2555 Wieneke Road ●●● Saginaw, MI 48603 ●●● 989-791-4330

Syllabus

Grade 12
Course Description

A one-year course designed to prepare academically capable students for the AP. examination in May.

Students will learn to read and comprehend some of the finest poetry, plays, novels, short stories, and essays written at various times in various cultures, with an emphasis on literature originally written in English.  They will learn how to discover meaning in literature by being attentive to language, image, character, action, argument, and the various techniques and strategies authors use to evoke emotional responses from readers.  Students will be expected to justify their interpretations with those proposed by others.  In addition to all other types of writing, the analytical essay is a staple of the course in literature and composition.  In order to write it well, students must learn to sustain an argument while guiding a reader through well-organized evidence drawn from the details of text. 

Prerequisite:  Student must have teacher approval.  Students admitted to this program should be willing to pursue reading and writing at a more intense level. 

Outcomes:

• Be able to write a traditional college level essay.

• Be able to relate literature to self and the real world.

• Be able to prepare oral and written literary analyses.

• Be able to participate meaningfully in discussion of a given work of literature.

• Be able to gather, research, integrate, analyze, and synthesize ideas and information.

• Be able to write a quality essay questioning a particular genre using the proper criteria.

• Be able to appreciate the diversity that literature offers.

• Be able to respond in a creative fashion to all types of literature.

• Be able to handle and respond appropriately to timed writings.

 Required Texts:

• Assigned summer reading.

• The Bedford Introduction to Literature, St. Martin’s Press, 1999 Edition

• Survival, A Peek Publication, 1995 Edition

• SF Writer, 2nd Ed., Addison-Wesley Publishers Inc., 2002

• The Great Gatsby, F.S. Fitzgerald

• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

• The Stranger, Albert Camus

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

• The Plague, Albert Camus

• The Awakening, Kate Chopin

• O Pioneers, Willa Cather 

• Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella

• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

• The Turn of the Screw, Henry James

• Ordinary People, Judith Guest

• Ethan Frome,  Edith Wharton

• Native Son, Richard Wright

• The Good Earth, Pearl Buck

• Tartuffe, Moliere

• No Exit, Jean Paul Sartre

• The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

• Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
   

• English Department Requirements:

• All major papers will be typed.

• All written work must be completed in ink.

• All written work must be completed on loose-leaf paper on one side.

• All work must be handed in on time.

• No late work will be accepted.

• No extra credit will be given.

• Any form of cheating will result in an automatic zero.

• Plagiarism is unacceptable and will result in no credit.

• Required materials are expected in class on a daily basis.

• A notebook is required (continuation of prior years).

• It is your responsibility to see the teacher (at the beginning of the class period) the day you return about missed assignments due to excused absence(s).  Quizzes and tests must be made up immediately on your own time.  Dates for these will be assigned when you return.  Assignments given on the day of the absence will be assigned a later due date.  Work given or due as a result of an unexcused absence or tardy will result in a zero.  Prearranged absence - it is your responsibility to check before the actual absence so that work is completed upon return.

• Participation is required.

• Appropriate classroom behavior is expected.

• Writing Portfolio

• Computer disc required.

 Grading:

Various methods of evaluation will be used.  The purpose of this is to give you the exposure and experience to a variety of procedures. All work given will be assigned point values as determined by their importance.  The total points will determine the final grade.  The quarterly work and semester exam will all constitute a certain percentage of the grade as determined by the student handbook.

Composition Techniques Required:

(Each grade builds upon the prior composition formats that are required.)

• Thinking and Writing About Literature

 Literature Required:
 

1^st Semester

• Novels, Drama and Short Stories

 2^nd Semester

• Novels, Drama, Poetry and Nonfiction

ANALYZING POETRY

Author
1. Who is the author?
2. What do you know about the writer and/or the time period in which the poem was
    written?

Title
1. What does the title tell you?
2. What does the title suggest about the poem?

Genre
1. Is the poem a lyric, such as an ode, elegy, or sonnet?
    • Does it use musical language to express the emotions of the speaker?
    • Who is the speaker?
    • What audience is being addressed?
    • What is the occasion or situation?
2. Is it a narrative poem-that is, does it tell a story?
    • What plot, characters, settings, and point of view does the story have?
3. Is it a dramatic poem?
    • Is it a monologue or dialogue, or does it use some other dramatic technique?
    • What point of view, characters, setting, and situation does the dramatic work present?

