English 10 Honors

1. Mrs. Navejar

2. Objectives
– Summarize in your note book
Academic Standard
Content Standard
Performance Standard
I’m learning: ________
I will know I learned because I can: ___
I want to know: _____
I want to know more about: _____

3. Learning Strategies
When I don’t understand something I
should: ________
I don’t understand the terms or language
used in class. I should: ____
I feel like I’m falling behind. I should: ___
I’m distracted. I should: _____
I’m bored. I should: ___
I’m sleepy. I should: _____

4. Community of Learners
 We respect each other because…
 It’s not fun being laughed at.
 It’s not fun being ignored when I’m/you’re talking.
 We’re here to learn, grow, and interact with our peers. It’s not fun
sitting in class for over an hour when someone is acting foolish.
 Non-negotiables
 No sleeping or resting your head
 No moving around the class without permission
 Don’t arrive late. Other people might hang out in the hallways,
but you can and will not.
 Don’t stand by the door waiting for the bell to ring.
 No swearing.

5. Wednesday, May 12th
Examples from the story Existentialism
“…an old man who sat in the shadow
of the leaves of the tree….”
Isolation: The individual struggles with
the anxiety and dread of Nothing. The
“Nothing” is the void that surrounds
everyone. The individual feels anxious
over the fact that he is dependent
upon himself. The old man in the café
sits in the shadow alone and separate
from society.

6. Thesis The symbolism of light and dark reveals the
existentialists concern with an individual’s feelings of
isolation.
Topic sentence A
Topic sentence B
Topic sentence C
Topic sentence D
Topic sentence E
Describe the symbolism of light and dark as it relates to
existentialism

7. The symbolism of light and dark reveals the existentialists concern with an individual’s
feelings of isolation.
Topic sentence
A
The old man in the café sits in the shadow alone and
separate from society.
Lead in
sentence
In the story, the café represents two worlds—the world of the
existentialist and the world of those who live in a blissful
ignorant state.
Example From the start of the story, the “… old man who sat in the
shadow of the leaves of the tree….”
Analysis
Existentialism
The individual struggles with the anxiety and dread of
Nothing. The “Nothing” is the void that surrounds everyone.
The individual feels anxious over the fact that he is
dependent upon himself.
Analysis
Existentialism
and story
The shadow represents the Nothing that the old man is living in. The
darkness of the shadow—the existentialist state contrasts the
youthful, ignorant state of the light.

8. Farewell to Manzanar
Author: Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki.
Title: Farewell to Manzanar
Author: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
ISBN: 940.54 H843
I ordered 17 books, and they will arrive on
Saturday (or Monday?).
Each book will cost around $5.50.

9. Farewell to Manzanar
 Atkinson YA 940.54 H834B CHECK SHELVES
 Central Adult Pbk 940.54 H834B CHECK SHELVES
 Central Childrens
 Villard YA Pbk 940.54 H834B CHECK SHELVES
 Wash Pk Adult PB Classic 940.54 H834B CHECK
SHELVES
 Zablocki PB Classics 940.54 H834B CHECK
SHELVES
 Zablocki PB Classics 940.54 H834B CHECK
SHELVES

10. End product
 Type a 7 paragraph essay
 Introduction
 5 body paragraph
 Conclusion
 Times New Roman
 Double spaced
 12 point font
 Name, class and date upper right hand side
 Title: “Existentialism in A Clean Well-Lighted Place”
 Today is Wednesday-
 Outline
 Thursday
 Check in outline
 Write draft in class- check in
 YOU HAVE TILL MONDAY TO HAND IN YOUR PAPER.
 IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO TYPE YOUR PAPER DUE TO:
 NO COMPUTER
 NO PRINTER
 NO PAPER
 LET ME KNOW
regina@navejar.com

11. Literary Criticism Map
Where do the theories fall?

12. Monday, May 17th
Review papers
Exchange
 Look at the form of the paragraphs
 What went right- wrong?
 Order
Waiting for Godot
 Notes on Godot- handout
 Review
Sign up sheet for “Farewell to Manzanar”

13. Tuesday, May 18th
Manzanar- I ordered 17 books. The book
will cost you $5.50 (maybe less).
Either way you get your book, we need it
by Monday.

