ThunderReaders » metaphor

Comparison Frenzy!

tinternteacher — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:58:05 +0000

Victor Davis Hanson, a Stanford professor of classics, and author of a recent book about the wars between Athens and Sparta, has fun writing a political piece today exploring an amazing range of figures of speech to compare John McCain and Barack Obama. I just have to publish this for my “Writer of the Day” because of the variety and density of rhetorical devices he plays with in order to make some serious points.

How many different figures can you find in this piece? Among the analytical terms we’ll study in our AP course, I can find examples of allusion, metaphor, simile, personification, antithesis, paradox, analogy, rhetoric, imagery, pathos, idiom, colloquialism, archetype…it just doesn’t stop!

Professor Hanson has given us a “keeper” that you’ll be able to master later on in our year! Enjoy it now, and comment on which figure of speech he uses you like the best.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/imagining_the_election.html

Chapters 6-9: Jane Catches Cold; How Exciting!

tinternteacher — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:26:26 +0000

I know, I know…it can’t get much more tedious than this section. Jane rides a horse in a thunderstorm, catches a bad cold, and has to stay over at Bingley’s mansion for DAYS even though it would take half an hour in a carriage to get her home. Her mother absolutely LOVES it; in fact, she planned for it to happen!! For entertainment value for most of Austen’s audience at the time, she is providing the ultimate fantasy: I get to stay over at my boyfriend’s house, have him and his family wait on me hand and foot, and yet nobody will think that I’m being naughty. And best of all, he’ll really get to know me and fantasize about what it would be like to have me living in his house ALL the time.

Believe it or not, while Jane is titillating the “Mrs. Bennets” in her reading audience, she has some serious metaphorical fish to fry in this section. What if Jane, disabled and passive in her sick room, symbolizes the ultimate ideal of Victorian marriage? In fact, is her “convalescence” that much different than Miss Bingley’s and Mrs. Hurst every day life?

Isn’t it amazing how shocked they are that Elizabeth would hike a whole three miles and get her stockings dirty to help her sister! What would they make of the many powerful and tough female athletes and activists of our time?

Does our society encourage some of the same kind of fantasies, or some of the same kind of passiveness in young women? Or is the issue here more the idleness of the wealthy upperclass, whose money has resulted in a passive detachment from life?

Meet Maureen Dowd

tinternteacher — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:17:31 +0000

If your opinion surfing hasn’t led you yet to one of her articles, let me introduce one of my favorite columnists, Maureen Dowd. She’s smart, funny, irreverent, and her awareness of language is keen: you can bet the house that she got a “5″ on her AP language exam.

Today’s submission is so good that I could teach a whole unit of analytical vocabulary with it (irony, colloquialism, metonymy, metaphor, cliche, connotation, euphemism, pejoration…on and on).

But for now, just enjoy her voice and her ideas. See if she doesn’t become one of your favorites too!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/opinion/25dowd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin