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Sophomore Honors Summer Reading 2016-2017 In addition to the required summer reading assignment choice for grades 9-10 , Sophomore Honors students are required to complete the following: A. Read and annotate* the background information on Stephen Crane and The Civil War. B.Read The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and complete the reading guide** questions C. Read the poems*** by Walt Whitman and Stephen Crane and answer the questions that follow. At the start of the school year, Sophomore Honors students should return with the following: 1. Annotated background readings 2. A completed reading guide for The Red Badge of Courage 3. Completed questions for the poems by Whitman and Crane You need to print out the background information in order to annotate it properly. You may type or hand-write your answers to the questions on the novel and the poems. If you type them, please bring a printed copy with you on the first day of school. Upon return in September we will begin the year discussing, examining, and analyzing the novel and other readings. Assessments and writing assignments will be given.

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Page 1: Sophomore Honors Summer Reading - Somerville High   Web viewSophomore Honors Summer Reading. ... Generally speaking, diction is just word choice. ... Horace and Pindar

Sophomore Honors Summer Reading2016-2017

In addition to the required summer reading assignment choice for grades 9-10, Sophomore Honors students are required to complete the following:

A. Read and annotate* the background information on Stephen Crane and The Civil War.B. Read The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and complete the reading guide** questionsC. Read the poems*** by Walt Whitman and Stephen Crane and answer the questions that follow.

At the start of the school year, Sophomore Honors students should return with the following:

1. Annotated background readings2. A completed reading guide for The Red Badge of Courage3. Completed questions for the poems by Whitman and Crane

You need to print out the background information in order to annotate it properly. You may type or hand-write your answers to the questions on the novel and the poems. If you type them, please bring a printed copy with you on the first day of school.

Upon return in September we will begin the year discussing, examining, and analyzing the novel and other readings. Assessments and writing assignments will be given.

* A brief description and guide to annotation is provided with the summer reading assignment on my website.

** All reading guides can be found on my school website.

*** A glossary of literary terms is provided with the assignment as a reference. You may need this when reading and answering questions on the two poems.

If you have any questions over the summer, you may contact me, Mrs. Harter, at my school email: [email protected]. I will respond in as timely a manner as possible.

Recommended for class next year: A 3 ring binder with dividers (about 4) separate from other classes – we will discuss the

organization of this in September. Notebooks may be collected and assessed as a classwork

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grade each marking period. This will help to keep notes, handouts, and graded assessments organized for quick reference.

A pack of 3x5 lined index cards for vocabulary (we will make flashcards each day).

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Annotate: to add notes to (a text or diagram) giving explanation or commentMarking and highlighting a text is like having a conversation with a book – it allows you to ask questions, comment on

meaning, and mark events and passages you want to revisit. Annotating is a permanent record of your intellectual conversation with the text.

As you work with the text, think about all the ways that you can connect with what you are reading. What follows are some suggestions that will help with annotating.

Plan on reading most passages, if not everything, twice. The first time, read for overall meaning and impressions. The second time, read more carefully. Mark ideas, new vocabulary, etc.

Begin to annotate. Use a pen, pencil, post-it notes, or a highlighter (although use it sparingly!). Here are some notes you might make while reading. You do NOT have to do all of these and you may do something NOT on this list!

Summarize important ideas in your own words. Add examples from real life, other books, TV, movies, and so forth. Define words that are new to you. Mark passages that you find confusing with a ??? Write questions that you might have for later discussion in class. Comment on the actions or development of characters. Comment on things that intrigue, impress, surprise, disturb, etc. Note how the author uses language. A list of possible literary devices is attached. Feel free to draw picture when a visual connection is appropriate Explain the historical context or traditions/social customs used in the passage.

Here are some further suggestions for methods of marking a text: If you are a person who does not like to write in a book, you may want to invest in a supply of post it notes. If you feel really creative, or are just super organized, you can even color code your annotations by using different

color post-its, highlighters, or pens. Brackets: If several lines seem important, just draw a line down the margin and underline/highlight only the key

phrases. Asterisks: Place and asterisk next to an important passage; use two if it is really important. Marginal Notes: Use the space in the margins to make comments, define words, ask questions, etc. Underline/highlight: Caution! Do not underline or highlight too much! You want to concentrate on the important

elements, not entire pages (use brackets for that). Use circles, boxes, triangles, squiggly lines, stars, etc…

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THE LIFE AND WORKS OF

Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) lived only twenty-eight years. In that time, he earned a reputation as a great American novelist, poet, and short-story writer; was a forerunner of literary movements that flourished long after his death; and became a respected war reporter. Crane met the most noted literary figures of his day; he lived through a shipwreck and near death at sea; and he became one of America’s most notorious literary rebels, even angering a future president. Despite so much action packed into so few years, Crane did have a regret—that he never became a major league baseball player. While we can never be sure what the loss to baseball was, Crane’s chosen profession as a writer helped to spark a revolutionary change in American literature.

Stephen Crane was born in 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, the youngest of fourteen children. He had six brothers and two sisters who survived into early adulthood. Stephen Crane’s father was a Methodist minister who was already over fifty when Crane was born. His mother was also a devout Methodist who wrote for Methodist journals and papers, often in support of the temperance movement (a movement that advocated a sober lifestyle and sought to ban the sale of alcohol). The Crane family moved frequently to different towns in New Jersey and New York, as Stephen’s father, the Reverend Crane, moved from church to church.

