English A Unit 2: The Literature of the Americas II

Vocab:Compound subject: two or more subjects in the same sentence that share a verb and are joined by a conjunctionCompound verb: two or more verbs in a sentence that share a subject and are joined by a conjunctionMagical realism: fiction in which the realistic and fantastic are both presentMain idea: the "glue" that holds together a literary work

Elements of Magical Realism:Everyday imageryPersonal fantasiesDetailed techniqueDeep-space perspectives

"The Youngest Doll" by Rosario FerreA lady is bitten by a prawn, which now resides inside her. She spends all her time making life size dolls for her nieces, exact models of them. As they marry off, she sends each with a wedding doll, which is them at eighteen years old and stuffed with honey rather than cotton. The youngest marries an arrogant doctor, with a paper silhouette and a paper soul. He pries out the diamonds from the doll's eyes to pawn them. The wife is forced to sit on the balcony all day so people can see her. The doll disappears, and the doctor notices she sits to still. He sneaks in while she's sleeping and listens with a stethoscope. He hears water swishing and her eyes open fully, revealing the pits where the eyes had been pried out. The last sentence of the story, he sees frenzied prawn antennae coming out of her eyes.

Rosario Ferre: Puerto Rican poet, novelist, and literary critic.

"The Youngest Doll" criticises the "Pandora" myth. Both myths show a woman created for the purpose of worsening the lives of men. But in "The Youngest Doll" the woman created is not harmful until the man made it that way. Pandora is about the woman herself poisoning a man's world, while "The Youngest Doll" is about the man doing this to himself.

Compare and contrast essay structures:point-by-pointblock

Vocab:character development:generalizations:sentence fragment: a group of words that do not express a complete thoughtsymbolism: when the author uses physical things to represent metaphysical concepts

João Guimarãesbra

João GuimarãesBrazilian novelist

"The Third Bank of the River"A father obtains a rowboat, and paddles in circles for years in the nearby river. The rest of the family moves on, but the youngest son stays and watches his father grow old. The father leaving could be a symbol for divorce, the father leaving the family behind. The boat, his new house, the river, his new life. The son provides for him, maybe it symbolizes that he is lonely and the son is giving him the love and attention he needs. When he starts to come towards the son, thinking the son would take his place, the son runs away. Possibly scared of upsetting his family and other around him. Or it could be fear of death. Maybe the father is dead and everyone else can move on but the son, and just when he thinks he's ready to join his father in death, he chickens out.

Jorge Luis BergeBrazilian author

"The Book of Sand"A man meets a traveler who sells bibles. The traveler shows him a book he got from an untouchable in India. The book is called the book of sand because both it and the sand are infinite. He purchases it with some money and an old Bible. The book becomes his life as he struggles to understand it, and when summer is nearly over he realizes that it's driving him mad. he hides it in the national library and to this day, will not walk down that street.

Sentence complement: direct objects, indirect objects, predicate nominatives and predicate adjectivesDirect object: person or object that receives the action of the verb directly

Situational irony is a plot twist in which the outcome of a character's intent or action becomes twisted into its opposite. 

Situational irony is a plot twist in which the outcome of a character's intent or action becomes twisted into its opposite. 

Luisa Valensuela - Argentine journalist and fiction writer

journalism- horizontal view, facts onlyfiction- vertical, digging deeper than facts

A man writes a letter to a loved one but is scared the censorship department will find something in it that gives reason to hurt the recipient. He joins the censorship department in hopes of finding it and is so consumed by his work that he works through the levels, getting promotion after promotion until he's at level B, then he has become merciless and is constantly seeing censor-worthy things in the innocent letters. He finally sees his own letter, and marks it evil. He is executed the next morning.

predicate nominative: noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb and identifies, renames, or explains the subject

predicate adjective: adjective that follows a linking verb and modifies the subject

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Lesson 5

Lesson 6

Lesson 7

Lesson 8