Kite Runner: Assignment 3 - 5 in 1

Theme

Great stories, like the one you are reading are often great because they convey themes. Theme is defined as a message that the writer wishes you to get from his story.

The central idea may be expressed as a singular encompassing theme, while at the same time there are often lesser themes within the story.

Theme is expressed as a complete thought:

§  War is a futile endeavour that is best avoided, by both leaders and their citizens.

§  The bonds of blood are often stronger than those forged by friendship.

Prepare a 5 in 1 and post it to your blog: you may post it as a picture or compose the 5 in 1 on your blog and add a picture:

Components:

 

1. Write a theme that you feel best encompasses the author’s central idea in the novel that you are reading. 

2. Write a paragraph that explains how the theme is developed in the novel.

3. Quote a few lines that you feel best capture the theme. Cite the quotation according to AMA format.

4. Create an image that you feel best captures the theme. (Think of an image that reflects the themes above: bonds of family vs. bonds of friendship or the futility of war. How would you draw these themes?

5. Write a title that encompasses all of the other elements of this assignment!

The Kite Runner

Novel Study: Paragraph 2 

Any good story has a conflict, and conflict is the direct outgrowth of a causative incident (CI). From the story that you are reading, identify the CI and write about how that CI came about and what likely conflict it will foment.

Writing the paragraph: unity and coherence:

A paragraph is unified when it stays on topic.

A paragraph is coherent when the point made is clearly made. 

To achieve unity and coherence write a paragraph that outlines the CI and indicates what likely conflict will transpire. 

The criteria for this paragraph: 

• Maintaining unity
• Achieving coherence
• writing in active sentences
• using at least one correlative conjunction

To add style to your writing play with your words. Add a hook that you return to in the concluding sentence.

 

 

Example:

            (hook) When you look around at others you probably assume that people are all the same - and that only you are different. Well, in that regard we are all the same - we each like to think that we are the different one! In Sherman Alexie’s novel, Part Time Indian, the main character, Junior, likes to think that he is unique. This wildly original thinking, though, is what leads to the causative event in this book. Junior, a Okanagan native boy, leaves his rez school in central Washington to attend a white school in the nearby town of Reardon. Because he’s fought with his teacher at his reservation school, Junior makes the decision to attend Reardon High School, and consequently finds himself between two worlds, the world of his native heritage and his adopted white culture. Without a doubt this causative incident should lead to plenty of conflict, in the variety of both man versus man and man versus self. So, the next time that you are looking around to see that everyone else is the same, give your head a shake and realize that there are as many differences as there are people out there! (clincher)