...discomfort to curiosity to embarrassment. 2. How are the Metis represented in the story? “if that half-breed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake, I'm not going” (188) Vanessa's images of Natives are drawn solely from literature, and these representations are only superficially positive. When Piquette doesn't reveal nature's secrets, Vanessa concludes “as an Indian, Piquette was a dead loss” (191) 3. What do the loons symbolize? “My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few more years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away” (190-91). Years later when Vanessa visits the lake, after the deaths of her father and Piquette, she realizes that the loons are no longer there. The loons become associated with death and loss, and while symbolic of Piquette, they are also an allegory of Canadian history. 4. What does Vanessa mean by the last sentence of the story? When Vanessa encounters Piquette as a young woman, she recognizes in Piquette what she hears in the loons' cries—“self-pity” (192) and “terrifying hope” (193); when Vanessa learns of Piquette's death soon after, she responds with silence. Vanessa's personal loss—of her father and of Piquette—is connected through the symbol of the loons with the Metis' loss of their land and their culture. Vanessa's realization at the end of the story, that only Piquette “had heard the crying of the loons” (194), signals the loss of...
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... SET 1 1. Read the extract from the short story Tanjong Rhu. Then answer the questions. ‘Edward’, she said, crossing her legs, ‘come and join us?’ He refused, and was just turning away, when she noticed the binoculars he was holding, And asked what they were. ‘Oh, these,’ he said. ‘I bought theme today. For the children’. He could not think of anything better to say. (p.20) a) Who does the pronoun ‘us’ refer to? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… b) Why do you think Edward or Mr Li refuses to join them? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… c) In your opinion, why didn’t Edward tell the truth about the binoculars he bought for his mother? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… d) What does this incident reveal about the relationship of these two characters? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2. Writing Task HOTS a) If you could change one part of the story, which would you change? Give reasons for your decision. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… b) Describe a character in the short story Tanjong Rhu who displays an admirable quality. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ...
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...Debra Bronstein English 1B Short Story Essay Prompt Essay Due: Monday 10/15 at the beginning of class (100 points) Please write a 4-5 page essay. All papers should be typed, double-spaced, 12-point font (Times New Roman), with one-inch margins. All papers must analyze how the rhetorical/formal/symbolic/narrative elements of the short story contribute to your understanding of the text. Please review these terms from your literary terms quiz and your class notes to remind yourself how authors deploy them in the stories. Please choose one of the following topics. Note: I ask a lot of questions within each of the topics because I want to give you many options to consider; however, this does not mean that you have to answer all the sub-questions. Use them as guides to jumpstart your thinking. 1. Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Jewett’s “A White Heron,” Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” track a particular symbol throughout the short story. Focusing on one of these stories, show how the author uses the development of the symbol in order to reflect the demise or spiritual growth of the main characters. Hint: for “The Things They Carried, you can focus on the word carry rather than on a specific individual symbol. 2. Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both narrated by unreliable narrators who go crazy. Focusing on one of these stories, how does the author portray insanity...
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...------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Ernest Hemingway. "Cat in the Rain" (1925) Homework: Read the story. While reading, please note down at least three points of wonder. Pinpoint the exact sentence that puzzles you and phrase a question. Task 1: Individually Summary and composition: 1. Divide the text into sections and give each a headline. 2. Now write down 5-10 keywords that will allow you to give an oral summary of the short story. Task 2/pre-reading: In groups The importance of the first paragraph Looking only at the first paragraph of the short story, please answer the questions below: 1. Describe the setting (sum up, don't just repeat what it says in the text) 2. What do we get to know about the difference between American couple and the Italians in the first paragraph of the short story? 3. What does the setting tell about the mood of the short story? And provided that the setting is used as a mirror of the characters' state of mind, what can we infer about the characters' emotional state? Task 3: In groups Points of wonder * Discuss the points of wonder that you have identified while reading the short story. Take turns to present your points of wonder. * Choose one point of wonder and attempt to give an answer that is supported by the text. * Attempt to determine the possible symbolical meaning of the cat. Task 4: In groups Minimalist characteristics and...
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...aspect of art. The realist movement didn't just help artist, it helped authors. Authors didn't have to write about romance, or fictional. Author could just be realistic. they did not need elaborate settings, weird/ attention grabbing stories. they wrote simple stories with extraordinary detail which made the story that much more better. Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy also known as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Tolstoy was a master of realistic fiction and is widely considered one of the world's greatest novelists. He is best known for two long novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Tolstoy first achieved literary acclaim in his 20s with his semi-autobiographical trilogy of novels, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852-1856) and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based on his experiences in the Crimean War. 3 questions is another master piece that Leo Tolstoy created. The story starts out with king that wanted to know the answer to three simple questions: What was the right time for every action, who were the most necessary and how he might know what was the most important. the king promised anyone who could this question would get a great reward. many people gave the kind different answer that he did not like. he dismissed the idea of any man answering his question, he just went to a...
