Storytelling

• English

Unit 1: Storytelling and the Oral Tradition

                       Vocabulary and Noredink:

                                15% of grade

1. First Unit on noredink

2. Vocabulary for Unit 1 (and each of the other units; quiz at end of unit). This is also available on google classroom.

3. Noredink and when/how it is graded

For Monday, 

Read the first 18 pages of The Things They Carried.

This is available online.

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Definition

Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, often with improvisation, theatrics, or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and instilling moral values.

Definition #2

Oral tradition is a community's cultural and historical traditions passed down by word of mouth or example from one generation to another without written instruction.

Purpose of storytelling

3 main categories:

To entertain

To inform or instruct

To convince audience to do or think something 

*These can be combined; they are not mutually exclusive.

Why is storytelling important?

Who is the best (or worst) storyteller you know?
Why?

Listen to these contemporary stories and assess them based on content and delivery.

Content: What it’s about  

Delivery: How it’s told

Rank the story on content.

-12100

Rank the story on delivery.

-13100

Rank the story on content.

-19100

Rank the story on delivery.

-24100

Rank the story on content.

-25100

Rank the story on delivery.

-25100

Storytelling Activity

To see how oral storytelling is dynamic and mutable. 

In other words, it changes.

What do you know about the Vietnam War?

(go to kahoot.it)

The Draft

www.usatoday.com

Why? Because of our first book

The Things They Carried recounts the experiences of an infantry unit before, during, and after the Vietnam War. 

The Things They Carried

First published in Esquire in 1986, “The Things They Carried” became the lead story in the book Viking published in 1990.

The book received widespread critical acclaim and established Tim O’Brien, the writer, as a major figure in Vietnam literature.

Tim O'Brien

Born October 2, 1946

Raised in small town of Worthington, Minnesota

Attended Macalester College in St. Paul, where he took part in the antiwar movement and participated in war protests and peace vigils

He graduated with a degree in political science and planned to go to graduate school to study government when he was drafted

Tim O'Brien

Resisting the impulse to defect to Canada, O’Brien joined the infantry

While he received the Purple Heart for wounds he received, he always despised the war and everything about it

Tim O'Brien

After the war, while pursuing graduate studies at Harvard, O’Brien wrote his first book

Since 1973, O’Brien has been a full-time writer

The Things They Carried, the collection of interrelated stories we are about to read, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 .

Historical Context

Themes

Love & Shame – How do feelings of love and shame propel the soldiers’ actions?

The Individual and the Collective: How do the soldiers appear as individuals? How do they sacrifice their individual identities to become part of a group?

Morality: How can morality exist within the context of war?

Solitude & Isolation: How can solitude and isolation intensify feelings of despair?

Truth: In what ways is truth subjective? What is the difference between “story truth” and “happening truth”?

Literary Elements

Point of View and Narration: In the title story, the narrator is unidentified, but in other stories he is a “fictional” character named Tim O’Brien.”

Realism: Method of accurately describing the details, general attitude, and philosophy of ordinary life that favors confronting the realities of life instead of escaping or idealizing them.

Hyper-realism: Lingering over details smaller than an ordinary observer could perceive (Example: the buzz of a mosquito)

Magical realism: Weaving fantastic or imaginary elements into a narrative that otherwise has all the features of an objective realistic account. (Example: the sun sucks a soldier up into a tree)

Fact or Fiction

Questions over the truthfulness of the book linger.

O’Brien’s response in Contemporary Literature: “What I’m saying is that even with that nonfiction-sound element in the story, everything in the story is fiction, beginning to end. To classify different elements of the story as fact or fiction seems to me artificial. Literature should be looked at not for its literal truths but for its emotional qualities. What matters in literature, I think, are the pretty simple things – whether it moves me or not, whether it feels true. The actual literal truth should be superfluous.”

Check for understanding

Where did Tim O'Brien go to college?

1. Grinnell
2. Stanford
3. Iowa
4. Macalaster

Which part of Vietnam was initially communist?

1. East
2. West
3. North
4. South

Which of the following subjects is prominent in The Things They Carried?

1. Beauty
2. Truth
3. Unicorns
4. Trust

Method of accurately describing the details, general attitude, and philosophy of ordinary life that favors confronting the realities of life instead of escaping or idealizing them.

1. Realism
2. Hyper-realism
3. Magical Realism
4. Romanticism

From what point of view is most of the novel told?

1. 1st
2. 3rd
3. 2nd
4. 4th