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Mr. Hodge’s Homework

November 4, 2022

General English Periods 1-2

On the study guide, complete the comprehension questions. You must write out the question on a separate sheet of paper and answer it in complete sentences.   Use textual evidence when need to support your answer.

Copy down the following for the short answer.  

What is the purpose of the title The sound of thunder by Ray Bradbury?

The metaphor of thunder seems to be used just to describe the sheer physical awesomeness of the dinosaur, but it is much more than that.  The thunder metaphor also shows us how any given action can have massive ramifications that are not seen.  Any action, even one so seemingly innocuous as the killing of a butterfly, can “thunder” on and change the world.  Thunder can be thought of as a prominent repercussion of a previous event.  The lightning flashes, but then the thunder comes and demands our attention much more than the lightning does.  If you are turned the wrong way, you don’t see the lightning, but there is no hiding from the sound of the thunder.  The thunder is only a result of the lightning, but in many ways, it is more conspicuous than the lightning and has more of an impact on us.  The same is true in the story.  Eckles’ actions do not seem very important at all.  You could easily turn away from them and not notice.  But what comes next—the thunder—cannot be ignored.  Eckles’ action changes the whole of modern society.  A small action has had tremendous repercussions.  Thunder is truly the major metaphor of this story, but it is not just about the way the dinosaur moves. It is also a metaphor for our actions’ impacts on the world. In the end, the final sound of thunder is the killing of Eckels

 

Theme for Sound of Thunder

“A Sound of Thunder” is a science fiction story about a man named Eckels who hires a time travel company to take him on a hunting expedition in the age of the dinosaurs.  The theme is that little things can make a big difference. This story reminds us of an idea called the “Butterfly Effect.”  The Butterfly Effect states that a very small event can have large unintended consequences.  In the story, Ecklels is warned never to step off the path, because they can only hunt animals that are already about to be killed if nature runs its course. It floats six inches above the earth. Doesn’t touch so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree. It’s an antigravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past in any way. This little bit of foreshadowing, the insistence that he stay on the path, is directly related to the theme.  When you step off the path, something happens that you do not intend.  You can affect the entire course of the future, just by stepping on a butterfly. “Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!” cried Eckels. By stepping on the butterfly, Eckels altered the path of history such that the spelling on the sign was changed and a new man was elected president. We probably won’t go time traveling in our lifetime, but this is still a relevant theme.  Sometimes a little thing can make a big difference.  One small choice, although it may seem minor, can affect not only the course of your future but others as well.

How does the use of dramatic irony in “By the Waters of Babylon” suggest the loss of knowledge that may occur when a civilization falls?

Dramatic irony occurs when readers know what characters in a work of literature do not. In this story, we know that the Place of the God is New York City. We understand the technologies of elevators, running water, and central heating, though John does not. The gap between our knowledge and John’s is so wide that we realize the loss of knowledge can be profound when a civilization falls.

 

Identify figurative language use in  A Sound of Thunder?

Personification: the giving of human traits to non-living/non-human things.  An example fo personification is found in the opening sentence: “The sign on the wall seemed to quaver.” To quaver means to quiver because of weakness. Human beings can falter because of weakness, signs cannot. The attribution of human traits to that which is non-human.  e.g. “The Machine howled….The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur.    “Time steps aside.” Imagery: the formation of mental images based upon the descriptions provided by the author. The better an author appeals to the senses of the reader, the better the mental image. The opening of the story provides a very distinct image: “The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water. Eckels felt his eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary darkness.” Here, the reader is able to create a very distinct mental picture of the scene the author has provided for them. Metaphor: the comparison of two typically dissimilar things. “Time was a film run backward.” Here, time is compared to a film running backward. An ustated comparison. The jungle was the entire world forever and forever.”  “…pterodactyls soaring with cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and night fever. “A sound of thunder” = the T-Rex. “the seed death, the green death,…” “Trees exploded in clouds of leaf and branch.” “The Monster twitches its jeweler’s hands down…”

 

Theme for  By the waters of Babylon

Stephen Vincent Benét explores the theme of knowledge as an avenue for enlightenment and discovery. With knowledge, humans can move forward and rebuild what was lost. John‘s forbidden journey east to the Place of the Gods is a quest for knowledge. His curiosity leads him there, and with every encounter, he gains new knowledge. For example, upon setting foot on the shore of the Place of the Gods, he meets with the new knowledge that the ground is not hot to the touch. He sees that grasses grow through the cracks in the broken god-roads, and he concludes that the Place of the Gods is not as dangerous as his tribe was led to believe. As he explores the Place of the Gods further, he is enlightened by visions and encounters that help him understand that his purpose, as well as man’s, is to rebuild civilization. Benét also explores how knowledge dissolves fear. When John first arrives in the Place of the Gods, he has great fear. He explores towers, has his vision, and encounters the dead god, and each of the experiences fills him with new knowledge. He leaves the city fearless and with new understanding.

