LITERARY EXPLORATION ASSIGNMENT

Read the following excerpt from a famous speech and complete the assignment that follows.

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

“On Friendship” - Kahlil Gibran

The Assignment

When we reflect on our lives, we come to see that friendship is one of the most important, and most rare experiences of all.

What is your opinion of the idea that friendship is of crucial importance in our lives?

In your writing, you should:

§ discuss a character from the novel, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. Remember that you need to focus your response, so do not choose to write about too many characters.

§ reflect upon your own knowledge and/or experience.

§ carefully consider your controlling idea, your thesis, and how you will create a strong unifying effect in your response. Organize your discussion so that your ideas are clearly and effectively presented.

§ make sure that the examples and details that you select are relevant and support your opinion about friendship.

LITERARY EXPLORATION ASSIGNMENT

PARAGRAPH ONE - INTRODUCTION

Consider the details in the text on the assignment. You may want to include a quotation from poem by Gibran in your introduction.

General Statement about the topic ________________________________________________________________

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Brief Statement summarizing personal experience or observation

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Brief summary of character from Of Mice and Men, or another text studied in this unit.

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Thesis statement – your answer to the question

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PARAGRAPH TWO – PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OR OBSERVATION

Use your own experiences and/or observations to support your opinion

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PARAGRAPH THREE – CHARACTER FROM TEXT STUDIED

Select supporting examples from Of Mice and Men, or the other text you’ve chosen. Focus your discussion on a particular character and/or situation

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PARAGRAPH FOUR – CONCLUSION

Connect your ideas and generalize about them.

Restate your thesis

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Generalize about your personal experience or observation to the character in the text

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Generalize about the topic

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ENGLISH 20-2

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

PERSUASIVE WRITING IN CONTEXT

Read the news article excerpt below and use it to complete the assignment that follows.

Foreign Farm Workers Unionize: A First in BC

August 21, 2008

By Tom Sandborn

Union aims to organize more farms.

For the first time, foreign workers imported to pick B.C. crops have been allowed to join a union. Migrant workers at Greenway Farms in Surrey have voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) of Canada. The historic certification was granted with the support of more than 75 per cent of the roughly 40 affected workers. Never before had B.C.'s Labour Relations Board approved a union to represent workers brought to Canada under the federal Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program.

"I am pleased to hear this," said Raj Chouhan, the NDP MLA for Burnaby-Edmonds, and the founder of an earlier attempt to unionize B.C. farms. "Workers are finally getting some protection.... We need all the support we can get for farm workers."

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) matches foreign workers, primarily from the Caribbean and Mexico, with agricultural employers who claim they cannot find Canadian employees. The program began in eastern Canada in 1966 and has been bringing Mexican workers to B.C. farms since 2004. It has been criticized, by observers who see it as a way of keeping wages in agriculture low and institutionalizing the exploitation of vulnerable guest workers, historically a group very hard to unionize.

The Assignment

Consider the reading about unionization for this assignment, as well as our discussion of unions in class. You are standing before a crowd of employees at the ranch where George and Lennie and the others are working. Write a speech that will persuade workers during the Great Depression era of Steinbeck’s novel EITHER to unionize OR to reject unionization.

In preparing your speech, BE SURE TO

• consider your purpose and audience

• speak to the particular circumstances, experiences, and needs of characters in the novel. They are your audience. Use facts and details from the novel to help you make your case either way.

• use an appropriate tone when you’re speaking to the men. How will you convince them?

Remember that you must clearly and directly choose either to accept or reject the

proposal to unionize. You might want to reflect on your own knowledge and/or experience of the world of work.