Category Archives: English 9
Secret Path – Infographic
(This is an infographic presentation of the “Secret Path: Swing Set” poem analysis.)
Short Story Graphic Comic – The Veldt
Comprehension Questions – All Summer in a Day
- I believe that the kids do sympathize Margot and feel bad for her after seeing the sun because they now understand how marvelous it was and how perfect it was to her description. They realize at the end that they shouldn’t have locked her in the closet and ruined her chance of seeing the sun once for the next seven years.
2. I believe Margot acts the way she does is because she stayed on earth longer than any other kid. I feel that she is traumatized by the move and misses the earth and how the sun use to beat down on her everyday. All the other kids do not like her because of her differences and I believe that plays into why she does not play with the other kids.
3. I believe why the other kids are so mean to Margot is because they are all jealous that she still remembers how the sun use be. They do not know to deal with their jealousy so they treat her horribly. They are indanyl that the way she describes the sun is true because of their jealousy and her differences.
4. Once they let Margot out of the closet, I believe that Margot is now even more sad and extremely depressed that she missed seeing the sun. The kids must feel bad for their actions because they felt guilt once they forgot that Margot was still in the closet when they got back. I feel that the connection between Margot and the others is even worse than it was before.
5. The sun represents life and hope. That’s why Margot truly wanted to see the sun because it would remind her of how real life use to be on Earth. It isn’t healthy for people never to be in the sun because our bodies absorb vitamin D to survive. The story states that they have sun lamps for people on Venus so they can absorb some vitamin D but heat lamps can not compete with the natural sources of the sun.
6. The theme of the story is about how people can be ignorant of things and only see things one way because have only ever experienced something one way and from one point of view.
Comprehension Questions – All Summer in a Day
- I believe that the kids do sympathize Margot and feel bad for her after seeing the sun because they now understand how marvelous it was and how perfect it was to her description. They realize at the end that they shouldn’t have locked her in the closet and ruined her chance of seeing the sun once for the next seven years.
2. I believe Margot acts the way she does is because she stayed on earth longer than any other kid. I feel that she is traumatized by the move and misses the earth and how the sun use to beat down on her everyday. All the other kids do not like her because of her differences and I believe that plays into why she does not play with the other kids.
3. I believe why the other kids are so mean to Margot is because they are all jealous that she still remembers how the sun use be. They do not know to deal with their jealousy so they treat her horribly. They are indanyl that the way she describes the sun is true because of their jealousy and her differences.
4. Once they let Margot out of the closet, I believe that Margot is now even more sad and extremely depressed that she missed seeing the sun. The kids must feel bad for their actions because they felt guilt once they forgot that Margot was still in the closet when they got back. I feel that the connection between Margot and the others is even worse than it was before.
5. The sun represents life and hope. That’s why Margot truly wanted to see the sun because it would remind her of how real life use to be on Earth. It isn’t healthy for people never to be in the sun because our bodies absorb vitamin D to survive. The story states that they have sun lamps for people on Venus so they can absorb some vitamin D but heat lamps can not compete with the natural sources of the sun.
6. The theme of the story is about how people can be ignorant of things and only see things one way because have only ever experienced something one way and from one point of view.
Comprehension & Vocabulary Questions – The Veldt
Short Story Comprehension Questions
The Veldt
- Advancements in technology have affected the children because they don’t need their parents anymore and they have become spoiled and horrible. The technology in the house has become so advanced that it takes care of the children in their nursery. The parents don’t have any parental jobs anymore. Lydia doesn’t have to rock her children to sleep, cook or clean and as a result the children no longer respect or listen to their parents anymore.
2. I think the story was originally called “The World the Children Made” because the story centres around this disturbing “world” the children had created in their nursery. This world they have created is dangerous and deadly and adults are not allowed in! Their disturbing imaginations have created a scene from the savannah where deadly man eating lions in the end eat their parents.
3. I believe that the children put their father’s wallet and their mother’s scarf into the veldt with the lions so that the lions could get their scent. The fact that they are both bloodied foreshadows that something terrible is going to happen to Lydia and George in the nursery.
