Figurative Language, Author’s Purpose, Tone
How many examples of figurative language (describing something by comparing it to someone else) can you find in the following poem? Highlight them and identify them by name. (If you can find other literary elements, identify them, too!) Examples of figurative language: simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, idiom, cliché.
A Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ARE NOT TO BE ANSWERED LIKE CONSTRUCTED RESPONSES. Use at least one advanced vocabulary word (from your warm-ups) in one of the responses.
HOW DOES THE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN THIS PASSAGE IMPACT THE MEANING OF THE TEXT?
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
WHAT CAN YOU INFER ABOUT THE SPEAKER OF THIS POEM? EXPLAIN YOUR ANSWER.
“Six days a week, I take the bus across the WoodrowWilsonBridge to where Miss Leefolt and all her white friends live, in a neighborhood call Belhaven. Right next to Belhaven be the downtown and the state capital. Capitol building is real big, pretty on the outside but I never been in it. I wonder what they pay to clean that place.” (Stockett 14)
WHAT WAS THE AUTHOR’S PURPOSE IN HAVING AIBILEEN DESCRIBE THIS PART OF MISSISSIPPI?
HOW IS TONE SHOWN IN THIS PASSAGE? GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM THE TEXT.
Theme
From each of the passages below, how does Stockett develop the theme of the play? Identify the themes and explain how the text specifically shows the theme by highlighting the lines in the text and using them in your explanation:
“But I know I’ll have to rewrite everything [Aibileen’s] written, wasting even more time.” (Stockett 174)
What is the theme communicated in this passage and which part of the text supports this?
“Use the white bathroom at Pinchman Lawn and Garden. Say they wasn’t no sign up saying so. Two white men chase him ad beat him. […] He up at the hospital. I heard he blind” (Stockett 117)
What is the theme communicated in this passage and which part of the text supports this?
“Miss Leefolt, she like it fancy when she do a luncheon. Maybe she trying to make up for her house being small. They ain’t rich folk, that I know. Rich folk don’t try so hard.” (Stockett 4)
What is the theme communicated in this passage and which part of the text supports this?
Author’s Purpose, POV, Characterization
Why does Cyrano have to die? What is the author’s purpose in having him die?
By the end of the play, what can you interpret about Cyrano’s character?
What can you infer is the author’s point of view on love based on the play?