A WebQuest

For

E.L. Doctorow's

The Book of Daniel           [1971]

E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel chronicles the interpretive journey of Daniel Issacson, the fictional son of the real Rosenbergs (the New York couple convicted of leaking nuclear secrets to the Russians in 1951 and the last Americans to be executed for espionage in 1953).  Daniel, like the Biblical Daniel who interpreted dreams for Nebuchadnezzar, is faced with an interpretive dilema as he looks back from his hippie present in 1967 to make sense of the dream-like memories of his alternately normal and horrific childhood in the 1940's and 50's.  Set against the sexual revolution and dissent of the late 1960's is the subsurface communist activities in the repressed 1940's and 50's.  Too young to understand the reasons and risks associated with his parents communist activity Daniel looks back, now a father and a sort of dissenter himself, to try and make sense of it all.

Task I ..............***Meet the Rosenbergs** Task II ..............***Doctorow’s Disneyland** Task III .................. ***Ginsberg’s America** Task IV ..................***Defining Our Terms** Task V ...........***A Critical Lens**