ENGLISH 10

WEEK 5- THIRD QUARTER

Name:____________________________________ Grade & Section:___________
Teacher:__________________________________ Date: ____________________

Learning Competencies (Essential Competencies)

Critique a literary selection based on the following approaches:

structuralist/formalist

Objectives

1. Understand the meaning of Structuralist/Formalist Approach;

2. Recognize the use of Structuralist/Formalist Approach;
3. Comprehend a story “A Happy Man” by Anton Chekhov; and
4. Create an analysis on the poem “The Road Not Taken” based on
Structuralist/Formalist Approach.

Let’s Understand (Study the Concept)

Motive question: How do you want to be judged by other people? By the way you are now?
Or your past behavior? Explain briefly.

You absolutely answer that you want to be judged by other people by the way you are now,
basically that is the concept of structuralist/formalist approach.

Structuralism and formalism are two literary theories or literary criticisms that focus on the
structure of a particular text. Structuralism assumes that every text has a universal, underlying
structure. Formalism analyses the structure of a text without focusing on the external factors
such as authorship, social and cultural influence. However, structuralism connects the work of
a particular author with works of similar structures whereas formalism only analyses one work
at a time. This is the key difference between structuralism and formalism. Formalism is the origin
of structuralism.

Formalism
● a literary theory primarily concerned with the form and structure of a text
● does not take any outside influence into consideration
● only considers the components of the text

Brief History of Formalism

● also called Russian formalism or New Criticism
● emerged in Russia in the 1910s
● began when the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the Society for the Study of Poetic
Language were established in 1915 and 1916, respectively
● literariness - the feature that distinguishes literature from other texts, and it is made of
artistic devices
● defamiliarization - makes familiar and ordinary things unfamiliar and strange through
language

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 The Formalist Approach
● requires the reader to consider how the elements of a certain text work together to
develop a certain effect
● posits that all the elements necessary for understanding a piece of literary work are
found in the work itself
● requires the reader to be aware of literary text elements

Elements of Narration
● Narratives may come in the form of a short story, play, poem, essay, anecdote, and
many others.
● It is important to consider the various elements of narration, namely, the plot,
characters, point of view, conflict, theme, setting, and tone.
● Knowledge of these elements will help make the reading of stories more meaningful
and fulfilling.

The Role of Literary Devices

● Short story writers often use literary devices or special techniques that make their work
more flavorful and interesting to read.
● Those devices include symbolism and imagery.
● We need to learn about those literary devices so that we could better decode and
speak the “secret language” of short-story writers.

How to use Formalist Approach in Reading Literature

1. Identify the various elements present in the text.
2. Determine how the elements work together in developing the theme.
3. Assess the overall artistic value of the text. At this point, ask yourself the following
questions:
a. Does the text leave a strong impression on me? Why or why not?
b. What elements in the text worked or did not work? Why?

Let’s Apply (FIX ME!)

Arrange the jumbled letters to form words and phrases that describes
structuralist/formalist critical approach.
1. MROF FO ETH XTET 6. NRRAAIONT
2. YSMOLBS 7. PIOTN FO WIEV
3. RENOGI UTAORH 8. LITRAYRE EVIDSEC
4. NGUGELAA 9. TRSCURETU
5. SLTYE 10. ESLOC EADNGIR

Let’s Analyze

Directions: Read and study the given literature. Try to have an analysis of it by doing this.

1. Encircle the sentence that dictates that this text is a first-person point of view.

2. Underline the independent clauses that you will find in the text. ____________

3. Box the imagery and metaphors used in the text.

4. Put inside the star strange/unknown vocabulary in the text.

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 THE HANDMAID’S TALE BY MARGARET ATWOOD
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood,
with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops
for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone. A balcony ran around
the room, for the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent
scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the
watching girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in miniskirts, then pants, then in one
earring, spiky, green-streaked hair. Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a
palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail,
garlands made of tissue-paper flowers, cardboard devils, revolving ball of mirrors, powdering
the dancers with a snow of light.
(WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS TEXT? THINK OF THE AESTHETICS, NARRATION, FORM, IMAGERY, AND
LANGUAGE) Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuS4j66x96E

Let’s Try (Evaluation)

Read the short story "A Happy Man" by Anton Chekhov and answer the following questions:

1. What is the primary conflict the main character faces in the story? How does he initially
react to it?
2. How does Ivan Alexyevitch foreshadow the crisis he faces at the end of the story?
Pinpoint specific lines to support your answer.
3. Which literary elements and devices add to the comical tone of the short story?
4. How does the story reinforce the idea that creating your own happiness can be
good for you? On the other hand, how does it show that creating your own
happiness isn’t always effective?
5. How does Pyotr Petrovitch argue against being the creator of your own happiness,
and how is he proven correct?
A Happy Man
By: Anton Checkhov

