is made to anticipate the destruction of its own celebration. Anticipated demolition, which the listener learns to expect and cannot stop

  7. What does the missing verb accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    "Your boasted liberty, an unholy license" omits "is", which is a scheme called ellipsis. The verdict arrives faster than a complete sentence would allow, and the clauses become a series of labels rather than a series of statements. The effect is that Douglass appears to be identifying facts rather than advancing opinions. Ellipsis speeds each verdict and makes it read as a label rather than a claim

  8. Why does the absence of conjunctions matter?
    Show the full solution

    Semicolons with no "and" mean nothing joins the clauses, so there is no pause for a listener to recover in and no signal that the list is approaching its end. The sequence can stop only when Douglass decides to stop it. Asyndeton gives a speaker complete control over duration, which is exactly what a hostile catalog needs. No pause and no warning of the end, so the speaker controls the duration

  9. What is the pronoun doing?
    Show the full solution

    Carrying the entire argument. Douglass addresses the room as fellow-citizens and then says "your celebration", "your boasted liberty", "your shouts of liberty and equality" six times. A single possessive asserts that the holiday belongs to some of the people present and not to others, which is the speech's thesis compressed into one word repeated. One possessive carries the speech's whole thesis about who the holiday belongs to

  10. Why is naming figures insufficient as analysis?
    Show the full solution

    Because a name identifies a pattern without saying what it does. "The speaker uses anaphora" is true of thousands of texts and explains none of them. The analytical question is what the repetition does to a listener by the fourth occurrence, which requires describing an effect that could be disputed and therefore counts as an argument. A name states a pattern; analysis states its effect on a particular audience

Lesson 3.7 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.8

Attacking the wrong thing

A fallacy is an error in reasoning, not an error in conclusion. An argument can be fallacious and still reach a true answer, which is why the point of learning fallacies is to evaluate reasoning rather than to win disagreements.

The key ideas
  1. A fallacy is a defect in reasoning, so a fallacious argument can still have a true conclusion.
  2. Fallacies of relevance offer material that does not bear on the claim being argued.
  3. Ad hominem attacks the person instead of the argument, and it is a fallacy even when the criticism is accurate.
  4. The straw man restates an opponent's position in a weakened form and defeats the restatement.
  5. The red herring introduces an irrelevant issue that changes the subject while appearing to address it.
  6. Appeal to authority is legitimate when the authority is relevant and the claim falls in their field, and fallacious otherwise.
  7. Appeal to popularity argues that widespread belief makes something true.
  8. Fallacies persuade because they resemble valid moves, which is why naming them requires showing what the argument would have needed instead.

Where students lose marks: naming a fallacy without showing it. Quote the sentence, state what the argument would need in order to work, and show what is missing.

Worked example

The text. Sophocles, Antigone, in Jebb's prose translation, read as argument. Public domain.

CREON: But thou, tell me, not in many words, but briefly, knewest thou that an edict had forbidden this?

ANTIGONE: I knew it: could I help it? It was public.

CREON: This girl was already versed in insolence when she transgressed the laws that had been set forth; and, that done, lo, a second insult, to vaunt of this, and exult in her deed.

CREON: Now, verily, I am no man, she is the man, if this victory shall rest with her, and bring no penalty.

Step one: examine the second passage. Creon's response to Antigone's defense is that she is insolent and that she is boasting. Neither addresses her claim that divine law outranks his edict.

Step two: name it. Ad hominem, of the kind that attacks manner rather than substance. Even if she were insolent, and she is, the argument about burial would be exactly as strong.

Step three: state what he would have needed. An argument that the obligation to bury the dead does not outrank a civic decree, or that Polyneices forfeited it by attacking the city. Both were available to him, and he does not make them.

Step four: examine the third passage. "I am no man, she is the man, if this victory shall rest with her." Creon has replaced the question of whether the edict was just with the question of whether he will be humiliated by a woman.

Step five: name it. A red herring. The new issue is genuinely important to Creon and it has nothing to do with the burial, and it changes the subject while appearing to continue the conversation.

Step six: state why the fallacy is persuasive to him. Because status in this society really does depend on not being overruled, so the irrelevant consideration is not imaginary. Fallacies persuade because they resemble valid moves, and this one resembles a real concern.

Step seven: connect it to the play's structure. Once Creon's position is about not being beaten rather than about the decree, he cannot climb down without losing what he has made the stake. The fallacy is not incidental; it is the mechanism of his destruction.

Step eight: state the general lesson. Identifying a fallacy is not point-scoring. It explains why a conversation stops being about its subject, and in this play it explains why two people with real arguments never once address each other's.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What is a fallacy?
    Show the full solution

    A defect in reasoning, which can still accompany a true conclusion

  2. Define ad hominem.
    Show the full solution

    Attacking the person instead of the argument

  3. Define the straw man.
    Show the full solution

    Restating an opponent's position in a weakened form and defeating the restatement

  4. What is a red herring?
    Show the full solution

    An irrelevant issue that changes the subject while appearing to address it

  5. When is an appeal to authority legitimate?
    Show the full solution

    When the authority is relevant and the claim falls within their field

  6. Why is ad hominem a fallacy even when the criticism is true?
    Show the full solution

    Because the truth of a claim does not depend on the character of the person making it. Antigone is genuinely insolent, and her argument about divine law would be exactly as strong if she were meek. Creon's observation is accurate and irrelevant, and the combination is what makes ad hominem persuasive: it offers something true in place of something responsive. A claim's truth does not depend on its speaker's character

  7. What argument was available to Creon that he does not make?
    Show the full solution

    That the obligation to bury the dead does not outrank a civic decree in a case of treason, or that Polyneices forfeited the obligation by leading an army against his own city. Either would have engaged Antigone's actual claim, and both are defensible. He attacks her manner instead, which means the strongest version of his own position is never stated by him. That treason forfeits burial, or that civic law outranks it in this case

  8. Analyze "I am no man, she is the man".
    Show the full solution

    Creon replaces the question of whether his edict was just with the question of whether he will be humiliated by a woman. That is a red herring: a new issue that changes the subject while appearing to continue the conversation. It is persuasive to him because status in his society really does depend on not being overruled, so the irrelevant consideration is not imaginary. A red herring substituting his humiliation for the justice of the decree

  9. How does the fallacy drive the plot?
    Show the full solution

    Once Creon's position is about not being beaten rather than about the decree, he cannot climb down without losing what he has made the stake. Haemon later offers him a route out and he refuses it for exactly this reason. The red herring is not an incidental error in a speech; it converts a disagreement he could have settled into one he cannot, which is the mechanism of his destruction. It makes retreat impossible by changing what he has at stake

  10. What is the point of learning fallacies?
    Show the full solution

    Not point-scoring in disagreements. It is to explain why a conversation stops being about its subject. In Antigone, naming the ad hominem and the red herring explains why two people holding genuinely strong and opposed arguments never once address each other's, which is the structural fact the whole play depends on. To explain why a conversation stops being about its subject

Lesson 3.8 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.8

Fallacies of evidence and causation

The second family of fallacies concerns evidence that is relevant but insufficient, and reasoning about causes that does not hold. These are harder to spot than name-calling, and they do far more damage.

The key ideas
  1. Hasty generalization draws a general conclusion from too few cases.
  2. The unrepresentative sample draws from enough cases but from the wrong ones.
  3. Correlation is not causation: two things occurring together does not establish that one produced the other.
  4. Post hoc ergo propter hoc assumes that because one event followed another, the first caused the second.
  5. The false dilemma presents two options when more exist, and it is persuasive because real situations sometimes do have two options.
  6. The slippery slope claims a first step leads inevitably to an extreme outcome, without establishing any of the intervening steps.
  7. Circular reasoning assumes what it sets out to prove, sometimes across enough sentences that the circle is hard to see.
  8. Equivocation shifts a word's meaning between one part of an argument and another.

Where students lose marks: calling every prediction a slippery slope. It becomes a fallacy only when the intervening steps are asserted rather than argued, and an argument that establishes each step is not fallacious at all.

Worked example

The text. Patrick Henry, speech to the Virginia Convention, 23 March 1775, as recorded by William Wirt in 1817. Public domain.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?

Step one: identify the structure of the first passage. Two options are offered: liberty or death. The sentence is famous because it is absolute, and absoluteness is exactly what makes it examinable.

Step two: name the fallacy. False dilemma. Other outcomes existed: negotiation, delay, partial autonomy, or defeat followed by survival under the same government. The Convention's actual choice was not between two things.

Step three: state why it persuades anyway. Because the audience was a legislature deciding whether to arm, and a decision that must be made now genuinely does reduce to yes or no. The fallacy borrows the structure of a real binary and applies it to a question that has more answers.

Step four: assess it fairly. Henry is not being dishonest. He believes the middle options are illusory, which is an arguable position. What makes the sentence a false dilemma is that he asserts the reduction rather than arguing for it.

Step five: examine the second passage. "Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?" This predicts a sequence of worsening states leading to an extreme.

Step six: test it against the slippery slope definition. A prediction is fallacious only when the intervening steps are asserted rather than argued. Henry does supply a mechanism: British troops had been sent, arms were being seized, and the Convention was debating disarmament. The steps are not imaginary.

Step seven: deliver the judgment. The false dilemma is a genuine fallacy because no argument is offered against the middle options. The slippery slope is not, because the steps are grounded in events the audience could verify. Two similar-looking moves, and only one of them fails.

Step eight: state the general lesson. Fallacy-spotting done badly turns into labeling anything forceful. Done well, it distinguishes a claim that has skipped its reasoning from one that has compressed it, and the difference is whether the missing steps could be supplied on request.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define hasty generalization.
    Show the full solution

    Drawing a general conclusion from too few cases

  2. What does post hoc ergo propter hoc assume?
    Show the full solution

    That because one event followed another, the first caused the second

  3. Define the false dilemma.
    Show the full solution

    Presenting two options when more exist

  4. What is equivocation?
    Show the full solution

    Shifting a word's meaning between parts of an argument

  5. When does a prediction become a slippery slope fallacy?
    Show the full solution

    When the intervening steps are asserted rather than argued

  6. Why is "give me liberty or give me death" a false dilemma?
    Show the full solution

    Because other outcomes existed: negotiation, delay, partial autonomy, or defeat followed by survival under the same government. The Convention's actual decision was not between two things. Henry may believe the middle options are illusory, which is an arguable position, but he asserts the reduction rather than arguing for it, and that assertion is what makes the sentence fallacious. Middle options existed and he asserts rather than argues their absence

  7. Why does the false dilemma persuade anyway?
    Show the full solution

    Because the audience is a legislature deciding whether to arm, and a decision that must be taken now genuinely does reduce to yes or no. The fallacy borrows the structure of a real binary and applies it to a question with more answers. Fallacies persuade because they resemble valid moves, and this one resembles the most valid move available in the room. It borrows the shape of the real yes-or-no decision the room actually faced

  8. Is the second passage a slippery slope? Justify the answer.
    Show the full solution

    No. A prediction is fallacious only when the intervening steps are asserted rather than argued, and Henry supplies a mechanism: British troops had been sent, arms were being seized, and the Convention was at that moment debating disarmament. The steps are grounded in events the audience could verify, so the prediction is compressed reasoning rather than skipped reasoning. No: the steps are grounded in verifiable events rather than asserted

  9. How do you tell compressed reasoning from skipped reasoning?
    Show the full solution

    Ask whether the missing steps could be supplied on request. A speaker who has compressed an argument can fill it in if challenged, because the reasoning exists and was left out for time. A speaker who has skipped it cannot, because there is nothing to fill in. That test separates forceful argument from fallacy better than any label. Ask whether the speaker could supply the missing steps if challenged

  10. What goes wrong when fallacy-spotting is done badly?
    Show the full solution

    It turns into labeling anything forceful. Every prediction becomes a slippery slope, every strong claim becomes a false dilemma, and the exercise stops being about reasoning. Done well it distinguishes a claim that has skipped its reasoning from one that has compressed it, which requires reading the argument rather than scanning it for shapes. It becomes a way of dismissing anything forceful without reading it

Lesson 3.9 · Unit 3 · RI.9-10.6, RI.9-10.8

Advertising and propaganda

A speech announces itself as persuasion. Most of the persuasion a person meets does not, and the techniques in this unit are more useful applied to that than to texts already marked as arguments.

The key ideas
  1. Advertising is persuasion that does not present itself as argument, which is its main advantage.
  2. Association rather than claim is its usual method: place a product beside something desirable and make no assertion at all.
  3. An unstated claim cannot be refuted, which is why association is preferred to argument.
  4. Propaganda is persuasion in service of a cause that typically suppresses alternatives rather than answering them.
  5. The techniques overlap heavily with legitimate rhetoric, and what distinguishes them is usually what is hidden rather than what is used.
  6. Common devices include the bandwagon, the testimonial, transfer, and glittering generalities, which are vague virtue words.
  7. Repetition works independently of content, which is an uncomfortable fact about how belief forms.
  8. The defense is the same in every case: state the claim explicitly, and then ask what evidence is offered.

Where students lose marks: treating all persuasion as propaganda. Douglass persuades and so does an advertisement, and the difference has to be argued from what each conceals rather than assumed.

Worked example

The text. Advertising language of the 1920s, drawn from period publications and now in the public domain, with the products unnamed because the technique rather than the brand is the subject.

"Often a bridesmaid but never a bride."

"They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play!"

"The skin you love to touch."

Step one: state the claim of the first line. There is none. It is a situation, not an assertion, and no sentence in it can be shown to be false.

Step two: work out what it implies. That the reader may have a problem nobody will mention to her, that the problem has social consequences, and that the advertiser knows what it is. All three arrive without being claimed.

Step three: state why implication beats assertion. A claim can be tested and denied. An implication has to be reconstructed by the reader before it can be argued with, and a reader who reconstructs it has already done the work of believing it.

Step four: analyze the second line. It is a narrative with a reversal: humiliation followed by triumph, delivered in two sentences. No property of the product is mentioned at all.

Step five: name the technique. Transfer. The desirable feeling belongs to the story, and proximity moves it to the product. This is association rather than argument, and there is nothing in the copy to disagree with.

Step six: apply the same test to a political case. A slogan built on glittering generalities, words like freedom or security with no specified content, works the same way: it cannot be refuted because it has not said anything, and it borrows whatever the listener already attaches to the word.

Step seven: distinguish this from legitimate rhetoric. Douglass also uses association, pathos and repetition. The difference is that his claims are stated and his evidence is offered, so an opponent knows what to disagree with. Concealment, not technique, is what separates the two.

Step eight: state the defense. Write out the claim the text wants you to accept as a full sentence, then ask what evidence supports it. "This product will make you marriageable" is a claim, and once stated it is obviously unsupported. The whole technique depends on the sentence never being written down.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What is advertising's main advantage over a speech?
    Show the full solution

    It does not present itself as argument

  2. What is its usual method?
    Show the full solution

    Association rather than claim

  3. Name four common propaganda devices.
    Show the full solution

    Bandwagon, testimonial, transfer, glittering generalities

  4. What are glittering generalities?
    Show the full solution

    Vague virtue words with no specified content

  5. What is the defense against all of these?
    Show the full solution

    State the claim explicitly as a sentence, then ask what evidence supports it

  6. Why is an unstated claim more powerful than a stated one?
    Show the full solution

    A stated claim can be tested and denied. An implication has to be reconstructed by the reader before it can be argued with, and a reader who has reconstructed it has already performed the act of supplying it, which is most of the work of believing it. Nothing in "often a bridesmaid but never a bride" can be shown to be false, because nothing in it is asserted. The reader must supply it, and supplying it is most of believing

  7. Analyze the piano advertisement.
    Show the full solution

    It is a two-sentence narrative with a reversal: humiliation followed by triumph. No property of the product is mentioned anywhere. The desirable feeling belongs to the story, and proximity transfers it to the thing being sold. There is nothing in the copy to disagree with because the copy makes no claim about the product at all. Transfer: a story supplies a feeling the product has not earned

  8. How does a political slogan work the same way?
    Show the full solution

    A slogan built on words like freedom or security with no specified content cannot be refuted, because it has not said anything specific enough to be wrong. It also borrows whatever the listener already attaches to the word, so every listener hears their own definition confirmed. That is the same mechanism as the advertisement, applied to a different purchase. Unspecified virtue words cannot be refuted and borrow each listener's own meaning

  9. What actually distinguishes propaganda from legitimate rhetoric?
    Show the full solution

    Not the techniques, since Douglass uses association, pathos and repetition too. The difference is concealment: his claims are stated and his evidence is offered, so an opponent knows exactly what to disagree with. Propaganda typically suppresses alternatives rather than answering them, and hides the claim rather than defending it. What is concealed, not what is used

  10. Apply the defense to "often a bridesmaid but never a bride".
    Show the full solution

    Write the claim as a full sentence: "This product will make you marriageable." Once stated, it is obviously unsupported, and no reasonable reader would accept it. The whole technique depends on the sentence never being written down, which is why writing it down is the entire defense and why it takes about four seconds. Written as a sentence it is obviously unsupported, which is why it is never written

Lesson 3.10 · Unit 3 · W.9-10.2, RI.9-10.6

Effect, not inventory

A rhetorical analysis essay is not a list of the devices a text contains. It is an argument about how a particular text works on a particular audience, and the difference is visible in the first sentence of every paragraph.

The key ideas
  1. The thesis names a strategy and an effect, not a list of devices.
  2. Organize by strategy rather than by paragraph order, so the essay is not a walk through the text.
  3. Every body paragraph does four things: names a choice, quotes it, explains how it works, and states what it accomplishes.
  4. Use verbs of intention, such as concedes, qualifies, escalates, undercuts, since they assert something a reader could dispute.
  5. Always specify the audience, because an effect only exists in relation to someone.
  6. Do not evaluate whether you agree, since the task is to explain how the text persuades, not whether it should have.
  7. Devices are evidence, not subject matter, so name them in passing while analyzing the choice.
  8. The strongest analyses explain a risk, since showing why a choice might have failed proves you understand why it worked.

Where students lose marks: the device hunt. A paragraph identifying three metaphors, an anaphora and a rhetorical question, with no claim about what any of them does, scores far below one claim properly supported.

Worked example

The text. Sojourner Truth, address to the Women's Rights Convention at Akron, 1851, in the version recorded by Frances Dana Gage in 1863. Public domain.

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?

Step one: write a weak thesis and diagnose it. "Sojourner Truth uses repetition, rhetorical questions and personal anecdote to make her point." That is an inventory. It names devices and no effect, and it could be written without reading the speech.

Step two: write a strong thesis. "Truth dismantles the argument against women's rights by demonstrating that its premises have never applied to her, turning her own excluded body into evidence that the category being protected was never the whole category."

Step three: check it. It names a strategy, states an effect, and could be disagreed with. It also implies a structure, because an essay would now have to show the premises, the demonstration, and the consequence.

Step four: build one body paragraph's claim. "Truth begins by stating her opponent's argument more fully than he did." That is a choice, not a device.

Step five: quote and explain. She lists carriages, ditches and the best place everywhere, and then denies each in the same order: carriages, mud-puddles, best place. The parallel structure is what makes the refutation feel like arithmetic rather than contradiction.

Step six: state the accomplishment. By matching his list item for item she shows she is not disputing his facts but reporting that they exclude her, which is a far harder position to answer than disagreement would be.

Step seven: name the audience. A convention of mostly white women, some of whom had not thought about whether their arguments included her. The effect only exists in relation to them, and an analysis that does not say so has described a technique in a vacuum.

Step eight: explain the risk. Interrupting a convention to contradict a speaker could have read as hostility and lost the room. The refrain "and ain't I a woman" prevents that, because it asks for inclusion rather than demanding correction. Showing why the choice might have failed is what proves you understand why it worked.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What must a rhetorical analysis thesis name?
    Show the full solution

    A strategy and an effect, not a list of devices

  2. Name the four jobs of a body paragraph.
    Show the full solution

    Name a choice, quote it, explain how it works, state what it accomplishes

  3. Give three verbs of intention.
    Show the full solution

    Concedes, qualifies, escalates, undercuts

  4. Why must the audience be specified?
    Show the full solution

    An effect only exists in relation to someone

  5. Should the essay evaluate whether you agree?
    Show the full solution

    No; the task is to explain how the text persuades

  6. What is wrong with "Truth uses repetition, rhetorical questions and personal anecdote"?
    Show the full solution

    It is an inventory. It names three devices and no effect, and it could be written by someone who had skimmed the speech without reading it, since those three appear in most speeches ever given. A thesis has to make a claim about what this text does to this audience, which means it must be specific enough to be wrong about this speech. It lists devices, states no effect, and could be written without reading it

  7. Why is "Truth begins by stating her opponent's argument more fully than he did" a better paragraph opening?
    Show the full solution

    Because it names a choice rather than a device, and a choice is something a writer made and a reader could dispute. It also commits the paragraph to demonstrating something: that her version is fuller than his, which requires quoting and comparing. A paragraph opening with a device name commits to nothing beyond pointing at it. It names a disputable choice, which commits the paragraph to proving something

  8. Explain what the matched lists accomplish.
    Show the full solution

    Truth lists carriages, ditches and the best place everywhere, then denies each in the same order. The parallel structure makes the refutation feel like arithmetic rather than contradiction, and it shows she is not disputing his facts but reporting that they exclude her. That is a far harder position to answer than disagreement, because there is nothing in it to argue with. She matches his list item for item, so the refutation reports rather than disputes

  9. Why does naming the audience change the analysis?
    Show the full solution

    Because an effect exists only in relation to someone. Her audience is a convention of mostly white women, some of whom had not considered whether their arguments included her. The refrain works on them specifically, and the same words addressed to a hostile legislature would do something else entirely. An analysis that omits the audience has described a technique in a vacuum. The same words do different work on different audiences

  10. Why does explaining a risk strengthen an analysis?
    Show the full solution

    Because showing why a choice might have failed proves you understand why it worked. Interrupting a convention to contradict a speaker could have read as hostility and lost the room; the refrain "and ain't I a woman" prevents that by asking for inclusion rather than demanding correction. Identifying the danger the technique avoided is the clearest demonstration of understanding available. It proves you understand the mechanism rather than just observing the outcome

Unit 3 review · 10 questions · all lessons

Unit 3 review: Rhetoric

Shuffled across all ten lessons. Every question about a device wants its effect, not its name.

