The document appears to be a collection of informal notes and commentary from a literature class. It includes snippets of conversation between students, observations about assigned readings, and brief discussions of literary concepts and theories. Several topics are mentioned, such as postmodernism, critical theory, the American Dream, and interpretations of specific texts like The Road and Death of a Salesman. Students debate different analytical approaches and potential essay prompts.

1. Pick me!
Pick me!What’s up
with the “live
long and
prosper”
fingers???

2. Hey! Look
what I can do
with my
fingers!
I think I can
get extra
points if I
say her
fingers are
cooler than
Janet’s!
Class Crasher
Whoa!
Dumbassery
plus!
I just love
her!!!

3. I’ll just read while I
wait for her to get to
me….
I will just stare off into
the distance and
ponder life
J: wrud
Me: nmjc

4. It is clearly a
juxtaposition of
the postmodern
dichotomy that …
Oh hell…. I was
thinking it was a
travel narrative

5. Air quotes?
Really?
It is “hopeless”! We are
destined for failure!
Why go on??? I feel so
happy!

6. If my family
could see me
now!
Yes I did! I ate your
damn plums….right out
of the fridge!
Hmmmm…Does
she get another
five points????

7. Why stand on a chair
when I can command the
room from here?
Score! Look
at her rack
up the points!
What do
you think
is she
looking
at?

8. Sometimes we get it right!

9. ELIT 48C CLASS 42
“All Right”
and “Alright”

10. • Well, as grammarian Bill
Walsh puts it in his book
Lapsing Into a Comma, “We
word nerds have known
since second grade that
alright is not all right” (4). He
was talking about “alright” as
one word. It's not OK.

11. Chair Poet?
Poetry is finer and more
philosophical than
history; for poetry
expresses the
universal, and history
only the particular.
Aristotle

12. AGENDA
•The Road
•Postmodernism
•Critical Theory
•The American Dream
•Introduce Essay #2

13. Discuss
Five
minutes!

14. The Road as a postmodern novel
• To start, it’s clearly fragmented.
• McCarthy also rejects quotation marks entirely, and uses the
contraction’s apostrophe selectively (absent for the contraction
of “not”).
• Why is there no indication of who is speaking when there is dialogue?
• Also it begins abruptly [. . .]And ending is unresolved
• This story is both anti-metanarrative, and metanarrative.
• There’s more confusion and doubt, less purpose.
• In the “Postmodernism” online article (Mary Klages) she says that one
of the larger differences between modernism and postmodernism, is
that modernism fights to create meaning anyway against apparent
meaninglessness, and postmodernism just sort of bathes in the
meaninglessness, saying “great! It’s meaningless! Let’s embrace that!”

15. • I also believe that the lack of names to identify the speaker
may be a way that McCarthy wants us to think about his
novel. If you attempt to imagine this as though you were
God watching over the conversations taking place, you
could see who was talking instead of being told who is
talking. This very postmodern aspect of the novel is
interesting because it forces you to read the entire novel
without really taking time to think about it too much. There
are no chapters and with the exception of periods and very
few commas there is no punctuation. The entire novel
rambles as if someone is writing this as a flashback of what
they witnessed.

16. Past the Postmodern?
• Talking about how The Road is post-modern, and how we are
trying to find out if it’s something beyond it, I feel that it has
moved past post modernism. Postmodernism was a
movement focused around the portrayal of of the individual
stories within our lives, and the perfection of a medium
through various means. What McCarthy accomplishes is
something past post modernism. It returns to the “all story” in
terms of structure, but the point is to look at our own
contemporary follies as a people. Instead of getting people to
think, he wants us to be afraid.
• Instead of saying “art for art’s sake” or using “personism(?)” he
shows a world full of consequences and leaves the reader to
identify for themselves what the action was. In this sense, I
believe that he definitely surpasses post-modernism.

17. The Marxist lens
• I think it’s interesting to take Marxist criticism [. . .] and
apply it to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where
consumerism is the least of their worries. It makes me
wonder how different consumerism can get and how even
though there’s nothing left for them to consume but
chemical toilets and canned peaches, the concept still
exists.

18. The Feminist Lens
• The majority role of women in this society stems back to
being a vessel of creation.
• I thought about looking at The Road through a feminist
lens because the two protagonist are men and all the
other main characters are men. Also, I was highly
intrigued by the fact that is was The Man who decided to
keep living, and that The Woman just gave up on life.
Normally, women fight to survive for their children, and in
this case that did not happen.

19. TheAmerican Dream in The Road
• It’s rather puzzling to think of the American dream in
context of “The Road.” When society is stripped away, is
the pursuit of the American dream still possible? The
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the “American
Dream” as “an American social ideal that stresses
egalitarianism and especially material prosperity; also :
the prosperity or life that is the realization of this ideal.”
The small family holds little to no possessions at
times, and there is no foreseeable future where that would
be possible.