Form
1. Does the poem have a traditional form or pattern? If so, what is it?
2. What is the stanza form?
3. How many lines does each stanza have? Do all the stanzas have the same number of lines?
4. What are the rhyme scheme and the metrical pattern?
5. If the stanzas are written in a standard form, what is it?
6. Does the poem have a special shape or structure that enhances its meaning?

Subject
1. W11at is the subject of the poem?
2. What is this poem about?

Theme or Thesis
1. What at is the theme or central idea of the poem?
2. How is the message conveyed?

Sensory Images
1. What at details appeal to your sense of sight?
2. What details appeal to your sense of hearing?
3. What at details appeal to your sense of smell?
4. What at details appeal to your sense of taste?
5. What details appeal to your sense of touch?
6. What is the purpose of these sensory images?

Figurative Language
1. Are there any metaphors?
2. Are there similes?
3. Are there personifications?
4. Are there other less common figures of speech? What are they?
5. What purpose do the figures of speech serve?
6. Is there symbolism?
7. What do the symbols stand for?
8. What is the purpose of the symbolism?
9. Are there allusions?
10. Is the poem allegorical?

Sound Devices
1. Does the writer make use of alliteration?
2. Does the writer include assonance or consonance?
3. Does the poet use onomatopoeia?
4. Does the poet use any type of rhyme, such as end rhyme, interior rhyme, masculine
    rhyme, or feminine rhyme? What is it?
5. Are there any repetitions in words, lines, or stanzas?
6. Does the poem contain euphony, cacophony, parallel structure, or repetition?
7. What is the meter? What type and number of metrical feet are in a line?
8. How does the poem use rhythm?
9. What purpose do these sound effects serve?

Opposition
1. Are there any contrasts between people or personalities?
2. Are any places contrasted?
3. Are other elements contrasted?
4. What is the effect of the contrast?

Style
1. What is the mood or emotional structure?
2. Does the emotional structure remain constant or does it change?
3. What is the tone?
4. Does the tone stay the same or change?
5. Does the poet use any special techniques, such as unusual punctuation, capitalization,
    or spacing?
6. How does the poet use words? Does the poet use words in unusual ways?
7. How do connotations of words create figurative or extended meaning?

NOTE: Use these questions as you practice planning and writing the essay questions on poetry in this chapter. Take the answers to these questions into account as you develop your theses. Pay particular attention to how the various literary techniques contribute to the impact of the poem. Include your own reactions and feelings in your essays, but support them with specifics from the poem. By using these questions throughout this chapter, you will become so familiar with them that you will automatically turn to them to analyze any poetry you read.

Mode of Discourse
 1. What type of prose is it-fiction, exposition, persuasion, description, narrative, drama? 

 2. Are points developed by definitions, examples, facts, events, or quotations and citations?

Author
 1. Who is the author?

 2. What do you know about the writer and/or the time period in which the passage
      was written?

Title
 1. What does the title tell you?

 2. What does it suggest about the subject or the theme (meaning) of the passage?

Subject
 1. Wl1at is the subject of the passage?

 2. What is this selection about?

Setting
 1. Where and when does the action in the selection take place?

 2. What details does the writer us to create the setting?

 3. Does the setting create a mood or feeling?

 4. Is the setting a symbol for an important idea that the writer wants to convey?

 5. Does the setting play a role in the central conflict?

 Point of View
 I. Is the passage told from the first person or from the third person point of view?

 2. Is the narrator limited or omniscient?

 3. What effect docs the point of view have on the way you experience the selection?

 Central Conflict
 1. What struggle is the protagonist involved?

 2. Is the central conflict internal, within the main character's mind, or external, with another character, society, or nature?

 3. How is the conflict resolved?

 1. What events take place in the passage?

SUGGESTED READING

The following list of novelists, short story writers, dramatists, poets, essayists, and diarists draws heavily from the selection of writers that the College Board suggests students read during an AP English literature course. The works have been chosen from a variety of sources to provide representative examples of literary types and periods. In studying for the test, use this list to practice developing essay responses.

POETRY
Auden, W. H., "The Unknown Citizen," "Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love"

Bishop, Elizabeth, North & South-A Cold Spring

Blake, William, "London," "The Tyger," "The Marriage of Heaven  and Hell

"Bradstreet, Anne, Contemplations, "To My Dear and Loving Husband"

Brooks, Gwendolyn, Annie Allen, Riot

Browning, Robert, "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb"

Byron, George Gordon, Lord, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto III." "When we two parted," "So we'll go no more a-roving"

Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Cummings, E.E., "anyone lived in a pretty how town,"' "buffalo bill's defunct"

Dickinson, Emily, "Success is counted sweetest," "I cannot live with you you," "There came a day at Summer's full" "There's a certain slant of light"

Donne, John, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," "The Flea".

