Overview

Lesson Procedure

60-65 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure5 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Think of two songs from the same year that are about the same thing, such as leaving home. What makes them alike? What makes them sound completely different?"

   Take a few answers and name the two things students just did: they found a shared topic and compared the treatment (tone, speaker, style). Explain that writers from the same period often share topics because they face the same questions, and that RL.11-12.9 asks students to compare how they answer them.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Part 1: What makes a work "foundational." A foundational work is one that later American writers and readers keep returning to: it shaped ideas about the individual, freedom, race or the nation. Walk through the period table below. Students do not need to memorize it; they need to be able to place a work and say what questions its period cared about.

   American literary periods, 1700s to 1920s

   Period	Years (approx.)	Common concerns	Foundational works (examples)
   Colonial and Revolutionary	1700s	Faith, reason, liberty and the new nation	Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741); Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)
   Romanticism and Transcendentalism	1820s-1860s	The individual, intuition, nature, nonconformity; also the darker side of human nature	Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle" (1819); Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (1841); Frederick Douglass, Narrative (1845); Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven" (1845); Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850); Thoreau, Walden (1854); Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
   Realism and Naturalism	1860s-1910s	Ordinary lives, regional speech, social forces and limits on freedom	Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892); Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895); Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)
   Early Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance	1910s-1920s	Breaks with tradition, new forms, the city, Black identity and pride in African heritage, the meaning of America	Robert Frost, North of Boston (1914); Claude McKay, Harlem Shadows (1922); F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925); Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues (1926)

   Part 2: Model the comparison. Read the Emerson excerpts aloud, then the Thoreau excerpt.

   1Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

   [...]

   2Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

   [...]

   3What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

   [...]

   4The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

   [...]

   5A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

   1I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

   2Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

   • Placing a work in its period

     Emerson's "Self-Reliance" (1841) and Thoreau's Walden (1854). What period are they from, and why does that matter for reading them?

     Result: Both belong to Transcendentalism, part of the American Renaissance of the 1830s-1850s. Thoreau was Emerson's friend, and his cabin at Walden Pond stood on land Emerson owned. Knowing this, a reader expects both to value the individual over institutions, and can ask how each writer does it.

   • Finding the shared topic

     Emerson: "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist." Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." What topic do both sentences treat?

     Result: How a person should live: by his own judgment and on purpose, rather than by habit or custom. That is the topic; each writer's treatment of it is what the comparison examines.

   • Comparing the treatment

     Who is speaking, and to whom? Compare "Absolve you to yourself" with "I went to the woods."

     Result: Emerson speaks to "you" in commands and general truths. Thoreau speaks as "I" and reports a choice he made. The same topic arrives as advice in one text and as testimony in the other.

   • Writing a comparative thesis

     Combine the shared topic and the difference in treatment into one claim.

     Result: "Both Emerson and Thoreau urge readers to live by their own judgment, but Emerson makes the case through commands aimed at the reader, while Thoreau makes it through the story of his own attempt to live deliberately."

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Pairs fill in a three-column chart (Emerson only / Both / Thoreau only) for the two excerpts. Ask the questions one at a time and confirm each before moving on:

   1. What does each writer want the reader to do? Teacher note: Emerson wants the reader to trust his own mind ("Absolve you to yourself"); Thoreau mostly tells what he wanted for himself ("I wished to live deliberately") and turns to advice only later.
   2. What kind of evidence does each use? Teacher note: Emerson relies on bold general statements and metaphors; Thoreau relies on his own experience and on vivid comparisons (ants, pygmies, a "chopping sea").
   3. What would each say to the other? Teacher note: this is an open question. Accept answers that are grounded in a quotation from each text, and push students to find a real disagreement, not only agreement.

   Each pair writes one sentence for the "Both" column that names the shared topic, and one sentence that names the most important difference. Share two or three and compare them with the thesis in the fourth worked example.

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Students read the two excerpts below on their own and complete the same three-column chart. Then they write a first-draft comparative thesis. Tell them to start by placing both works in the period table: the story appeared in 1892 and the novel in 1899. The quiz questions on these excerpts work as a check once students finish.

   1It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

   2A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

   3Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

   4Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

   5John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

   6John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

   7John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

   8You see, he does not believe I am sick!

   9And what can one do?

   10If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?

   11My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.

   12So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.

   13Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

   14Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

   15But what is one to do?

   16I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.

   17I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.

   18So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

   1Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her.

   2A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the light which, showing the way, forbids it.

   3At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

   4In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.

   5But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

   6The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

   7The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

   [...]

   8Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.

5. Closure5 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Name the period of one pair and one concern that period shared. (2) Finish the sentence: "The two excerpts share the topic of ___, but they treat it differently because ___."

   Teacher note on historical language: Gilman's narrator repeats the diagnosis of her time, "temporary nervous depression" and "a slight hysterical tendency." "Hysterical" was a medical label often applied to women, and doctors no longer use it. Gilman had been treated with a rest cure herself, and many readers see the story as a response to it. Explain this before students read, so the words are understood as the story's target, not its view. The narrator's illness is often read today as postpartum depression, and some students may know depression from their own or a family member's life: discuss the narrator's situation respectfully, avoid treating mental illness as a joke or as a label for a character, and let students know where they can find support at school. If students read on in The Awakening, preview that the novel ends with Edna's death in the sea.

   For homework: students read the Whitman excerpt below, which the homework uses.

   1I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
   And what I assume you shall assume,
   For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

   I loafe and invite my soul,
   5I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

   My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
   Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
   I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
   Hoping to cease not till death.

