I just wanted to pop in here to give some general feedback about your posts for the first two weeks.
Week 2: Your responses to “The Most Handsome Drowned Man” were sensitive and intelligent. Some of you mentioned the compassion that is seen in the story. Others focused on the idea of keeping an open mind and having a willingness to change. Others wrote about the importance of imagination and inspiration. All of these observations were wonderfully expressed, and many directly addressed the prompt about why I might have assigned this story as the first. All were valid and part of the reason. One answer by Alex Barrios hit particularly close. He wrote, “Maybe some of us are the village, and this course is our Esteban.” For me, this story is about the power of stories to change lives. In the story, a community comes together to create a story from their imagination about a man who has no story when he washes onto the store. In their made-up story, they imagine a life for him that is greater than their own. Then they set out to change their own lives to live up to the myth they have created. My hope is that the stories we read in this class will expand your perspectives in a similar way. I hope that at least one of the works of literature we read in this course will stay with you forever. Yes, I mean it. Forever.
Week 3: What I noticed and appreciated about most of the Week 3 responses was the clear response to the prompt about the change in the narrator. Sometimes students who are new to studying literature end up retelling the story rather than analyzing it. In ENG 201, we are not writing book reports like the sort of essays you may have written in grade school or high school. We are writing analytical essays that offer original interpretation based on the text. Your responses to the prompt about “Salvation” demonstrated an ability to analyze by looking at the text. This is so important because next week you will be assigned your first official writing assignment. It will just be an introduction, but it will be the introduction you use for all subsequent drafts of your essay project.
If you have questions about your discussion board grades, please be sure to review “Information about Discussion Boards” in COURSE INFORMATION. If you still have questions after doing this, please do contact me.
