Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround” was first published in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
Isaac Asimov’s short story “Runaround” introduces his Three Laws of Robotics, the fictional rules that figure prominently in his short stories exploring the relationships between humans and robots. For Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan, the astronauts in “Runaround,” reexamining their application of those three laws–in a sense, tinkering with them as they would a machine–enables them to resolve the central conflict in the story.
Identifying that central conflict and expressing it in your own words will be the focus of your group exercise in the first half of today’s class. In groups, you will also develop talking points for the full-class discussion that will follow in the second half of class.
Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics as the epigraph for I, Robot (1950)
Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics appear both in the stories collected in his book I, Robot (1950) and as the book’s epigraph: a short quotation at the beginning of a book intended to suggest its theme.
What do the Three Laws of Robotics indicate about Asimov’s vision of humans’ relationships to artificial intelligence?
As a model for your own ethical use of generative AI for English 1103, the August 25 blog post featured screenshots of a conversation in which I developed ideas for my literacy narrative with the help of ChatGPT. After you read my literacy narrative, it should have been apparent that despite the AI assistant’s wealth of information, one of its answers revealed a lack of knowledge about the comic strip Henry. What did the AI assistant not know? (What did it say about Henry that was false?)
The September 7 class notes included a bonus assignment for correctly answering the question above. What is the answer?
Panels of Henry by Carl Thomas Anderson
Henry, created by Carl Thomas Anderson in 1932, is a comic strip in which the title character communicates through pantomime. The AI’s observation that I could “‘read’ the strip even though [I] could not yet read its words” reveals the agent’s lack of knowledge about the comic; it did not know that Henry is wordless.
Kudos to Claire Jahnke and Devyn Jones for correctly identifying that error in ChatGPT’s response. For their efforts, they received a bonus assignment credit.
Today’s class marks the beginning of our study of science fiction exploring the nature of artificial intelligence: Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround,” followed by Brian Aldiss’s “Supertoys” stories and Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” in Exhalation.
In a drawing in the second half of today’s class, you will have the chance to win a copy of the book pictured above: Isaac Asimov’s short story collection I, Robot, which includes “Runaround.”
As we continue our study of science fiction, consider how Asimov, Aldis, and Chiang use their imaginations as testing grounds for questions about humanity and the future.
Next Up
For Wednesday’s class, you will read Brian Aldiss’s short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” which I will distribute in class today. If you are absent or misplace your copy, print one from Blackboard.
Wednesday, we will meet on the lower level of Smith Library, where we will examine some of the science fiction novels in the Asimov Collection, donated to the library by Dr. John L. Hubisz, a retired physics professor who taught at North Carolina State University. In your perusal of the novels’ and short story collections’ covers, you will explore how artists have depicted science fiction in their cover illustrations and what those images reveal not only about the stories themselves but also about readers’ perceptions and marketing.
Today in class, before you begin your Scrabble games, we will examine the opening of Tom Junod‘s article “The Falling Man,” published in Esquire magazine two years after 9-11. One of the elements that we will consider is the unusually long first paragraph.
The authors of Writing Analytically recommend that “[i]f you find a paragraph growing longer than half a page–particularly if it is your opening or second paragraph–find a place to make a paragraph break” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 308). Junod does not follow that advice. He opts instead to open his article with a paragraph of more than four hundred words.
If Junod had chosen to divide the first paragraph, where might he have divided it?
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. “The Idea of the Paragraph.”Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 307-313.
If you would like to read more of Junod’s article than the first paragraph, you won’t be able to do so on Esquire‘s website because the magazine’s paywall will deny you access to the full text, unless you are a subscriber. However, students and faculty at HPU can access the full text of articles published in any of the magazines and newspapers included in the libraries’ databases. To access “The Falling Man” through the HPU Library site, follow these steps:
Directions for Accessing “The Falling Man” (Full Text)
Under the heading Search HPU Libraries . . . , click on the Articles tab.
Under the Articles tab, type Tom Junod “Falling Man” Esquire in the search box and click search.
On the next screen, you will see a brief summary of the article. Click View full text to see the complete article.
On the next screen, click View full text beside one of the database options.
Literacy Narrative Blog Response Assignment
Directions
After this morning’s hard deadline for the literacy narrative,10:40, go to the class page, and click on the link for the blog of the classmate whose name follows yours. If you are last on the list, go to the blog of the student whose name is first.
If your designated classmate’s blog is not linked to the page, or his or her literacy narrative is not published, choose another classmate’s blog.
Read the classmate’s literacy narrative.
Compose a one- or two-paragraph response (75 words, minimum) that includes both the classmate’s name and the title of his or her literacy narrative. In your comment, address one or more of these elements: the title, vivid details, scene, dialogue, the image documenting part of the writing process away from the screen, the embedded link to a relevant website. Note that you will mention the classmate by name, but you will not refer to him or her in third person. In other words, you will not write, John’s description made me feel as if I were with him in his fourth-grade classroom. Instead, you will write, John, your description made me feel as if I were with you in your fourth-grade classroom.
Recommended (not required): Draft your comment longhand in your journal.
Type your response as a comment. You should see a leave comment/reply option at the top or bottom of the post. If you do not see that option, click the title of the post and scroll down. You should then see leave comment/reply.
Before you click leave comment/reply, copy your comment (on a PC, copy with control + c; on a Mac, copy with command + c).
After you submit your comment on your classmate’s literacy narrative, return to this blog post, and paste your comment as a reply (on a PC, paste with control + v; on a Mac, paste with command + v). This step is critical because your classmate may not approve your comment, which means it will not be visible on his or her blog. To receive credit for the assignment, you must post your duplicate comment as a reply to this post, ENG 1103: “The Falling Man” . . . . To submit your comment, click the title of the post, then scroll down to the bottom. There you will see the image of an airmail envelope with a box for your comment. Type your comment in the box and click Comment. Post your comment by 7:30 a.m. on Monday, September 14. I will make your comments visible after the deadline.
