Poetry
What is the name for what Saeed Jones does with sentences in lines two and three of "A Stranger?"
I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me.
I know I don’t know her new name. I don’t know
her, not now. I don’t know if “her” is the word
burning in a stranger’s mind when he sees my dead
Enjambment
Who wins the lottery in "The Lottery"?
Tessie
What is a setting?
The time or place of the poem
How does the epigraph of "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks contribute to the poem's meaning?
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
The speaker of the poem is a collective we, shown by the epigraph to be seven pool players. We can guess that they are young and skipping school, showing the burnout and sense of pointlessness they have about modern life.
Identify the following poem. How do these metaphors contribute to the poem's theme?
Try—try—try—try—to think o' something different
Oh—my—God—keep—me from goin' lunatic!
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
Rudyard Kipling, "Boots"
The soldiers are going mad from the repetition of the boots, reproduced through sound (syllables/rhythm) in the poem
How does "Daystar," by Rita Dove, use irony?
She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared
pouting from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice? Why,
building a palace. Later
that night when Thomas rolled over and
lurched into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour – where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.
Dove uses what the audience expects about motherhood--that mothers love their children, want to spend time with them, and that to be a mother to young children is the most fulfilled a woman can be--to shock the audience by showing a mother who is so overwhelmed that her most fulfilled time is sitting behind the garage staring at nothing.
The "Veldt" is part of what genre? What is the threat to humanity?
Science Fiction, technology--living in a digital world at the expense of human connection and real life
What is a protagonist?
The character who drives the plot
How does this line of "King of the Bingo Game" reveal the theme of the novel?
"Then someone was laughing inside him, and he realized that somehow he had forgotten his own name. It was a sad, lost feeling to lose your name, and a crazy thing to do. That name had been given him by the white man who had owned his grandfather a long time ago down South. But maybe these wise guys knew his name”
Names are a motiff--the narrator's life has been determined by his race in Jim Crow America, even down to his name/family/heritage. In the north he has control of his destiny, but no identity
What is the author, title, and significance/situation of the last couplet?
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 130: My Mistresses' Eyes"
The last two lines change the entire meaning of the poem, which to this point, has felt like a really mean boyfriend. The "belied with false compare" shows that Shakespeare isn't even really writing about the physical appearance of the woman who is the object of the poem--rather, he is noting that no woman actually looks like his description from the earlier lines, and writing about beauty has become so ridiculous that it isn't about real beauty anymore.
How are Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” poems related?
They share a situation
What two characters are foils in "Interpreter of Maladies?" Why?
Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi's wife--Mrs. Das finds Mr. Kapasi's job romantic, his wife is repelled
What is metonymy?
Substitution of an attribute/adjective of a thing for the thing itself (suit=business man)
What literary device is present in the following lines of "Dulce et Decorum Est"? What does it do for the poem?
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
A simile, it translates the horror of gas/chemical warfare in WWI for the audience by comparing dying from inhaling mustard gas to drowning
Identify the title, author, and theme implied by the following quote:
"Unlike his wife, she had reminded him of its intellectual challenges. She had also used the word ‘romantic.’ She did not behave in a romantic way toward her husband, and yet she had used the word to describe him. [...] Her sudden interest in him, an interest she did not express in either her husband or her children, was mildly intoxicating. When [he] thought once again about how she had said “romantic,” the feeling of intoxication grew."
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
Mr. Kapasi has a romantic fantasy of Mrs. Das which begins with this passage. The theme of the story is the danger of romanticizing the unknown--Mrs. Das does not really know India as an Indian-American and romanticizes Mr. Kapasi from her perspective, and Mr. Kapasi romanticizes her against his wife before truly knowing her and not liking her at all.
In Langston Hughes' "I, Too," what is the speaker talking about using the metaphor of the kitchen table?
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Hughes is envisioning the end of Jim Crow and a United States with Civil Rights for African Americans. He wants to be recognized at the table, AKA, allowed to participate in American Society/be recognized as an American citizen.
What is the narrative perspective in Jamaica Kincaid's
"Girls"? How affect the reader?
You feel like the mother is talking to you, making you think of your own mother and your relationship with her. You become a character in the story.
What is the difference between an iamb and a trochee?
Iamb=stressed/unstressed
Trochee=unstressed/stressed
What is the significance/literary device of the title, "Lady Lazarus," to Plath's poem?
Lazarus is an allusion to the biblical Lazarus. Like Lazarus, Plath has nearly died three times, but survives/is resurrected after each suicide attempt/near death experience.
Identify the title, author, and allusion/its significance of the following quote:
Humans in the wild, gathered and feeling good, previously an exhilaration, now: a target.
A target of concert-goers.
A target of movie-goers.
A target of dancers.
A group of schoolchildren is a target.
"Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild," Kathy Fish
The allusion in this text is to multiple mass shootings in the US--the Colorado shooting at the Batman premiere, the Las Vega concert shootings, the Pulse Nightclub and Colorado Drag bar shootings, and of course, Sandy Hook elementary school shooting (20 first graders murdered, 6 school staff)/Uvalde elementary school (19 elementary schoolers, 2 teachers).
Fish is arguing that gun violence in America is now a condition of American life, that everyone is reduced from unique human to a target, and that no one is safe.
What is the main literary device in Kathy Fish’s “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild”? How does this literary device help us understand the theme or message of the poem?
Metaphor. Fish compares different groups of people to non-sensical group names, playing off connotative meanings. The uniqueness of human life is reduced by modern gun violence, shown through allusions to recent mass shootings.
In “King of the Bingo Game,” why is the narrator nameless? How does this connect to a theme of the short story?
The narrator is nameless because he is powerless to assert himself in the world--as the only Black man in a mostly white, segregated space, his lives his life unable to shape his own reality. This is why he goes mad with power and can't let go when he controls the wheel--because he finally feels like he has agency over his own fate.
What literary device is in the sound of these lines?
"Help head
Help Heart"
Alliteration
Identify the author, title, and significance of the following scene:
"That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?"
"It would be fun for a change, don't you think?"
"No, it would be horrid. I didn't like it when you took out the picture painter last month."
"That's because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son."
"I don't want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?"
"The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury
This scene reveals Bradbury's theme--that technology will take away one's humanity by painting/writing/caring for one another/etc.
Identify the title, author, and significance of the passage below:
"Trembling, he pressed the button. There was a whirl of lights, and in a second he realized with finality that though he wanted to, he could not stop."
"King of the Bingo Game" by Ralph Ellison
The unnamed narrator is an African American man who has migrated to the North in a white community to try and earn enough money to save his wife/love, Laura, who we learn has already died. The short story is about fate/power to control one's destiny. The narrator is unable to--he is powerless in a Jim Crow/segregated world to make his own destiny. The wheel, and this scene, symbolizes both his powerlessness ("he cannot stop") and the randomness of fate (his entire life is a gamble because of his social station).