World & Me: Delacruz
WORLD & ME STUDY GUIDE: Sophomore English, 2015
1)DIRECTIONS: REREAD all of the following passages.
2)For each passage, CREATE of an appropriate TITLE that might best summarize within one sentence the significance of the passage. Write down the TITLE for each passage.
3)Practice the following steps with TWO of the passages.
SOAPSTone: Please use shrub packet for notes and examples.
Create and respond to a comprehension question.
Respond to an essential question.
Annotate for a literary/rhetorical device using the guides below.
(The guide below will not be given to you on your exam, so please study these skills.)
Comprehension:Create one comprehension question for reading. Then, answer your comprehension question.
Comprehension questions = 5 W’s and H / Essential Question:
Connect an essential question to your reading (3 sentences minimum):
- Connect the essential question to an event.
- Make a prediction about how the character(s) may demonstrate an essential question.
(1)What is a cultural identity?
(2)How does one’s cultural experience(s) contribute to an understanding of self?
(3)How does the examination of other cultures widen our perspective and/or inform who we are? / Literary/Rhetorical Device:
Write a direct quote from the text that includes a rhetorical device. (Make sure to give background on the scene and quote-weave). Then, interpret how the rhetorical device affects the reader.
STEP #1: Your annotation will start with:
When __(background)___, __(speaker) ___ says, ____ (Martel #).
(or)
In the scene in which (background)_, ____ describes ____ (Martel #).
STEP #2: Your interpretation will look like:
Simile: This simile is a comparison ______between ____ and _____. The simile helps the reader better visualize/understand ______.
Metaphor: This metaphor is a comparison ______between ____ and _____. The metaphor helps the reader better visualize/understand ______.
Personification: ____ is being personified as _____. The personification helps the reader better visualize/understand __.
Imagery: The details about ____ evoke the sense of ___(sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, feel)___. This makes the image of ______more vivid.
1)CHAPTER #: 23TITLE (should summarize significance of this section): THE THREE WISEMEN AND FAMILY BACKGROUND
2)SOAPSTone annotate on the left hand margin.
SPEAKER: ADULT PI
OCCASION: PI IS OUT WITH HIS PARENTS BY ESPLANADE
AUDIENCE: THE AUTHOR INTERVIEWING PI
SUBJECT: THE THREE WISE MEN, PI’S FAMILY AND THEIR LACK OF RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND
PURPOSE: TO SHOW THAT PI ARRIVED AT HIS RELIGIONS IN HIS OWN UNIQUE WAY AND HE IS ABOUT TO BE CONFRONTED BY THE THREE DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS LEADERS
TONE: INITIALLY, PI IS ANXIOUS
3)Comprehension Question:
4)Comprehension Answer: ______
5)Connection of passage to an essential question: ______
6)Literary Device Annotation: ______
7)CHAPTER #: ______TITLE (should summarize significance of this section): ______
8)SOAPSTone annotate on the left hand margin.
9)Comprehension Question: ______Comprehension Answer: ______
10)Connection of passage to an essential question: ______
11)Literary Device Annotation: ______
CHAPTER 23
Alas, the sense of community that a common faith brings to a people spelled trouble for me. In time, my religious doings went from the notice of those to whom it didn’t matter and only amused, to that of those to whom it did matter—and they were not amused.
“What is your son doing going to temple?” asked the priest. “Your son was seen in church crossing himself,” said the imam. “Your son has gone Muslim,” said the pandit. Yes, it was all forcefully brought to the attention of my bemused parents. You see, they didn’t
know. They didn’t know that I was a practising Hindu, Christian and Muslim. Teenagers always hide a few things from their parents, isn’t that so? All sixteen-year-olds have secrets, don’t they? But fate decided that my parents and I and the three wise men, as I shall call them, should meet one day on the Goubert Salai seaside esplanade and that my secret should be outed. It was a lovely, breezy, hot Sunday afternoon and the Bay of Bengal glittered under a blue sky. Townspeople were out for a stroll. Children screamed and laughed. Coloured balloons floated in the air. Ice cream sales were brisk. Why think of business on such a day, I ask? Why couldn’t they have just walked by with a nod and a smile? It was not to be. We were to meet not just one wise man but all three, and not one after another but at the same time, and each would decide upon seeing us that right then was the golden occasion to meet that Pondicherry notable, the zoo director, he of the model devout son. When I saw the first, I smiled; by the time I had laid eyes on the third, my smile had frozen into a mask of horror. When it was clear that all three were converging on us, my heart jumped before sinking very low.
The wise men seemed annoyed when they realized that all three of them were approaching the same people. Each must have assumed that the others were there for some business other than pastoral and had rudely chosen that moment to deal with it. Glances of displeasure were exchanged.
