Usage Tip: Hark Back or Hearken Back?

Hark means to listen attentively, as in "Hark, the herald angels sing..."

Hark back is a related idiom, meaning "to return to a previous point, as in a narrative." (Myself, I prefer the synonymous idiom "givelendan ear," also written as "givelendone's ear.")

Hearken is nearly synonymous to hark, meaning "to make an effort to hear something." However, the idiom above does not synonymously translate into hearken back, though many mistakenly use "hearken back" rather than "hark back."

So, hark back -- or givelendone's ear!

Crucible -- Character Sketches

Here's an excellent resource that I highly recommend: The "Deeper Roots Project" provides helpful character sketches of Abigail, Reverend Hale, and Reverend Parris, using The Crucible movie for visual illustration. Having a look through these would be helpful for preparing for next week's test as well as for producing the play.

Abigail Williams -- part 1

Abigail Williams -- part 2

Reverend Hale -- part 1

Reverend Hale -- part 2

Reverend Samuel Parris

You may be able to find a few other episodes from the Deeper Roots Project.

Snapshots: American War Novels

A number of American novels dealing with the general theme of war would be suitable for the Three-Books Project. In addition to Heller's Catch 22 (already featured here), these three provide a unique look at Americans at war, the aftermath of war, and the sometimes-absurdity of war. You'll notice that each was written in a different decade in the 20th century.

Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim, an ill-trained American soldier, is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge and taken to a prison in Dresden. The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in a disused slaughterhouse, known as "Slaughterhouse number 5." The POW's and German guards alike hide in a deep cellar; because of their safe hiding place, they are some of the few survivors of the city-destroying firestorm during the Bombing of Dresden in World War II. Billy has come "unstuck in time" and experiences past and future events out of sequence and repetitively. He is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They exhibit him in a zoo with B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack as his mate. The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives. They believe in predestination. They say they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the correctness of their theories. [ review ]

Johnny Got His Gun (1939) by Dalton Trumbo
Joe Bonham, a young American soldier, is hit by a mortar shell on the last day of World War I. He lies in a hospital bed in a fate worse than death --- a quadruple amputee who has lost his arms, legs, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. He remains conscious and able to think, thereby reliving his life through strange dreams and memories, unable to distinguish whether he is awake or dreaming. He remains frustrated by his situation, until one day when Joe discovers a unique way to communicate with his caregivers -- by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. His wish is that he may be put in a glass box and tour the country, to show people the true horrors of war. As he drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. He also forms a bond, of sorts, with a young nurse who senses his plight... [ review ]

The Caine Mutiny (1951) by Herman Wouk
Willie Keith, with a low opinion of the ways of the Navy, misses his ship when it leaves on a combat assignment, and rather than catch up with it, ducks his duties to play piano for an admiral who has taken a shine to him. But guilt-stricken by a last letter from his father, who has died of melanoma, he reports aboard the Caine. He immediately disapproves of its decaying condition and slovenly crew, which he attributes to a slackness of discipline by the ship's longtime captain, Lieutenant Commander William De Vriess. Willie's lackadaisical attitude toward what he considers menial and repetitive duties brings about a humiliating clash with De Vriess when Willie neglects a communications message. While Willie is still pouting over his punishment, De Vriess is relieved by Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg... [ review ]

Word of the Day: Somnambulism

Somnambulism: a condition that is characterized by walking while asleep or in a hypnotic trance; also known as: hypnobatia, noctambulism

If you're looking for an interesting and curious story to read in preparation for All Hallow's Eve, you might want to read "Somnambulism: A Fragment" by Charles Brockton Brown (1771-1810), a pioneer of the American novel.

Here's an excerpt from a review (explication) of the story:

Benjamin Franklin Made Me Do It!
In "Somnambulism: A Fragment" Charles Brockden Brown uses the gothic style to convey an unharnessed terror in a single vision: Young Althorpe, while sleepwalking in a forest, murders the woman he desires. But the story is more than a ludicrous curiosity, to read it thus would miss its elegantly stated manifesto against the dangers of Benjamin Franklin's megalomaniacal ideals of industry and pragmatism. The story exploits Franklin's example of the studious, dutiful, useful young man and turns him into a monster. Browns' mode of style is strategic, subversive, infiltrating the reader and earnest student of the eighteenth century by mixing the ordinary with the grotesque, the intelligent with the very wrong.

"Somnambulism scares because it is surrounded with the normal, because its central character, its killer, is not the usual deviant monster, but a sharp, educated young man, not very far removed from the ideals of Franklin himself. As a cue of his hunger to learn, his desire for accurate information, Althorpe uses an elevated language (example: "The family retired to sleep. My mind had been too powerfully excited to permit me to imitate their example.")...

read entire article...

Snapshot (+Reminder): Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Reminder: Please keep in mind that now, while your reading load is very light, you should be exploring potential books for your Three-Book Term project. You will need to have determined which books you will be reading and writing about by mid-second quarter. This research paper is a very significant part of the course.

In case you've forgotten, here's the intro sheet to the project:
Intro Sheet to Three-Books Project [ PDF ]

Meanwhile, I'll continue to present some snapshots of American works we won't be studying together during the year. This time on to J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey. Here's an excerpt from a seminal review in The New York Times by John Updike in 1961:

...and now "Franny" and "Zooey" have a book to themselves. These two stories--the first medium-short, the second novella- length--are contiguous in time, and have as their common subject Franny's spiritual crisis.

In the first story, she arrives by train from a Smith-like college to spend the week-end of the Yale game at what must be Princeton. She and her date, Lane Coutell, go to a restaurant where it develops that she is not only unenthusiastic but downright ill. She attempts to explain herself while her friend brags about a superbly obnoxious term paper and eats frogs' legs. Finally, she faints, and is last seen lying in the manager's office silently praying at the ceiling.

In the second story, Franny has returned to her home, a large apartment in the East Seventies. It is the Monday following her unhappy Saturday. Only Franny's mother, Bessie, and her youngest brother, Zooey, are home. While Franny lies sleeplessly on the living-room sofa, her mother communicates, in an interminably rendered conversation, her concern and affection to Zooey, who then, after an even longer conversation with Franny, manages to gather from the haunted atmosphere of the apartment the crucial word of consolation. Franny, "as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers," smiles at the ceiling and falls asleep.

read the entire review...