  1. Name the five parts of the rhetorical situation, and say which is most useful to analyze.
    Show the full solution

    Speaker, audience, purpose, occasion, message; audience, because almost every other choice follows from it

  2. Distinguish extrinsic from intrinsic ethos, and say which is worth analyzing.
    Show the full solution

    Extrinsic is the reputation a speaker brings in; intrinsic is what the text itself builds. Intrinsic is worth analyzing because it is made of sentences you can quote, explain and disagree with, while "he has ethos because he is a doctor" requires no reading at all. Intrinsic, because it is built from quotable sentences

  3. Why is concession such a strong ethos move?
    Show the full solution

    An audience assumes a persuader presents only helpful material, so a speaker who grants a point that costs something appears to be following evidence rather than selling a position. Douglass concedes more than he has to, and the surplus is why the attack lands. It is evidence that the speaker is weighing rather than selling

  4. Why is emotion not opposed to reason in rhetoric?
    Show the full solution

    Because some facts are only comprehensible when felt. A person who can contemplate a description of torture without response has categorized it rather than understood it, and a description producing the appropriate feeling is doing intellectual work. Pathos fails only when the feeling is not warranted by the facts. Some facts are not understood until they are felt

  5. What is an enthymeme, and where is Stanton's missing premise?
    Show the full solution

    A syllogism with a premise left unstated. Stanton never states that women are people; she inserts "and women" into a sentence her audience already accepts and lets the inference run. Objecting afterwards means objecting to the Declaration of Independence. A syllogism with an unstated premise; hers is that women are people

  6. Name the six parts of a classical speech, and say why Gettysburg's narratio is so short.
    Show the full solution

    Exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, refutatio, peroratio. The narratio exists to supply facts the audience lacks, and this audience is standing on the battlefield four months after the battle, so it is compressed to two sentences of reminder. The audience needed no facts supplied

  7. Analyze the anaphora in Douglass's "your celebration is a sham" passage.
    Show the full solution

    Six parallel clauses, each naming something the audience is proud of and destroying it in three words, with the verb elided and no conjunctions. By the fourth the listener can hear the next demolition coming, so anticipation strengthens rather than weakens the effect, and the possessive carries the whole thesis. Anticipated demolition, with "your" carrying the argument

  8. Why is ad hominem a fallacy even when the criticism is accurate?
    Show the full solution

    Because a claim's truth does not depend on its speaker's character. Antigone is genuinely insolent and her argument about divine law would be identical if she were meek. Creon's observation is true and irrelevant, and that combination is what makes the fallacy persuasive. Truth does not depend on the speaker's character

  9. How do you tell compressed reasoning from a slippery slope?
    Show the full solution

    Ask whether the speaker could supply the missing steps if challenged. Henry's prediction about disarmament rests on troops already sent and arms already seized, so the steps exist. A prediction whose intervening steps are merely asserted, with nothing to fill in, is the fallacy. Ask whether the missing steps could be supplied on request

  10. What must a rhetorical analysis thesis contain, and why is the audience essential?
    Show the full solution

    A strategy and an effect, not a list of devices. The audience is essential because an effect exists only in relation to someone: Truth's refrain works on a convention of mostly white women who had not considered whether their arguments included her, and the same words elsewhere would do something else. Strategy and effect; an effect only exists in relation to an audience

Lesson 4.1 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.6, RI.9-10.4

Satire and the gap between speaker and author

Swift's pamphlet is the most famous satire in English and the most commonly misread, because it never once signals that it is not serious. Understanding how it works is the point of the lesson; understanding why some readers miss it is the other point.

The key ideas
  1. Jonathan Swift published A Modest Proposal anonymously in 1729, and it is in the public domain.
  2. Its full title is A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.
  3. The proposal is that the infants of the Irish poor be sold as food, argued in the register of an economic pamphlet.
  4. Satire attacks a vice or folly by means of ridicule, and it requires a real target outside the text.
  5. The persona is the speaker Swift invents, a reasonable projector who believes his own scheme.
  6. The gap between persona and author is where the meaning lives, and Swift never closes it himself.
  7. The real target is not cannibalism but the economic reasoning that treated Irish people as units of production.
  8. Verbal irony operates continuously, so every sentence means the opposite of what the persona intends.

Where students lose marks: writing that Swift suggests eating babies. Swift's persona suggests it; Swift is demonstrating what the prevailing arguments about Ireland already assumed.

Worked example

The text. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, 1729. Public domain.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the publick good of my country... I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

Step one: establish the register. The pamphlet opens with statistics, arithmetic and the vocabulary of political economy. It looks exactly like the dozens of serious proposals about Ireland published in the same decade.

Step two: state why that matters. The satire works by imitation. If Swift had written in an obviously comic voice, the pamphlet would be a joke about a bad idea. Written in the register of policy, it becomes an accusation against that register.

Step three: examine the first passage. The horror is in the list: stewed, roasted, baked, boiled, fricassee, ragout. The persona is thinking about recipes, which no moral objection has interrupted.

Step four: identify the source of the effect. Not the proposal but the persona's calm. A man who could propose this while screaming would be mad; a man who proposes it while listing cooking methods has a functioning mind that has been trained not to notice something.

Step five: work the second passage. He establishes his disinterest by noting that his own children are too old to sell. It is the standard move of an honest advocate declaring he has no stake, and it is grotesque because of what the stake would have been.

Step six: identify the real target. The pamphlet argues that Irish children should be counted as economic assets. So did the serious arguments of the period, which calculated the value of a population in terms of rents and exports. Swift's persona has simply followed that logic to its end.

Step seven: state why Swift never breaks character. Because the moment the author steps forward to say he does not mean it, the pamphlet becomes a comment on an argument instead of an instance of it. Staying inside the persona forces the reader to locate the flaw themselves, and the flaw is in premises they share.

Step eight: write the analysis sentence. "By keeping his projector perfectly reasonable, disinterested and precise, Swift makes the pamphlet indistinguishable in form from the serious economic arguments of the 1720s, so a reader who recoils has to identify what separates it from them, and the honest answer is that it only completes them."

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. When was A Modest Proposal published, and by whom?
    Show the full solution

    1729, anonymously, by Jonathan Swift

  2. Define satire.
    Show the full solution

    An attack on a vice or folly by means of ridicule, requiring a real target outside the text

  3. What is a persona?
    Show the full solution

    The speaker an author invents, distinct from the author

  4. What is the pamphlet's real target?
    Show the full solution

    The economic reasoning that treated Irish people as units of production

  5. How does the persona establish his disinterest?
    Show the full solution

    By noting that his own children are too old to sell

  6. Why does Swift write in the register of an economic pamphlet?
    Show the full solution

    Because the satire works by imitation. An obviously comic voice would make the piece a joke about a bad idea, which attacks nothing. Written in the exact register of the serious proposals about Ireland published in the same decade, complete with statistics and arithmetic, it becomes an accusation against that register, and against everyone who reads such documents without discomfort. Imitation turns the piece from a joke into an accusation against the form it copies

  7. Where does the horror of the first passage actually come from?
    Show the full solution

    From the persona's calm rather than from the proposal. The list of cooking methods, stewed, roasted, baked, boiled, fricassee, ragout, shows a mind proceeding to practical detail with no moral objection having interrupted it. A man who proposed this while screaming would be mad and therefore dismissible; one who proposes it while considering recipes has a functioning mind trained not to notice something. The persona's calm, which shows a working mind trained not to notice

  8. Analyze the declaration of disinterest.
    Show the full solution

    It is the standard move of an honest advocate establishing he has no stake, and Swift executes it exactly: no personal interest, no motive but the public good, and proof in the form of children too old to sell. The form is scrupulous and the content is grotesque, and the gap between them is the joke. Ethos-building technique applied to a monstrous proposal exposes the technique. An honest advocate's move, made grotesque by what the stake would have been

  9. Why does Swift never break character?
    Show the full solution

    Because the moment the author steps forward to say he does not mean it, the pamphlet becomes a comment on an argument rather than an instance of one. Staying inside the persona forces readers to locate the flaw themselves, and when they try, the honest answer is that the flaw is in premises about population and economy that they already hold. Breaking character would let them off. It forces readers to find the flaw, which turns out to be in their own premises

  10. Why do some readers miss the satire?
    Show the full solution

    Because nothing in the text signals it. There is no comic register, no wink, no authorial voice and no exaggeration of form, only of content. A reader who accepts the premises the pamphlet shares with contemporary policy writing has no formal reason to stop. That is the design working rather than failing: Swift built a text that cannot be dismissed as obviously not serious. Nothing in the form signals it, which is the design rather than a flaw

Lesson 4.2 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.6, RI.9-10.8

The reader who takes it straight

Every satire risks being believed, and some of them are. This lesson examines the conditions under which satire succeeds and fails, because the answer says something useful about how readers use texts.

The key ideas
  1. Satire depends on shared knowledge between writer and reader about what is being ridiculed.
  2. A reader who lacks that knowledge has nothing to measure the text against and may take it at face value.
  3. Horatian satire is gentle and amused; Juvenalian satire is bitter and angry, and Swift's is the second.
  4. Parody imitates a specific work or style; satire attacks a target outside the text, and they often overlap.
  5. The closer the imitation, the greater the risk of being taken straight.
  6. Swift accepted that risk deliberately, since signaling the joke would have weakened the accusation.
  7. Satire cannot correct a reader who agrees with the persona, which is its permanent limitation.
  8. Context travels badly, so a satire read three centuries later loses the shared knowledge it was built on.

Where students lose marks: concluding that a misread satire has failed. Ask instead what the misreading reveals about which premises the reader shares with the persona.

Worked example

The text. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, 1729. Public domain.

Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance.

Step one: notice what this list contains. Every item is a real proposal Swift had made seriously in earlier pamphlets, under his own name, in plain prose.

Step two: state what the persona does with them. He dismisses them all, refusing to hear of "other expedients". The rejected list is the author's actual program.

Step three: state why this passage is the key to the text. It is the one place where Swift's own position becomes visible, and he makes it visible by having his persona sweep it aside. A reader who knows Swift's earlier pamphlets sees the author directly.

Step four: state what that requires of the reader. Shared knowledge. A Dublin reader in 1729 knew these proposals and knew who had made them. Without that, the list reads as the persona's impatience with impractical alternatives, which is exactly what it pretends to be.

Step five: name the risk Swift accepted. The imitation is close enough that the signal is only available to informed readers. Swift could have added a line making the irony explicit and chose not to, because doing so would have let every reader off the hook.

Step six: state the permanent limitation. Satire cannot correct a reader who agrees with the persona. Someone who genuinely believes Irish children are best understood as economic assets finds nothing in the pamphlet to object to except the menu, and that is a difference of degree.

Step seven: explain why context travels badly. Three centuries later a reader has no working knowledge of the 1720s Irish economy, of absentee landlords, or of Swift's earlier writing. The satire survives because the proposal is shocking, which is the crudest of its effects rather than the intended one.

Step eight: state what misreadings reveal. A reader who takes a satire straight has not failed a comprehension test. They have revealed which premises they share with the persona, and that information is more useful than the correction. Swift's pamphlet is a device for finding out what an audience already believes.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What does satire depend on?
    Show the full solution

    Shared knowledge between writer and reader about the target

  2. Distinguish Horatian from Juvenalian satire.
    Show the full solution

    Horatian is gentle and amused; Juvenalian is bitter and angry

  3. Which kind is Swift's?
    Show the full solution

    Juvenalian

  4. Distinguish parody from satire.
    Show the full solution

    Parody imitates a work or style; satire attacks a target outside the text

  5. What is contained in the list of rejected "other expedients"?
    Show the full solution

    Swift's own serious proposals from earlier pamphlets

  6. Why is the list of rejected expedients the key to the text?
    Show the full solution

    It is the one place where Swift's own position becomes visible, and he makes it visible by having the persona sweep it aside. Every item on the list is a proposal Swift had published seriously under his own name. A reader who knows that sees the author directly through the persona for one paragraph, which is the only such moment in the pamphlet. It is the only place Swift's real program appears, disguised as the persona's impatience

  7. What does that passage require of a reader?
    Show the full solution

    Knowledge of Swift's earlier pamphlets and of the debate about Ireland in the 1720s. A Dublin reader in 1729 had both and would have recognized the list instantly. Without it, the passage reads exactly as it pretends to: a practical man impatient with alternatives that have been tried and failed. The signal is invisible to an uninformed reader by design. Knowledge of Swift's own earlier proposals and the Irish debate

  8. Why did Swift not make the irony explicit?
    Show the full solution

    Because a line signaling the joke would have let every reader off the hook. Explicitly marked irony converts the pamphlet into a comment on bad arguments, which a reader can agree with comfortably. Unmarked, it forces each reader to locate the flaw themselves, and the discomfort of not finding a clean one is the whole effect. Signaling it would let readers agree comfortably instead of searching

  9. What is satire's permanent limitation?
    Show the full solution

    It cannot correct a reader who agrees with the persona. Someone who genuinely believes a population is best understood as an economic asset finds nothing in the pamphlet to object to except the menu, and that is a difference of degree rather than of principle. Satire works on readers who already hold the value it appeals to, and has no purchase on anyone else. It has no purchase on a reader who shares the persona's premises

  10. What does a misreading actually reveal?
    Show the full solution

    Which premises the reader shares with the persona. A reader who takes a satire straight has not failed a comprehension test; they have disclosed that nothing in the argument struck them as unusual until the content did. That information is more useful than correcting them, and it means the pamphlet functions as a device for finding out what an audience already believes. Which of the persona's premises the reader already held

Lesson 4.3 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.5, SL.9-10.3

Occasion, audience and kairos

A speech is written to be heard once, by particular people, at a particular moment. Every feature that distinguishes it from an essay follows from those three facts.

The key ideas
  1. A speech arrives once, in order, at the speaker's pace, with no possibility of rereading.
  2. That single constraint produces most of the differences between spoken and written argument.
  3. Repetition is necessary in speech and optional in writing, because a listener cannot go back.
  4. Structure must be announced, since a listener cannot see the shape of the argument on a page.
  5. Sentences are shorter and syntax simpler, because a complex subordinate clause is hard to hold in memory.
  6. Aristotle's three genres are deliberative, forensic and epideictic: speech about the future, the past, and the present.
  7. Deliberative speech urges a decision, forensic accuses or defends about past events, and epideictic praises or blames on a ceremonial occasion.
  8. The occasion determines the genre, and mistaking the genre is the fastest way to misread a speech.

Where students lose marks: analyzing a speech as though it were an essay. Ask what the audience could actually retain, and notice that every repeated phrase is a decision about memory.

Worked example

The texts. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, 1863, a work of the United States government; and Patrick Henry's speech to the Virginia Convention, 1775, as recorded by William Wirt in 1817. Both public domain.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live... But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground.

Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?

Step one: classify the genres. Lincoln's is epideictic: a ceremonial occasion, praising the dead, concerned with the present. Henry's is deliberative: a legislature deciding whether to arm, concerned with the future.

Step two: state what the genre predicts. Epideictic speech uses elevated style, formal rhythm and the language of shared values. Deliberative speech uses questions, urgency and direct address, because it needs a decision today.

Step three: check the prediction on Lincoln. Three parallel negations, a formal triple rhythm, no question, no instruction to any individual. The style matches the genre exactly.

Step four: check it on Henry. Four sentences, three of them questions, all of them short, one exclamation. The syntax is as simple as English gets, and nothing in it is hard to hold in memory.

Step five: notice the repetition in both. "We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow." Three repetitions of a structure a reader could have absorbed once. In a speech the repetition is what makes the listener able to follow.

Step six: state why Henry uses questions. A question compels a listener to supply an answer, which is participation rather than reception. In a room that has to vote, making the audience answer silently is the closest a speaker can get to making them decide.

Step seven: assess the kairos of each. Lincoln's works four months after the battle, when the dead are buried and the war is not over. Henry's works in March 1775, after Lexington is imminent and before it has happened. Both are unrepeatable moments.

Step eight: state what an essay would lose. Both passages are short, simple and repetitive, which on a page looks thin. Judged as speech they are efficient, because everything a listener can carry away is in them and nothing else is. Analyzing a speech as an essay mistakes economy for poverty.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Name Aristotle's three genres of speech.
    Show the full solution

    Deliberative, forensic, epideictic

  2. What is each concerned with?
    Show the full solution

    The future, the past, and the present

  3. Classify the Gettysburg Address and Henry's speech.
    Show the full solution

    Epideictic and deliberative

  4. Why is repetition necessary in speech?
    Show the full solution

    A listener cannot go back

  5. Why are sentences shorter in speech?
    Show the full solution

    A complex subordinate clause is hard to hold in memory

  6. How does genre predict style?
    Show the full solution

    Epideictic speech, being ceremonial and about shared values, uses elevated style and formal rhythm and asks nothing of any individual. Deliberative speech needs a decision today, so it uses questions, urgency and direct address. Lincoln's three parallel negations and Henry's four short questions each match their genre exactly, which means classifying the occasion predicts most of the prose. Ceremony produces elevated rhythm; deliberation produces questions and urgency

  7. What does repetition do in Lincoln's passage?
    Show the full solution

    "We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow" repeats a structure a reader would have absorbed on the first occurrence. In a speech the repetition is what makes the point survivable: a listener hearing it once at speaking pace might miss it, and hearing it three times cannot. Every repeated phrase in a speech is a decision about the audience's memory. It makes the point survive a single hearing at speaking pace

  8. Why does Henry use questions?
    Show the full solution

    A question compels a listener to supply an answer, which is participation rather than reception. In a room that has to vote, making the audience answer silently is the closest a speaker can get to making them decide. Four sentences containing three questions puts the Convention into the habit of concluding things before the vote is called. They make the audience supply answers, which is practice for deciding

  9. Assess the kairos of each speech.
    Show the full solution

    Lincoln's works four months after the battle, when the dead are buried and the war is not yet won, so an obligation can still be assigned to the living. Henry's works in March 1775, with British troops in the colonies and Lexington weeks away but not yet fought. Both depend on a moment that had not existed earlier and would not exist later. Each depends on a window that did not exist before and closed after

  10. What goes wrong when a speech is analyzed as an essay?
    Show the full solution

    Economy is mistaken for poverty. Both passages are short, simple and repetitive, which on a page looks thin and unsophisticated. Judged as speech they are efficient: everything a listener can carry away is present and nothing else is. The right question is always what the audience could actually retain, not what would reward rereading. Economy is mistaken for thinness, because rereading is assumed

Lesson 4.4 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.6, RI.9-10.9

The speech, and the problem of the record

Sojourner Truth's address at Akron is one of the most quoted speeches in American history, and the version everyone quotes was written down twelve years later by someone else. That fact is not a footnote; it is part of what the lesson is about.

The key ideas
  1. Sojourner Truth was born enslaved in New York around 1797 and freed under state law in 1827.
  2. She spoke at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, without a written text.
  3. Two accounts survive. Marius Robinson published one in 1851, weeks after the event and from his own notes.
  4. Frances Dana Gage published another in 1863, twelve years later, and that is the famous one.
  5. The refrain "and ain't I a woman" appears only in Gage's version, not in Robinson's earlier one.
  6. Gage also wrote Truth's speech in a Southern dialect, although Truth grew up speaking Dutch in New York and had never lived in the South.
  7. Both versions are public domain and both are historical documents, but they are documents of different things.
  8. The argument in both is that the reasons given for denying women rights have never been extended to her, so they cannot be reasons about women at all.

Where students lose marks: quoting the 1863 version as Truth's words without qualification. Say which version you are using and when it was recorded, which takes one clause and is simply accurate.

Worked example

The texts. Marius Robinson's 1851 account and Frances Dana Gage's 1863 account of Sojourner Truth's Akron address. Both public domain.

I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it.

Robinson, 1851

Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?

Gage, 1863

Step one: identify what both versions share. The argument. Truth points to her own body and her own labor and asks what category she falls into, given that the reasons offered for excluding women have never applied to her.

Step two: state why that argument is powerful. It does not dispute the claim that women need protection. It reports that the claim has never been extended to her, which means the speaker was not describing women but a particular class of them.

Step three: identify the differences. The refrain is not in Robinson. The dialect is not in Robinson. The list of tasks differs. The rhetorical shape of Gage's version is tighter and more quotable.

Step four: state what the dialect does. Gage renders Truth's speech in a Southern dialect she did not speak, having grown up in a Dutch-speaking household in New York. The choice makes the speaker sound like a Southern freedwoman, which fits an abolitionist audience's expectations and is not accurate.

Step five: assess Gage fairly. She was recording from memory twelve years later, during the Civil War, for a purpose. She preserved a speech that would otherwise be known only from Robinson's shorter account, and she shaped it. Both of those are true.

Step six: state what a careful writer does. Names the version, dates the record, and quotes whichever suits the point being made. "In Frances Dana Gage's 1863 account, Truth asks..." costs one clause and is accurate.

Step seven: ask what the two versions are each evidence of. Robinson's is better evidence of what Truth said. Gage's is evidence of that plus what abolitionist audiences in 1863 wanted a formerly enslaved woman to sound like. The second is a document about its own moment.

Step eight: state the general lesson. A speech delivered without a text survives only through someone else's record, and the recorder has interests. That applies to Patrick Henry, whose speech was reconstructed by a biographer in 1817 from other people's memories, and to a great deal of what is quoted as historical speech.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. When and where did Truth deliver this speech?
    Show the full solution

    The Women's Rights Convention at Akron, Ohio, 1851

  2. Name the two recorders and their dates.
    Show the full solution

    Marius Robinson in 1851, and Frances Dana Gage in 1863

  3. Which version contains the famous refrain?
    Show the full solution

    Gage's, twelve years after the event

  4. What language did Truth grow up speaking?
    Show the full solution

    Dutch, in New York

  5. State the argument both versions contain.
    Show the full solution

    That the reasons given for denying women rights have never been extended to her

  6. Why is the argument so difficult to answer?
    Show the full solution

    Because it does not dispute the claim that women need protection. It reports that the claim has never been extended to her, and offers her own body and labor as the evidence. An opponent must either concede that the argument was never about women as such, or say openly which women it covered, and both answers destroy the position. She concedes the premise and reports that it excluded her, leaving no answer

  7. What does Gage's use of dialect do?
    Show the full solution

    It makes the speaker sound like a Southern freedwoman, which fits an abolitionist audience's expectations in 1863 and is not accurate, since Truth grew up in a Dutch-speaking household in New York and never lived in the South. The choice adds vividness and it also assigns her an identity she did not have, which is a consequential thing for a record to do. It assigns her a Southern identity she did not have, fitting audience expectations

  8. Assess Gage fairly.
    Show the full solution

    She was recording from memory twelve years later, during a war, for a purpose, and she shaped what she wrote. She also preserved a version of a speech that would otherwise be known only from Robinson's shorter account, and her version is why the speech is remembered at all. Both things are true and an honest treatment says both. She preserved the speech and she shaped it; both are true

  9. What is each version evidence of?
    Show the full solution

    Robinson's, written weeks later from his own notes, is better evidence of what Truth actually said. Gage's is evidence of that plus what abolitionist audiences in 1863 wanted a formerly enslaved woman to sound like, which makes it a document about its own moment as well as about 1851. Neither is worthless and they are evidence of different things. Robinson of what was said; Gage of that plus what 1863 wanted to hear

  10. What general lesson does this case teach?
    Show the full solution

    A speech delivered without a text survives only through someone else's record, and the recorder has interests. Patrick Henry's speech was reconstructed by a biographer in 1817 from other people's memories of 1775, and a great deal of famous historical speech reaches us the same way. Naming the version and the date takes one clause and is simply accurate. Undocumented speech survives through interested recorders, so name the version

Lesson 4.5 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.8, RI.9-10.6

The deliberative speech, and the false dilemma

Henry's speech is the clearest example in this course of a text that is rhetorically superb and logically flawed at its most famous point. Holding both judgments at once is the skill this unit exists to build.

