For Wednesday, April 16

On your own paper, answer the following questions from "The Moths" by Helena Maria Viramontes.

Antigone and Polynices

1.  As the narrator cares for her dying grandmother, she begins to ask herself, "when do you stop giving when do you start giving" (para. 12), continuing the repetition of the word "when" throughout the following paragraph.  What is the significance of this repetition for the fourteen-year-old narrator?  What might she be questioning in her own life?
2.  Trace the references to hands in this story.  How do you interpret the poultice balm of moth wings that Abuelita uses to shape the narrator's hands back into shape?  What is the significance of this act?
3.  What do the moths represent in the story? (make sure you use embedded quotations in your answer)

"the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"
by e.e. Cummings
      

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds

(also, with the church's protestant blessings

daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)

they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,

are invariably interested in so many things—

at the present writing one still finds

delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?

perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy

scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D

.... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above

Cambridge if sometimes in its box of

sky lavender and cornerless, the
 moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

 

Read and Think  About All 5 of the following questions.  Select two of the questions to answer on your own paper.

 

1.  What do you envision about the Cambridge ladies when you read that they "live in furnished souls" and have "comfortable minds"?  How is calling them "unbeautiful" different from calling them "ugly"

2.What does the allusion to Christ and Longfellow in the same breath suggest about the speaker's attitude toward the Cambridge ladies' beliefs?  What does the qualifying phrase "both dead" tell you about the speaker's own beliefs?

3. How does Cummings's playful use of syntax in "delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles? / perhaps" contribute to his commentary on the Cambridge ladies?  What effect does the inserted "is it" have on your sense of their commitment to political causes and philanthropy?

4.  How do you interpret the ellipsis dots in line 11?

5.  Why do you think the speaker compares the moon over Cambridge with "a fragment of angry candy"?  How can candy be angry?  What does the simile have to do with the Cambridge ladies?

For Fun:

 

Buffalo Bill 's

defunct

                     who used to

                     ride a watersmooth-silver

                                                            stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                                                                                        Jesus

he was a handsome man

                                                            and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

 

candy