My students need 30 copies of "The Road," by Cormac McCarthy to help them analyze and familiarize themselves with the complex language they will encounter on the AP exam.
My AP senior students want to read about the end of the world, but need to encounter complex and unusual uses of language. By the end of the school year, I need my students to understand not only how language is constructed, but how it can be deconstructed for stylistic and thematic effects.
My students are in an Advanced Placement literature course, that will earn them college credit, if they are successful on the AP Exam, at the end of the school year.
These students are eager to learn, they are voracious readers and eloquent writers. Because my school follows a very traditional curriculum, in our literature courses, they have yet to encounter pioneers of the English language, like Cormac McCarthy. They are very familiar with Shakespeare and Twain, and with Homer and Steinbeck, but have not had many experiences with contemporary writers. In order to adequately prepare them for the AP exam, and to show them the wide variety of reading available, I need to expand their horizons.
My Project
My students will use "The Road" as a whole class book study in McCarthy's expert deconstruction of the English Language, and use of unique sentence structure as well as taking a thematic look at the complexity of parent child relationships and man's humanity, and inhumanity, toward man in moments of desperation. By reading this book as a class, my students will not only be exposed to one of today's most accomplished American writers, but also have deep experiences with the use of sentence structure, as a stylistic and thematic tool. This book will move them emotionally, and help them make realizations about themselves and the world, that will prepare them for adulthood.
This book moves people.
While my AP students will read whatever I ask them to, and will complete whichever assignments I require, I also want to see them moved by and involved with literature. I know that this book can do this for them. This book can cause them to ask themselves the questions they need to consider about themselves and our world, so they are better prepared to be adults next year.
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