Monday

• Pericles Funeral Oration
• JFK’s Inaugural address

Pericles Funeral Oration Questions:

- What does this speech reveal about Greek civilization? For example, in the picture above one can see a sculptor pausing from his work to listen to Pericles. From this one can infer the value of the arts to the Greeks. What can be inferred from the "picture" given of Greek life by Pericles in his speech? 

- What does this document reveal in terms of history as a genre of writing at that time? What was worth recording, and why do you think Thucydides chose the methods he used?

- What was Pericles’ purpose in the Oration?

- Picking up off the last suggestion from history, how does the additional historical information you researched help us better understand the kairos for Pericles' oration?

- Analyze the arrangement of his speech. What significance is there to the order in which the ideas were given? 

JFK Inaugural Address Questions:

- Identify those segments of President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address where heacknowledged the significant dangers posed by the arms race and the nuclear threat. Howdid he explain his concerns?

- Beginning with the paragraph “To those old allies,” select two paragraphs where JFKdefined our relationship with another nation and / or region. Then, list and explain thespecific pledge he held out to the nation and / or region you selected.

- How can you explain President Kennedy’s emphasis on international concerns while atthe time of his inauguration the United States was facing serious internal issues regardingpoverty and civil rights?

- How did President Kennedy urge the citizens of the United States to rise to the challengesthat faced mid-twentieth-century America?

The Big Question: Does Ginsberg’s “America” adhere to the Kennedy ideals of responsible citizenship or does it go against them?

How do the lyrics from Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changin” reflect the transition to the Kennedy Era and the “New Frontier”?

“The Times They Are A Changin” - Bob Dylan

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'

"Times are a Changing” Analysis - Bob Dylan

1.What does the expression ” the waters around you have grown” mean?

2. Explain “you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone.”

3. What does the poet ask the writers and critics?

4. What is the battle implied in “There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’?”

5. What does the line “the first one now will later be last” imply.

6. Explain “Your old road is rapidly agin'”

7. What is the context of the song” The Times They are A-Changing”?

8. Why does Bob Dylan say that the present now will later be past?

Blowin’ In the Wind - Bob Dylan 

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they're forever banned?The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the windYes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
And how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the windYes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Homework- Read about The Berkeley Free Speech Movement

Tuesday

Questions:

1. What was Rule 17 and how did it apply to the area immediately outside Sather Gate in 1964?
2. What options did students have other civil disobedience to get Rule 17 changed? Should they have resorted to these options before choosing civil disobedience? Why or why not?
3. Mario Savio said the issue at Berkeley was student free speech. UC President Clark Kerr said it was a matter of the rule of law. Who do you think was right? Why?
4. Would you have voted for or against the amendment to the motion before the Berkeley Academic Senate? Why? How would you have voted on the main motion itself? Why?

Mario Savio - Rage Against the Machine

The Big Question: Does free speech have limitations? Are there things we cannot say?

Vietnam Touched Off a Firestorm

Homework- Make sure you bring The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien to class on Wednesday.

Wednesday

Vietnam War Webquest

1. Click [here] to learn about the history of Vietnam.

Briefly describe the background to the Vietnam War. Answer the following questions: 

How did Vietnam end up being split into two?

Why did the US get involved?

Who was Ho Chi Minh?

Who were the Vietcong? 

2. Click [here] to learn about the Gulf of Tonkin. Answer these questions

What was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution?

Why was it necessary (what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin)? 

3. Click [here] to learn about the Tet offensive.

What was the Tet offensive? 

4. Click [here] to learn about Guerilla warfare.

Describe Guerilla warfare. 

5. Click [here] to read about "trouble on the home front".

Why was support for the war declining? 

6. Click [here] to read about 1960's counter-culture.

What was the counter-culture and how did it relate to Vietnam 

7. Click [here] to learn about the antiwar movement 

What were the different ways that students protested the war effort?

8. Click [here] to learn about Woodstock

Describe Woodstock in 2-3 paragraphs

9. Click [here] to learn about the violence of the antiwar movement

Of the seven different examples listed, which 2 do you believe to be the worst? Why?

