Your team must design a webquest for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Each webquest must follow the design pattern found on http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/web_quest/ and must have three processes: 1) Literary, 2) Historical, and 3)Your Choice. Vary the evaluations (products) so that not all of them require writing. Have fun! Be creative! Make your quest attractive and interesting.
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will . . .”
–from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Introduction
While Jane Eyre was published in 1847, the author Charlotte Bronte introduced readers to an endearing young heroine who embodies all of the stages of the hero’s journey that are typically more closely associated with male protagonists rather than female. In spite of her lonely and isolated childhood at both Gateshead Hall and Lowood School, Jane Eyre becomes a young woman who is assertive, intelligent, and kind, and who in the end saves a brooding gentleman from the despair of his own arrogance and sorrow.
The Task
As you proceed through the following webquest, you will become familiar with some of the important elements often associated with a study of the novel, Jane Eyre. Read carefully through the steps included in the process of this quest, but essentially I have gathered material for you to peruse in the following areas of Victorian England and of the setting associated with Charlotte Bronte.
The Victorian Age
Bronte Country
The Byronic Hero
The Process
Navigate through each of the following sites to paint a clearer image of the life and literature of Victorian England.
Step One– From the following website, choose an article from each of the following categories:
Assignment: After gathering ideas and information from the site, write and answer two questions per article for each of the three levels of questioning.
Step Two– Part A. Listen to the radio broadcast (about 7 minutes) discussing a travelers imaginings as she tours Bronte Country.
Step Two–Part B. Browse through the information provided on Wikipedia about Yorkshire. Read, in particular, the sections focused on culture, landscape, and cuisine.
Assignment: Pretend you have from breakfast through suppertime to enjoy the area of Yorkshire, her history, her food, and her countryside. Create a brochure or flyer entitled “Walking Tour: A Day in Bronte Country” that describes how you might spend your day.
Beginning 2nd Quarter each student will be participating in a small group Lit Study reflecting the current national interest in Book Clubs like Oprah’s. I will host the first Book club over Beowulf, inviting students to join me for virtual hors d’oevres and guiding them in an online discussion about the epic saga. After each class has partipated in the Book Club I have modeled, the students will break up into small groups to host our second Book Club meeting on the novel Neverwhere, a novel by Neil Gaimen. The small groups will practice the process of inviting, hosting, developing discussion questions, etc. that have been modeled in the Beowulf Book Club. After this series of meetings have been held, I will allow students to develop Book Clubs based on shared reading interests.
Don’t forget to sign-up for GoodReads! We’ll be posting our book reviews on this site, so you need to get familiar with how it works. You might check out this short video to get some additional info about what it’s for and how the sight designer envisions readers using it. Plus, he looks to be well under thirty and on his way to his first or second million.
When I began to think of Flying and Freedom the first person to come to my mind was of course The Pan himself. To live the life of Peter Pan has been the fancy of many a child. Just think… never growing old, having a fairy for a best friend, having amazing adventures every day, fighting off Pirates and any other wrong doers who threaten Never-Neverland. And oh yes, how could I forget, Peter’s most memorable and amazing attribute. Peter Pan can fly.
I read a book a couple years ago called Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Berry and Ridley Pearson. And well, basically it’s about how Peter Pan became Peter Pan. It starts out with Peter and a few other boys (a.k.a the Lost Boys) from the local orphanage being loaded on to a great ship called (obviously…) The Neverland, to be sold to a far off King as slaves. But the Neverland is accidentally loaded with a mysterious cargo, which we later discover as a trunk full of magical starstuff, or a fallen star.
And low and behold this magical cargo is perused my the most notorious pirate to ever sail under the Jolly Roger, Black Stache (who of course later becomes affectionately known as Hook, after Peter cuts off his hand and feeds it to the ridiculously large crocodile Mister Grin who develops an affinity for said pirate and follows him around for the rest of his life hoping for another taste.)
When tragedy falls the Neverland leaving Peter and the Lost Boys, along with the trunk of starstuff, shipwrecked on a desert Island. (I’m sure you can see where this is headed…) Leaving them sitting ducks for Stache, or so he thinks. Battles commence in which Black Stache has his hand cut off, and Peter and the Island (which they name Neverland after the name plank from the ill fated ship washes up on shore) are exposed to large amounts of the starstuff, allowing Peter to once and for all escape the clutches of Stache and his crew by flying to his freedom, and thus creating his legacy.
Before I begin I apologize for being absent from the discussions, and late in posting my posts for family issues kept me from it.
My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and upon reading Chapter Two: Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion I immediately recalled a meal scene that takes place at the beginning of Chapter Three. It’s the first day of school and, after having made her look bad in front of the whole class and the new teacher, Scoutcaught Walter Cunningham in the playground and began to pummel him before her older brother Jem intercedes and breaks up the fight.