You are not required to read other classmates’ literacy narratives, but I encourage you to browse their blogs and read the posts that pique your interest.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review your journal notes and the blog posts with Scrabble tips, including this one
Coming Soon
For Monday’s class, you will read and annotate Isaac Asimov’s short story “Runaround,” which I distributed in class on Wednesday. If you were absent or misplaced your copy, print one from Blackboard.
Also, before Monday morning’s 7:30 deadline, remember to post your peer blog response as a comment on today’s post.
Today’s blog entry begins with step-by-step instructions for posting your literacy narrative to Blackboard and WordPress.
Posting to Blackboard
Log in to Blackboard and select the course site for ENG 1108.03, then scroll down to Literacy Narrative Submission Site.
Click LiteracyNarrative Submission Site. On the next page, click the black rectangle on the lower right, labeled View instructions.
The next page is where you will submit your literacy narrative file as an MS Word document or PDF. Click on the paperclip icon, and attach your file as you would an email attachment.
An important posting note: Be sure to click the gray rectangle labeled Submit, on the lower right. If you click Save and Close, your file will be saved to Blackboard, but it will not be submitted and will not be accessible to me. To submit your file, you must click Submit.
If you follow the steps above, voila! You have submitted your literacy narrative to Blackboard.
Posting to WordPress
Log in to WordPress, and you will see a home page similar to the one below. Hover over +New in the upper left of the screen, and click Post. You can also add a post by scrolling down the left menu to Posts (beside the pushpin icon) and selecting Add Post.
On the next page, type your literacy narrative title in the Add title line and hit return. Then copy and paste the text of your narrative from your MS Word file into the space below the title. On a PC, copy and paste with control + c, control + v; on a Mac, copy and paste with command + c, command + v.
After you have pasted the text, it will appear as single-spaced, block-style paragraphs. Do not indent. Your file posted to Blackboard should follow MLA formatting guidelines, including paragraph indentations, but WordPress posts are easier to manage if you keep the default paragraph settings. To add your required image between the title and the first paragraph, hover below the title, and a + will appear.
Click the +, and a menu will pop up with various options for add-ins. If Image is not among them, click Browse all.
Scroll down, and under the heading Media, click Image.
After you select Image, click Upload to add your picture. Do not post an AI-generated image or a stock photo from the Web. The image in your blog post should be a picture you took yourself that documents part of your writing process away from the screen. Note that the blog image you see below, and in Monday’s post, is a collage that includes snippets of my handwritten draft. Your image may be of your writing alone, or it may include other elements, as mine does.
Your image should now be centered on the page. If it isn’t, you can use the Align feature (shown above) to center it. If you would like the picture to be rounded, click on the picture, then click the half-black, half-white circle on the right (shown below). Then select the Rounded option.
Optional: To make the first letter of the first word of your literacy narrative a drop cap (or monogram), place the cursor on the first paragraph, and click Topography in the menu on the right (see the image below).
In the pull-down menu, click Drop cap, and a toggle switch will appear (see below). Click the toggle switch, and you will have a drop cap at the beginning of your narrative.
To add the required embedded link, open a new tab and go to the page you want to link to your post. Copy the address and return to the draft of your blog post. Highlight the word or phrase where you want to embed the link, and a link option will appear (see below).
Click the link icon, and a box will appear (see below).
Paste the address into the box, hit enter, or return, and the link will be embedded.
Save your draft (by clicking Save draft in blue in the upper right). Once you have finalized your post, click Publish. After you have published a post, you can still make changes. To do that, simply return to your dashboard, scroll down to Posts, click All Posts, then click edit under the post you want to edit (see below).
Preparing for Your In-Class Reflection
Directions
To comply with the requirements for your reflection assignment, you will need to complete the planning exercise that follows. In class, you will not be permitted to refer to this blog post or any other online resources. You will need to have all the necessary citation information written longhand in your journal.
Review the pieces of writing we have examined in class, and choose a phrase or sentence from one that is pertinent to your own literacy narrative. The passage you choose may be one that reminded you of your experience with reading, writing, or learning a second language, or it may be a turn of phrase that inspired you to use a similar rhetorical device.
After you have chosen a passage, compose a signal phrase in your journal to introduce the quotation. (See the examples below.) Many academic writing assignments, including most that follow MLA style, require a signal phrase. A quotation that lacks one is considered a dropped quotation.
Follow your signal phrase with the quotation, and follow the quote with an MLA-style parenthetical citation. (See the examples below.)
Below your sentence, write the MLA-style works cited entry for the reading you quoted. (See the examples below.)
Sample Quotations with Signal Phrases and Parenthetical Citations
David Sedaris’s hyperbolic description of his classmate’s “front teeth the size of tombstones” (168) led me to seek moments when figurative language would enliven my own narrative.
Helen Keller’s observation that she did “not remember” (par. 8) all the words she learned that day reminded me that gaps in my memory could figure in my story.
The author’s hyperbolic description of his classmate’s “front teeth the size of tombstones” (Sedaris 168) led me to seek moments when figurative language would enliven my own narrative.
Her observation that she did “not remember” (Keller, par. 8) all the words she learned that day reminded me that gaps in my memory could figure in my story.
The third and fourth examples include the author’s last name in the parenthetical citation because the author is not named in the sentence. Note that no comma is included before a page number in an MLA parenthetical citation, but a comma does precede the abbreviation for paragraph (par.).
If you quote “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” cite it as if you are quoting a page in a book because your handout is a photographic image of the essay from David Sedaris’s collection Me Talk Pretty One Day. (See the examples above.)
If you quote a line from any class handout other than “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” include the paragraph number in the parenthetical citation. For your works cited entry, use the MLA format for a course handout. (See the examples below.)
Sample Works Cited Entries
Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life” by Helen Keller. ENG 1103.01 (or 08), High Point University, Received 24 August 2026. Course handout.
Lucas, Jane. Sample Literacy Narrative: “A Bridge to Words.” ENG 1103.01 (or 08), High Point University, Received 4 September 2026. Course handout.
Lucas, Jane. Sample Literacy Narrative: “Creativity is key [sic].” ENG 1103.01 (or 08), High Point University, Received 28 August 2026. Course handout.
Lucas, Jane. Sample Literacy Narrative: “The Journey of the Greatest Story.” ENG 1103.01 (or 08), High Point University, Received 31 August 2026. Course handout.
Lucas, Jane. “Summary, Scene, and Dialogue”: An Excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. ENG 1103.01 (or 08), High Point University, Received 26 August 2026. Course handout.
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown, 2000, pp. 166-73.
Your own works cited entry will not be a bullet point but will have a hanging indent (the first line will be flush left and the second line and any additional lines will be indented five spaces or one-half inch.
You will not include a section number in parentheses. You will simply include your section number. See the examples below.
The word sic, Latin for “thus,” appears in brackets above to indicate the preceding error. Key should be capitalized.
Quiz Follow-Up
Rather than listing the answers to the questions on Monday’s quiz, I have followed each question below with a note regarding where to find the answer. By finding the answers yourself, you will learn more than you would from simply reading them in a list.
What is the term for the kind of narrator the writer employs in “A Bridge to Words”? If you cannot remember the term, describe the nature of the narration. See the September 2 class handout and the September 3 class notes.
Record one concrete detail you recall from “A Bridge to Words.” (What did you see or hear in your mind as you read the words on the page?) See “A Bridge to Words,” paragraphs one through eight.
Record a second concrete detail you remember from “A Bridge to Words.” See “A Bridge to Words,” paragraphs one through eight.
Your quiz also included a bonus opportunity. Possible answers for that bonus are found in the class notes for September 4.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will compose your reflective essay focusing on the process of planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative. If you are still in the process of completing your essay on Wednesday (since you have until Friday morning’s hard deadline to post it without a late penalty), your reflection will address your work in progress. Follow the guidelines included above to ensure you will be prepared to complete all requirements for your reflection.
Hillaire Belloc’s “Rebecca,” illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen
This morning’s blog post features “A Bridge to Words,” my model literacy narrative that you read and annotated for today’s class. After the Scrabble debriefing and our study of “A Bridge to Words,” I will lead you step by step through the process of posting your literacy narrative to Blackboard and WordPress. Tomorrow’s post entry will include step-by-step directions with screenshots.
The image above meets the guidelines for the picture you are required to include in your blog post: one that documents part of your writing process away from the screen. That image may include notes in your journal or lines of your handwritten draft. The image should not include your laptop, tablet, or phone.
In the picture, a page of my draft serves as the background for a collage with a photocopied illustration of Rebecca, the title character of Hillaire Belloc’s “Rebecca,” and lines of the poem in the foreground. (Note that using a fragment of the illustration for educational purposes constitutes fair use.) The image could simply be the lines of my draft, but I wanted to include Rebecca as well since her poem figures prominently in my narrative.
A Bridge to Words
To a small child, the pages of a newspaper are enormous. Looking far back through the years, I see myself, not yet school age, trying to hold up those long, thin sheets of newsprint, only to find myself draped in them, as if covered by a shroud. Of course, back then, my inability to hold a newspaper properly was of little consequence. Even if I could have turned the pages as gracefully as my parents did, I couldn’t decipher the black marks on the page; thus, my family’s ritual reading of the newspaper separated them from me. As the youngest and the only one who couldn’t read, I was left alone on the perimeter to observe. My family’s world of written words was impenetrable; I could only look over their shoulders and try to imagine the places where all those black marks on the page had carried them—these people, my kin, who had clearly forgotten that I was in the room.
My sister, who was three years older, had her very own news source: The Mini Page, a four-page miniature paper that arrived at our house as an insert in the Sunday edition. While our parents sat in their easy chairs poring over the state and local news, my sister, Jo, perched at the drop-front desk and occupied herself with articles, puzzles, and connect-the-dots.
Finally, one Sunday, someone noticed me on the margin and led me into our family’s reading circle. Whether it was one of my parents or my sister, I don’t know. I remember only the gesture and the words: someone handing me the Sunday comics and saying, “You can read part of the funny pages, too. You can read Henry.”
I took the giant page and laid it flat in the middle of the oval, braided rug on the floor of the den. Once I situated the page, I lay on top of it with my eyes just inches above the panels of the comic strip. To my parents, my prone position was a source of amusement, but for me it was simply a practical solution. How else was someone so small supposed to manage such a large piece of paper?
As I lay on the floor and looked at the comic strip’s panels, I realized what the voice had meant. I could “read” Henry, the comic with the bald boy in a red shirt, because it consisted entirely of pictures. In between panels of Henry walking, there were panels of him standing still, scratching his hairless head. I didn’t find Henry funny at all. I wondered how that pale forerunner of Charlie Brown had earned a prime spot in the funnies. Still, I was glad he was there. He was the bridge that led me to the written word.
