Online Task 2

Online Task 2

Do we have a canon for Malaysian literary works? Let's say we do, who do you think are in it? Consider the fact that their works are well-known and most importantly included as part of the school syllabus- (both in BM and English)

1. Che Husna Azhari – Of Bunga Telur And Bally Shoes

2. Shirley Lim Geok Lin – Learning To Love America

3. Ali Majod – The Pencil

4. M. Shanmughalingam – Heir Conditioning

5. A. Samad Said – The Dead Crow

 

The poems by Erica Jong raises some feminist issues. What are they?

They are sex-positive issues, gender difference, gender bias, patriarchy and oppression of women, male dominance in love and family relationship, gender equality for women and women's rights and interests.

 

Do you think they are suitable to teach at the secondary school level? Explain.

In my opinion, Erica Jong’s poems can be used to teach at the secondary school level as a formal school programme for sex education. It is necessary to reduce risk behaviours such as unprotected sex, and equip students to make informed decisions about their personal sexual activity.

Open dialogue about physical intimacy and health education can generate more self-esteem, self-confidence, humour, and general health in students.

Is Hillary Tham's poem more suitable?

Hillary Tham’s ‘Becoming A Woman’ is not more suitable but equally suitable. It highlights the receiving of maternal wisdom. After all, it is necessary for students to know how a little girl goes through the phase of becoming a woman, to grow and chang in ways that prepare her to be able to have a baby

 

The short tale from the Native American group is about a girl who is unsatisfied with her life. How is this a universal experience? Can it teach our students anything?

More than too often most human being is not satisfied with what they have and pursue for something else which they think will make them happier. For example, almost every adult woman is trying to look prettier and younger than they are for they are unsatisfied with the way they look. The short tale from the Native American group teaches students to determine what does and does not give us real satisfaction.

 

From your findings about his background, tell me about the dilemma he conveys through the poem CROSS.

The dilemma is that the speaker is a slave or former slave who has a black mother and white father.  Being a bi-racial person in America during the 1900s was a tough position to be in.  The skin colour would represent closest to a light-skined African American, but to most African American Americans it represents the enemy, the white man.  The speaker voices anger towards his parents for making him an oddity.

I find "Dinner Guest: Me" laden with irony and sarcasm. Briefly state if you feel the same.

Yes. The speaker, being a formal dinner guest surrounded by lobster and wine he naturally would not have spoken to his white hosts as he would his neighbors and kin. “I know I am / The Negro Problem / Being Wined and dined, / Answering the usual questions / That come to the white mind “. He is Black, he is important at some level because people are trying to impress him, he is answering questions from White minds and hence must be the guest in a white house hold, he represents all Black in their eyes and is seen as a problem because they do not understand him. 

 

The experience in the poem Harlem is one that is true for many people. Do you agree?

It is true that having to postpone one’s deepest desires can lead to destruction.

Langston Hughes fights for the voice of his people. What is the movement called?

New Negro Movement - a bold eff ort to transform American images of African Americans through art and literature, while instilling race pride within the black community itself. Pursuing racial renewal through cultural diplomacy, the new Negro movement gave birth to the Harlem Renaissance (1919–1934).

Online Task 1

Online Task 1

1. Folktale

a)  List some of the well-known folktales from Malaysia .

How Malacca Got Its Name

The curse of Batu Gajah

The Curse of Mahsuri

Bawang Merah Bawah Putih

The Princess og Mount Ledang

Sang Kancil And The Crocodile

b)  List some of the possible issues found in The Son of the Turtle Spirit

The issues found in The Son of The Turtle Spirit are:

-          Love – the true love between the maiden and the turtle

-          meaning of wealth - wealth is power

-          feng shui for wealth - dragon as a symbol of power and auspicious

c)  Are those issues universal in nature or are they only relevant in the Chinese culture?

The issues of love and meaning of wealth is universal in nature while feng shui for wealth is relevant in the Chinese culture only.

2.  Fables

a)  Morals that can be gotten from the other fables by Aesop

The Ant And The Dove – One good turn deserves another

The Dog And Its Shadow – Grasp at the shadow and lost the substance

The Bundle of Sticks – Union Gives Strength

The Ant And The Grasshopper – It is best to prepare for the days of necessity

3.  Myths

One well-known literary figure from the Elizabethan age used Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe as a model to one of his famous plays. Who is he and what is the play?