The Reverend Crane died in 1880, when Stephen was only eight years old. Stephen’s mother took on more writing projects, but the family was poor and continued to move frequently, most likely to escape debt. Stephen had a love of adventure as a child that sometimes drew him close to danger.When he was very young, he almost drowned when he tried to join older boys swimming in a river. Stephen also gained more first-hand experiences with death. In a town in New Jersey, he witnessed a woman being stabbed to death by her romantic partner. One of Stephen’s sisters, who encouraged his love of reading, died when he was thirteen. A few years later, one of his brothers died in a gruesome railroad accident.

Despite these experiences, Stephen maintained his high spirits and was determined to live life as he saw fit. Stephen attended a number of boarding schools, one of them a military school. Although bright, he was never an excellent student. He spent his time reading books other than those assigned and playing baseball. He was a gifted catcher and shortstop who could catch the ball barehanded. In 1890, he entered Lafayette College to study engineering, but quickly dropped out. The next year, he entered Syracuse University, where he followed his passion for reading and writing. He also continued to play baseball and dreamed of joining the major leagues despite his poor health. He excelled in English, but as he enjoyed reading everything but what was assigned for

his classes, the rest of his marks were poor. The summer after his first year at Syracuse University, Stephen decided not to go back and to try writing full time.

Crane began writing as a reporter in New York City. Soon after he launched his career as a reporter his mother died. Crane was fascinated by the life in the Bowery, one of the City’s notorious slums. There he drew inspiration for his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a grim, Naturalistic novel about an impoverished woman in a desperate situation. Crane’s novel was too shocking for most publishers. Impoverished himself, Crane borrowed money against the small inheritance his mother had left him to publish the novel himself. Although the novel won the respect of a few American writers, it earned little critical praise and sold poorly.

Discouraged, but not willing to give up on his talent, Crane began reading widely about the Civil War. By 1894, he had finished The Red Badge of Courage, his best known novel about a soldier’s experiences in the Union Army during the Civil War. He sold the novel for ninety dollars to be published serially (a few chapters at a time) in a number of newspapers. The Red Badge of Courage was published in its entirety in a book in 1895. It immediately became a best-seller and won Crane great critical acclaim. Most people, however, were stunned to learn that the young man who had written such a compelling account of war had never seen one. The same year he published his first book of poetry, The Black Riders.

Crane’s fame startled him, in part because people began to criticize the way he lived. In 1896, he defended a chorus girl who was arrested for immoral behavior. Because Crane testified against police officers, he became a somewhat scandalous figure. The police commissioner of the City, Theodore Roosevelt, who would later become president of the United States, was among Crane’s critics.

Crane escaped his growing notoriety in America and satisfied his fascination with war by becoming an overseas war correspondent, reporting on the revolution in Cuba. On his way to Cuba from Florida, he met and fell in love with Cora Taylor, a woman with a questionable reputation who had been married twice before (which was considered to be scandalous in Crane’s day). On December 31, 1896, Crane set off for Cuba in the steamship Commodore. Two days later the ship began to sink. Crane, the captain, and ten other sailors were lowered into the sea in a small lifeboat. After a day in the lifeboat, they sighted land but the sea was too treacherous for them to make their way to safety. The boat capsized, and Crane and the other men struggled to stay alive in the cold, stormy sea. After someone on land spotted them, the crew was rescued. On land, Crane read his own obituary. Crane later

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immortalized his experiences at sea in the short story, “The Open Boat.”

On his return, Stephen Crane and Cora Taylor left for Greece to report on the Greco-Turkish War. They married, and after the war moved to England, where Crane was befriended by fellow-American writer Henry James and British writers H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad.

In 1898, the Spanish-American war erupted, and Stephen and Cora returned to the United States. Stephen tried to enlist in the Navy, but was rejected because of his poor health. Again, Crane became a war reporter, serving in both Cuba and Puerto Rico. After the war, Crane stayed in Havana, Cuba, to begin to write Active Service, a novel about the Greco-Turkish War. Apparently he contacted neither his wife nor his brothers, who began to launch official searches for him. Late in the year 1898, Crane returned to New York to visit with his family before rejoining Cora in England.

In England, Crane completed and published both Active Service and another book of poetry, War Is Kind. He also began an Irish novel, The O’Ruddy, wrote some tales about the American West, and published The Monster and Other Studies. Stephen and Cora were spending far beyond their means and socializing too much for Stephen’s poor health.

To celebrate the end of the nineteenth century, Stephen and Cora organized a three-day New Year’s party at a manor they rented. Some of the most noted literary figures of the day attended, including H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, George Gissing, and Rider Haggard. They put on a play, played games, and celebrated late into the night. On New Year’s morning one of the guests found Crane, who had collapsed with a hemorrhaging lung due to tuberculosis, a chronic and often fatal disease of the lungs.

In 1900, Crane grew stronger, but soon his health deteriorated again. He went to a health resort in the Black Forest of Germany to heal. He died there on June 5, 1900, not yet twenty-nine years old.

