Objectives
- Students will evaluate the effect of rhetorical strategies within nonfiction literature.
- Students will discuss how the manipulation of language can alter an author’s purpose and audience.
- Students will use descriptive details and textual evidence to support their written arguments.
Procedures
- The Death Penalty: is the book written as one big appeal against the death penalty? Lets take it to the courts.
- Two groups:
- Yes: Construct an argument that supports the assumption that Capote’s final argument was to draw support against the death penalty. Supply evidence from the text to support your argument including the title, diction, syntax, tone, and figurative language. Also, your group must address the purpose of the fictional ending. The scene when Al Dewey and Susan Kidwell meet in the cemetery never happened. What effect does this detail have on the reader? Why do you think Capote ended his nonfiction book with a fictional event? What was his purpose in ending the book this way?
- No: Construct an argument that negates the assumption that Capote’s final argument was to draw support against the death penalty. Supply evidence from the text to support your argument including the title, diction, syntax, tone, and figurative language. Also, your group must address the purpose of the fictional ending. The scene when Al Dewey and Susan Kidwell meet in the cemetery never happened. What effect does this detail have on the reader? Why do you think Capote ended his nonfiction book with a fictional event? What was his purpose in ending the book this way?
- Google Docs: Write a two-page final reflection of purpose
- Who won the debate in your opinion? Why?
- What do you think Capote’s final purpose was in writing In Cold Blood? Why?
- Supply valid evidence from the text including recognition of the purposes discussed in all four sections.
- Place reflection in AP Essays folder of Google Docs so Ms. Degenhardt can see it.