William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet

4. Legends

List some of the popular legends we have in Malaysia

Hang Tuah	Langkawi's Legendary Brawl
Magical Lake of Pregnant Maiden	The Seven Magical Wells
The Legend of Mahsuri	Kedah's Legendary Fanged King
The Adventures of The Singing Sea Captain	The Mysterious Giant Footprint
Mystical Cave of Stories	Sri Rambai, The Magical Cannon
The Tragic Tales of Buaya Sangkut & Upeh Guling	The Legend of Princess Santubong
The Mysterious Jugra Lighthouse	The Fairy Princess Of Gunung Ledang
The Kinabalu Dragon’s Gem	The Legend of Princess Sa'adong
The Tragic Tale of a Turtle Stone	The Dragon Of Lake Chini
Monsopaid the Legendary Warrior	The Kind Princess at Princess Hill
Legend of Perhentian Island	Legend of Kota Gelanggi Cave
Perak Royalty Rituals	The Isle of The Sleeping Dragon

1.  Who is Thomas Malory?

 Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1405 -14 March 1471) was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur.

2. When was Le Mort d’Arthur written?

Le Mort d’Arthur was finished, as the epilogue tells us, in the ninth year of Edward IV., i.e. between March 4, 1469 and the same date in 1470. Malory probably started work on it in the 1450's while he was in prison. It was published in 1485.

3. How many books/ parts are there in LMDA?

There are 21 books in Le Mort d’Arthur

4. What is book 8 about?

 It is about Sir Tristram's life.

5.  Who were the two people who had an affair?

Sir Lancelot and Arthur’s wife, Guinevere.

6. Book 6 has a strong connection to a popular modern fiction which is now a movie. What is the title of the popular modern fiction?

King Arthur (2004)

7. State three well-known facts about King Arthur/ his time as a King

-           Arthur was betrayed by his greatest knight, Sir Lancelot.

-           Arthur's sword was called Excalibur.

-      Arthur married Guinevere and got the Round table as a wedding present from her father Leodegrance.

Think of 2 ways in which you can use folktales/fables/myths or legends in the classroom. Explain briefly.

      a) Using Graphic Organizers to Generate Genre Definitions

Using graphic organizers, students create definitions of a variety of story types, including fables, fairy tales, folktales, legends, myths and tall tales.

      b) Passport to Stories Around the World

Introduce students to six tales – one from each of six continents – and ask them to fill out passports about each continent. Students worksheet provided.

Research Paper

Finally

I submitted my RP more than a week ago from today. I was very surprised with Miss Dzeelfa for ‘okaying’ both of the template and the organization of my RP right on the first email. Could it be so easy? So I was on the right track though I doubted about myself? I wondered.

Some of the journals and articles I read along the process to produce my RP commented on how Jane Austen’s background, especially of her being unmarried and her failure in a few relationships, affected the way she portrayed relationships in her novels.

I understand perfectly that these comments are from a bunch of great people with great minds and most probably they are right for majority of the readers but I just cannot agree with them. I always believe that every individual has their own situation and sometimes fate sort of play with some people’s life. And I do not think that with Austen being not married has anything to do with the way she wrote because that’s her ways of viewing things and her perspective. 

There’s nothing new about the purposes of marriage in Austen’s novels and in real life. It could be for money, status, love and so on. It depends on individuals’ intentions and how other people interpret a relationship.

Green Light

This special green light indicates that I am on the right track and can proceed with my research paper. Hurray…(softly because it does not mean that I will get good marks for it, yet).

The phrase ‘research paper’ sounds so huge (a stranger to me, a bit scary and difficult) because I have never befriended with it before. Well, that is why I have to get to know about it.

Miss Dzeelfa’s notes in her blogspot have done a great help for me to produce a template of my research paper in order to get a green light from her. It is actually about choosing three texts by the same author or three texts with common concerns written by three different authors, focus on the similarities of those texts, choose one topic which sounds interesting (to myself and my reader, maybe) and has the potential to be researched on.