   10Creeds and schools in abeyance,
   Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
   I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
   Nature without check with original energy.

   [...]

   Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
   15Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
   Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

   Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
   You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
   You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
   20You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
   You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In "Self-Reliance," Emerson writes that "Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." What does the metaphor claim?

   ASociety is a business that makes its members wealthy. BPeople give up their independence in exchange for security and comfort. CMembers of a society share their food fairly with one another. DEmerson thinks readers should invest in companies.

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Emerson writes, "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion." Which sentence from Walden treats the same topic, living by conclusions other people have reached?

   A"Still we live meanly, like ants." B"An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers." C"For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'" D"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." What is Emerson arguing in this part of the excerpt?

   APeople should be willing to say what they think now, even if it contradicts what they said before. BBeing consistent in hard work is foolish. CGreat people should contradict themselves on purpose. D"Little minds" means children, who cannot think consistently.

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Thoreau says that if life "proved to be mean," he would "publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience." What does this show about his approach compared with Emerson's in these excerpts?

   AThoreau already knows that life is mean and wants to prove it. BThoreau does not care what he finds, because he plans never to write about it. CThoreau and Emerson both refuse to share their conclusions with others. DThoreau treats the question of how to live as an experiment whose result he does not assume, while Emerson states his principles as settled truths.

5. Question 5 of 20 · Short Answer

   Emerson writes that "the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Thoreau went to live alone in the woods. Does Thoreau's choice fit Emerson's statement, or complicate it? Use one quotation from each text.

   Show model answer

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Thoreau writes, "Our life is frittered away by detail." Which sentence from the Emerson excerpt makes a related point about what conformity costs a person?

   A"Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world." B"He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall." C"The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character." D"Self-reliance is its aversion."

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which topic do Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Chopin's The Awakening share in these excerpts?

   AThe beauty of summer houses near the sea BMedical treatments for illness in the 1890s CA married woman's growing awareness of herself as an individual, and the limits placed on her DGhosts and haunted houses

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Gilman's narrator writes, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage." What does this sentence reveal?

   AShe accepts being dismissed by her husband as a normal part of marriage, and the calm tone makes that acceptance troubling. BJohn is a cheerful man who enjoys telling jokes. CThe narrator finds her marriage funny. DThe narrator is angry and plans to leave John.

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why does Gilman's narrator call her journal "dead paper" and "a great relief to my mind"?

   AThe paper is old and falling apart. BShe thinks writing is useless and plans to stop. CShe is writing a letter she will mail to her brother. DThe paper cannot answer, argue or report her, so it is the only safe place to say what she really thinks.

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    How do the two excerpts differ in who tells the story?

    ABoth are told in the first person by the woman herself. BGilman's is a first-person journal in the narrator's own hesitant voice; Chopin's is told in the third person by a narrator who comments on Edna from outside. CChopin's is told by Edna, while Gilman's is told by John. DBoth are told by the women's husbands.

11. Question 11 of 20 · Short Answer

    "Personally, I disagree with their ideas. / Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. / But what is one to do?" Explain how the repeated word "Personally" and the final question show the narrator's conflict.

    Show model answer

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Chopin writes that "A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her," and calls it "the light which, showing the way, forbids it." What does this paradox suggest?

    AA sunrise is lighting the path to the beach. BEdna's new self-knowledge shows her a different way to live, and at the same moment shows her that her life forbids it. CA religious vision is commanding Edna to obey her husband. DEdna is going blind.

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Chopin says Edna had always known "the dual life," which she describes as "that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions." What does she mean?

    AEdna has always behaved as expected on the outside while privately questioning inside. BEdna has two separate families. CEdna pretends to be sick so that she can be alone. DEdna has lived in two different houses, one in the city and one by the sea.

14. Question 14 of 20 · Short Answer

    Write a one-sentence comparative thesis about how Gilman and Chopin treat a married woman's awakening to her own mind. Then give one quotation from each excerpt that supports it.

    Show model answer

15. Question 15 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A student plans to pair Walden with The Awakening as "two texts from the same period." What is the problem with this pairing for RL.11-12.9?

    AWalden is not American literature. BThe two works were published forty-five years apart, in different literary periods, so they are not from the same period. CA memoir cannot be compared with a novel. DThere is no problem; any two American texts count as the same period.

16. Question 16 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which feature of the "Self-Reliance" excerpt is most typical of Transcendentalism?

    ATrust in the individual's own mind over tradition, as in "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" BRealistic detail about poverty in a modern city CA call for strict obedience to church authority DA story told through a character's stream of consciousness

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    "The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation." What does the sea stand for in this passage, and what warning do the words "abysses" and "lose itself" carry?

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail." What is Thoreau recommending?

    AKeep careful written records of every expense. BGive up all business and property completely. CStop learning arithmetic, since fingers are enough for counting. DReduce your affairs to the essentials so that life is not consumed by details.

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    In Gilman's excerpt, who holds authority over the narrator, and how do you know? In Chopin's excerpt, where does the pressure on Edna come from? Use one quotation from each.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which sentence best describes a difference in tone between the two excerpts?

    ABoth excerpts are cheerful and lighthearted throughout. BGilman's narrator sounds calm and certain, while Chopin's narrator sounds anxious. CGilman's narrator sounds anxious and hesitant, often taking back what she starts to say, while Chopin's narrator sounds calm and reflective, with a touch of irony. DBoth excerpts are angry and openly rebellious.

These standards connect to RL.11-12.9: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.