4. Bradbury creates and maintains suspense in the story from the very beginning of where Lydia says there is something wrong with the nursery. She says she feels like the house has taken over the role of mother. Bradbury maintains suspense by using foreshadowing in the story. He foreshadows that something bad is going to happen by showing the lions feasting on something in the distance. There are even vultures in the scene. When I think of vultures, I think of death.
5. The irony in this story is that the house was supposed to make everyone’s life better and easier. Where in fact the house is driving everyone crazy. The nursery was supposed to help raise well adjusted kids, but it’s actually allowed them to become disturbed killers with no respect or love for their parents. It’s actually ironic that the house is called “HappyLife” home.
6. The Veldt is told from the third person point of view, limited omniscient. The narrator is telling the story as though watching it happen. Although, the author lets us into George’s thoughts and feelings a little. This affects our understanding of the story and characters because we don’t know what they children are feeling and thinking. We don’t know why they have become so disturbed. We only know how George perceives things.
7. An allusion is an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly. An illusion is a deceptive appearance or impression; an erroneous mental representation. Allusion is used in the story with the children’s names. Peter and Wendy are also the main characters in Peter Pan, which also centers around and imaginary world thought up by children. There is a big difference between the childlike world of Peter Pan and the imaginary world of the Veldt.
Vocabulary:
- Veldt: Uncultivated country or grassland in southern Africa. Pg. 1
2. Automaticity: Working by itself with little or no direct human control. Pg. 1
3. Efficiency: Technical the ratio of the useful work performed by a machine or in a process to the total energy expended or heat taken in. Pg. 2
4. Contraptions: A machine or device that appears strange or unnecessarily complicated, and often badly made or unsafe. Pg. 4
5. Intersperse: Scatter among or between other things; place here and there. Pg. 6
A Mountain Journey Quote Drawing
Comprehension & Vocabulary Questions – The Sea Devil
Ruby Maher
English 9
The Sea Devil
- The man goes fishing by night because he likes the loneliness and the labour of it. He likes the feeling of being a solitary hunter. His desire to go out fishing alone at night is what gets him into big trouble. He almost loses his life trying to survive his encounter with the giant ray because he is alone in the dark with no one there to help him. The man does not fish for a living, so he really doesn’t need to go out in the dark to fish.
2. Foreshadowing:
- The author tells the reader in the beginning of the story that porpoise are the man’s friend. In the end, it’s a porpoise that saves him from the sea devil.
- A school of sardines surfaces near the boat as though something had frightened them. The man does not know at this point that the giant sea ray is frightening the sardines.
- The author tells the reader that the man liked “the harsh tug of the retrieving rope around his wrist.” Little did he know that the rope would be the one thing that almost kills him.
3. The complicating incident is when the man sees the two swirling, dark pools near the boat. He thinks there are two mullet swimming under the surface. He casts his net out towards what he thinks are the mullet and nets a giant sea ray and gets pulled into the water by the rope attached to his wrist.
A single crisis is when the man is being dragged out further and deeper I into the bay and realizes he only has moments to live.
The climax is when with the help of the porpoise hitting the sea ray with his tail, the man is able to swim ahead of the ray to tie the rope around the barnacle encrusted stake. He hopes when the sea ray lunges forward again, the rope with break on the stake to set him free.
The resolution is when the rope breaks free and the man swims back to his small boat.
The ending is a happy ending in the sense that the man did not die. He lets the dying mullet go free because he is a changed man. He knows what it is like to be hunted and trapped. He vows not to go fishing alone at night ever again.
4. Civilized: bring (a place or people) to a stage of social, cultural, and moral development considered to be more advanced.
Primitive: relating to, denoting, or preserving the character of an early stage in the evolutionary or historical development of s s something.
When the author refers to the plane and the causeway he is referring to how modernized man has become. Even when he talks about how the man has job that where he doesn’t have to rely on hunting for his food. He has a job where he uses his head instead of his hands. The wife at home represents the safety that man thinks he has created for himself in his civilized world. The irony of this story is that no matter how “civilized” or modern man has become he can’t win against the “primitive” strength and power of nature.