Eliot, T. S., "The Hollow Men." "The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock" "The Waste Land"

Frost, Robert, "The Road Not Taken," "The Wood-Pile," "Birches."

Heaney, Seamus, Station Island, North

Herbert, George, "The Pulley," "Easter Wings"

Hopkins, Gerard Manley, "The Windhover," "The Caged Skylark," "Spring and Fall," "The Wreck of the Deutschland"

Hughes, Langston. "Dreams," "My People," "The   Negro Speaks of Rivers"

Jarrell, Randall, The Woman at the Washington Zoo

Keats, John. "To Autumn," "The Eve of St. Agnes,." "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

Lowell, Robert, Lord Weary's Castle, The Dolphin

Marvell, Andrew, "To His Coy Mistress," "The Garden"

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. "On His Blindness,"' .'Lycidas"

Moore, Marianne, Collected Poems

Plath, Sylvia, Collected Poems

Pope, Alexander, "The Rape of the Lock"

Rich, Adrienne, .Diving into the Wreck

Shakespeare, William, Sonnets

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," "Mutability"

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, "Morte d'Arthur," "The Lotus-Eaters," "Ulysses"

Whitman, Walt, "Song of Myself;" "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "Beat! Beat! Drums"

Wilbur, Richard, Things of This World

Williams, William Carlos, Pictures from Brueghel, Paterson Wordsworth, William, "Lucy Gray," "Daffodils," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"

Yeats, William Butler, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "When You Are Old"

DRAMA
Aeschylus, Orestes Trilogy

Albee, Edward, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Anouilh, Jean, Antigone

Aristophanes, The Frogs

Baraka, Amiri, The Dutchman

Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot, Endgame

Bolt, Robert, A Man for All Seasons

Chekhov, Anton, The Cherry Orchard, The Sea Gull

Congreve, William, the Way of the World

Eliot, T. S., Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail Party

Euripedes, Medea

Goldsmith, Oliver, She Stoops to Conquer

Hansberry, Lorraine, Raisin in the Sun

Hellman, Lillian, The Little Foxes

Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly

Ibsen, Henrik, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Enemy of the People,  Ionesco, Eugene,

Rhinoceros, The Bald Soprano

Johnson, Ben, Volpone

Lorca, Federico Garcia, The House of Bernarda Alba

Marlowe, Christopher, Dr. Faustus

Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons

Moliere, Tartuffe, The Physician in Spite of Himself

O'Casey, Sean, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars

O'Neill, Eugene, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Mourning Becomes Electra

Pinter, Harold, The Birthday Party, Master Harold and the Boys

Pirandello, Luigi, Six Characters in Search of an Author

Sartre, Jean Paul, No Exit

Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, Othello,

King Lear, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra

Shaw, George Bernard, Major Barbara, Arms and the Man, Pygmalion

Shepard, Sam, Buried Child

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, The Rivals, The School for Scandal

Sophocles, Antigone, Electra, Oedipus Rex

Strindberg, August, Miss Julie

Stoppard, Tom, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Thomas, Dylan, Under Milk Wood

Wilde, Oscar, The Importance of Being Earnest

Williams, Tennessee, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire

Wilson, August, The Piano Player, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Fences

FICTION

Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart

Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid's Tale

Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice

Baldwin, James, Go Tell It on the Mountain

Bellow, Saul, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift

Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre

Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights

Camus, Albert, Tbe Stranger

Cather, Willa, "Paul's Case"

Cheever, John, The Wapshot Scandal, The Wapshot Chronicle.

The Stories of John Cheever

Chopin, Kate, The Awakening

Cisneros, Sandra, The House on Mango Street, Woman

Hollering Creek

Colette, Gigi, The Cat, Cheri

Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim

Crane, Stephen, "The Open Boat"

Dickens, Charles, Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov

Eliot, George, Middlemarch

Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man

Erdrich, Louise, Love Medicine, The Beet Queen

Faulkner, William, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August

Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby

Ford, Ford Maddox, The Good Soldier

Forster, E. M., Passage to India

Hardy, Thomas, Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter

Heller, Joseph, Catch-22

Hemingway, Ernest, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea

Hijuelos, Oscar, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Ishiguro, Kazuo, Remains of the Day

