1. Dr. Morse Fall 2015 Wednesday Week 2
** Group Lecture Quiz ** group Passage analysis ** In the words of Simone Weil Cont’d
Dr. Morse Fall 2015 Wednesday Week 2

2. Group Lecture Quiz (30 pts) Upload to Quiz on Class Web Site
In your groups “share and compare” details from your notes and write/type one group answer to 2 questions (About 15 minutes).
Purpose of Exercise:
Many of the questions serve as midterm examples
Lecture Review and Extension (may combine material from Monday/Wednesday lectures and class)
Demonstrate how much information you are able to pull out of the lecture. Work together to build collective knowledge.

3. Essay 1 Task Prompt
Passage Analysis of the Scope and Quality of Agency: You will choose ONE of the below two options.
1) Book 6 lines (Hector, Adromache, son)
2) Book 16 lines (Patroclus and Hector)
Be sure to complete the first Ideas Draft by Saturday, October 10th 11:45 p.m. for your selected passage.
Bring Preliminary Thesis to Monday’s Class for In-Class Work (See Thesis Building Slides at End of this .pptx for tips)

4. Determining the Quality and Scope
As you are formulating your thesis you may want to follow the following general steps… (Yes…but…So What Thesis)
What factors “cause” or contribute to character action? (deliberation, cultural duty, gender role, emotion, fate, etc.)
What are the “consequences” of character action?
What are the outcomes of action – impact on others, impact on self, etc.
When considering a character “wrestling” with the above, does the above characterize or reveal conflict or crisis or underlying motive for character action? (“So What” Element)

5. Interpret – How far can you go?
“Great Ajax now – forever aiming at Hector, trying to strike his helmet flashing bronze but Hector was far too seasoned, combat-tested, broad shoulders hunching under his bull’s-hide shield, his eyes peeled for a whistling shaft or thudding spear. Hector knew full well the tide of battle had turned but still stood firm, defending die-hard comrades.” (Iliad ).

6. Group Passage Analysis Activity Agency or “Force” accounting for action
Task: Close-read and discuss assigned passages. Prepare an argument that takes a stand: What accounts for action in the scene and what does this reflect about some aspect of the text as a whole (e.g. function of war)? (i.e. Scope and Quality of Agency) Groups will present arguments using CEW structure: thesis/claims, evidence and warrants.
Group 1: Iliad (Thersites speaks)
Group 2: Iliad (Odysseus speaks)
Group 3: Iliad (Hector and Menelaus)
Group 4: Iliad (from the gods’ perspective)

7. *How do these Covers “Frame” Simone Weil (as a woman, a human, a public figure)? *Given her own personal experiences and values, why does the Iliad seem like an appropriate text for her to interpret? *How does she use her interpretation of the Iliad to make an argument that goes beyond the text?

8. What does Weil assert here, and what larger argument about war in general does she make?
“But the auditors of the Iliad knew that the death of Hector would be but a brief joy to Achilles, and the death of Achilles but a brief joy to the Trojans, and the destruction of Troy but a brief joy to the Achaeans.
Thus violence obliterates anybody who feels its touch. It comes to seem just as external to its employer as to its victim …from this spring the idea of a destiny … before which conquered and conqueror are brothers in the same distress” (HCC Reader 36).

9. “… heroism is but a theatrical gesture … for those whose spirits have bent under the yoke of war, the relation between death and the future is different than for other men … Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death … our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death’s face … On each of these days the soul suffers violence …Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own ‘war aims” (HCC Reader 38).

10. 5 thesis reminders
1) In your thesis you are asked to consider what accounts for action in the passage (causes/consequences) as a means of establishing the scope and quality of agency in the passage.
Note: Desire, passion, anger, fear are all internal forces. Issues of instinct about human nature and self-preservation as a kind of impulse are also internal forces and NOT counted as agency.
Note: An individual with agency acts self-consciously (awareness of power to act freely), guided by reason, consideration, reflection (even while under constraints like impulse , instinct, duty or some factor of determination).

11. 5 thesis reminders
2) A more complex argument will follow a kind of Yes…but structure that will help explain to what extent the human action is based on agency and to what extent it is driven by internal impulse, external force (bargain with god, duty to honor code, constraints based on gender, fate, etc. ).
The last thesis component is the “so what” element (next slide)
Note: With a complex argument you may find your thesis longer than one sentence, which is appropriate for this kind of analysis.

12. 5 thesis reminders
3) The last part of the thesis is called the “so what” element.
In the “so what” portion of the thesis explain what your argument reveals about larger themes or concerns of the text (about men’s or women’s roles/values in this society, about the duty of the military, complicated negotiation between agency and “force,” about the interconnected relations between the humans and gods in this society, etc.)

13. 5 thesis reminders
4) Your thesis should focus on the characters and action in the selected passage and not make a generalized claim about humans and gods in the Iliad
You are also not supposed to argue about whether or not the characters in the poem or passage have agency

14. 5 thesis reminders
5) Make sure your argument is clear and takes a specific and arguable position
Read your thesis to someone and ask them what you are arguing (to check for clarity)
Avoid being too vague or general (take a position)
Avoid writing a thesis that is obvious
A thesis with which everyone would generally agree

15. 5 thesis reminders
5) Avoid offering a “Laundry List” of proof items in your thesis. That means that you should try not to make your thesis and prove it all at the same time.
You don’t need to try to prove your argument in your thesis.
You might find that these “laundry list” can be used to formulate claims for body paragraphs.