LITERATURE

1. Journal      #2 response to: “The Lesson,” “Killings,” “The Things They Carried,” or      “Guests of a Nation.”

Remember, your journal responses need to be at least 250-word reactions to the pieces you’ve read. Some prompt to consider in typing your journal. Choose ONLY ONE as the basis of your response:

1. What do I think of this text and why?


2. List the emotions (anger, pity, envy, admiration, astonishment, etc.) the work evoked. Then draw conclusions about the reasons you think you felt these emotions.


3. Copy one sentence, one line, or one phrase that struck you as especially beautiful, puzzling, enlightening, and so on. Then interpret how and why the sentence, line, or phrase evoked this response.


4. You can write a letter to the author asking questions or making observations about the reading.


5. Draw conclusions about why you could or could not detect with a particular character or situation in the reading.


6. Reread the work and interpret how your impression of the reading changed from your initial reading of the piece.

Make sure you vary the format for your responses. For example, don’t just write a letter to the author for every response. Try your hand at different approaches to your writing responses. Again, these are just suggestions; you may take any approach to the responses that you prefer. The one thing I do NOT want you to do is to provide just a summary of the reading. Your ideas about reading are more important to me. I want to know what you are thinking about the readings and why. Please proofread your responses before you turn them in. Also, please cite your responses using proper MLA formatting rules, like this:

In-text citation: “At that I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn’t use the word “hurt” I might get somewhere” (Williams 92).

Works cited entry:

Author. Title. Title of container (self contained if book), Other contributors (translators or editors), Version (edition), Number (vol. and/or no.), Publisher, Publication Date, Location (pages, paragraphs and/or URL, DOI, or permalink). 2ndcontainer’s title, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location, Date of Access (if applicable).

In-text citation: (Dubus 80)

Works Cited page entry: Dubus, Andre. “Killings.” 1979. Killings story.pdf.

In-text citation: (O’Brien 366)