The Other Girls (Part One, Rumor Has It)

   Anastasia got up and readied herself just like any other day; but she felt different today, she just knew it would be a good day. She choked down her vitamins with unexpectedly expired milk. She spat out what she could and dumped the rest of the milk out in the sink. 

   "Of course," she groaned.

   She chewed her slightly burnt toast while the taste of spoiled milk lingered. She finished getting ready and headed out the door. Anastasia could hear the bus moaning as it stopped, and she hurried down to catch it. There was an unfamiliar face in Anastasia's usual spot. She sat down in the empty seat beside this new face.

   "H-h-hi," the new face managed to choke out.

The Twenty-six Malignant Gates

Rules of the Game:
   Waverly Jong starts playing chess at a young age after her brother receives a chess set for Christmas. She meets a man who teaches her everything he knows about the game. Waverly becomes a great player and her mom signs her up for many competitions. Waverly seems to get sick of the game, and fights with her mother quite a bit. In the end, Waverly and her mom play a game.


The Voice From the Wall:
   Lena and her parents move to San Francisco, where her mother is constantly fretting about the house. Lena also constantly hears what she believe is the girl living next door (Teresa) getting beaten, but whenever Lena sees Teresa, Teresa is fine. After time, Lena's mother's newborn child dies, and Lena's mother slowly falls apart. Her mother frets about evils in the house, and later learns to deal with her problems.



Half and Half:
   Rose is going to get divorced, and has no clue how to tell An-Mei. Rose has had issues in the marriage from the start. After leaving him, she goes off with An-Mei, and gets to watch over Bing, whom she later loses in the river. She realizes that faith cannot change fate, as she discovers: "fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention." 


Two Kinds:

   Throughout the beginning, Jing-mei talks about her past and childhood, in which there were many issues. In Jing-mei's past, Suyuan makes her take piano lessons after seeing a nine-year-old Chinese girl play the piano on The Ed Sullivan Show. Jing-mei gets a mentor, who turns out to be deaf, so she decides to only keep rhythm and not correct her mistakes. She signs up for a recital, but does not practice at all, believing the prodigy within her would shine when needed. She fails miserably and is embarrassed. Suyuan encourages her to practice more, but Jing-mei disagrees and wishes her dead like her other sisters. Later, Suyuan passes, and Jing-mei realizes that the songs she played were like Yin and Yang; complimentary to each other.

Coding the TEXT 3/21/12

  Jarvis sat, deeply moved. Whether because this was his son, whether because this was almost the last act of his son, he could not say. Whether because there was some quality in the words, that too he could not say, for he had given little time in his life to the savouring and judging of words. Whether because there was some quality in the ideas, that too he could not say, for he had given little time to study of these particular matters. He rose and went up the stairs to his room, and was glad to find his wife not there, for here was a sequence not to be interrupted. He picked up the Abraham Lincoln and went down to the study again, and there opened the book at the Second Inaugural Address of the great president. He read it through, and felt with a sudden lifting of the spirit that here was a secret unfolding, a track picked up again. There was increasing knowledge of a stranger. He began to understand why the picture of this man was in the house of his son, and the multitude of books.

KEY:
Characterization(Jarvis)
Point of View(3rd Person)
Repetition
Allusion
Sentence Structure(long, quite a few commas, but not run-on)

Cry the Beloved Country

   The men are stronger, more important. Paton develops the power of gender slowly, just by describing men, and rarely speaking of women. Paton wrote: "Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed." (pg 1) The men are the most important thing, they are what keeps society going strong. In another passage: "They are valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away, the young men and the girls are away." (pg 2) The men have left the dead land, leaving the rest to care for themselves.
   Later Paton writes: "Down in the valleys women scratch the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man." The women are lower in society, while the men are what keeps it going. Women may be only as important as cooking and childbearing, while the men hunt, work, and protect society.
   With these differences, women are more important in African society, while they are almost meaningless in Paton's eyes.

Power Structure

   In Lord of the Flies, there was a power struggle between Jack and Ralph. Jack came power through promises of food, and also creating havoc, especially after stealing Piggy's glasses. He created many problems, and caused the death of two people in order to stay in control of the boys, in which he succeeded. Ralph had a different way; first he used the conch to call the other boys, who then voted him leader; later, he stuck with acting civilized, while he lost control of the boys who later joined Jack's tribe. When Simon and Piggy were killed, it seemed as though Ralph lost all power.
   In The Power of One, the power structure was mainly the German school boys. They gained power over PK when they peed on him (evil!) and killed his chicken. He fought back a little when he pushed over the German boy onto the little pointed Nazi flag. But again they gained dominance by tying PK up. They held onto power until PK left with his grandfather's friend.

Key Passage 4

In this passage, there were few symbols. One was Jack's behavior. Golding wrote: "He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarl." It seemed as though it was symbolizing how he and the other boys were changing. Jack began to lose his humanity as days passed on the island. Another part of the passage was "He capered towards Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own." The boys were going somewhat mad, some faster than others, the longer they were stranded on the island. Jack was changing the fastest, as he went mad and started acting strange, almost hysterical. One other part was important, "The mask compelled them." It wasn't the mask that had told them what to do, it was the boys fear of Jack and what he might do if they disagreed. Everyone was fearful of Jack and his madness, as he was losing his sanity the quickest.

Key Passage One! Page 31.

"They were in the beginnings of a thick forest.." This shows how much different this scenery is than it was when the boys were back home."The piglet tore lose... He (Jack) brought his arm down..." Jack had failed at slaughtering the piglet, showing a possible weakness of his. "He snatched his knife out of the sheath and slammed it into a tree trunk." Jack seems easily angered and may not be able to control his temper, which could be a sign of weakness, and possibly a future conflict involving him.