Sound and Sense 115-116

Incident

:What accounts for the effectiveness of the last stanza? Comment on the title. Is it in key with the meaning of the poem?

The last stanza shows how much the speaker is frustrated after hearing the demeaning word from a guy who is similar in his age and size. He said, “I saw the whole of Baltimore” in line 9. It describes that he views the whole Baltimore as a racist city after getting insulted. Before the speaker experienced this incident, he seems to be a friendly and naïve boy as it says in line 7 “And so I smiled”. The incident changed the boy’s view of other people and he labeled the whole city to be racist.

"The Snow Man" break down

1. read it through
2. bough=a branch of a tree
Juniper=any of numerous shrubs or trees
Shagged=to make rough
3. The speaker can be any man who is talking in the winter trying to convey an idea.
4. The speaker is looking at shrubs glazed with ice, which looks shine but it is rough on the surface when a person touches it. The place takes in anywhere that shrub exist. It is a cold winter in the early 1900s.
5. The tone is bright but depressed at the same time. The author realizes that in life, many things seem to be great like the shining ices on shrubs. However, the reality is challenging and tough like the hard surface of the ice.
6. In the line 6, the author says, “The spruces rough in the distant glitter”. This line puts a musicality in the poem. When reading this line, a reader tends to draw into the poem. Snow is used as a tool to describe the theme
7. Theme is that many events in the world are described and shown in good ways, however, when it comes to a reality it isn’t always like that but touch and stressful.
8. The author uses “of” to start with a line for several times giving some musicality. Also in the line 10, he says “Which is the sound of the land”. The word ‘sound’ and ‘land’ gives another musicality.

Sound and Sense 119

The Chimney Sweeper

1. The boy seems like he has been cleansing the chimney for so long time that his brain thinks working for his master is the right thing to do. The boy certainly has positive view of life. On the other hand, the speaker has negative view. The speaker thinks selling the boy to the work is terrible and using young workers are more terrible. I guess the boy is too young to even notice what is good and what is bad, and he is brain washed by the master.

Sound and Sense 117/121

Barbie Doll
1. The author is describing a doll as if it is a real girl. That’s one way of approaching to the readers. The personalities that are given to the girl indicate the features of the doll. The author seems to make fun of how Barbie dolls depicted the girls at that time.

Ozymandias
1. read it through
2. visage= face
3. the speaker is a guy who has been traveling.
4. the speaker had an accident and somehow stuck in a desert with broken gears. But, he looks like he survived. The situation would be in the early 1800s.
5. The tone seems exhausted from the struggle to survive from an accident and desolate as the setting is in the desert with sand blowing.
6. The word ‘sand’ makes the tone solicit and dry. It makes the speaker desperate to survive from the accident. In line 10, it says “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings”. He is recalling his heydays when he was a great traveler.
7. The theme is the emptiness of life after losing what one had.

Sound and Sense 385/ 82

The Victoms
--The victims are the rest of the family whom the father or stepfather abandoned. Throughout the poem, we can feel the how much the rest of the family despises him. After the father left, the family seems to have mental and financial problem; therefore started taking ‘it’, which I assume to be a drug. The family wants the x father to fail in everything.

Toads

4. The speaker is reluctant to live his life the way it is. However, he is afraid to speak up to the boss and get out of it. Instead, he complains to himself by making himself look miserable. The first toad indicates the complaints to himself while the second toad represents that he is not courageous enough to say it to the boss. In other words, the second one is how he actual reacts in the reality.
5. The speaker is exhausted from the work and has tons of stress. However, he couldn’t quit because he could not survive in the world without a job. He thinks the life he has right now is not the life he wanted. He is just a ordinary workers at an office getting stress from the boss.

Sound and Sense 86

3. If my girl knows the love that I have to her, she would definitely love me.
But, my feeling has not been reached her yet; still I love her
Therefore we will never be successful as I expected at the first place.

I think this is definitely a valid argument since it summarizes the feeling of the man in the poem.

Sound and Sense 86/ 74-75

Dream Deferred
1. The five similes in the poem are the things we can expect. For instance, sweetness, dryness, and stink are not that surprising. In fact the author seems to draw readers’ attention with these similes. But with the metaphor at the end, which says “Or does it explode”, the author changes the direction and makes readers to think and figure out where did it come from. The metaphor at the end gives meaning to the poem while making the readers to comprehend it.

