For Monday: Mandel, Station Eleven, Chs.13-19

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Why do you think the author decided to name the entire book after Miranda's graphic novel? How does it seem to echo some of the 'real-world' issues of the future? Do you think Kristen and the others are aware of this? Or is just escapist entertainment for them?

Q2: The more we read, the more we learn that Arthur Leander is the "glue" that connects all the main characters together. What makes him such a significant and/or interesting character in the book? Why are people so drawn to him, even though in some ways he's a bit of a failure at the end of his life?

Q2: At one point Miranda tells her dog, "This life was never ours...We were only ever borrowing it" (101). What does she mean by this? How might this statement become important to other characters/moments in the book?

Q4: In Francois' interview with Kirsten, he tells her that he's created a library because "I believe in understanding history" (115). She seems unimpressed by this, saying that "everyone knows what happened." Why do you think he's taking the trouble to interview people for a newspaper that almost no one reads, as the head of a library almost no one uses? Does history matter if so few people are around to use it?

The Annotated Biblography for Conversation Paper #2 (due NEXT FRIDAY by 5pm)

NOTE: The assignment below is just for the Annotated Bibliography. I'll give you another handout for Conversation Paper #2, though it is basically what I wrote below. I just wanted you to understand the ultimate assignment so it could help guide your hunt for sources.

In Chapter 46 of Station Eleven, Jeevan is discussing the subject of Year Twenty education with some friends. One of them remarks, “Does it still make sense to teach kids about the way things were?” And Jeevan’s wife, Daria, responds, “I suppose the question is, does knowing these things make them more or less happy?” (260-270). 

So there is where you come in: I want you to imagine that you’re designing the first college for the Post-Flu Age. Now that we’re in a new world, we can start over again, with a completely blank slate. We really get to decide what would make the new generation of students “more or less happy”—and what would truly educate them for the future. So what should an education look like in a “perfect world”? This is your chance to imagine what education should be and what it could be rather than what it is today. So consider what works about the modern university, what should be preserved, and what seems broken. Discuss at least one thing you would KEEP from the past—either a class, a field of study, or a method of teaching, and at least one thing you would CHANGE—again, the same types of things. You should also identify the overall philosophy that you think a university should embody: is it simply preparing students for careers and employment? Or is it to make them more responsible and educated citizens? Or is to teach values, morals, and ethics?

THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

To help you do this, you need to do research since this isn’t science fiction—this is a big conversation going on right now. Many schools are drastically changing how education works, what classes are taught, and who teaches them. Find other voices to respond to, and put them in conversation with your own ideas and Station Eleven. To make sure you do this sooner rather than later, I want you to turn in an Annotated Bibliography, which is a list of 5-6 sources that you found through research to help you discuss this conversation. The Bibliography should list each source alphabetically (according to MLA format, or whichever you prefer) and then provide a brief 2-3 sentence explanation of why this article is useful to your discussion and/or what its main ideas are. DO NOT take this summary from the article’s abstract—be sure to skim or read the article yourself and explain briefly what the article is about. This is due in ONE WEEK on Friday, April 6th by 5pm. And yes, you can use the article we just discussed in class (but you don’t have to).

Example:    Strauss, Valerie. “A University of Wisconsin campus pushes plan to

                 drop 13 majors.” The Washington Post. 12  March  2018

         https://www.washingtonpost.com/news.  Accessed 29 March 2018.

This article is useful to me because it discusses the university’s argument for making a very controversial decision—scrapping most humanities majors in favor of more “lucrative” or “hands-on” career fields. Even though many claim this goes against the very fabric of what a university stands for (character building rather than mere job creation), the university feels that this will better meet “the state’s workforce needs.” The article also explains that this is part of a trend in Wisconsin politics which has tried to undermine a liberal arts education under Governor Scott Walker’s leadership.

For Wednesday: Mandel, Station Eleven, Chs.1-12 (pp.3-67)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: On the Traveling Symphony’s banner, it reads “Because survival is insufficient.” Though we’ll find out later what this means, why do you think it’s appropriate based on what we know about the Symphony and the people who perform in it? Why isn’t survival enough?

Q2: In Chapter 10, the author writes, “People left the Symphony sometimes, but the ones who stayed understood something that was rarely spoken aloud” (48). What is it that they understood? And why don’t they speak it aloud? What is the reality of Year Twenty that makes the Symphony so important to the performers who stay?

Q3: What makes Shakespeare strangely appropriate for a group of traveling players in the second decade after the collapse? What connections does Mandel hint at between Shakespeare’s world and the world of this science-fiction “present”? In other words, why might people get Shakespeare even more than we do in a post-apocalyptic society (besides just the nostalgia factor)?

Q4: Why do you think the novel opens in the present with Jeevan’s experiences? What does he observe or reveal about the past that is important to the reader? In other words, why is he our first ‘hero’ in the novel? (Also be sure to note who he meets in the opening chapters as a child—and where we see her again!)  

For Friday: Tolbert, “Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass” (pp.152-166)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Why doesn’t Louisa find the rabbit holes of other people interesting? What’s wrong with other people’s fantasies? (and how might this relate to why Langford left his own)?

Q2: Why do the Others invade the ‘real world’ and try to assimilate into jobs, work clothes, and TV shows? Why don’t they establish their own worlds and laws? Consider this passage: “They all wore business dress, and when the train stopped, they hurried off and into the street like any other group of commuters. The only difference was that they were smiling” (161).

Q3: Louise realizes at the end of the story that “now that she was elevated above her problems, literally, she could see the world for what it was becoming—something stranger than whatever could be on the other side of a single rabbit hole. Why would she want to leave this?” (165). Why was she unable to see this before? Why can the entire world be a rabbit hole if you look at it correctly?

Q4: Considering that this entire story isn’t real, and therefore can be seen as a metaphor, or a finger pointing to a different “moon” (remember our discussion on Wednesday), what might it mean that we all have our own “rabbit holes,” and that none of them are prisons...we can choose to exit and enter them at will? What might be the advantage of having a fantasy world that you visit¸ rather than live in?

For Wednesday: Beagle, “The Story of Kao Yu” (pp.206-222)

 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: When Lanying is told of the judge’s solitary life and his relationship with the chi-lin, the narrator writes, “It is perhaps the heart of this tale that Lanying chose to believe one of these truths and to disdain the other” (212). What do you think this means? Why is it important to the story which one of these “truths” she didn’t believe? How might this explain what she does and says to the judge?

Q2: The writer Joseph Campbell once said, “mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words.” With that it mind, what does the chi-lin represent in the story that “cannot be put into words”? Why does it only come every few generations, and in this case, only to the court of Kao Yu? What makes him special?

Q3: Kao Yu’s retainers say of him, after his affair with Lanying, that “He is like a vase of pot that has been shattered into small bits, and then restored, glued back together, fragment by fragment. It will look as good as new...but you have to be careful with it” (217). Why is his “shattered” by this experience? And what do they fear will break him to pieces again?

Q4: Why does Kao Yu save Lanying at the end of the story from the chi-lin? After all, he knows she’s a liar and a murderer and a thief; why does he want her to escape justice for her crimes? Is it as simple as he’s in love with her? Or is there something else that makes him alter his ideas of justice?