Summer Reading Response Essay Example for Free

Summer Reading Response Essay 1. â€Å"His manner The quiet air around. When he turned the light on in the small, callous washroom that night, Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father’s eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting Liesel, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot.† The significance of this passage is the description of Hans Hubermann’s eyes as the color represents his worth and personality. It contributes to the characterization of Hans Hubermann. His eyes are described as â€Å"made of kindness and silver†. Silver represents riches and valuables and as seen later in the story, Hans Hubermann is someone that is very valuable and close to Liesel’s heart. He also demonstrates a quiet kindness as he agrees to take in Max regardless of the dangers that lie within harboring a Jew in those times. 2. â€Å"She remained on the steps, waiting for Papa, watching the stray ash and the corpse of collected books. Everything was sad. Orange and red embers looked like rejected candy, and most of the crowd had vanished. She’d seen Frau Diller leave (very satisfied) and Pfiffikus (white hair, a Nazi uniform, the same dilapidated shoes, and a triumphant whistle). Now there was nothing but cleaning up, and soon, no one would even imagine it had happened.† The colors in this passage, orange, red, and white, signify the destruction and death that was happening all around them at the moment even though the destruction was to a pile of books. It represents the turmoil in Liesel’s life and more to come. The â€Å"corpse of collected books† seems like a sort of foreshadowing as in the end, piles of corpses from Himmel Street. Then how everyone was completely ignorant to the burning of precious books, they are ignorant to the mistreatment of the Jews. The author’s use of similes joined together with heavy diction such as rejected, corpse, sad, and dilapidated leaves behind a mood of morose sadness. 3. â€Å"After a few seconds, he manages to scratch his head (the rustle of kindling) and he looked at her. His movements were fragmented, and now that they were open, his eyes were swampy and brown. Thick and heavy.† The author decides to focus on Max’s eyes and uses the adjectives swampy, brown, thick, and heavy. It gives the feeling of a person who has gone through much in his life. Also shown later in the book, brown represents a kind person who is close to the earth. Max always has Leisel give him the weather report as he cannot leave his hiding place to see outside. He is always kind to Liesel and even writes her a book for her birthday. His swampy, heavy eyes describe him as a person who has gone through sadness and suffering for the sole reason that he is a Jew. 4. â€Å"They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts. And then. There is death.† This passage is especially powerful in the way the author creates the mood and tone through the diction and description. The simile that describes the clouds as beating black hearts gives the feeling of death and evil. Black as a color represents death and evil. â€Å"There is air like plastic† gives the picture of the air suffocating the people that dwell within it. 5. â€Å"As he stood, Max looked first at the girl and then stared directly into the sky who was wide and blue and magnificent. There were heavy beams-planks of sun-falling randomly, wonderfully to the road. Clouds arched their backs to look behind as they started again to move on. â€Å"It’s such a beautiful day,† he said, and his voice in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die, like this.† The sky was described as blue and magnificent although the situation juxtaposes with the brightly described day. The author successfully adds in a piece of irony through the contrast of making the day beautiful while Max is think about what a great day it is to die. The cloud described as looking back gives the feeling of something of immense importance that is about to happen. The colors give off the mood of happiness and the imagery going with the sun create an image completely wrong for the situation.

Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Manns The Difference and

Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Mann's The The Difference: Growing Up Female in America and Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys Gender stereotypes are common in the United States today, even though many men and women have been working hard to defeat it. The task is made difficult however, when society in general implants the idea of gender roles into the mind of a child. Two authors, Judy Mann of The Difference and Bernard Lefkowitz of Our Guys face the issue of gender roles and stereotypes, and how they affect our lives today. Our Guys focuses on the way that young boys are brought up by society by telling the true story of a group of Glen Ridge, New Jersey teenage boys who sexually assaulted a young retarded girl. Neither the boys nor the townspeople saw what they did as wrong, and tried everything in their power to get them acquitted. They were however, fighting for the wrong cause. It was the boys’ parents and society itself that gave the teens the illusion that they, as males, should be given free range and power over those weaker than themselves. From the time these boys in question were born, their parents and their environment (including the composition of their nuclear families, i.e. ratio of males to females) made them kings. They were privileged teens and the fact that they were male made them even more so. All the ‘jocks’ involved were angels in their mothers’ eyes, who was in most cases, the only female influence in their lives and not a very good one at that (1 35). The Glen Ridge boys, affectionately known to their peers as "our guys", were brought up as stereotypical boys, worsened by the "boys will be boys" attitude adopted by their parents, teachers and neighbors (Lefkowitz, 73). This ... ...only accepted stereotypes are not based in reality at all, and that these stereotypes are harmful to everyone, not just the victims of being typecast. This conclusion is correct in all senses. Judy Mann’s book shows that the only real difference between men and women are their reproductive organs (24). Many professionals support this fact, but not society. Bernard Lefkowitz’s retelling of what happened to the young girl in Glen Ridge, New Jersey shows that believing that women are inferior can have terrifying repercussions. Society’s perception of people and the practice of labeling based on gender must be eliminated in order for women and men to live equally. These books simply help to make more people aware of the problem, which is only part of the solution. Works Cited Mann, Judy. The Difference: Growing up Female in America. New York: Warner, 1994.