5. The man learns at the end of the story that he should never underestimate the power of nature. He also learns how it feels to be trapped and fighting his life. In the end, he lets the dying mullet in the bottom of his boat go free because how helpless it feels.
6. Examples of Figurative Language:
Somewhere out in the channel the porpoise blew, with a sounds like steam escaping. P. 33
The night was black as a witch’s cat, the stars looked fuzzy and dim. P. 34
A school of sardines surfaced, suddenly, skittering along like drops of mercury. P. 36
Vocabulary
- Sullen: bad-tempered and sulky; gloomy.
- Weltering: move in a turbulent fashion. 3
- Elemental:(of an emotion) having the primitive and inescapable character of a force of nature.
- Sinewy: Tough and difficult to cut, stringy.
- Hoisted: To raise something by using ropes and strength
- Phosphorescence: Luminescence that is caused by the absorption of radiations.
- Cordage: The ropes in the rigging of a ship or boat.
- Exhilaration: Feeling of great happiness and excitement.
- Atavistic: A recurrence to a past style, manner, outlook or activity.
- Centrifugal: To move away from the center of something.
- Gauntly: Barren, desolate.
- Impeding: To slow the movement, progress or action of something.
- Tenaciously: Very determined to do something.
- Respite: A period of temporary delay.
- Equilibrium: A state of balance, one force is not stronger than the other.
- Imminent: Something that is about to happen very soon.
Comprehension and Vocabulary Questions- A Mountain Journey
Ruby Maher
English 9
A Mountain Journey -Questions
1. Dave Conroy is a seasoned trapper who has been traveling alone in the winter crested mountains and forest. He is hauling his fifty pound sack of furs on his back that he plans to sell at the market. He has been pushing himself very hard to reach his next resting point, a cabin in the woods.
2. The reader knows that the protagonist has pushed himself to far right from the beginning of the story when Dave Conroy has made it to the summit of the pass and realizes that he should have made camp two miles back in the shelter of the spruce tree. The author lets the reader know right away that he has pushed himself too far. We really know that he is in serious trouble when he barely makes it to the cabin after falling into the river only to find that the cabin has burned down. At this point, he can no longer feel his hands and can’t even make a fire.
3. The first critical mistake that Dave Conroy made was that he didn’t stop at the first spruce tree and rested, instead he went on to find the first cabin. The second mistake that he made was when he found that the cabin was burned down, he decided to make a fire with his matches but the dropped them into the freezing snow. The last mistake was that even though the was cold, wet and utterly exhausted, he continued his journey the second nearest cabin that was not a near as he wished. These critical mistakes did cost him his life.
4. Exposition: The story introduces the protagonist Dave Conroy as he crests a snowy mountain summit on skis. He has been hauling his 50 lb backpack full of furs that he has trapped through the wilderness to the market. He realizes as he crests the summit that he is exhausted and has pushed himself too far. He should have stopped two miles back to spend the night in the shelter of a large spruce tree.
Complicating incident: Dave starts his descent on his skis and at the bottom falls through the ice in to the freezing cold water of the river and gets soaked.
3 crises: He takes his gloves off because they are wet and puts on a pair of woolen inner mitts and decides to continue on even though he knows he should make a fire to dry and warm up his hands and wet feet.
He makes it to where the cabin should be and finds that it has burned down
He tries to make a fire, but he can no longer feel his hands. He drops his match and match safe.
Climax: The climax of the story is when Dave makes a last frantic effort to make the ten mile climb up the high pass to MacMoran’s cabin in Terrace Creek.
Denouement: Dave makes it to just below the summit and sits down for a rest and realizes he’s too tired to move and falls asleep. Dave dies still thinking maybe his friends MacDonald and MacMoran might come get him.