James, Henry, Daisy Miller, The Americans, Portrait of a Lady

Joyce, James, The Dubliners (collection), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman Warrior

Laurence, Margaret, This Side Jordan, A jest of God

Lawrence, D. H., Sons and Lovers, Women in Love

Malamud, Bernard, The Assistant

Mansfield, Katherine, Bliss, The Garden Party (both collections) Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Mason, Bobbie Ann, Shiloh and Other Stories

McCullers, Carson, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Member of the Wedding, The Balled of the Sad Cafe (collection)

Melville, Herman, Moby Dick, "Benito Cereno"

Morrison, Toni, The Bluest Eye, Beloved

Mukherjee, Bharati, Jasmine

Naipaul, V. S., A Bend in the River

O'Connor, Flannery, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge (both collections)

Paton, Alan, Too Late the Phalarope, Cry, the Beloved Country

Porter, Katherine Anne, Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider (both collections)

Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea

Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels, "A Modest Proposal"

Tan, Amy, The Kitchen God's Wife

Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina, War and Peace

Twain, Mark, Pudd'nhead Wilson

Tyler, Anne, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Updike, John, Rabbit Is Rich

Vonnegut, Kurt, The Cat's Cradle

Walker, Alice, The Color Purple

Waugh, Evelyn, Brideshead Revisited

Wharton, Edith, Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence

Woolf, Virginia, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway Wright, Richard, Native Son

Nonfiction

Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Addison, Joseph, The Tatler, The Spectator

Baldwin, James, Notes of a Native Son I

Boswell, James, Life of Samuel Johnson I

Carlyle, Thomas, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, "Self-Reliance," "Nature"

Hazlitt, William, Sketches and Essays

Johnson, Samuel, The Rambler, The Idler ..

Lamb, Charles, Essays of Elia

Mencken, H. L., Prejudices

Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty

Orwell, George, "Shooting an Elephant"

Steele, Richard, The Tatler, The Spectator

Thoreau, Henry David, Walden

Tuchman, Barbara, The Guns of August, Practising History' (collection)

Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One's Own

Vocabulary

Lesson #29
adherent adversary apathy atypical banal bliss dilettante exhort fracas garrulous gusto indolent inebriated lithe nondescript obese pathetic pique platitude wane
 

Lesson #30
candor charlatan condescend decorum encumbrance extinct fledgling galvanize
gaudy idyllic jocose jubilant malign mortify omnipotent peremptory precedent rustic wheedle zenith
    

Lesson #31
anomaly arbiter attel1uated concomitant deleterious dissent efficacy ferment fervid heresy incumbent innocuous lassitude milieu ostensible propagate prudent spurious strident surfeit
 

Lesson #32
alleviate ambiguous archaic bizarre celerity condone emulate expedite extraneous facetious menial paltry prodigious profound rabid salubrious succinct trivial usurp venerable
  

Lesson #33
abjure allay complacent connoisseur debilitate deter discreet evanescent foment
glean impetuous occult penitent propensity quarry reproach slovenly somber tantamount wary
   

Lesson #34
antiquated asinine au courant calumny commodious cumbersome disheveled divulge facade fastidious fluctuate grimace interrogate noisome pittance site tenacious unkempt unmitigated vigil

Lesson #35
cliché countenance debacle effrontery equanimity flabbergasted gaunt hirsute lampoon mien nonentity parable pensive refute sanctimonious stupor vivacious whet whimsical wince

Lesson #36
acme candid compassion copious covet degrade depict dexterity epitome genre grotesque ignominious ingratiate naive penury perfidious repugnant unsavory vehemently venial

Lesson #37
austere antipathy conducive confront erudite felicitous germane halcyon iconoclast motivate nascent phobia rationalize servile sojourn superfluous tenable therapy vertigo volition

THE NOVEL

What can we say about the novel?

A novel is a prose account of human experiences that are not only unique, but also universal. A novel enables man to see facets of himself, but in doses that are ordered, palatable, entertaining, or symbolic.

A novel should point out something (an experience, a thought, a condition, a possibi1ity) and spotlight it as being worth consideration because not everyone can think of or experience all the things that are worth thinking of or experiencing.

A novel is a book that tells you something. It can give you greater insight into human behavior or about the world around you. It is not some romantic story which is nothing but drivel. A novel can entertain but not just on the level of the romance.

A novel should have a plot, should have complete character development, should have a theme, should have an antagonist and protagonist.

