Characternym

Vocabulary:

• B. climax

• D. Magic realism

• A. Protagonist

• H. Peripity

• F. Novel

• E. Traditional symbol

• C. Incidental symbol

• G. Characternym

• i. Romance

• j. Metafiction

QUOTATIONS:

• Sherman Alexie uses this quote in the story “This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona,” shows that Victor knows even though Thomas helped him in his journey to visit his father’s home, that Thomas is too much Native and of the old traditions, and Victor will separate himself from Thomas. Even though they were friend when they were young, they will never be close again. They went two separate ways.

• This is a quote from The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This quote describes that the minister wore the veil to represent the sin we all have inside of us, and that people should see themselves in his wearing of the veil, and be afraid of their own ability to be sinful.

• Zora Neale Hurston’s story “Sweat” uses this quote when the wife finally throws her terrible husband out of her life. She finds the courage to stand up to him.

• A quote from “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson this is at the very end of the diary, and really is the last line. He is at the end of his year, and the end of writing his diary.

• This quote is from Guy de Maupassant’s story” Mother Savage.” She is telling the townspeople to let the family of the soldiers she killed let them know she killed their sons.

• This quote is from Cathedral by Raymond Carver. It’s when Robert helps the husband have a new way of looking at things, by helping the blind man draw the cathedral so he could “see it” in his mind.

• This quote comes from the story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It describes the way Elisenda felt about the Angel not leaving their house.

• This quote comes from the short story Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, and it describes that we cannot really be sure if the story is true or not.

• This quote comes from The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, and it describes what the doctors said caused her death after her husband came home.

• This quote comes from the Red Cadillac by Louise Erdrich. It shows that the two brothers were not separated until Henry kills himself.

SHORT ANSWER ESSAYS

• Situational irony is when events turn out to be opposite of what was intended by a character, so the outcome of their story is opposite of what they expected. The wife in “The Story of an Hour,” thought she had become free from being a prisoner and limited by what was expected of women of her time in history. When she heard her husband had been killed, she felt relief and a new sense of opportunity and a renewed life. When her husband walked through the door, she felt so much emotion, she died, I guess from a heart attack. So, the only freedom she gained was in death. Dave thought when he bought a gun, he too would gain more freedom. With a gun, he would be treated with more respect as a man, but instead, after killing the mule, he ended up being even more trapped by having to pay off $50 for the dead mule, so he not only was not a free man who had earned respect, everyone made fun of him for having to pay for a dead mule, which Dave figured would take him two years. Michael Obi thought he and his wife would finally make the school into a beautiful place of learning, but instead his actions about the path ended up causing the destruction of the school. So, the choices made by the characters caused the opposite of what they expected.

4). In “The Lottery,” you would think that a person won a prize. Today, winning the Lottery usually means the person has won a giant jackpot worth lots of money. In Shirley Jackson’s story, winning the Lottery is the last thing the person wants because they will be killed. “Araby” seems like it will be the story of fun for a boy at the Bazaar, but it is really a story of disappointment. “The Diary of an Interesting Year,” by Helen Simpson seems like it would just tell ordinary stories of interest. Instead the writer of the diary is living in a world that is dark and evil where people are dying of cholera and the streets are flooded with sewage.

5. The characters in the stories present mostly a negative view of worship through how their actions bring negative consequences. In the Minister’s Black Veil, for some reason the pastor appears for the Sunday sermon wearing a black veil, and his people become afraid of him. They believe he is hiding something from them, like sin. So, he wears the veil to cover his shame. When he continues to wear the veil, people become more disturbed. He tells the woman he loves that he cannot remove the veil, even if it makes him feel very lonely. The veil seems to be a symbol of people being sinful, which is not a very loving way for a man of God to be. He is a religious man, but he seems to be saying that faith is something that brings pain and punishment. In the “Dead Man’s Path,” Michael Obi is completely disrespectful of the worship the people have for their ancestors. He blocks the path to the cemetery. So, according to the story, the ancestors become angry and destroy the school and the beautiful gardens. This to me, makes the ancestors that are being worshipped or the people that worship them very harmful and destructive, even though Michael Obi did not show respect to their beliefs. The story “A very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” shows the people who are supposed to be religious because they believe in Angels as being mostly very cruel and selfish.

Instead of helping the old man who is clearly in trouble, they use him when they realize he might be an Angel. They cage him and people come to see him who treat him badly. For people who are supposedly religious, they are unkind and have no compassion, so this is a negative view of how religion is supposed to help people be more moral and lead better lives.