14. Reading Test #1
1. Choose one example of existentialism in the
play, and write a critical analysis of that
example.
2. How are Didi and Gogo related as characters?
What do they represent?
3. Choose one example in the play where a
Christian theme or topic is mentioned. Write an
analysis of that example as it relates to
existentialism.
4. What do you suppose the tree represents?
5. What are the features of absurdist theater?

15. Wednesday, May 19th
Review Reading Test #1
Acceptable responses
Continue Reading Waiting for Godot
 We will create Reading test questions as we
read
 Look for examples of existentialism
UW-Madison research
 Research rounds

16. Acceptable responses for Reading test #1
 One example of existentialism in the play is that Didi and Gogo are
waiting for Godot, but they don’t’ even know if he is coming. They
were unsure if Godot was coming yesterday, tomorrow, etc…. The
waiting for Nothing is represented by this, just as it was in A Clean
Well-Lighted Place.
 Didi and Gogo are related as characters because they are friends
and because together they represent all of the feelings of a person.
Didi represents the mind, while Gogo represents the body.
 One part of the play had mentioned Christian topics. Vladimir had
referenced that one of the thieves was saved. This is related to
existentialism because only on of the four Evangelists (Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John) wrote about the thief being saved. This shows
the uncertainty in life that existentialism expresses.
 The tree represents a peace and sense of direction. It is the only
distinguishing feature around them and mildly comforts them as the
light did in A Clean Well-Lighted Place.

17. Thursday, May 20th
Take reading test #2
Continue reading
 Look for examples of existentialism
 See film version
 Discuss symbolism

18. Friday, May 21st
Reading Test #3
Review Reading Test #2
Acceptable responses
Watch Act II- part 1
Finish reading
 Look for examples of existentialism in the play

19. Reading Test #2
1. Who is Didi and Gogo tied to?
2. What is the relationship between Pozzo
and Lucky?
3. What do the bags symbolize
4. Choose one of the above responses and
make a connection to existentialism.
5. Consider Lucky’s inability to speak
without Pozzo’s command. What would
an existentialist say about this?

20. Reading Test #3

21. Acceptable responses

22. Waiting for Godot
See Waiting for Godot (1)
See Waiting for Godot (2) 7:34
See Waiting for Godot (3)
Act II
Waiting for Godot 1
Waiting for Godot 2
Waiting for Godot 3

23. Waiting for Godot-
Writing activity
 We will review the following thesis paper
 Reading Waiting for Godot through the
lens of Christian existentialism
 By Amanda L. Kelsch
1. I will group you together
2. You will receive a section of the master’s thesis
3. You will look for the following:
a. Paragraph structure
b. How did Kelsch organize her ideas?
-topic
-supporting ideas, research, lines from the book, etc…
a. Cite her work?

24. 1. You will look for the following:
a. Paragraph structure
b. How did Kelsch organize her ideas?
-topic
-supporting ideas, research, lines from the book, etc…
a. Cite her work?
 Read (7 minutes)
 Point out to your group members your findings
(3 minutes)
 (say, “look at the topic sentence and here is how she
supported that example”)
 As a whole group, let’s look at the whole paper.

25. Waiting for Godot:
Philosophical Contexts
http://gr8ight.files.wordpress.com/
2006/11/waiting-for-godot-
existentialism.ppt

26.  When considered in terms of twentieth-century secular
philosophy, Waiting for Godot seems particularly
congruent with the tenets of existentialism, which gained
popularity (and notoriety) in the decades following World
War II.
 Although origins can be traced back at least to the mid-
nineteenth century in the writings of philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche and the fiction for Fyodor
Doestoyevsky, its foremost twentieth century proponent
was Jean Paul Sartre, whose major work Being and
Nothingness was published in 1943 in France and
translated into English in 1956.

