A Hard rain’s a gonna fall  BOB DYLAN (commentary)

The song is connected to the situation of upheaval and unrest that characterized the 1960’s, in particular the Cuban missile crisis, when after the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba in October 1962, many people feared the world was on the verge of a nuclear war. However, it seems that Bob Dylan wrote the song some months before the Cuban missile crisis.

Anyway, the song comes from the ferment of the 1960’s, characterized by a general atmosphere of young people’s rebellion and social protest.

Yet, the song may come from any period, since it has no specific historical references and the prevailing dimension is mythical.

As singer and song writer Bob Dylan said, "There would be no music without the words." He produced many songs of social protest.

This song was based on an old medieval ballad whose  title is  "Lord Randal", in which a mother asks her son lots of questions (beginning with "Where have you been?"), leading him to reveal he has been poisoned.

The answers in this song are not symmetrical and balanced like in the original Lord Randal but get longer and longer as the song goes on.

No time is mentioned, no setting is fixed; we have a series of effective, powerful, intense images.

Bob Dylan once said: "Hard Rain is a desperate kind of song. Every line in it, is actually the start of a whole song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one."

The hard rain of the song may be the fallout, consisting in the radioactive particles that are carried into the atmosphere after a nuclear explosion or accident and gradually fall back as dust or rain.

Dylan himself still  introduced this song by saying “hard rain meant something big was about to happen”, maybe a sort of nuclear catastrophe, a sort of final apocalypse.

In other words the hard rain that is going to fall is a reference to all the bad things that will happen in the world if we don't stop them.

This song is characterized by the use of a lot of adjectives- misty, crooked, sad, dead, black, young, ugly, damp, dirty….

It is also the song  of numbers- twelve, six, seven, a dozen, ten thousand (three times). repetitions and alliteration.

The blue eyed son may be symbolic of an innocent child witnessing terrible events, seeing the wrongs committed and realizing they will lead to destruction or a terrible damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale.

In the first stanza Dylan is saying that he has been to many different places all around the world and he has seen many different weird, dreadful things. Probably the twelve misty mountains are volcanoes, the six crooked highways represent mankind’s dishonesty, the seven sad forests are the trees that are dying because of the climate change, the dozen oceans are dead because of  the same problem.

In the second stanza, he is saying that children are surrounded by violence since their birth, the black are persecuted and even badly hit in some places in the world, cruelty and brutality are increasing more and more, there could be a “ladder”, that is a tool to escape but “that ladder” is so wet and slippery that  it cannot be used….and if you climb it, you may fall off and die, maybe the idea is that no one can change his condition and improve that in some way.

 Here he  is referring to racial hatred, segregation laws, the impossibility to change, the indifference to sorrow. He is also saying that those who want  to speak out against injustice cannot do that,  because they are not allowed to criticize society and point out its negative aspects.The future world will be so violent, senseless, absurd and immoral that even children will have to use  weapons  and defend themselves, changing themselves  into frightful soldiers.

In the third stanza, he is suggesting that people could catch some warning signs coming from nature and society.  The thunder and the wave may suggest some terrible natural catastrophe ( a terrible tsunami…), maybe brought about by human beings, for example a nuclear war.  Probably they will be people (drummers) who will play so fast that their hands will burn in order to warn about the possible dangers for the mankind. Some others will choose another way-they will use a soft and confidential tone of voice to warn of dangers.

However, no one will take the signs of warning seriously, even some of them will laugh, making fun of those who can see the truth- the awful, direful destiny human beings are going to meet.  The poet will die unheard and the clown, who is supposed to tell the truth in a joyful, disrespectful way, will die in a very narrow road closed at one end, because nobody will be interested in his words. People will go on thinking of themselves, even when clearly there are people who suffer ( “ I heard one person starve”).