The key ideas
  1. Patrick Henry addressed the Virginia Convention on 23 March 1775, arguing that the colony should arm its militia.
  2. No text survives from 1775. The speech was reconstructed by William Wirt in his 1817 biography, from the recollections of people who were there.
  3. It is deliberative: it urges a specific decision about the future.
  4. The exordium is an elaborate apology for disagreeing with respected colleagues, which builds ethos before any claim is made.
  5. The central argument is inductive: ten years of petitions have been answered with troops, so further petitioning is futile.
  6. The famous closing line is a false dilemma, as lesson 3.8 established.
  7. A speech can be fallacious and still be right, since Henry's assessment of British intentions turned out to be accurate.
  8. Evaluating reasoning and evaluating conclusions are separate tasks, and an analysis must not collapse them.

Where students lose marks: treating "this contains a fallacy" as a verdict on the speech. Say what the fallacy does, whether the argument survives without it, and what the speech gets right.

Worked example

The text. Patrick Henry, speech to the Virginia Convention, 23 March 1775, as recorded by William Wirt in 1817. Public domain.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves?

We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne... Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded.

Step one: identify the form of the first argument. Induction. Ten years of evidence about British conduct, used to predict future conduct. Henry names the method explicitly: judging the future by the past.

Step two: assess its sufficiency. Ten years is a substantial sample, the instances are of the relevant kind, and the audience can verify them from memory. As inductive arguments go, this one is strong.

Step three: examine the second passage's structure. Four verbs ascending in submissiveness: petitioned, remonstrated, supplicated, prostrated. Then three of them repeated with their outcomes: slighted, answered with violence, disregarded.

Step four: state what the matched structure does. It presents the evidence as a completed experiment. Every available method has been tried and each result is recorded, so the conclusion that nothing remains is delivered by the arrangement rather than asserted.

Step five: locate the fallacy. "Give me liberty or give me death." Two options are offered where more existed, and Henry does not argue that the middle options are unavailable; he sweeps past them.

Step six: ask whether the argument survives without it. Yes. The inductive case about ten years of petitions stands entirely on its own and is the speech's actual reasoning. The false dilemma is a peroration, and removing it would weaken the speech rhetorically and not logically.

Step seven: assess the conclusion separately. Henry was right. The British government had no intention of conceding, war began three weeks later, and further petitioning would have achieved nothing. A flawed argument reached an accurate conclusion.

Step eight: state the analytical discipline. Evaluating reasoning and evaluating conclusions are two tasks. This speech has strong induction, a genuine fallacy in its most quoted line, and a correct judgment about the future. An analysis that reports only one of those three has not read it.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. When and where did Henry speak, and about what?
    Show the full solution

    The Virginia Convention, 23 March 1775, urging that the militia be armed

  2. How does the text reach us?
    Show the full solution

    Reconstructed by William Wirt in an 1817 biography from others' recollections

  3. What genre of speech is it?
    Show the full solution

    Deliberative

  4. What does the exordium do?
    Show the full solution

    Apologizes elaborately for disagreeing with respected colleagues, building ethos

  5. Name the four verbs in the petition sequence.
    Show the full solution

    Petitioned, remonstrated, supplicated, prostrated

  6. Assess the induction for sufficiency.
    Show the full solution

    Ten years is a substantial sample, the instances are of exactly the relevant kind, namely British responses to colonial petitions, and the audience can verify every one from memory. Henry also names his method openly rather than smuggling it in. As inductive arguments go this is a strong one, and it is the speech's actual reasoning rather than its most quoted sentence. Strong: a large sample of relevant, verifiable instances

  7. What does the matched structure of the second passage accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    Four verbs ascending in submissiveness are followed by their recorded outcomes, so the passage presents itself as a completed experiment: every available method tried, every result logged. The conclusion that nothing remains is delivered by the arrangement rather than asserted, which makes it feel like a finding rather than an opinion. It presents the evidence as a completed experiment with every result recorded

  8. Where is the fallacy, and does the argument survive without it?
    Show the full solution

    In the closing line, which offers two options where more existed and sweeps past the middle rather than arguing against it. The argument survives entirely: the inductive case about ten years of petitions stands on its own and is the speech's real reasoning. Removing the closing line would weaken the speech rhetorically and not logically at all. In the peroration; the inductive case stands without it

  9. Was Henry right?
    Show the full solution

    Yes. The British government had no intention of conceding, fighting began at Lexington three weeks later, and further petitioning would have achieved nothing. A speech containing a genuine fallacy in its most famous line reached an accurate judgment about the future, which is the case this lesson exists to examine. Yes; war began three weeks later and petitioning had been exhausted

  10. State the analytical discipline this speech demonstrates.
    Show the full solution

    Evaluating reasoning and evaluating conclusions are separate tasks. This speech contains strong induction, a real fallacy in its most quoted sentence, and a correct assessment of British intentions. An analysis reporting only the fallacy has dismissed a good argument, and one reporting only the correct conclusion has excused a bad move. Both have to be said. Reasoning and conclusions are judged separately and both must be reported

Lesson 4.6 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.2, RI.9-10.6

Turning a life into evidence

Read the whole Narrative before this lesson. It is short, about a hundred pages, and it is constructed as an argument rather than as a memoir, which is the thing to watch for.

The key ideas
  1. Frederick Douglass published the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845, and it is in the public domain.
  2. It sold enormously and made him a target, since he was still legally a fugitive and had named the men who held him.
  3. A slave narrative is a genre with established conventions, including prefaces by white abolitionists vouching for the author.
  4. Douglass's book opens with two such prefaces, by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, which is a fact worth analyzing.
  5. He begins by not knowing his own birthday, and uses that absence as his first piece of evidence.
  6. The book argues rather than recounts: each episode is selected to establish a claim about the institution.
  7. He refuses to describe his escape in order to protect the route and the people who helped him.
  8. The appendix distinguishes Christianity from slaveholding religion, anticipating an objection the book's argument would otherwise leave open.

Where students lose marks: treating the Narrative as a sequence of events. Ask of any episode what claim it is being used to prove, because Douglass chose it for that reason.

Worked example

The text. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845. Public domain.

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.

I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit.

Step one: notice where the book begins. Not with a birth but with the absence of a record of one. The first sentence is about missing information.

Step two: state what that accomplishes. Every autobiography opens with a date. Beginning with the impossibility of supplying one announces immediately that this is not an ordinary life being recounted, without a word of argument.

Step three: work the comparison. "As little of their ages as horses know of theirs." Douglass chooses the analogy, and it is a claim about how the institution classified him. He is not being insulted; he is reporting a classification.

Step four: identify the shift in the second sentence. "It is the wish of most masters to keep their slaves thus ignorant." The absence is not an accident of record-keeping. It is policy, and the sentence moves from a fact about Douglass to a claim about a system.

Step five: state the structure of the argument. Particular fact, then generalization, then evidence for the generalization in the next paragraph. That is the shape of the whole book: an episode, then what it establishes about the institution.

Step six: examine the second passage's evidence. Asking about his own age was treated as impertinence and as evidence of a restless spirit. That single detail supports the policy claim without any further assertion, because it shows the ignorance being maintained deliberately.

Step seven: state why this is stronger than outrage. Douglass reports rather than denounces. The reader performs the outrage, which is more durable than borrowed outrage, and the restraint also serves his ethos with white readers disposed to suspect exaggeration.

Step eight: write the analysis sentence. "By opening with the absence of a birth record and then reporting that inquiries about it were treated as impertinence, Douglass converts a missing fact about himself into evidence of a deliberate policy, and establishes in two paragraphs the method the whole book uses: a particular detail, offered without comment, that can only be explained by a system."

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. When was the Narrative published?
    Show the full solution

    1845

  2. Why was publishing it dangerous for Douglass?
    Show the full solution

    He was still legally a fugitive and had named the men who held him

  3. Who wrote the book's two prefaces?
    Show the full solution

    William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips

  4. What does Douglass refuse to describe, and why?
    Show the full solution

    His escape, to protect the route and the people who helped him

  5. What does the appendix distinguish?
    Show the full solution

    Christianity from the religion of slaveholders

  6. Why does the book open with a missing birth record?
    Show the full solution

    Every autobiography opens with a date, so beginning with the impossibility of supplying one announces immediately that this is not an ordinary life being recounted. The absence does the work of a thesis statement without a word of argument, and it also establishes the method: a particular missing fact that can only be explained by policy. The absence of the conventional opening is itself the first argument

  7. Analyze the comparison to horses.
    Show the full solution

    Douglass chooses it, which matters. He is not being insulted by someone else; he is reporting how the institution classified him and using the classification as evidence. The comparison is precise rather than emotive: horses genuinely do not know their ages because nobody records them, and the point is that the same was true of people by design. He reports a classification the system made, using it as evidence

  8. How does the argument move from fact to system?
    Show the full solution

    The first sentence states a fact about Douglass. The second generalizes: most slaves know as little, and most masters wish to keep them so. The next paragraph supplies evidence for the generalization, namely that asking was treated as impertinence and as evidence of a restless spirit. Particular, generalization, evidence, which is the shape of the whole book. Particular fact, then generalization, then evidence for the generalization

  9. Why is reporting stronger than denouncing here?
    Show the full solution

    The reader performs the outrage rather than receiving it, and outrage a reader has produced is more durable than outrage they have been handed. The restraint also serves Douglass's ethos with white readers disposed to suspect exaggeration in a slave narrative, which was a real and anticipated objection. Flat reporting answers it before it is made. The reader supplies the outrage, and restraint answers suspicions of exaggeration

  10. Why are the two prefaces worth analyzing?
    Show the full solution

    Because they are a convention of the genre: white abolitionists vouching that a Black author really wrote the book. Their presence is evidence about what the book had to overcome, and it frames Douglass's own prose as something requiring authentication. The Narrative's style, precise and unemotional, can be read as an answer to the same suspicion the prefaces exist to address. They document the suspicion the book had to overcome, which shapes its style

Lesson 4.7 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.2, RI.9-10.5

Literacy as the Narrative's central claim

The book's structural center is not an escape or a beating but a sentence spoken by a slaveholder about reading. Everything in the Narrative is organized around it.

The key ideas
  1. Sophia Auld begins teaching Douglass to read and her husband stops her.
  2. Hugh Auld's explanation is that literacy would make a slave unmanageable and discontented, and Douglass overhears it.
  3. Douglass treats the prohibition as instruction, concluding that literacy must be the route out because his master has just said so.
  4. He then obtains it in fragments, from white boys in the street, from a copybook, and from a schoolbook of speeches called The Columbian Orator.
  5. The Columbian Orator contained a dialogue in which a slave argues his master into freeing him, which taught Douglass argument as well as reading.
  6. Literacy makes his condition worse first, and he says so plainly, since understanding it removes the possibility of not thinking about it.
  7. The book is itself the proof of its own claim, since a reader holding it is holding what Hugh Auld tried to prevent.
  8. Sophia Auld's change from kindness to cruelty is offered as evidence that the institution damages the people who hold it.

Where students lose marks: calling literacy "a symbol of freedom". It is not a symbol in this book; it is a causal mechanism, and Douglass explains the causation directly.

Worked example

The text. Frederick Douglass, Narrative, 1845. Public domain.

"If you teach that [racial slur in the original] how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master."

Douglass records Hugh Auld's words exactly, including a racial slur. Square brackets mark the one substitution made here; every other word is as printed in 1845.

These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought... I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty, to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.

Step one: state what Hugh Auld actually says. That literacy would make Douglass unfit to be a slave. He is not stating a prejudice; he is stating a working theory about how the institution is maintained.

Step two: state what Douglass does with it. He accepts the theory. If reading destroys a slave, then reading is the route out, and the prohibition has just told him where to go. He calls the prohibition itself "a grand achievement" of understanding.

Step three: identify the irony. Hugh Auld's attempt to prevent Douglass's education is the single most educational event in the book. The passage is structured as a reversal: an act intended to close a door identifies it.

Step four: state why this is not a symbol. Douglass explains the mechanism directly. Reading gives access to arguments, to news, to forged passes, to the abolitionist press and to the ability to write about it. Every one of those is a practical cause rather than a figurative meaning.

Step five: work the Columbian Orator. It was a school textbook of speeches, and it contained a dialogue in which an enslaved man argues his master into freeing him. Douglass learned from it both how to read and what an argument looks like when it wins.

Step six: read the passage about misery. Douglass states that literacy tormented him, that he envied the stupidity of his fellow slaves, and that learning to read showed him his condition without showing him an exit. He does not soften this.

Step seven: state why the admission strengthens the book. A narrative in which education simply liberates would be a comfortable story. Reporting that it first made everything worse is a concession, and concessions build ethos, as lesson 3.2 established.

Step eight: state the structural argument. The book the reader is holding is the thing Hugh Auld said would make a slave unmanageable. Douglass learned to read, became unmanageable, escaped, and wrote it. The Narrative is the completed proof of a claim made by a slaveholder in a kitchen in Baltimore.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Who begins teaching Douglass to read, and who stops it?
    Show the full solution

    Sophia Auld begins; her husband Hugh Auld stops it

  2. What reason does Hugh Auld give?
    Show the full solution

    That literacy would make Douglass unmanageable and unfit to be a slave

  3. Name three sources from which Douglass obtains literacy.
    Show the full solution

    White boys in the street, a copybook, and The Columbian Orator

  4. What was The Columbian Orator?
    Show the full solution

    A schoolbook of speeches, containing a dialogue in which a slave argues his master into freeing him

  5. What happens to Sophia Auld?
    Show the full solution

    She changes from kindness to cruelty

  6. Why does Douglass call the prohibition a "grand achievement"?
    Show the full solution

    Because it solved the problem that had most perplexed him: how the white man's power to enslave was maintained. Hugh Auld's explanation is a working theory of the institution, delivered aloud in front of the person it concerned. Douglass accepts the theory and takes the prohibition as a map, which is why he treats the moment as intellectual achievement rather than as a setback. It explained how enslavement was maintained, which told him where to go

  7. Identify the irony in the episode.
    Show the full solution

    Hugh Auld's attempt to prevent Douglass's education is the single most educational event in the book. The passage is built as a reversal in the precise rhetorical sense: an act intended to close a door identifies it instead. The teaching that mattered came from the person trying hardest to prevent teaching, and Douglass says so explicitly. The act intended to close the route is what reveals it

  8. Why is literacy a mechanism rather than a symbol?
    Show the full solution

    Because Douglass explains the causation directly. Reading gives access to arguments, to news, to the abolitionist press, to the ability to forge a pass and to the ability to write a book. Every one of those is a practical cause with a traceable effect, not a figurative meaning a reader assigns. Calling it a symbol substitutes vagueness for what the text states. Douglass names practical causes with traceable effects

  9. Why does Douglass admit that literacy made things worse?
    Show the full solution

    Because a narrative in which education simply liberates would be a comfortable story and a less credible one. He states that it tormented him, that he envied the stupidity of his fellow slaves, and that it showed him his condition without showing him an exit. That is a concession, and concessions build ethos by demonstrating that the writer is reporting rather than advocating. The concession is more credible than a comfortable story and builds ethos

  10. How is the book its own proof?
    Show the full solution

    Hugh Auld said that literacy would make a slave unmanageable and of no value to his master. Douglass learned to read, became unmanageable, escaped, and wrote the book the reader is holding. The object in the reader's hands is the completed demonstration of a claim made by a slaveholder in a Baltimore kitchen, which is the tightest structure available to an argument. The book in the reader's hands completes the slaveholder's own prediction

Lesson 4.8 · Unit 4 · RI.9-10.9, RI.9-10.6

Argument against testimony

Standard RI.9-10.9 asks students to analyze documents that address related themes. Douglass wrote in two modes about the same subject, seven years apart, and the difference between them is a lesson in how a writer matches form to purpose.

The key ideas
  1. The Narrative of 1845 is testimony: a first-person account offered as evidence of what an eyewitness saw.
  2. The Fourth of July speech of 1852 is argument: a public case built on premises the audience already holds.
  3. Testimony's strength is that it cannot be answered except by calling the witness a liar.
  4. Argument's strength is that it can be checked, so an audience can verify it without trusting the speaker.
  5. Testimony's weakness is that it is one person's account, and the Narrative's prefaces exist because of exactly that objection.
  6. Argument's weakness is that it can be resisted by disputing a premise, which testimony gives no room for.
  7. Douglass uses both and in the 1852 speech he quotes his own experience sparingly, relying on the Declaration instead.
  8. The choice follows the audience: the Narrative addresses readers who may not know, and the speech addresses people who know and celebrate anyway.

Where students lose marks: arguing that one mode is stronger. Each answers a different objection, and the essay should show what each is for rather than rank them.

Worked example

The texts. Douglass's Narrative, 1845, and "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?", 1852. Both public domain.

I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood.

Narrative, 1845

Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government... There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment.

Fourth of July speech, 1852

Step one: choose the basis. Both texts establish that enslaved people are human beings entitled to the same consideration as anyone else. That is one claim both make and prove differently.

Step two: state how the Narrative proves it. By testimony. Douglass was in the next room, he heard it, he names the relation and the method and the hour. The reader is asked to believe an eyewitness.

Step three: state how the speech proves it. By argument from the opponent's own law. Virginia's statutes distinguish crimes committed by black men from the same crimes committed by white men, which requires classifying the first as persons capable of committing crimes. The law itself concedes the point.

Step four: name the difference. One asks for trust and one asks for none. Douglass's testimony can be doubted by anyone willing to doubt him; his argument from Virginia's statute book cannot be doubted by anyone at all.

Step five: connect each to its audience. The Narrative addresses readers who may genuinely not know what slavery involved, and description is what they need. The speech addresses an anti-slavery society that already knows, so description would be redundant and argument is what remains.

Step six: notice the tone difference. "Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?" is impatient, and the impatience is the point: Douglass is refusing to perform an argument his audience should not need, which is itself a rebuke to them for expecting it.

Step seven: state the weakness of each. Testimony is one person's account, which is why two white abolitionists had to vouch for the Narrative in prefaces. Argument can be resisted by disputing a premise, which is why the speech leans on the Declaration, a premise the audience cannot disown.

Step eight: write the comparative claim. "Both texts establish the humanity of the enslaved, but the Narrative does it by testimony that can only be answered by calling Douglass a liar, while the speech does it from Virginia's own statute book, so the earlier work asks an audience to trust him and the later one makes trust unnecessary." That names both texts, the shared claim, the difference and its consequence.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Distinguish testimony from argument.
    Show the full solution

    Testimony is a witness's account offered as evidence; argument builds a case on premises the audience holds

  2. What is testimony's strength?
    Show the full solution

    It cannot be answered except by calling the witness a liar

  3. What is argument's strength?
    Show the full solution

    It can be checked without trusting the speaker

  4. What evidence does the 1852 speech use about Virginia?
    Show the full solution

    That seventy-two crimes carry death for a black man and two for a white man

  5. Why do the Narrative's prefaces exist?
    Show the full solution

    Because testimony is one person's account and readers doubted it

  6. How does the Virginia statute prove the point?
    Show the full solution

    Distinguishing crimes committed by a black man from the same crimes committed by a white man requires classifying the first as a person capable of committing a crime. The law cannot punish a thing. Virginia's own statute book therefore concedes the humanity of the people it enslaves, which means the point is established from the opponent's own documents rather than from Douglass's word. Punishing someone for a crime concedes they are a person capable of one

  7. How does each text match its audience?
    Show the full solution

    The Narrative addresses readers who may genuinely not know what slavery involved, and description is what they need, so it supplies scenes. The 1852 speech addresses an anti-slavery society who already know and celebrate the Fourth of July anyway, so description would be redundant and argument from their own founding documents is what remains. The form follows what the audience lacks. Description for those who do not know; argument for those who know and celebrate anyway

  8. What is the impatience in "Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?" doing?
    Show the full solution

    Refusing to perform an argument the audience should not need, which is itself a rebuke for expecting it. By stating that the point is conceded already and that nobody doubts it, Douglass converts what would have been the central labor of an abolitionist speech into an insult he declines to accept. The tone is part of the argument. Refusing the argument rebukes the audience for expecting it

  9. State the weakness of each mode.
    Show the full solution

    Testimony is one person's account, and can be dismissed by anyone willing to doubt the witness, which is exactly why two white abolitionists had to vouch for the Narrative in prefaces. Argument can be resisted by disputing a premise, which is why the 1852 speech leans on the Declaration of Independence, a premise the audience cannot disown without abandoning the holiday they are celebrating. Testimony can be doubted; argument can be resisted at its premises

  10. Write the comparative claim.
    Show the full solution

    "Both texts establish the humanity of the enslaved, but the Narrative does it by testimony that can only be answered by calling Douglass a liar, while the speech does it from Virginia's own statute book, so the earlier work asks an audience to trust him and the later one makes trust unnecessary." It names both texts, the shared claim, the precise difference and its consequence. Both texts, shared claim, precise difference, and its consequence

Unit 4 review · 10 questions · all lessons

Unit 4 review: Persuasive Nonfiction

Shuffled across all eight lessons. Several questions require you to apply unit 3's vocabulary to a text in unit 4.

