The Value of Life



NAME: ___________________________________ English 11Honors, Per. 6

Ms. Swanson Spring 2014

ERWC Unit: The Value of Life

Each of the texts you will be reading addresses the issue of how life is valued. As you will see, the texts provide very different ways of thinking about how we can, do, and should value life.

NOTE: * = a written, graded assignment that should be entered into your “Value of Life” journal

THOUGHT-PROVOKERS:

I. Text 1“Allegory of the Cave”

A. READ: “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato in the World of Ideas textbook, pp 443-453 (red cover version). (in class: Tu 2/18)

B. *DRAW: Draw the “cave” as described in the allegory. (in class: Tu 2/18)

C. *WRITE: When you have finished reading and drawing, write up a summary of what you think this piece teaches us about the value of life. (in class: Tu 2/18)

II. Text 2 “Story of an Hour”

A. READ: “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (handout). Take notes on its connection to the value of life as you read. (HW Due: Th 2/20)

B. *WRITE: Write up a list of events that happen in the story that explore the value of life and explain what each one seems to suggest about life. (HW Due: Th 2/20)

C. DISCUSS: Fishbowl discussion of the story’s exploration of what makes life meaningful. (in class: Th 2/20)

MAIN TEXTS:

III. Text 3: Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” Soliloquy

PRE-READING

Activity 1: Getting Ready to Read (in class: Th 2/20)

*Quickwrite: Write a response to the following prompt (attach it to the back of the packet): What does being alive mean to you? How do you assign value to life? What makes life challenging? What makes it worth living? Give a few examples that help to show your thinking about how people should value life.

Activity 2: Introducing Key Concepts (in class: Th 2/20)

*Define: Explore the ways in which society defines “life” in various contexts. Write a definition for each of these:

1. scientific definition; 2. right-to-life definition; 3. your personal definition; 4. a classmate’s definition.

READING

Activity 3: First Reading (in class: Th 2/20)

Although it is quite short, the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy from Hamlet packs much meaning into its 33 lines. You may need to read it more than once before you feel you have a good grasp on the ideas it contains.

*Quickwrite: As you first read the text, focus on what you see as the “big picture” Hamlet describes. Based on this first reading, would you say that Hamlet is an optimist or a pessimist? What are your reasons for thinking so?

Activity 4: Rereading the Text and Looking Closely at Language

Strategic Marking of the Text (in class: Th 2/20)

This time, focus on the way Hamlet values life. As you read, highlight the text, marking the places where Hamlet describes what it means to be alive. In the margins, write down what you think he means. At the bottom summarize what you think his attitude is toward life.

POSTREADING

Activity 5: Charting Multiple Texts (in class: Th 2/20)

Fill out the author, title, and genre on the multiple texts chart for Hamlet at the back of this packet.

Then, fill in the details on the following in the squares provided or on an attached sheet.

• What is the text’s big issue with regard to the value of life? This asks you to identify the “main idea” of the text.

• What main claim does the text make about the value of life? This asks you to identify the writer’s perspective on the main idea.

• What are examples or quotes from the text concerning the value of life? This is where you put examples given by the writer to help the reader understand his or her claim. Be sure to include page or line numbers (or both) to identify where you found the quote or idea.

• What do you think about the text’s main claim about the value of life? In this box, you will explain your response to the text’s claim, including to what extent (if any) you agree with it.

• What are your examples? Give a few examples from your own experiences that help explain your response to the text’s claim.

• How does this text connect to other texts? If you see a similarity to another text, make note of it here. Connections can be made even among texts that have very different claims.

INTERLUDE: Watch Life of Pi: (in class: Mo 2/24 and Tu 2/25)

IV. Text 4 – “What is a Life Worth?”

PREREADING

Activity 6: Surveying the Text (in class: Th 2/27)

DISCUSSION: The article “What Is a Life Worth?” comes from the February 12, 2002, issue of Time magazine. Take a look at its form and length. How much time do you think it will take to read this piece? Have you read anything from Time magazine? What do you know about that publication? What kinds of articles are commonly included in it? What types of people do you think compose the magazine’s primary readership?

Making Predictions and Asking Questions (in class: Th 2/27)

This article includes the following subtitle: “To compensate families of the victims of Sept. 11, the government has invented a way to measure blood and loss in cash. A look at the wrenching calculus.” *WRITE the answers to these questions:

1. What predictions can you make about the article’s content from this subtitle?

2. What connections do you think you might see between this article and the soliloquy from Hamlet?

3. How will this article be different from the soliloquy from Hamlet(list 4 or 5 ways)?

Activity 7: Introducing Key Vocabulary (in class: Th 2/27)

*WRITE: Below, you will find three groupings of vocabulary words taken from “What Is a Life Worth?” The first group consists of words related to the legal and financial aspects of the article. The second list contains terms that convey information with particular emotional connotations. The final set of words is made up of terms that are used to describe the workings of the governmental plan to compensate 9/11 family victims. Look over each list and provide a brief definition for each one. Pay particular attention to the ways in which the words connect to one another (e.g., people litigate, or sue, because they want somebody to compensate them for a loss).

