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Wuthering Heights, ix
Cathy asks Nell if she has made the decision in accepting Edgar’s proposal.
Note the difference in C.’s reasoning: Edgar is a checklist.
Meanwhile, her description of her bond with H. springs from a prescient dream. (Is that foreshadowing? By this time we are fairly sure she is dead in the literary present.)
“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire” (72).
Some powerful similes, some powerful imagery — and so much for checklists.
(How much misery we invite when we do not follow the heart when the heart speaks so clearly.)
And what is she, and Heathcliff? In the next chapter, she nails down Heathcliff’s character succinctly as she describes him to Isabella in an attempt to warn her off. We can infer, then, that this is Cathy’s character as well, given the admission above?
Upon discovering that he is gone, Cathy braves the elements to find him, and remains soaked all night, unmoving. This is foreshadowing.
The Great Gatsby: thoughts on chapter III
“…the two or three people of whom I asked [Gatsby’s] whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table” (42). It is good manners to find, and be greeted by, the host.
innuendo appears several times.
The owl-eyed man (45) appears only twice (not counting his exit from the party), yet his character embodies character. You’ll meet several people like this in your life.
Belasco (46)
The meeting of Nick and “the young roughneck.” Compare the paragraph focusing on his smile with that of the focus on Daisy’s voice (9).
“I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy” (50).
Mascara as musical notation. (51)
Honesty. (58-60) Nick gives himself the “cardinal virtue” of honesty. Does this hold with his NYC side trip with Tom and Myrtle in chapter two?
cardinal
The Great Gatsby: some thoughts, chapters I and II
“To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing” means that some people enjoy watching the “drama” and secrecy of affairs of others: Jordan Baker’s actions appear to put her in this category. “–my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police”(16). Nick is alarmed. But then how would he explain his actions in chapter two?
“as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body” (16). Be prepared to explain the simile.
Daisy doesn’t seem to be serious about anything; when she says “I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything,” (17) do we believe she becomes so? Why? Where was Tom when Daisy gave birth? And her statement about what a what a woman should be?
“God–I’m sophisticated” (18).
“as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged” (18).
Come back to 16-18 at the climax and denouement of the novel. It’s like a slap. Or perhaps a punch, depending on how much validity you are willing to give to Gatsby’s dream.
Chapter II
The imagery of the “farm” that grows men and cars from ash (23-26).
smoke/spirit/gray/ghostly/body vs. ectoplasm. Note the shifts of the spatial within the chapter.
Myrtle is not beautiful per se, but…
“you’d of thought she had my appendicitis out” (31). This says of her character…
The grotesque image of the whirling, enlarging Myrtle (31).
Is Tom in love with Myrtle? No. What’s your evidence for that?
Invisible Man
You’re by this time noticing that things are left unnamed so that the idea, the symbol, is what is addressed.
You’re noticing that “time” is a theme, and it is elastic. That music is connected to an unconscious, amorphous knowledge.
Chapter five is a sort of legend of the Founder — and chapter six delivers a punch!
Read quickly and loosely.
Battle plan
My colleague and I planned the first week old school on one of the last remaining chalkboards on the campus.
Understanding poetry: repetition and parallelism
Repetition and parallelism—the use of similar constructions within the sentence—need further expansion. The queen of figurative language, repetition of sound or word or phrase slips from poetry to prose to speeches of art or urgency. Memorize this terminology, then begin to see how the great writers and orators employ it.
anaphora, the same words open the clause series
e.g., What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?
epistrophe, the same words close a clause series
e.g., When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child
symploce, the use of both anaphora and epistrophe:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
asyndeton, the omission of conjunction
e.g., Veni, vidi, vici.
polysyndeton, the repetition of conjunction
e.g., …men and women who spoke the language of duty and morality and loyalty and obligation.
antithesis, opposition in construction
e.g., Many are called, few are chosen.
Man proposes, God disposes.
climax, clauses ascending in importance
e.g., …three things endure: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Additionally, there are different forms of asyndeton for the acutely-focused student:
apokoinu: …there was no breeze came through the door.
parataxis: I weep for Adonais—he is dead.
zeugma: Mary likes chocolate, John vanilla.
Kingsley Andersen 