In the fourth stanza, he is going on to claim that violence and death will be very close to children, because they will be exposed to more and more wars,  discrimination will be more and more manifest, violence against women won’t come to an end but it will grow more and more, emotions will be extremely strong, either in the positive way or in the negative one. In spite of that, he met a girl and she gave him “a rainbow”, a symbolic image referring to peace and equality, promoted by the 60’s civil rights movement.

In the last stanza, the longest one, he is saying that in one way or another he wants to help those who can’t help themselves. He wants to go to the worst places in the world, to those places where humans suffer more for being subjected to a real ugly situation, because of starvation, because of extreme pollution, because of the poor, dirty houses, because of the lack of justice. The poet is claiming that he will stand by these people even when he will “sink”, he will go down, to a lower level himself.

Finally, he is promising that he will educate himself , trying to know well the subject he is going to talk about, before “singing”,  making public declarations about that.

The song deals with the following themes- war, greed, racial hatred, the end of the world, corruption, exploitation, death, indifference to art, loss of innocence. However, along with these negative themes there are the positive ones- hope, love, the importance of memory and the vital role of the artist.

In a 1963 radio interview Dylan said, “In the last verse, when I say, ‘the pellets of poison are flooding the waters’, that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers”.

Robinson Crusoe, mind map

A fun drawing-should

A real fun drawing to help students use the structure You should/you shouldn't to give some advice, made by my colleague, the English conversation teacher in 2 Bl,last week.

1984 Story and Analysis in 9 min (with Subtitle)

Video SparkNotes: Orwell's 1984 Summary

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Official Trailer [HD]

Watch the trailer of the film 1984 and pay close attention to the images of the trailer.
Get into pairs and
1) Write down as many visual details (objects, people, actions, emotions) as you can remember
2) Discuss your personal reactions to the trailer. What surprised/pleased/upset/frightened.....you?
3) Complete with the missing words:
In 1984 George Orwell had a vision of _____________________________.
Today that vision is still_____________________________amd its prophecy remains as _____________________________ as ever.
If you want_____________________________of the future_____________________________, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a _____________________________  forever.
A future when _____________________________ becomes slavery, where  _____________________________ is forbidden, the past _____________________________ and where living people simply _____________________________ .
Yet one man and one woman _____________________________ to love.
What are your _____________________________ towards Big Brother?
I _____________________________ him
You must _____________________________ him. It is not enough to _____________________________ him. You must love him.
4) What kind of atmosphere does the trailer convey? Sinister, romantic, scary, fearful,horrifying....?

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Book Summary) - Minute Book Report

Bob Dylan 2016 Nobel Prize - A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall live

A hard rain’s a gonna fall BOB DYLAN

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

The Celts

The Passive: When, why, and how to use it

A group activity
Students are divided into 4/5 groups. Each group is asked to write three sentences using the Simple Past Passive form related to a specific topic (disasters, crime...)

Tattoos and piercings

Having or not having tattoos ....a good point students have talked about in 3Al and 3 BL

• Pros and cons of having tattoos

In modern times there are some serious pros and cons in having tattoos

Here are five pros and five cons.

PROS

•        A tattoo is a form of self-expression because it says something about that person and helps show off our personality and to be unique
•        Tattoos can preserve memories of a loved one
•        Tattoos can stay with us forever if we get tattoos for the right reasons and with the care they need
•        If a tattoo is done by an artist it’s a real work of art
•        It’s something yours because you wanted it and because it will be on your skin for the rest of your life

CONS

•        A tattoo may limit your career path because some people still consider it a taboo
•       Removing it may be very difficult
•       They are very expensive if you want a good one
•        There could be healthy risks because some tattoo inks may cause allergic reaction and also infections
•        You might get tired of it

A good example of essay by a student in 4BL

To tattoo or not to tattoo?

It is known that in ancient civilizations tattoos and piercings played an important role; indeed they were traditional symbols in which people really believed and also they were connected to the rites in some celebrations.

Even now in some places they are used as  a characteristic of the society, like in the Indian one.