The passenger train is just starting from Bologoe, the junction on the Petersburg-Moscow line.
In a second-class smoking compartment five passengers sit dozing, shrouded in the twilight of
the carriage. They had just had a meal, and now, snugly ensconced in their seats, they are
trying to go to sleep. Stillness.
The door opens and in there walks a tall, lanky figure straight as a poker, with a ginger-
coloured hat and a smart overcoat, wonderfully suggestive of a journalist in Jules Verne or on
the comic stage.
The figure stands still in the middle of the compartment for a long while, breathing heavily,
screwing up his eyes and peering at the seats.
"No, wrong again!" he mutters. "What the deuce! It's positively revolting! No, the wrong one
again!"
One of the passengers stares at the figure and utters a shout of joy:
"Ivan Alexyevitch! what brings you here? Is it you?"
The poker-like gentleman starts, stares blankly at the passenger, and recognizing him claps
his hands with delight.
"Ha! Pyotr Petrovitch," he says. "How many summers, how many winters! I didn't know you
were in this train."
"How are you getting on?"
"I am all right; the only thing is, my dear fellow, I've lost my compartment and I simply can't
find it. What an idiot I am! I ought to be thrashed!"
The poker-like gentleman sways a little unsteadily and sniggers.
"Queer things do happen!" he continues. "I stepped out just after the second bell to get a
glass of brandy. I got it, of course. Well, I thought, since it's a long way to the next station, it

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would be as well to have a second glass. While I was thinking about it and drinking it the third
bell rang. I ran like mad and jumped into the first carriage. I am an idiot! I am the son of a
hen!"
"But you seem in very good spirits," observes Pyotr Petrovitch. "Come and sit down! There's
room and a welcome."
"No, no. . . . I'm off to look for my carriage. Good-bye!"
"You'll fall between the carriages in the dark if you don't look out! Sit down, and when we get
to a station, you'll find your own compartment. Sit down!"

Ivan Alexyevitch heaves a sigh and irresolutely sits down facing Pyotr Petrovitch. He is visibly
excited, and fidgets as though he were sitting on thorns.
"Where are you travelling to?" Pyotr Petrovitch enquires.
"I? Into space. There is such a turmoil in my head that I couldn't tell where I am going myself. I
go where fate takes me. Ha-ha! My dear fellow, have you ever seen a happy fool? No? Well,
then, look at one. You behold the happiest of mortals! Yes! Don't you see something from my
face?"
"Well, one can see you're a bit . . . a tiny bit so-so."
"I dare say I look awfully stupid just now. Ach! it's a pity I haven't a looking-glass, I should like
to look at my counting-house. My dear fellow, I feel I am turning into an idiot, honour bright.
Ha-ha! Would you believe it, I'm on my honeymoon? Am I not the son of a hen?"
"You? Do you mean to say you are married?"
"To-day, my dear boy. We came away straight after the wedding."

Congratulations and the usual questions follow. "Well, you are a fellow!" laughs Pyotr
Petrovitch. "That's why you are rigged out such a dandy."
"Yes, indeed. To complete the illusion, I've even sprinkled myself with scent. I am over my ears
in vanity! No care, no thought, nothing but a sensation of something or other . . . deuce
knows what to call it . . . beatitude or something? I've never felt so grand in my life!"
Ivan Alexyevitch shuts his eyes and waggles his head.

"I'm revoltingly happy," he says. "Just think; in a minute I shall go to my compartment. There
on the seat near the window is sitting a being who is, so to say, devoted to you with her
whole being. A little blonde with a little nose . . . little fingers. My little darling! My angel! My
little poppet! Phylloxera of my soul! And her little foot! Good God! A little foot does not like
our beetle-crushers, but something miniature, fairylike, allegorical. I could pick it up and eat
it, that little foot! Oh, but you don't understand! You're a materialist, of course, you begin
analyzing at once, and one thing and another. You are cold-hearted bachelors, that's what
you are! When you get married, you'll think of me. 'Where's Ivan Alexyevitch now?' you'll say.
Yes, so in a minute I'm going to my compartment. There she is waiting for me with impatience
. . . in joyful anticipation of my appearance. She'll have a smile to greet me. I sit down beside
her and take her chin with my two fingers.

Ivan Alexyevitch waggles his head and goes off into a chuckle of delight.
"Then I lay my noddle on her shoulder and put my arm round her waist. Around all is silence,
you know . . . poetic twilight. I could embrace the whole world at such a moment. Pyotr
Petrovitch, allow me to embrace you!"
"Delighted, I'm sure." The two friends embrace while the passengers laugh in chorus. And the
happy bridegroom continues:
"And to complete the idiocy, or, as the novelists say, to complete the illusion, one goes to the
refreshment-room and tosses off two or three glasses. And then something happens in your
head and your heart, finer than you can read of in a fairy tale. I am a man of no importance,
but I feel as though I were limitless: I embrace the whole world!"

