Close Reading of Othello 1.3

Click here for a close reading activity for 1.3.

Background Information for Understanding Othello

We will explore the following topics as a means of better understanding the conflicts and characters in Othello.

-Black Africans in Renaissance Europe
What were the stereotypes?  How many were there?  How much social/economic/job related mobility did they have?
-Turks during the Renaissance
Who were they?  What facts and details are most significant to know/understand?  What was their relationship to Europeans?  What were they like as a military power?
-Cyprus during the Renaissance
Find basic facts and images.
-Venice during the Renaissance
Find basic facts and images.  What was Venice like as a military power?
-The Moors
Who were they?  Where did they come from?  How were they received?  Images?
-Women during the Renaissance
How were women regarded?  Was there equality?  What role did women play?

Odyssey/Cold Mountain Compare/Contrast

Click here for an explanation and model for how you draw comparisons between the two texts.


Here is the rubric for the compare/contrast essay.

Odyssey Reading

Book 4 "The King and Queen of Sparta" pages 129-133,  lines 185 - 331

Telemachus, son of Odysseus, has arrived at the palace of King Menelaus of Sparta, seeking clues to his father's whereabouts.

Important thing to remember: Telemachus has grown up without knowing his father. Athena has inspired him to travel abroad to find out news of his father.  He has doubts whether he is the famed Odysseus's son; he's been bullied and disgraced by suitors who question his birthright and who seek his mother's hand in marriage.  Meeting this royal couple, hearing their stories of Odysseus, being recognized as looking like Odysseus--all make a deep impression on the young man.

In this excerpt, King Menelaus and Queen Helen (yes, that Helen) rejoice in meeting Odysseus' son. But the presence of Telemachus causes the king to grieve the many losses suffered in and as a result of the Trojan War. Notice that Helen drugs the wine to keep everyone's spirits on an even keel. She then launches on her own story about brave Odysseus.

Book 5 "Odysseus - Nymph and Shipwreck" lines 1-102
Odysseus is stranded on Calypso's island.  At this point, he has been away from home for almost twenty years.

In Book 5, we first meet Odysseus.  What state is he in?  How does his state compare/contrast to how we first find Inman?

Book 10: The Bewitching Queen of Aeaea - read in its entirety 

We readers last encountered Odysseus in Book 6. In this book, he was rescued from his nakedness and starvation by Princess Nausicaa on the island of Phaeacia, where he'd washed up after his raft was wrecked at sea. Nausicaa's father, King Alcinous, promises to deliver Odysseus back home to Ithaca; it has been 20 years since he set out for Troy.  On the eve of his homeward voyage, Odysseus recounts his adventures to his hosts: where he's been; what he's suffered; how he incurred the wrath of Poseidon; how his crew came to an untimely end. Books 9-12, then, are a series of flashbacks that enthrall his listeners. King Alcinous is so impressed with the tale that he offers to make Odysseus his son-in-law, something Nausicaa would be very much in favor of! Odysseus respectfully demurs, saying he must return to Penelope.

In Book 10, in addition to the many examples of sanguine and lethal forms of hospitality, we have Circe, who serves as temptress and then as guide. Book 10 has many parallels with Cold Mountain. Your task is to make note of them.  Please note: your book has a "pronouncing glossary" of character and place names (pp. 521-41).

Book 11: The Kingdom of the Dead - excerpts on Achilles: pp. 265-266 [lines 541-573]; and of other famous figures from Minos to Heracles: 268-270 lines 650 - end].

It wouldn't be an epic without a journey to the underworld. Here, Odysseus gleans wisdom from the dead. Parallels with Cold Mountain?

Book 23 The Great Rooted Bed: read in its entirety. 

The suitors have been slaughtered by Odysseus and Telemachus. The palace floor has been scoured of the carnage. Order is restored. But "circumspect Penelope" does not immediately embrace her long-lost husband. Why? What does she fear? Do you see any parallels with the character of Ada? What does the book offer in the way of commentary on marriage? 

Multi-Genre Project

Click here for the description and rubric for the multi-genre project.  This project is due on 3/10.

Cold Mountain Socratic Seminar Points for Discussion

Consider the following points as you prepare for the Socratic Seminar. You may also use these questions to help you think about what you may want to craft your project and literary essay around.  You do not have to prepare answers for all of these questions.  Choose at least five that resonate with you and prepare specific notes on them.  You should at least think about all of them, though.