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THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF

The Red Badge of Courage

The Civil WarBorn six years after the Civil War ended, Stephen Crane drew the inspiration for his best-known and most widely read novel, The Red Badge of Courage, from this terrible conflict. Sometimes called the War Between the States, the Civil War was just that—Americans were divided into two groups roughly along geographic lines. Eleven Southern states announced that they were officially seceding, breaking away from the United States to form their own government, called the Confederate States of America. The North, composed of twenty-three Northern and Western states, challenged the Southern states’ right to do so and wanted to keep the nation intact. The Northern and Southern states clashed in one of the most bloody wars the United States has ever experienced.

In the decades before war broke out, the Northern and Southern states were in conflict over political, economic, social, and moral issues. In the North, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing; trade in manufactured goods was the focus of the Northern economy. In the agricultural South, cash crops like cotton, tobacco, and sugar were the economic focus. The South also relied on a labor pool of more than four million enslaved African Americans. While many Northerners found the institution of slavery reprehensible and sought to prevent new states from being admitted as slave states, the war was not fought over the issue of slavery alone. Increasingly, Southern states were finding themselves outvoted on issues such as tariffs that favored the economic interests of Northern states. Southerners were also enraged when many Northern states passed laws freeing any slaves who managed to escape to the North. The last straw for the South was a split in the Democratic party that practically guaranteed the election of Abraham Lincoln, aRepublican who opposed the spread of slavery and supported acts that would strengthen the Federal government, boost the economy in the North, and help to expand the West. Soon after Lincoln’s election in 1860, Southern states announced their secession. The first shots of the Civil War were fired on April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

Both sides had certain advantages and disadvantages. The North had a larger population—22 million compared to the South’s 9 million, of which 4 million were slaves who were not eager to support the Southern cause. Some of these slaves fled to the North to claim their freedom and fight for the Union. The North was able to enlist 2 million soldiers, including almost 200,000 African Americans, while the South gathered only 900,000 soldiers. The North also had much greater manufacturing abilities, and so was able to produce more

weapons, more ammunition, more uniforms, more medicine, and more shoes for its soldiers. The South, however, had an advantage in defending land it knew well; the North had to invade and crush the South into surrender, but the South merely had to defend its land until the invaders left. The South also had a proud military heritage with arguably more skilled officers than the North.

The war ended on April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee, leader of the Confederate forces, surrendered to U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant. The war brought an end to the institution of slavery, and emancipated, or freed, four million African Americans. It also left the South in ruins: its land burned and pillaged, its economic system shattered, and its people demoralized. Out of a nation of about 35 million people,620,000 men were killed in the war. More Americans died in the Civil War than in any war since, including World Wars I and II.

The Battle of ChancellorsvilleCrane never calls the two days of battle he chronicles inThe Red Badge of Courage by a specific historical name. Based on certain details in the story, however, many people believe that Crane was describing the Battle of Chancellorsville. In this battle General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker led 130,000 Union soldiers against General Robert E. Lee and 60,000 Confederate soldiers. The battle took place on May 2–4, 1862, in Chancellorsville, Virginia, which lies near the Potomac River and the Rappahannock River, which is mentioned in the novel. The land around Chancellorsville was covered with thick forest, making it difficult for soldiers to maneuver. Crane portrays the wooded setting and the difficulties it presents vividly in The Red Badge of Courage. Although Hooker’s men outnumbered Lee’s, so many Union soldiers were killed that the Union soldiers retreated. They left behind, however, many dead Confederate soldiers as well, including one of the most renowned Confederate generals, Stonewall Jackson.

Life as a Civil War SoldierHenry Fleming, the main character in this novel, discovers that war is not like the romantic, daring battles that he has imagined in dreams. Most Americans came to this realization during the Civil War. At first, men rushed to enlist and bought fancy uniforms, modeled on various European nations’ uniforms. Photography was a new invention, and soldiers posed in their uniforms for portraits before heading off to war. Outside Washington, D.C., wealthy people gathered on hillsides to picnic and watch the battles unfold. This casual attitude toward war

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did not last long. Soon people experienced, or saw in some of the first photographs of war, the terrible death and destruction that was taking place.

Life as a Civil War soldier was not romantic. Heavy artillery, or large cannons, fired explosive shells on soldiers in battle. Bullets were shaped differently than those today, and were made to shatter bone and flesh. Medicine was less advanced then, and doctors faced with a soldier shot in the arm or leg could usually only amputate the limb, not heal it. Antibiotics were not widely used, so injured men became infected. Illnesses doctors could not treat also swept through military encampments. One out of every five Northern soldiers and one out of every four Southern soldiers died during the Civil War. In some towns, a whole generation of young men seemed simply to disappear. Many of these soldiers were very young, some only fourteen or fifteen years old.

Even when they were not fighting each other or fighting illness, soldiers still faced difficulties. The soldiers lived in crude camps in extreme weather conditions. They often fell short of food, and the food they did have was terrible—some of it was military rations left from the Mexican War two decades before, and soldiers complained that it was rotten and filled with vermin. Often soldiers plundered farms for food to eat. Romantic military uniforms quickly became tattered in war. The South, with its lack of manufacturing capability, was especially hard-pressed for uniforms. By the end of the war, many Southern soldiers fought barefoot and in little more than rags. The Union soldiers were only a little better off.

