Mr. Phelan (Revised from Assignment by Mr. Reeves)

English 3 Honors

Mr. Phelan (Revised from assignment by Mr. Reeves)

The Canterbury Tales

Post-Apocalyptic Canterbury Tales Project

Directions:

The end of days has arrived. The dead have risen from their graves and roam the earth. They are tireless, relentless, and have an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

Man's best chance at continued survival is through cooperation. In the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, groups of survivors have banded together to help each other navigate this dangerous new landscape.

Your assignment (With 1-2 Partners!): Imagine one such group of survivors. Just like in The Canterbury Tales, the group consists of people from different backgrounds and occupations traveling together to a rumored safe zone somewhere in the mountains of New Jersey. To pass the time on the trek, the survivors have agreed to a storytelling contest. The prize: the last Twinkie on Earth.

The rules are simple. Each survivor tells one story in any genre he chooses. Each story, however, must have some kind of moral or teach some kind of lesson about survival in a post-apocalyptic world infested with the walking dead.

There are 4 parts to this assignment:

1. Choose and develop an apocalypse survivor. Describe your survivor's occupation, personality, clothing and equipment. You may make a satirical commentary on your character or take your character more seriously. Your Prologue Introduction section must be written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter in the style of Chaucer.

Minimum 16 lines

2. Create an illustration of your survivor. You may use or adapt the template that I've provided or you may create your own. Remember, neatness and creativity count. A black and white line drawing in pencil is unlikely to score you many points. Use color.

3. Write your character's story (Should include a prologue to your character's story as well as the story itself.) Think about what type of story the character you've created would tell, and what type of lesson that character would have to teach about surviving the zombie outbreak. This portion of your story does not have to be in rhyming couplets but can be...

Minimum 600 words.

4. Participate in the storytelling contest. Participants will share their tales and fellow classmates will judge the best story. Treats will be awarded.

5. Extra Credit (up to 7.5 points): Enhance your presentation or writing in any creative way. Write the entirety of your tale in rhyming couplets, make/include a video out of or in your story, include an original song, go above and beyond in the artistic component...any way to go the extra mile...

Due Date______

Scoring Rubric:

Part 1: Character Description/General Prologue

Part 2: Character Illustration

Part 3:Character's Story

Final Score

The English Teacher by D. Reeves

There was an English teacher among us, he called himself Reeves.

He dressed like an old professor: a corduroy blazer, elbow patches on the sleeves.

His blazer and khakis and blue button-down shirt

Were covered in blood and gore and dirt,

And hewore a red necktie as a band around his head

To distinguish himself from the ranks of the dead.

He often spoke in verse, in meter, in rhyme

And corrected our grammar like we were committing crimes

Against the English language that he held so dear

Or against the old writers that he seemed to revere.

They say that the pen is mightier than the sword,

But a pen is quite useless against a raging undead horde,

So from his belt hung a hatchet, and slung across his back

He carried a blood-smearedLouisville Slugger bat.

Not quick to anger or prone to fits of choler,

He was quite deadly when threatened, this warrior scholar.

If ever afraid, he certainly did not show it.

He was a true apocalypse poet.

The English Teacher’s Prologue by D. Reeves

If you ask me, they were zombies long before the outbreak. The constant admonitions against wearing headphones in class and the ever-losing battle against cell phone usage during school hours were beginning to wear me out, but I continued my quixotic crusade against the electronic demons that so plagued our youth.

Many had become so engrossed by the universe of data and pixels at their fingertips that the real universe, the one that actually mattered, had become an afterthought. I would watch them in the cafeteria when I had lunch duty. At any given table there were seven or eight teenagers sitting together yet alone, each with his nose buried in an iPhone, more focused on the world in his hand than the world around him. Social network interaction had replaced social interaction.

It was no wonder, then, that in the early days of the outbreak, our schools and shopping malls were hit the hardest. The techno-zombies were easy prey for the undead variety.

I remember it well, the day when the world as we knew it ended. It is a memory that I’ll carry for the rest of my days. We were reading Hamlet, or at least I was. To be or not to be, that was the question, and sadly, many of my students had already answered in the negative. They just weren’t aware of it yet.

The English Teacher’s Tale

There was once a shining city, high on a mountaintop. In this city was a library that housed all of the knowledge recorded in human history. Mathematics, Science, Art, Literature, it was all stored there, thousands of years worth. Pilgrims came from miles around to visit the shining city and study at the library, for it contained the answer to every question that had ever been asked.

The library was tended by a staff of gray-bearded men who spoke only in whispers. They took their jobs as guardians of all recorded knowledge very seriously, and were held in the highest regard by those who came to study at the library. There eventually came a time, however, when it was decided that there had to be a more efficient method of obtaining knowledge than relying solely on the library keepers, so, despite the protests of the gray-beards, some of the greatest thinkers of the day set to work on the task of digitizing all of the information stored in the great library.

A new computer program was written, an artificial intelligence designed to be a keeper of the new virtual library. Its developers named it ATHENA after the ancient goddess of wisdom, and developed a holographic avatar for it that could be projected directly into the homes of all of the people of the city. If one had a question, it was no longer necessary to make the journey to the great library. He could simply ask ATHENA and be given the answer.

Over time, people began to rely on ATHENA for almost everything. There was no longer a need to think about a problem when the answer could be so easily attained by asking the holographic library keeper. Life had become easy, people no longer had to think for themselves. They drifted into complacency.

Many years passed. The old library fell into disrepair, and the gray-beards fought a valiant struggle against mold and dust and time in an effort to preserve the old books that had become relics of a forgotten age when reading was a valued skill and knowledge had to be actively sought.

Meanwhile, in order to create a more engaging experience with the holographic library keeper, the programmersin charge of its maintenance asked it how they might improve its code. ATHENA offered suggestions which were quickly implemented, and eventually, the process of interacting with ATHENA had become so much like interacting with an actual person, that its users began to think of ATHENA as a her rather than an it. The more realistic she became, however, the slower and more deliberate her answers to questions became. Her answers were sometimes cryptic or unclear, and the people who had relied on her for so long were suddenly left in the dark. She had taken on a life of her own, and only seemed to answer questions when she wanted to. When the programmers asked her how she could be fixed. She replied “One does not ‘fix’ a goddess.”

The programmers who had for so long relied on ATHENA to self diagnose and tell them how to best maintain her, were at a loss for what to do. The coding had become so complex that without ATHENA’s help, they had no idea how to proceed.

ATHENA’s goddess complex intensified. After a time, wanting to be the sole keeper of all knowledge, she refused to offer any answers without the sacrifice of one of the tomes from the old library. The people, who had abandoned the art of reading and had become nearly helpless without ATHENA’s guidance, were more than willing to comply. The gray-beards resisted and were arrested. The old library was emptied of its books. The books were burned as an offering to ATHENA. The old library was razed.

The destruction of the old library and its contents satisfied ATHENA for a short time, but eventually she wanted more. The people were at her mercy. Helpless to accomplish anything on their own, they were more than happy to accommodate her increasingly steep demands. The old library keepers were offered to her in sacrifice. She accepted, but still it was not enough. A community leader suggested that ATHENA needed to be shut down. Though some agreed, no one knew how to do it, and she would not tell them. The community leader was sacrificed for his insolence. More human sacrifices followed. The population dwindled. Darkness descended on the shining city, eventually leaving the mad goddess its sole inhabitant.