27.  Controversial because it was perceived as undermining
the basis of Western philosophy since Plato and
subverting virtually all traditional religions, existentialism
asserted that human existence precedes any form of
“essence”.
 There is, therefore, no preexistent spiritual realm, no
soul, no god (Christian or otherwise), no cosmic
compassion for or interest in human life, no afterlife, no
eternal life, no heaven, no hell, no everlasting rewards or
punishment for earthly deeds, no transcendence of
worldly existence, no cosmic metanarrative, no angels
and devils vying for human allegiance, no divine will, no
salvation, no redemption (and no agency to perform it),
no preset destiny, no inevitable fate, no revealed truth,

28.  And no immutable commandments or other permanent
but externally imposed rules. All of that is simply human
invention or, as Nietzsche termed it, ‘superstition’, a
culturally determined and socially enforced fiction that, in
its effectiveness, fundamentally constricts human
freedom and allows human beings to evade their own
responsibility for the conditions of existence throughout
the world.
 The best concise introductory explanation of Sartre’s
doctrine is his essay now titled “The Humanism of
Existentialism”. Although he briefly acknowledges the
existence of Christian existentialism, he insists that the
first principle of (his own atheistic) existentialism is that
“there is no human nature since there is no God to

29.  Conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself
to be, but…man is nothing else but what he makes of
himself.” Because each individual must bear full
responsibility for whatever he or she becomes and
whoever he or she is (since it is not predetermined,
shaped by God’s will, or otherwise from outside oneself,
a constant state of anxiety is a defining human
characteristic – the first of three that Sartre identifies.
Many people, however, seek desperately to avoid taking
such responsibility for themselves, palliating (however
dishonestly) their anxiety and trying to place
responsibility on anyone or anything but themselves- an
institution, a religion, even a Godot.

30.  Yet such an evasion is itself an act of self-definition,a
free choice for which they remain responsible, even if
they consider it an obligation by which they are bound or
a worldview not of their own design (or indeed, of their
own liking.) The second of Sartre’s defining
characteristics is forlornness, a term that he traces
particularly to the philosopher Martin Heidegger, by
which he “means only that God does not exist and we
have to face the consequences of this”.
 Among the foremost of these is that there are no
transcendent or a priori standards of goodness, virtue, or
justice, just as there is no God to conceive or sanction
them, “as a result, man is forlorn, for neither within him
now without does he find anything to cling to”.

31.  Neither is there any core ‘human nature’ or other form of
determinism, instead “man is free, man is freedom”. In
an empty universe that is devoid of meaning, purpose,
design or care – the ‘existential void’ represented by the
coldness of interstellar space, the featureless Beckettian
landscape, or simply darkness in Beckett’s later stage
works- human beings are, Sartre contends, “alone, with
no excuses” and “condemned to be free.”
 This situation leads to the third of his defining
characteristics, despair, which is widely if wrongly
alleged by Beckett’s detractors against his works as well.
For Sartre, the term “means that we shall confine
ourselves to reckoning with what depends on our will, or
on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action

32.  Possible.” For Beckett’s characters in Waiting for Godot,
however, it is precisely the probabilities that are
uncertain, the decisive action that is impossible (other
than waiting, which is, of course, itself an action, and the
“will” (including but not limited to their consideration of
suicide) that remains paralyzed. To Sartre, however,
existentialism “can not be taken for a philosophy of
quietism, since it defines man in terms of action, not for a
pessimistic determination of man, for … man’s destiny is
within himself.”
 An equally important Sartrean concept was set forth in
Part One of Sartre’s major work Being and Nothingness.
As Vladimir and Estragon base their lives on the arrival
(and indeed the existence) of Godot, the exemplify what

33.  Sartre defines as ‘bad faith’, it prevents them from being
‘sincere’ in Sartre’s sense, in that they cannot “be what
they are” because they are preoccupied with the
transcendent Other (Godot) that remains an absence
rather than a presence in their lives. Action, by which
existential man defines himself, is therefore precluded or
perhaps endlessly deferred, any suggestion that they
might actually do something (even depart or commit
suicide) is countered by yet another reiteration of the
core fact of their existence, that they must continue to
await Godot.
 If this motive is considered to be like one of the “drives”
that Sartre describes, this enterprise of waiting is itself
“realized only with their consent” Furthermore, it must be