Literary Movements of the Late Nineteenth CenturyStephen Crane rebelled against Romanticism, a

form of literature that dominated much of the nineteenth century. American Romantic writers wrote scholarly and often moralistic works. Their writing was sentimental, nostalgic, idealistic, and designed to inspire lofty

emotions. Crane, on the other hand, wanted to present his readers with as realistic a vision of life as possible. In the late nineteenth century, a movement called Realism was gathering more and more followers, and Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage is an example of this type of writing.

Crane’s first novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was an early example of another literary movement that became popular toward the turn of the twentieth century—Naturalism. Naturalists believed that actions and events resulted from biological or natural forces or from forces in the environment. They presented characters who had little or no choices; their decisions were predetermined by their environment, their biological makeup, or both. The Red Badge ofCourage shows certain Naturalistic tendencies as well.

A final movement that was barely beginning at the time of Crane’s death, and that would later be associated with the early twentieth century, was Modernism. Modernist writers sought to express the uncertainty of the modern individuals who had lost connection to the beliefs and values of the past. Modernist writing is often fragmented, and themes are often left ambiguous, creating a sense of uncertainty in the reader. Modernist writers explored the subconscious mind through techniques like stream-of-consciousness. Stream-of consciousness writing is literary work that attempts to render the flow of feelings, thoughts, and impressions within the minds of characters. Other Modernists, called Imagists, presented clear snapshots of a moment in time without telling the reader how to feel about the picture or image but relying on the image itself to produce emotion in the reader. Other Modernist writers, known as Surrealists, strove to heighten awareness by placing together seemingly unrelated images and forcing the reader or viewer to look for possible connections. Although The Red Badge of Courage predates most Modernist works, it does use some Modernist techniques.

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THE RED BADGE OF COURAGEReading Guide

Directions: Answer each question as completely as possible. Where specified, provide either the page number where the answer is found OR quote direct textual evidence with the page number.

Chapter 1

1. What time of year does it seem to be?

2. What dreams did Henry Fleming (the youth) initially have about war?

3. To what time period did he see war as belonging when he is awake?

4. Why does Henry view war differently depending on if he is dreaming or awake?

5. How had the youth’s mother treated his “war ardor” and patriotism? Given his dreams, why does his mother’s reaction disappoint him?

6. What contrast existed between the days immediately following his enlistment and the arrival in the field camp??

7. In Chapter 1, what rumor does Jim Conklin (the tall soldier) spread?

8. What worries does Henry have about battle?

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Chapter 2

1. How and why does the youth try to “measure himself” by his comrades?

2. What images does the youth have of (a) the colonel and (b) the enemy and (c) the marching regiments?

3. Why do you think the author does not give names to characters initially?

4. What is Jim’s opinion about how the new regiment will do in battle and whether he would run?

5. What is Wilson’s (the loud soldier’s) opinion about how the regiment will do? What is his opinion about whether he would run?

6. Why does Henry ask these two soldiers these questions?

7. What type of person is Henry hoping to discover and why?

8. Explain what the author means when he calls Henry an “unknown quantity”?

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Chapter 31. When the regiment finally marches toward a battle, what do Henry and the other soldiers encounter for the first

time, and what do they notice about this thing?

2. What had the youth been taught about a man in battle?

3. What does Henry begin to think about the army’s commanders?

4. How does Henry feel about death? Be specific.

5. What does Wilson (the loud soldier) tell Henry once the regiment sees the battle? What does Wilson give to Henry?

6. What do Henry’s thoughts about the commanders reveal about his feelings toward the battle?

7. How do you think Wilson’s words at the end of Chapter 3 make Henry feel?

8. Identify Henry’s feelings about war, death, and his own potential in the upcoming battle. How have Henry’s feelings about these things changed from the beginning of Chapter 1 to the end of Chapter 3?

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Chapters 4-7

1. In Chapter 4, what does the 304th regiment witness in battle? What do they see another regiment do? What does seeing this make Henry think he will do?

2. Describe the battle flag using examples from the text in Chapter 4.

3. In Chapter 5, what does the 304th regiment do when the enemy charges? At the end of the Chapter 5, do you believe Henry has conquered his fear of running from battle? Explain.

4. How does Henry (the youth) act during battle? What did he become while fighting and why?

5. How does Henry feel about the other soldiers? To what does he compare them during the fighting?

6. How does Nature react to the battle?

7. As Chapter 6 begins, what does Henry think about war and himself?

8. What does Henry do once the battle begins?

9. What does he discover about the battle at the end of Chapter 6?

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10. What does the news about the battle at the end of Chapter 6 reveal about Henry’s fears? What does it reveal about what he’s done?

11. In Chapter 7, what does Henry tell himself is the reason he fled?

12. Where does Henry go to escape from the sounds of battle? What “experiment” does Henry conduct there?

13. What does the youth find in the clearing? Explain why the setting in which the thing is placed makes finding it there even more horrible.

14. In what way is battle depicted in Chapters 4-7? In what way is death depicted? Identify examples of vivid descriptions that support your answers.