Mitch Tooley

English Assessment Plaster cast and Fresh bait The stories I have chosen to talk about today are Plaster Cast by Archimede Fusillo, and Fresh Bait by Sherryl Clark. I have chosen to talk about these particular stories, because the ways in which they are similar captured my interest when reading them. Both stories feel as if they are written from end to beginning. They unfold slowly, keeping the reader in rapt suspense, on the edge of their chair, until the very end, when the story takes its last breath to reveal to the reader the horrible, unforeseen truth.The authors of these two stories employed many techniques to create works that are similar in some ways, dissimilar in others. It is these different techniques I will talk to you about today. One of the most important elements of a short story is characterization. In both stories, the author intertwines the concepts; confusion and suspicion to portray their individual protagonists, letting out small details to intrigue the reader a nd make them wonder about the characters. In plaster cast, Miranda (the main protagonist) is a new art student entering gruesome sculptures into her school art show. uote â€Å"They’re not fit for a school art show† pg49 Her character is slowly developed and revealed through these sculptures, that seem eerie and â€Å"too lifelike† for comfort. Similarly to Plaster Cast, the character traits of the main protagonist in Fresh Bait are revealed slowly. The unnamed character remains to the reader a mystery, as we are left to stumble slowly yet blindly after her on her strange journey. Similarly to Miranda, the anonymous hero in Fresh Bait seems somewhat strange to the people around her who cannot understand the peculiar things the does. uote â€Å"I walked back a few paces, bent down and noted his number plate. † Pg19 Structure Language Technique comparison The Technique in these stories is quite different. In fresh bait the language techniques mostly include adjectives, listing and a few similes and metaphors, quote â€Å"Called up the list in my head again. Blue Holden new. Sales Forty-Fifty. Finger. † Pg21. This quote is an example of listing. The language techniques in the plaster cast mostly include adjectives and repetition. Quote â€Å"They could be living things. Breathing, pulsating, living things. † Pg49

Magical Realism and the Sublime in The Circular Ruins Essay

Magical Realism and the Sublime in The Circular Ruins Among the many short stories that the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges has written, The Circular Ruins was published in 1964 in a collection of his works entitled Labyrinths: Selected Stories Other Writings. Even though The Circular Ruins may be classified as a Magical Realist text, one may wonder if this short story could be classified as the Sublime as well. By examining The Circular Ruins, a reader will be able to see several similarities between Magical Realism and the Sublime. Of course, the first step in deciding whether or not The Circular Ruins is a type of the Sublime is to look at some of the characteristics of the Sublime. For instance,†¦show more content†¦Since the main character is said to have come from the South where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent, then his origin seems to be quite real (Borges 45). Another real element is the setting, which is not in some other realm but instead at a temple in the jungle. However, the magical element of the dreams hints to the reader that the main character is not from a normal background and that the story is probably just in an imaginary jungle. Yet, both the reader and the characters in the story accept these unreal elements as being real. Because of the cross between the real and the unreal, Magical Realism, like the Sublime, causes transcendence. According to Longinus, another identifying mark of the Sublime is the use of accumulations, which are also found in The Circular Ruins. For example, before the magician dreamt his entire son, he first dreamt his sons beating heart. Over a period of fourteen nights, he carefully examined this heart until he actually touched it with his finger. After that, he dreamt another organ in the same manner. Eventually, he even dreamt the eyelids and hair. After finally accumulating all the parts of the boy, the magicians son was complete and ready to become accustomed to reality (Borges 47-49). Identical to the Sublimes characteristic of accumulation in The Circular Ruins is Magical Realisms characteristic of an extensive