  1. Define satire and persona, and name Swift's real target.
    Show the full solution

    An attack on folly by ridicule; the speaker an author invents; the target is the economic reasoning that treated Irish people as units of production

  2. Why does Swift write in the register of an economic pamphlet?
    Show the full solution

    Because the satire works by imitation. An obviously comic voice would make the piece a joke about a bad idea, which attacks nothing. Written in the exact register of the serious proposals about Ireland published in the same decade, it becomes an accusation against that register. Imitation turns a joke into an accusation against the form it copies

  3. What does the list of rejected "other expedients" contain, and what does it require of a reader?
    Show the full solution

    Every item is a proposal Swift had published seriously under his own name. It is the only place his real position appears, disguised as the persona's impatience, and seeing it requires knowledge of his earlier pamphlets. Without that, the passage reads exactly as it pretends to. Swift's own serious proposals; it requires knowledge of his earlier work

  4. Name Aristotle's three genres of speech and classify Lincoln's and Henry's.
    Show the full solution

    Deliberative, forensic, epideictic; the Gettysburg Address is epideictic and Henry's is deliberative

  5. Why is repetition necessary in speech but optional in writing?
    Show the full solution

    A listener cannot go back. "We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow" repeats a structure a reader would absorb once, and the repetition is what lets the point survive a single hearing at speaking pace. Every repeated phrase is a decision about memory. A listener cannot reread, so repetition carries memory

  6. State the problem with the record of Sojourner Truth's Akron speech.
    Show the full solution

    Two accounts survive. Marius Robinson published one in 1851 from his own notes; Frances Dana Gage published the famous one in 1863, twelve years later, adding the refrain and writing Truth in a Southern dialect she did not speak. A careful writer names the version and its date. The famous version was written twelve years later by someone else

  7. Where is the fallacy in Henry's speech, and does the argument survive without it?
    Show the full solution

    In the closing line, a false dilemma offering two options where negotiation, delay and partial autonomy existed. The argument survives entirely: the inductive case about ten years of petitions answered with troops is the speech's real reasoning and stands alone. In the peroration; the inductive case stands without it

  8. Why does Douglass open his Narrative with a missing birth record?
    Show the full solution

    Every autobiography opens with a date, so beginning with the impossibility of supplying one announces immediately that this is not an ordinary life. The absence functions as a thesis statement, and it establishes the method: a particular missing fact that can only be explained by policy. The absence of the conventional opening is itself the first argument

  9. Why is literacy a mechanism rather than a symbol in the Narrative?
    Show the full solution

    Because Douglass explains the causation directly. Reading gives access to arguments, to the abolitionist press, to a forged pass and to the ability to write a book. Each is a practical cause with a traceable effect, not a figurative meaning a reader assigns. He names practical causes with traceable effects

  10. Compare how the Narrative and the 1852 speech establish the humanity of the enslaved.
    Show the full solution

    The Narrative uses testimony, which can only be answered by calling Douglass a liar, which is why two white abolitionists vouch for it in prefaces. The speech argues from Virginia's own statute book, since punishing a man for a crime concedes he is a person, so trust becomes unnecessary. Testimony requiring trust against argument from the opponent's own law

Lesson 5.1 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.9, RL.9-10.5

The Gothic, the Romantic, and the science that made this possible

Frankenstein was written by a teenager in 1816 and published anonymously in 1818. Three things had to exist before it could be written, and knowing them makes the novel legible rather than merely strange.

The key ideas
  1. Mary Shelley began the novel at eighteen, during a wet summer at Lake Geneva in 1816, in a ghost-story competition.
  2. It was published anonymously in 1818 with a preface by Percy Shelley, and many first readers assumed he had written it.
  3. Its subtitle is The Modern Prometheus, naming the Greek figure who stole fire from the gods and was punished eternally.
  4. The Gothic novel supplies the machinery: ruined places, extreme weather, secrets, pursuit and the uncanny.
  5. Romanticism supplies the values: the primacy of feeling, the sublime in nature, and the isolated individual of extraordinary ambition.
  6. Galvanism supplies the premise, since experiments in the 1790s had made dead muscle twitch with electricity and were widely discussed.
  7. The novel is an epistolary frame narrative, told in letters containing a narrative containing another narrative.
  8. Both the 1818 and 1831 texts are public domain, and they differ substantially, which lesson 5.9 examines.

Where students lose marks: writing that the novel is anti-science. It is about an individual working in secret with no accountability, and Shelley's own circle was enthusiastic about scientific progress.

Worked example

The text. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, and her introduction to the 1831 edition. Public domain.

Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated.

Introduction to the 1831 edition

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

Step one: establish the Gothic machinery. A dreary night in November, a solitary room at the top of a house, a body assembled from graveyards and dissecting rooms. Every element is standard Gothic equipment.

Step two: notice what Shelley does with it. The Gothic usually explains horror by the supernatural: a ghost, a curse, a haunted building. Here the cause is a young man working alone with electricity and anatomy. The machinery is Gothic and the explanation is not.

Step three: state why that matters. It makes the novel the first of its kind: horror produced by a process the reader could in principle understand, rather than by something outside nature. That is the definition usually given for science fiction.

Step four: establish the Romantic content. Victor is a solitary genius pursuing knowledge beyond ordinary limits, he responds intensely to mountains and storms, and his feelings are treated as the primary subject. All three are Romantic commitments.

Step five: read the Prometheus subtitle. Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humanity, and was chained to a rock to have his liver eaten daily forever. The subtitle promises a transgression, a gift, and an unending punishment, and the novel delivers the first and third.

Step six: notice what the subtitle withholds. Prometheus's theft benefited humanity. Victor's benefits nobody, since he abandons the result within minutes. The parallel is announced and then broken, which is a judgment on Victor rather than a compliment.

Step seven: place galvanism accurately. Luigi Galvani had made frogs' legs twitch with electricity in the 1780s and his nephew had publicly applied current to a hanged criminal in London in 1803. Shelley's premise was a live scientific question rather than a fantasy.

Step eight: state what the novel is actually about. Not science but unaccountable solitary work. Victor tells no one, consults no one, keeps no record he shares, and abandons what he makes. Every disaster follows from the secrecy rather than from the chemistry, which is why reading the book as anti-science misses its argument.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. How old was Shelley when she began the novel, and where?
    Show the full solution

    Eighteen, at Lake Geneva in 1816

  2. What is the novel's subtitle, and what does it allude to?
    Show the full solution

    The Modern Prometheus, alluding to the Titan who stole fire and was punished eternally

  3. Name three pieces of Gothic machinery in the novel.
    Show the full solution

    Ruined or isolated places, extreme weather, secrets, pursuit, the uncanny

  4. What is galvanism?
    Show the full solution

    The use of electricity to make dead muscle twitch, demonstrated from the 1780s

  5. What narrative form does the novel use?
    Show the full solution

    An epistolary frame narrative: letters containing a narrative containing another

  6. What does Shelley do to the Gothic that is new?
    Show the full solution

    The Gothic normally explains its horror by the supernatural: a ghost, a curse, a haunted building. Shelley keeps the machinery, a dreary November night, a solitary room, a body assembled from graveyards, and supplies a natural cause instead. Horror produced by a process a reader could in principle understand is the usual definition of science fiction, which is why the novel is often called the first. Gothic machinery with a natural rather than supernatural cause

  7. What does the Prometheus subtitle promise, and what does it withhold?
    Show the full solution

    It promises a transgression against divine limits, a gift to humanity, and an unending punishment. The novel delivers the transgression and the punishment and withholds the gift: Prometheus's theft benefited humanity, and Victor's creation benefits nobody because he abandons it within minutes. The parallel is announced and then broken, which is a judgment on Victor rather than a compliment. Transgression and punishment, but not the gift Prometheus actually made

  8. Why does it matter that galvanism was real?
    Show the full solution

    Because it makes the premise a live scientific question rather than a fantasy. Galvani made frogs' legs twitch in the 1780s and his nephew publicly applied current to the body of a hanged criminal in London in 1803. Shelley's readers had heard of this, which means the novel's central event was speculative in the way a plausible extrapolation is speculative. The premise extrapolated from experiments her readers knew about

  9. Why is "anti-science" the wrong reading?
    Show the full solution

    Because every disaster follows from the secrecy rather than the chemistry. Victor tells no one, consults no one, shares no record and abandons what he makes within minutes of making it. Shelley's own circle was enthusiastic about scientific progress. The novel is about unaccountable solitary work, which is a criticism of a practice rather than of a discipline. The disasters follow from secrecy and abandonment, not from the science

  10. Name the three Romantic commitments the novel displays.
    Show the full solution

    The primacy of feeling, since Victor's emotional states are the novel's main subject and are treated as significant in themselves. The sublime in nature, since mountains, glaciers and storms produce the most elevated writing in the book. And the isolated individual of extraordinary ambition, which is Victor's entire situation and the source of everything that goes wrong. Feeling, the sublime in nature, and the isolated ambitious individual

Lesson 5.2 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.6

Three tellers, and who is allowed to speak

Frankenstein has three narrators nested inside each other, and the arrangement is the novel's single most consequential decision. Everything the book argues depends on the order in which the reader meets them.

The key ideas
  1. Walton is the outermost narrator, writing letters to his sister from an expedition to the North Pole.
  2. Victor is the middle narrator, telling his story to Walton, who writes it down.
  3. The creature is the innermost narrator, telling his story to Victor, who repeats it to Walton, who writes it down.
  4. The creature's account reaches the reader third hand, filtered through two men who have reason to present it a particular way.
  5. Nobody is a neutral transmitter, and Victor in particular is describing a being he has tried to kill.
  6. The structure is symmetrical, opening and closing with Walton's letters and placing the creature's story at the exact center.
  7. Walton is the only narrator who survives and the only one whose account is not embedded in someone else's.
  8. The form makes the reader adjudicate, since no narrator is authorized and the reader must weigh them.

Where students lose marks: treating the creature's narrative as reliable because it is sympathetic. It is the most mediated account in the book, and noticing that is the analysis, not disbelieving it.

Worked example

The text. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818. Public domain.

I have read your letter over and over again, and I find it impossible to describe to you the sensations that it has excited... Strange and harrowing must be his story, frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it, thus!

He has asked me many questions concerning my design, and I have related my little history frankly to him. He appeared pleased with the confidence, and suggested several alterations in my plan, which I shall find exceedingly useful.

Step one: map the layers. A reader holds a book printed for the public, containing letters Walton wrote to his sister, containing Victor's spoken account, containing the creature's spoken account. Four levels between the reader and the innermost speaker.

Step two: state what each layer costs. Every transmission is an opportunity for selection and emphasis. Victor repeats the creature's words to a man he has just met, months later, while dying, and while presenting himself as the wronged party.

Step three: notice how favorably Walton receives Victor. Before hearing a word of the story he calls the vessel gallant and the storm frightful, assuming a shipwreck and a noble victim. He has decided what kind of man Victor is on sight.

Step four: state why Walton is predisposed. He is a lonely man on a dangerous expedition seeking a friend, and he says so explicitly in the first letters. Victor arrives as the educated companion Walton has been wishing for, which is not a neutral position from which to record testimony.

Step five: identify the parallel. Walton is pursuing glory at the pole at risk to his crew, exactly as Victor pursued knowledge at risk to everyone near him. Victor recognizes this and tells the story as a warning, which gives him a motive to shape it.

Step six: work the second passage. Victor "suggested several alterations" to Walton's plan and Walton finds them useful. The man whose judgment destroyed his family is being consulted as an expert, and Walton records it without irony.

Step seven: state what the symmetry accomplishes. The creature's story sits at the exact center, surrounded by Victor's, surrounded by Walton's. The most mediated account is also the most protected, and the reader has to dig through two interested men to reach it.

Step eight: state the effect of the whole design. No narrator is authorized. Walton is partial, Victor is self-justifying, and the creature is arguing for something. The form refuses to tell the reader whom to believe, which is why the novel has never settled into one interpretation.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Name the three narrators from outermost to innermost.
    Show the full solution

    Walton, Victor, the creature

  2. To whom is Walton writing?
    Show the full solution

    His sister

  3. How many layers separate the reader from the creature's own words?
    Show the full solution

    The creature to Victor, Victor to Walton, Walton to his sister, and the printed book

  4. Which narrator survives the novel?
    Show the full solution

    Walton

  5. Where does the creature's narrative sit in the structure?
    Show the full solution

    At the exact center

  6. Why is Walton not a neutral recorder?
    Show the full solution

    He is a lonely man on a dangerous expedition who has explicitly written to his sister wishing for a friend, and Victor arrives as exactly the educated companion he has been hoping for. Before hearing a word of the story he calls the vessel gallant and assumes a noble victim. A man who has decided what kind of person his witness is before the testimony begins is not a neutral transmitter. He wants a friend and has judged Victor favorably before hearing anything

  7. What motive does Victor have to shape the creature's account?
    Show the full solution

    He is describing a being he has tried to kill, while presenting himself as the wronged party, to a man he has just met, months after the events, and while dying. He also recognizes Walton as a version of himself and is telling the story as a warning, which gives him a purpose beyond accuracy. Every one of those is a reason to select. He is self-justifying, dying, and telling it as a warning to a man like himself

  8. Analyze the detail about Victor suggesting alterations to Walton's plan.
    Show the full solution

    The man whose judgment destroyed his entire family is being consulted as an expert on an expedition, and Walton records the exchange without irony and finds the suggestions useful. Shelley places it early, before Victor's story is told, so a rereader sees it differently. It is a quiet demonstration that Walton cannot assess the person he is transcribing. Walton takes advice from a man whose judgment destroyed his family, without irony

  9. What does the symmetry of the structure accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    The creature's story sits at the exact center, surrounded by Victor's, surrounded by Walton's letters, which open and close the book. The most mediated account is also the most protected: the reader must dig through two interested men to reach it and back out through them afterwards. The shape enacts the creature's position in the novel's world. The reader must dig through two interested men to reach the center and back

  10. What does the form require of the reader?
    Show the full solution

    Adjudication. Walton is partial, Victor is self-justifying, and the creature is arguing for something he wants. No narrator is authorized by the novel and none is corrected by another voice. The reader has to weigh three interested accounts without help, which is why the book has never settled into a single agreed interpretation. To weigh three interested accounts with no authorized narrator

Lesson 5.3 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.3

Why the novel begins with a stranger

Readers frequently skip the opening letters to get to the story. They are the reason the story means what it means, and a course that skips them produces essays that cannot explain the ending.

The key ideas
  1. The novel opens with four letters from Walton to his sister Margaret Saville in England.
  2. Walton is attempting to reach the North Pole, which he believes may contain a country of eternal light.
  3. He is self-taught, ambitious, and lonely, and he tells his sister he has no friend.
  4. He has taken a crew into danger for a goal that is his own rather than theirs.
  5. Every one of those facts matches Victor, which is why Victor tells him the story at all.
  6. The letters establish the novel's real question before its plot begins: what an ambitious person owes the people their ambition puts at risk.
  7. Walton's crew eventually demands to turn back, and he agrees, which is the decision Victor never made.
  8. The ending returns to Walton so the reader can see whether the warning worked.

Where students lose marks: treating Walton as a framing device. He is a character with a decision to make, and the novel's last movement is about whether he makes it differently from Victor.

Worked example

The text. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, Letters 1 and 2 and the closing pages. Public domain.

I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man... But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation.

I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.

Step one: read the first passage for its two motives. Curiosity, stated first and personally, and benefit to mankind, stated second and as a fallback. The order is the characterization.

Step two: notice the concession structure. "Supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit." He concedes that his theory may be wrong and asserts the public benefit anyway, which is a way of protecting the project from any objection at all.

Step three: match this to Victor. Victor also frames a private obsession as a gift to humanity, and also proceeds when his reasons do not hold up. The parallel is established in the first letter, before Victor exists.

Step four: work the second passage. "I have no friend, Margaret." Walton is isolated by choice and ambition, and says so directly. The novel's first stated problem is loneliness, which is also the creature's first stated problem.

Step five: connect the three isolations. Walton has no friend, Victor isolates himself for two years to work, and the creature is alone by construction. The novel rhymes its three narrators on exactly one quality, and it is the quality the opening letters introduce.

Step six: state what the crew adds. Walton's ambition is not private, because he has taken sailors into ice at risk of their lives for a goal that is his. That is precisely Victor's situation with his family, translated into a form Walton can see.

Step seven: examine the ending. The crew demands to turn back, Walton is furious, and he agrees. Victor, hearing this, urges them on and calls them cowards, which is the last thing he does. The two men make opposite decisions about the same question.

Step eight: state why the novel ends here. Because the warning has to be tested. A story that ended with Victor's death would leave the reader to guess whether it taught anything. Ending with Walton turning back shows the warning being received, and Victor refusing it with his last breath shows that he never learned it himself.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. To whom is Walton writing, and from where?
    Show the full solution

    To his sister Margaret Saville, from an expedition toward the North Pole

  2. What does Walton tell his sister he lacks?
    Show the full solution

    A friend

  3. Name Walton's two stated motives, in order.
    Show the full solution

    His own curiosity, then benefit to mankind

  4. What does Walton's crew demand?
    Show the full solution

    To turn back

  5. What does Victor urge them to do?
    Show the full solution

    To go on; he calls them cowards

  6. What does the order of Walton's motives reveal?
    Show the full solution

    Curiosity comes first and is stated personally, as his own ardent desire to see what no one has seen. Benefit to mankind comes second and functions as a fallback: even if the theory is wrong, the public good is asserted as beyond contest. Placing the private motive first and the public one as insurance is the characterization, and it is done in one sentence. Private curiosity is primary; public benefit is insurance against objection

  7. How does Walton match Victor before Victor appears?
    Show the full solution

    Both frame a private obsession as a gift to humanity, both proceed when their reasons do not hold up, both are self-taught and driven, and both are isolated. Walton has also taken other people into danger for a goal that is only his, which is Victor's situation with his family in a form Walton can see. The parallel is complete before the plot starts. Private obsession framed as public gift, isolation, and others put at risk

  8. What does the crew's presence add to Walton's situation?
    Show the full solution

    It makes the ambition non-private. Walton has taken sailors into ice at risk of their lives for a goal that belongs to him alone, so the question of what an ambitious person owes the people their ambition endangers is posed concretely rather than abstractly. Victor's version of the same question involves his family and he never recognizes it as a question. It poses concretely the question Victor never recognizes about his family

  9. Why does the novel end with the two men making opposite decisions?
    Show the full solution

    Because the warning has to be tested. Walton, faced with a crew demanding to turn back, is furious and agrees. Victor, hearing the same demand, urges them on and calls them cowards with nearly his last breath. Putting both responses to one situation at the end lets the reader see the warning received and refused simultaneously. It shows the same warning being received by one man and refused by the other

  10. What would be lost if the novel ended with Victor's death?
    Show the full solution

    The reader would have to guess whether the story taught anything to anyone. Victor dies unreformed, still urging the crew onward, so a novel closing there would end on a man who learned nothing. Returning to Walton shows the warning working on somebody, which is the only evidence the book offers that the story was worth telling. The only evidence that the warning worked on anyone

Lesson 5.4 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.4

Ambition, and the language of creation

Victor spends two years on the project and about two minutes with the result. The prose he uses before and after is where the novel makes its case about him, and the shift is abrupt enough to date.

The key ideas
  1. Victor's stated aim is to discover the principle of life and to banish disease from the human frame.
  2. His language before the creation is religious and parental, using words like species, creator, father and blessing.
  3. His language after it is immediately revolted, using wretch, demoniacal and catastrophe within a single page.
  4. The change takes minutes, and nothing happens in between except that the creature opens its eyes.
  5. He then leaves the room and does not return, abandoning the being he spent two years making.
  6. He tells nobody for years, including when an innocent woman is tried and hanged for a murder he knows the creature committed.
  7. He repeatedly falls ill at moments of crisis, which removes him from scenes where he would have to act.
  8. The novel never states that he is culpable, and lets the reader assemble the case from his own account.

Where students lose marks: describing the creation as the novel's central error. The central error is what happens in the following five minutes, and every catastrophe in the book follows from the abandonment rather than the creation.

Worked example

The text. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. Public domain.

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God!

Step one: catalog the vocabulary of the first passage. Species, bless, creator, source, happy, excellent, owe, father, gratitude, child, deserve. It is the language of divinity and of paternity at once.

Step two: notice what it is about. Not the creature. Every clause describes what Victor will receive: blessing, gratitude, being owed. The imagined child exists in the sentence only as a source of debt.

Step three: catalog the second passage. Catastrophe, wretch, and an exclamation breaking the sentence. The same project is now described in the vocabulary of disaster.

Step four: measure the interval. Two years of work separate the two passages in time, but only a few paragraphs separate them in the text, and the trigger is that the creature opened its eyes and breathed. Nothing else happened.

Step five: work the broken sentence. "I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God!" Victor's own prose collapses mid-thought. He cannot complete a sentence that contains both his intention and the result, which is the most precise thing in the chapter.

Step six: state what the collapse reveals. Victor had planned everything except what it would be like to have done it. The two years of work contain no sentence about what the creature would need, where it would live, or what he would owe it.

Step seven: identify the real error. He leaves the room. Every death in the novel, William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, follows from the abandonment and not from the creation. A creature taught and acknowledged does none of it, and the creature says so himself.

Step eight: state how the novel assigns blame. It never does. Victor narrates his own case and the reader assembles the indictment from his testimony: the vocabulary of paternity used about a debt, the abandonment within minutes, the silence at Justine's trial, the illnesses that arrive whenever action is required. Shelley lets him convict himself.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What is Victor's stated aim?
    Show the full solution

    To discover the principle of life and banish disease from the human frame

  2. Name four words from his language before the creation.
    Show the full solution

    Species, bless, creator, father, gratitude

  3. Name three words from his language after it.
    Show the full solution

    Catastrophe, wretch, demoniacal

  4. What does Victor do immediately after the creature wakes?
    Show the full solution

    Leaves the room and does not return

  5. Who is hanged for a murder Victor knows the creature committed?
    Show the full solution

    Justine

  6. What is the first passage actually about?
    Show the full solution

    Victor, not the creature. Every clause describes what he will receive: a species blessing him, natures owing their being to him, gratitude no father could claim more completely. The imagined child exists in the sentence only as a source of debt owed to its maker. The vocabulary of paternity is being used to describe an acquisition. What Victor will be owed, with the child present only as a debtor

  7. What triggers the change in vocabulary, and how long does it take?
    Show the full solution

    The creature opens its eyes and breathes. That is the entire event. Two years of work separate the two passages in time and a few paragraphs separate them in the text, and nothing occurs between them except that the thing Victor built began to live. The speed of the reversal is what makes it evidence about Victor rather than about the creature. The creature opening its eyes; the change takes minutes

  8. Analyze "Beautiful! Great God!"
    Show the full solution

    Victor's prose collapses mid-thought. He begins a sentence containing his own intention, that he had selected the features as beautiful, and cannot complete it alongside the result. The broken syntax is the most precise thing in the chapter, because it shows a man unable to hold his plan and its outcome in one sentence, which is exactly his problem. The sentence breaks because he cannot hold his intention and the result together

  9. Why is the abandonment the real error rather than the creation?
    Show the full solution

    Because every death in the novel follows from it. William, Justine, Clerval and Elizabeth die because a being was made, left, and educated by nothing but rejection. The creature says explicitly that he was benevolent and that misery made him a fiend. A creature taught and acknowledged commits none of the murders, so the creation alone causes nothing. Every death follows from the abandonment; the creation alone causes none

  10. How does the novel assign blame without stating it?
    Show the full solution

    By letting Victor narrate his own case. The reader assembles the indictment from his testimony: paternal vocabulary used to describe a debt, abandonment within minutes, silence while an innocent woman is hanged, and illnesses that arrive whenever action is required. Shelley never comments. A verdict the reader has constructed is harder to dismiss than one the book asserts. Victor's own testimony supplies the evidence and the reader assembles it

Lesson 5.5 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.2

The De Lacey chapters

The creature's account of learning to speak, read and think occupies the center of the novel and is the most quietly radical thing in it. Nothing about him is innate; everything is acquired, and the reader watches the acquisition.

The key ideas
  1. The creature hides in a hovel adjoining a cottage and observes the De Lacey family for about a year.
  2. He learns language by listening, and learns to read when Safie, an Arabic-speaking newcomer, is taught French.
  3. He performs unseen kindnesses, gathering their firewood at night, and stops stealing their food when he realizes they are poor.
  4. He reads three books found in a portmanteau: Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's Sorrows of Werter.
  5. Each book teaches him something different: theology and grievance, public virtue, and private feeling.
  6. He also reads Victor's journal, found in the pocket of the coat he took, and learns the circumstances of his own making.
  7. The rejection by the De Laceys is the turning point, and it comes after a year of deliberate preparation on his part.
  8. He approaches the blind father first, having reasoned that a man who cannot see him may hear him, which is a plan rather than an impulse.

Where students lose marks: calling the creature a monster who becomes violent. Track the sequence: benevolence, preparation, rejection, and only then violence. The order is the argument.

Worked example

The text. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, the creature's narrative. Public domain.

I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption; but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained, and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots which I gathered from a neighbouring wood.

Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death.

I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?

Step one: examine the first passage as evidence. He is starving, he has been stealing, and he stops because he notices the cost to people who do not know he exists and who have never given him anything.

Step two: state what that establishes. Moral reasoning, unprompted, from a being with no teacher and no prospect of reward. Whatever the creature becomes, the novel has documented what he was before anyone spoke to him.

Step three: notice the source of his moral education. Observation of a family he cannot join. He learns kindness by watching it practiced on other people, which is a precise and unsentimental account of how a person raised outside a community might acquire values.

Step four: work the passage about knowledge. The lichen simile is his own, and it is good. He is describing the impossibility of unlearning what he has learned about his own situation, which is the same discovery Douglass records about literacy.

Step five: state what his reading gives him. Paradise Lost supplies the vocabulary of creator, creature, Adam and Satan, which is how he comes to frame his grievance theologically. Plutarch supplies public virtue and Werter supplies private feeling, and Victor's journal supplies the facts.

Step six: examine the preparation. A year of observation, deliberate practice at speech, and a plan to approach the blind father first because a man who cannot see him may listen. This is not a creature acting on impulse; it is one executing a strategy.

Step seven: place the violence correctly. It follows the rejection, which follows the preparation, which follows a year of documented benevolence. The creature states the causation himself: malicious because miserable, and miserable because shunned. The order of events is the argument the novel is making.

Step eight: state the radical claim. Nothing about the creature is innate. He acquires language, morality, grievance and violence in that order, from his environment, and the reader watches each acquisition. That is a claim about human beings as much as about him, and it is why the novel keeps being read.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. How does the creature learn to speak and read?
    Show the full solution

    By observing the De Lacey family, and by listening while Safie is taught French

  2. Name the three books he finds.
    Show the full solution

    Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Werter

  3. What does he stop doing, and why?
    Show the full solution

    Stealing their food, when he realizes it causes them pain

  4. Whom does he approach first, and on what reasoning?
    Show the full solution

    The blind father, reasoning that a man who cannot see him may listen

  5. How does he explain his own malice?
    Show the full solution

    He is malicious because he is miserable, and miserable because shunned

  6. Why is the decision to stop stealing important evidence?
    Show the full solution

    He is starving, the cottagers do not know he exists, and they have never given him anything or could ever reward him. He stops because he notices the cost to them. That is unprompted moral reasoning from a being with no teacher and no prospect of gain, and it documents what he was before any human being had spoken to him. Unprompted moral reasoning with no teacher and no possible reward

  7. What is unusual about how he acquires his values?
    Show the full solution

    By observing a family he cannot join, learning kindness by watching it practiced on other people. It is a precise and unsentimental account of how someone raised entirely outside a community might acquire its values, and it means everything he knows about how people should be treated comes from a household that will later drive him out with sticks. He learns kindness by watching it given to other people

  8. What does each of his three books supply?
    Show the full solution

    Paradise Lost supplies the vocabulary of creator, creature, Adam and Satan, which is how he comes to frame his grievance theologically and to ask why he was made and abandoned. Plutarch supplies public virtue and the idea of a life judged by others. Werter supplies private feeling and the language of unbearable solitude. Victor's journal supplies the facts. Theology and grievance, public virtue, private feeling, and the facts from the journal

  9. Why does the preparation matter?
    Show the full solution

    A year of observation, deliberate practice at speech, and a plan to approach the blind father first because a man who cannot see him may listen. This is a strategy rather than an impulse, and it means the rejection destroys something carefully built rather than interrupting a moment of instinct. A creature capable of that plan is capable of everything the novel later denies him. It shows a strategy, so the rejection destroys something carefully built

  10. State the novel's radical claim about the creature.
    Show the full solution

    That nothing about him is innate. He acquires language, then morality, then grievance, then violence, in that order, from his environment, and the reader watches each acquisition happen. The sequence is documented rather than asserted. That is a claim about human beings as much as about him, and it is the reason the novel is still argued about. Nothing is innate; language, morality, grievance and violence are all acquired

Lesson 5.6 · Unit 5 · RI.9-10.8, RL.9-10.3

The demand for a companion, and whether Victor answers it

The meeting on the glacier is the only conversation in the novel, and it is structured as a formal argument. Unit 3 gave you the vocabulary for it, and this lesson applies that vocabulary to a scene in a novel.

The key ideas
  1. The creature demands that Victor make him a female companion, and promises to leave Europe and live in the wilds of South America if he does.
  2. His argument has three parts: that Victor owes him something as his maker, that his violence has a cause, and that the remedy is specific.
  3. He opens by claiming a right, not by asking a favor, which sets the terms of the exchange.
  4. He concedes his own crimes rather than denying them, which builds ethos as lesson 3.2 described.
  5. Victor agrees, begins the work, and then destroys it, with the creature watching through a window.
  6. Victor's reasons for destroying it are that the pair might breed and that the female might refuse the bargain, which are real objections.
  7. He never puts those objections to the creature, so the negotiation ends without either party answering the other.
  8. The creature's reply, "I shall be with you on your wedding night," is a threat Victor misreads as being about himself.

Where students lose marks: treating the demand as unreasonable on its face. State it as an argument with premises, then state Victor's objections as an argument, and only then judge.

Worked example

The text. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, the meeting on the sea of ice. Public domain.

Remember, that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed... Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.

You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.

Step one: set out the argument formally. Premise one: Victor made him and therefore owes him what a maker owes. Premise two: his violence was caused by exclusion, not by nature. Conclusion: the specific remedy Victor alone can supply is owed.

Step two: identify the borrowed framework. "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel." He is arguing inside Paradise Lost, using a book Victor also knows, which supplies a shared vocabulary neither of them has to explain.

Step three: state what that framework claims. Adam was made and cared for; Satan was cast out for a misdeed. The creature says he has been cast out for no misdeed at all, which makes his situation worse than Satan's within the terms of the book they both know.

Step four: notice the concession. "Misery made me a fiend." He does not deny the murders. Conceding the crimes while disputing their cause is the strongest available move, because denial would have ended the conversation and this does not.

Step five: read the demand's wording. "I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede." Not a plea. He has spent the whole speech establishing entitlement so that the final sentence can be a claim rather than a request.

Step six: state Victor's objections fairly. That the two might breed and produce a race, and that the female, being a separate person, might refuse the bargain and do as she liked. Both are serious and the second is the more interesting, because it treats the hypothetical female as a person with her own will.

Step seven: identify what goes wrong. Victor never puts either objection to the creature. He agrees, works for months, and destroys the body without a word. A negotiation in which one party has real objections and states none is not a negotiation, and this is the same failure as Creon's in Antigone.

Step eight: read the threat correctly. "I shall be with you on your wedding night." Victor assumes he will be attacked. The creature has been consistent throughout about wanting a companion, and the obvious reading is that he will take Victor's, which he does. Victor's misreading kills Elizabeth, and it happens because he has never once listened to what the creature actually says he wants.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What does the creature demand, and what does he promise in exchange?
    Show the full solution

    A female companion; in exchange he will leave Europe for the wilds of South America

  2. Which book supplies his framework?
    Show the full solution

    Paradise Lost

  3. How does he explain his violence?
    Show the full solution

    He was benevolent and good; misery made him a fiend

  4. Give Victor's two reasons for destroying the female.
    Show the full solution

    That the pair might breed, and that she might refuse the bargain

  5. What threat does the creature make?
    Show the full solution

    "I shall be with you on your wedding night"

  6. Set out the creature's argument as premises and conclusion.
    Show the full solution

    Premise one: Victor made him and therefore owes him what a maker owes a creature. Premise two: his violence was caused by exclusion rather than by his nature, and he offers a year of documented benevolence as evidence. Conclusion: the specific remedy, which Victor alone can supply, is owed to him as a right. It is a valid structure and the premises are arguable rather than absurd. Obligation from creation, violence caused by exclusion, therefore the remedy is owed

  7. What does the Paradise Lost framework accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    It supplies a shared vocabulary neither party has to explain, since Victor knows the poem too. Within its terms, Adam was made and cared for and Satan was cast out for a misdeed. The creature claims to have been cast out for no misdeed at all, which makes his position worse than Satan's inside a framework Victor accepts. A shared vocabulary in which his position is worse than Satan's

  8. Why is conceding the murders the strongest move available?
    Show the full solution

    Denial would have ended the conversation, since Victor knows what happened to William and Justine. Conceding the crimes while disputing their cause keeps the discussion open and demonstrates that the creature is reporting rather than pleading. It is exactly the ethos-building function of concession that unit 3 described, used by a speaker with almost nothing else available. Denial would end the conversation; concession keeps it open and builds ethos

  9. What is wrong with how the negotiation ends?
    Show the full solution

    Victor has two serious objections, that the pair might breed and that the female might refuse the bargain, and he states neither. He agrees, works for months, and destroys the body without a word while the creature watches through a window. A negotiation in which one party holds real objections and voices none is not a negotiation, and it repeats Creon's failure in Antigone. Victor holds real objections and never states them

  10. Why does Victor misread the threat, and what does it cost?
    Show the full solution

    He assumes he will be attacked himself. The creature has been entirely consistent about wanting a companion, so the obvious reading is that he will take Victor's, which is what happens. Elizabeth dies because Victor has never once listened to what the creature says he wants, which is the same inattention that produced everything else. He assumes the threat is to himself; Elizabeth dies because he never listened

Lesson 5.7 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.3, RL.9-10.5

Pursuer and pursued change places

The last third of the novel inverts its own structure. The man who ran from the creature chases it across a continent, and the creature who begged for contact now provides it. The reversal is deliberate and it is the novel's final argument about the two of them.

The key ideas
  1. After Elizabeth's death Victor devotes his life to pursuit, abandoning everything else.
  2. The chase runs from Geneva across Russia into the Arctic, which is where Walton finds him.
  3. The creature leaves messages and food for Victor along the route, deliberately keeping him alive.
  4. The pursuit is therefore collaborative, since neither could continue it without the other.
  5. Victor now has a purpose for the first time since the creation, and the novel notes that it restores him.
  6. The roles have exchanged: the creature is now the one withholding contact and Victor the one who cannot bear to be left alone.
  7. Each has become the other's only relationship, which is what the creature asked for and did not get in the form he wanted.
  8. The creature's last speech to Walton is grief rather than triumph, and he announces his own death.

Where students lose marks: describing the chase as revenge. It is the only sustained relationship either character has, and both of them keep it going.

Worked example

The text. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, the pursuit and the closing pages. Public domain.

My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during sleep alone that I could taste joy... I was cursed by some devil, and carried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good followed and directed my steps.

Sometimes, indeed, he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees, or cut in stone, that guided me, and instigated my fury. "My reign is not yet over," these words were legible in one of these inscriptions; "you live, and my power is complete. Follow me."

He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish... I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinguished.

Step one: notice what Victor calls the guidance. "A spirit of good followed and directed my steps." He is describing the creature leaving him food and directions, and he attributes it to a benevolent spirit rather than to the being he is chasing.

Step two: state what that shows. Victor cannot process kindness from the creature even while surviving on it. The misattribution is the same inattention that ran through the whole novel, appearing one last time.

Step three: read the inscription. "You live, and my power is complete. Follow me." The creature needs Victor alive, and says so. His power consists in being pursued, which means it depends entirely on the pursuer continuing.

Step four: state why the chase is collaborative. The creature is faster, stronger and better adapted to cold, and could vanish at any time. He does not. He leaves marks, supplies food, and stays just ahead. Victor could stop and does not. Both are choosing it.

Step five: identify the reversal. Victor spent the novel avoiding contact and now cannot bear to lose it. The creature spent the novel demanding contact and now rations it. Each has taken the other's position exactly.

Step six: state what the creature obtained. He asked for one being who could not escape him and would be bound to him permanently. He now has one. The novel grants his request in the cruelest available form, which is a comment on how the request was refused.

Step seven: read the final speech. "He is dead who called me into being." Not "my enemy" or "my persecutor" but the phrase for a parent. The creature's last words about Victor use the vocabulary of creation, which he has used throughout.

Step eight: state the effect of ending on grief. A creature who triumphed would confirm Victor's account of him. A creature who mourns the man who abandoned him, and then announces his own death because there is nothing left, confirms the creature's account instead. Shelley gives the last word to the narrator the structure buried deepest.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What starts Victor's pursuit?
    Show the full solution

    Elizabeth's death

  2. Where does the chase end?
    Show the full solution

    In the Arctic, where Walton finds him

  3. What does the creature leave for Victor along the route?
    Show the full solution

    Food, and messages carved in trees and stone

  4. What does Victor attribute the guidance to?
    Show the full solution

    A spirit of good

  5. How does the creature describe Victor in his final speech?
    Show the full solution

    As "he who called me into being"

  6. What does Victor's misattribution reveal?
    Show the full solution

    That he cannot process kindness from the creature even while surviving on it. He is eating food the creature left and following directions the creature carved, and he credits a benevolent spirit. It is the same inattention that ran through the whole novel, appearing one final time, and it means he never understands his own situation even at the end. He survives on the creature's kindness and credits a spirit

  7. Why is the chase collaborative rather than a hunt?
    Show the full solution

    The creature is faster, stronger and better adapted to cold, and could vanish at any moment. Instead he leaves marks, supplies food and stays just ahead, and he writes that his power is complete because Victor lives. Victor could stop and does not. Both parties are choosing to continue it, which makes it a relationship rather than a pursuit. The creature could vanish and instead keeps Victor alive and following

  8. State the reversal precisely.
    Show the full solution

    Victor spent the novel avoiding contact with the creature and now cannot bear to lose it. The creature spent the novel demanding contact and now rations it, staying just out of reach. Each has taken the other's position exactly, and the exchange is complete rather than partial, which is why the last third reads as a different book with the same two people. Victor now needs the contact he fled; the creature now withholds what he begged for

  9. What does the creature end up with, and how?
    Show the full solution

    He asked for one being who could not escape him and would be permanently bound to him. He now has exactly that, in Victor. The novel grants his request in the cruelest available form, which is a comment on the refusal: the thing he wanted was going to happen one way or another, and Victor's destruction of the female determined only which way. The permanent bond he asked for, granted in its cruelest form

  10. Why does the novel end on the creature's grief?
    Show the full solution

    A creature who triumphed would confirm Victor's account of him as a fiend. A creature who mourns the man who abandoned him, calls him "he who called me into being", and announces his own death because nothing remains, confirms the creature's own account instead. Shelley gives the last word to the narrator her structure buried deepest, which is a verdict delivered by arrangement. Grief confirms the creature's account rather than Victor's, and he gets the last word

Lesson 5.8 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.2, RL.9-10.1

Following one question across the whole novel

This lesson is a method as much as a reading. Tracing one question through a long book is the skill the literary analysis essay requires, and responsibility is the question Frankenstein is organized around.

The key ideas
  1. Pick a question the whole book engages, not a theme word, and phrase it so that different characters answer it differently.
  2. Collect answers from every narrator, since a frame narrative gives you three positions rather than one.
  3. Note where each answer appears, because a claim from chapter five and a claim from chapter twenty-four may not be the same claim.
  4. Victor's answer changes across the novel, from denial to partial admission to a final position he states to Walton.
  5. The creature's answer is consistent, which is itself evidence.
  6. Walton's answer is never stated but is enacted when he turns the ship around.
  7. The novel supplies no adjudication, so the essay must argue for one rather than report the book's.
  8. Use the ends of the book, since a character's first and last statements on a question bracket their movement.

Where students lose marks: building an essay on one quotation. Four short quotations from four parts of the novel beat one long one, because the claim is about the book rather than about a scene.

Worked example

The question. What does a maker owe what they have made?

A new species would bless me as its creator and source... No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

Victor, before the creation

I ought to be thy Adam... Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.

The creature, on the glacier

Yet another may succeed. Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.

Victor, to Walton, near the end

Step one: phrase the question so it can be answered differently. "What does a maker owe what they have made?" Victor, the creature and Walton would all answer it, and not alike. A theme word like "responsibility" would not do this.

Step two: take Victor's first answer. Before the creation, he believes a maker is owed gratitude. The direction of obligation runs from creature to creator, which is the opposite of the position the novel will test.

Step three: take the creature's answer. On the glacier, that a maker owes his creature the conditions of a bearable existence, and that this obligation is not canceled by the creature's appearance or crimes. He never departs from it.

Step four: note what consistency is evidence of. The creature says the same thing at every appearance, from the glacier to the final speech over Victor's body. Victor's position moves and the creature's does not, and a reader assessing reliability should notice which is which.

Step five: take Victor's last answer. "Avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science." He has concluded that the error was wanting to achieve something, which is not the same as concluding that he owed the creature anything.

Step six: state what that reveals. Victor never arrives at the creature's question. He ends by warning against ambition, not against abandonment, and in the same speech he tells Walton that another may succeed where he failed. He has not changed his answer; he has changed the subject.

Step seven: read Walton's unstated answer. He turns the ship around. He never says what he owes his crew, and the act is the answer, which is a different kind of evidence and worth naming as such.

Step eight: write the thesis. "Frankenstein tests what a maker owes what they have made by giving the question to three characters and letting only two of them answer it, since Victor moves from expecting gratitude to warning against ambition without ever addressing the obligation the creature names, and it is Walton, who turns his ship around, who answers in the only way the novel treats as real."

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. How should a traceable question be phrased?
    Show the full solution

    So that different characters would answer it differently, not as a theme word

  2. How many positions does a frame narrative give you?
    Show the full solution

    One per narrator, so three in this novel

  3. What does Victor believe a maker is owed, before the creation?
    Show the full solution

    Gratitude

  4. What does Victor warn Walton against at the end?
    Show the full solution

    Ambition, even in science and discovery

  5. How does Walton answer the question?
    Show the full solution

    Not in words; he turns the ship around

  6. Why is "responsibility" a poor question to trace?
    Show the full solution

    It is a theme word rather than a question, so nobody in the novel can be said to answer it and every passage can be made to relate to it. "What does a maker owe what they have made?" can be put to Victor, the creature and Walton, and each gives a different answer that can be quoted. A traceable question must be answerable differently by different characters. A theme word cannot be answered, so every passage relates to it equally

  7. What is the creature's consistency evidence of?
    Show the full solution

    He states the same position at every appearance, from the glacier through the demand for a companion to the final speech over Victor's body: that a maker owes his creature the conditions of a bearable existence, and that the obligation is not canceled by appearance or by crimes. Victor's position moves repeatedly and the creature's does not, which is relevant to assessing which narrator to trust. A position held unchanged throughout, while Victor's moves repeatedly

  8. Does Victor ever answer the creature's question?
    Show the full solution

    No. He ends by warning Walton against ambition, which is a different subject from abandonment, and in the same speech he says another may succeed where he failed. He has not revised his view of what he owed the creature; he has replaced the question with one about whether the project should have been attempted. Changing the subject is not the same as changing the answer. No; he warns against ambition, which changes the subject rather than answering it

  9. Why is Walton's answer a different kind of evidence?
    Show the full solution

    Because it is an act rather than a statement. He never says what he owes his crew; he turns the ship around when they demand it, against his own furious objection. An essay has to name that as enacted rather than stated evidence, which is worth doing explicitly because it is the only answer in the novel that costs the person giving it anything. It is enacted rather than stated, and it costs him something

  10. Why do four short quotations beat one long one?
    Show the full solution

    Because the claim is about the book rather than about a scene. Four passages from four parts of the novel demonstrate that a position is held or abandoned across its length, which is what a thesis about a novel asserts. One long quotation, however good, supports only a claim about the page it came from, and an examiner reads that as a claim about that page. A claim about a book needs evidence spread across the book

Lesson 5.9 · Unit 5 · RL.9-10.9, RL.9-10.7

What Shelley changed, and what it does

Frankenstein exists in two substantially different texts. Most editions print the 1831 version, most scholars prefer the 1818, and the differences are large enough to change the novel's argument. This lesson is also a demonstration of how revision works.

The key ideas
  1. The 1818 text was published anonymously when Shelley was twenty, and the 1831 text carries her name and a new introduction.
  2. Thirteen years separate them, during which Percy Shelley, Byron, and three of her children had died.
  3. Elizabeth is Victor's cousin in 1818 and an adopted foundling with no blood relation in 1831.
  4. Victor's agency is reduced in 1831, with more references to destiny and fate and fewer to his own choices.
  5. The 1831 introduction is where Shelley tells the story of the ghost-story competition and calls the book her hideous progeny.
  6. Both texts are public domain, so a student can compare them without buying anything.
  7. The 1818 text makes Victor more culpable; the 1831 makes him more doomed.
  8. Which text you quote changes your argument, so a careful essay names the edition.

Where students lose marks: quoting "destiny" passages from 1831 to argue that the novel treats Victor as fated, without noticing that those passages were added thirteen years later.

Worked example

The texts. Frankenstein, 1818 and 1831 editions. Both public domain.

It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.

Added in 1831

And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.

Introduction to the 1831 edition

Step one: read the added passage for its claim. Destiny decreed his destruction and his own effort was ineffectual against it. Victor is being described as someone to whom the events happened.

Step two: state what the 1818 text does instead. It gives Victor decisions: to work in secret, to leave the room, to say nothing at Justine's trial, to destroy the female without explanation. The earlier text records choices where the later one supplies fate.

Step three: state the consequence for reading. An essay arguing that Frankenstein is a tragedy of fate can quote 1831 extensively. An essay arguing it is about unaccountable choice can quote 1818. Both are quoting Frankenstein and they are not quoting the same book.

Step four: work the Elizabeth change. In 1818 she is Victor's first cousin and they are raised together. In 1831 she is an unrelated foundling. The change removes a detail readers of the 1820s had begun to find uncomfortable, and it also weakens the novel's pattern of families that are made rather than born.

Step five: place the revisions biographically without over-reading. Between the editions Shelley lost her husband, her close friend Byron, and three children. A writer in that position may find a novel about an ambitious young man who causes his family's deaths harder to present as his own doing. That is a plausible account rather than a proven one.

Step six: read the introduction's phrase. "My hideous progeny." Shelley calls her book her monstrous child and sends it out into the world. She has adopted the novel's own central relationship to describe writing it.

Step seven: notice what she says about the happy days. "When death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart." She is dating her own innocence and marking it as gone, in an introduction to a book about consequences arriving late.

Step eight: state the practical rule. Name your edition. "In the 1818 text, Victor..." costs four words and prevents an examiner from concluding that you do not know there are two. It is the same discipline as naming which version of Sojourner Truth's speech you are quoting.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. When were the two texts published, and how did they differ in attribution?
    Show the full solution

    1818 anonymously; 1831 under Shelley's name with a new introduction

  2. What happens to Elizabeth between editions?
    Show the full solution

    She changes from Victor's cousin to an unrelated foundling

  3. What is added to Victor's account in 1831?
    Show the full solution

    References to destiny and fate, reducing his agency

  4. What does Shelley call the book in the 1831 introduction?
    Show the full solution

    Her hideous progeny

  5. Which edition makes Victor more culpable?
    Show the full solution

    1818

  6. How does the added destiny passage change the novel's argument?
    Show the full solution

    It describes Victor as someone to whom events happened, with his own efforts ineffectual against immutable laws. The 1818 text gives him decisions instead: to work in secret, to leave the room, to stay silent at Justine's trial, to destroy the female without explanation. One text records choices and the other supplies fate, which is a difference in what the book is about. It converts a record of choices into an account of fate

  7. Why does this matter for writing an essay?
    Show the full solution

    Because an essay arguing that Frankenstein is a tragedy of fate can quote 1831 extensively and an essay arguing that it is about unaccountable choice can quote 1818. Both are quoting Frankenstein and neither is quoting the same book. Naming the edition costs four words and prevents a reader from concluding that the writer does not know there are two. Opposite arguments can each be supported by quoting a different edition

  8. What does the Elizabeth change do?
    Show the full solution

    It removes a first-cousin marriage that readers of the 1820s had begun to find uncomfortable. It also weakens a pattern in the 1818 text, in which families are made rather than born: the creature is assembled, Elizabeth is brought in, and Victor's obligations are chosen rather than given. The revision solves one problem and costs something structural. It removes a discomfort and weakens the pattern of made rather than born families

  9. How should the biographical explanation be handled?
    Show the full solution

    As plausible rather than proven. Between editions Shelley lost her husband, her close friend Byron and three children, and a writer in that position may find a novel about a young man who causes his family's deaths harder to present as his own doing. That is a reasonable account and it is not evidence. An essay should mark the difference rather than assert the motive. As a plausible account clearly marked as such, not as a proven motive

  10. Analyze "my hideous progeny".
    Show the full solution

    Shelley calls her book her monstrous child and sends it into the world to prosper, which adopts the novel's own central relationship to describe having written it. She does what Victor did not: names the thing hers, acknowledges affection for it, and releases it deliberately rather than fleeing. The introduction performs the correction the novel's plot withholds. She claims and releases her monstrous offspring, which is what Victor refused to do

Unit 5 review · 10 questions · all lessons

Unit 5 review: Frankenstein

Shuffled across all nine lessons. Where a question could be answered differently from the two editions, say which text you are using.

  1. What does Shelley do to the Gothic that is new?
    Show the full solution

    She keeps the machinery, a dreary November night and a body assembled from graveyards, and supplies a natural cause instead of a supernatural one. Horror produced by a process a reader could in principle understand is the usual definition of science fiction. Gothic machinery with a natural rather than supernatural cause

  2. Name the three narrators and say how many layers separate the reader from the creature.
    Show the full solution

    Walton, Victor, the creature; the creature to Victor, Victor to Walton, Walton to his sister, and the printed book

  3. Why is Walton not a neutral recorder?
    Show the full solution

    He has written to his sister that he has no friend, and Victor arrives as exactly the educated companion he wanted. Before hearing a word he calls the vessel gallant and assumes a noble victim. A man who has judged his witness before the testimony begins is not a neutral transmitter. He wants a friend and judged Victor before hearing anything

  4. Why does the novel end with Walton rather than with Victor's death?
    Show the full solution

    Because the warning has to be tested. Walton, faced with a crew demanding to turn back, is furious and agrees; Victor urges them on and calls them cowards with nearly his last breath. Ending there shows the warning received and refused at the same time. It shows the warning being received by one man and refused by the other

  5. Why is the abandonment rather than the creation Victor's real error?
    Show the full solution

    Because every death follows from it. William, Justine, Clerval and Elizabeth die because a being was made, left, and educated by nothing but rejection. The creature states that he was benevolent and that misery made him a fiend, so the creation alone causes nothing. Every death follows from the abandonment, not the creation

  6. What evidence does the creature's decision to stop stealing supply?
    Show the full solution

    He is starving, the cottagers do not know he exists, and they could never reward him. He stops because he notices the cost to them. That is unprompted moral reasoning with no teacher and no prospect of gain, documenting what he was before any human being had spoken to him. Unprompted moral reasoning with no teacher and no possible reward

  7. Set out the creature's glacier argument as premises and conclusion.
    Show the full solution

    Premise one: Victor made him and owes him what a maker owes. Premise two: his violence was caused by exclusion rather than nature, with a year of documented benevolence as evidence. Conclusion: the remedy Victor alone can supply is owed as a right. The structure is valid and the premises are arguable. Obligation from creation, violence caused by exclusion, therefore the remedy is owed

  8. What goes wrong in the negotiation, and what does it cost?
    Show the full solution

    Victor holds two serious objections, that the pair might breed and that the female might refuse the bargain, and states neither. He agrees, works for months, and destroys the body without a word. He then misreads the threat as being about himself, and Elizabeth dies. He never voices real objections, and Elizabeth dies from the misreading

  9. State the reversal in the novel's last third.
    Show the full solution

    Victor spent the novel avoiding contact and now cannot bear to lose it; the creature spent it demanding contact and now rations it, staying just ahead and leaving food. The chase is collaborative, since the creature could vanish and instead keeps Victor alive and following. Each takes the other's position, and both keep the pursuit going

  10. How does the destiny language added in 1831 change the novel's argument?
    Show the full solution

    It describes Victor as someone to whom events happened, with his efforts ineffectual against immutable laws. The 1818 text gives him decisions instead: to work in secret, to leave the room, to stay silent at Justine's trial. One text records choices and the other supplies fate. It converts a record of choices into an account of fate

Lesson 6.1 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.7

From topic to research question

Most failed research papers failed at the first step. A topic produces a report; a question produces an argument, and the difference is decided before any source is opened.

The key ideas
  1. A topic is a subject area; a research question is something evidence could answer.
  2. A good question can turn out either way, so you should not already know the answer when you start.
  3. It must be narrow enough to answer in the length available, which for a school paper is very narrow indeed.
  4. It must be wide enough to have sources, and a question nobody has written about cannot be researched at this level.
  5. "Why" and "how" questions produce arguments; "what" and "when" questions usually produce reports.
  6. Preliminary reading comes before the final question, because you cannot narrow sensibly until you know what the debates are.
  7. The question will change as you research, and revising it is progress rather than failure.
  8. The thesis is the answer to the question, which means a good question makes the thesis almost automatic.

Where students lose marks: a question so broad that answering it would take a book. "Was the Civil War inevitable" is not a school paper question. Narrow it until it is uncomfortable, then narrow it again.

Worked example

The task. Narrow a topic from this course into a usable research question.

Step one: start with the topic. "Frankenstein." That is a subject area with thousands of books about it and no question in it at all.

Step two: narrow once. "The two editions of Frankenstein." Better, because it names a specific feature, but still not a question. A paper on this would be a report.

Step three: convert to a question. "How do the 1831 revisions change the novel's treatment of Victor's responsibility?" Now there is something evidence could answer, and it begins with how.

Step four: test whether it can turn out either way. Yes. The revisions might reduce his culpability, or might only appear to, or might do something else entirely. A researcher who does not already know the answer has a real project.

Step five: test narrowness. Two texts, one theme, a specified set of differences. That is answerable in ten pages. Compare with "How did Romanticism influence Frankenstein", which is a book.

Step six: test for sources. Both editions are public domain and freely available, and the differences between them are a standing scholarly topic. Sources exist and are reachable without a university library.

Step seven: check the verb. "How" requires an explanation and produces an argument. Compare "What are the differences between the 1818 and 1831 editions", which is answerable by a list and requires no thinking.

Step eight: derive the thesis. A good question makes the thesis nearly automatic, because the thesis is the answer. "The 1831 revisions reduce Victor's responsibility by adding language of destiny while leaving his actual decisions unchanged, so the later text describes a fated man performing the same culpable acts." Answer the question and the thesis is written.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Distinguish a topic from a research question.
    Show the full solution

    A topic is a subject area; a question is something evidence could answer

  2. Which question words produce arguments?
    Show the full solution

    Why and how

  3. What are the two size tests a question must pass?
    Show the full solution

    Narrow enough to answer in the length available, wide enough to have sources

  4. When should the final question be fixed?
    Show the full solution

    After preliminary reading, since you cannot narrow sensibly first

  5. What relation does the thesis bear to the question?
    Show the full solution

    It is the answer to it

  6. Why must a good question be able to turn out either way?
    Show the full solution

    Because a researcher who already knows the answer is collecting support rather than investigating, and the paper will show it: every source will be used to confirm and none to test. A question whose answer is genuinely open forces the writer to follow evidence, and it makes the conclusion worth reading because it was not settled in advance. Otherwise the research collects support instead of testing anything

  7. Why do "what" and "when" questions usually produce reports?
    Show the full solution

    Because they are answerable by a list or a date, and a list requires no reasoning to assemble or to read. "What are the differences between the 1818 and 1831 editions" can be answered by enumeration. "How do the 1831 revisions change the novel's treatment of responsibility" requires explaining an effect, which is an argument someone could dispute. They are answerable by enumeration, which requires no reasoning

  8. Why is "Was the Civil War inevitable" a bad school paper question?
    Show the full solution

    Because answering it properly would take a book and a career. The evidence spans decades, the historiography is enormous, and a ten-page treatment can only summarize other people's positions. Narrowing it until it is uncomfortable and then narrowing again produces something a student can actually answer with evidence they have read themselves. It would take a book; narrow until uncomfortable, then again

  9. Why does preliminary reading have to come first?
    Show the full solution

    Because you cannot narrow sensibly until you know what the existing debates are. A question invented before any reading is likely to be either already settled, already exhausted, or impossible to source. Reading first tells you where the live disagreements are, and a question aimed at one of those has both sources and a reason to exist. You cannot tell where the live disagreements are without reading

  10. Show how a good question makes a thesis almost automatic.
    Show the full solution

    The thesis is the answer to the question, so once the research is done the sentence is nearly written. "How do the 1831 revisions change the novel's treatment of Victor's responsibility?" produces "The 1831 revisions reduce his responsibility by adding language of destiny while leaving his actual decisions unchanged." Answer the question in one sentence and that sentence is the thesis. The thesis is the question's one-sentence answer

Lesson 6.2 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.8

Finding sources, and judging them

Finding sources is now easy and judging them is now hard, which is a reversal of the problem this skill was invented to solve. The tests have not changed; the volume has.

The key ideas
  1. A primary source is created by a participant or at the time; a secondary source analyzes primary ones.
  2. A tertiary source summarizes secondary ones, which is what an encyclopedia is.
  3. Four tests apply: authority, purpose, evidence and currency.
  4. Authority asks who made it and whether they have relevant expertise or access.
  5. Purpose asks why it was made, and it is the most important of the four because purpose governs selection.
  6. Evidence asks what it rests on, and a source that cites nothing cannot be checked.
  7. Currency asks when, which matters enormously in science and rarely in the analysis of an 1818 novel.
  8. Corroboration is the practical standard: a claim appearing in several genuinely independent sources is more reliable than one appearing once.

Where students lose marks: judging a source by how it looks. Design is cheap and evidence is not, so a plain page that cites its sources beats a polished one that does not.

Worked example

The task. Assemble and judge sources for the question about the 1831 revisions.

Step one: identify the primary sources. The 1818 text and the 1831 text, plus Shelley's 1831 introduction. All three are public domain and all three can be read in full, which means the central evidence costs nothing.

Step two: state why primary sources come first. The question is about what the two texts say. Every secondary source is somebody's reading of exactly the material you can read yourself, so going to the texts first means you can evaluate the readings instead of accepting them.

Step three: apply the authority test to a secondary source. An article on the two editions is stronger if the author is named, has relevant expertise, and published with an editor. An anonymous page fails the first test before its contents are read.

Step four: apply the purpose test. A study guide exists to help students pass tests, so it simplifies. A scholarly article exists to persuade other specialists, so it argues. Neither is dishonest and both select, and knowing which selection is operating tells you what to expect.

Step five: apply the evidence test. Does the source quote both editions, give chapter references, and name which text it uses? A claim about the revisions that quotes neither edition is an assertion, and assertions are not sources.

Step six: apply the currency test honestly. For a question about an 1818 novel, a careful essay from 1974 may be better than a careless one from last year. Currency matters most where the underlying facts change, which for literary texts they mostly do not.

Step seven: corroborate. The claim that 1831 adds language of destiny should appear in more than one independent place, and you can verify it yourself by reading both texts, which is the strongest corroboration available. Three pages copying one article are one source, not three.

Step eight: state the working rule. Prefer sources you can check. A claim with a citation can be verified and a claim without one has to be trusted, and for a question where the primary texts are free, there is no excuse for building an argument on anyone else's reading of them.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Distinguish primary, secondary and tertiary sources.
    Show the full solution

    From a participant or the time; analyzing primary ones; summarizing secondary ones

  2. Name the four tests.
    Show the full solution

    Authority, purpose, evidence, currency

  3. Which test matters most, and why?
    Show the full solution

    Purpose, because purpose governs selection

  4. What are the primary sources for the sample question?
    Show the full solution

    The 1818 text, the 1831 text, and Shelley's 1831 introduction

  5. What is corroboration?
    Show the full solution

    A claim appearing in several genuinely independent sources

  6. Why go to the primary sources first?
    Show the full solution

    Because the question is about what the two texts say, and every secondary source is somebody's reading of exactly the material you can read yourself. Going to the texts first means you can evaluate the readings rather than accept them, and it means your argument rests on evidence you have verified. For a question whose primary sources are free, there is no excuse for doing otherwise. You can then evaluate other readings instead of accepting them

  7. How do purpose and honesty differ?
    Show the full solution

    A study guide exists to help students pass tests and therefore simplifies; a scholarly article exists to persuade specialists and therefore argues. Neither is dishonest and both select. The purpose test is not an accusation but a prediction about what a source will include and leave out, which is what you need in order to use it well. Both may be honest and both select; purpose predicts what is left out

  8. Apply the evidence test to a claim about the revisions.
    Show the full solution

    Ask whether the source quotes both editions, gives chapter references, and names which text it is using. A claim about what changed between 1818 and 1831 that quotes neither edition is an assertion rather than a finding, and assertions are not sources. The test is mechanical and it eliminates most of what a search returns in about ten seconds. Does it quote both texts and name its edition? If not, it is an assertion

  9. When does currency matter, and when does it not?
    Show the full solution

    It matters most where the underlying facts change, which is why it is decisive in science and medicine. For a question about an 1818 novel the text has not changed, so a careful essay from 1974 may be better than a careless one from last year. Applying currency mechanically to literary questions discards good work for no reason. Decisive where facts change; nearly irrelevant for a fixed text

  10. Why is appearance a bad guide?
    Show the full solution

    Because design is cheap and evidence is not. A professionally built site with no named author and no citations has invested in looking authoritative rather than in being checkable, and a plain page listing its sources has done the opposite. Judging by appearance rewards exactly the wrong investment and is the commonest way students are misled. Design is cheap and evidence is not, so looks reward the wrong thing

Lesson 6.3 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.8

Notes, paraphrase, and where plagiarism actually begins

Most student plagiarism is accidental and originates in note-taking rather than in writing. Fixing the note-taking fixes the problem, and it takes about five minutes to learn.

The key ideas
  1. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own, and intention does not change the consequence.
  2. Most of it starts in notes, when a student copies a sentence and later cannot remember whether it was theirs.
  3. The fix is mechanical: put every copied phrase in quotation marks in your notes, immediately, with the page number.
  4. A paraphrase restates in your own words and sentence structure, and still requires a citation.
  5. A patchwrite changes a few words and keeps the original structure, which is plagiarism even with a citation attached.
  6. The test for a real paraphrase is whether you could write it without looking at the original.
  7. A summary condenses a longer passage and also requires a citation.
  8. Common knowledge needs no citation, meaning facts verifiable in many general sources that no particular author discovered.

Where students lose marks: the patchwrite. Changing vocabulary while keeping the sentence shape is the commonest form of accidental plagiarism and the easiest for a reader to detect.

Worked example

The source. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818, the creature's narrative. Public domain.

I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption; but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained, and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots which I gathered from a neighbouring wood.

Step one: write a patchwrite and diagnose it. "He had been used, at night, to take some of their supplies for his own use; but when he found that this caused suffering to the cottagers, he stopped, and contented himself with berries, nuts and roots gathered from a nearby wood." Every clause is in the same place. The vocabulary has changed and the sentence has not.

Step two: state why a citation does not repair it. A citation says where an idea came from. It does not say that the sentence structure is also borrowed, and a reader comparing the two passages sees a disguised copy rather than a paraphrase.

Step three: write a real paraphrase. "The creature stops stealing food once he realizes it is hurting people who cannot see him, and lives on what he can forage instead." Different structure, different length, different emphasis, and the same content.

Step four: apply the test. Could you write that sentence without looking at the original? Yes, because it reports the content rather than shadowing the wording. That is the working definition of a paraphrase.

Step five: show the note-taking fix. In notes, this passage should read: `creature stops stealing when he sees it hurts them, lives on "berries, nuts, and roots" (1818, ch. 12)`. The quoted phrase is marked, the rest is summary, and the source is attached.

Step six: state why that solves the problem. Three weeks later, the writer can tell at a glance which words are Shelley's and which are theirs. Almost all accidental plagiarism is a failure of this record rather than a failure of honesty.

Step seven: test a common-knowledge claim. "Frankenstein was published in 1818." This appears in every general source and no particular author discovered it. No citation needed. "The 1831 text adds fourteen references to destiny" is a specific finding and must be attributed.

Step eight: state the rule. When in doubt, cite. An unnecessary citation is a minor clutter that a reader ignores; a missing one is plagiarism, and the costs are so unequal that the decision requires no judgment at all.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define plagiarism.
    Show the full solution

    Presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own, regardless of intention

  2. Where does most student plagiarism start?
    Show the full solution

    In note-taking

  3. What is a patchwrite?
    Show the full solution

    Changing a few words while keeping the original sentence structure

  4. What is the test for a real paraphrase?
    Show the full solution

    Whether you could write it without looking at the original

  5. Does a paraphrase require a citation?
    Show the full solution

    Yes

  6. Why does a citation not repair a patchwrite?
    Show the full solution

    A citation says where an idea came from. It does not disclose that the sentence structure is also borrowed, so a reader comparing the two passages finds a disguised copy presented as the writer's own prose. The borrowed thing was the construction as well as the content, and the citation only covers half of what was taken. The structure is borrowed too, and the citation does not disclose that

  7. Diagnose the patchwrite in the worked example.
    Show the full solution

    Every clause sits in the same position as in Shelley's sentence: the habit of stealing at night, the discovery of the harm, the abstention, the substitute foods, the nearby wood. Only the vocabulary has changed. A paraphrase must restate the content in a different construction, and this one has shadowed the original from beginning to end. The clauses sit in the same order; only the vocabulary changed

  8. Show the note-taking fix and say why it works.
    Show the full solution

    Notes should read: creature stops stealing when he sees it hurts them, lives on "berries, nuts, and roots", with the edition and chapter attached. The quoted phrase is inside quotation marks, everything else is summary, and the source travels with the note. Three weeks later the writer can tell at a glance which words are Shelley's, which is the whole problem solved. Mark quotations immediately so the record survives the weeks

  9. Distinguish a common-knowledge claim from a citable one here.
    Show the full solution

    "Frankenstein was published in 1818" appears in every general source, was discovered by no particular author, and needs no citation. "The 1831 text adds fourteen references to destiny" is a specific finding somebody counted, and it must be attributed. The test is whether a particular person did work to produce the claim. A date everyone reports, against a finding somebody counted

  10. Why is "when in doubt, cite" the right policy?
    Show the full solution

    Because the costs are wildly unequal. An unnecessary citation is a minor clutter a reader ignores. A missing one is plagiarism, which in most academic settings carries consequences regardless of intention. When one error costs almost nothing and the other can end a course, the policy under uncertainty is obvious and requires no judgment to apply. The costs are wildly unequal, so no judgment is needed

Lesson 6.4 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.7, W.9-10.9

Making sources answer your question

The difference between a research paper and a book report is synthesis. A report tells the reader what each source said; a paper makes several sources bear on one question the writer is answering.

The key ideas
  1. Synthesis means combining sources to answer your question, rather than summarizing them in turn.
  2. The structural test is your paragraph openings: if they name sources rather than ideas, you are summarizing.
  3. Sources that disagree are the most useful, because the disagreement is something for your paper to resolve.
  4. Put sources in conversation by showing where they agree, where they differ, and what accounts for the difference.
  5. You are the argument, so every paragraph should advance your claim rather than report someone else's.
  6. A source can be used against itself, since evidence an author supplies may support a conclusion they did not draw.
  7. Balance is not neutrality, and a paper that presents every view without deciding has not answered its own question.
  8. The gap between sources is where a contribution lives, since a question nobody has answered is one you can actually say something about.

Where students lose marks: the source-by-source structure. If a paragraph could be deleted without affecting any other paragraph, the paper is a stack of summaries with an introduction on top.

Worked example

The task. Synthesize three sources on the Frankenstein editions question.

Step one: invent the situation. Source A argues the 1831 revisions make Victor a victim of fate. Source B argues they are cosmetic and the novel is unchanged. Source C discusses Shelley's losses between editions and does not address Victor's culpability at all.

Step two: write a summarizing structure and diagnose it. Paragraph one on Source A, paragraph two on Source B, paragraph three on Source C, conclusion noting that scholars disagree. Every paragraph opens with a name and the paper has no argument.

Step three: identify the real disagreement. A and B disagree about whether added language changes a novel when the events are identical. That is a genuine question and it is the one the paper should answer.

Step four: build a synthesizing structure. Paragraph one: the revisions add fate language. Paragraph two: the decisions and events are unchanged. Paragraph three: what follows when a text describes the same acts in different terms. Each paragraph opens with an idea and draws on whichever sources bear on it.

Step five: put A and B in conversation. They agree on the facts, which are the additions, and differ on their significance. Naming that precisely is more useful than reporting both positions, because it locates the disagreement at a single point.

Step six: use Source C against itself. C discusses Shelley's bereavements and draws no conclusion about Victor. Its evidence supports a claim about why the revisions were made, which is a conclusion its author did not reach and which your paper can draw with attribution.

Step seven: refuse false balance. The paper must decide whether A or B is right, or whether both miss something. "Scholars disagree" is a report of the field and not an answer to the question, and a paper that ends there has not done the work.

Step eight: state the contribution. The gap is that nobody in this set has checked whether the fate language attaches to Victor's decisions or only to his commentary on them. That is answerable by reading both texts, it has not been answered here, and it is what a student paper can actually contribute.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Define synthesis.
    Show the full solution

    Combining sources to answer your question rather than summarizing them in turn

  2. What is the structural test for synthesis?
    Show the full solution

    Whether paragraph openings name ideas or sources

  3. Which sources are most useful?
    Show the full solution

    Ones that disagree

  4. What does it mean to use a source against itself?
    Show the full solution

    Using evidence an author supplies to support a conclusion they did not draw

  5. Why is balance not neutrality?
    Show the full solution

    A paper presenting every view without deciding has not answered its question

  6. Diagnose a source-by-source paper.
    Show the full solution

    Paragraph one on Source A, paragraph two on Source B, paragraph three on Source C, and a conclusion noting that scholars disagree. Every paragraph opens with a name, any of them could be deleted without affecting the others, and the writer has contributed nothing but the order. It is a stack of summaries with an introduction on top. Paragraphs open with names, are independent, and the writer contributes only the order

  7. How do you locate the real disagreement between two sources?
    Show the full solution

    Find what they agree about and then name the exact point where they part. A and B agree that the 1831 text adds fate language and differ on whether added language changes a novel when the events are identical. Stating that precisely is far more useful than reporting both positions, because it converts a difference of opinion into a question the paper can answer. Name the shared facts, then the single point where they part

  8. Give an example of using a source against itself.
    Show the full solution

    Source C discusses Shelley's bereavements between editions and draws no conclusion about Victor's culpability. Its evidence nonetheless supports a claim about why the revisions were made, which its author did not reach. Drawing that conclusion with proper attribution is legitimate and is one of the few ways a student paper adds something rather than relaying. Draw a conclusion its evidence supports but its author did not reach

  9. Why is "scholars disagree" an insufficient conclusion?
    Show the full solution

    It reports the state of the field rather than answering the question the paper asked. A reader already knew there was a disagreement; that is usually why the question exists. The paper's job is to decide which position the evidence supports, or to show that both miss something, and stopping at the disagreement means the research was conducted and not used. It reports the field instead of answering the paper's own question

  10. Where does a student paper's contribution come from?
    Show the full solution

    From the gap between the sources. In this case nobody has checked whether the added fate language attaches to Victor's decisions or only to his commentary on them. That is answerable by reading two public domain texts, it has not been answered by the sources consulted, and it is exactly the size of contribution a school paper can genuinely make. A small checkable question the sources leave open

Lesson 6.5 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.1

Claim, reasons, evidence, warrant

Unit 3 taught you to take an argument apart. This lesson uses the same four components to build one, because a structure you can analyze is a structure you can write.

The key ideas
  1. The claim is the position, stated so a reasonable person could disagree.
  2. The reasons answer why the claim should be accepted, and they become the body paragraphs.
  3. The evidence supports each reason, and it must be specific enough to be checked.
  4. The warrant is the unstated assumption connecting evidence to claim.
  5. Make your warrants explicit when they are contestable, since an audience that does not share an assumption will reject the argument without knowing why.
  6. Qualify the claim to make it defensible, using words like usually, largely, in this case, which strengthen rather than weaken it.
  7. Order the reasons by dependence, so that each paragraph makes the next one possible.
  8. The conclusion states what follows, not what the essay just did.

Where students lose marks: the unqualified claim. "Victor is entirely responsible for every death" invites one counter-example and collapses. "Victor's abandonment, rather than the creation, causes every death in the novel" is defensible and says more.

Worked example

The task. Build an argument on whether the creature's demand for a companion should have been granted.

Step one: write a bad claim. "Victor should have made the companion." Too flat, with no reason attached, and it invites an immediate objection about consequences.

Step two: qualify it. "Victor was obliged to answer the creature's demand, and his failure to negotiate rather than his refusal is what produces the catastrophe." Now the claim is about the manner of refusal, which is defensible and more interesting.

Step three: derive the reasons. One: the demand was an argument with stateable premises. Two: Victor's objections were real and he never voiced them. Three: the outcome followed from the silence rather than from the refusal.

Step four: attach evidence to each. One: the glacier speech, with its concession and its claim of right. Two: Victor's stated reasons for destroying the female, which appear only in his narration to Walton. Three: the creature's threat, Victor's misreading of it, and Elizabeth's death.

Step five: find the warrant. The assumption joining these is that a party who holds serious objections is obliged to state them before acting. That is contestable, and a reader who rejects it will reject the whole argument.

Step six: make the warrant explicit. One sentence: "A refusal delivered without reasons is not a decision the other party can respond to, and the novel treats Victor's silences as consequential throughout." Now the reader can see what they are being asked to accept.

Step seven: order the reasons by dependence. Reason one must come first, because the reader has to accept that there was an argument to answer before the failure to answer it can matter. Reason three comes last because it is the consequence.

Step eight: write the conclusion. Not "I have shown that Victor should have negotiated." Instead: "Frankenstein's catastrophes follow from silences rather than refusals, which is why the novel ends with two men talking to each other across an ice field instead of with either of them getting what they wanted."

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. Name the four components of an argument.
    Show the full solution

    Claim, reasons, evidence, warrant

  2. What is a warrant?
    Show the full solution

    The unstated assumption connecting evidence to claim

  3. What do the reasons become in the essay?
    Show the full solution

    The body paragraphs

  4. Give three qualifying words.
    Show the full solution

    Usually, largely, in this case

  5. What should a conclusion state?
    Show the full solution

    What follows from the argument, not what the essay did

  6. Why does qualification strengthen a claim?
    Show the full solution

    Because an unqualified claim invites a single counter-example and collapses. "Victor is entirely responsible for every death" can be defeated by one objection about the creature's own choices. "Victor's abandonment, rather than the creation, causes every death in the novel" survives that objection and says something more precise, because it names which of his acts is doing the work. It removes the single counter-example that would defeat the absolute version

  7. Why must a contestable warrant be made explicit?
    Show the full solution

    Because a reader who does not share the assumption will reject the argument without being able to say why, and the writer will never find out where it failed. Stating that "a refusal delivered without reasons is not a decision the other party can respond to" shows the reader exactly what they are being asked to accept, and lets the disagreement happen at the right point. Otherwise a reader rejects the argument without either party knowing where

  8. Explain why the reasons must be ordered by dependence.
    Show the full solution

    Because each paragraph should make the next one possible. The reader has to accept that the creature made a real argument before the failure to answer it can matter, so that reason comes first. The consequence, Elizabeth's death following Victor's misreading, comes last because it depends on both earlier points. An arbitrary order wastes the persuasion that sequence supplies free. Each paragraph should make the next possible, and the consequence comes last

  9. Improve "Victor should have made the companion."
    Show the full solution

    "Victor was obliged to answer the creature's demand, and his failure to negotiate rather than his refusal is what produces the catastrophe." The revision shifts the claim from the decision to the manner of it, which is defensible against the obvious objection about consequences, and it is more interesting because it names a specific failure rather than asserting a different outcome. Shift the claim from the decision to the failure to negotiate

  10. Compare a weak and a strong conclusion for this essay.
    Show the full solution

    Weak: "I have shown that Victor should have negotiated", which restates the thesis and uses the most emphatic position in the essay to tell the reader something they read six pages ago. Strong: "Frankenstein's catastrophes follow from silences rather than refusals, which is why the novel ends with two men talking across an ice field instead of either getting what he wanted." A weak one restates; a strong one states what the argument means

Lesson 6.6 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.1, RI.9-10.8

Answering the objection you would rather not raise

The counterargument paragraph is the one most students skip and the one examiners weight most heavily. It is also the paragraph that most improves an argument, because writing it forces you to find out whether you are right.

The key ideas
  1. A counterclaim is the strongest opposing position, not a weak version you can dispose of.
  2. State it at full strength, because a weakened version is a straw man and a reader who knows the subject will see it.
  3. A concession grants a point and then limits its significance, usually with "but", "even so" or "the difficulty is".
  4. A refutation shows the objection fails, on the evidence or on the reasoning.
  5. Conceding builds ethos, as unit 3 established, because it demonstrates weighing rather than advocating.
  6. Placement depends on the audience, and refutation goes first when the opposing view is the one they already hold.
  7. If you cannot refute it, revise the thesis, because an unanswerable objection means the claim was too strong.
  8. The best refutations accept the facts and dispute what follows from them, since facts are harder to defeat than inferences.

Where students lose marks: the token counterargument. "Some people might say Victor is not to blame, but he is" concedes nothing, refutes nothing, and signals that the writer never considered the objection.

Worked example

The thesis. That Victor's abandonment rather than his creation causes the novel's deaths.

Step one: find the strongest objection. The creature is an adult who makes choices. He murders a child, frames an innocent woman, strangles Clerval and kills Elizabeth on her wedding night. Those are his acts, and the novel gives him the intelligence to have chosen otherwise.

Step two: state it at full strength. Do not write "some people think the creature is partly to blame." Write the case: he has read Plutarch, he reasons carefully enough to plan a year-long approach to the De Laceys, and he selects targets who will hurt Victor most. That is culpable behavior by anyone's standard.

Step three: notice what stating it does to you. The thesis as written, that abandonment causes every death, now looks too strong. That discovery is the counterargument paragraph doing its real job, which is testing your claim.

Step four: concede. "The creature's murders are his own, and the novel gives him the capacity to have chosen otherwise: a being who can plan a year of preparation can also refrain." Grant the point completely and without hedging.

Step five: then limit it. "Even so, the question the novel asks is not whether he is culpable but what made a benevolent creature into someone capable of this, and it supplies an answer in his own narrative."

Step six: refute on the reasoning rather than the facts. The objection establishes that the creature is responsible. It does not establish that Victor is not, because responsibility is not a fixed quantity divided between parties. Accepting the facts and disputing the inference is the stronger move.

Step seven: revise the thesis in light of it. "Victor's abandonment rather than his creation sets every death in motion, though the creature's culpability for the acts themselves is not thereby removed." The qualification makes the claim survive the objection.

Step eight: state what the paragraph accomplished. It found a real objection, forced a revision that improved the thesis, and demonstrated to the reader that the writer considered the other side. All three are worth more than the paragraph costs, which is why skipping it is the most expensive economy in essay writing.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What is a counterclaim?
    Show the full solution

    The strongest opposing position

  2. Distinguish concession from refutation.
    Show the full solution

    Concession grants a point and limits it; refutation shows the objection fails

  3. When should refutation come first?
    Show the full solution

    When the opposing view is the one the audience already holds

  4. What should you do if you cannot refute an objection?
    Show the full solution

    Revise the thesis, because the claim was too strong

  5. What do the best refutations dispute?
    Show the full solution

    What follows from the facts, rather than the facts

  6. Why must the counterclaim be stated at full strength?
    Show the full solution

    A weakened version is a straw man, and any reader who knows the subject sees the weakening at once and discounts everything else in the essay. Stating the real case, that the creature has read Plutarch, plans a year-long approach and selects targets to hurt Victor most, means the refutation is worth something. Defeating a version you built to be defeated proves nothing. A weak version is a straw man that discredits the whole essay

  7. What is the counterargument paragraph's real job?
    Show the full solution

    Testing your claim. Writing out the strongest objection to "abandonment causes every death" reveals immediately that the thesis is too strong, because the creature's murders are his own acts. The discovery happens while writing rather than while being marked, which is the whole value: the paragraph finds the weakness before a reader does. To find the weakness in your own thesis before a reader does

  8. Show how to concede and then limit.
    Show the full solution

    Concede completely: "The creature's murders are his own, and the novel gives him the capacity to have chosen otherwise, since a being who can plan a year of preparation can also refrain." Then limit: "Even so, the question the novel asks is not whether he is culpable but what made a benevolent creature capable of this." Grant without hedging, then narrow the significance. Grant the point without hedging, then narrow what it settles

  9. Why is refuting on the inference stronger than on the facts?
    Show the full solution

    Because facts are harder to defeat than inferences. The objection establishes that the creature is responsible for the murders, and that cannot be argued away. What can be argued is the step from there to "therefore Victor is not", which assumes responsibility is a fixed quantity divided between parties. Disputing that step leaves the facts intact and the objection answered. The facts stand; the inference from them can be disputed

  10. What did the worked paragraph accomplish?
    Show the full solution

    It found a real objection, forced a revision that improved the thesis to "sets every death in motion, though the creature's culpability is not thereby removed", and showed the reader that the writer had considered the other side. All three are worth more than the paragraph costs, which is why skipping the counterargument is the most expensive economy available in essay writing. A real objection found, a better thesis, and demonstrated fairness

Lesson 6.7 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.8, L.9-10.2

Integrating and citing sources in MLA

Citation rules look arbitrary until you know that every one of them exists so a reader can find exactly what you used. Once that is clear, the rules become derivable rather than memorized.

The key ideas
  1. MLA style is standard in English, using an in-text parenthesis and a Works Cited list.
  2. The in-text citation gives author and page, as in (Shelley 42), and the page alone if the author is named in your sentence.
  3. Plays cite act, scene and line and poems cite line numbers, since page numbers differ between editions.
  4. A signal phrase introduces a source and names the author, which tells the reader whose voice is arriving.
  5. Every quotation must be embedded so the surrounding sentence reads grammatically aloud.
  6. A block quotation is used for more than four lines, indented, with no quotation marks and the citation after the final punctuation.
  7. The Works Cited entry identifies the exact version, which is why edition and publication details are required.
  8. Every in-text citation must match an entry, and every entry must be cited somewhere in the text.

Where students lose marks: a quotation that breaks the sentence around it. Read every sentence containing a quotation aloud with the quotation in place, and rebuild any that does not parse.

Worked example

The task. Integrate and cite one quotation four ways, from worst to best.

Step one: drop it. "The creature is sympathetic. 'I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.' This shows he is not evil." The quotation stands alone, the comment restates the claim, and there is no citation.

Step two: introduce it badly. "Shelley says that 'I was benevolent and good' (Shelley 97)." Read it aloud: "Shelley says that I was benevolent." The "that" introduces indirect speech in the third person and the quotation is in the first, so the sentence does not parse.

Step three: fix the grammar. "The creature insists that he 'was benevolent and good' before 'misery made me a fiend' (Shelley 97)." Better, though the second quotation still shifts person mid-sentence.

Step four: integrate properly. "The creature offers a causal account rather than a defense, claiming that he 'was benevolent and good' until 'misery made' him 'a fiend' (Shelley 97)." Every quoted fragment now sits inside a grammatical sentence.

Step five: add the analysis. "The sentence concedes what he has become and disputes only how, which is the same move Douglass makes when he grants a claim in order to dispute its application." Evidence without explanation is not support.

Step six: demonstrate the signal phrase. "As Shelley's creature argues on the glacier, he..." tells the reader whose voice is arriving and where in the novel, which a bare parenthesis does not.

Step seven: write the Works Cited entry. "Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818 text, edited by Marilyn Butler, Oxford University Press, 1998." Author, title, version, editor, publisher, year.

Step eight: state why the edition is required. Because this course has just spent a lesson establishing that there are two texts with different content. A citation to Frankenstein without an edition does not tell a reader which book you read, which is exactly what a citation exists to do.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. What does an MLA in-text citation contain?
    Show the full solution

    Author and page, or page alone if the author is named in the sentence

  2. How are plays and poems cited?
    Show the full solution

    Plays by act, scene and line; poems by line number

  3. What is a signal phrase?
    Show the full solution

    An introduction naming the author, so the reader knows whose voice is arriving

  4. When is a block quotation used, and how is it punctuated?
    Show the full solution

    For more than four lines; indented, no quotation marks, citation after the final punctuation

  5. What must be true of every in-text citation?
    Show the full solution

    It must match an entry in the Works Cited, and every entry must be cited in the text

  6. Why do plays and poems use line numbers rather than pages?
    Show the full solution

    Because page numbers differ between editions and line numbers do not. A reader following a citation to act 3, scene 1, line 94 can find the passage in any edition of the play; a reader following a page number can find it only in yours. The rule follows directly from the purpose, which is letting someone else check your work. Line numbers are stable across editions and pages are not

  7. Diagnose "Shelley says that 'I was benevolent and good'."
    Show the full solution

    The word "that" introduces indirect speech, which requires the third person, while the quotation is in the first. Read aloud it says "Shelley says that I was benevolent", which does not parse. The fix is either to drop "that" and use a colon, or to bracket and recast so that the pronouns agree with the sentence around them. "That" requires third person and the quotation is first person

  8. What does a signal phrase give that a parenthesis does not?
    Show the full solution

    It tells the reader whose voice is arriving and where, before the quotation rather than after it. "As Shelley's creature argues on the glacier" locates the speaker, the scene and the mode of speech in six words, so the quoted material is received already framed. A bare parenthesis supplies a reference and no orientation. Orientation before the quotation rather than a reference after it

  9. Why is evidence without explanation not support?
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    Because the quotation supplies raw material and the argument lives in the account of how it bears on the claim. "This shows he is not evil" restates the claim and adds nothing the quotation did not already contain. Real explanation names a feature of the words, such as the fact that the sentence concedes what he became and disputes only how. The quotation is raw material; the reasoning is what persuades

  10. Why must a Frankenstein citation name the edition?
    Show the full solution

    Because there are two texts with materially different content, as lesson 5.9 establishes, and a citation to "Frankenstein" does not tell a reader which book was read. Since the entire purpose of citation is to let someone else find exactly what you used, omitting the edition defeats the rule rather than merely bending it. Two different texts exist, so the citation would not identify what was used

Lesson 6.8 · Unit 6 · W.9-10.5

Revising for argument rather than for sentences

English 9 taught revision as distinct from editing. This lesson applies that to a research paper, where the failure modes are structural and invisible at the sentence level.

The key ideas
  1. Revise structure first, then paragraphs, then sentences, because polishing text you will delete is wasted work.
  2. The reverse outline is the main tool: one sentence per paragraph describing what it argues, then read the list.
  3. A good reverse outline reads as an argument, and a bad one reads as a table of contents.
  4. Check that every paragraph advances the thesis, and delete any that merely reports something interesting.
  5. Check that the thesis still matches the paper, since arguments move during drafting and the opening is written first.
  6. Look for the paragraph that should be first and is currently third, which is the commonest structural fault.
  7. Cut the throat-clearing, and in a research paper the first two paragraphs are usually the candidates.
  8. Read the paper aloud last, which catches what the eye skips and takes about twenty minutes.

Where students lose marks: revising only at sentence level. A paper with elegant prose and no argument scores below one with plain prose and a good structure, because structure is what is being assessed.

Worked example

The task. Reverse-outline a draft and diagnose it.

Step one: write the reverse outline. P1: introduces Frankenstein. P2: summarizes the plot. P3: explains that there are two editions. P4: lists the changes. P5: discusses Shelley's biography. P6: argues the changes reduce Victor's agency. P7: concludes.

Step two: read the list as a list. It reads as a table of contents rather than as an argument. Six of the seven entries describe subjects and only one, P6, makes a claim.

Step three: locate the real argument. P6 is the paper. Everything before it is preparation, and the thesis is stated in a paragraph that arrives on page four.

Step four: cut the throat-clearing. P1 and P2 introduce and summarize a novel the reader of a Frankenstein paper has read. Both go, and the paper opens with the fact that there are two texts, which is the information the argument actually needs.

Step five: test each remaining paragraph against the thesis. P5, on Shelley's biography, is interesting and does not advance the claim about what the revisions do to the text. It either becomes evidence for why the revisions were made, with that stated, or it goes.

Step six: check whether the thesis still matches. The opening was written before P6 existed, so it probably promises a survey of differences rather than an argument about agency. Rewriting the thesis to match what the paper became is nearly always necessary.

Step seven: rebuild the outline. P1: two texts exist and the difference matters, with thesis. P2: the additions are language of destiny. P3: the decisions and events are unchanged. P4: what follows when the same acts are described in different terms. P5: counterargument, that the additions are cosmetic. P6: conclusion. Every entry now makes a claim.

Step eight: state what changed. No sentence was improved. Two paragraphs were deleted, one was repurposed, one was added, and the thesis was rewritten. The paper is shorter and it now has an argument, which is what revising for structure means.

Practice · 10 questions

Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.

  1. In what order should revision proceed?
    Show the full solution

    Structure, then paragraphs, then sentences

  2. What is a reverse outline?
    Show the full solution

    One sentence per paragraph describing what it argues, read as a list

  3. How can you tell a good reverse outline from a bad one?
    Show the full solution

    A good one reads as an argument; a bad one reads as a table of contents

  4. Where is throat-clearing usually found in a research paper?
    Show the full solution

    In the first two paragraphs

  5. What should be done last?
    Show the full solution

    Read the paper aloud

  6. Diagnose the sample reverse outline.
    Show the full solution

    Six of the seven entries name subjects rather than making claims, so the list reads as a table of contents. Only P6 argues anything, which means the paper's thesis arrives on page four and everything before it is preparation. A reader reaching P4 has not yet been told what the paper thinks, which is a structural fault no sentence editing would reveal. Only one paragraph makes a claim, and it arrives on page four

  7. Why do the first two paragraphs go?
    Show the full solution

    They introduce and summarize a novel that anyone reading a paper about Frankenstein's two editions has already read. A narratio exists to supply what the audience lacks, and this audience lacks nothing about the plot. Cutting them lets the paper open on the fact that two texts exist, which is the information the argument actually needs. They supply what this audience already has, delaying the information the argument needs

  8. What are the two options for the biography paragraph?
    Show the full solution

    Either it becomes evidence for a claim about why the revisions were made, with that purpose stated explicitly in the paragraph, or it goes. As drafted it reports something interesting that does not advance the thesis about what the revisions do to the text. Interesting and relevant are different tests, and only the second one matters in revision. Repurpose it as evidence for why the revisions were made, or delete it

  9. Why does the thesis usually need rewriting?
    Show the full solution

    Because it was written first, before the argument existed, and arguments move during drafting. An opening drafted when the plan was to survey differences will promise a survey, while the finished paper argues about agency. Rewriting the thesis to match what the paper became is nearly always necessary, and it is not a sign that the drafting went wrong. It was written before the argument existed and the argument moved

  10. What actually changed in the worked revision?
    Show the full solution

    No sentence was improved. Two paragraphs were deleted, one was repurposed, one was added, and the thesis was rewritten to match the paper. The result is shorter and has an argument where it previously had a sequence of topics. That is what revising for structure means, and no amount of sentence-level work would have produced it. Paragraphs deleted, repurposed and added, and the thesis rewritten; no sentences improved

Unit 6 review · 10 questions · all lessons

Unit 6 review: Research, Synthesis and Argument

Shuffled across all eight lessons. Several questions ask you to diagnose a draft, which is the form this material is actually tested in.