15. Explain whether Henry’s actions make him a coward. What do you think about his decisions to leave the regiment?

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Chapters 8-10

1. In Chapter 8, what is ironic to Henry?

2. What conclusion about Nature’s intentions does Henry make as he makes his way through the woods?

3. In Chapter 8, what sort of people does Henry encounter in the road. Describe some of the actions of these men.

4. In Chapter 9, what does Henry realize about the “spectral soldier”? What happens to this soldier at the end of the chapter?

5. What image is used to describe Jim as Henry and the tattered soldier follow him?

6. Why is moral vindication important to Henry, according to what he says in Chapter 10?

7. According to the tattered man, what attitude should they take toward the spectral soldier? What does Henry notice about the tattered man?

8. At the beginning of Chapter 8, Henry lingers about the battle lines because he thinks of the battle as “an immense and terrible machine” that he must see “produce corpses.” In what way does his attitude about the results of battle – death and corpses – change through Chapters 8-10?

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Chapters 11-15

1. In Chapter 11, what does Henry see one clam and proud regiment doing? What happens to this regiment in Chapter 12?

2. Describe the way in which Henry is injured in Chapter 12. What does the way Henry was injured reveal about the effect that war and panic can have on people?

3. In Chapter 12, what opposing images of war and nature are given?

4. What actions does Wilson (the loud soldier) perform for Henry once he returns to the regiment? What does Henry notice about Wilson?

5. What is ironic about Henry’s “red badge of courage”?

6. In Chapter 15, why does Henry’s outlook toward the upcoming battle change?

7. Identify Henry’s attitude toward his own position and what he perceives to be his own dishonor. In what way is Henry’s injury a stroke of luck? What does it enable him to do that he might find to be more difficult if it were not for his injury?

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Chapters 16-20

1. In Chapter 16, what attitude does Wilson have toward the upcoming battle?

2. In Chapter 17, when Henry’s regiment is fighting the enemy, which of Henry’s actions surprise his fellow soldiers? What does Henry think of his own actions?

3. In Chapter 17, what does Henry think about while “his fingers twined nervously about his rifle”?

4. In Chapter 18, why do Henry and Wilson leave their regiment?

5. What do Henry and Wilson overhear the general and an officer saying about Henry’s regiment, the 304 th? Why do you think this description of their regiment surprises Henry and Wilson?

6. What is the “ironical secret” Henry and Wilson keep from their regiment?

7. What words would you use to describe Henry’s actions in this charge against the enemy in Chapter 19?

8. In what ways has Henry changed as a soldier? Identify how he has grown or changed since the last battle in which he took part.

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9. Crane ends Chapter 20 with the line “And they were men.” Decide what you think Crane means by this line. Why might Crane say this about the soldiers of the 304 th regiment at this point in the story?

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Chapters 21-24

1. In Chapter 21, what do the veteran soldiers say when Henry’s regiment returns from battle?

2. What happens to make Henry and Wilson feel better about themselves at the end of Chapter 21?

3. In Chapter 22, when Henry’s regiment is engaged in battle again, what does he believe will be a “great and salt” reproach on the officer who called them mule drivers and mud diggers?

4. What attitude does Henry have toward danger and death in the charge that takes place in Chapter 23?

5. How is Henry beginning to feel about himself as a soldier?

6. In Chapter 24 when Henry has time to reflect on his actions, how does he feel about his public actions? His private actions?

7. What does the narrator say has happened to Henry’s soul?

8. Identify some of the different ideas about what it means to be a hero presented not only in Chapters 21-24, but also in the novel as a whole. What vision of heroism do you think was portrayed at the novel’s end?

BACKGROUND: The Civil War was very real to the poet Walt Whitman. Moved by the suffering he saw as he searched for his wounded brother, Whitman spent his spare time as a volunteer in the overcrowded, poorly equipped Union hospitals in Washington, D.C. He wrote many poems about war in the year immediately following the end of the Civil War.

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Directions: Read the poem and complete the questions that follow.

“A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown”By Walt Whitman

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,

Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,

We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,

’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital

Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made,

Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,

And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,

By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down,

At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)

I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,)

Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all,

Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead,

Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood,

The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d,

Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating,

An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls,

The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches,

These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,

Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;

But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,

Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,

Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,

The unknown road still marching.

Source: Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1959)

Questions on “A MARCH IN THE RANKS HARD-PREST, AND THE ROAD UNKNOWN”

1. What emotions do you think the “sullen remnant” of the army felt when they first saw a dim-lighted building in the opening? What emotions might they have had when the realized that the church was a makeshift hospital?

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2. What might Whitman mean when he says “a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made”?

3. What happens to the young solider who is shot in the abdomen? How does the soldier seem to meet his fate?

4. What similarities do you see between the experience of Whitman’s soldier in the church and Henry Fleming’s experience in the “green chapel”?

5. How can you relate this poem to the character of Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage?

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Directions: Read the poem and complete the questions that follow.

“Do no weep, maiden, for war is kind”By Stephen Crane

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.Because your lover threw wild hands toward the skyAnd the affrighted steed ran on alone,Do not weep.War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,Little souls who thirst for fight,These men were born to drill and die.The unexplained glory flies above them,Great is the Battle-God, great, and his Kingdom –A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not week, babe, for war is kind.Because your father tumbled in yellow trenches,Raged at his breast, gulped and died,Do not weep.War is kind.

