For those interested, and unsure if you got all the notes today in class, a few points:
A text is any work of literature, any bit of writing you're working with, whether a poem, story, novel, essay, speech, what have you. It's the actual words of the thing.
Plot is what happens in a story, novel, or poem. That is, Huckleberry Finn's plot is that a runaway boy and a slave travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.
Character covers a lot of material, but it's mostly concerned with the people who do things in a story. Characters in Huck Finn would be Huck, Tom Sawyer, Jim, Huck's dad. Characters of course don't have to be people; in Finding Nemo, for instance, they're mostly fish.
Setting is where and when the story takes place. The setting of Finding Nemo would be the Pacific Ocean in the present day. The setting of Star Wars is "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."
Style gets at how the writer tells the story or the way it's written. Long sentences, big words, short sentences, rhyming, formal, conversational, etc.
A text's theme is the deeper, broader truth the writer is trying to get at. Thus, Huck Finn isn't really about a boy and a slave, but about friendship and equality and escape.
Finally, a thesis is a statement of opinion supported by facts from the text that serves as the purpose of an essay. Like we discussed in class, saying that the Giants will win the Super Bowl next year because they have cool uniforms is a bad thesis because the uniforms have nothing to do with how well the team plays. But saying the Giants will win the Super Bowl because of their strong defense, good coaching, and improving offense is a good thesis because the supporting facts directly relate to the point you're trying to make.
Which brings us to the Essay "Circle of Life." By sifting through the text, we figure out the author's themes. Once we figure out some themes, we develop a thesis based on one of them (like the one we're working on in class, "The poem 'On Death, Without Exaggeration' argues that death isn't nearly as powerful as it seems."). Then, we go back and find factual support for our thesis in the text. So, the Circle of Life goes TEXT-THEME-THESIS-TEXT. Live it, learn it, love it.
Finally, the extra credit questions on tomorrow's quiz will be about the title and author of the second poem I gave you (Hint: it's pronounced "dunn" not "don").
Good luck to one and all!