Financial and legal terms

1. compensate

2. litigation

3. commodify

4. valuation

5. discretion

6. liability

7. beneficiary

8. tort

9. allocation

10. disparity

Emotion-laden words

1. squeamish

2. garish

3. gall

4. traumatize

5. callous

6. inconsolable

7. indignant

8. balk

9. deteriorate

Descriptive terms

1. rhetorical

2. Rorschach test

3. artillery

4. analogy

5. solidarity

6. orchestrated

7. concoct

8. mechanism

READING

Activity 8: First Reading (in class: Th 2/27)

*WRITE: As you read “What Is a Life Worth?” for the first time, look for the main issues and the various stances people take in response to those issues. Be sure to also look for connections to the idea of valuing life and to what was previously said about valuing life by Shakespeare.

1. How is “life” defined in this text? (For example, does “life” refer to a human body, a soul, human experience, existence, or quality of life?)

2. Does this definition include a person’s personal life and professional or working life?

POSTREADING

Activity 9: Thinking Critically (in class: Th 2/27)

*WRITE: The previous two texts both provide very personal approaches to the idea of valuing life. The current text, though, is an article from a respected national news magazine. The following questions will help you work through some of the implications of the text’s structure and features on the interpretation and understanding of the text:

1. Most news articles such as “What Is a Life Worth?” try to take an objective, unbiased approach. Do you feel this text is un-biased, or do you think it favors one perspective? Explain your answer.

2. What kinds of evidence does Ripley, the author of the article, use to get across the key ideas and issues associated with the compensation of 9/11 victims and their families? Are any specific types of evidence more compelling to you as a reader? Less compelling?

3. How accurate do you think the information in the article is? In other words, do you think Time magazine and Ripley are to be trusted? Why or why not?

4. Does the article use logic, emotion, or both to make an impact on the reader? If so, describe how. Compare that use to the way logic and emotion are used by Shakespeare, Armstrong, or both.

Activity 10: Charting Multiple Texts (in class: Th 2/27)

Make an entry on your chart for “What Is a Life Worth?”

IV. Text 5 – “Human Life Value Calculator”

PREREADING

This text comes from an Internet resource called the “Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education.”

Go online, find the web site:

Activity 11: Introducing Key Vocabulary (in class: Mo 3/3)

*WRITE: The vocabulary terms listed below come from the Web site text. Many of these terms are similar to those in the list of legal and financial terms from “What Is a Life Worth?” In the same way that finding connections among ideas in different texts helps us to better understand those ideas, finding connections among vocabulary words helps us to better understand those words. As you find definitions for the terms below, try to include a similar term from the previous vocabulary lists.

• assess

• incur

• expenditure

• consumption

• fringe benefits

• contribution

READING

Activity 12: First Reading

Try entering your date and see how a life’s value is determined by the Human Life Value Calculator. Then enter data for one of your parents. As you make sense of the calculator and its workings, make note of any connections you see to the previous texts we have read.

POSTREADING

Activity 13: Thinking Critically DUE: ______________

*WRITE: Answer the following questions:

1. The Web site text you have been studying differs structurally (that is, in the way it is put together) from the prior texts. Make a list of several of the differences between this text and the others.

2. Unlike the other texts, the Human Life Value Calculator has no single identified author. Does the lack of a named author affect your level of belief in the text’s ideas and purpose? How can you find out more about the text and whose interests it represents?

3. Did this text produce in you an emotional response of any sort? If so, briefly describe it.

4. Consider the charts that the calculator produces. How well do you understand the meaning of these charts? How do the three charts differ? Does the use of all of the numbers within the charts seem to make a logical argument about the value of life?

Activity 14: Charting Multiple Texts DUE: _________________

As you did with the previous texts, fill out a chart entry for the web page. To facilitate this task, you may refer, as needed, to the highlighting you have done, your responses, and the questions (above) you just answered.

Activity 15 Analyzing the Writing Assignment DUE: ________________

|Writing Assignment: How should our society assign value to human life? |

|We have heard a number of different voices giving insights into the value of life. You might not fully agree or disagree with any of the texts’ essential claims |

|about the value of life. This makes your voice an important contribution to this discussion about how we should value it. Where do your ideas fit into the |

|terrain mapped by the other texts we have read? Is it right to assign dollar values to a person’s life? Do suffering and illness impact how we should value life?|

|As you write your essay, think about the different ways the authors you read make their points about valuing life. Depending on the points you are trying to |

|make, you might want to use some metaphors for life, as Hamlet does, or tell some stories. You may choose to include some words from people you interview, as |

|Ripley does, or you might choose to establish your own criteria for how human life should be calculated in monetary terms. As you construct your essay, make |

|conscious choices about the ways you can represent your ideas to your reader. |

|Be sure to refer to and cite the readings. You may also use examples from your personal experience or observations. |

“The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills. 

 

 

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