Reading the wordless comic strip Henry for the first time was the beginning of a years-long habit of stretching out on the floor with newspapers and large books—not thick ones but ones that were tall and wide, among them one of my childhood favorites: The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense. My sister and I spent hours lying on our bedroom floor, the pink shag carpet tickling our legs as we delighted in the antics of Rebecca, the mischievous title character of one of the poems.
Carl Thomas Anderson’s comic strip character Henry
“Rebecca”—which my sister read to me before I could read it myself—introduced me to the word abhors, the very sound of which appealed to me. Sometimes before Jo had finished reading the opening lines, my uncontrollable giggles collided with her perfect mock-serious delivery. As the last word in the first line, abhors serves as a lead-in to an enjambment: the continuation of a sentence or clause in a line break. It would be years before I learned the term “enjambment,” but I was immediately swept away by its effect in the opening lines: “A trick that everyone abhors/ In Little Girls is Slamming Doors” (Belloc 61). The first line lured me into the second one, and so on and so on. I was drawn both to the individual word abhors—with its side-by-side b and h, rare in English—and the way the words joined, like links in a chain, to yank me giggling through Rebecca’s cautionary tale:
It happened that a marble bust Of Abraham was standing just Above the door this little lamb Had carefully prepared to slam, And down it came! It knocked her flat! It laid her out! She looked like that.
Her funeral sermon (which was long And followed by a sacred song) Mentioned her virtues, it is true, But dwelt upon her vices too, And showed the dreadful end of one Who goes and slams the door for fun. (61)
Why these particular early memories visit me now, I don’t know. Perhaps rereading Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus with my students has roused the wordless Henry and the word-filled Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense from the corner of my brain where they’ve slumbered. The former wakes and stretches out in my mind as a bridge to the latter: a spot in the world of words I’ve inhabited ever since.
Today’s Scrabble debriefing continues with a study of some of the plays in the games pictured below. Answers to the questions that I pose about those plays are included near the end of the post.
Assessing S
On the board pictured below, the first team opened the game with the play of dims for fourteen points. Even though the s increases the score, playing it there on the first turn may not have been advisable. Why?
You Can’t Do That
In the game below, a team played the verb cant: to tilt or slant. Despite the word’s playability, the group lost five points because of the presentation of the word on the score sheet. What lost the group five points?
When You Draw a Blank (or Two)
On the board pictured below, a team played l after the e in gore, to form el (an elevated train and the two-letter spelling of the letter l), and below the l used blanks for g and e, along with o, u, n, and s to play lounges. Although the other two u‘s on the board (in juts and aqua) had not been played, you may still question the decision to use both blanks and one of the u‘s in a single turn. Why was el and lounges a well-advised play?
Answers
Assessing S: Adding s to dims increases the score by only two points. In the team’s second play or another later play, they could likely raise their score by more than two points by using the s to form two or more words through parallel and/or perpendicular play. Keep in mind that the first play of the game is the only one in which you don’t have the opportunity to form more than one word. If playing an s enables you to form a five-letter word with a consonant–especially a high value one–that opportunity would warrant using an s in the first play. For example, if a team had the letters to spell dimes in the first play, playing the d on the double-letter square would increase the score from fourteen to twenty. Even better, if a team had the letters to spell zones in the first play, playing the z on the double-letter square would increase the score from twenty-six to forty-eight.
You Can’t Do That: Although cant is playable, the team that played it lost points because the scorekeeper recorded the word can’t, the contraction of cannot, on the assignment sheet. Words with apostrophes are not playable in Scrabble, and recording one on the score sheet and subsequently assigning it a point value it cannot have results in a penalty.
When You Draw a Blank (or Two): At first glance, playing both blanks and one of the u‘s in a single turn might seem like a bad idea; however, by playing the two blanks (as g and e) with l, o, u, n, and s the team used all seven of its tiles in one turn which gave them a bonus of fifty points. With ten for lounges for a double-word play and two for el, the team scored a total of sixty-two points. Note that the misspelling of quills went unchallenged, resulting in a five-point loss.
Bonus Assignment Opportunity
Students who correctly respond to the AI misstep question below will earn a bonus assignment credit.
Information Versus Knowledge
As a model for your own ethical use of generative AI for English 1103, the August 25 blog post features screenshots of a conversation in which I developed ideas for my literacy narrative with the help of ChatGPT. Now that you have read my literacy narrative, it should be apparent that despite the AI assistant’s wealth of information, one of its answers revealed a lack of knowledge about the comic strip Henry. What did the AI assistant not know? (What did it say about Henry that was false?)
Directions for Finding and Submitting Your Answer
To find the AI assistant’s error, review the descriptions of Henry in “A Bridge to Words,” then review the AI assistant’s words in the screenshots in the August 25 blog post.
Compose a response of one or more complete sentences that identifies and briefly explains the error.
Post your comment as a reply to this blog post by 7:30 a.m. on Friday, September 11.
To post your comment, click the title of the post, “ENG 1103: A Bridge to Words . . . ,” then scroll down to the bottom of the post. There you will see the image of an airmail envelope with a white rectangular box for your comment. Type your comment in the box and hit return. Voila! You have submitted your answer. Good luck! I will make the comments visible before class on Monday, September 14.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will compose a reflective essay focusing on the process of planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative. If you are still completing your essay on Wednesday (since you have until Friday morning’s hard deadline to post it), your reflection will address your work in progress. To ensure that you are prepared to meet all the requirements for your reflection, carefully read the directions for preparing, which will be outlined in tomorrow’s blog post.
The paragraphs that follow include detailed but not comprehensive notes on the two sample essays that you read and evaluated yesterday. Look to these notes as a guide for editing your own literacy narrative.
