Assignment: My Literary Annotations of the Book of Mormon

I'm asking my students to analyze the Book of Mormon as literature. For Wednesday, 9/16/19, I'd like each student to annotate the five pages he/she has selected, and then to take a photo of and post the image of one or more pages of that annotation, as I model below.

In preparation, they may wish to review my Primer on Formal Literary Analysis, but the goal is to demonstrate that they can do more than identify themes, or look at the book purely in personal religious ways.

Along with the image or images of their annotations, they should include a capsule explanation or reflection on their experience in doing this annotation, and they should respond to one another's posts, reviewing the other students' approaches to annotation and interpretation.

See my model post below:


Gideon's Literary Annotations of the Book of Mormon

In my annotations I focused on the characters who were important in the current story, on settings and symbolism (like wilderness and travel through it), and specifically on the use of pronouns ("I"; "me" etc.) that seemed to underscore the very personal way that the first narrator, Nephi, begins this book. I saw that the act of recording was an explicit theme, and that language and literary ability are pointed out by the character, Nephi, as being central to himself. I think if I were to do it again, I would broaden my annotations to include observations from literary theories I've practiced, such as psychoanalytical criticism.