Swift blazing flag of the regiment,Eagle with crest of red and gold,These men were born to drill and die.Point for them the virtue of slaughter,Make plain to them the excellence of killingAnd a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a buttonOn the bright splendid shroud of your son,Do not weep.War is kind.

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Questions on “DO NO WEEP, MAIDEN, FOR WAR IS KIND”

1. What three people are addressed by the speaker of the poem? What does the speaker say to each of these people?

2. Does the speaker literally mean what he says to the three people he addresses? Explain your answer.

3. What happens to each of the three people addressed?

4. What emotional effect does the description of what happens to these three people have on the reader?

5. This poem is written in mock-heroic language. What phrases in the two indented stanzas of the poem suggest that the speaker does not, in fact, believe that war is kind?

6. In what ways can you relate this poem to Crane’s novel, The Red Badge of Courage?

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LITERARY DEVICES & ELEMENTSMost of these definitions have been taken from shmoop.com. It is a great resource for literary terms and examples

of said terms. If you need more information, please visit www.shmoop.com/literature-glossary.

ALLITERATION: a term used to describe the repetition of initial consonant sounds. More simply put, alliteration is what happens when words that begin with the same consonant (the letters that aren't vowels) get all smushed together to great effect. As in, "Carol constantly craves cornflakes." As you may have guessed, you'll find alliteration in many a tongue twister, but it's also just about everywhere in literature, too.

ALLUSION: An allusion is, plain and simple, a reference. You'll find allusions when the book you're reading makes a reference to something outside of itself, whether another work of literature, something from pop culture, a song, myth, history, or even the visual arts.

Why use allusions? Because they connect literature to other pieces of literature (or art or music or history or whatever). Allusions deepen and enrich a work's meaning, and are a form of intertextuality, so they help books talk to each other.

Examples? William Shakespeare is the king of being alluded to and referenced in literature. The title of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is an allusion to a line from Macbeth, and when we read Faulkner, if we keep Macbeth in mind, Faulkner's meaning just might be enhanced.

ASSONANCE: Assonance is a kind of internal rhyme that makes use of repeated vowel sounds . The vowel sounds are woven together to create a cool sonic effect. It's a trick of the trade that poets use to create and enhance meaning.

BALLAD: A ballad is a song. Think boy bands and chest-thumping emotion. Maybe a few tears. But in poetry, a ballad is also an ancient form of storytelling. In the way back days, common people didn't get their stories from books—they were sung as musical poems. Because they are meant to convey information, ballads usually have a simple rhythm and a consistent rhyme scheme. They often tell the story of everyday heroes, and some poets, like Bob Dylan, continue to set them to music.Many (though not all) ballads are written in a little something we like to call ballad meter (creative, right?), which consists of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (8) and iambic trimester (6).

That means they sound a little something like this: daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM / daDUM daDUM daDUM.If that sounds eerily familiar, well, it should. This meter is a classic, an old stand-by, and tons of poems, ballads, hymns, and other songs were written in it—songs like "Amazing Grace" or "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." In fact, you can sing ballad poems to the tune of these songs, if you really wanted to.

BLANK VERSE: Thanks to a lot of very old, very famous white guys, blank verse is one of the most common forms of English poetry. Oh, and we should say—it's anything but blank. The term refers to verse that has no rhyme scheme, but does have a regular meter— iambic pentameter , to be exact. Why is blank verse so common in English? Well, a lot of people think we speak in blank verse in our everyday conversations. Kind of like we just did: "a lot of people think we speak in it." That could be a blank verse line. This verse was common in Renaissance dramas by folks like Shakespeare and his frenemy Christopher Marlowe, both of whom made the verse accomplish all kinds of amazing fancy feats. But it's used all over poetry, perhaps most famously in Milton's Paradise Lost. Traditionally, blank verse is used when the writer is tackling serious subjects, and you don't get much more serious than Satan.

CONSONANCE: A kind of alliteration , consonance happens when consonant sounds are repeated . While the consonants stay the same, the vowels can change. Stella levels the laughter with an alarming leer. Hear all those L sounds? That's consonance. Are you able to abide by our bubbly babbling?

COUPLET: These cute little buggers are tiny stanzas . So tiny, in fact, that they only include two lines. Sometimes they rhyme, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're written in meter (as in heroic couplets), sometimes they're not. Bottom line? If you see a stanza that's two lines long, it's a couplet.

DICTION: Generally speaking, diction is just word choice. Which words is the author using, and what's their effect?Should you call your crush "sweetie," "dearest," "darling," "beloved," "boo," "sugar pie," or "Hey, you"? It makes a difference. Trust us. See, diction creates tone , and tone is one of the most important aspects up for discussion in literature . So when your teacher asks, what's the tone of this novel? Just ask yourself: what words are being used?

EPIC: Ah, the epic. The most exalted, fancy pants of all genres, the epic is a kind of narrative poem that dates back to ancient Greece and the classical period . Homer and other likeminded bros used the epic to tell stories about larger-than-life heroes and their triumphs on and off the battlefield. Epics usually involve supernatural or mythic elements like gods who like to meddle in human affairs. They are written in an elevated style and use lots of long similes, called heroic similes .

