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The Awakening Socratic Seminar

We will have a Socratic Seminar tomorrow to assess your reading of the book. You will receive an individual grade that will be worth ________. The procedure of the seminar will be as follows:

• Students will sit in a circle with the teacher “outside”

• A list of questions will be posted and the class will work through them, in order. The first question should be exhausted (group consensus will determine when this is the case) before moving on to the next one; we may not get to all of them.

• One student will serve as the “gatekeeper” to keep the class on track as needed, but this is the responsibility of you ALL.

• You will be working with your partner to see if they are meeting their goal and assessing them using a rubric.

Guidelines for Participants in a Socratic Seminar

• Refer to the text when needed during the discussion. A seminar is not a test of memory. You are not "learning a subject"; your goal is to understand the ideas, issues, and values reflected in the text.

• Do not participate if you are not prepared. A seminar should not be a bull session.

• Actively encourage others to participate; do NOT hog the floor. You will lose points if you do.

• Do not stay confused; ask for clarification.

• Stick to the point currently under discussion; make notes about ideas you want to come back to.

• Don't raise hands; take turns speaking.

• Listen carefully.

• Speak up so that all can hear you.

• Talk to each other, not to the leader or teacher.

Expectations of Participants in a Socratic Seminar

Want an A? Here is what an A level performance looks like:

• Uses formal English in discussion

• Offers enough solid analysis, without prompting, to move the conversation forward

• Through comments, demonstrates a deep knowledge of the text and the question

• Comes to the seminar prepared, with notes and a marked/annotated text  

• Through his comments, shows that he/she is actively listening to other participants

• Offers clarification and/or follow-up that meaningfully extend the conversation

• Remarks often refer back to specific parts of the text.

Socratic Seminar for The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Seduction of the Sea

This Socratic Seminar will evaluate an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s poem, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”, and Edna Pontellier’s experiences with the sea: limitless, freedom, the unknown, self-awareness, emotion, isolation, truth and beauty, allurement.

To prepare for this session, the students will read the following excerpts:

This first part is from the song sung by the bird in Whitman’s long poem--

Soothe! soothe! soothe!

Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,

And again another behind embrazing and lapping, every one

close,

But my love soothes not me, not me.

Low hands the moon, it rose late,

It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land,

With love, with love.

Question: Edna’s swimming out to sea begins her awakening and her rebellion. Consider the various encounters Edna has with water and evaluate its meaning and effect on her. Do you think the water is an active instigator in Edna’s emerging crisis?

The following excerpt from the poem is the response of the listener to the song of the bird in the first passage.

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,

O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating

you,

Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,

Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,

Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what

there in the night,

By the sea under the yellow sagging moon,

The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within,

The unknown want, the destiny of me.

O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,)

O if I am to have so much, let me have more!

A word then, (for I will conquer it,)

The word final, superior to all,

Subtle, set up--what is it?--I listen;

Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?

Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?

Whereto answering, the sea

Delaying not, hurrying not,

Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before day-

break,

Lisp’d to me the low delicious word death,

And again death, death, death, death,

Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d

child’s heart

But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,

Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly

all over,

Death, death, death, death, death.

Question: After Adele’s baby is born, the doctor tells Edna that “youth is given up to illusion...And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, or arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we fell obligated to maintain at any cost.” Edna responds, “Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.” What does she mean? What illusions has she lived with? Do you think Edna’s actions and experiences are valid, or is she being dramatic?

English 3/4H

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Socratic Seminar

1. Listen to the lyrics of “I’m just a Girl,” by No Doubt. What parallels exist between Edna Pontellier’s experiences within the novel and the speaker within the song?

2. “Whatever we may do or attempt, despite the embrace and transports of love, the hunger of the lips, we are always alone. I have dragged you out into the night in the vain hope of a moment's escape from the horrible solitude which overpowers me. But what is the use! I speak and you answer me, and still each of us is alone; side by side but alone.” In 1895, these words, from a story by Guy de Maupassant called “Solitude,” which she had translated for a St. Louis magazine, expressed an urbane and melancholy wisdom that Kate Chopin found compelling. To a woman who had survived the illusions that friendship, romance, marriage, or even motherhood would provide lifelong companionship and identity, and who had come to recognize the existential solitude of all human beings, Maupassant's declaration became a kind of credo. Discuss how this credo has shaped Chopin’s novel The Awakening.

3. Chopin scholar Erin E. McDonald, PhD, states, “Past feminist examinations of Kate Chopin's work have focused on the question of whether the heroine's suicide in The Awakening was intended to signify rebellion or defeat, most commonly reaching the conclusion that the author intended to leave this point ambiguous.” Discuss the significance of Pontellier’s final act. Why was her suicide so necessary, or was it? Discuss.

4. Edna Pontellier and Adele Ratignolle share several intimate conversations about Edna‟s relationship with her children. Edna sums up her sense of duty to her children in this way: “I would give up the unessential; I would give up money, I would give life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” (67). What does she mean by this? What is the unessential? What is the essential? Connect this sentiment to a central meaning of the novel.

5. “The Awakening was a scandalous book when it arrived from the turn-of-the-century presses, with a heroine who found her husband dull, married life dreary and confining, and motherhood to be bondage.” Is this an accurate summary for the novel? Explain.

6. Consider the significance that setting plays in this novel: the cottage at Grand Isle, the Pontellier estate in New Orleans, the Pigeon House, Mlle Reisz’s apartment, the beach and ocean, Louisville, etc. How do these various setting locations reflect Edna’s metamorphosis throughout the novel?

7. While many read Chopin’s novel through a feminist lens, they forget that most of the male characters possess many nontraditional “feminine qualities: Leonce does the shopping and attends Janet’s wedding; Robert takes great pleasure in tending to and cooking for Edna; Arobin dons a dusting-cap and cleans and performs housework for Edna. These do not represent the stereotypical, oppressive male components of society as seen in feminist literature. Published in 1899, perhaps the novel should be read through the lens of Dark-romanticism (Chopin was quite familiar with the works of the major romantic figures, and even has Edna read from the works of Emerson). The idea that while the natural world may indeed possess supernatural qualities, these qualities need not be positive or beneficial to the individual. In fact, Chopin’s initial title of the novel was The Solitary Soul. Considering the recurring natural images discuss how The Awakening emulates the themes of Dark Romanticism (consider the impact of Edna’s newly found individualism upon her life).

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