Rebellions Are Built on Hope

 Read the poem below by Emily Dickinson - 

"Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --

What is the literary term that drives the meaning of this poem?
  

a. metaphor

b. simile

c. repetition

d. allusion

Scroll down for the answer.

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a. is correct.  We do not have what the complete comparison is, but we should be able to figure out that Hope is being compared to a bird.

She sells seashells, too.

​Read the following:


Wallace walked wearily while wondering where Wendal was.


What literary device does this sentence rely on?


A. Simile
B. Alliteration
C. Hyperbole
D. Personification

Scroll down for the answer.

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The correct Answer is B.


Thanks to Ezra for this excellent and egregiously terribly twisty tongue teaser. If you want more tongue twisters, try this site: http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/50-tongue-twisters-improve-pronunciation/

The Black Beast of ARRRRGGGHHH!

 Watch this clip from Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail:

What literary term is shown in this clip:

a. rhetorical device

b. personification

c. allusion

d. deus ex machina

Scroll down for the answer.

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The correct answer is d. deus ex machina.  Why? The term literally means "God in a machine" and is used to describe when the characters are in a bind and there is no way to get them out of it, so the writer just makes up something to save them all.

My Pretty Rose Tree

 Read the following poem by William Blake:

My Pretty Rose Tree

A flower was offered to me,
Such a flower as May never bore;
But I said, 'I've a pretty rose tree,'
And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my pretty rose tree,
To tend her by day and by night;
But my rose turned away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.

Why is the speaker's "only delight" the thorns of the rose tree?

a. the speaker is not fond of flowers, which is why he passed over the flower offered him
b. the speaker's girlfriend/wife is upset with him because of another woman is hitting on him
c. the speaker is a bitter old man with nothing but memories of better days
d. the speaker should have taken the rose offered
e. who the heck knows?


  








Scroll down for the answer.







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In this poem, the rose is symbolic of a woman.  One woman offered herself to him and he refused because he is faithful to his wife/girlfriend.  However, his wife/girlfriend is jealous and this causes problems in their relationship.

A Call for Questions

Teachers - Be Not Afraid

Your Daily Dose entry is just below this post. Today is my birthday, so I thought I'd take the time to ask for any contributions to help keep this blog fresh.


The challenge:

Either send me a question of your making (you'll get credit at the bottom) from any classic work or work of pop culture

-or-

Assign your kids the task of creating a question with the above parameters and send me the best one to three entries.  I'll make sure to give them credit as well.  

You can send them to extremeenglishteacher@gmail.com!

Oh, and don't forget to check our blog! 

 

1001

 Read this very short story:

“The Moores are having a baby.”

I glanced up from the table, surprised. “They got the okay?”

My husband nodded. “The paperwork came in today, so I heard.” He lowered his eyes in sorrow. “Poor Joanna.”

“She’s only 53,” I breathed.

A bead of sweat dripped down my brow, landing on the cool, concrete floor of the bunker. I tried to remind myself to be thankful for this place, this concrete tomb, but it grew more difficult each day. Perpetuum Technologies, the company that sprung up just in time for the largest nuclear war the world had ever seen, had designed the vault to sustain one thousand people for as long as it took the surface to be inhabitable again.

Exactly one thousand people.

Poor Joanna indeed.

From this story, we can infer:

a. Joanna cannot have children

b. Joanna is very sick

c. Joanna is the first name of Mrs. Moore

d. Joanna is the oldest person in the community

Scroll down for the answer.

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This question requires two processes to figure out.  The first is to understand that Perpetuum Technologies will only sustain 1000 people.  This means that if a new baby comes in, that will push the number over 1000 - so the solution would be to get rid of one person to make room for the baby.  Why Joanna?  The key to that is in the statement that she is only 53.  Since the characters are focused on her age, we can assume that the person selected to be gotten rid of to make room for the baby must be selected on age.  Therefore, the correct answer is D.

Spookily enough, there is a real world Perpetuum Technologies.

Story taken from: https://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/boo-scared-you?utm_term=.bcyrRk5yEk#.cs7Rr7QmX7

Burn, Baby, Burn!

Read the following excerpt from Fahrenheit 451.  This is a book written in the 1950s that takes place in our future.

The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest. The music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune.

Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of the tomb, her eyes fixed in the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.

What is the purpose of the metaphor in this passage?

a. to explain how Mildred drowned
b. to show that Mildred cannot swim
c. to explain how Mildred listens to music
d. to show Mildred's unique fashion sense

Scroll down for the answer.








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This is a typical NCFinal three part question. Part one, do you know what a metaphor is?  Part two, can you find the metaphor?  Part three do you understand what the metaphor means?  

The ocean is a metaphor showing how distant Mildred is when she uses the "seashell" radio.  Basically Ray Bradbury is envisioning ear buds way back in the 1950s.  Know that you know that, the other metaphor, the mosquito, makes more sense as well and adds to the understanding.  
C. is the correct answer.