34.  Realized that such drives “are not forces of nature” or
innate within mankind, instead, the tramps “lend the
drives the efficacy by making a perpetually renewed
decision concerning their value” Such is, in effect, the
plot of Waiting for Godot. Moreover, Sartre asserts that
“assuredly a man in bad faith who borders on the comic”
is one who “acknowledges all the facts which are
imputed to him (but still) he refuses to draw from them
the conclusion which they impose…the crushing view
that his mistakes constitute for him a destiny.
 The facts, in Beckett’s play, are to be found in Vladimir’s
admissions of multiple uncertainties- that they are in the
right place, that it is the right day and time, even that
they would recognize Godot if he came. Their crushing

35.  Conclusion is that their purpose is futile, that Godot will
never come, or that their lives have been in vain. Against
such despair, they continue, unreasonably and implicitly,
to hope, to wait, and idly pass the time- actions that do
indeed “border on the comic” in a play that its author
labeled a tragicomedy.
 Ultimately, however, as Sartre argues, “the true problem
of bad faith stems evidently from the fact that bad faith is
faith.” (Sartre’s emphasis). In other words, it bases one’s
existence on a sustained belief in and sustaining reliance
on someone or something external to the self. To a
Sartrean existentialist, such a being that transcends and
transforms lives is by definition nonexistent- and thus not
fundamentally unlike Santa Claus, the Easter bunny,
wish-granting genies, leprechauns, fairies, and all other

36.  Such fictions, however pleasant, popular, entertaining, or
consoling belief in them might be among the credulous.
Accordingly, those who consider Waiting for Godot an
existential play tend to assume (with often aggressive
and sometimes condescending certainty) that Godot
does not actually exist – that he will never come for the
simple reason that he can never come, that there is no
“he” to come, even if Vladimir and Estragon were to wait
for all eternity. In this view, the play’s many Christian
allusions are little more than shards of a culture,
signifiers of little or nothing, distractions or delusions that
merely help to pass the time.
 Notwithstanding the striking congruencies between
Sartre’s philosophy and Beckett’s play, to read Waiting

37.  For Godot as nothing more than a dramatic illustration of
a Sartrean thesis is no less reductive and simplistic than
to regard it as a modern-day version of Christian
allegory; the committed atheist and the religious zealot
have in common an unyielding ontological certainty,
despite their irreconciliably opposite beliefs. Theirs is,
however, a conviction that neither Beckett himself nor
any of his characters seem to share. When, in 1937,
Samuel Beckett was asked in a courtroom whether he
was a Christian, a Jew, or an atheist, he replied “None of
the three”, each presumably, was too certain about

38.  Everything for Beckett to affirm anything that they
believed. Beckett’s characters, “non-knowers and non-
caners” as he himself described them, would be totally
daunted by the prospect of having to be constantly
commited (engage, in existential terms, continually self-
defining, and wholly responsible for both themselves and
the state of the world, as Sartre’s ideology contends that
they must be. Their concerns are far more mundane:
hurting feet, lapsing memories, the scarcity of carrots,
the protocols of hanging, their appointment with the
unknown Godot. Although existential issues are

39. Unmistakeably present throughout Waiting
for Godot, they are no less the subject of
skepticism and humor than the precepts of
Christianity.

40. Today’s Lesson and Strategy

41. Model

42. Guided Practice

43. Assessment

44. Independent Practice

45. Differentiated Instruction for grade, skill
and language differences

46. Reflect on what you learned
 Review the learning objective.
 Did you meet the objective? Yes or no.
 If yes, how do you know you met the objective?
 If no, how do you know you did not meet the
objective?
 What do you want to learn more about this
subject?
 What can Mrs. Navejar do to make this lesson
more interesting?