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Other conventions include an invocation to the muses and starting in medias res, a Greek phrase that means "in the middle of the action. Homer wrote two main epics: the Iliad and the Odyssey. After him, Virgil, a Roman guy—ahem, the Roman guy—wrote the Aeneid. Check out our analysis of epic in the Odyssey for some ideas on how to spot one. Later epics include Milton's Paradise Lost, and, if you want to play fast and loose with the definition, Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself."

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: This is just a fancy term for words that mean more than meets the eye . Figurative language uses figures of speech like similes and metaphors to build meaning beyond the literal. Think of figurative language as words that have more than one level of meaning. We often use figurative language in our everyday speech without even realizing it. When we say, "its raining cats and dogs," we don't literally mean that felines and canines are falling from the sky. It's a metaphor for a major downpour. Here are a few other examples:

She runs like the wind. I smell a rat. America is a melting pot. How could she marry a snake like that? My head is spinning. My love is a red, red rose. This classroom is like a circus.

Get the picture? Hey, that's one, too.

FREE VERSE: Free verse is a poetic style that lacks a regular meter or rhyme scheme. This may sound like free verse has no style at all, but it totally does. We're talking serious swagger. Free verse poets just use different tools (like internal rhyme or a particular rhythm) to create that style. Walt Whitman was one of the pioneers of free verse, and it has become super popular among contemporary poets like Li-Young Lee and Adrienne Rich.

HAIKU: We have the Japanese to thank for this poetic form. While it has its own rules in Japanese, in English, a haiku has three lines with five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables respectively. These guys often describe natural imagery and include a word that reveals the season in which the poem is set. Aside from its three sections, the haiku also traditionally features a sharp contrast between two ideas or images.

IAMBIC PENTAMETER: Here it is, folks. Probably the single most useful technical term in poetry (and in drama, too). Or maybe metaphor. But you already knew that one.

Let's break it down: An iamb is a metrical foot that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one—daDUM. Penta- means five. Meter refers to a regular rhythmic pattern in poetry. So iambic pentameter is a kind of rhythmic pattern that consists of five iambs per line, almost like five heartbeats: daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM.

Of course, though many poets use this rhythm, it might get pretty stinkin' boring after a while if they didn't shake it up a bit. So while a ton of poems are written in iambic pentameter, you'd be hard pressed to find one that follows the meter perfectly. Poets like to mix it up with metrical variations like extra syllables or out-of-order stresses.

IMAGERY: Imagery is all of the pictures and sensations a piece of writing conjures up in your noggin. Imagery is the key to literature—especially poetry. If you're reading a description that engages any one of your five senses, you're reading imagery, kids.

LYRIC: Lyrics can be the words to a song, sure, but the word lyric can also refer to a kind of poetry. Lyric poetry is all about giving us a glimpse inside the speaker's head. That means lyric poetry is usually written from the first-person point of view (using the pronoun "I") in order to directly convey the speaker's thoughts and emotions. Wait, so why in the world are they called lyrics? Can't they get their own term? Well lyric poems were originally sung, and when those old Greeks (we see you, Sappho) would sing their poems, they'd do so with accompaniment from a lyre. Lyre… lyric. Makes sense, right?Lyric poetry includes lots of subgenres like the ode and the sonnet .

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METAPHOR: Anyone who's ever sat in an English classroom knows that metaphors are everywhere, and all-important. Where would literary history be without lines like "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"? Or the declaration that "all the world's a stage"? Or the rhetorical conundrum of "Who in the rainbow can show the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?" Metaphor, it's safe to say, is the bread and butter of literature. But, um, have you ever really thought about what a metaphor is? And, more importantly, how metaphors work?

A metaphor is a kind of word magic that—presto change-o, alakazam—changes black hats into rabbits and scarves into doves. With a wave of the wand, metaphors compare two different things; metaphors describe one object as another . It's almost as if the object becomes what it is being compared to, at least, in a figurative way.

"You're a toad!" is a metaphor—although not a very nice one. So is "you're a star!" and that one's a little kinder. Metaphors are different from similes because metaphors leave out the words "like" or "as."

For example, a simile would be, "You're like a toad" or "You're like a star." (Although, technically speaking, similes are a type of metaphor.)

Technically speaking, similes are metaphors, too, they just use "like" or "as." Personification is a kind of metaphor that compares something to people. And then there are the fancy pants metaphors like metonymy and synecdoche. Memorizing your metaphors can go a long way in opening up literature for you.

METER: Think of meter as a poem's underlying structure—the rhythm beneath the words in each line. Does the poem go daDUM daDUM daDUM? Does it go dadaDUM? How about daDUMda daDUMda? Answer that question and you've got the poem's meter. Of course describing a poem in daDUMs can only get you so far. At some point you're going to run out of noises and need some vocabulary – but we’ll worry about all the formal stuff later. For now, know this: Good writing is about much more than the words on the page; it's about how they sound, and how that sound contributes to meaning. So understanding meter can be yet one more tool in your reading arsenal.

