By Ms.Teref

-Make allusions to Hamlet, The Trial, Great Expectations, Sula, quote your favorite poems, plays, novels

When would you use “Kafkaesque” or “Dickensian?”

What did the author say? How did he say it? Annotate according to the prompt question

- Annotate every time the prompt is referenced

- Mark the shifts - Analyze each meaningful chunk by circling details and relate each chunk to the prompt question.

Use your weapon – pen/pencil to annotate!

Look for shifts (e.g. however, but, yet, ironically, oddly enough…)

Look for natural breaks:

- Is one stanza or paragraph significantly longer than the others? (That must mean there’s an overwhelming emotion in that part.)

-Is there a sentence which is significantly longer than others? Why?

Is there a list or a litany (a negative list)? Could that list be making the long sentence so long? (Think of Hamlet’s soliloquies.)

Chase subject and verb combinations (find the verb first and see what it’s linked to) + bracket the interrupters or nonessential/intervening information)

If a sentence/line sounds odd, unscramble the word order (perhaps the line starts with a verb and its subjects is far apart)

When faced with a difficult sentence or verse, circle the words you know or the key words, and pay attention to what you know.

Pay attention to punctuation: ! ? - (something is emphasized, dramatized, pathos…)

When stuck and don’t know what else to write, start with “When (character does something…), i.e. summarize and then analyze. Summary in the service of analysis!

Be yourself!!! Be confident and allow the judges to get to know your personality. How do we show our personality? How do we set ourselves apart from the multitude of other people?

Interact with the text/poem, but don’t be seduced by it (in other words, don’t think Estella or Sula is mean, but try to have a MORE balanced view. Not necessarily 50-50, but 70-30, or something .

For the thesis: CFC, parallel structure, correlatives (no sooner… than, not only… but), archetypes, does the character change from beginning to the end?

Alliteration, metaphor, extended metaphor (conceit), simile (what’s their function? don’t just identify them)

Connotation (connote), denotation (denote)

Euphony, cacophony

Sonnet, Italian sonnet, English sonnet, stanza, blank verse, volta, iambic pentameter, iamb, rhyme scheme (abba abba cdc cdc), couplet, heroic couplet (rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter: aa bb cc dd…) quatrain, sestina, ballad.

Humor: humorous/comic (not “funny”): - exaggeration/hyperbole/hyperbolic- irony, sarcasm- diction tone- shifts- satire: we must know the original (e.g. “My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)

Anti-hero (Hamlet, Lucifer), protagonist, antagonist/villain (King Claudius), foil, major vs. minor characters (characters “in transit” – what’s their function?)

Speaker vs. persona vs. narrator (never the author – this is only for non-fiction)

1. THESIS: In your thesis, identify what similar concern/problem/issue the speakers have, and then explain how their conclusions about that concern are different.

2. ANALYZE COMPLETELY THE POEM YOU UNDERSTAND BETTER FIRST.

3. Transition paragraph: connect poem 1 with poem 2.

4. Begin analyzing the other poem and occasionally ping-pong between poem 2 and poem 1 to make connections between them.

5. Conclusion