“Creativity is Key”: Notes on Content
The essay is not a narrative. The writer mentions his experience writing a Southern gothic story, and he briefly recounts writing about his training for track and field and international football (soccer), but the writer offers very few details. Focusing on one of those experiences and recreating one or more moments from it would transform the essay into a narrative and develop it into one that meets the six hundred-word minimum requirement.
“Creativity is Key”: Notes on Form
Form is less important than content, but easily avoidable errors of form may prevent readers from appreciating the content of your narrative. Creating a compelling story is hard work; proofreading isn’t. If you don’t get the easy part right, readers may stop reading.
The writer changes the font of the body of the paper to Times New Roman but does not change the font of the running header, which should also be Times New Roman.
The writer incorrectly adds an extra space between the first-page course information (in the upper left) and between the title and the first line of the essay. MLA-style manuscripts are double-spaced. Note that later, the writer also incorrectly adds space between the paragraphs.
The title should be typed in twelve-point font, which is the font size that should be used throughout the document.
The title should not appear in boldface.
The title should be centered.
In MLA style, all major words in a title, including the final one, are capitalized (“key” should be “Key).
The second “sentence” of the second paragraph is a fragment because the meaning of “one being my senior year . . .” is dependent upon the clause that ends the previous sentence. See Writing Analytically, page 426-29.
The comma between “all” and “matter” is a comma splice. See Writing Analytically, 429.
“[R]eal life” should be hyphenated (as real-life) when it functions as a compound modifier. Ditto for “open minded” and “four to five.”
Errors of letter case–upper rather than lower, or vice versa–are mistakes of mechanics that are prevalent in the second paragraph. Track, Field, defensive back, and Athlete should all begin with a lowercase letter.
“[F]elt like” should be “felt as if.” In comparisons, use “like” before a noun and “as if” before a clause.
“I’m a writer that” should be “I’m a writer who.” The correct relative pronoun for a person is “who,” not “that.”
“The Journey of the Greatest Story”: Notes on Content
“The Journey of the Greatest Story” is a well-told narrative, but one with a glaring omission: Kate Chopin’s words. The writer claims that the last sentence of The Awakening affected her profoundly, but the absence of those words may lead readers to question the writer’s reliability. If Chopin’s words were so memorable, why aren’t they on the page? Near the end of the narrative, the writer states that she “can still recall key details from the story” (par. 4), but provides no examples. The only detail the writer mentions is Edna Pontelier’s suicide by drowning, which is a well-known fact about the novel.
The writer may have chosen to withhold Chopin’s last sentence from her introductory paragraph because she wanted to focus instead on what followed: the “loud slam of the book as he [the teacher] shut it” (par.1). Still, the writer could have included it later. For example, when she writes about the feelings the novel evokes, she might have included a sentence such as this:
I kept thinking about the last sentence: “There was a hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air” (Chopin, ch. 39).
Quoting The Awakening doesn’t require having a copy of the novel at hand. The complete text is available on Project Gutenberg. The parenthetical citation in the example above follows the format for an unpaginated online book (author’s last name, chapter abbreviation, and chapter number). The MLA work cited entry for the book appears below. Note that in a manuscript, the entry would have a hanging indent, which means the first line would be flush left and any subsequent lines would be indented five spaces or one-half inch.
“The Journey of the Greatest Story”: Notes on Form
The Awakening (pars. 2, 4) should be italicized rather than underlined. In the process of composing her draft longhand, the writer learned that titles of book-length works are underlined in handwritten documents, and she mistakenly applied that rule to her typed revision.
The word as should not precede “the final sentence” (par. 1), because it is used improperly there. As offers comparison, shows reason, or introduces a clause. Here are two ways the writer could revise the sentence:
I still remember the moment the final sentence of the story slipped from my teacher’s mouth, and the loud slam of the book as he shut it.
I still remember the final sentence of the story slipping from my teacher’s mouth, and the loud slamming of the book as he shut it.
The second example above is more direct because the writer doesn’t tell the reader it’s a moment. Instead, she lets the moment happen. The strike-throughs indicate that “of the story” (par. 1) is an unnecessary phrase. The writer has already established that The Awakening is her subject. Also, if specifying the book is necessary at any point, it should be referred to as a novel, not a story.
The writer describes Edna Pontelier as “submerging as death grew upon her” (par. 2), but growing indicates a rise, while submersion indicates a lowering. Grew should be replaced with engulfed.
The writer incorrectly uses hyphens to set off the appositive “-the author-” (par. 2). Here are two ways the writer could correct the presentation of the appositive and edit the passage for brevity:
I yearned for more pages to materialize to clarify the ending, or to have a chat with Kate Chopin–the author–so she could relieve my frustration by explaining the conclusion. Instead, I just sat and pondered those aggravating feelings.
I yearned for more pages to materialize to clarify the ending, or to have a chat with Kate Chopin, the author, so she could relieve my frustration by explaining the conclusion. Instead, I just sat and pondered those aggravating feelings.
An appositive can be set off by em dashes or commas, but commas are preferable for short appostives, so the second correction above is recommended.
The line “having me read this class” (par. 3) is not what the writer intended. The words shoud be having me enroll in the course or having me read Chopin’s novel.
When the teacher responds to the student (par. 3), the writer should begin a new paragraph because the speaker changes.
And when the writer responds to her teacher, she should begin a new paragraph yet again because the speaker changes from the teacher to the writer-student, with her words, “Have a nice day” (par. 3).
Years are an exception to MLA’s numbers rule regarding words and figures. 2025 should be written as 2025, not “twenty-twenty-five” (par. 4).
