The Importance of Latin in the Curriculum
My memories of Latin in high school are less than fond. I remember slouching in my chair, staring blankly at my desk as I tried to remember the form of the word agricola (farmer) in the ablative plural. Much of the class consisted of mundane activities like this. We translated endless Bible passages from Latin, translated what seemed like the entire body of Greek mythological literature, and read hundreds of lines from The Aneid, The Odyssey, and The Iliad. I signed up for Latin because I was considering going into medicine, and I had heard that doctors need to know Latin. As high school progressed, though, a medical career seemed less and less likely so it appeared I had no real use for Latin, except that I knew the meaning of phrases like carpe diem and semper ubi sub ubi (always wear underwear). When someone would ask me why I took Latin, I would either mumble something about how Latin is the foundation on which all modern languages are based, or I would laugh and agree with them that it was a waste of my time, and that it’s a dead language.
And it is a dead language, at least in spoken form. Regardless of what Dan Quayle thinks, Latin is not the official language of Latin America. Latin has dropped from being the language spoken by almost the entire known Western world to an obscure language known mainly in scholarly circles. After the fall of the Roman Empire to Germanic invaders in 476 AD, Latin began a shift from being the common tongue to a language used mainly by upper-class and learned people (Hammond 243). Because the Church used Latin extensively, it became, along with ancient Greek, “the sheath in which the sword of the Spirit is lodged,” as Martin Luth...
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...s managed to escape from the wrath of the approaching Greek army.
Works Cited
“Amo, Amas, Latin – How Schools Are Using the Ancient Tongue to Teach English.” Time 11 December, 2000: 61.
Culham, Phyllis, and Edmunds, Lowell, ed. Classics: A Discipline and Profession In Crisis. Lanham: University Press of America, 1989.
Davis, Sally. Latin in American Schools: Teaching the Ancient World. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991.
Hammond, Mason. Latin: A Historical and Linguistic Handbook. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Kopff, E. Christian. The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition. Wilmington: ISI Books, 1999.
Smith, Sharwood. On Teaching Classics. London, Henley and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.
Waquet, Francoise. Latin Or The Empire Of A Sign. Trans. John Howe. New York: Verso, 2001
Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path' is a story that emphasizes the natural symbolism of the surroundings. As the story begins, we are introduced to our main character, Phoenix Jackson; she is described as a small, old Negro woman. I believe that the name Eudora Welty gives our main character is very symbolic. The legend of the Phoenix is about a fabled sacred bird of ancient Egyptians. The bird is said to come out of Arabia every 500 years to Heliopolis, where it burned itself on the altar and rose again from its ashes, young and beautiful. Phoenix, the women in the story, represents the myth of the bird because she is described as being elderly and near the end of her life. Phoenix can hardly walk and uses a cane made of an old umbrella to aid her. Her skin is described as old and wrinkly, but yet with a golden color running beneath it 'Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath?(55). Her skin tone represents the golden feathers of the Phoenix and her grandson represents the next Phoenix that will be given life when she dies. The trip to the city to get the medicine represents the mythological trip that the Phoenix takes to the sun to die. Most likely this journey along a worn path through the woods, will be one of her last.
Keys, Marilynn. "'A Worn Path': The Way of Dispossession." Studies in Short Fiction 16 (Fall 1979): 354-56.
The title itself, “A Worn Path,” referred to life as the journey itself through a worn path. Obstacles that Phoenix Jackson faced shows the real-life hardships, lies, and aggressions, that minorities face. Despite its simplicity, Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” does show us some of the greatest of life’s reality.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, transports the reader into the minds of veterans of the Vietnam conflict. The Vietnam War dramatically changed Tim O’Brien and his comrades, making their return home a turbulent and difficult transition. The study, titled, The War at Home: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Post-War Household Stability, uses the draft lottery as a “natural experiment” on the general male population. The purpose of the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) study is to determine the psychological effects of the Vietnam War on its veterans. In order to do this, they tested four conditions, marital stability, residential stability, housing tenure, and extended family living. However, it neglects the internal ramifications of war that a soldier grapples with in determining whether they are “normal” in their post-war lives. Thus, effects such as alienation from society, insecurity in their daily lives, and the mental trauma that persist decades after the war are not factored in. After reading the NBER study, it is evident that Tim O’Brien intentionally draws the reader to the post-war psychological effects of Vietnam that may not manifest themselves externally. He does this to highlight that while the Vietnam war is over, the war is still raging in the minds of those involved decades later, and will not dissipate until they can expunge themselves of the guilt and blame they feel from the war, and their actions or inaction therein.
The Vietnam War holds a different meaning for people both young and old. The longest known US war lasted a solid eighteen years. Some would describe the war as a puzzle since not everyone was for the war. At the age of 21 Tim O’Brien was drafted for the Vietnam War. He states that The Things They Carried is a way for readers to feel what he felt during the war. The key experiences and emotions that he wants the reader to feel are frustration, not being able to find your enemy, having soldiers all around you losing their life, and being upset about being in a war in which you yourself do not believe in. Now forty years later after the Vietnam War first started O’Brien is left with face-less responsibility and face-less grief. He says it best himself “You bring war back home with you. The things you carried in the war are also things you brought back home.”
Gegenheimer, Albert Frank. “Language in Two Recent Imaginary Voyages.” Modern Language Association 61.2 (2009): 601-603. Print.
Moss, Joyce, and George Wilson. Literature and Its Times. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Print.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. DiYanni Robert. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. 38-41. Print.
“A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty is a short fictional story first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1941. Welty was an American short-story writer and novelist. Welty was a photographer before she started writing so her stories were as detailed as her photographs. Some reccurring themes she used in her literary pieces were social prejudice, isolation, and southern living. This short story includes these common themes she favored throughout her works. There are multiple themes in this fictional story. Some themes presented in this story include racism, family, and responsibility. The most prominent theme is the age and perseverance, because the protagonist is predisposed to failure given her age but her tenacity keeps her going.
Bloom, Harold. Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. New York City: Chelsea House, 1986. Print.
Mujica, Mauro E. “Why the U.S Needs an Official Language.” Worldandi.com. 2003. Web. 31 July 2011. .
Ioannides, Panos. “Gregory.” Across Cultures: a Reader for Writers. 3rd ed. Eds. Sheena Gillespie, and Robert Singleton. Needham Heights, NJ: Allyn and Bacon, 1996. 339-403.
Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour is a brilliant short story of irony and emotion. The story demonstrates conflicts that take us through the character’s emotions as she finds out about the death of her husband. Without the well written series of conflicts and events this story, the reader would not understand the depth of Mrs. Mallard’s inner conflict and the resolution at the end of the story. The conflict allows us to follow the emotions and unfold the irony of the situation in “The Story of an Hour.”
Let’s go back to John Stuart Mills, he was a gifted individual, his father spent a lot of time educating him and teaching him Greek and Latin. By the age of 14 he mastered both Greek and Latin. In his tee...
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...