1.
Important
Note!!! Next week we will begin our reading of
Melville’s wonderful epic, Moby
Dick. Please make sure that you have
a copy of the book and are ready to read.
2.
IMPORTANT!!! Memorize your selection for the open house. Be prepared to recite it by memory on Tuesday, November 6 for a grade.
2. Vocabulary:
1. Precipitous: Resembling a precipice; very steep: extremely
rapid or abrupt.
2. Quasar:
An extremely distant celestial object whose power output is several
thousand times that of the entire Milky Way Galaxy.
3. Quotidian:
Commonplace or ordinary, as from everyday experience.
4. Recapitulate: To repeat in concise form; to make a summary.
5. Reciprocal:
Existing, done, or experienced on both sides; done, given, felt, or owed
in return.
6. Reparation:
The act or process of making amends for a wrong.
7. Respiration: The act or process of inhaling and exhaling;
breathing.
8. Sanguine:
Cheerfully confident; optimistic.
9. Soliloquy: A
dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or
reveals his thoughts when alone or unaware of the presence of other characters.
10. Subjugate:
To bring under control; conquer.
3. Writing: Read the following passages from the book and locate
them in context. For each one, write a
one-page commentary that begins with an assertive thesis and goes on to analyze
and discuss the thesis. You are not
merely “translating” the meaning of the words, but interpreting an aspect of
the book.
For example, in responding to quotation #1,
you might begin by asserting that the narrator is re-telling the story in order
to justify not only his ancestors, the Puritans, but himself, and that to do
this, he identifies the non-religious character strengths that motivated them.
Due
November 15.
1. “A writer of
story-books! What kind of a business in life,—what mode of glorifying God, or
being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation,—may that be? Why, the
degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!” Such are the compliments
bandied between my great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And
yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have
intertwined themselves with mine.
2. “Mother,” said
little
“Nor ever will, my child, I hope,” said Hester.
“And why not, mother?” asked
3. But Hester Prynne,
with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely
estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude
of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered,
without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness. . . . The scarlet letter was
her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair,
Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made
her strong, but taught her much amiss.
4. “Mother,” said [
“Hold thy peace, dear little
5. But there was a
more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England, than in that unknown
region where