ELA 9: Introduction to Literature—Semester B

  • Credit Recovery Enabled
  • Course Length: 18 weeks
  • Course Type: Basic
  • Category:
    • English
    • Literature
    • High School

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Shmoop's ELA 9 course has been granted a-g certification, which means it has met the rigorous iNACOL Standards for Quality Online Courses and will now be honored as part of the requirements for admission into the University of California system.

This course has also been certified by Quality Matters, a trusted quality assurance organization that provides course review services to certify the quality of online and blended courses.


Everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten and the first semester of your freshman year, right?

…Not quite. And no offense to Semester A of ELA 9, but there are miles to go before you sleep, and Shmoop will be your guide. In Semester B, you'll

  • dig deeper into short fiction, especially when comparing it with nonfiction journalism, editorials, and personal essays.
  • get your feet wet with drama and all the glories its unique text structure provides.
  • complete both formal activities and creative projects (dioramas and engrossing self-lead research projects, to name a few) about all things English.

So enjoy our course—or else we're telling our neighbors you're a warlock.

(Don't worry, you'll understand it by the time the semester's over.)

P.S.: ELA 9: Introduction to Literature is a two-semester course. You're looking at Semester B, but you can check out Semester A here.


Unit Breakdown

5 ELA 9: Introduction to Literature—Semester B - Short Stories, or Paginally-Challenged?

Short writing is the name of the game in this unit. We'll be reading authors like Jack London, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, and John Steinbeck, all while tackling the idea of text structure. What are the structural choices authors make that create a huge difference, and how are they implemented in shorter works differently than in novels?

6 ELA 9: Introduction to Literature—Semester B - Mo' Drama Mo' Problems

Don't worry, Shmoopers, you won't be putting on plays—rather, you'll be reading selections from classics like The Crucible and Romeo and Juliet, and learning the virtues of gestures, stage directions, prompt books, costumes, and last but not least, a sassy "aside" to the audience.

7 ELA 9: Introduction to Literature—Semester B - The Real World

Essays, speeches, and news—we might not think of it all as literature, but now that you've got the chops, this unit will allow you to put your analysis skills to the test on these non-fiction genres. By the end of this unit, you'll be lecturing and persuading crowds like the best of 'em, with new rhetorical and slant tricks provided by Shmoop.

8 ELA 9: Introduction to Literature—Semester B - Not My Bones or Blood

You likely haven't heard about the creepy corruption that went down in one of the biggest scientific discoveries ever. And that's okay; in this unit we'll read novel-length nonfiction text The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and let it inspire poetry, blog posts, and even a research paper. All the skills you've acquired over the whole course will come to play in this informational text-lovin,' thematically connected slam dunk of a unit.


Recommended prerequisites:

  • ELA 9: Introduction to Literature—Semester A

  • Sample Lesson - Introduction

    Lesson 5.02: Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to

    A soulful looking husky with piercing blue eyes.
    Don't you eyeball us, young man.
    (Source)

    Have you ever experienced a character's eyes quite in the way London's narrator describes Spot's eyes? We know more about a character that can't even utter a word that we can understand simply by this intense and detailed description.

    Awww. Doggies.

    But seriously: So much can be determined about a person—or dog—simply by looking deeply into their eyes. This is much of why nine out of ten people say that the eyes are the most important feature of a potential mate.

    (Okay, maybe we made that statistic up, but you have heard that "the eyes are the windows to the soul," right? Ole Willie [Shakespeare] really knew his stuff.)

    Seriously though, we might not exactly get the perspective of this story from inside Spot's head, but we can tell a lot about this guy just by the narrator's telling. Looking ahead:  In a future lesson, we'll be getting a house's perspective in a story. But in this lesson, more puppy dog eyes.


    Sample Lesson - Reading

    Reading 5.5.02: Whatchoo Lookin At?

    The narrator in "That Spot" is, well…we don't know. He's some random dude who appears to know a whole lot about what's going on, including what the dog is thinking, seeing, and feeling. At some points, the story is very nearly focalized through the dog.

    Sure, that's a big word. And, to be honest, it's kind of a big concept. Let's break it down. The key words here are narrative voice (or perspective) and focalization. You can think of narrative voice as being the speaker—we covered that earlier, in Semester A. But the person speaking isn't always the person we care about, or the person (or animal, or thing) whose ideas or perspective we're getting.