However, in our society and in general in the European one, there is a different view and way of thinking tattoos and piercings and we have to say that, as in everything, there are people who really like them and people who don’t and even that we can find both positive and negative aspects.

First of all, as regards the positive ones, we can say that there are people who really like tattoos and piercings and there are many reasons for that. They could be a symbol, a connection with something, a lucky charm- in a tattoo someone could hide a story, his story or it could represent a beautiful memory of something happened to you, of something belonging to the past or of someone you really love, but also something sad but that characterizes you. Someone could also get a tattoo to cover a scar or a part of his body he doesn’t like, or for example a group of friends could choose to have the same tattoo as  a symbol of friendship.

On the other hand, it’s important to say that there are also negative aspects or anyway people who think about them in a negative way, saying for example that they are a symbol of rebellion that teenagers do to go against the system or to be unconventional. These people usually connect tattoos and piercings to punkies or punks, thinking that only bad guys have them and these are often the typical thoughts of those who have grown up being narrow-minded.

However, it’s not  just a question of judging those having tattoos or piercings. In fact, there are many aspects that could be negative and also really dangerous. Firstly, if they are not done by a professional tattoo artist, a tattoo could cause you illnesses, so you have to pay attention because it could be dangerous. Moreover, in the work field there are jobs which don’t allow you to show off tattoos or piercings, so if you want to do one of these jobs you have to pay attention and you must think twice before doing something like a tattoo.

In addition, if you do a tattoo or a piercing without thinking about it for a long time, you could stop to like it and have a regret, wishing you should have never done it. Accordingly, we should ask ourselves a question: Are wrong those who exaggerate in doing them or are wrong those who just judge? It’s true that everyone should think and say what he really thinks, but it is also true that everyone has the freedom to do what he wants with his body.

Personally, I really like piercings and tattoos, but in my body I would have them without exaggeration and without getting big and lots of tattoos. Undoubtedly, if I saw someone full of tattoos and piercings, I wouldn’t disagree with him and I wouldn’t think anything bad  about him, because everyone is the master of his own life and choices.

How to Stop Translating in Your Head and Start Thinking in English Like ...

Fabrizio De André - Geordie

Diane Maset - Geordie

Write about 150 words about strong emotions: what causes them and what they can lead to. (from the book pg. 179, n.5)
These are some of the sentences written by students in 4 Bl

Humans are affected by a wide variety of emotions, from positive to negative and from the weakest to the strongest ones.

The strongest emotions are the worst because no one can control them, even worse are the strong negative emotions- that wind of feelings makes you lose the control of your thinking, bringing you to act, in many cases, in the wrong way.

What do we really think about when we hear the words strong emotions?

Normally we should think about someone who has so deep feelings to do "crazy things" for love, or to do everything for love, but obviously in the proper and positive sense of the word, without any exaggeration.Sadly this is not the only way to think about it, because there are people who justify their horrible actions with sentences like " I did it for love"

Sometimes emotions like hatred and love could lead to do things that you've never thought you'd do.If that happens it's because people are too emotional and they let themselves go to feelings, even the bad ones.

Nowadays a lot of people suffer from strong emotions, like the emotion of love and jealousy. The phenomenon of jealousy is much discussed today- there are some men  who, because of jealousy, hurt their women, saying that they love them too much. I think that it isn't love, but it's obsession, because if you love a person you wouldn't have the courage to harm her.

Young people sometimes find it difficult to control feelings and emotions, for this reason a little problem could become a huge and impossible one for them. I think the strongest emotion children feel is anxiety caused by school. For a weak person it may become something that probably will ruin his life.

James Joyce - Ulysses: Molly Bloom's Soliloquy, The Last 50 Lines

James Joyce
Joyce 1

Joyce 2

Joyce 3

A complete scheme

Joyce 4

Persuasive techniques

After having studied Macbeth in 4 Bl, students were asked to work in pairs and build up some dialogues where "student A tries to convince sttudent B", practising some persuasive techniques...