Song of the Powers
4. on the last line of the final stanza says, “They all end alone as you will, you will”. The term, ‘You’, refers to human being in general and it says all the power in the world will not last forever but will end up bleak and lonely. The author believes every physical power will somehow get lost. He uses metaphors of birds and scissors to illustrate it.

Sound and Sense 70/70-71

Bereft
1. The summer is past and cold and windy winter has come. The man feels lonely and empty as his life is in decline as he got older. The speaker seems like he is standing on a hill and watching icy shore. The weather is getting colder and more windy.


1. read it through
2. Hound= a dog of any of numerous hunting breeds Rend= to remove from place by violence Spurng= Equivocal= subject to two or more interpretations and usually used to mislead or confuse; uncertain as an indication or sign
3. the speaker is a random guy
4. he is just thinking, most likely outside where he can see a dog. He seems like he is suffering from Great Depression; therefore he talks about the two opposite results out of life.
5. The tone seems to be concerning and monotone. The speaker is not actual depressed or anything like that but he is thinking about how life can come out differently.
6. Some of the ends of the lines rhyme, and in general, the language is very concise while containing deeper meaning to it. He represents life as a hound and uses characteristics of hound to describe different things.
7. Theme is that the life cannot be assumed but you got to experience and face it in order to know and talk about it.
8. The author set hound as the representation of life and all other characteristics to describe parts in life.

Sound and Sense close reading for OUT OUT

1. Read it through
2. Snarled= tangled rattled=to make a rapid succession of short sharp noises scented= perfumed apron= a garment usually of cloth, plastic, or leather usually tied around the waist and used to protect clothing ether= sky
3. the speaker seems like he watched the boy getting his hands cut.
4. the boy got his hand chopped and finally died with excruciating pain. In the poem, it says “Under the sunset far into Vermont”. We can assume the incident takes place in Vermont, and most likely, people would be suffering with the Great Depression by looking at the author’s birth and death.
5. The tone of the poem is risky and sorrow. In line 7, it says, “And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled”. The saw gives the feeling of risk, since it can easily hurt people. The poem depicts sorrow with the boy dying because his hand was chopped.
6. ‘the saw’ is main word in the poem because it created the intensity and risk. In line 14, it says, “To tell them “Supper” At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant”. The supper represents the freedom from work labor. Since the boy wasn’t aware of the presence of the saw, he got his hand cut. Even though the boy was dead, people went back to the work, which reveals the cold reality and touch life.
7. Robert Frost wants to show people that the reality is too busy keeping up with all the works that it seems like nobody is paying attention to human rights and other important values.
8. Frost uses the saw and the supper to describe the situation. Also his powerful language touches to readers.

Sound and Sense 64/188

4. Since the speaker is living during the Great Depression, he is living poorly with his dad earning money as a laborer. He complains the lack of respect for his dad. He doesn't understand why the life is so painful and desperate.

3. The woman is stressing out with the responsiblity as a mother. She lists bunch of chores that she has to do. But, interestingly, some of the listed chores are for males. She might had lost her husband and now has to deal with everything in a houes.

Sound and Sense 141

3. I feel like the whole poem is a giant irony. The author writes about a fairy tale with different accents. Also the ending is different. Instead the girl kissing the frog, she flushes the frog into the toliet and think the frog is a lunetic. The ending is messed up in this version.

Sound and Sense

1. It was banned because of the word Jazz. When it was written the Jazz was understood to be a sexual reference. However, the she meant the music of Jazz. Therefore it was banned in some schools in urban area.
2. Richard killed himself even though he fulfilled every factor that modern people understood to be successful because he was lonely. Wealth doesn’t give the real happiness.
3. The family in the poem feels happy as they overcome difficulty in life. Also they feel they are having good time when they enjoy themselves.

Sound and sense p 44-45 and p 48-49

Pathedy of Manners

4. The tone of the speaker’s language seems to change in line 17 where it says, “I saw her yesterday at forty-three,” Before this line, the speaker was criticizing the woman and once he said he met her yesterday, the language looks more controlled.

Cross

1. The author of the poem lived when the segregation of African-American was happening. He showed respect to white man but he treated black man with demeaning words. But he feels little bit of remorse in his action when he is about to die. The title, ‘cross’ means two lines intersecting perpendicularly and it also means a structure consisting of an upright with a transverse beam used especially by the ancient Romans for execution. The connotation of cross would mean the African-Americans and White men being treated differently. On the one hand it would mean people’s view on the author because he treated blacks with disrespect and he seems worried once he is about to die.

storm windows closed reading!

