Here We go...

I guess that I should start by saying something about why we are doing this - which I already have, but nevertheless. Every summer I spend some time thinking and rethinking how to best organize AP English. By doing so, every year ends up being different than the last. Usually, I try an organize the course around "essential questions" which serve as ways into thinking critically about the content. So, our work is arranged around ideas rather than just books.

What does this have to do with The Sound and the Fury? Well, last June, right after arena, and right after Richy and I had finished distributing S and F to y'all I began to think about the novel, about the Compsons, and about how to teach this text, and then it occurred to me - family. So, sure I could have developed three or four, or seven essential questions about family and we would have been done, but then we would have been focusing on what is of interest to me, and this is not necessarily what is of interest to you. Make sense?

So, lets take a look at some statements/questions about family that AP has asked over the years:

• Works of literature often depict acts of betrayal. Friends and even family may betray a protagonist; main characters may likewise be guilty of treachery or may betray their own values.
• How does the character's relationship to the past (family) contributes to the meaning of the novel?
• One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. How do characters in a novel or a drama struggle to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others?
• Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed.
• Novels or plays often depicts a conflict between a parent (or a parental figure) and a son or daughter.
• The conflict created when the will of an individual opposes the will of the majority is the recurring theme of many novels, plays, and essays.

You get the idea