This is the situation: student A convinces student B to let him use his car......

This is the kind of dialogue written down by two students:

STUDENT A: Sheila, I'd like to know if you let me use your car for the next weekend because my friends and I are going to a music festival....as the festival is far we need a car so we can go. Please let me your car, 'cause my friends are counting on me already.

STUDENT B: I'm sorry, but I won't let you my car because the last time I lent it to you, you gave it back to me in very bad conditions.....you're so careless! What's more, I don't think your new friends are good ones. I don't trust you and them!

STUDENT A: Please!!! I promise that this time I'll take good care of your car: If I return it to you in a bad way, I promise I'll never ask you for it again! Give me a chance

STUDENT B: OK you have got me to lend you my car.....I wish you wouldn't damage it!

This is another dialogue written down by two more students:

D: I really want to go to that music festival, but I really need a car and my brother has told me that he won't lend his.

L: You have to convince him to let us go on his car, because there's no public transport

E: I totally agree with L!

D: Hey Luke, what's up?

Luke: What do you want from me?

D: I was wondering if you can lend me your car to go to the music festival.

Luke: No way!

D: If you don't lend me your car I'll tell mum and dad that last year you broke their car and then you told them that it was an accident, but I know for surethat you were drunk

Luke: Fine! I'l lend you the car but don't ask me any more favours

D: Dear:::I know you're intelligent! Love you

Emotion poems

Studying literature is always a sort of tool to learn new words and expressions, especially when students are asked to create something new, like a poem.
After having revised what a simile is, students in 3bl have been told to write "Emotion poems" focussing on a feeling.
These are the poems they have written working in pairs or in groups of three or four.


JOY
It smells like a Sunday lunch spent with your big family
It tastes like a sweet candy after a disgusting pill
It sounds like the children's laugh on a sunny day
it feels like the sun shining on your cold skin
It looks like a crowd enchanted by the vision of  Northern lights
Joy is an extraordinary and intimate opportunity.

HATE
It smells like plastic burning on a spring day
It tastes like a bitter coffee in the morning
It sounds like bells on an  early Sunday morning
It feels like getting splashed by a car on a rainy day
It looks like a house burning to kill a rat
hate is nothing more than fear, fear of loving and fear of living
LOVE
It smells like a freshly baked cake
It tastes like a mom's kiss
It sounds like two friends laughing together
It feels like hugging someone who has been away
It looks like the sun after the storm
Love is enchanting and unlimited

PRIDE
It smells like a burning cake
It tastes like a bitter coffee
It sounds like the noise of a duel sword
It feels like a fire growing more and more
It looks like the rain on a sunny morning
Pride is inevitable and irrational

HATE
It smells like a withered flower
It tastes like a rotten fruit
Hate is like darkness
It sounds like the noise of weapons in war
Hate is bad like hunger and death
Hate is a feeling killing you




The following poem doesn't follow the scheme of an emotion poem .....but it is so nice that it is worth while .......

LIFE

Loneliness is that part of you

that makes you think about life

like a bear that lives alone

in its dark cave

And while you're thinking of a dark night

you can see a shooting star and you express a wish, the same as when you see a ladybird and you think it'll bring you good luck

But ....when you feel lonely

suddenly you may meet someone being close 

to your heart

like a firefly lighting up in the dark of a night

And together their hearts

become inflamed

like more and more fireflies giving 

more and more light in a group 

Lord Randal by Giordano Dall'Armellina

Four Weddings and a Funeral: W.H. Auden (Subtitled)

FUNERAL BLUES (W.H. AUDEN)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Traditional novel vs Modern novel

TRADITIONAL NOVEL

• ·         Interest in society and outward actions
• ·         Chronological time
• ·         Omniscient narrator
• ·         Didactic aim

MODERN NOVEL   

• Interest in man and the psyche   
• Subjective time   - flashbacks, anticipations, the story within the story, special forms of punctuation (dashes, parentheses) Interior monologue/the narrator disappears
•   Looking for a moral centre in human experience
  