  1. Distinguish a topic from a research question, and name the two size tests.
    Show the full solution

    A topic is a subject area; a question is answerable by evidence. It must be narrow enough to answer and wide enough to have sources

  2. Why must a good research question be able to turn out either way?
    Show the full solution

    Because a researcher who already knows the answer is collecting support rather than investigating, and the paper shows it: every source is used to confirm and none to test. An open question forces the writer to follow evidence and makes the conclusion worth reading. Otherwise the research collects support instead of testing anything

  3. Name the four source tests and say which matters most.
    Show the full solution

    Authority, purpose, evidence, currency; purpose, because it governs selection

  4. Why should you go to the primary sources first?
    Show the full solution

    Because every secondary source is somebody's reading of material you can read yourself, so going to the texts first lets you evaluate those readings rather than accept them. For a question whose primary sources are public domain, there is no excuse for doing otherwise. You can then evaluate other readings instead of accepting them

  5. What is a patchwrite, and why does a citation not repair it?
    Show the full solution

    Changing a few words while keeping the original sentence structure. A citation says where an idea came from and does not disclose that the construction was borrowed too, so a reader comparing the passages finds a disguised copy presented as the writer's own prose. The structure is borrowed too, and the citation does not disclose that

  6. What is the structural test for synthesis?
    Show the full solution

    Whether paragraph openings name ideas or sources. A paper whose paragraphs open with names, any of which could be deleted without affecting the others, is a stack of summaries with an introduction on top. Synthesis puts sources in conversation around a question. Paragraph openings should name ideas, not sources

  7. Why is "scholars disagree" an insufficient conclusion?
    Show the full solution

    It reports the state of the field rather than answering the question the paper asked, and a reader already knew there was a disagreement, which is usually why the question exists. The paper's job is to decide which position the evidence supports, or show that both miss something. It reports the field instead of answering the paper's own question

  8. Why does qualification strengthen a claim rather than weaken it?
    Show the full solution

    An unqualified claim invites a single counter-example and collapses. "Victor is entirely responsible for every death" falls to one objection about the creature's choices; "Victor's abandonment, rather than the creation, sets every death in motion" survives it and names which act does the work. It removes the counter-example that would defeat the absolute version

  9. What is the counterargument paragraph's real job?
    Show the full solution

    Testing your claim. Writing out the strongest objection reveals whether the thesis is too strong, and the discovery happens while drafting rather than while being marked. It also demonstrates fairness to the reader, which is why skipping it is the most expensive economy in essay writing. To find the weakness in your own thesis before a reader does

  10. Diagnose a reverse outline that reads as a table of contents.
    Show the full solution

    Its entries name subjects rather than making claims, which means most paragraphs report rather than argue and the thesis arrives late. The fix is structural: cut the throat-clearing, repurpose or delete paragraphs that do not advance the claim, and rewrite the thesis to match what the paper became. Entries name subjects rather than claims, so the argument arrives late

Rhetorical analysis 1 · 60 minutes

Read the passage below. Then write an essay analyzing the rhetorical choices Sojourner Truth makes to advance her argument before this particular audience.

Directions

You have sixty minutes. Begin by establishing the rhetorical situation, then state a thesis that names strategies and their effect rather than listing devices.

Organize by strategy, not by walking through the speech in order. Every paragraph must answer "so what, for this audience?"

The passage

Source: Sojourner Truth, speech at the Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, 29 May 1851, as recorded by Marius Robinson in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, 21 June 1851. Public domain.

I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now.

As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart, why can't she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, for we can't take more than our pint'll hold.

The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble.

Show a top-score response

Sojourner Truth speaks at a convention whose leadership is educated, white and mostly middle class, on behalf of a claim those leaders already accept in principle. Her problem is therefore not persuasion but standing: she has no formal education, no office and no institutional authority, and her audience is accustomed to arguments arriving from people who do. She solves this by building credibility out of the only materials available to her, her body and her labor, and then using that credibility to reframe the opposition's fear rather than to refute it.

The opening sentence does something unusual. "I am a woman's rights" does not announce support for a position; it identifies the speaker with it. Before offering evidence she has collapsed the distance between the argument and herself, which means that any objection to the claim now has to be made to her face. For an audience used to debating rights as an abstraction, this is an immediate and uncomfortable move.

She then builds ethos from labor. The list of verbs, "plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed", is not decorative accumulation. Each task was understood by her hearers as men's work, and reciting five of them establishes both that she is qualified to speak and that the premise of the opposing argument is false. The credential and the evidence are the same sentence, which is far more economical than establishing authority and then arguing from it. The rhythm of the list also does work: five verbs in one breath performs the endurance it describes.

The question that follows, "can any man do more than that?", converts the evidence into an argument without stating the argument. Laid out formally the reasoning is that the case against women's rights rests on women's incapacity, that she has demonstrated capacity, and that the case therefore fails. She leaves the third step to the audience. A conclusion a listener completes is one they have partly committed to, and anyone wishing to disagree must now answer aloud against evidence just presented.

The second paragraph shifts ground from strength to intellect, which is where the harder objection lived, and here she changes tactic entirely. Instead of denying that men might have more intellectual capacity, she concedes the premise for the sake of argument: let a woman have a pint and a man a quart. The concession is strategic. By granting the opposition its most confident claim she removes their strongest position and reveals that it does not support their conclusion, because a smaller measure is still a measure and a pint still deserves filling.

The image then turns the fear inside out. "You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, for we can't take more than our pint'll hold" names the real anxiety, which is not capacity but displacement, and disarms it using the opponent's own assumption. If women are as limited as you say, she points out, then your fear is groundless by your own reasoning. It is a refutation that requires her audience to abandon nothing.

The final paragraph changes register again, to something close to affectionate condescension. "The poor men seems to be all in confusion" and the address "why children" reposition her as the calm adult in a room of the flustered, which reverses the social hierarchy of the occasion without ever contesting it directly. The closing appeal is to the opposition's self-interest rather than to justice: "give it to her and you will feel better." After establishing capacity, conceding intellect and neutralizing fear, she finishes by making concession the comfortable option, which leaves an opponent with no dignified place left to stand.

Rhetorical analysis 2 · 60 minutes

Read the passage below. Then write an essay analyzing how Swift constructs his speaker and what that construction accomplishes that a direct argument could not.

Directions

You have sixty minutes. Keep the persona and the author distinct throughout; an essay that attributes the proposal to Swift himself will not score.

Your thesis should name what the persona is designed to do to the reader.

The passage

Source: Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country", 1729. Public domain.

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Show a top-score response

Swift's proposer is a reasonable man. That is the entire design. By constructing a speaker who is humane in manner, methodical in reasoning and entirely conventional in his assumptions, Swift produces an argument that a comfortable reader cannot dismiss as fanaticism, and then walks that reader into a conclusion they will recoil from while holding the premises that produced it. A direct denunciation would have been read as intemperate and set aside. The persona makes the indictment inescapable by making the reader complicit in the reasoning.

The opening establishes the speaker's decency before it establishes anything else. The sight of beggars is "a melancholy object", and the detail of children "all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms" is observed with what reads as genuine pity. Nothing here signals satire. A reader is invited to recognize a familiar type: the concerned gentleman who has noticed a problem and intends to think about it seriously. That recognition is the trap, because it means the reader has already agreed to travel with him.

The register of the second passage reinforces this. "I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection" is the language of the improvement pamphlet, a genre Swift's contemporaries read constantly: a social ill, an analysis, a costed remedy. Borrowing the form supplies borrowed credibility. The reader settles into a familiar pattern of consumption and stops reading defensively.

Then the proposal arrives, and Swift's most important choice is that the tone does not change. The speaker cites an authority, "a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London", exactly as a pamphleteer would. He has considered preparation methods, offering "stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled" and adding that it will "equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout." The culinary thoroughness is the horror, and it is delivered with the mildness of a man being helpful. Because the speaker registers no alarm, the reader must supply all of it, and a revulsion you generate yourself is far harder to set down than one you have been instructed to feel.

The final passage shows what the persona is actually for. "I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children" contains the essay's real accusation. The verb "devoured" is doing double duty: literal in the proposal's logic and metaphorical in its indictment of rents that have consumed a generation. Yet the sentence is framed as a practical note about pricing and market fit. Swift can make the sharpest charge in the pamphlet because his speaker appears to be making a commercial observation.

Underneath all of this is a reductio. The principle Swift is attacking is that the Irish poor should be valued according to their economic usefulness, a premise his readers had largely accepted. The persona accepts it too, without argument, and follows it honestly. If people are worth what they produce, and these people produce nothing, then the rational step is to find a use for them. The proposal is monstrous because the premise is, and the essay never has to say so.

The target, therefore, is not the poor and not only the landlords. It is the reader who found the arithmetic sensible. This becomes explicit when the speaker lists genuine reforms, taxing absentees and curing the expensiveness of pride, and discards them as impractical. Those were Swift's actual proposals and that dismissal was their actual reception. Having his persona reject them as unrealistic reproduces the reader's own behavior and hands it back to them, which is a rebuke no direct argument could have delivered.

Literary analysis 1 · 60 minutes

Read the passage below. Then write an essay analyzing how Shelley constructs the creature's argument and what the novel gains by making him its most persuasive speaker.

Directions

You have sixty minutes. Begin with an arguable thesis. Quote briefly and often, and analyze each quotation rather than dropping it in.

Remember the frame: this speech reaches the reader through Victor and then through Walton. A strong essay accounts for that.

The passage

Source: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818, Volume 2. The creature confronts Victor on the glacier. Public domain.

"I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us."

"Remember that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."

"Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands."

Show a top-score response

Shelley gives the best argument in the novel to the character with the least right to be believed. The creature's speech on the glacier is structured, escalating and morally precise, and it reaches the reader only after passing through Victor, who is defending himself, and Walton, who adores Victor. That arrangement forces a reader into a position the novel wants them in: persuaded by testimony they have every procedural reason to doubt, and therefore obliged to notice that they had been judging by appearance all along.

The speech opens by anticipating its own reception. "I expected this reception," the creature says, which establishes immediately that he understands the social situation better than Victor does. He then generalizes, "All men hate the wretched", converting a personal rejection into a claim about human behavior. The move is rhetorically sophisticated: it denies Victor the position of a man reacting reasonably to a monster and places him instead as an instance of a predictable prejudice.

He then makes the claim the rest of the speech depends on, which is relational rather than emotional. He is bound to Victor "by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us." This is not a plea for sympathy; it is an assertion of obligation. Shelley has the creature argue from duty, the same ground on which Victor's society would have understood a father's responsibility to a child, and Victor never once addresses it.

The Milton comparison in the second paragraph is the sharpest instrument in the speech. "I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed" casts Victor as God and indicts him within his own culture's highest moral framework. It also carries a quiet legal point: the fallen angel fell for a misdeed, and the creature specifies that he is excluded "for no misdeed", so the comparison is made in order to show where it fails. That is a more exact use of allusion than Victor manages anywhere in the novel, and it is evidence of an education Victor never gave him.

The causal claim follows and is stated with unusual economy: "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend." Shelley places the two clauses in bare parallel, separated only by a semicolon, so the reader receives cause and effect without connective softening. The sentence then produces a testable proposition, "Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous", which is the one part of the argument that could be refuted by experiment. Victor declines the experiment, and the novel records that refusal without comment.

The closing move is the most confident. "I ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands." He surrenders the outcome and asks only for a hearing, which is the posture of someone certain that the hearing will do the work. The phrase "the work of your hands" returns responsibility to Victor in the same breath, so even the offer of his own destruction is an accusation.

What the novel gains from all this is a problem the reader cannot resolve by looking. The creature is described throughout as hideous, and he has by this point murdered a child. He is also the only character in the book who reasons from principle, acknowledges his own crimes, and proposes a remedy. Shelley withholds the usual correspondence between appearance and worth, and she does it by giving the repellent figure the eloquence and the ethical vocabulary that her readers associated with gentlemen. A reader who finishes the glacier scene still confident that they can identify a monster by sight has not been reading.

Literary analysis 2 · 60 minutes

Read the passage below. Then write an essay analyzing how Sophocles constructs Creon as a tragic figure rather than as a villain.

Directions

You have sixty minutes. Use the vocabulary of tragedy precisely: hamartia, peripeteia and anagnorisis should appear because they are doing work, not to demonstrate that you know them.

A strong essay takes Creon's position seriously before showing where it fails.

The passage

Source: Sophocles, Antigone, translated by F. Storr, 1912. Public domain. Haemon argues with his father; later, Creon speaks after the deaths.

HAEMON: Then be not self-opinioned, deem that all
Is wisdom which thou sayest, and naught beside.
Who thinks that in himself all wisdom lies,
Or eloquence or wit unmatched by all,
Will in unfolding show himself as empty.

CREON: And I am worsted by a boy?
HAEMON: Not by a boy, but by thy proven fault.
CREON: Am I to rule for others, not myself?

CREON (later): Woe for the sins of a darkened soul,
Stubborn sins, fraught with death.
Ye behold us, the sire who has slain,
The son who has perished.
Woe for the blind counsel that was mine.

Show a top-score response

Sophocles builds Creon so that his destruction follows from a defensible political principle held past the point where it remains reasonable. That is what separates a tragedy from a morality play, and it is why reading Creon as a tyrant, which students often do, makes the play smaller than it is. His hamartia is not cruelty. It is the conviction that a ruler who accepts correction has stopped ruling, and the play arranges for that conviction to be tested by the one person he cannot afford to dismiss.

The exchange with Haemon locates the error precisely. Haemon does not argue that the edict is unjust; he argues about method, warning against the man who "thinks that in himself all wisdom lies". This is a procedural objection, not a moral one, and it is the objection Creon is least equipped to hear. His replies confirm it. "And I am worsted by a boy?" converts a question about judgment into a question about status, and "Am I to rule for others, not myself?" states the hamartia almost as a thesis. In eleven words Creon has defined authority as immunity from persuasion, which is the position the rest of the play will demolish.

Sophocles is careful to leave the underlying edict defensible. Polyneices attacked the city, and a ruler who honors an attacker with the rites owed to a defender does weaken the distinction the city depends on. Nothing in the play shows that reasoning to be stupid, and Creon is never given a speech in which he enjoys his power. The tragedy requires this. If the audience can dismiss the policy, they can dismiss the man, and the fear half of pity and fear disappears, because nobody fears making a mistake they would never make.

The peripeteia is constructed with particular cruelty. Warned by Tiresias, Creon relents and goes to free Antigone, which is the correct action and the one Haemon had urged. He arrives too late. Sophocles could have had him persist and be destroyed by persistence, which would have produced a clean lesson about stubbornness. Instead the reversal is triggered by the correction, so the play denies its audience the consolation that doing the right thing is sufficient. What is punished is not the refusal itself but the delay, and delay is a far more ordinary failing.

The anagnorisis arrives last and is complete. "Woe for the blind counsel that was mine" concedes everything: not that the gods were against him, not that circumstances conspired, but that the judgment was his and it was blind. Sophocles gives him the full recognition precisely because it can now change nothing, and the placement is the point. Recognition before the reversal would make the play a story of redemption. Recognition after makes it a study of irreversibility.

The self-description in that final speech is worth close attention. "The sire who has slain, the son who has perished" places the two in grammatical parallel, which is how Creon now understands the relationship: his son's death and his own act are one event. He does not say that Haemon killed himself, though Haemon did. Sophocles has him accept authorship of a death he did not commit, which is the strongest possible statement that the error was his and that he knows it.

The result is a figure the audience can pity without excusing. Creon is not punished for wanting order, which is a reasonable thing to want, nor for an unusual vice. He is punished for treating counsel as insubordination, a mistake available to anyone with authority, and for taking one scene too long to reconsider. That is why the play produces fear as well as pity: the audience is not watching a monster fall, they are watching a competent man make an ordinary mistake in a situation that does not forgive one.

Argument 1 · 60 minutes

Should high schools begin the academic day later than 8:00 a.m.? Take a position and defend it, addressing the strongest objection to your view.

Directions

You have sixty minutes. State your claim in the first paragraph. Identify at least one warrant explicitly, since this prompt is designed to expose unstated assumptions.

State the counterargument at full strength, concede what is true, and refute by distinguishing rather than by contradiction.

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High schools should begin no earlier than 8:45, and the case rests on a premise worth naming at the outset: that a school timetable should be organized around the hours in which students can actually learn, rather than around the convenience of the adults who built it. Anyone who rejects that premise will not be moved by evidence about sleep, which is why stating it matters more than accumulating studies.

The biological reason is the strongest one available. Adolescent circadian rhythms shift later at puberty, which means the difficulty teenagers have falling asleep before eleven is a physiological fact rather than a failure of discipline. A schedule that requires waking at six is therefore not asking students to be responsible; it is asking them to override something they cannot override, and then penalizing them for the outcome. Districts that have moved their start times report improved attendance, which is the result the biology predicts: students who are awake arrive.

It is worth being careful here, because the evidence is not uniform. At least some districts that measured academic achievement after a later start found no movement in grades. This is often presented as a refutation and it is not one. Attendance and grades measure different things, and grades aggregate a dozen inputs of which alertness is one. The two findings conflict only if one assumes that better sleep must improve everything it touches. The honest version of the argument is narrower than the enthusiastic version: later starts reliably get students into the building, and their effect on achievement is unproven.

The strongest objection is not inconvenience and should not be characterized that way. It is that a later start produces a later finish, and a later finish transfers real costs onto the families least able to absorb them. Households that depend on an older sibling being home by four to receive a younger one lose that arrangement. Students working after school lose hours. Athletics move into darkness, which for some sports means they do not happen. Bus fleets serving several districts require renegotiation, and that expense is paid from a budget that funds something else.

Most of this is simply correct, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. The childcare burden in particular cannot be argued away, and it falls hardest on exactly the families whose children stand to gain most from the extra sleep. Any advocate who has not noticed that is not arguing in good faith.

But the objection, examined closely, is an objection to the ending time rather than to the starting time, and those can be separated. A later start with a compressed schedule ends at the same hour. A final period made optional, or offered as a supervised study block that students with caregiving responsibilities may leave, preserves the current dismissal for the families who need it. The transport cost is real and is a genuine trade rather than a refutation: it is a question about what the district is willing to purchase, not about whether the purchase is worth anything.

What the objection defeats, then, is one implementation, the naive one that shifts the whole day forward and assumes families will adapt. It does not defeat the proposal. That distinction matters because it tells a district what to design rather than whether to act.

The question the district is actually deciding is not whether teenagers are tired. It is whether a schedule inherited from an era of agricultural labor and single-earner households should continue to outrank what is now known about adolescent sleep. Framed that way, the burden of proof belongs to the existing arrangement, which has never been justified on any ground except that it is what we already do.

Argument 2 · 60 minutes

Satire depends on readers recognizing that the speaker is not the author. Given that many readers miss this, is satire an effective form of argument? Take a position and defend it.

Directions

You have sixty minutes. Take a clear position rather than surveying both sides. Use evidence from at least one satirical text studied in this unit.

Address the strongest version of the opposing view. Name your warrant.

Show a top-score response

Satire is effective as argument, and the misreadings it generates are evidence for its effectiveness rather than against it. The premise I am working from, and which an opponent would actually be rejecting, is that the purpose of argument is to change how a reader thinks rather than to transmit a proposition accurately. If the goal is accurate transmission, satire is obviously inferior to plain statement. If the goal is producing a change that survives, plain statement is the weaker instrument.

The case against satire is serious and should be stated properly. A form that depends on the reader detecting an unstated gap will fail with any reader who does not detect it, and the failure is not neutral: a reader who takes "A Modest Proposal" literally does not simply miss the argument, they receive its opposite. Swift is recorded as having been understood by some contemporaries as a monster. In an environment where text circulates without context, the risk multiplies, because the signals that mark a piece as satire depend on knowing the author, the venue and the moment. Direct argument has no equivalent failure mode. Nobody misreads a clearly stated position as its inverse.

That concession is real, and I do not want to minimize it. Satire has a floor of comprehension below which it does active harm, and a writer who chooses the form is accepting responsibility for that.

But the objection compares satire to an idealized version of direct argument that does not exist. The relevant comparison is not between a satire that some readers misunderstand and a pamphlet that all readers understand. It is between a satire that some readers misunderstand and a pamphlet that most readers never finish. Swift had already published direct proposals: tax the absentee landlords, buy Irish goods, restrain the expensiveness of pride. They were ignored. He puts those same proposals into "A Modest Proposal" and has his persona dismiss them as impractical, which is precisely what had happened to them in reality. The satire exists because the direct version failed, and that sequence is the strongest evidence available on the question.

The mechanism explains why. A direct argument announces its conclusion at the start, which lets a reader who disagrees adopt a defensive posture immediately and read for counterarguments. Swift's pamphlet announces nothing. It presents a familiar genre, a reasonable speaker and a costed proposal, and the reader consents to the method before discovering what the method is being applied to. By the time the horror registers, they have already spent several pages agreeing that people should be evaluated by their economic usefulness. The recoil they then feel is directed at a premise they were holding, which is a fundamentally different experience from being told that the premise is wrong.

This is why the misreading is diagnostic rather than merely unfortunate. A reader who finishes "A Modest Proposal" believing Swift meant it has demonstrated that they find the reasoning plausible enough to attribute to a serious man. That reader was never going to be persuaded by a denunciation either; the satire has at least revealed the position they hold. The form fails with them, but it fails informatively, and it succeeds with the much larger group who follow the logic and then recognize where it has taken them.

There is a limit worth naming. Satire works when the target premise is one the audience actually holds and has not examined. Aimed at a premise nobody holds, it is merely confusing, and aimed at people who already reject the premise, it is only entertainment for the converted. Swift's pamphlet works because eighteenth-century readers genuinely did evaluate the Irish poor in economic terms. The form is powerful within that condition and ineffective outside it, which makes it a specialized instrument rather than a superior one.

Within its proper use, though, satire does something no direct argument can: it makes the reader supply the conclusion and the outrage, and arguments people reach themselves are the ones they keep.

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