1. I can cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.2. I can determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.3) I can analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed). 4) I can determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings' 5) I can analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
In class: new vocabulary (class handout / copy below. Quiz on Tuesday, June 2.
Reading Robert Frost's poem "Home Burial" with accompanying responses. (class handout / copy below) due at the close of class.
Key terms associated with modernism: uncertainty, disjointedness, disillusionment,
fragmentation, lack of trust in values, meaninglessness, uncertainty,
bewilderment
Name______________
Home Burial
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some
fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
From up there always—for I want to know.’
She turned and sank upon her skirts at
that,
And her face changed from terrified to
dull.
He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’
Mounting until she cowered under him.
‘I will find out now—you must tell me,
dear.’
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and
silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t
see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.
But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again,
‘Oh.’
‘What is it—what?’ she said.
‘Just
that I see.’
‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what
it is.’
‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three stones of slate and one of
marble,
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the
sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child’s mound—’
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.
She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on the banister, and slid
downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting
look,
He said twice over before he knew himself:
‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s
lost?’
‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t
need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.
I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’
‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won’t come down the
stairs.’
He sat and fixed his chin between his
fists.
‘There’s something I should like to ask
you, dear.’
‘You don’t know how to ask it.’
‘Help me, then.’
Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.
‘My words are nearly always an offense.
I don’t know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught
I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.
A man must partly give up being a man
With women-folk. We could have some
arrangement
By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you’re a-mind to name.
Though I don’t like such things ’twixt
those that love.
Two that don’t love can’t live together
without them.
But two that do can’t live together with
them.’
She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t
go.
Don’t carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it’s something human.
Let me into your grief. I’m not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the
thing
To take your mother-loss of a first child
So inconsolably—in the face of love.
You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’
‘There you go sneering now!’
‘I’m not, I’m not!
You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s
dead.’
‘You can’t because you don't know how to
speak.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand—how could you?—his
little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so
lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the
hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know
you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the
stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling
voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your
shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s
grave
And talk about your everyday concerns.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’
‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever
laughed.
I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m
cursed.’
‘I can repeat the very words you were
saying:
“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can
build.”
Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
You couldn’t care! The
nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to
death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the
grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to
life
And living people, and things they
understand.
But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so
If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’
‘There, you have said it all and you feel
better.
You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the
door.
The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.
Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’
‘You—oh, you think the talk is all.
I must go—
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make
you—’
‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.
‘Where do you mean to go? First tell
me that.
I’ll follow and bring you back by
force. I will!—’
|
1. What happens in the first stanza?
Paraphrase.
.
2.
Why hasn’t the man noticed the view
2 of the graveyard at the top of the
stairs?
•
3. How is the relationship between the
man and woman revealed in their
physical
postures toward each other?
•
4.
Does the man want to share the
woman’s grief? How does he reveal
h his
attitude about her grief?
•
5. What does the woman find abhorrent
about
the man?
•
6. What does she find abhorrent about
death?
7. What
does the last stanza reveal about
the relationship between the woman
and the man?
|
Prufrock vocabulary Quiz on Tuesday, June 2
1. epigraph (noun)- a short quotation or saying at the beginning
of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme.
2.
infamy –(noun)- the state of being
known for some bad quality or deed
3.
to etherize (verb)- to anesthetize a
person or animal with ether (put them to sleep)
4. insidious (adjective)- treacherous, crafty
5. Michelangelo (noun)-Renaissance artist Sistine Chapel / Vatican
6. muzzle (noun and verb)- the
projecting part of the face, including the nose and mouth, of an animal such as
a dog or horse. To muzzle- to cover up
the nose or mouth, so as the animal cannot make a noise.
7. to formulate (verb)- to create or devise methodically (a strategy or a
proposal).
8. synecdoche-(noun)- a figure of speech in which a part is
made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs
(meaning “Cleveland's baseball team”).
9. eternal footman-(noun)-
death
10. Lazarus –(noun) - a brother of Mary and Martha whom Jesus raised from the dead.
11. deferential- (adjective)- respectful, humble, obsequious
12. misogynist- (noun
/ adjective)- a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced
against women.
