Reading Quiz

1. Reading Quiz • After you finish your reading quiz, please turn it in right away.

2. Review on Dystopia and Dystopian Literature • Dystopian is a term coming from “utopian” that was first used to describe a certain type of novel or short story that featured a repressive and highly controlled society, often pretending on the outside to be utopian, or perfect. • Dystopian societies often claim to be or pretend to be utopias, but if you look closely terrible costs are revealed in order to achieve this control over society. • Can you think of some examples of Dystopian societies in books or movies? Without getting too controversial, can you think of any societies that tried to be this in real life?

3. Dystopia and The Hunger Games • Why is The Hunger Games considered a dystopian novel? • Take a moment and write a quick paragraph on the dystopian elements of the Hunger Games that you find most interesting.

4. Utopia/Dystopia in The Hunger Games • How has the society in The Hunger Games tried to achieve a perfect society? • Who thinks they are living in a perfect society and who does not? • How does the Capitol in The Hunger Gamesmake sure that Panem doesn’t have some of the problems in our society, like war ?

5. Young Adult Novels vs Adult Literature • The Hunger Games is marketed as a young adult novel, and Brave New World as adult literature. • Beside the obvious sexual content, what differences do you see between The Hunger Games as a YA novel and Brave New World as an adult novel? • Do you find distinctions between “young adult” and “adult” novels helpful and accurate, or do you see them as simply marketing tactics?

6. The Vocabulary of Literary Criticism • Many literary terms describe how an author communicates his or her ideas. • You will see writers of LitCrit essays using these words to describe the text. • YOU can use these words in your own essay too! Look through the text and try to identify some of methods he or she uses to convey the patterns of ideas you are most interested in. • characterization: the author's expression of a character's personality through the use of action, dialogue, thought, or commentary by the narrator or another character. • conflict: the struggle within the story. Character divided against self, character against character, character against society, character against nature, character against God. Without it, there is no story. • dialogue: vocal exchange between two or more characters. One of the ways in which plot, character, action, etc. are developed. • imagery: the collection of images within a literary work. Used to evoke atmosphere, mood, tension. For example, images of crowded, steaming sidewalks flanking streets choked with lines of shimmering, smoking cars suggests oppressive heat and all the psychological tensions that go with it. • point of view: the vantage point from which the author presents action of the story. Who is telling the story? An all-knowing author? A voice limited to the views of one character? The voice and thoughts of one character? Does the author change point of view in the story? Why? Point of view is often considered the technical aspect of fiction which leads the critic most readily into the problems and meanings of the story. • symbol: related to imagery. It is something which is itself yet stands for or means something else. It tends to be more singular, a bit more fixed than imagery. For example, in Lessing's "A Woman on a Roof," the brief red sun suit seems to symbolize the woman's freedom and independence from externally imposed standards of behavior. • tone: suggests an attitude toward the subject which is communicated by the words the author chooses. Part of the range of tone includes playful, somber, serious, casual, formal, ironic. Important because it designates the mood and effect of a work.

7. So you know you have to quote…. • ….but what is the BEST way to quote?It’s not a good idea to simply “drop in” a quote without making it a part of your own sentence. Original Quote from the source: • “He is already fighting hard to stay alive. Which also means that kind PeetaMellark, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill me.” • Drop-In Quote: • Katniss remains suspicious of Peeta. “Which also means that kind PeetaMellark, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill me” (Collins 60). • Integrated Quote: • Katniss remains suspicious of Peeta. When she realizes that he is “already fighting hard to stay alive”, Katniss decides that “the boy who gave me the bread is [also] fighting hard to kill me” (Collins 60).

8. The “Quote Sandwich” • This is a way to integrate quotes into your paper smoothly and avoid drop-in quotes. • The first piece of “bread” • Introduce quote, possibly mention author, connect quote to what you were saying before. • The “Meat” • Your quote, correctly cited with in-text citation. • The second piece of “bread” • Interpretation/explanation of quote (NOT simply rewording the quote), connect quote to what you will say next.

9. Use the Quote Sandwich method to structure paragraphs! By using a detailed quote sandwich, we can write whole paragraphs using only one quote/point

10. Example of detailed quote sandwich using2 different sources and comparing them: Introduce quote from literature Quote w/in-text citation Analysis of quote Introduction of outside source Outside source quote w/in-text citation Analysis of quote and connection to thesis and main point The poverty that faces District 12 is vividly described in the novel. The narrator, Katniss, describes how the people are so hopeless and defeated that they have “hunched shoulders and swollen knuckles” and they have even “stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails [or] the lines of their sunken faces” (4). In this sentence, Suzanne Collins describes the conditions of poverty and hopelessness, using words like ‘sunken’ and ‘hunched.’ All throughout the chapters that describe District 12 the language portrays a broken down people who have no hope because of their overwhelming poverty and hunger.Many readers may think that such poverty cannot exist in real life, or if it does it is only in other far-away countries. However, research into the poorest areas of America tells a different story. There are many communities and neighborhoods that are just as poor, oppressed, and downtrodden as District 12. In fact, there are many neighborhoods in the United States where the average salary per household is shockingly “below minimum wage” and even “two or three full time workers in a single household may not be enough to pay for basic necessities like rent, food, and medical care” (Scheckner). It is clear that although American Society may not be as obviously oppressive as the Capitol in The Hunger Games, there are still some very serious problems with our economic system when a hard-working family cannot even afford the basics without relying on credit cards, government aid, or working like a slave at more than one job.