5. The setting of this story is in the deep, mountain wilderness somewhere in Northern Canada in the winter near the end of February. The story is set back in time, as the writer talks about Dave having matches and a match safe and also refers to his friend owning a cobbler shop. The setting affects the plot and the theme of the story because this a story of a man underestimating nature and weather. This is a story of man vs. Nature and nature wins. A theme statement for this story is not to let your pride get in the way of making the right decision. Dave’s overconfidence and pride are what got him killed out in the unforgiving winter wilderness.
6. An example of symbolic setting in the story is the little white cottage with the open door that Dave sees in the distance at the end of the story. The cottage with the open door is symbol for death…. it’s inviting him in.
7. Figurative Language: Stiff branchless trees, like a parade of skeletons climbing up the mountainside (p.95)
Simile: glanced a moment over his shoulder at the curved beauty of his ski trail on the hill above, curved and smooth and thin, like the tracing of a pen upon the snow.
Metaphor: The cold was an old man’s fingers feeling craftily through his clothes (p.91)
Personification: That tree, like a strong lonely woman, called to his weary body to stop. (p.92)
A Mountain Journey Vocabulary
- Eternal: Lasting or existing forever.
2. Immobility: Incapable of moving or being moved.
3. Opaque: Not able to be seen through.
4. Reverberation: Prolongation of a sound.
5. Momentum: The impetus gained by a moving object.
6. Cadaverous: Resembling in a corps being very thin, pale or bony.
7. Congregated: Gathered into a crowd or mass
8. Inundation: Flooding.
9. Beggared: A person of a specified type, often one to be pitied.
10. Filched: pilfer or steal in a casual way.
Friday Questions – Ruby Maher
- The boys are upset at the idea of the girls carrying the water bucket because the boys feel threatened that the girls are going to take their responsibility away from them. They don’t value the girls as equals and don’t believe that the girls are strong enough or brave enough to carry the water bucket.
2. The strategies the boys use to pressure the girls to give in is that they beat up the girls and excluded them from the softball game. They also threated them and tried to persuade them to give up the idea. The girls were definitely not happy about the way the boys were treating them but still wanted to not give in and stand for what they think is right.
3. The story is told in first person point of view by a girl in the same class as Alma. She seems to respect Miss Ralston very much and is very grateful of the way she stood up for the girls and took Alma’s question about the water seriously. The narrator is not pleased by the way the boys are treating the girls but still wants to stand beside Alma and the other girls in the fight for their rights.
4. The setting takes place somewhere in Eastern Canada in the early to mid 1900’s. The evidence that shows the setting is that a line from the story says that “If one of those German planes, like in the movies, appeared over the school and dropped a bomb”. This shows that the story must have taken place sometime after WWII. Also the story states something about “driving a tractor or playing for the Toronto Maple Leaves”. This shows that the story must have taken place somewhere in Canada. The conflict was person vs. Person because both sides (Boys vs. Girls) were fighting for the same thing (the water bucket).
5. The protagonist is Alma Niles. She is the protagonist because she was the girl to ask the question about the water and she was the person who tried to change tradition.
6. That Friday, the balance of equality changed for the better. After Miss Ralston told the class that “next week, Alma Niles and Joyce Shipley will be going for the water”, she swept her hand on her desk. I believe that this symbolizes satisfaction in the change that she has allowed and pride for the girls and that she has balanced the equality in the classroom. The theme is stating that equality should always be evident and that girls can do just as much as boys can.
Vocabulary
- Galvanized: Coat (iron or steel) with a protective layer of zinc “a galvanized bucket”.
- Remotest: Of a chance or possibility unlikely to occur.
- Intoxicated: Excited or exhilarated.
- Ominous: Giving the impression that something bad or unpleasant is going to happen.
- Supplementary: An additional person or thing.
- Forlornly: Pitifully sad and abandoned or lonely.
- Earnestly: Resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction.
- Gloating: to contemplate or dwell on one’s own success or another’s misfortune with smugness or malignant pleasure
- Transfixed: cause someone to become motionless with horror, wonder or astonishment
- Pirouettings: spin around, twirl, whirl, revolve or pivot