Upon recieving a stroke of genius, and just a jolt of common curtesy, Jem innvites Walter to their house for lunch. Since he is “one of them Cunningham’s” he hesitates, before finally giving in and follows them home for dinner. This is where, if you haven’t already guessed, the meal scene takes place.
During the meal Jem and Scout look on in wonder at Atticus and Walter “talked together like two men” in a conversation that neither Jem nor Scout could follow. But as they are eating Walter asked for the molasses, and upon receiving the pitcher drowns his whole dinner in the syrup. This act shocks Scout into asking, in her own blunt way, “what in the sam hill he was doin’.” This of course invokes embarrassment in Walter, who is unable to answer. Seeing the poor boy’s shame, Calpurnia summons Scout into the kitchen, where she begins to reprimand Scout for contrdicting the boy in such a way.
Scout not only earns a stinging smack to the behind but also a brand new sense of respect. She learns that when at her family table whoever is sitting there breaking bread with them that at that moment they are equal. During this time she not only earns a friendship with Walter, which happens to aid in keeping them safe on the steps of the jailhouse later on in the book, but she learns accecptence. Cunningham or not.
But I also find it slightly ironic that Scout gets her revelation from Calpurnia, who is her black maid, and who isn’t allowed to sit at the same table as Scout.
Archetypes reach into the depths of our mythic ethos. They are idealizations of forms of people or concepts that help explain the nature of life. Jung compared his conception of the archetype to the Platonic ideas which existed in pure form in the mental realm but are projected in myriad manifestations in the physical realm. To Plato all truth lies in the concepts of these ideas. Perhaps that is why Archetypes are so important to humanity. They are lights which illuminate truth out of the complicated haze of our existence.
Perhaps one of the most crucial archetypes, in my opinion, in understanding and finding meaning in human existence, is that of Prometheus. Prometheus was a Greek titan who, according to myth, stole fire from the gods in order to grant it to man. This gift of fire to man was the nexus from whence all further development and advancement sprung. The Greek playwright Aeschylus actually represents him as granting some of these early developments to humanity in addition to the original gift of fire. None the less, because of this Zeus punished him by condemning him to being chained to a rock, upon which a eagle will land every day to devour his liver, which will regrow every night (due to his immortality) so that the process can be repeated. Prometheus thus is a tragically heroic figure. One who sacrifices greatly in order to provide for the advancement of man. Fire set man on a path of greatness, a path of singular cosmic importance.
His archetype is not an exceedingly common one in literature, partly because of the pessimism of much human (especially modernist) thought, partly because of the uniquely splendid nature of a prometheus where he does occur, partly because of the narrow-minded view many share of the human experience. For example, take Alexander the Great. The foolish view of him as a tyrant is a common one today, but exemplified by the promethean view, he is a hero, who liberated tens of millions from the yoke of oriental despotism and exposed them to enlightened hellenism.
Viewed from this perspective there are a number of worthy promethean figures. Literature brings out a few prominant ones. In ancient times there is Gilgamesh, a demi-god like figure who eventually accepts the role as a champion of budding mesopotamian civilization. In modern times there is Superman, who protects humanity from many different threats.
Captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, or The Whale is a promethean figure, in my opinion, a promethean viewed in the tragic sense, like Victor Frankenstein, another romantic literary figure. Ahab is a whaling captain from Nantucket who has lost his leg to the infamous, allegedly immortal and ubiquitous leviathon known as Moby Dick. Since that incident he has come to associate it with all evil or misfortune that has, is, or will beset humanity in past, present, and future. He thus embarks on a frightening voyage to kill this whale, exacting revenge not for himself but on behalf of all man. He rebels against the most terrifying and powerful forces of nature -the terrible seas and the indominitable whale who makes them his dominion.
It is interesting to note that there are some who would cast Milton’s Satan from Paradise Lost, who proclaimed he would “rather rule in hell than serve in heaven,” as a Promethean figure, and furthermore compare Ahab to Satan, stating that his mission is one of blasphemy (as is the nagging suspicion of Starbuck in the book). However, I would dispute this view. The jealous and imperfect gods who Prometheus rebels against bear much more resemblence to Satan, who becomes the enemy of man, than the benevolent deity of Christianity. Similarly, Ahab, is striking at all cosmological powers which would stand in the way of man. The whale is a rare physical portal through which man can address its metaphysical woes. Ahab is no narcissist, but rather the ultimate democrat.
When reading Chapter 18: If she comes up, It’s baptism, I couldn’t help but think of Edna in The Great Awakening by Kate Chopin. Through the book Edna is afraid to go into the water but wishes that she could. One night, she decides to go in by herself. For her, being in the water was like no other feeling. She could be herself and not who others wanted or felt that she should be. For Edna, it was like being baptized. She was a new person. She loved it. However, it didn’t last long. One night she went out again by herself and she didn’t make it. But, while it lasted, her new feeling of rebirth was joyous and amazing!
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