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...UNIT -1 Vanka By- Anton Chekhov- Know the author- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov ( 29 January 1860– 15 July 1904) is a major Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. He is a literary artist of concise precision who explored below the surface of life, laying bare the secret motives of his characters.. Concentrating on clear insignificances, they create a special kind of atmosphere, sometimes termed lasting or emotional. Chekhov describes the Russian life of his time using a dishonestly simple technique devoid of prominent literary devices, and he is regarded as the outstanding representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school. His famous works are: “Three sisters", "The Cherry Orchard", "The Lady with the Dog" and others. SUMMARY The story opens on Christmas Eve with Vanka, a poor orphan of age of nine, sitting down to write a letter to his grandfather living in a unknown village in Russia. After his mother's death Vanka is transferred to new masters in Moscow to live with family of Alyahim the shoemaker. Alyahin and his wife oppress the little orphan, who grows frustrated with the situation and tries to contact his grandfather to ask him for help. As he writes the letter, Vanka recalls his grandfather and his life at the village before he was apprentices to this new home. After the letter is finished, the little boy puts down the name of his grandfather,Konstantin Makarich, and as address he writes down "the village". He is also not aware...
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...Serup Gregersen 3.a The short story ” No Angel” is written by Bernie McGill from 2011. The story takes place in Northern Ireland. A limited 1st person narrator tells the story because the main character Annie tells the story from her point of view. The short story starts in media res. The short story is about how people handle death and the effect it has on a person. The short story circles about the main character Annie who sees her dead father´s ghost. In this essay there is an analysis and interpret the short story´s composition, supernatural elements, theme and the relationship between Annie and her father. The composition in the short story contains flashbacks because it jumps back and forth in time. In the short story there are some streams of consciousness, and that is why the chronological order has been unregulated. There is harmony between the start and the end. The use of flashbacks has an effect - it gives a full picture of the theme to understand the main character and her problems dealing with her father’s dead. It is a common element for a short story to have flashbacks. “The first time I saw my father after he died, I was in the shower, hair plastered with conditioner, when the water stuttered and turned cold. He was at the sink in front of the misted-up mirror with the tap running, his back to me. It was two weeks after his funeral. His things were all where he’d left them. ” This is the first flash back in time in the short story. Annie is seeing her father...
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...Alcock Table of Contents Introduction About Short Stories The Writer Synopsis Elements Activities Beyond The Text Assessment Answer Key Glossary Panel of Writers [pic] SHORT STORY Welcome to the World of Literature and to Short Stories! We hope you will enjoy working with this guidebook, which has been specially designed to help you prepare your students enjoy the Literature Component of the KBSM English Language syllabus. A brief explanation of the short story genre has been provided together with suggested activities, teaching steps and worksheets/handouts. An answer key with suggested answers has been provided at the end of the guide to assist you. There is also an assessment section with contextual questions and ideas for authentic assessment and a glossary at the end of each story. We recommend that the activities in this guidebook be adapted for your students’ needs and be carried out creatively in order to develop students’ appreciation and critical analysis of the short stories. Be ready to listen to students’ views and opinions, and encourage them to work out the answers. It is our sincere hope that the activities and worksheets in this guidebook will act as a springboard for your own ideas and methods of exploring the individual stories. SHORT STORY What is a Short Story? Can you explain what makes a short story? Well, a short story is a short piece of fiction aiming at unity of characterization...
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...What makes a short story successful and satisfying for the audience to read? I believe that the answer to this question varies from person to person. In my opinion, an interesting short story includes a full character development of its protagonist that shows how he/she came to be and also a main event that happens that would change the whole dynamic of the story and greatly influence the main character. An intriguing short story should reveal the full character development of its protagonist because it allows us to get out of our skins and into others’. When reading about a person’s childhood, experiences, failures and triumphs, we, as readers, can explore the roads not taken in our lives. For example, in the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin (1957), the writer starts with Sonny’s childhood where his parents died when he was young. His older brother was in the military, so Sonny had to live with his brother’s fiancé’s family. Unfortunately, this did not work out and Sonny’s spiral dive into drugs and illegal activities started after he moved out. It is fascinating to see and experience the path that Sonny had taken in order to become the person he is today. A captivating short story takes us out of our reality and engulfs our imagination into someone else’s life through character development. Furthermore, a successful short story should contain a main event or a pivoting moment that greatly influences the protagonist. This event changes the momentum of the...
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...decision? A decision where you much choose one option or the other? The short story Hills Like White Elephants depict a situation in which many, if not all readers can relate to at one point in their lives. The author Ernest Hemingway describes this scenario with a young couple who are at a crossroads in their life, and they are unsure of the future. The young couple are forced, but shying away from the rather large “white elephant in the room”, deciding to go through with having a child or an abortion. The theme in Hills Like White Elephants is expressed using typical thematic literary elements. Hemingway uses elements such as character, setting, conflict, and irony all to express the short story theme and symbolism. All of these elements help to develop the theme of decision making and sacrifice. The reader gets very little background on the relationship of the young couple but at the same time receives insight into the norms of the relationship between the “American man” and Jig the “girl” who is pregnant. Jig is represented as a young dependent girl, in article Tim O’brian writes, “Even the nickname "Jig" develops this central conflict. The name suggests a dance, the music for the dance, and a joke, for instance, and thereby exposes the man's ultimately condescending attitude toward her: she is entertainment, material for an interlude, perhaps. “Hemingway uses the character as an element to his short story as well. He uses the characters to depict different stages of life,...
