The Martian - Makes No Sense

 Read the following excerpt from Andy Weir's novel The Martian.  The protagonist has been stranded on Mars and has been keeping a log of his thoughts and actions while stuck there.  This excerpt begins with NASA officials trying to figure out how to get him home and ends with one of the protagonist's log entries.

     "Any idea on how to keep him alive for four years?"
     "Nope."
     "Work on that, too."
     "Will do," Venkat said.
     Teddy swiveled his chair and looked out the window to the sky beyond.  Night was edging in.  "What must it be like?" he pondered.  "He's stuck out there.  He thinks he's totally alone and that we all gave up on him.  What kind of effect does that have on a man's psychology?"
     He turned back to Venkat.  "I wonder what he's thinking right now."

LOG ENTRY: SOL 61
     How come Aquaman can control whales?  They're mammals! Makes no sense.


What literary device is being used for humorous effect?

a. juxtaposition
b. allusion
c. pun
d. rhetorical device

Scroll down for the answer.








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a. is correct.  Juxtaposition is the placing of one scene right next to the other scene.  Here we follow up on a serious issue with a silly one for humorous effect.

Go Gawain!

 Read the following from J. R. R. Tolkien's work, The Fall of Arthur:

Greatest was Gawain,
   whose glory waxed
as times darkened,
   true and dauntless,
among knights peerless
   ever anew proven,
defence and fortress
   of a falling world


What word could replace "waxed" in the second line?
a. faded
b. increased
c. faltered
d. fearless

How cool is it that I own this book?

Scroll down for the answer.




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a. and c. are incorrect.  They both mean the same thing, so if one was correct, so would the other.
d. means nothing in this sentence.
b. is correct.  While others failed, Gawain just got stronger, braver, and better.  His glory increased.

Chim Chim Cher-ee

William Blake is famous for publishing two collections of poetry: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. He writes about the same subject matter from the perspective of an innocent and the perspective of someone who has lost that innocence.  There is a "Chimney Sweeper" poem in both books.

The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

A little black thing among the snow,
Crying "weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? say?"
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil'd among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

What line(s) from the poem suggests that this poem is from Songs of Experience rather than Songs of Innocence? 

A."...I am happy and dance and sing," 
B. "They are both gone up to the church to pray"
C. "And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,/Who make up a heaven of our misery." 
D. "Where are thy father and mother, say?"

Scroll down for the answer.






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The best answer is C. These lines show that the speaker is aware that he has been abandoned by his family and by a society in which people neglect some of its most vulnerable populations (like chimney sweepers). This level of self-awareness reflects that the speaker has already lost his innocence, so this poem fits into the Songs of Experience collection.

You may have noticed that this question exceeds in quality our usual fare.  That is because someone far wiser than me wrote this one.  Thanks to Ms. White for this question!  Students of Ms. White should not weep weep in notes of woe, but rather cheer and carry her around the room on your shoulders in notes of joy! 

Shameless Plug - One Shot Quick Activities

Never fear, dear fellow English teacher - your Daily Dose of EOC is just a scroll away.

 As we head into the fourth quarter, you find yourself in need of a one-day lesson.  You can get a couple of them from the XET Teacher-Pay-Teachers Store:

Writing Formal Emails - walks your kids through how to format and write an email for when they need to sound professional.  Good for leaving with a substitute since the students can walk themselves through the presentation.

Title Punctuation and Capitalization - by high school, they should already know this, but most do not.

Practicing Inference Using Proverbs - Three one-day activities - students can work together or on their own to figure out the meaning behind these sayings.

Context Clues Practice - American Flag Edition - can they figure out the meaning of these words used in the Pledge of Allegiance and the "Star Spangled Banner"?  

Of course, here at Extreme English Teacher, we are not out to take all of your hard-earned paycheck, you can search the tag LESSON IDEAS and QUICK LESSONS get some freebies over at https://extremeenglishteacher.blogspot.com/!

What? What?

 Look at this cartoon strip:

What is most likely the word that was blanked out in the last panel?

a. something profane
b. "bingo"
c. "irony"
d. no word was there, just ". . ."








Scroll down for the answer.





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O.K., this shouldn't have been too hard.  Let's stop and think.  A teacher is putting this up, so chances are that he is not going to put something profane on the site.  So we can rule out A.  Irony is something unexpected and it would be unexpected that an irony detector detects everything but irony, so C. is a good answer.  While it might look as if he is repeating her last word, "Bingo" makes no sense, so we can rule out B.  D. would only work if the cartoonist was expecting you to figure out the joke, so it might could work.  So we have b, which works, and d, which might would work.  Always go with the sure thing.  C. is the correct answer.

What's Sacred to You?

Read this excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque:

"Good God, what is there that is sacred to me?- such things change pretty quickly with us."


What is this passage an example of?

a) allusion
b) tone
c) metaphor
d) external conflict














Scroll down for the answer.

________________________________

a) allusion isn't the answer because nothing famous is referred to
b) Tone is the answer because the character's response is very disillusioned and depressed
c) metaphor isn't the answer because you aren't comparing one thing to another
d) external conflict isn't the answer because the two characters aren't in conflict here



Thanks to the ultra smart Miranda from Mrs. Stamey's class for this question.  Based on the quality of this question, I'm sure she is a die hard Carolina fan!  Go Heels!

Never

Read the following excerpt from Kenneth Follet's novel Never, a novel about the beginning of a nuclear war.  Pauline Green is the president of the United States of America in this novel and has just launched an attack on North Korea in retaliation for North Korea's attack on South Korea and Japan.

Pauline had killed hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, by bombing North Korean military bases, and more would have been maimed by the blast and ravaged by the radiation.  In her head she knew she had done the right thing: General Pak's murderous regime had to be closed down.  But no amount of reasoning could make her feel all right about it in her heart.  Every time she washed her hands she thought about Lady Macbeth trying to get the blood off. 

What is the purpose of the allusion in the above passage?

a. to show how Pauline was justified in taking the action she took
b. to show how Pauline feels guilty for the deaths of those caught in the US's bombing
c. to show how guilty General Pak is from his actions
d. to let the reader know that nuclear war is never a justifiable option

Scroll down for the answer

____________________________________________________

In order to answer this question correctly, you must:

• know what an allusion in
• be able to find the allusion in the passage
• understand how the allusion relates to the passage

Allusions are often difficult to spot because you may have never read the book being alluded to.  Allusions that may appear on the state test will probably come from Shakespeare, mythology, or the Bible.  

So, how do you find the allusion in the above passage if you do not recognize the work it is coming from?  First thing to do is to look for anything that does not belong.  We have three names: Pauline, General Pak, and Lady Macbeth.  We know from reading the blurb before the passage that Pauline is a character in the book.  We can guess that General Pak is her adversary in North Korea.  That leaves Lady Macbeth, who doesn't seem to have a role here.  That could be our allusion.  We see she is washing blood off her hands.  Given that this was a missile strike, there would be no literal blood on anyone's hands, so we can read this to be figurative.  The phrase "blood on one's hands" deals with a guilty conscience, so armed with that knowledge, we can narrow the answers to B or C.  Since it is Pauline that the passage is focused on and not General Pak, we can narrow the answer to B.