MOOD: the general atmosphere created by the author’s words. It is the feeling the reader gets from reading those words. It may be the same, or it may change from situation to situation. Don’t confuse this with tone, because, as we’ll learn, they are two very different things.

MOTIF: A motif is a meaningful pattern in art and literature. When you see an image, type of character, or symbol pop up again and again, chances are you're dealing with a motif. A motif can be specific to a single book or poem or can occur in art more generally, like an apple standing in for original sin. Yeah. Real original.

MYTH: Myths are the stories a culture tells to explain big things like the origins of the universe, why the sky is blue, and where socks go when we lose them in the dryer. A myth more than likely involves gods or supernatural elements (we're blaming you, Loki, for the socks thing). These days, the word "myth" has become synonymous with "lie"—it's bogus (i.e. "Midlife crisis is a myth!"). But way back when, it had a much deeper, much cooler meaning. A myth was a sacred story, an important part of religion, and helped humans understand how they fit into the world. It's pretty cool stuff.

NARRATOR: The narrator is the one who tells the story—kind of like a guide leading you through a novel or short story. A narrator can have a limited point-of-view, as with first-person narrators, or they can have total omniscience. Narrators can be unreliable or trustworthy. They can be close to the action or as far away as possible. It all depends. In many ways, narrators (even third-person ones) become characters in their own right.

ODE: An ode is a type of lyric poetry that sings the praises of the poem's subject . In ancient times, the ode was usually performed at a ceremonial occasion, with music. More recently, one of the most glorious symphonic movements of all time, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" from his Ninth Symphony, is a musical setting of an ode. It's a serious and ceremonial form, the kind that might have been sung after a big banquet. Most modern odes still have a very formal, traditional sound. Many of them are poems of praise, or general appreciation.

Nowadays, we often use the phrase "ode to" as an indication of formal praise. As in, "His speech was an ode to his favorite sports team." The Romantics made a big deal out of writing odes and John Keats was the master. He wrote odes to all kinds of things—nightingales, Grecian urns, even melancholy.

Some odes follow the formal rules set by the two most famous Greek writers of odes, Horace and Pindar. These poems are called—surprise, surprise—Horatian and Pindaric, respectively. But other odes, like Keats's, follow a form and meter all their own.

PERSONIFICATION: This classic is pretty common in writing – it is figurative language that gives human traits (qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics) to non-living objects (things, colors, qualities, or ideas).

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REFRAIN: Just like in songs, a refrain in poetry is a regularly recurring phrase or verse, especially at the end of each stanza or division of a poem or song.

RHYME: Simple, right? A rhyme is just a repetition of sounds that sound, well, the same. Well, it's simple and it isn't. Strictly speaking, that definition is correct, but did you know there's also a whole bunch of different types of rhyme? Seriously, take a look:

Internal rhyme occurs within a line of poetry. End rhyme occurs only at the ends of lines. Go figure. Perfect rhyme sounds just like what it means. A perfect rhyme rhymes perfectly, as in cat and hat. Slant rhyme consists of rhymes that are close, but not quite there. Think dear and door or soul and all. Also known as half

rhyme, imperfect rhyme, or weak rhyme. Hey! Who you callin' weak? Eye rhymes look alike, but don't sound alike, like tough and bough or mint and pint.

When end rhymes are arranged in a certain way in a poem, we call that the poem's rhyme scheme. Does it go ABABABCC? How about AABBCCDD? (Rhyme Scheme – for more on this term, visit www.shmoop.com/literature-glossary)

SIMILE: A simile is a figure of speech that makes use of the adverbs "like" or "as" to make a comparison or analogy . In that sense, it's a very specific kind of metaphor, but for the most part, we can think of it as its own separate beast.

Speaker – see Narrator

STANZA: Think of these guys as poetic paragraphs. A stanza is a division within a poem where a group of lines are formed into a unit. The word stanza comes from the Italian word for "room." Just like a room, a poetic stanza is set apart on a page by four "walls" of blank, white space.A poem can have regular stanzas, such as Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," which is made up entirely of quatrains. Or it can have stanzas of all shapes and sizes, like those you might see in a free verse poem like Langston Hughes's "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

THEME: A theme is a central idea in a work of literature. It's everywhere (cue creepy music), but it's never explicitly stated. For example, you might say, "This book is about death," but the author probably wouldn't—at least not in the book itself. So death is a theme. Themes help us reflect on big, hulking, abstract ideas like love, youth, progress, and religion. Once we've got the themes under our belt, it's time to figure out what the author is saying about that theme. The theme is the abstract idea, but the author probably has an opinion on it, right? And all the other aspects of a book—from the characters to the style to the plot—can help us pinpoint just what that opinion is.

TONE: Our voices can be playful, dour, cynical, or optimistic. The same thing goes for authors, and that's where tone comes in. Tone is an author's attitude—the emotions and feelings conveyed by the work of literature. But don't confuse tone with style. Tone refers to attitude, while style refers to the techniques the author uses in writing. One book can be optimistic in tone and another pessimistic, but they could both be written in a stream-of-consciousness style. Or one book may be written in a sparse style and another in a rich, lush style, but they both could be nostalgic in tone. How do writers create tone? With diction . When trying to figure out the tone of a text, just ask yourself what kind of words the author is using, and that's your answer.