Mr. S’ Grade 12 English

Hey everyone…welcome to our blog for “The Crucible” unit.   

For your first blog, please post a general biography of the character whose identity you will assume.  Be sure to include their age, gender, occupation, personality (if known) and any relevant background information, such as where they originally came from and why they settled in Salem. 

Your response should be between 1-2 paragraphs in length.  Please include the source of your information. 

As you near the completion of your novel study, it is time to consider what you feel is most important in life.  Both Duddy and Holden have very different views on this subject; for one character, success is the most important goal in life, while the other character struggles with answering that question.   

What do you feel is most important in life?  Is it family, friends or success? 

As always, please respond in full paragraphs. 

Hi everyone…

“The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” and “The Catcher in the Rye” are stories about young adolescents maturing and entering adulthood.  Each of the novel’s main characters struggle with problems of achieving social success and acceptance, however, each character reacts to these challenges differently. 

Do you think your main character, either Duddy or Holden, will be successful as an adult, or will their troubles as adolescents cause them problems later in life?

Please respond using examples from the story and your own ideas.  Please write between 2-3 paragraphs in total. 

Responsibility is an important character trait.  To be responsible, one must be reliable, dependable and accountable.  We expect the people we trust most in our lives, such as our family and friends, to be responsible.  If someone is consistently irresponsible then our trust in them is understandably shaken. 

In advertising and in the media there is a certain expectation from the public that the people in charge of creating media texts are responsible, and that they are reliable and accountable for the messages that are created.

If you discovered that a certain type of media was irresponsible, such as deceptive advertising or the broadcasting of incorrect information, would it shake your trust in the creators of that message?  Do you feel media should always be responsible to the public? 

Please address this response in one to two paragraphs, and feel free to include examples from your experience with “responsibility” and media. 

The main focus for our first unit will be answering the question, “what makes a person great?”  The quotation in the tagline, “this above all: to thine own self be true” is a very famous line from one of the play’s we will be studying this year: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 

What this line means is that if you are true to yourself then you must naturally be honest with others, and so if you are honest with yourself then no one in the world can think you’re false.  It’s a wonderful idea, and a very memorable line.  Unfortunately, the person who speaks this line is known to be very devious, perhaps even deceitful.

I would like you to respond to the question, “What makes a person great?”  I would like to know what character traits you think a hero should have.   I would also like you to consider what roles, if any, honesty and integrity play when determining greatness.  Can a hero be a deceptive person or use deception on purpose and still be considered a great person?  If so, what character traits are more important in a hero than honesty? 

Your response should be at least one—two paragraphs long, and remember, “this above all: to thine own self be true.”