20. • You can’t believe in the American Dream if you don’t have
hope. You have to hope you can achieve more, you have
to hope you can work hard to achieve great things. In this
case you have to hope you survive but that hope also
leads into hoping that you’ll see the world change and see
something more for yourself and others.
• Another part of the American Dream is hope. There is a
lot of hope in the novel as discussed in class. The
American dream works differently in the novel than it did
in the other novels. The papa and the son do not want to
be rich or care about money, the dream revolves around
surviving to see a better future and creating a better
future.
The Dream

21. The Dream
• The idea of the American Dream was created based on a
great deal of optimism and hope. The father and son in
The Road embody this idea during their journey to the
south. [. . .] Their journey is obviously not the traditional
journey towards the American Dream, but their journey
embodies the effort and hope necessary to achieve the
dream. Some may thing that this entire story is an
extreme version of the failure of the American Dream, but
I do not believe that the American Dream can fail while
people still have that hope and fire inside of them.

22. the novel as an abstraction of a journey through purgatory
(Christian Biblical symbolism).
• All the religious symbolism/language in the novel points
toward a metaphor for Purgatory. Purgatory (which has an
early idea of “burning away sins”, and I’ve even heard of it
as a “baptism of fire”) is a transitional place in Christian
mythos (and a number of other religions have a similar
idea of a temporary waypoint before the eternal afterlife) –
and no one stays there forever (the young boy asks about
the meaning of “Ever” a few times – they won’t be in
Purgatory “for ever”). You either move up to Heaven or
down to Hell depending on your actions (and on your
specific religion and interpretation). With the death of the
man, the boy was finally able to leave Purgatory behind –
he refused to leave the side of his father who was not
able to leave Purgatory due to his inability to trust others

23. THE ESSAY

24. Prompt Introduction
In this second half of our quarter, we have read and
discussed multiple texts, theories, and opinions on both
literature and literary analysis, and for this reason, I offer
you many choices for your first essay. In a thesis driven
essay of 500 to 750 words, respond to one of the prompts
I have offered or one of your own. You need only the
primary text for this essay, but you may incorporate other
stories, manifestos, or critical theory as additional support.
Remember, you can also draw on your own experiences
and knowledge to discuss, explain, and analyze your
topic.

25. Topics for Essay #2
There are many essay topics to choose from.
On the webpage, click on “Essay Prompts” and then “Essay
#2”
You will see another list of choices specific to our texts.
Click on any of them to explore topics
You may write an essay on any of these topics.
You may write an essay on a topic of your choice.
You may use fodder from one of your posts.
The essay is due Thursday, June 27th before 7:00 am.
Send it as a word document to palmorekim@fhda.edu

26. The Road
Topic #2
Using a close reading strategy and specific textual evidence argue
for how the world was most likely devastated. Consider climate
change, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, the explosion of nuclear
bombs, or?
Topic #15
Examine both the concept and reality of cannibalism in The Road.
Consider motivations and outcomes of the behavior.

27. “Battle Royal”
One does not need to look very deeply in Ralph
Ellison's short story "Battle Royal" to find different
elements and examples of racism. Use African
American literary criticism to make an argument about
“Battle Royal.”
Examine the theme of “American Dream” in “Battle
Royal.” Consider how the story defines the concept of
“success”?

28. Death of a Salesman
Describe how Willy has taken Ben’s life and his philosophy of
the “jungle” as models for success. How has Willy shaped that
philosophy to encompass life as a salesman?
Linda says that “attention must be paid” to Willy despite his
faults. Write an essay in which you either support Linda’s claim
or argue against it. If Willy is a “fake,” as Biff calls him, then
does he deserve respect?
Should Willy be “happy right here, right now,” as Linda says?
Willy has a wife and two sons who love him, so why should he
be unhappy? Examine how Willy continually plans for his own
success and happiness but always seems unsatisfied, even
angry. Willy says “the sky’s the limit” when “it’s who you know
and the smile on your face,” but who does Willy know and what
has his smile earned him?

29. Postmodernism Essay
Discuss the work in terms of its postmodern
construction. Consider the postmodern
manifestos or the Mary Klages article on
Postmodernism to ground your argument.
Discuss two or more of the manifestos, working
to define the ever-elusive idea of postmodernism.
Consider using the Klages essay on
postmodernism to support your argument.
Discuss the American Dream with regard to the
postmodern condition.

30. End of Days
• Thursday:
• The quarter in review
• Self-Assessment
• Discuss Exam #3
• Monday: Optional Class: Make-up Exam #1 or #2
• 8:30 am showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Thursday, June 27: Final: 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
• Exam #3
• Due electronically before class:
• Essay #2
• Essay revision
• Honors project.

31. HOMEWORKMEWORK
•Begin Essay #2
•Honors Project
•Work on your Revisions
•Study for make up exam #1 or #2
•Tomorrow is the last Chair Poet Day