B
Background
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 ends with the following stanza and rhyming couplet:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
To understand his overall argument, we need to understand what he means by “this” in the final line. He is referring to the “eternal lines,” written words, “this” poem, which allows his subject to live on, even after physical death. This is the power of Literature! And it extends to other forms of art, of course. However, we have also developed ways to memorialize “ordinary” people, telling their story and publishing it for anyone to see: an obituary.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “obituary” is first recorded in English in 1701, but the original term goes back to the 14th century, “obit” (Latin) and initially meant “death” but quickly came to mean “a record or notice of a person’s death” which has survived for 600 years. Interestingly, obit was also used to mean “a yearly or other regular memorial service” which may explain why we sometimes see obituaries or an “in memoriam” reprinted each year on the anniversary of the death of a loved one. The modern obituary is used to record not just a person’s death, but also their life, the lives they touched, and ways they impacted their community.
Task
Read the full text of August Wilson’s play Fences . https://archive.org/details/WilsonFences/mode/2up I recommend that you also watch the movie-version of the play, since that is the way it is intended to be consumed. The newest movie with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis is excellent.
Choose a character (other than Troy) and write a detailed obituary for them, using the details you know from the play, your own evaluation of what they contribute to the community they inhabit, and what you think their life would look like beyond the conclusion of the play. Take a close look at it.
suggestions
Look over the sample obituaries, below. Pay attention to the key features, style, and tone as a guide to the obituary as a genre of writing.
Collect all the relevant details from your character’s life that are noted in the play. This includes calculating age/year of birth, even if it is not explicitly stated. You can make up birth day/month if it’s not stated. For example, the play starts in 1957 and Troy is 53 which means he was born in 1954.
Consider the ways your character embodies the ideas and/or ideologies of the era and any ways s/he seems like an outlier. Use this to talk about their impact on the community within the play and what they might do next.
Consider the history and literature you have read that bridges that time period to this and imagine the path your character’s life may have taken beyond the end of the play. Consider what you know about them from the play; this is a chance to be creative while maybe applying what you’ve learned from the stories, poems, and speeches we’ve read.
Find a real physical/online publication that you think would be an appropriate outlet to post this character’s obituary. Include their heading (or some version of it) at the top of your paper. Maybe copy/past their logo. You don’t have to actually publish the obituary!
Requirements
Minimum 750 words
Take a close look at the grading rubric to see all the elements I’ll be looking for.
Be sure to include a headline!
ou can include an MLA header or you can put your name in as the reporter.
Sample obituaries:
August Wilson (Links to an external site.)https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/oct/04/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries
Satchel Paige (Links to an external site.) https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0707.html
Jackie Robinson. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/25/archives/jackie-robinson-first-black-in-major-leagues-dies-jackie-robinson.html