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| Summer Reading |
Summer Reading 2008 – AP English Language and Composition, 11th grade – Three BooksRequired Book One: Due the first day of class Required Book Two: Due the first week of school (see attached page) Book Three: Choice Book: Due the second week of class *Book contains mature language/situations Assignment: Text: – Patterns for College Writing, 10th ed. - Kirszner, Laurie and Stephen Mandell Definitions of Heroes for Farewell to Arms essay: Traditional Hero – “a character who has such admirable traits as courage, idealism, and fortitude. The earliest heroes, as revealed in myth and literature, were frequently favored by the gods or were themselves semi-divine....Moreover, the hero embodied the cultural values of his time and functioned as defender of his society.“ Aristotelian Tragic Hero is “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself. It incorporates incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish the catharsis of such emotions....the tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is ‘better than we are,’ in that he is of higher than ordinary moral worth. Such a man is shown as suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of a mistaken act, to which he is led by his hamartia or, as it is often literally translated, his tragic flaw.” The Anti-hero - “characters who constantly move from one disappointment in life to the next, without end, with only occasional and fleeting successes. But they persist and even attain a form of success through persistence and their determination to never give up or change their goals. These characters often keep a deep-seated optimism that one day they will succeed (though usually in the end they still meet with failure, the ultimate fate of a traditional villain The Epic Hero is “of great historic or legendary importance. The setting is vast and the action is often given cosmic significance through the intervention of supernatural forces such as gods, angels, or demons. Epics are typically written in a classical style of grand simplicity with elaborate metaphors and allusions that enhance the symbolic importance of a hero's adventures. Some well-known epics are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and John Milton's Paradise Lost.” The Hemingway Hero is “a man [or woman?] for whom it is a point of honor to suffer with grace and dignity, and who, though sensing that defeat in inevitable, plays the game well.” Romantic (Byronic) Hero “is a rebel, proudly defiant in his attitude toward conventional social codes and religious beliefs, an exile or outcast hungering for an ultimate truth to give meaning to his life in a seemingly meaningless universe. An individualist with an extraordinary capacity for passion, he suffers deeply from remorse over a moral or spiritual transgression; through his solitary wanderings among awesome landscapes, he yearns to purge himself of demonic self-destructiveness. Despite his ‘crime’ or ‘sin,’ he remains a sympathetic figure, for he is not guilty of intentional cruelty. His nobility in grief inspires awe; his capacity for eloquence testifies to his extraordinary sensibility.” Transcendental Hero – “the characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All [wo]men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity, but a hero has resolved to be great, abide by himself, and does not try to reconcile himself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.” If a student uses any sources other than the books themselves or the definitions provided, the information must be correctly cited using the MLA format. For the definitions use the source material provided in your citation.
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