•  No chronological order- the conventional structure of beginning, development and conclusion disappears
  
•  Trivial events occurring over a short period of time
• Sensations, dreams, thoughts, recollections of the characters (main focus)

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS FICTION

The expression  stream of consciousness is used to refer to the experiments by Joyce, where the fragmentary nature of thioughts is reproduced making it very difficult to follow. The character’s thoughts flow freely, not interrupted by external events.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 A PSYCHIC PHENOMENON- the mental activity itself

INTERIOR MONOLOGUE

The instrument used to translate this phenomenon into words

The stream of consciousness technique applied to literature the theories developed by two philosophers: Henri Bergson and William James

Modernism video

Why should you read James Joyce's "Ulysses"? - Sam Slote

ULYSSES
set in DUBLIN in 1904
It deals with a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.
Leopold is an ADVERTISING AGENT
THE NOVEL⇉  3 books → 18 EPISODES

                               ⇊
                            Each book is modelled on a section  of                                              Homer's  Odissey
                              ⇊
                            It covers an hour of Bloomsday
LEOPOLD → ULYSSES
STEPHEN → TELEMACHUS
MOLLY→ PENELOPE

FIRST BOOK 3 episodes → STEPHEN
SECOND BOOK 12 episodes → LEOPOLD (his wanderings)
THIRD BOOK 3 episodes → STEPHEN and LEOPLOD go to Bloom's home, where Molly is already in bed


There are few incidents. During his wanderings Bloom meets Stephen Dedalus, who is the alienated protagonist of A Portrait of an artist as a young man. He becomes his adopted son.

WHO IS LEOPOLD?

LEOPOLD =JOYCE's COMMON MAN

The alienated common man
He leaves his home at 8 o'clock to buy his breakfast and he comes back at 2 the following morning
Places he visits; a newspaper office
                          the cemetery
                          the library
                          the public baths
                          a brothel

THE MYTHICAL METHOD
Homer's myth is used to give the actions and people of a Dublin day another dimension and to express the universal in the particular

STEPHEN pure intellect (every young man seeking maturity)
MRS BLOOM sensual nature
MR BLOOM he unites the extremes. He is everybody

THEME ⇉QUEST or JOURNEY →MORAL???
Human life means suffering, falling but also struggling to rise and seek the good (overcoming chaos)

Bloomsday VNR Tourism Ireland

AUDEN

While T. S. Eliot was the key-figure of the Twenties, AUDEN was the key figure of the thirties.

The thirties were a period of political and social UNREST- economic crisis, unemployment, the rise of Nazism and Fascism.

The poetry of the time was mostly COMMITTED.          

When Auden started writing his poems he seemed to be very pessimistic. He realized he was living in a time characterized by terrible events, but he also believed that something could be made to create a better world in the hope that a generation of society would be possible. His poetry may be divided in two periods.

In his early poems he sympathized with the Left-wing movements, considering the poet a public voice, giving voice to the oppressed, the weaker and the persecuted. Poetry was definitely seen as an instrument to spread political messages.

At the time he was the leader of the Oxford group, whose members were also Louis Mc Niece, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day Lewis.

He was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxism.

He mainly dealt with the horrors of his time: dictatorship and the mad quest for world domination, citizenship and national identity, the fall of the masses under their leaders' spell, the terrible effects of the bureaucratic state (reducing people to statistics and figures), the Spanish Civil War, the bleakness and perhaps impossibility of the future, the martyrdom of heroes and the death of poets, the improper use of modern tools.

Later on, after his moving to the USA, in 1939, he moved away from Marxism to return to his childhood religion, Anglicanism.

He started thinking that improvement is connected with the self, not with society. Now he mainly dealt with themes like love, friendship, death, nature, religious beliefs.

Auden used different verse forms and poetic genres-sonnet, lyric, narrative poem, ballad , blues. He also tended to use irony and humour even when considering serious issues of modern life.