I have touched quite a number of novels and short stories in previous semesters and know about more than a handful of authors. Since I have obtained the green light, I have done some readings on the field that I am going to do research on, which is marriage, and found some useful materials from journals and articles which I think can be used for my research paper.

Dear Research Paper, I’m getting to know about you bit by bit.

Keats' Letters

Keats letter to Fanny Brawne is a passionate one and it seems he was head to toe in love with Fanny Brawne. The way he wrote the letter was as if he couldn’t live without her, that she was his air and lived under his skin.

Both Shelley and Keats were great writers. Keats letter to Shelley reveals that their relationship was quite close for Shelley would invite Keats to stay with him when he learned that Keats was going to Italy. Another evidence of the closeness of their relationship is that Shelley advised Keats not to publish his work, Endymion.

In his letter to Shelley, Keats wrote that ‘My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.’ He implies that imagination is more powerful than most powerful thing. I’ve read some of his poems last semester like Bright Star, Ode To A Nightingale, Ode To Autumn and Ode On A Grecian Urn which he wrote about his imagination, the relation between thought and sensation and his own identity.

I think to be a writer like Keats, one has to ‘too frequently think too much’ and ‘think about a lot deeply’. It sounds a bit insane to me because thinking too much about what have happened and what is yet to happen is both very unhealthy. If we keep on dwelling with negative thoughts, we will feel depressed and it will become a habit which most people do not realize. Too much thinking and analyzing will just make any problem worse. I believe that today is wonderful and I want to live it in the present.

The Blue Rose

The Blue Rose – A Folktale From China

‘Honesty is the best policy’ means that it is always to be honest even if you have done something wrong. In the folktale of ‘The Blue Rose’, the gardener’s son chooses to be honest not only to the others but also to himself that there is no blue rose anywhere. Instead of making up one, he uses his wisdom to make the white rose becomes blue by showing the Princess the rose in a blue room at sunset. I think the gardener’s son is courageous and admirable for being honest.

To be honest, one has to have courage and it reveals our characters. It is easier to be honest than telling a thousand lies to hide one act of dishonesty and create more and more troubles for oneself. Honesty is at the heart of who we are and what we believe in. It is a choice and we make it each day. The choice is ours, either to stand with dignity or to lower ourselves to standards of dishonesty and fall.

Shooting An Elephant

Shooting An Elephant by George Orwell

The Occupier & The Occupied

This is not a story simply about shooting an elephant but again it involves prejudice, neither against African nor black American, but the natives in Burma, the conflicts between the east and the west during the colonial ages.

The natives of Burma have no freedom and are in inferior status in their own country because of British colonization. They are humiliated for being occupied, humiliated by British immoral and unethical attitude. Therefore they resent the presence of British and there is a constant tension between the natives and the British.

So the main themes for the essay are like prejudice, resentment and freedom.

 I think the narrator faces an internal conflict. He could choose not to shoot the elephant and walked away. But he has no courage to go against the will of the crowd. Instead of choosing honour, he chose to go against his conscience. Too often the same kind of situation of choosing between right and wrong happens in our society.

Here is a link to the text of “Shooting An Elephant” of George Orwell with a very thorough analysis which can be used in the classroom. And check out this link which consists of worksheets of a graphic organizer and activities related to “Shooting An Elephant”.

I would like to share this "The Elephant Song" with you. It's by Kamahl. The lyric of the song is as below.

Tell me said the elephant
Tell me brothers if you can
Why all the world is full of creatures
Yet we grow in fear of man
Tell me said the elephant
tell me why this has to be
we have to run from man and hunter
never safe and never free

 people kill without regret
although they fly by jumbo-jet
let the word all may remember
let the children not forget.

Gentle is the elephant
Pulling loads and everything
we love to hear the children laughing
when we,re in the circus-ring
Happy was the elephant
Happy was his jungle life
and then they came, the cruel hunters
with their rifle and their knives

Listen, please listen, said the elephant
if we want the world we know, to stay alive
Then man and beast, we must work together
And together we will survive

Listen said the elephant
It is conservation time
So take the warning when we trumpet
For the future of mankind