Underground Railroad Essential Literary Synopsis

Thank you for a great opening week!  I hope that our discussions on the WSJ author's interview--including his use of historical runaway slave ads, connections to contemporary events and artistic movements, and his opinions on human nature--have been as instructive and enlightening for you as they have been for me.  In addition, I hope that our time spent unpacking some of the "What? / How? / So what?" elements of the ending has helped bring the novel's theme into sharper focus for you.

Also, I know it may seem early to mention this, as we have only just begun, but if you get the sense at any point that this class or my instruction is not meeting your needs in any way, please let me know.  :)

One more task for this week remains, which is to get our final thoughts on this novel into a compact form for later study and use.  For this task, I am proposing that we use the "Essential Literary Synopsis" form shared with me by veteran English AP Lit instructor Rob Brown this summer.  We will be completing one of these for each major work we study--probably a dozen or so overall.

Note: the box labeled "MOWAAW" on the "ELS" form stands for "Meaning of [the] Work as a Whole."

Please bring a printout or photocopy of your completed "ELS" form and your copy of the novel to turn back in on Monday.