My parents looked puzzled to have their way gently blocked by three broadly smiling religious strangers. I should explain that my family was anything but orthodox. Father saw himself as part of the New India—rich, modern and as secular as ice cream. He didn’t have a religious bone in his body. He was a businessman, pronounced busynessman in his case, a hardworking, earthbound professional, more concerned with inbreeding among the lions than any over-arching moral or existential scheme. It’s true that he had all new animals blessed by a priest and there were two small shrines at the zoo, one to Lord Ganesha and one to Hanuman, gods likely to please a zoo director, what with the first having the head of an elephant and the second being a monkey, but Father’s calculation was that this was good for business, not good for his soul, a matter of public relations rather than personal salvation. Spiritual worry was alien to him; it was financial worry that rocked his being. “One epidemic in the collection,” he used to say, “and we’ll end up in a road crew breaking up stones.” Mother was mum, bored and neutral on the subject. A Hindu upbringing and a
Baptist education had precisely cancelled each other out as far as religion was concerned and had left her serenely impious. I suspect she suspected that I had a different take on the matter, but she never said anything when as a child I devoured the comic books of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and an illustrated children’s Bible and other stories of the gods. She herself was a big reader. She was pleased to see me with my nose buried in a book, any book, so long as it wasn’t naughty. As for Ravi, if Lord Krishna had held a cricket bat rather than a flute, if Christ had appeared more plainly to him as an umpire, if the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had shown some notions of bowling, he might have lifted a religious eyelid, but they didn’t, and so he slumbered.
CH A P T ER 33
He shows me family memorabilia. Wedding photos first. A Hindu wedding with Canada prominently on the edges. A younger him, a younger her. They went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. Had a lovely time. Smiles to prove it. We move back in time. Photos from his student days at UofT: with friends; in front of St. Mike’s; in his room; during Diwali on Gerrard Street; reading at St. Basil’s Church dressed in a white gown; wearing another kind of white gown in a lab of the zoology department; on graduation day. A smile every time, but his eyes tell another story.
Photos from Brazil, with plenty of three-toed sloths in situ.
With a turn of a page we jump over the Pacific—and there is next to nothing. He tells me that the camera did click regularly—on all the usual important occasions—but everything was lost. What little there is consists of what was assembled by Mamaji and mailed over after the events.
There is a photo taken at the zoo during the visit of a V.I.P. In black and white another world is revealed to me. The photo is crowded with people. A Union cabinet minister is the focus of attention. There’s a giraffe in the background. Near the edge of the group, I recognize a younger Mr. Adirubasamy.
“Mamaji?” I ask, pointing. “Yes,” he says. There’s a man next to the minister, with hornrimmed glasses and hair very cleanly combed. Helooks like a plausible Mr. Patel, face rounder than his sons. “Is this your father?” I ask. He shakes his head. “I don’t know who that is.” There’s a pause of a few seconds. He says, “It’s my father who took the picture.” On the same page there’ s another group shot, mostly of schoolchildren. He taps the photo. “That’s Richard Parker,” he says.
I’m amazed. I look closely, trying to extract personality from appearance. Unfortunately, it’s black and white again and a little out of focus. A photo taken in better days, casually. Richard Parker is looking away. He doesn’ t even realize that his picture is being taken.
The opposing page is entirely taken up by a colour photo of the swimming pool of the Aurobindo Ashram. It’ s a nice big outdoor pool with clear, sparkling water, a clean blue bottom and an attached diving pool.
The next page features a photo of the front gate of Petit Seminaire school. An arch has the school’ s motto painted on it: Nil magnum nisi bonum. No greatness without goodness.
And that’ s it. An entire childhood memorialized in four nearly irrelevant photographs. He grows sombre. “The worst of it,” he says, “is that I can hardly remember what my mother looks like any more. I can see her in my mind, but it’ s fleeting. Assoon as I try to have a good look at her, she fades. It’s the same with her voice. If I saw her again in the street, it would all come back. But that’s not likely to happen. It’s very sad not to remember what your mother looks like.“ He closes the book.
CHAPTER 47:
The day broke, humid and overcast, with the wind warm and the sky a dense blanket of grey clouds that looked like bunched-up, dirty cotton sheets. The sea had not changed. It heaved the lifeboat up and down in a regular motion.
The zebra was still alive. I couldn’t believe it. It had a two-foot-wide hole in its body, a fistula like a freshly erupted volcano, spewed half-eaten organs glistening in the light or giving off a dull, dry shine, yet, in its strictly essential parts, it continued to pump with life, if weakly. Movement was confined to a tremor in the rear leg and an occasional blinking of the eyes. I was horrified. I had no idea a living being could sustain so much injury and go on living.
The hyena was tense. It was not settling down to its night of rest despite the daylight. Perhaps it was a result of taking in so much food; its stomach was grossly dilated. Orange Juice was in a dangerous mood too. She was fidgeting and showing her teeth.
I stayed where I was, curled up near the prow. I was weak in body and in soul. I was afraid I would fall into the water if I tried to balance on the oar.
