The Crucible Audiobook and Random Fun Facts

For this next week, you are going to be reading the first half of a play called The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Here is a link to the audible version through Youtube, if you are an auditory learner or just want some help following along as you read. Now, The Crucible takes quite a bit of testimony from our Salem Witch Trials, which we will examine in class next week, but it was written in a much more modern era. As you listen to this or read it, think about the greater symbolism this story and historical event can have on other events in history. Do we have "witch hunts" in contemporary society? Do these "witch hunts" measure up to the catastrophe of the Salem witch hunts? Check the time frame of this play's publication and Miller's religious background and political views. What might he be pointing at as a witch hunt in his era?

One cool fact about Miller if you haven't found it during your own research: He was Marilyn Monroe's third husband. :)

One other fun fact: I once played Abigail Williams in this play in high school. I still remember most of my lines 20 something years later...

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Flannery O'Connor Analysis on "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Grace and Theology: A Necessary Discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Heather Chandler D.H. Lawrence asserts in his Studies in Classic American Literature, that “the proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it” (8). While this approach is helpful and necessary in many works of literature, it is both misleading and damaging to do so with Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” A popular new way of interpreting her work is to look through a secular lens, but separating her Catholic beliefs and allusions reduces her work to a simplistic ambiguous tale, molded to suit our own postmodern desires; and, this is essentially as misguided as looking at Da Vinci’s Last Supper and refusing to note its religious connotations. Instead, we should look at the larger picture,...

Tiny House Living and Transcendentalism

This week's class will explore transcendentalism, Emerson, and Thoreau. But like most of the topics we've studied so far, we can find modern connections. Transcendentalism was a religious movement that grew out of Romanticism between 1836-1860. We can define it as a spiritual, philosophical, literary movement with ties to the Unitarian Church around Boston. Like Romanticism, this movement emphasized individual rights and inspiration, the latter, especially within nature. Transcendentalists believed that individuals can discover truth for themselves, rather than learning it through tradition. It differs from Romanticism in that it focused on God. Transcendentalists believed that God was everywhere and could be discovered through intuition and that all people have a divine inner light. By accessing this light or intuition, they can transcend the ordinary and experience the spiritual. The five tenets of Transcendentalism: 1. Nonconformity 2. Self-Reliance 3. Importanc...

Welcome to U.S. History and American Literature

Class, I'm glad to have each of you join me for this journey into American history, literature, art, and music. Our goal this year is to gain a broader sense of our American culture, its major events and movements, our greatest artists and musicians, and the influences and shifts that have shaped our nation into what it is today. There is a great deal of information to cover, but I want to emphasize to you that we will not be experts by the end. In fact, learning is a lifelong pursuit. What I hope we can accomplish this year is to lay a healthy foundation, introducing you to the major players and events. We will break history down into units. Those units will have many sub-topics. Your task is to pick a couple of those sub-topics each week and research them more in-depth and prepare yourself for both class discussions and debates. You have some freedom here with your choices. If you are more interested in battles, then you can focus there. If you are more interested in the politica...

Harper's Academy U.S. History and American Literature

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