A novel should deal with the entertainment of a person's mind. It doesn't have to be a true to life event to the reader, but should make the reader become interested in it by presenting the reader with thoughts and ideas to expand their day to day life.  It shows how everything isn't the same to everyone in the world and the possibilities of something existing that one would never find possible in their life.

A novel should be either a reading to let you escape from reality for awhile, or a reading which will teach you some knowledge about life. A good novel should do both of these; it should hold the reader's attention, provide entertainment, and also make the reader think.

A novel is a piece of life cornered by some person amateur or professional and thoroughly exposed and discussed and looked at. A novel should have some realism in it otherwise it will only amuse and not instruct as most authors wish their novels to do.  The novel should have two levels, the amusement level and the hard, deep level where I nothing is sacred and everything can be criticized or agreed upon or discussed.

E. M. Forster said: "Prose, because it is a medium for daily life as well as for literature, is particularly sensitive to what is going on, and two tendencies can be noted; the popular, which absorbs what is passing, and secondly, the esoteric, which rejects it, and tries to create something more valuable than monotony and bloodshed.  The best work of the period has this esoteric tendency. . ."

Purpose of Reading a Novel

1. Novels are representations of life, of the world, and of the peoples who make up these worlds. The reading of a novel gives a vicarious experience of some facets of the world, thus life. The reading of a novel gives one perhaps added insights or new perspectives on some parts of life.
   
   a. since they can't experience all life, novels can offer some experience not gotten in everyday world.
   
   b. since novels explore more deeply into the situation and the minds of the characters the experience can be more full, or more revealing.
    
2. Because what you understand about a novel, what you "get" from it are dependent on what you already know or have experienced, a novel can give added dimension or understanding to your own conceptions of the world. Novels may change/alter your conceptions or preconceptions.
   
   a. good novels are psychological documents.
   
   b. good novels are the depiction of one man's or Man's, or a number of peoples conflicts without life. Their solutions may offer suggestions for one's own solutions; their non-solutions as examples of poor solutions.
   
   c. good novels show characters who find or do not show their peace without life again, can offer examples.
   
   d. every novel should say something to the individual--give him something to fit to his perception of world.
   
   e. novels should entertain.

Study Guide for Any Novel

1. Theme is the central or dominating idea in a literary work. In a novel it is the abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person and action. It is the basic idea or general truth the author is try to present. In any novel your task is to define what you believe the theme is.
    
2. Plot or the situation or story itself; what is happening between the characters.
   
   The author has complete control of the series of actions he depicts. He chooses and arranges his incidents to focus on the theme, to build the characterization of his characters, and to create an effect that dominates the novel.
   
   Plot is not merely the random ordering of a series of incidents; the series must be unified toward a goal (that of creating a fictive world in which the theme is set forth) to be a plot.
   
   Plot is the interrelationship of the actions; these give unity to the novel.Plot sets forth the major and minor conflicts in any novel.
    
3. Conflict is the "meat" of the plot. Conflict is the struggle which grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces in the novel. Usually one of these forces is a character in the novel.
   
   The conflict may be the struggle between man and nature. A character may struggle against another person. A character may struggle against society.  The conflict may be within the character himself; his good nature may struggle against his tendency to do evil, his jealousy of a friend may be in conflict with his love for that friend, or his desire to run away from a situation may be in opposition to his feeling that to run would be cowardly. for example.  Or a character may struggle, most often uselessly, against fate, against his destiny.
   
   For any novel define what struggle. or more probably struggles, is or are going on in the novel. What type of struggles are they? Once you see what conflicts are being presented. you can usually define what the central ideas or themes in the novel are.
   
   For any novel ask how do these conflicts arise from the personality and situations of the characters. how do these characters face and solve, or not solve, these conflicts.
    
4. Obviously the characters are the persons who act and are acted upon in the novel. The characters serve to carry the author's theme. It is through the actions and feeling of the characters that the theme is presented.
   
   A character is developed or shown by:
   
   a. straightforward descriptions of how the character looks.
   
   b. outright presentations of what the character is feeling.
   
   c. the author's narration of what the character does.
   
   d. what the other characters say about him, tell you about him.
   
   e. how other characters react to him, feel toward him.  how the character himself to society, and to the objects in his world.

   For any novel note how the particular author develops his characters and note at information leads you to form the opinions you do about the characters.
    

5. Setting is the physical, and sometimes spiritual. background against which the action of a narrative takes place. The elements which go to make up a setting are: (1) the actual geographical location, its scenery, its "props"; (2) the occupations and daily manner of living of the characters; (3) the time or period in which the action takes place, and (4) the general environment of the characters, that is, religious, moral, mental, social, and emotional conditions through which the people in the novel move.
   