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... Analysis of “Indian Camp” by Ernest Hemingway ”Indian camp” is a short story by Ernest Hemingway written in 1921. It’s about the young boy Nick who accompanies his father, who is a doctor, to an Indian camp where an Indian woman has been in labour for a few days. His uncle George is also going with them to the camp but in another boat. They arrive at the camp where Nick’s father is going help the woman have her baby. The woman is lying on a bunk inside one of the shanties. Her husband, who has hurt his foot, is lying in the upper bunk. Nick’s father has to do a caesarean and Nick watches while his father is preforming the operation. When the baby is born Nick’s father turns to the Indian woman’s husband to see how he’s doing but it turns out that the husband has committed suicide by cutting his throat whit a razor. Then Nick and his father sails back, while Nick is asking a lot of questions. Setting The story takes place in an Indian camp - and on a lake, a meadow and in a wood on the way to and from the camp in northern Michigan (I assume it’s in Michigan, because a nurse will come from St. Ignace (page 15, line 17), witch is a city in northern Michigan). It probably takes place around 1910 based on the fact that Hemingway himself was a child at that time and his own father also was a doctor, who also paid doctor’s calls among Indians in Michigan. Also what is going on in the short story corresponds with the factual historical time, e.g. that a doctor goes...
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...LEGEND * A traditional story or group of stories told about a particular person or place. Formerly the term legend meant a tale about a saint. Legends resemble folktales in content; they may include supernatural beings, elements of mythology, or explanations of natural phenomena, but they are associated with a particular locality or person and are told as a matter of history. * Some legends are the unique property of the place or person that they depict, such as the story of young George Washington, the future first president of the United States, who confesses to chopping down the cherry tree. EPIC * A long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds, although the term has also been loosely used to describe novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and motion pictures, such as Sergey Eisenstein’sIvan the Terrible. In literary usage, the term encompasses both oral and written compositions. * The prime examples of the oral epic are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Outstanding examples of the written epic include Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia in Latin, Chanson de Roland in medieval French,Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata in Italian, Cantar de mio Cid in Spanish, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene in English. PROVERB * A succinct and pithy saying in general use, expressing commonly held ideas and beliefs. Proverbs are part of every spoken language and are related to such...
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...Analysis of G. K. Chesterton’s short story «The Sign of the Broken Sword» «The Sign of the Broken Sword» is a short story by G. K. Chesterton featuring his famous characters Father Brown and former criminal Flambeau. In the centre of a story is a mysterious death of General Sir Arthur St. Clare, who was hanged on a tree with his broken sword hung round his neck. It is a detective story and throughout it Father Brown reveals to us the mystery of General St. Clare. The story starts with the description of landscape and the description of St. Clare’s monument, which is a sort of exposition, where the main hero of the story and the place where the story will begin (or, more accurately, one of the stories) are presented. Then two other characters, Father Brown and Flambeau (who are not presented properly because they are heroes of the cycle thus there is no need to introduce them in each story) appear and the plot starts with Father Brown’s question: “Where does a wise man hide a pebble?”. It is necessary to say that author turns to retrospective, thus creating a framed structure of the story - the priest and his companion are narrator and listener and from Father Brown’s lips we hear the true story of St. Clair’s crime. So, there are two settings also: the past and the present. In both stories the exposition is scattered: in modern times Father Brown mentions he «dug up in holes and corners» bits of evidence that helped him to solve the mystery while Flambeau remembers...
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...teacher has to respect pupils and the pupils have to respect their teacher. Fear should not appear between teachers and pupils. Similar problems are depicted in the short story Suffer the little children, by Stephen King. Although in this exact story it is the demands of the teacher which is not fulfilled. She is called Miss Sidley and she is teaching a middle school class. One day while over watching the children through a reflection Miss Sidley a monster appears from a pupil. From this point Miss Sidley loses her mind, and becomes very paranoid and in the end she kills her pupils because of this monster grudge. The short story is told by a third person narrator, who is not a part of the story. The main character is an omniscient person which simply means one can get to her thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, this make one feel pity for Miss Sidley because it is a direct path for her feelings and more important discoveries. As mentioned earlier the main character is Miss Sidley, who surprisingly is described as a very normal when one considers her looks and personality. Her exterior is described as a small woman, wears glasses, grey hair and gimlet eyed1. Personal wise it is the same thing Miss Sidley seems to be the perfect teacher, because her instincts are supreme, she knows all the answers in the whole wide world. Moreover, her teaching technique is a bit old fashioned,...
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...In the short story, “the Lady or the Tiger,” the author uses plot structure to develop the unique writing style. For instance, the author does not use a traditional plot structure. The author creates his unique writing by ending the story right after the climax. In “The Lady or the Tiger” the author writes, “Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it,” (9). At this point, it is the climax of the story, and the author does not continue on such as a normal story would. In a normal story there would be an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and a resolution. “The Lady or the Tiger” contains the first three, but not a falling action or resolution. Similarly, the author does include a resolution....
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