English IV Summer Reading Assignment

Part I: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Directions: Please answer three of the following questions in a three-page, typed and double-spaced document (yes, this means each answer should be one page typed). Please label each answer by its appropriate number and answer all parts of each question. This assignment will be turned in to your English instructor on the first day of school.

Identify the author’s tone toward the three main characters. How are we as readers expected to feel toward Basil, Dorian, and Lord Henry? Find specific references in the text that show the author’s attitude toward the three characters.

What is the nature of evil? What generates it? How is it perpetuated? In the novel, are any of the characters evil? What makes them so? What does the novel suggest are the consequences of evil?

The novel concerns itself with the concept of influence. How are different characters influenced and shaped in the novel? What makes Dorian the way that he is, or the person he becomes?

In his writings Oscar Wilde often presented characters who were not entirely honest about who they were or what they had done. In a well written essay discuss Wilde’s tone toward this “dishonesty” (or to put it more precisely lack of full disclosure), Wilde’s thematic use of this dishonesty (What is he saying about human nature by presenting us with so many characters that are not honest?). Finally, what is Wilde communicating to his readers about the discrepancy between the persona we present to society versus the person that we truly are?

Choose three of the aphorisms* from the Preface and explain what you think they mean and how they apply to the novel.

*a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”


Part II: The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

As for The Metamorphosis, which is also a summer reading assignment, you should be ready on Day 1 for a quiz over this short story, as well as a Socratic seminar discussion. There will be no questions prepared for you, so you should bring some Level 1, 2, and 3 questions to guide that process. Your first grades in English IV will be comprised of three things: your Dorian assignment, your participation in the Socratic Seminar, and a reading quiz over The Metamorphosis.