Category: Grade 9

1. Why does the man fish by night? How does this lead to the conflict with the ray? What is significant about the fact that he doesn’t fish for a living? 

He goes fishing in the night because then, he would be able to catch around half a dozen mullets in around an hour. He doesn’t fish for a living because he liked working with his head over his hands. He liked fishing alone at night because he felt that reality seemed to be missing from his twentieth-century daily life.

2. 3 examples of foreshadowing:

“When the man slipped the knot over his wrists”

“Something perhaps the shadow of the skiff, had frightened them. The old dock loomed very close.”

“Only by using his brain could he possibly survive and he called on his brain tO a solution; and his brain responded.”

3. Identify the following parts of the story plot: the complicating incident/ a single crisis/ the climax, the resolution and the ending:

The complicating incident: When he fell into the lake.

 A single crisis: When the man realized that he had caught a sea devil instead of some mullets

The climax: When he see the monster

The resolution: Swimming away from the monster and saving himself.

The ending: He saved himself but, made up his mind that he would never go casting alone in the night. 

One of the conflicts is between the civilized and primitive world (define these two words first). What is the purpose of the references made to the plane, the causeway, and the man’s wife at home?

Primitive world is where objects are only the natural aspects of earth and nature.

Civilized world is where everyone is living and everything’s modern and developed.

What does the man learn at the end of the story? Why does he release the mullet?

He released the mullet at the end of the story because he felt how the mullet felt when he was trapped underwater. He let it go because when he was suffering underwater, the mullet was suffering up in the land therefore, I think he did it because he didn’t want to have the mullet suffer like how he did. At the end of the story, I think the man learned to never go casting alone in the night.

Find 3 examples of descriptive language – this will lead into a discussion of figurative language.

 

Personification – “the good, rough, honest wood”

simile – “a great horned thing shot like a huge bat of of the water”

figurative language – “ he saw the mullet he had just caught, gasping its life away on the floor boards of the skiff.”

Sullen – bad-tempered and sulky; gloomy.

Weltering – move in a turbulent fashion.

Elemental – primary or basic.

Sinewy – consisting of or resembling sinews.

Hoisted – consisting of or resembling sinews.

Phosphorescence – light emitted by a substance without combustion or perceptible heat.

Cordage – cords or ropes, especially in a ship’s rigging.

Exhilaration – a feeling of excitement, happiness, or elation.

Atavistic – relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral.

Centrifugal – moving or tending to move away from a center.

Gauntly – extremely thin and bony; haggard and drawn, as from great hunger, weariness, or torture; emaciated. bleak, desolate, or grim, as places or things: a gaunt, windswept landscape.

Impeding – delay or prevent (someone or something) by obstructing them; hinder.

Tenaciously – with a firm hold of something; closely.

Respite – a short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant.

Equilibrium – a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced.

Imminent – about to happen.