Next Up
On Wednesday, after our follow-up discussion of “Creativity is Key” and “Journey of the Greatest Story,” I will return your literacy narrative drafts, and you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue revising before posting to Blackboard and WordPress. The due date for your literacy narrative is Wednesday, September 9, before class; the hard deadline is Friday, September 11, before class.
Yesterday, before you began drafting your literacy narrative, we examined a page (pictured above) from Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. That page from the first chapter serves as a valuable model for three narrative elements: summary, scene, and dialogue–at least two of which will figure in your literacy narrative.
The first paragraph of the passage summarizes the characters’ circumstances, designating the “summertime boundaries” (12) within which the narrator, Jean Louise, “Scout,” Finch, and her older brother, Jem, may play outdoors. The short one-sentence paragraph that follows continues the summary, informing readers that the summer Scout has just summarized is the one in which Dill (Charles Baker Harris) first visits Maycomb, Alabama.
With the first words of the next paragraph, “[e]arly one morning,” Scout shifts from summary to scene (12). All of the remaining paragraphs except the final one continue the scene with dialogue. Scout returns to summary with the words “Dill was from Meridian” (12).
Note that Harper Lee begins a new paragraph whenever the speaker changes. Also note that every line of dialogue does not include a dialogue tag, such as “he said” or “she said.” If a passage of dialogue includes only two speakers, none of the paragraphs require dialogue tags after the speakers’ first lines because the start of a new paragraph signals to the reader that the other person is speaking. If a dialogue includes three or more speakers–such as Scout’s conversation with Jem and Dill–occasional tags are essential.
Lessons in Punctuation
The excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird also demonstrates how to use a variety of punctuation marks, including em dashes, hyphens, and commas.
Harper Lee uses em dashes to set off “Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was expecting” (12) from the rest of the sentence because it is nonessential. It adds details, but the sentence can function without them. An em dash is used before and after phrases that are nonessential. Note that there is no space before or after the dash, which is made with two strikes of the hyphen key.
Jem asks if Dill is “four-and-a-half”? Hyphens appear between those words because multiple-word numbers, such as ages, are hyphenated. The numbers twenty-one through ninety-nine are hyphenated as well.
Near the end of the excerpt, “Mississippi” and “Miss Rachel” (12) are both set off by commas because those details are nonessential. Commas are used to set off single words and short phrases of nonessentials the way that em dashes are used to set off longer units of words.
Work Cited
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Lippincott, 1960. p. 12.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review your journal notes on the game and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.
This morning at the beginning of class, we will examine the literacy narrative that you read for today, “The Day Language Came into My Life,” which is the fourth chapter of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life.
Together, Sedaris‘s essay and Keller’s chapter demonstrate two vastly different ways to present a literacy narrative. “Me Talk Pretty One Day” offers a quirky look at the challenges of learning French from a sarcastic, soul-crushing instructor. Keller’s story poignantly recounts learning to make meaning of the world through sign language.
After we discuss Keller’s chapter, you will begin planning and drafting your first essay assignment, a literacy narrative: an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language.
Directions
Begin by asking yourself this question: What were some of my most formative experiences as a reader, a writer, or a language learner? Freewrite on those, then choose one to bring to life. Your aim is to recreate your experience on the page and reflect on its significance. Your focus may be any one of the following:
A memory of a reading or writing assignment that you recall vividly
Someone who helped you learn to read or write
A writing-related school event that you found humorous or embarrassing
A particular type of writing that you found (or still find) challenging
A memento that represents an important moment in your development as a reader or writer
Learning a second language
Your literacy narrative should be a well-told story that includes these elements:
Vivid detail
Some indication of the narrative’s significance
A minimum of 600 words
A title that offers a window into your essay (It should not be titled “Literacy Narrative.”)
Detailed instructions are included in the assignment handout that you will receive in class today. An additional copy is posted on Blackboard in the Major Paper Assignments folder.
Quiz Follow-Up
Rather than listing the answers to the questions on Monday’s quiz, I have followed each question below with a note regarding where to find the answer. By finding the answers yourself, you will learn more than you would from simply reading them in a list.
How is David Sedaris different from his classmates, or how does he perceive himself as different from them? See pages 166-67 of “Me Talk Pretty One Day.”
What style will you use for formatting files and documenting sources in papers for English 1103 and many other courses in the humanities (philosophy, classics, religious studies, art history, and foreign languages)? See the August 20 class notes.
What is one of the formatting requirements for the style you will use for your papers in English 1103? See theAugust 20 class notes.
Your quiz also included a bonus opportunity. Possible answers for that bonus are found in the class notes for August 20and21.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, review Merriam-Webster’s Scrabble Word Finder page, your journal notes on the game, and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.
Postscript: Dolly Parton (January 19, 1946-August 25, 2026)
It’s fitting that you began your literacy narratives on a day when we are remembering a woman who created one of the largest book-giving programs in the world. Although she is known primarily as a country music icon–and songwriter, actress, producer, and entrepreneur–she was also a philanthropist whose Imagination Library, founded in 1995, has given more than a million books to children in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and Australia. Children enrolled in the program receive one book per month from birth to five years regardless of their family’s income. Rest in peace, Dolly. Your artistry and philanthropy have made the world a better place.
Yesterday in class, after your Scrabble debriefing, we examined David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” and you and two or three of your classmates collaborated on an exercise that involved identifying an instance of tension in the essay. Locating such a moment in another writer’s work provides you with a model for creating tension in your own story, which is key to maintaining the reader’s interest and propelling the narrative forward.
As models for you, I included the examples below on your worksheet.
Examples
In “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” David Sedaris introduces tension when he writes, “the students exhibited an ease and confidence I found intimidating” (167).