Benét’s theme of knowledge is also cautionary. He brings up the problems that having too much knowledge can create. The priests are the keepers of knowledge in the Hill People’s tribe. They interpret the signs of the natural world, and they have, or at least the narrator has, access to secret knowledge through visions. In addition, they may have retained knowledge no longer useful. The ground may have once been too hot to touch, but it has cooled. The people seemed masterful or godlike, but, in death, their humanity seems obvious. In this sense, knowledge can be partial and imperfect when it comes with a particular perspective or bias. At the end of the story, the priests commit to studying and recovering the knowledge of the gods. They also take responsibility for sharing this knowledge with their people at a controlled and rational pace. This sets them apart from the gods, who accumulated knowledge too quickly and applied it without judgment

 

 

MS AB English

On the study guide, complete the comprehension questions. You must write out the question on a separate sheet of paper and answer it in complete sentences.   Use textual evidence when need to support your answer.

Copy down the following for the short answer.  

Why does the narrator compare Jimmy Valentine to a phoenix?

“A Retrieved Reformation” follows the transformation of Jimmy Valentine, a notorious safecracker, into Ralph D. Spencer, a respected shoe-shop owner and fiancé to a banker’s daughter. The comparison to a phoenix is an allusion to a mythological bird that lives for centuries before being consumed in an inferno from which it emerges reborn, resurrected from death to live out its life cycle again and again. In colloquial language, the phoenix has come to mean a person who has emerged renewed after an apparent disaster. By alluding to a phoenix, the narrator casts Jimmy’s change of identity in mythic and violent terms: he must heroically destroy his identity as Jimmy Valentine so that he may emerge as Ralph Spencer. The full significance of the allusion is not established until later in the story, when the phoenix has to dive into the flames once again: Ralph burns the image of himself as respectable by revealing his identity as a skilled safecracker, and Jimmy is resurrected for another life cycle.

Why does the narrator mention Jimmy’s looks so often in the story?

Jimmy is described as youthful, pleasant-looking, and nice-looking. His appearance is significant because it engenders strangers’ trust in him. Starting with the warden and ending with Ben Price, everyone throughout the story sees some intangible yet trustworthy quality in Jimmy. Jimmy does not display any overt signs of criminality or untrustworthiness, and this clean image allows him to swindle people in the towns in which he briefly settles before committing a robbery and skipping out. Even when his intentions are pure, Jimmy relies on his ability to garner trust and then exploit it so that he may ingratiate himself into Annabel’s family. When Jimmy turns out to have a noble heart after all, it becomes clear that what people saw in Jimmy was real; by leading a dishonest life, he was misleading himself by neglecting his selfless nature.

 

The theme of the war of the Wall

The theme is to never judge a book by its cover.  the narrator and his friends believe that the painter lady is not a good person and that she is ruining their wall. The later find out that she was doing a mural for her cousin and famous people .

 

Number 4 essay question needs to be answered  on your own

 

 

 

Transitions English 

On the study guide, complete the comprehension questions. You must write out the question on a separate sheet of paper and answer it in complete sentences.   Use textual evidence when need to support your answer.

Copy down the following for the short answer.  

What do think is behind the door, the lady or tiger. Why?

Based on the story, you have t infer based on what you read.  Use text evidence to support your answer

 

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” how does Edgar Allan Poe engage the sense of hearing, and to what effect?

While all good writers engage the senses through descriptive language, Edgar Allan Poe gives special attention to the sense of hearing in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Besides language that engages sight—specifically the sight of the eye—there is not much attention given to senses beyond hearing. This focus on what the narrator hears is important in two ways. First, the narrator claims that he has heightened power of the senses, and that “above all was the sense of hearing acute.” Poe spends a lot of time detailing what the narrator hears. Second, this creates a parallel between the reader’s experience and the narrator’s. In the absence of sensory language that engages other senses such as touch, taste, and smell, the reader’s experience is grounded in the sounds the narrator professes to hear.

 

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” how does Edgar Allan Poe engage the sense of hearing, and to what effect?

While all good writers engage the senses through descriptive language, Edgar Allan Poe gives special attention to the sense of hearing in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Besides language that engages sight—specifically the sight of the eye—there is not much attention given to senses beyond hearing. This focus on what the narrator hears is important in two ways. First, the narrator claims that he has heightened power of the senses, and that “above all was the sense of hearing acute.” Poe spends a lot of time detailing what the narrator hears. Second, this creates a parallel between the reader’s experience and the narrator’s. In the absence of sensory language that engages other senses such as touch, taste, and smell, the reader’s experience is grounded in the sounds the narrator professes to hear.

