glossary

glossary: noun:(from m-w.com) a collection of textual glosses or of specialized terms with their meanings.

BUT–what are glosses?

gloss: noun: (from m-w.com, 3rd meaning of the word, definition 1a) a brief explanation (as in the margin or between the lines of a text) of a difficult or obscure word or expression

That means that a glossary is a collection of explanations of difficult words.

Cloak

Cloak: transitive verb: to cove or hide / noun: something that envelops or conceals

From “The Shawl”: First, I told him that keeping his sister’s shawl was wrong, because we never keep the clothing of the dead. Now’s the time to burn it, I said. Send it off to cloak her spirit. And he agreed.

Now I came to understand that the boy requested his father to burn the shawl so that the shawl will reach to the spirit of his father’s dead sister and cover her.

Stash

Stash: transitive verb : to store in a usually secret place for future use

From “The Shawl”: I got my growth earlier that some boys, and, one night when I was thirteen and Doris and Raymond and I were sitting around wishing for something besides the oatmeal and commodity canned milk I’d stashed so he couldn’t sell them, I heard him coming down the road.

Now I understand that the boy kept the oatmeal and commodity canned milk in secret place so that his father won’t sell them and they could eat later.

Avid

Avid: adjective: desirous to the point of greed, urgently eager

From “The Shawl”: For he kept seeing his mother put the baby and grip his sister around the waist. He saw the brown shawl with its red lines flying open. He saw the shadows, the wolves, rush together, quick and avid, as the wagon with sled runners disappeared into the distance- forever, for neither he nor his father saw Aanakwad again.

Now I came to know that the boy used to see a nightmare where his mother and sister are being chased by quick and hungrily greedy wolves.

Scorched

Scorch: verb: to burn a surface of so as to change its color and texture, to dry or shrivel with or as if with intense heat

From “The Shawl”: His chest was scorched with pain, and yet he pushed himself on. He’d never run so fast, so hard and furiously, but he was determined, and he refused to believe that the increasing distance between him and the wagon was real.

Now I came to understand that the boy was running very fast, so his chest was burning with pain but still he was not ready to give up the race with the wagon.

Regalia

Regalia; plural noun; the decorations, insignia, or ceremonial clothes of any office or order, or

rich, fancy, or dressy clothing; finery.

From What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie : “So we headed over that way, feeling like warrior drunks, and we walked past this pawnshop I’d never noticed before. And that was strange, because we Indians have built-in pawnshop radar. But the strangest thing of all was the old powwow-dance regalia I saw hanging in the window.”

The word regalia means a clothing or something of the type that is used for ceremonial events such as graduations or in this case, a traditional Indian dance. The narrator, Jackson Jackson, saw a regalia in the window of the pawnshop.

Capricious

Capricious; adjective; subject to, led by, or indicative of a sudden, odd notion or unpredictable change; erratic.

From The Shawl by Louise Erdrich: “He became, for us, a thing to be avoided, outsmarted, and exploited. We survived off him as if he were a capricious and dangerous line of work. I suppose we stopped thinking of him as a human being, certainly as a father.”

After searching this word, I see that the narrator was describing his father as something dangerous and unpredictable. He and the siblings he was referring to saw their father as someone crazy.

Monotonously

Monotonously; adjective; lacking in variety, tediously unvarying.

From The Shawl by Louise Erdrich: “If she could have thrown off that wronghearted love, she would have, but the thought of the other man, who lived across the lake, was with her always. She became a gray sky, stared monotonously at the walls, sometimes wept into her hands for hours at a time.”

After searching this word, I now understand that the narrator described the women as boring, having no variety or activity. She had become flat.

 

Final exam information

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On the final exam, as on the midterm exam, there will be two parts. In Part I, you will have a list of terms that we have learned this semester (review our list here, and get more background information from “Elements of Fiction.” There will also be a list of 10 passages from our readings since the midterm. You will have to choose five of the passages, and for each, you will identify the title and author of the passage, identify which term is an appropriate label for that passage, AND explain why in a sentence or two. There might be more than one term that applies to any given passage, for example, if a passage is an example of first-person narration and setting–either would be correct in that case. You will not get credit, though, if you do not provide an explanation of why it is the appropriate label, since I won’t know if you know the terms or are just guessing. In completing Part I, you will need to use five different terms–that is, each term you use cannot be used more than once, even if they can apply to more than one passage. Extra credit will be given for completing a sixth answer.

In Part II, you will write a well-developed essay(thesis-driven, organized, thoughtful, evidence-based, proofread), in which you compare two texts we have read since the midterm exam based on their approach to one of the following issues, topics, or themes. Use two examples from each story, using quotations from your quotation sheet as evidence, developed using the now-famous five-step method, to support for your thesis-driven essay. If you want to include a third story as well, you can, and that can include anything we read this semester, but make sure you have enough time to do so. Here are the five questions we agreed upon:

  1. Using two stories we read, compare what happens when characters face impossible choices.
  2. Using two stories we read, compare what happens when stories are not definitive but instead create uncertainty or ambiguity or a multiplicity of possibility when important information is the unknowable or un-confirmable.
  3. Using two stories we read, compare how characters’ personal history or family history have an impact on future generations.
  4. Using two stories we read, compare what happens when characters exhibit pride. Consider the positive and/or negative effects of pride.
  5. Using two stories we read, compare what happens when characters reverse roles, including familial, professional, or social roles.

Look back at our class notes as we brainstormed these topics for the ideas we discussed in class. On the exam, this will be a list of three, so be sure to prepare three of the five to guarantee one of your preferred options will be available to you on Monday! Look for the poll in the sidebar to give me a sense of which question you’re hoping to find on the exam on Monday.

Your essay should be approximately 500-600 words—if you’re writing 5 words per line, that’s 5-6 pages in the blue book, fewer pages if you get more words per line. There’s no need to count all of the words: check to see roughly how many words you write per line on a few lines, then multiply that by 20 (lines per page) and the number of pages you have. Most of you had no trouble meeting this requirement this for the midterm exam. When you include a quotation, even though it is already on your quotation sheet, I ask that you copy it into your essay. Rather than using whiteout or making a mess, when you need to make a correction, just cross out what you want to delete.

To get started, you should use the time before the exam to plan your three possible essays. Take time at the start of the exam to think about which question you will respond to, remember what  you want to write about it, and use the blue book to write down notes before you start writing the essay. There’s no need to skip every other line, but you might want to skip a line or two between paragraphs to give yourself space to add in any additional words or sentences when you re-read your essay.

Good luck!