In “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” the author introduces tension when he writes, “the students exhibited an ease and confidence I found intimidating” (Sedaris 167).
I included two examples because the correct format for the citation is determined by the content of the sentence, specifically, whether the author is named. The first example includes only the page number in parentheses because the author is named in the sentence. The second example includes the author’s name in parentheses because he is not named in the sentence. Including the author’s name in both places would be redundant.
Here are some of the instances of tension that you identified in “Me Talk Pretty One Day”:
Moments of Tension in “Me Talk Pretty One Day”
The French teacher asks the Yugoslavian student if she “love[d] your little war” (Sedaris 169).
Sedaris conveys the underlying pressure in the classroom when he recounts how “the optimist struggled to defend herself” (169).
The author renders tension when he writes, “‘I hate you,’ she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless . . . I couldn’t help but take it personally” (Sedaris 171).
Sedaris notes, “The teacher, through word and action, conveyed the message that if this was my idea of an identity, she wanted nothing to do with it” (171).
The writer recalls that “[His] fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of the classroom” (Sedaris 171).
The narrator observes, “the teacher hadn’t meant to stab the girl, but neither did she spend much time apologizing” (Sedaris 172).
Talking Points
Your groups also identified a minimum of three talking points in Sedaris’s essay, parts of the narrative you had questions about, or any passages that you deemed particularly interesting or revealing. Section one did not have time for post-exercise discussion. In section eight, a student addressed Sedaris’s use of gibberish, or nonsense words, such as “meimslsxp” (167), as an effective way to convey Sedaris’s utter lack of understanding of his French teacher’s speech.
Nonsense Words and Italics
If you include nonsense words in your literacy narrative or any words in a language other than English, those words should be italicized because MLA style requires that words in languages other than English be italicized. See the examples in “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” beginning on page 167.
Figurative Language
One of the notable features of Sedaris’s writing is his use of figurative speech, including metaphor (direct comparison), simile (a comparison using like or as), and hyperbole (extreme exaggeration):
Metaphor: “everybody into the language pool, sink or swim” (Sedaris 167).
Simile: “like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets” (Sedaris 168).
Hyperbole: “front teeth the size of tombstones” (Sedaris 168).
Work Cited
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little Brown, 2000. pp. 166-73.
“What’s in a Name” Follow-Up
Friday’s blog entry offered a bonus assignment credit to any student who posted a response identifying the classmates whose names are also common nouns, which makes them playable Scrabble words.
The playable names of your classmates appear below in bold, followed by the definitions in parentheses.
Section 1
Grace (ease and fluidity of movement) Duffy
Brenna Murphy (a potato)
Bridgett Murphy (a potato)
Hayden Porter (a person who carries baggage)
Will (used to express futurity) Roberts
Madi Stone (a piece of rock)
Section 8
Dev (deva, a Hindu god) Broomer
Parker (one who parks) Davenport (a small desk or large upholstered sofa)
Ariana Foy (a farewell feast or gift)
Devyn Jones (a craving)
Lance (a spear-like weapon) Morgan (a unit of distance between two genes)
Cole (a plant of the cabbage family) Wilhelmsen
Kudos to Avery Broadbent, Madison Haugk, Vivian Laliberte, Michael McNamara, Layla Rothberg,and Alexis Zavalashin for identifying your classmates’ playable names. For their efforts, they will receive bonus assignment credit in the short assignments and participation category.
I will offer additional bonus assignments, so be on the lookout for those. Reading all the notes that I post for you here, on my blog, will ensure that you don’t miss those opportunities.
Using AI Ethically for Your Literacy Narrative
Using generative AI to write your literacy narrative and presenting an AI agent’s words as your own violates High Point University’s Honor Code and is grounds for an F. However, there are ethical ways to use AI for your literacy narrative, such as for brainstorming topics.
As a model for your own possible brainstorming with AI, I prompted ChatGPT to ask me a series of questions to help me decide which one of two events I might be able to render more vividly in a literacy narrative: (1) “reading” the panels of the comic strip Henry (before I could read words) as a way of joining my family’s ritual of newspaper reading, and (2) memorizing my lines for a play in which my character, María, speaks solely in Spanish. The images below are screenshots of that conversation.
Review the screenshot above and note how many specifics I offer about the two topics I’m considering and how I ask the AI agent to ask me a series of questions. Developing your initial question and requesting multiple questions in response will lead to a more productive exchange of ideas.
Question six, pictured above, and my answer serve as a key turning point in the conversation. Earlier questions posed by the AI agent asked me for details about the two experiences. Here I turn from focusing on the setting of the first of the two (my family’s den) and the action (“reading” Henry) to the implications. What was the moment of recognition or revelation? What was the significance of the event? Those are questions you will answer–not necessarily explicitly but implicitly–in the conclusion of your narrative.
In response to my answer to question six, pictured above, the AI agent raises another important point: In addition to conveying the importance of the experience, I need to be able to enter the mind of that earlier self, that preschooler who could not read yet.
In response to my answer to question seven, pictured above, the AI agent clearly delineates the differences between the two experiences and notes that both “have a clear desire and obstacle.” When you are planning your literacy narrative, ask yourself, what did I want, and what might have prevented me from getting it? Desires and obstacles figure in all compelling stories.
Question eight, pictured above, asks me to make a “quick mental inventory” of the sensory details from each experience, another important step in the writing process. Those particulars will enable readers to enter into the memory with you, as if they are looking over your shoulder. You may not remember many sensory details now, but trust the process. The more you think about the experience and put your thoughts on paper, the more you will recall.