    Huh? Let's rephrase it this way.

    • If you ask "Who sees?" then you'll find out who the focalizer is.
    • If you ask "What does the focalizer see?" you'll find out what is focalized.

    Put those two together, and you get focalization.

    So what? Stories' perspectives all comes down to the distance between the narrator and the focalizer. Is an omniscient, god-like narrator sitting up high casting some sort of judgment on the poor character, like in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"? Is the narrator sympathetic to the focalizer, like in "The Most Dangerous Game"? Or—as in most of the stories we've read so far—are the narrator and focalizer one and the same? The answer makes a difference in how we think about the story's themes.

    Here's a handy list of questions to ask yourself as you're trying to figure out a story's focalizer:

    • Do we get information from more than one character?
    • Do we have access to what the character is thinking, or to what he's doing, or both?
    • Do we get to look through a character's eyes?
    • Do we watch from outside the action?
    • Are we given access to the inner thoughts of lots of characters, or just one, or both?
    • Do we see the same actions from different characters?
    • Do we see things that a character wouldn't?

    Sample Lesson - Activity

    Activity 5.02: Man Bites Dog

    Now that we proved ourselves masters of setting in the previous lesson, it's time to dive deeper into the whole focalization thing. We know, we know, you wanted a lesson based on collecting pictures of sled dogs—but we've got some narrative analysis to do.

    Step One

    Choose three events in the story. You heard us, any three events; we're not giving qualifiers here. Some examples? When the men start off for the Klondike, when the narrator confronts Steve for whipping Spot, and when Steve drops that Spot off with the narrator.

    Step Two

    Choose one or two quotations for each event in which the narrator explains the narrator's reaction. Yep: We're looking for situations where the narrator remarks on his own judgment. Check out our example here, from when the narrator confronts Steve: "I told Steve he was brutal with the animal, and we had some words—the first we'd ever had." (Line 144) The narrator is totally reflecting on his past. Deep, right?

    Step Three

    Now that you've discussed the focalizer, let's get into the focalized. Choose one or two quotations for each event in which the narrator explains the dog's reaction—you might have to get a bit creative here, but use what you've been given in the text for this one. Check out our example for that same confrontation:


    "That Spot trembled and wobbled and cowered before ever I swung the lash, and with the first bite of it he howled like a lost soul. Next he lay down in the snow. I started the rest of the dogs, and they dragged him along, while I threw the whip into him. He rolled over on his back and bumped along, his four legs waving in the air, himself howling as though he was going through a sausage machine. Steve came back and laughed at me, and I apologized for what I'd said." (Lines 145 – 47)

    Aww—Spot's scared!

    Step Four

    Bet you didn't see this coming: Use a graphic organizer to present the information, in whatever way you think is best. We know you're pros at this by now, but if you're out of ideas, you can borrow this template:


    Plot EventQuote with narrator explaining his reaction (focalizer)Quote with narrator explaining Spot's reaction (focalized)
    The narrator confronts Steve"I told Steve he was brutal with the animal, and we had some words—the first we'd ever had." (Line 144)"That Spot trembled and wobbled and cowered before ever I swung the lash, and with the first bite of it he howled like a lost soul. Next he lay down in the snow. I started the rest of the dogs, and they dragged him along, while I threw the whip into him. He rolled over on his back and bumped along, his four legs waving in the air, himself howling as though he was going through a sausage machine. Steve came back and laughed at me, and I apologized for what I'd said." (Lines 145 – 47)

    Step Five

    When you're finished with your organizer, write a 200 – 250-word analysis of who the narrator is and who Spot is, based on your major plot events and the quotes you pulled.

    (Ya see how plot can be used to establish character, too? Plot = awesomesauce.)

    Our paragraph write-up might include details like:


    The incident of the narrator confronting Steve for whipping Spot tells us about both the narrator and Spot, separately and collectively. The narrator feels as if his old friend is being too harsh on Spot, but when he encounters the dog himself, he finds that Spot would rather be beaten than produce any work. That is some serious stubbornness in a canine.

    Get the gist? Upload your organizer and paragraph (they can be on the same or in two different documents) below when you're done.