Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Today I showed you a cool little video clip I found on the Lonely Planet website about Thailand that made some interesting connections to the novel. It's a short, amateur travel video of a guy reciting a poem he wrote about Thailand over a montage of images from his travels across the country. View the video by clicking here. Pay attention to when the narrator says that he's not sure "if it was one moment or one month" (losing a sense of time and reality, like Richard...) and when he calls himself Peter Pan and that "this place is my NeverNever Land" (a paradise, a fantasy, a utopia if you will...like the beach community that Richard is a part of.) This little video also gives you some good visual representation of the young, backpacker lifestyle, as well as some scenes of areas in Thailand that are described in the novel.

Next, to prepare for a group activity that you will do on Friday, I gave you some guided questions on the reading and in small groups of three you went over the reading together, and each group then shared out their ideas with the rest of the class. This was followed by a quick debrief and about 20 minutes of independent reading time. The rest of the period was spent finishing up the video about Lord of the Flies (that we started last week) and discussing some of the main ideas the video brought up as well as possible connections to The Beach.

For homework, read to page 180 by Friday! Pay attention to the following:

•P.169…Civilization, or “the world” beyond their beach feels very foreign to them…What is significant about Richard looking at his reflection?
•P.174 – Richard’s interaction with the Australians…how does it make him feel? Why?
•P.175 – What is Hadrin’s “fate” as Richard describes it? Recall his previous description of the difference between tourists and travelers…
•P.178 – foreshadowing…Zeph and Sammy (“the Yanks”) What does Jed say that could possibly be important later on?