You are welcome to use ChatGPT, as I have here, or one of the other AI agents, such as Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft 365’s Copilot, or Google’s Gemini, but remember that the words of your literacy narrative must be your own. If you think brainstorming with an AI agent will tempt you to seek an AI-generated literacy narrative, do not use AI. Instead, brainstorm with a classmate or a consultant at HPU’s Writing Center.
Congratulations to Bridgett Murphy and Sophia Stewart for winning copies of Me Talk Pretty One Day in yesterday’s drawing.
Next Up
In class tomorrow, you will begin drafting your literacy narrative, an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language. As part of your prewriting process, revisit “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and consider how you might incorporate some of the elements David Sedaris includes. Repeat the process with Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life” when you read and annotate it.
For weeks, my reading and writing have been limited almost exclusively to Shakespeare’s sonnets sixty-four and ninety-eight, along with parts of eighty-four, which I will perform at Creative Greensboro’s second annual Sonnet Fest, August 7-9.
I marvel at my actor friends who can sit backstage and lose themselves in the pages of a novel only minutes before they make another entrance and speak the words they have committed to memory. For me, those words I will speak on stage must remain in the forefront of my mind–a necessity I put at risk if I crowd my brain with the words of a book-length narrative.
The importance of focusing on the lines I will speak on stage grows greater when those words are Shakespeare’s. I am not a quick study, so learning lines is difficult for me and even more so when the diction and syntax are centuries removed from my own.
But after weeks of listening to my lines–in my car and on my morning walks–and writing and rewriting them in my journal, I once again witnessed the effects of the process that I am repeatedly doubtful of trusting.
With the knowledge that the hardest part of my line work was behind me, two days ago, as a birthday gift to myself, I began reading a novel I had avoided because of my focus on the lines.
To stave off a line backslide, I decided to return to my lines whenever I completed fifty pages of Shelby Van Pelt‘s Incredibly Bright Creatures, which found me toggling between late sixteenth-century England and early twenty-first-century Pacific Northwest.
The two began to intermingle in my mind. As I found myself inhabiting the small (fictional) town of Sowell Bay on the Puget Sound, the words of Sonnet 64 turned over in my head: “When I have seen the hungry ocean gain / Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, / And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store;” (lines 5-8).
For anyone who hasn’t read Van Pelt’s novel, I don’t want to spoil it, so I won’t offer any of the particulars I am tempted to detail. I will simply say this: If anyone had told me that I would be captivated by a narrator who is a giant Pacific octopus, I would have been incredulous. Then again, whenever I am faced with lines of iambic pentameter that are centuries removed from my own speech, I am similarly incredulous, convinced that I cannot learn them. And then slowly, I do, as I give them the attention they require.
Shakespeare would appreciate Marcellus, the octopus, and his human friend, Tova, both haunted by the same loss that pervades Sonnet 64. In his last brief chapter of narration, Marcellus reflects that “not a day passed when I did not ruminate on my own death” (349). I will stop there (to reveal no more) and turn to the bard’s words the octopus echoes. Meditating on the rise and fall of the tide, the poet notes that such “interchange of state” (9) has taught him “thus to ruminate, / That Time will come and take my love away” (11-12).
With the words he pens, Shakespeare strives to make sense of that loss. When Cameron, another of Van Pelt’s characters, asks Tova how she recovered from her own grief, she says, “You don’t recover. Not all the way. But you do move on. You have to” (346). Tova, too–a lover of language, like her non-speaking friend, Marcellus–is sustained in part what is written, spoken, and in one instance, etched: words.
My discussions with students about generative AI have been limited to plagiarism and academic integrity. But an end-of-semester faculty summit and a follow-up seventeen-day AI bootcamp led me to realize that I need to devote more attention to GenAI and model its responsible use.
How could I achieve those goals without increasing students’ screen time in the classroom? In the digital age, requiring students to compose drafts longhand and to read and annotate texts on paper seems anachronistic, but cognitive neuroscientists have identified those analog practices as vital. To provide students with a classroom experience that fosters the learning that screens can impede, my students will continue to draft their essays longhand and read on paper, but they will turn to GenAI for exercises in planning and brainstorming.
That series of exercises—which the students will complete outside of class—begins with asking an AI assistant for guidance on selecting a topic for their literacy narrative. Rather than starting with the simple question, what should I write about?, the students will instead present three topics and ask the AI assistant to ask them a series of questions to determine which one has the most narrative possibilities.
Although the students may not agree with the AI’s suggestions—just as they might not agree with a classmate’s or mine—the process itself will likely generate ideas that will lead to starting points. If they don’t, false starts will be steps in the journey, as they often are.
To prepare students for that initial exercise, I will conduct it myself, with three topics of my own, and take screenshots of the questions and answers. That documentation of my own process will enable me to lead students through the process step by step without opening an AI application in the classroom.
Though the students will not turn to AI in the classroom—and will turn only occasionally to their screens—AI will remain at the forefront of their classwork through our study of a sequence of science fiction that explores the nature of artificial intelligence: Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround,” which introduces his Three Laws of Robotics, followed by Brian Aldiss’s “Supertoys” stories and Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects.”
I chose those sci-fi stories not because I am naturally drawn to the genre but because of the ways the writers of those narratives use their imaginations as testing grounds for questions about humanity and the future. At the beginning of Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a young woman, Ana, sits in front of her computer, waiting for a videoconference job interview that she learns moments later has been canceled. The company has decided to hire someone else.
Ana’s interview-that-wasn’t would have been her first in months to reach the videoconference stage. Trying to recover from her disappointment, Ana sends queries to other companies and receives automated rejections.
For current college students, that doesn’t seem like science fiction. Contemplating such circumstances now in the classroom, their own testing ground—and trying to make sense of them through their own writing—may help them face a future with AI that we cannot know.