10. Click [here] to read the lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".

What is Bob Dylan trying to say with these lyrics? How do you think he felt about the war? 

11. Click [here] to view a photo gallery of America from 1965-1971.

Click on the numbers, 1-8, at the top to see all 8 pages.

Write a brief summary about her experiences with the following:

The counterculture

Communal living

Woodstock

12. Click [here] to read about the war and media.

What was the role of the media in the "living room war?"

Homework- Read “The Things They Carried” in the book TTC.

Thursday

The Things They Carried

Passage #1 Questions:

- Why “freight trains”? If you replaced that word with another, what might be lost?

1. -Think back to your webquest. What was ambiguous about Vietnam?
2. -What does O’Brien mean when he says “there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry”?

“they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders—and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.” (17)

Passage #2 Questions:

1. -Why does Martha “belong to another world”, and what is the significance of that statement?
2. -His love for Martha is unrequited. How does this provide insight to the first question?

“In part, he was grieving for Ted Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world, which was not quite real, and because she was a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, a poet and a virgin and uninvolved, and because he realized she did not love him and never would.”(17)

Passage #3 Questions:

1. -Shakespeare said that, “all the world is a stage”. How does this apply to the passage? Why does O’Brien say that “they were actors”? When we act, we are often masking something. Are the soldiers trying to conceal something?
2. -Think deeply and critically about this passage. What truth is O’Brien revealing about the soldiers?

“There were numerous such poses. Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal. They were afraid of dying, but they were even more afraid to show it.

They found jokes to tell. They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors.” (20)

Passage #4 Questions:

1. -Notice how O’Brien plays with diction. How do the “intangibles” have a “tangible weight”?
2. -Why is “blushing” the “soldier’s greatest fear”? How was embarrassment what “brought them to the war in the first place”?

“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.” (21)

Passage #5 Questions:

1. -Why does he choose to burn Martha’s letters? By doing so, is he burning something more significant? Think back to the questions from passage #2 and the clip from Apocalypse Now. What connections can you make?

“On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters. Then he burned the two photographs. There was a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the photographs over the tight blue flame with the tips of his fingers. He realized it was only a gesture. Stupid, he thought. Sentimental, too, but mostly just stupid. Lavender was dead. You couldn't burn the blame.” (23)

Passage #6 Questions:

1. -Why are “run freeze or hide” described as “instinct”? Why was this the heaviest burden of all? Compare to the questions for passage #4.

“They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down” (21).

What’s in a name? Consider the name “Jimmy Cross”. What could the name be a reference to? What does it mean?

Ted Lavender, “who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Ke in mid-April” (2).

“a simple pebble, an ounce at most. Smooth to the touch, it was milky-white color with flecks of orange and violet, oval-shaped, like a miniature egg” (8).

When Lavender dies, what happens for the rest of the soldiers?

The soldiers then strip Lavender of “all the heavy things.”

Homework- Read “Love” and “Spin” in TTTC.

Friday

Questions for The Things They Carried

“Love”

1. What did Jimmy Cross reveal that he could never forgive himself for?

2. How did Jimmy get a new picture of Martha playing volleyball?

3. What does Jimmy ask Tim to do when he writes the story? What does he ask him NOT to do?
4. What did Jimmy Cross reveal that he could never forgive himself for?
5. How did Jimmy get a new picture of Martha playing volleyball?
6. What does Jimmy ask Tim to do when he writes the story? What does he ask him NOT to do?

“Spin”

1. How did the “old poppa-san” help the platoon?

2. What does Norman Bowker wish for, more than anything?

3. According to Tim, what are stories for?
4. How did the “old poppa-san” help the platoon?
5. How did the “old poppa-san” help the platoon?
6. What does Norman Bowker wish for, more than anything?
7. According to Tim, what are stories for?

Homework- Read “On the Rainy River”.

4. How did the “old poppa-san” help the platoon?

5. What does Norman Bowker wish for, more than anything?

6. According to Tim, what are stories for?