English 8 students finished up reading “There Will Come Soft Rains” as the second story in our first unit. We’ll be analyzing its plot and working to summarize it tomorrow and Thursday.

English I students began the analysis of “The Cask of Amontillado,” asking the question of whether or not we can trust the narrator of the story. After some less guided discussion, students focused on a few questions:

1. What can we infer about Montressor and Fortunato and their role/position in society?
2. Who is he talking to? He keeps saying “you” – whom is he addressing?
3. We have two periods of time in this story: 1) when Montressor did these actions 2) when Montressor is telling this story. How much time is in between these?
4. Where does this story take place? What country? What is the dominant religion of that country?

We’ll use these questions to begin answering the question of whether or not Montressor is reliable as a narrator.

Homework

• English 8: finish reading “There Will Come Soft Rains” but you don’t have to do the annotations.
• English I Honors: 
  • complete the analysis of the opening paragraphs of “Amontillado” looking for interruptions and inversions (I forgot to assign this to fifth period yesterday, so fourth-period students should be done);
  • come prepared to answer the four questions we worked on in class.