The speaker seems to be a person who used to live in a town where the weather is awful. Based on phrases like “storm windows lying on the ground”, I imagine that there was really bad storm that destroyed everything where the speaker lives. The tone of the poem is a bit melancholy due to the damage. In the poem, it says “lonely afternoon of memories and missed desires, while the wintry rain runs on the standing windows and away”. It highlights the massive loss with nature’s undefeatable power. The poem tries to convey that even though humans try to overpower or at least overcome the nature with civilization or tools like storm windows, the nature isn’t defeated but destructs human.

Sound and Sense 25

A Study of Reading Habits

1. When he was going to school he liked to read and he usually was bullied by guys. Even though he was good kid in his early days he turned out to be corrupted man as he sleeps with other women and he is addicted to heroine.

2. He looks like a corrupted man with sex and drug. I guess he used to read books as a hobby but as his life got messed up he didn’t care about books

Sound and Sense 35 and 29

Mirror

2. In the first stanza when the mirror says “I am no cruel, only truthful” in line 4, it seems like the mirror has personality or heart like a human. The mirror says “The eye of a little god, four-cornered” in line 5. The description is not like a human but a mirror. In line 14 it says, “she rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands”. Agitation of hands makes the mirror.

Is my team plowing

3. Even though I couldn’t find three meanings for the word ‘sleep’, I could come up with some. Since sleep usually means peaceful moment within darkness. It will most likely mean the death. The word ‘bed’ would mean the after life. In line 27-28, it says, “And has he found to sleep in a better bed than mine?” It seems like the author believes in a form of after life such as heaven.

Sound and Sense 6-7:2 33-34:1

Dulce et Decorum Est

2. The poet barely contains beauty, but it describes extreme situation in a fight. In line 16 it says, “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”. Despite the dreadful situation, interestingly in line 9 it says, “A ecstasy of fumbling”. This line is indicates the beauty or happiness that exists even in a extreme situation.

When in Rome

1. It is a dialogue of Mattie and rich man. The man is suggesting Mattie to eat some upper class food, which Mattie doesn’t favor of. In line 12-13, she says “whew! If I had some black-eyed peas” It describes how Mattie doesn’t like the food the man has. Mattie’s words are not said out loud, instead she is talking to herself.

Introduction for A Doll House paper

The rolls of male and female has been set in people’s minds that some people think that is the ideal rolls. Henrik Ibsen, the author of ‘A Doll House’ mixes up the rolls of male and female in a family. In the late 19th century, the material Ibsen was writing was unthinkable form of a family. Torvald Helmer, the husband of Nora, treats her as a child and believes she is useless; therefore, Nora failed to develop independence. At the end, she realizes that Helmer and her personality is different and leaves the house. Nora could not develop her personal qualities because Helmer was treating her as if she was a child, which makes what happens at the end inevitable.

a Doll House (reaction) 5

The story finally reaches the climax when Torvald sees the letter and then Nora admits that it is true. Torvald is shocked but he wanted to forgive her and keep her like a child. I think Torvald is obsessed with the idea that men have to take care of women that Nora never had any time to grow up and be independent. On the last page, Nora goes somewhere to find who really she is. By making this choice she is willing to be mature and change.

A Doll House (reaction) 3

Nora is worried as the story goes on because Krogstad is blackmailing her. Krogstad is giving Nora pressure. He put a letter in Torvald’s mailbox. Meanwhile, Nora has a good friend name Dr.Rank and Dr. Rank acts as if he likes her. She is definitely flirting with Dr. Rank. I am confused of her identity because she acts like a baby in front of Torvald but she acts differently in front of Dr. Rank

Christine Linde, a widow, is a friend of Nora who needs a job. Nora promises to ask Torvald to give Christine a position at the bank where Torvald is a manager. Nora confides to Christine that she once secretly borrowed money to save Torvald's life when he was very ill, but she has not told him in order to protect his pride. She then took secret jobs copying papers by hand, which she carried out secretly in her room, and learned to take pride in her ability to earn money "as if she were a man." However, she has continued to play the part of the frivolous, scatter-brained child-wife for the benefit of her husband.

A Doll House (reaction)

Nora likes to squander money on everything. Even thought Nora and Torvald love each other they have different opinions or habits on using money. Torvald thinks Nora should spend it more wisely. He also emphasizes that there is always risk in life that one day he might die for some reason and if she can’t control spending money, then she can’t adapt to the situation. I felt Nora has a strong friendship when she promised to get Kristine’s job.