Unit 5: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony continued.

As a reminder, there are “Readers’ Guides to Ceremony” posted under “Student Resources,” and the second one covers up until page 179 (the page with the illustration of the stars). That’s a good target page to read up to for this Unit, or even further if you are ambitious. But to do well on this Forum assignment, you’ll need to have read carefully up until at least page 153. And, remember, that on Saturday June 4 we meet in-person again, and by that date you’ll have to have completed the novel. There will be an in-person quiz that day on the novel that week (details later), and the first paper will be on Ceremony (assignment sheet coming soon).

I strongly encourage you to use these readers’ guides, but not because I think you can’t figure it out the basic plot on your own. I’m quite sure you can; hundreds of thousands of college students across the nation have. But keeping track of time frames, events, characters, sequences, and things like that is itself a challenge in this novel, but that’s only our starting point, not our end goal. So the less effort you have to put into the basics, the more time and energy you’ll have for something much more important: advanced analysis! So use these guides.

The video lectures will also help, and this week’s lecture builds on last week’s comments on Narrative, and time, but starts to broaden the focus a bit beyond just Tayo, and discusses the thematic relationship between Tayo and the drought, and the formal relationship between the prose of the main narrative and the poetry Silko weaves into it, and more.

After you’ve read to page 153, 179, or further, and watched the lecture, turn to this week’s forum assignment. As a general reminder, let me reiterate a few rules.

• Follow the specific assignments (though, of course, you have some leeway to follow a good idea where it goes, as long as you make a narrow, and original, argument that analyzes the text)
• Analyze the language, don’t just rehash the plot, and don't just quote without explaining your unique and creative ideas about the language you quote.
• Remember the “format” of a good Post: 1) Claim (“I argue...”), 2) Evidence and Analysis, then 3) briefly State the Significance of your argument (review the PowerPoint).
• Replies MUST be 200 words at least, and they also need to work with the language of the text. Either introduce and analyze a new short quotation from the text (sometimes even a single meaningful word), or at least offer a different re-interpretation of a quotation already in the post.
• STAY OFF THE INTERNET: Plagiarism and academic misconduct generally starts to be a problem around this point in the semester, as the workload intensifies. Every single term, some students throw away the hard work they have done, and the money they have paid for the course, by casually going online, and thus failing the class. Don't let that be you! Stay ahead, trust your own instincts and interpretations, and be creative in your response to the text. (And, if absolutely necessary, better to hand in a poor Post and receive a bad grade but at least some credit for one assignment--rather than trying to take a shortcut and then end up Failing the entire course).