Students worked in small groups to discuss the following questions as they explored the Bellwrite question.
p.76 Danny "seemed to be seeing something he had been searching for a long time." What did Danny see?
p.71 Danny tells Reuven that he had wanted to kill him at the baseball game and that he doesn't understand why: "It had nothing to do with the ball game. At least I don't think it did. You weren't the first tough team we played. And we've lost before, too. But you really had me going, Malter. I can't figure it out." Beyond the obvious that it was a heated game, does Danny find any answer to that question?
p. 75 What is the significance of the following portion of dialogue between Danny and Reuven? What does Reuven learn about himself?
"You didn't want to duck."
"That's right," I said, after a while.
p.72 What is the significance of Reuven's thoughts: "I was fascinated just listening to the way perfect English came out of a person in the clothes of a Hasid. I had always thought their English was tinged with a Yiddish accent. As a matter of fact, the few times I had ever talked with a Hasid, he had spoken only Yiddish. And here was Danny Saunders talking English, and what he was saying and the way he was saying it just didn't seem to fit in with the way he was dressed, with the side curls on his face and the fringes hanging down below his dark jacket."
p.74 What might Freud and psychoanalysis have to do with Danny and Reuven's conversations in the hospital?
I shared a little bit of information on Freud's basic theory:
1) The mind is divided into the conscious and the subconscious. Sometimes a person can act in a way, or feel an emotion, that they cannot account for. When this occurs, it is the subconscious driving the experience.
2) The mind has three components:
Id: the animalistic, appetite-driven part of us that demands to be satisfied
Superego: the angel on the shoulder which tells us what we should and should not do
Ego: the part of us that negotiates between the id, superego, and reality
3) Father-son relationships are often full of unresolved psychological tensions due to subconscious conflicts relating to unfulfilled appetites.
4) Freud argues man invents the concept of God to create a father-figure to cope with his unresolved subconscious conflicts.
Can you imagine the son of an orthodox rabbi being interested in this theory? No wonder Danny has unresolved subconscious tensions with his father, not to mention his sense of being powerless in choosing his future (he will inherit his father's position but would rather study psychology) and his inability to talk with his father except when studying Talmud together.
Following this discussion, students rewrote their responses to the Bellwrite question and turned it in.
Class A also had a brief discussion about factors to consider when encountering profanity in a novel.
I gave individual feedback to about half the students on their State of the World projects. I will finish with the remainder of the students tomorrow. Because this is the first project of the year and we are learning about expectations, students will have the opportunity to resubmit their assignments through the end of this week for an improved grade. Resubmissions must include a cover page which indicates what specifically is different about the resubmission. They should also include the first grading rubric attached for reevaluation.
Homework: Read Chapter 4 of The Chosen and annotate the following:
1) vocabulary you learn
2) important passages
3) questions you have about the chapter (write them in the margins)
If applicable, please work on redoing your State of the World project.
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