Fall Semester Chapter Review

Here's the work you did in your groups. You can use it to study if you want.

“The Middle Eastern Bazaar”

Author: maybe he is a reporter or a traveler
Where: a Middle Eastern Bazaar
When: 1962

Audience: everybody

Purpose: Introduce the Middle Eastern Bazaar to people, making people know more about the bazaar by giving them a vivid and detailed description

Main Idea: The text depicts a typical Middle Eastern bazaar with its rich exotic colors (and sounds and smells)

The first paragraph is the most important one because the author uses a lot of rhetorical devices, such as: the historical past (the Middle Eastern bazaar takes you back hundreds—even thousands—of years), contrast (you pass through the heat and glare of a big, open square into a cool, dark cavern….), alliteration (thread their way among the throngs of people) and parallelism (the din of the stall-holders, …, of….), which makes the paragraph sound vivid and lively.

Figures of speech:

Para. 1: “thread their way among the throngs…” alliteration
“ the din of the stall-holders…,of donkey-boys…and of would-be buyers…” parallelism

Para 5 (line 5): “a fairy of dancing flashes” metaphor and personification
(line 2): “in each shop sit the apprentices” inversion

Para 7 (line 8): “the dye-market…which honeycombs this bazaar…” metaphor

Para 8 (line 3): “it is a vast, somber cavern of a room” metaphor
(line 6): “In this cavern are three…” inversion

Para 9 (line 9): Ancient girders creak and groan -- personification


“Hiroshima—the ‘Liveliest’ city in the world”

Author: Noel Groves, a reporter
From: Canada or America
When: after 1955
Audience: all human beings, especially the American people

Purpose: By narrating the experiences in Hiroshima, he showed all the readers what the attitude of the local people toward this disaster (the atom bomb) and how his own feelings changed.

Main Idea: This text is a piece of narration; the purpose of the author’s journey is to interview those from Hiroshima. The author described that foreigners are not accustomed to old Japanese customs. Different from the thought which has preoccupied the author before, the people of Hiroshima do not want to mention the bomb and misery anymore. The author is puzzled whey they are willing to hide the history. But after talking with an old man, he understands that the Japanese want to expect a good future rather than think of a miserable past.

Important paragraph: “Do you really think that Hiroshima is the liveliest city in Japan? I never asked it. But I could read the answer in every eye.”
I think this paragraph is the most important because it suggests that Hiroshima is the liveliest city in its spirit. People in the city have an active attitude.

Figures of Speech:
The “liveliest” city in Japan (pun and irony)
Was I not at the scene of the crime? (rhetorical question)
kimono and the miniskirt (symbolism, antithesis)
no on talks about it any more, and no one wants to (parallelism)
time marches on (personification)
they have been testing and treating me (alliteration)
when thousands upon thousands of people…where thousands upon thousands of others…(repetition)
skyscrapers (metaphor)


"Speech on Hitler’s Invasion of the USSR"

Author: Winston Churchill
When: In WWII after Hitler invades the USSR
Audience: People in England, and all people against the Nazis

Purpose: If Hitler invades Russia successfully, next time its purpose may be the British. Churchill realizes this and writes this speech to appeal to people against Hitler’s activity. He also tells America and other countries that they should ___ at Hitler’s invasion.

Thesis: This chapter is about a speech of Winston Churchill on Hitler’s invasion of the USSR Churchill made a decision to give a speech immediately after being told the German invasion of Russia. In his speech, he notified the audience of the current situation in front of Russian and declared the government policy, further convinced the listeners of the validity of the decision appeal to people to strike with united strength while life and power remain.


Rhetorical Devices:
*I suppose they will be rounded up in hordes (metaphor)
* If Hitler invades Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons (hyperbole)
* It is devoid…appetite and racial domination (metaphor)
* From this nothing will turn us—nothing (inversion)
* fighting for his hearth and home (synecdoche and alliteration)
* like a swarm of crawling locusts (simile)
* that is our policy and that is our declaration (parallelism)


"Mark Twain—Mirror of America"

Author: Noel Grove (National Geographic Atlas of World History)
Where: United States
When: 1970s

Audience: all the people of the world

Purpose: the author tries to explain the reason why Mark Twain is the mirror of America, through his experiences, characteristics, articles, and mind.

Thesis: Mark Twain is not only as adventurous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous as anyone has ever imagined, but also cynical, bitter saddened by the profound personal tragedies life dealt him.

Most important passages and why:
The 1st paragraph: in this paragraph, the author gives the general idea about this article and suggests the overall pattern of organization. The following paragraphs just narrate in details and depend on the first.

Figures of Speech:
(p. 153): It was a splendid population—for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home (alliteration)
(p. 155) Bitterness fed on the man who had made the world laugh. (personification)
(p. 150) eternal boyhood… (hyperbole)
(p. 151) the young nation’s heart (metaphor)
That seemed phonographic (simile)
(p. 152) avoided contact with the enemy (euphemism)
Know more about retreating than the man that invented retreating (irony)
His pen would prove mightier than his pickax (metonymy)
(p. 154) Not until 1874 did… (inversion)
(p. 156) they vanish from a world where they… where they… (repetition)
A world which will lament them for a day and forget them forever (antithesis)

"But what’s a dictionary for?"

Author: little is known of the writer Bergen Evans

Where: this text is an excerpt from an article of the same title in the book The Play of Language. Actually, the article first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in May, 1962.

Audience: the people who abuse the Third International Dictionary and the common readers who use or buy the dictionary

Purpose: After the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary was published, a lot of people argued against it and said it has a lot of faults. The writer stands out and supports the new dictionary.

Main Idea: The new dictionary may have many faults, but nothing that tries to meet an every-changing situation over a terrain as vast as contemporary English can hope to be free of them.

The most important paragraph: the last two.
Reason: the thesis statement is in these two paragraphs.

Figures of Speech:

Metaphor: the storm or abuse in the popular press
Life called it a “non-word deluge”
Antithesis: much touted Second International…much clouted Third International
Repetition: Just what’s a dictionary for? What does it propose to do? What does the common reader go to a dictionary to find?


"The Trial that Rocked the World"

Author: John Scopes (1900-1970) was an American teacher who violated a state law by teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee high school. His trial was a highly publicized confrontation between defense attorney Clarence Darrow and the director of the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan. Scopes was found guilty and fined a small sum, but his conviction was later reversed on technical grounds. The name of John Scopes became synonymous with his trial, which is popularly known as the Monkey Trial.

Audience: The passage was written for the readers all over the world no matter who he is, where he comes from, and which religion he believes.

Purpose: The author recorded the whole trial in his point of view. Through the passage, the readers can know about what happened at that moment and the influence that the trial had made. In the text, there are some personal feelings and other reflections. To some extent, he wasn’t so subjective. However, the description of the passage is vivid and easily understood.

Thesis: Fundamentalism was strong in Tennessee and the law that prohibited the teaching of “any theory that denies the story of creation as taught in the Bible (Fundamentalism).” The new law was aimed squarely at Darwin’s theory of evolution.