All seniors in all English classes are required to write the college essay. Now, I know that some of you seniors are not planning on entering college next year, and I know that right now some of you are juniors. However, all of you are going to write a college application essay. Those of you who do not plan on entering college will have gone through the process so that if you ever decide to apply to college you will understand the specifics of the college essay writing process. If you are a junior, I will not have you write a new essay next year. You will simply work to tweak the essay you wrote this year to have one for the college of your choice.
Today I passed out the essay topics you all have to choose from for this essay. There are seven or eight choices; we went over all of them in class and you had the opportunity to ask clarifying questions and star or circle a couple that are possibilities for you. I am excited to read your essays, but before then I'll content myself in helping you all through the writing process. I hope to have these essays completed before we move on to Christmas break. Hm. We'll see.
After we went over college essays, we moved on to Act IV in The Crucible. This is the final act of the play, so much is being decided. At this point, most of the accused are in jail and some of the judges and clergy are trying to get the innocent to confess to witchcraft in the hopes that they will not be hanged. We witnessed a tender exchange between the Proctors; it seems that Elizabeth is more and more pregnant and that John is still refusing to confess to witchcraft even though he has been brutally tortured.
We also learn that Giles Corey has not survived this unfortunate episode in American history. Unlike the other accused witches who were hung, Corey was pressed to death. He was asked with each stone whether or not he would confess to witchcraft and with each he simply asked for "more weight". Sad. On the bright side, Samuel Parris seems to want to help the accused. He tries unsuccessfully to get John Proctor to confess.
We did not quite finish this play, but we will next class. We'll have to wait to see how this play ends and who else suffers as a result of these cruel girls.