What do you think was behind the door on the right? The lady or the tiger? Why?

It is likely that the door on the right was hiding the tiger. The narrator of “The Lady, or the Tiger?” places so much emphasis on the fact that the princess had barbaric tendencies. In fact, he spends so much time describing her barbarism that he never gets around to explaining what makes her civilized. For this reason, it seems likely that she will make the barbaric choice of killing her lover.

One of the themes the story explores is the corruptibility of absolute power, especially when invested in an unfit leader. Write about the development of this theme in Stockton’s story, making sure to use evidence from the text to support your answer.

Every man who is sentenced to this bizarre ritual punishment faces the exact same consequences should the open door reveal the lady rather than the tiger: they will marry immediately whether or not the man is already married at the time or not. In the case of the young man in the story, this supposed “fairness” is corrupted by an outside agency. The king may have absolutely no idea that the lady chosen to stand behind one of the doors just so happens to be a potential romantic rival for the affections of the man his daughter loves, but that is beside the point. Whether attributable to the sinister motivation of the king or purely random chance in choosing the ideal beauty to stand as the alternative to the beast, the system is now corrupted in a way that makes this particular utilization of the punishment irrefutably unfair. Because of the pre-existing relationship between the lady behind the door, the princess, and the courtier, jealousy now enters the picture. The princess, having decided to find out what is behind each door, will now inevitably corrupt the abritrary nature of the system, guiding her lover to the tiger or the lady depending upon whether she is feeling jealousy more than love or love more than jealousy. Justice is either a system which is fair to all or fair to none, and though one can argue that this system of justice is lacking in all other aspects, it has been, up until this point, equally fair to all. That will no longer be the case now

 

Basic English 

On the study guide, complete the comprehension questions. You must write out the question on a separate sheet of paper and answer it in complete sentences.   Use textual evidence when need to support your answer.

Copy down the following for the short answer.  

 

Essay Questions

Flowers for Algernon is told in a first-person narration so that readers follow Charlie in a close perspective. What is the effect of this first-person narration? What does it tell that other perspectives might not tell? Why do you think the author chose to make Charlie a first-person narrator?

The first-person narration keeps readers close to Charlie, and makes Charlie both an identifiable and likeable character. When characters have disagreements with Charlie (such as Nemur saying he has become arrogant and selfish), readers are more apt to side with Charlie. Of course, this limits the amount of information that can be delivered, since what is told must be something that Charlie knows. However, the choice of using a first-person narrator in general also increases the pathos of the story, as it heightens the sense of sadness at Charlie’s eventual deterioration. It also gives insight into what Charlie is thinking, which is remarkably important in a story that is concerned with the mind.

 

The story is delivered in an epistolary fashion, that is, conveyed in Progress Reports styled like diary entries. What is the effect of this narrative choice? Why do you think the author chose to tell the story this way?

The epistolary fashion lends first-person credibility to Charlie as a narrator. Keyes also takes this as an opportunity to show Charlie’s physical-mental enhancement and deterioration through the way he manipulates the actual writing of these progress reports. The diction and writing style of Charlie at his intellectual peak is also different than that of when he is improving or when he is deteriorating. These reports also make sense given the plot of the story, and the necessity of documenting the experiment given the scientific method.

 

One of the themes the story explores is the corruptibility of absolute power, especially when invested in an unfit leader. Write about the development of this theme in Stockton’s story, making sure to use evidence from the text to support your answer.

Every man who is sentenced to this bizarre ritual punishment faces the exact same consequences should the open door reveal the lady rather than the tiger: they will marry immediately whether or not the man is already married at the time or not. In the case of the young man in the story, this supposed “fairness” is corrupted by an outside agency. The king may have absolutely no idea that the lady chosen to stand behind one of the doors just so happens to be a potential romantic rival for the affections of the man his daughter loves, but that is beside the point. Whether attributable to the sinister motivation of the king or purely random chance in choosing the ideal beauty to stand as the alternative to the beast, the system is now corrupted in a way that makes this particular utilization of the punishment irrefutably unfair. Because of the pre-existing relationship between the lady behind the door, the princess, and the courtier, jealousy now enters the picture. The princess, having decided to find out what is behind each door, will now inevitably corrupt the abritrary nature of the system, guiding her lover to the tiger or the lady depending upon whether she is feeling jealousy more than love or love more than jealousy. Justice is either a system which is fair to all or fair to none, and though one can argue that this system of justice is lacking in all other aspects, it has been, up until this point, equally fair to all. That will no longer be the case now.

 

Complete Essay question 4 on your own

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Date:
November 4, 2022
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