We discussed and studied John Donne's Meditation 17 that contains the famous lines,"no man is an island" and " ask not for whom the bell tolls...it tolls for thee." Joshua did well in recognizing the Meditation's conceits which we then examined. For example , Donne argues that all of mankind is so connected that each mans' death impacts each of us. We discussed whether this is true in today's world. We then analyzed Donne's argument that hardship is a "treasure" as Donne argues it brings maturity and draws one closer to God. While we modified some of Joshua's homework responses per our discussion, overall Joshua did very well in his analysis of Donne's recondite "essay." Last, we discussed an article I distributed from the NY Times discussing recent scholarship about Donne and his poetry. Using the AP rubric, Joshua discussed the author's purpose, and arguments in support of the contention that Donne is still relevant today.