The passengers, looking at the tipsy and blissful bridegroom, are infected by his cheerfulness
and no longer feel sleepy. Instead of one listener, Ivan Alexyevitch has now an audience of
five. He wriggles and splutters, gesticulates, and prattles on without ceasing. He laughs and

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they all laugh.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, don't think so much! Damn all this analysis! If you want a drink, drink,
no need to philosophize as to whether it's bad for you or not. Damn all this philosophy and
psychology!"
The guard walks through the compartment.
"My dear fellow," the bridegroom addresses him, "when you pass through the carriage No.
209 look out for a lady in a grey hat with a white bird and tell her I'm here!"
"Yes, sir. Only there isn't a No. 209 in this train; there's 219!"
"Well, 219, then! It's all the same. Tell that lady, then, that her husband is all right!"
Ivan Alexyevitch suddenly clutches his head and groans:
"Husband. Lady. All in a minute! Husband. Ha-ha! I am a puppy that needs thrashing, and
here I am a husband! Ach, idiot! But think of her! Yesterday she was a little girl, a midget. It’s
simply incredible!"

"Nowadays it really seems strange to see a happy man," observes one of the passengers;
"one as soon expects to see a white elephant."
"Yes, and whose fault, is it?" says Ivan Alexyevitch, stretching his long legs and thrusting out his
feet with their very pointed toes. "If you are not happy it's your own fault! Yes, what else do
you suppose it is? Man is the creator of his own happiness. If you want to be happy you will
be, but you don't want to be! You obstinately turn away from happiness."
"Why, what next! How do you make that out?"
"Very simply. Nature has ordained that at a certain stage in his life man should love. When
that time comes you should love like a house on fire, but you won't heed the dictates of
nature, you keep waiting for something. What's more, it's laid down by law that the normal
man should enter upon matrimony. There's no happiness without marriage. When the
propitious moment has come, get married. There's no use in shilly-shallying. But you don't get
married, you keep waiting for something! Then the Scriptures tell us that 'wine maketh glad
the heart of man.' . . . If you feel happy and you want to feel better still, then go to the
refreshment bar and have a drink. The great thing is not to be too clever, but to follow the
beaten track! The beaten track is a grand thing!"
"You say that man is the creator of his own happiness. How the devil is he the creator of it
when a toothache or an ill-natured mother-in-law is enough to scatter his happiness to the
winds? Everything depends on chance. If we had an accident at this moment, you'd sing a
different tune."

"Stuff and nonsense!" retorts the bridegroom. "Railway accidents only happen once a year.
I'm not afraid of an accident, for there is no reason for one. Accidents are exceptional!
Confound them! I don't want to talk of them! Oh, I believe we're stopping at a station."
"Where are you going now?" asks Pyotr Petrovitch. "To Moscow or somewhere further south?
"Why, bless you! How could I go somewhere further south, when I'm on my way to the north?"
"But Moscow isn't in the north."
"I know that, but we're on our way to Petersburg," says Ivan Alexyevitch.
"We are going to Moscow, mercy on us!"
"To Moscow? What do you mean?" says the bridegroom in amazement.
"It's queer. For what station did you take your ticket?"
"For Petersburg."
"In that case I congratulate you. You've got into the wrong train."
There follows a minute of silence. The bridegroom gets up and looks blankly round the
company.
"Yes, yes," Pyotr Petrovitch explains. "You must have jumped into the wrong train at Bologoe.
After your glass of brandy, you succeeded in getting into the down-train."
Ivan Alexyevitch turns pale, clutches his head, and begins pacing rapidly about the
carriage.
"Ach, idiot that I am!" he says in indignation. "Scoundrel! The devil devours me! Whatever am I
to do now? Why, my wife is in that train! She's there all alone, expecting me, consumed by
anxiety. Ach, I'm a motley fool!"

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The bridegroom falls on the seat and writhes as though someone had trodden on his corns.
"I am un-unhappy man!" he moans. "What am I to do, what am I to do?"
"There, there!" the passengers try to console him. "It's all right. You must telegraph to your wife
and try to change into the Petersburg express. In that way you'll overtake her."
"The Petersburg express!" weeps the bridegroom, the creator of his own happiness. "And how
am I to get a ticket for the Petersburg express? All my money is with my wife."
The passengers, laughing and whispering together, make a collection and furnish the happy
man with funds.

Let’s Create

Goal To create an analysis on the poem “The Road Not Taken” based
on Formalist/Structuralist Approach.
Role literary critic
Audience family members and teacher
Situation You have read on a newspaper that DepEd-Paranaque needs a
literary critic for the module development. The office requires the
applicants to analyze the poem “The Road Not Taken” by
Robert Frost and create an analysis based on Formalist/
Structuralist Approach. You will enjoy the benefits of a literary
critic once hired. Write your analysis on a sheet of paper.
Product/Performance poem analysis

Standards The output will be graded through the provided rubric.

Road Not Taken

By: Robert Frost
(1874-1963)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.