   For any novel ask what is the actual location and physical setting, what is the daily manner of living, what is the time period and/or season, and what is the general environment of the characters (religious. moral, social, etc.).  Then ask how these relate to the theme or what theme that they could be aiming at. Ask how the setting adds to the characterization, plot, theme, etc.
    
6. The way in which the author views the story; who tells it. The most widely; used points of view are:
   
   a. omniscient (all-knowing), in which the author knows and portrays the thoughts and actions of all the characters--he is always aware of what will happen at every point of the story.
   
   b. first person, in which the story is told from the limited knowledge of the narrator--all thoughts and actions are seen through his eyes.
   
   c. partial omniscient, in which the author limits his awareness of thoughts and actions to one character.
   
   d. objective, in which the author sees and records without expressing an opinion or comment.

   Criteria for Critically Evaluating the Novel
   
   1. A good novel contains action. This action need not be physical, external action; it quite often is internal action.
   
   a. The action of a good novel is based on a condition of suspense. Suspense in a novel is defined as a means of developing and maintaining interest by creating expectations (through uncertainty and anticipation) in the reader.

   The major characters of a good novel are believable. This is not to say that they are people who seem familiar to the average reader. A "real" character should grow and change as a personality, yet he must remain a fairly consistent being; an author cannot make you believe in a character if that. character suddenly commits an action against his established nature.
   
   a. The author builds his character carefully, always preparing the way for a major change or decision.
   
   b. Stereotyped characters are those that are rigid; they never change. A good novelist rarely uses a stereotyped character in a major position.
   
   3. A good novel will build to a climax or climaxes. Climax here shall be defined as a turning point in the situation of the major character(s) or an incident that brings about a crisis in the character's situation. This turning point or crisis sets the way for the outcome of the novel.
   
   a. The climax may be action-oriented or may be an internal event.
   
   b. A climax need not be an especially dramatic or exciting point; it need only be significant.
   
   4. A novel of value will have a theme. Any good novel will have an idea, a philosophy, a message to communicate.
   
   a. This theme is not necessarily world-shaking, but it will be some point that a reader can ponder. This requirement of theme satisfies the intellect of the reader; he wants to find something more than a mere story.
   
   b. However, a good novel should not obscure its theme, thus leaving the reader wondering exactly what the point of the narrative is. A good novelist will not bludgeon you over the head with his message, yet he also will not beat around the bush.
   
   5. A satisfying novel will have a "good ending." Loosely defined, a good ending is one that seems appropriate to the action that has preceded it.
   
   a. The ending should fit the mood of the novel. If the novel has been extremely pessimistic, the famous "happily-ever-after" ending may seem wrong or ridiculous.
   
   b. The surprise ending will be appropriate only if there have been some hints that this surprise could happen. Otherwise the reader may feel that the author has used a gimmick to merely make his novel "different."
   
   c. The "leave-you-hanging" ending will satisfy only if the novelist has previously given enough information to let the reader piece together his own ending. Otherwise the reader may feel that the author himself didn't have any idea of an ending.

   d. The novelist therefore must always prepare the way for his ending or the ending will not be believable.

   6. An effective novelist will always be conscious of his style. If his style is not appropriate to his subject matter, the novel will not satisfy the reader.

   a. The language the author uses should fit the characters; the dialogue should be part of the character. Thus the author must make his words fit the economic background, the social environment, and the age of the characters.

   (1) the language of the novel should always be consistent with the mood of the novel.

   b. The amount of description an author will use will depend partly on the author's preference for prose description. Yet a good novelist also realizes that there are guidelines to the amount of description that is satisfying to the reader.

   (1) the amount of description should be enough to let the reader "see" the environment and "feel" the mood. Once this has been accomplished any more may clog "the novel. Thus exotic places and unusual environments will warrant more elaboration than the commonplace.

   (2) the amount of description should be parallel to the emphasis the novelist wants to place on the places/things described. Thus if a novelist emphasized the appearance of a certain place, it should contain some importance to the narrative. For example, Lewis, in Babbit, wanted to show how "thing-conscious" George Babbitt was, so he detailed a description of Babbitt's bathroom.

   (3) description should not be hung on the reader all at once; it gets weighty. A good novelist will interweave; his description with his action.

   c. A good novelist will be careful to project a tone that is consistent with the story. An experienced novelist can find that his choice of words or arrangement of events has projected an attitude he never meant to give; a reader will sense this.