The zebra was dead by noon. It was glassy-eyed and had become perfectly indifferent to the hyena’s occasional assaults.
Violence broke out in the afternoon. Tension had risen to an unbearable level. The hyena was yipping. Orange Juice was grunting and making loud lip-smacking noises. All of a sudden their complaining fused and shot up to top volume. The hyena jumped over the remains of the zebra and made for Orange Juice.
I believe I have made clear the menace of a hyena. It was certainly so clear in my mind that I gave up on Orange Juice’s life before she even had a chance to defend it. I underestimated her. I underestimated her grit.
She thumped the beast on the head. It was something shocking. It made my heart melt with love and admiration and fear. Did I mention she was a former pet, callously discarded by her Indonesian owners? Her story was like that of every inappropriate pet. It goes something like this: The pet is bought when it is small and cute. It gives much amusement to its owners. Then it grows in size and in appetite. It reveals itself incapable of being house-trained. Its increasing strength makes it harder to handle. One day the maid pulls the sheet from its nest because she has decided to wash it, or the son jokingly pinches a morsel of food from its hands—over some such seemingly small matter, the pet flashes its teeth in anger and the family is frightened. The very next day the pet finds itself bouncing at the back of the family Jeep in the company of its human brothers and sisters. A jungle is entered. Everyone in the vehicle finds it a strange and formidable place. A clearing is come to. It is briefly explored. All of a sudden the Jeep roars to life and its wheels kick up dirt and the pet sees all the ones it has known and loved looking at it from the back window as the Jeep speeds away. It has been left behind. The pet does not understand. It is as unprepared for this jungle as its human siblings are. It waits around for their return, trying to quell the panic rising in it. They do not return. The sun sets. Quickly it becomes depressed and gives up on life. It dies of hunger and exposure in the next few days. Or is attacked by dogs.
CHAPTER 74:
I practised religious rituals that I adapted to the circumstances—solitary Masses without priests or consecrated Communion hosts, darshans without murtis, and pujas with turtle meat for prasad, acts of devotion to Allah not knowing where Mecca was and getting my Arabic wrong. They brought me comfort, that is certain. But it was hard, oh, it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.
At such moments I tried to elevate myself. I would touch the turban I had made with the remnants of my shirt and I would say aloud, “THIS IS GOD’S HAT!”
I would pat my pants and say aloud, “THIS IS GOD’S ATTIRE!” I would point to Richard Parker and say aloud, “THIS IS GOD’S CAT!” I would point to the lifeboat and say aloud, “THIS IS GOD’S ARK!” I would spread my hands wide and say aloud, “THESE ARE GOD’S WIDE ACRES!” I would point at the sky and say aloud, “THIS IS GOD’S EAR!” And in this way I would remind myself of creation and of my place in it. But God’s hat was always unravelling. God’s pants were falling apart. God’s cat was a constant
danger. God’s ark was a jail. God’s wide acres were slowly killing me. God’s ear didn’t seem to be listening.
Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family, of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
CHAPTER 81:
I know my survival is hard to believe. When I think back, I can hardly believe it myself. My crude exploitation of Richard Parker’s weak sea legs is not the only explanation. There is
another: I was the source of food and water. Richard Parker had been a zoo animal as long as he could remember, and he was used to sustenance coming to him without his lifting a paw. True, when it rained and the whole boat became a rain catcher, he understood where the water came from. And when we were hit by a school of flying fish, there too my role was not apparent. But these events did not change the reality of things, which was that when he looked beyond the gunnel, he saw no jungle that he could hunt in and no river from which he could drink freely. Yet I brought him food and I brought him fresh water. My agency was pure and miraculous. It conferred power upon me. Proof: I remained alive day after day, week after week. Proof: he did not attack me, even when I was asleep on the tarpaulin. Proof: I am here to tell you this story.
CHAPTER 99:
“He killed her. The cook killed my mother. We were starving. I was weak. I couldn’t hold on to a turtle. Because of me we lost it. He hit me. Mother hit him. He hit her back. She turned to me and said, ‘Go!’ pushing me towards the raft. I jumped for it. I thought she was coming with me. I landed in the water. I scrambled aboard the raft. They were fighting. I did nothing but watch. My mother was fighting an adult man. He was mean and muscular. He caught her by the wrist and twisted it. She shrieked and fell. He moved over her. The knife appeared. He raised it in the air. It came down. Next it was up—it was red. It went up and down repeatedly. I couldn’t see her. She was at the bottom of the boat. I saw only him. He stopped. He raised his head and looked at me. He hurled something my way. A line of blood struck me across the face. No whip could have inflicted a more painful lash. I held my mother’s head in my hands. I let it go. It sank in a cloud of blood, her tress trailing like a tail. Fish spiralled down towards it until a shark’s long grey shadow cut across its path and it vanished. I looked up. I couldn’t see him. He was hiding at the bottom of the boat. He appeared when he threw my mother’s body overboard. His mouth was red. The water boiled with fish.