Author's Argument for The Glass Menagerie (Incomplete - Precis)

!. Precis

2.  Vocabulary

- menagerie: a collection of wild or unusual animals, especially for exhibition.

- portieres: a curtain hung in a doorway, either to replace the door or for decoration.

- mastication: to chew

- cloche: a woman's close-fitting hat with a deep, bell-shaped crown and often a narrow, turned-down brim.

- martyr: a person who is put to death or endures great suffering on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause

- demurely: characterized by shyness and modesty; reserved

- jonquils: a narcissus, Narcissus jonquilla,  having long, narrow, rushlike leaves and fragrant, yellow or white flowers

3. Tone: recollective

4. Rhetorical Strategies

- Imagery: "Tom appears at the top of the alley. After each solemn boom of the bell in the tower, he shakes a little noisemaker or rattle as if to express the tiny spasm of man in contrast to the sustained power and dignity of the Almighty. This and the unsteadiness of his advance make it evident that he has been drinking. As he climbs the few steps to the fire escape landing light steals up inside. Laura appears in the front room in a nightdress. (44)"

- Allusion: "He knew of my secret practice of retiring to the cabinet of the washroom to work on poems when business was slack in the warehouse. He called me Shakespeare. (68)"

- Simile: "A fragile unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting. (69)"

- Telegraphic Sentences: "Face the facts. She is. (66)"

- Symbolism: "She carries a bunch of jonquils - the legend of her youth is nearly revived. (71)" - The jonquils were the biggest part of Amanda's youth.

5. Discussion Questions

- Tennessee Williams wanted a drama that expressed something closer to the truth, how would truth be part of this play?

- Why would Tennessee Williams choose to have a screen throughout the play?

- What part of the play would reflect on society today?

6. Memorable Quote

"You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns to everlasting regret if you don't plan for it! (63)"

Week Two: First Light by Richard Preston

1.

2. Vocabulary:

- Hecatomb: any great slaughter

- primordial: giving origin to something derived or developed

- neutron star: an iron core that implodes into a ball of neutrons about the size of an asteroid

- accretion: an increase by natural growth or by gradual external addition

3. Tone: Inquisitive, Familiar

4. Rhetorical Strategies:

- Imagery: “They followed a rad along the ridge, past scrub oaks and chokecherry bushes. Small flocks of birds flew in the wind. The air smelled of dead leaves and carried an edge of cold. A flicker of white and blue burst out of the underbrush, a blue jay took off with a chokecherry in its beak. “

- Syntax: “Twilight had eased off, and the black rift in Cygnus— a lane of dust in the Milky Way— was beginning to stand out.”

- Personification: “The cold began to bite.”

- Anecdote: “Her restlessness came from something deep, probably the American need to pile everything in a wagon and go look for Eden. Her father, Leonard Spellman, had tried silver mining in Colorado…”

- Listing: “Somewhere between Mars and Jupiter float the worlds of Fanny, Piccolo, Wu, Photographica, Requiem, O’Higgins, Lucifer, Tolkien, Echo, Zulu, d’Hotel, Fantasia, Limpopo, Valentine, Ultrajectum, Panacea, Geisha, