Lesson Plan

Pathetic Fallacy

Target audience:

Freshman international students who want to know how to write diaries and other

narratives in Penn State University. The students may have intermediate or high

proficiency in oral English, but have difficulty with expressing themselves in writing.

Class size: 20 students

Class Time: 90 minutes

Materials needed:

! Five printed pictures of natural views.

! PowerPoint about pathetic fallacy.

! Excerpts from Great Expectations, Bleak House, Frankenstein, The Strange Case

of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Wuthering Heights.

! A Youtube video about pathetic fallacy.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saiZeLwJn_Q)

Goals of Lesson:

! Students will be able to use pathetic fallacy as a technic in their narratives.

Objectives:

! Students will understand the concept of pathetic fallacy.

! Students will be able to recognize the usage of pathetic fallacy.

! Students will be able to connect feelings to nature.

! Students will be able to appreciate the beauty of pathetic fallacies in literatures.

! Students will be able to produce writings with pathetic fallacy.

Orientation (15 minutes)

The class will be divided into five groups with four students in each group. Every

group will then receive a picture of a type of natural scenery. The five pictures that I

selected include: a rainy day, a sunrise, a reflective lake, a cloudy day, and a full moon.

(Please see the pictures in the appendix.) Students will be asked to discuss about what

kind of emotions their pictures conjure. For example, scared, sad, excited, tranquil, etc.

After discussion, one student of each group will present their picture and feelings in front

of the class.

! When breaking students up into five groups, I will make sure that they sit with

classmates they do not usually talk to. This helps students to work with and to

learn from different people. It also ensures the efficiency of this activity, because

students tend to take it more seriously when they work with someone they are not

familiar with.

! The purpose of this activity is to relate their emotions to the sceneries, which is

the basic of pathetic fallacy. By saying simple sentences like “rainy days give me

a sad feeling”, they will actually be using the technic without knowing the term.

! The same pictures will be recycled to use in a later class to describe sceneries and

settings.

Presentation (20 minutes)

After students are able to attach emotions to inanimate objects, I am going to present

the literary term of this action. The PowerPoint I will use includes the definition, the

explanation and the origin of pathetic fallacy. (Please see the PowerPoint in the

appendix.)

! Knowing the origin of this technic may not be necessary in a writing course.

However, when the students see where the words “pathetic” derived from and

what “fallacy” means here, they will have a more accurate understanding of

how to use this technic.

Engagement (40minutes)

Students will still work in the same groups for this activity. Five pieces of literature

will be passed out to five different groups. They are going to work together and circle out

the words or sentences that contain pathetic fallacies. After 20 minutes of discussion, I

am going ask them to explain what mood the pathetic fallacies in their passages create.

(Please see the passages in the handout.)

! Learning the device in authentic discourse helps them to understand how to

use it appropriately. It also gives them a chance to accumulate more language

to describe emotions.

! All of the five pieces are excerpts of masterpieces. I am integrating the

objective that “student will have a better understanding of narrative literature”

into “students will acquire the technic and strategies of narratives”. While

they are trying to find pathetic fallacies, they are also appreciating the articles.

Plus, I will show the covers of the five masterpieces on the PowerPoint when

they present they findings. Seeing the picture more or less motivates them to

read more.

Evaluation (15 minutes)

For evaluation, students will still stay in the same groups. They are going to work

together to write three short descriptions of rain. However, the three descriptions should

reflect different emotions of characters, which they will pick from the following five

items:

a) A woman is dancing in the rain.

b) A man is catching a bus in the rain.

c) A girl is crying in the rain.

d) A man is standing alone in the rain.

e) A couple is kissing in the rain.

! If the students gain the technic of pathetic fallacy, they will be able to describe the

same natural setting but reflect different emotions.

Expansion

Students are going to write/revise their one of their journals with the use of pathetic

fallacy.

Appendix

! Five printed pictures of natural views.

! PowerPoint about pathetic fallacy.

! Handouts of excerpts

TEAM1

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of

my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window

for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass,

like a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.

On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy.

TEAM2

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes

of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine,

for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better;

splashed to their very blinkers... Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among

green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of

shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city ... people on the bridges

peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they

were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

TEAM3

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

the clouds swept across [the moon] swifter than the flight of the vulture and dimmed

her rays, while the lake reflected the scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by

the restless waves...

The storm appeared to approach rapidly... the heavens were clouded, and I soon felt

the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased...the darkness

and storm increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my

head. ...vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it

appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant everything seemed of a pitchy

darkness...

This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits...[then] I perceived in the gloom a

figure... A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me;

its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to

humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon...

TEAM4

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886

The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered

like carbuncles [jewels]; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the

procession of the town's life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as

of a mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight.

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great

chocolate-coloured pall [funeral cloth] lowered over heaven, but the wind was

continually charging and routing [beating back] these embattled vapours; so that as the

cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and

hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would

be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for

a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would

glance in between the swirling wreaths... like a district of some city in a nightmare. The

thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye.

TEAM5

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, 1847

There was no sound through the house but the moaning wind, which shook the

windows every now and then. On the morrow one could hardly imagine that there had

been three weeks of summer: the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts;

the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten [struck down] and

blackened.

About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rattling over the Heights in full

fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree

off at the corner of the building: a huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a

portion of the east chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the

kitchen-fire. We thought a bolt had fallen in the middle of us.