Vocabulary
If you are completely fascinated by a beautiful performance and unable to look away, you are in this state.
What is entranced?
It's a device that creates a story-within-a-story structure.
What is a frame story?
The Seventh Man's father describes this as an "intermission" to the storm, which should last "maybe fifteen, maybe twenty minutes."
What is the eye of the storm?
It's the literary device used here: "the house would creak and shudder as if a huge hand were shaking it."
What is a simile?
As a child, the Seventh Man is described as being particularly close to this character, whose death becomes the source of his lifelong guilt and fear.
Who is K.?
Seeing or hearing something that is not actually there is called this.
What is hallucinating?
It's a scene from the past that interrupts the present action of a story; it can take the form of a memory, a dream, or a shift of the story's setting.
What is a flashback?
It's what K. is doing when the Seventh Man sees him in the wave.
What is smiling?
It's the literary device used here: "The sea had suddenly stretched its long, smooth tongue out to where I stood on the beach."
What is personification? (Metaphor is also acceptable).
After K. is swept away, the Seventh Man develops this lasting response to the sea, eventually avoiding it for many years.
What is a fear of the sea?
A strong feeling that something is going to happen before it actually does is called this.
What is a premonition?
What is the exposition?
They are a memento the Seventh Man has from K. which remind him of the way K.'s "eye were open on the world."
What are K.'s watercolors?
It's the tense the Seventh Man uses when describing his dream.
What is the present tense?
The Seventh Man's decision to tell his story to the other men at the meeting reveals that he has begun taking this important step in dealing with his past.
What is confronting his trauma and fear?
Describing a calm, thoughtful state of mind, often reached through quiet reflection or deep breathing.
What is meditative?
The rising action of a linear plot line includes this.
What is an inciting incident?
It's how the Seventh Man stops having nightmares all the time.
It's the point of view used in the beginning and end of the story.
As an adult, the Seventh Man's understanding of K.'s death changes when he realizes that he has spent years interpreting this moment through guilt rather than fully understanding what happened.
What is K.'s final look/gesture toward him?
When someone is willing to do almost anything because they are in a very urgent or hopeless situation, they are this.
What is desperate?
What is the climax?
It's what prompts the seventh man to tell his story in the first place.
What is a storm?
It's the effect on the reader of describing the waves as "a reptile's skin" and as "a huge, man-eating beast" with "sharp teeth."
By the end of the story, the Seventh Man has changed from a man controlled by his childhood fear into someone who is able to do this when he thinks about the wave.
What is accept the past and let go of his guilt?