Food for thought questions

House of usher
1. When the narrator focuses on what he sees instead of himself. The narrator wants you to know about
the house of usher and not the narrator. Observing but not describing emotions. The full focus is on
the house, which generates feeling, Poe is intentionally putting the reader in the house of usher.

2. For example, he creates a lot of suspense even from the beginning. He uses foreshadowing,
ginormous amounts of imagery, what he sees in the house, people in the house, but not about the
narrator.

Open boat
1. The boat signifies life, the captain is an authority figure, but he is useless. The boat is also any other
situation in life, wherever you are in life there is an authority figure which is useless. He is saying
that you don’t always Need to listen to authority, he is also talking about fundamental of decision
making, he is saying look this journey is your journey, are you listening to authority, are you
listening to advice? If we look at the sea as the randomness and chaos of life, the size of the boat is
symbolic to cruelty of life. The people on the boat are on one hand are thrown together and that’s
why they need each other that doesn’t mean that we don’t have respect or voice for others. You have
to. manage life with relationships of others.

2. Crane is an example of realism. He tries to show how urgent things are in your life.

There will come soft rains

1. We are really reliant on the house and its technology that if it disappears, we will be having problems
living without it. The author is using the house as a description and the message that our usage of
technology is dysfunctional.
5. He makes us feel sympathy for the man since he didn’t fight back, he just put his head down and
tried to ignore it, almost as if he was used to it. He didn’t fight back because he knew that if
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2. La Guma starts off by describing the setting. He describes the trees and the moon which he indirectly compares
to society. Another important aspect is that La Guma is describing the crickets and dogs next to the white men,
which represent the people who knew what was about to happen and did nothing about it. It also shows the
anticipation of going on even if it was against their morality.  
 
3. In “The Lemon Orchard”, La Guma uses a number of techniques to portray his concerns for discrimination
against blacks. For example, describes that the moon is “hidden behind long, high parallels of cloud” he is
comparing the moon to society, which is hiding behind the clouds because it is too scared to react. La Guma also
uses phrases like  “angled branches”, “tips and edges” which “gleam with the quivering shine of scattered
quicksilver”, those are metaphors for tools used to kill. This story provides a basis of motivation for readers to do
something about the expansion of racism.  

 
4. He makes us feel sympathy for the man since he didn’t fight back, he just put his head down and tried to ignore
it, almost as if he was used to it. He didn’t fight back because he knew that if he did, he would not have won, and
nothing would have come from this. He tried to calm himself and just tried to walk away. By doing this we can in a
way associate
Lemon with his anger but feel sympathy since he did nothing as he knew he couldn’t. 
Orchard
Secrets
1. We can see that the protagonist himself is very curious and would like to know pretty much
everything he hears from other people. He is interested in his aunt’s life to the point of reading her
letters. Although we can see that he realizes what he did was wrong and therefor keeps asking If she
forgave him before she died.
2. It is powerful because a lot of people can relate to it. It is something that life never quite prepares us
for and yet it will most likely happen at least once in our lives.