The first assignment we did in Humanities was write a skit based on Walden. We had complete artistic freedom. We could do whatever we wanted as long as it related to Walden in some way (and was school appropriate of course). This led to some really creative skits. For example, one group put Thoreau on trial and we, the audience, had to decide whether he was guilty or not. My group had a really fun one. It was along the lines of a noir crime film where Thoreau was trying to figure out who sabotaged his beans (Thoreau loved his beans). Thoreau and Emerson (think Sherlock and Watson) went around interviewing (interrogating) the suspects: the Canadian, Jeff Bezos, Sewall’s dad, Emerson himself, and finally, Thoreau. It was extremely chaotic, and it is probably hands down one of the best projects I’ve ever done in an English class.
Another fun assignment we did in Humanities was writing our own satire. For this assignment, we were asked to satirize a problem in our life (by satirize I mean use devices like caricature, hyperbole, logical fallacies, and so on to bring attention to a problem and try to bring about change in some way). I teamed up with Timothy Schowalter, and we decided to write a satire about people who choose to remain ignorant. On the surface it looks like we are satirizing people in small towns, but there is a much deeper meaning to our paper. The small town is a metaphor for the mindset of people who choose to remain ignorant. They prefer to stay in their comfort zone, never exposing themselves to new experiences or ideas. We’re trying to call attention to this personality trait in some people because willful ignorance cannot be changed externally. Just as a person chooses to remain ignorant, they must also choose to become open-minded. Through the use of satirical devices such as understatement, reduction, and irony, we tried to get our message across.