1. How would you describe the style, or the voice, in which Charles Frazier tells his story? Do you find it realistic or stylized? What does it add to the overall effect of the story?

2. Charles Frazier seems to imply that, because of the moral barrenness of the Civil War and the crimes committed on the battlefield in the name of honor, there is no moral onus attached to the act of desertion? Do you agree with him? Why has Frazier chosen to portray the deserters as good, the Home Guard as evil?

3. How have Inman's views on secession, slavery, and war changed by the time he finds himself in the military hospital? What has he come to believe of both sides, the Federals and the Confederates, their leaders, and their motivations for fighting? Is he being overly cynical? How does the fighting and the level of blind violence in the Civil War compare with other, more recent wars?

4. Inman remembers a conversation he had with a boy he met after the battle of Fredericksburg, when he pointed out Orion's principal star. The boy replied, "That's just a name we give it.... It ain't God's name." We can never know God's name for things, the boy continues; "It's a lesson that sometimes we're meant to settle for ignorance" [p. 117]. How does this statement correspond with the lessons learned by Ada and Ruby? What point does Cold Mountain make about the nature and limitations of human knowledge?

5. Inman has little use for conventional religion, but he liked one sermon of Monroe's: "That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being. Already the long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall decrease forever" [p. 77]. What notion of "God" does this quotation endorse? What about the voice that spoke to Ruby when, as a child, she was in despair: Was this God's voice, and if so, in what does God consist? What do you conclude Frazier's ideas to be, and how do they differ from conventional Christianity?

6. How, finally, does Frazier portray the natural world: as benign, treacherous, cruel, or indifferent? Famous contemporaries of Inman and Ada--thinkers like Darwin, Wordsworth, and Emerson—were expressing new ideas, in poetry and prose, about nature. How do these ideas influence Monroe's thinking? "Monroe had commented that, like all elements of nature, the features of this magnificent topography were simply tokens of some other world, some deeper life with a whole other existence toward which we ought aim all our yearning" [p. 144]. What very different conclusions does Ada come to? How do Inman and Ruby view the natural world?

7. Remembering his friend Swimmer, Inman reflects that Swimmer's spells "portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, constantly under attack and in need of strength, always threatening to die inside you. Inman found this notion dismal indeed, since he had been taught by sermon and hymn to hold as truth that the soul of man never dies" [p. 20]. Which version of the soul seems to be borne out during the course of the book? Does Inman come to change his ideas during his journey?

8. Throughout Cold Mountain, the author works with the idea of the search for the soul. Inman, Ada, Ruby, Stobrod, Veasey, and the slaveholder's runaway son Odell are all in some way engaged upon this search. Which of them is, in the end, successful, and why?

9. Both Ada and Inman reflect, at different times, that they are living in a "new world" [p. 33].... What changes is nineteenth-century America undergoing, and how do Ada and Inman's experiences, and the people they meet, reflect those changes? How, and why, is the ideal of womanhood changing?

10. Both Ada and Ruby were motherless children from the time they were born. How has that state affected their characters and formed their ideas? How has it molded their relationships with their fathers? Do both women reconcile themselves to their fathers in the end, and if so, why?

11. Was Monroe, overall, a good father to Ada? In what ways did he fail her, and in what ways did he contribute to her strength of character? In what ways did he deceive himself?

12. Several of Cold Mountain's characters meet their death during the course of the novel. How do these characters' deaths reflect, or redeem, their lives? What points are made by the particular deaths of Veasey, Ada's suitor Blount, Pangle, Monroe, and others?

13. Stobrod claims not to be Ruby's true father; his wife, he says, was impregnated by a heron. What other mythical or animistic images does the book offer, and what is their purpose? How does Frazier view, and treat, the supernatural?

14. What is the significance of the Cherokee woman's story about the Shining Rocks? What does it mean to Inman, and why is Ada skeptical? What does her reaction tell us about her character?

15.  Consider the numerous themes that come up in the book.  Which stand out most to you?  How does Frazier develop them?

16.  Consider the multitude of characters that Inman meets along his journey.  What does he learn from each character.  What might each character represent?

17.  Inman and Ada are not able to make a life together.  How does their ending relate back to Inman's conversation with the blind man in the very beginning of the book?  What might Frazier be suggesting in terms of theme?