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Mr. Hodge’s Homework
January 12, 2023
Homework Navigation
General English 1-2
What is the theme of the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury?
The story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury conveys many important themes, but the two most significant are related. One theme is that everything depends on everything else for its existence, and a second is that human life is intimately connected to what happens in nature. An alteration to one tiny life millions of years ago can and does change the course of human events millions of years in the future.
What figurative language is found in “A Sound of Thunder”?
An example of figurative language found in “A Sound of Thunder” is similes.
Figurative language uses figures of speech such as metaphors, similes, and allusions to create a deeper and more vivid impact on a reader. As a science fiction writer, author Ray Bradbury is writing about concepts and events that are far beyond the science and technology of the time. This means that Bradbury has to find a way for readers to connect his great imaginary concepts to their existing base knowledge. Similes are a great tool for this, because they naturally connect one idea to another.
Similes are figures of speech that compare two objects or concepts with each other by using like or as. This construction essentially takes two seemingly dissimilar things and establishes a sense of equivalency. Readers of this story are greeted with a simile very early on in the story when Eckels first enters into the time safari business. He’s taking in the entire office space, and he hears something that sounds like “a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time.”
Later in the story, Eckels proves that he isn’t quite grasping the time repercussions of killing something in the past. It is explained to him that messing with the timeline can create a lot of destruction across all of time. It is “like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity.”
Probably my favorite figurative language simile in the story comes when Bradbury has Lesperance explain in incredible brevity how and why time paradoxes are not something to worry about. Usually, science fiction writers that write about time travel really struggle with avoiding time paradoxes for the reader to find error with. Bradbury simply has his story sidestep the entire problem by saying that time does the same thing. It steps aside to not allow paradoxes, and he relates it to airplane turbulence.
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.
MS AB English
3. What is the theme in the story “The War of the Wall”
The short story “The War of the Wall,” by Toni Cade Bambara, tells of two schoolchildren, the narrator and his cousin Lou, who object to a painter composing a picture on a wall in their neighborhood. The wall holds special significance for them, especially because they have chiseled the name of their friend Jimmy Lyons, who died in Vietnam, on it. The woman ignores them and continues her work. She is single-minded at her task and doesn’t take much notice of anyone else around.
While on a weekend at the country, Lou and the narrator come up with the idea of covering the painter’s wall picture with spray paint, just as they’ve seen graffiti artists do on TV. When they return to town, they spend their entire allowance on spray paint. However, when they get to the wall, they realize that the painter has created an amazing mural of African American empowerment, and she has done it in memory of her cousin Jimmy Lyons.
The main theme of this story has to do with the tendency of people to misjudge things that they don’t understand. It could also be expressed as the importance of not jumping to conclusions too quickly or not making assumptions when you don’t have all the facts. The two children could have avoided all the confusion, misunderstandings, and bad feelings if they would have simply asked the artist what she was painting. Instead, they automatically assume that she is doing something wrong, that she is invading their territory, and that they won’t like the end result of her efforts.
The beauty and appropriateness of the artist’s work when it is completed highlights to the children and everyone else in the neighborhood the importance of being slow to judge what you don’t understand and not relying on your first (and often erroneous) impressions of a situation.
Transitions English
Write a two paragraph summary of The Monkey’s Paw. Please indent to indicate that you have two paragraph. Make sure to use proper grammar and punctuation. A paragraph consist of a minimum of 5 sentence
Basic English
4. In which ways does the relationship between husband and wife alter as a result of the influence of possession of the monkey’s paw?
The relation between husband and wife could be termed a gift. They are not only comfortable with each other, but actually enjoy each other’s company. More than merely spouses, they also appear to be each other’s best friend, as exemplified by the playful interaction that takes place between them. Once it appears as though the consequences of the husband’s wish upon the monkey’s paw causes the accidental death of their son, everything changes between them. The playful sense of emotional bonding over their son now absent, they withdraw into a stony coolness toward each other that masks a simmering antagonism of the wife toward her husband; this will soon boil over into a frightful rage. The promise extended by the monkey’s paw has cost them a price greater than just the loss of their son: it has cost them their happy marriage as well.
5. 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.
6. 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
7. What does the ending of The Giver mean for our interpretation of the text?
Answer: Lowry has left the ending ambiguous. The more likely approach is to decide that Jonas did die and was merely hallucinating at the end of the novel, which could imply a pessimistic ending that completes our image of a dystopia that cannot provide its citizens with both safety and independence. Under this interpretation, we also see the difficulty of separating oneself from the collective; successful resistance requires more than just one or two people. One might decide instead that Jonas coincidentally finds the sled and Elsewhere at the conclusion of the novel. This development might suggest the ability of the human spirit to survive centuries of suppression and hint that Jonas’s society will recover from the adverse effects of Sameness. It is important to note that in a later novel, Messenger, Lowry resolves the ambiguity by suggesting that Jonas survived, but this does not invalidate the possible interpretation that Jonas died.
8. What is the significance of snow in The Giver?
Answer: Jonas’s experiences with his memories are intimately connected with the idea of snow, from his first received transmission of sledding through snow on a hillside to his experience of a broken leg and finally to his real encounter with it at the novel’s conclusion. As with many other things that have been eradicated through Sameness, snow involves the dangers that the community chose to end in its quest for safety. At the same time, however, it brings Jonas great joy, through his exhilaration in his first memory and in his apparent recognition of the existence of Elsewhere in the last chapter. Snow is neither good nor bad, but the novel implies that its absence takes some essential aspect away from the world. Removing a risk involves removing the benefits that could have resulted from taking the risk.