Setting: 1. Chapter 1, page 1, #2: “I didn’t entirely like this glossy new surface” Analysis: This quote shows that the setting was at one point different to the author. It was not glossy and new. 2. Chapter 1, page 4, #2: “Devon is sometimes considered the most beautiful school in New England, and even on this dismal afternoon its power was asserted.” Analysis: This quote showing setting can be closely related to the character Finny. Much like the school, Finny is beautiful even in the midst of some of his hateful classmates. 3. Chapter 1, page 5, #3: “Moving through the soaked, coarse grass I began to examine each one closely, and finally identified the tree I was looking for by means of certain small scars rising along its trunk, and by a limb extending over the river, and another thinner limb growing near it. Analysis: This setting shows in detail a location which is directly tied to the author. He remembers the tree in such detail because this was the place were the main conflict in his life took place. Theme: 1. Chapter 3, page 5, #3: “A little fog hung over the river so that as I neared it I felt myself becoming isolated from everything except the river and the few trees beside it. The wind was blowing more steadily here, and I was beginning to feel cold.” Analysis: This quote has the affect of creating a foreboding mood as if something dreadful is about to happen to gene and the landscape is warning him. 2. Chapter 2, page 18, #3: “It was hypnotism. I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything.” Analysis: This quote is based on the theme of envy. It is clear that Gene feels that Phineas can get away with anything. The reader can tell that Gene hate him because of this. 3. Chapter 3, page 29, #1: ““Blitzkrieg”, repeated Finny doubtfully. “We could figure out some kind of blitzkrieg baseball,” I said. “We’ll call it blitzkrieg ball,” said Bobby. “Or just blitzball”” Analysis: This quote shows the theme of microcosm. The boys are so isolated from the rest of the world and the war, that they do not understand fully the horrors of war. So much so that they name a game after a German tank invasion were thousands of people died. 4. Chapter 5, page 53, #1: “I couldn’t figure out exactly what this word meant, whether It meant broken in one or several places, cleanly or badly, and I didn’t ask.
Another difference lies in the position and shape of the tree itself. In Their Eyes, “the gold of the sun”, “t...
After a few moments, he settles and reflects, “I thought about him, fog on the lake, insects chirring eerily, and felt the tug of fear, felt the darkness opening up inside me like a set of jaws. Who was he, I wondered, this victim of time and circumstance bobbing sorrowfully in the lake at my back” (193). The narrator can almost envision himself as the man whose corpse is before him. Both deceased from mysterious causes, involved in shady activities, and left to rot in the stagnant lake water, and never to be discovered by the outside world. This marks the point where the main character is the closest he has ever been to death.
The tree “swings through another year of sun and leaping winds, of leaves and bounding fruit.” This sentence evokes images of happiness and serenity; however, it is in stark contrast with “month after month, the whip-crack of the mortgage.” The tone of this phrase is harsh and the onomatopoeia of a “whip crack” stirs up images of oppression. The final lines of the poem show the consequences that the family accepts by preserving the tree—their family heritage. When the speaker judges the tree by its cover she sees monetary value, but when she looks at the content in the book she find that it represents family. Even though times may be tough for the family, they are united by memories of their ancestors.
The author stresses certain events or moments in the story to deepen the illusion of peace and tranquility taking the reader further away from the real truth. Knowles uses Finny’s superior leadership skills to invent a summer game called Blitzball and conduct the winter carnival. Both of which were tools describing ideal moments used to distract the reader from reality that there is a battle being fought. Another idyllic event Knowles uses to his advantage was when Gene found his rhythm, ”Buoyed up, I forgot my usual feeling of routine self-pity when working out, I lost myself, oppresses mind along with aching body; all entanglements were shed, I broke into the clear.” (112) Utilizing this the author was able to divert the reader’s attention to the 1944 Olympic games and fool the audience into a false sense about the war.
Knowles wrote this book to convey the ups and downs of relationships and how it can take a turn for the worse in a matter of moments. The two main characters Gene and Finny, develop some sort of a jealousy towards each other. In this quote, “If I was head of the class and won that prize, then we would be even,”(Knowles 52), Gene feels that Finny is making an attempt to dethrone him of his role as the head of the class.However, Finny wasn’t trying to dethrone him at all. In fact Finny was trying to help his friend enjoy life a little more. This quote,“Finny had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us,”(Knowles 51), Gene is hit with reality that Finny wasn't jealous
Cheng, Ah. The King of Trees. Trans. Bonnie S. McDougall. New York: New Directions, 2010. Print.
The story starts off with the narrator showing the reader that he was interested in going home by using phrases such as "Ever since this evening, when against a fading sky I saw geese wedge southward. They were going home". He goes on to mention that his home is beyond the mountains and he is not at home; he wants to be amongst his people and celebrate the night sky. The first comparison is made in the third paragraph of the story, "Here where fall hides in the valleys, and winder never comes down from the mountains. Here where all the trees grow in rows; the palms stand stiffly by the roadsides..."; The narrator is comparing the plants and trees that grow in the city and the trees that grow on the reservation. Clearly, the trees that grow in the city are systematically planted in rows and lack the aspect that makes them unique in any way. He admits that there is still beauty in this order; however, it is the beauty of captivity. The narrator goes on to say "A pine fighting for existence on a windy knoll is much more beautiful". He uses this ...
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
4. “Yet even upon this shadowed terrain sunlight had very lately sparkled.” (page 7, paragraph 2)
Cheng, Ah. The King of Trees. Trans: Bonnie S. McDougall. New York,NY: New Directions, 2010. Print.
Also it is comparing the war to a game, which is a euphemism as well as a metaphor. It is a euphemism because war is a very serious, dangerous matter; whereas a game is something that people enjoy and never get seriously injured in. By using this euphemism, Jessie Pope - the poet – lessens the severity of war, and makes her readers’ think of it as enjoyable, and something that they want to do.
The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line - that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away-trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks-rafts ... and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up.
This is a quote from Charlotte Lucas, one of the female characters in the novel, and a quote which
Mark interesting features of the text. A feature might be a phrase, word, part of a word (for example, a vowel or consonant whose sound strikes you as interesting), even a punctuation mark or line or stanza break. Readers who are proficient in scansion (the analysis of metrical patterns) also use marks to identify stressed and unstressed syllables and metrical feet.
Many sands had the tree known; many green neighbors had come and gone, yet the tree remained. The mighty roots had endured such whips and scorns as had been cast upon it, but the old tree had survived, a pillar of twisted iron and horn against the now sickly sky. In the waning light of evening, the tree waited.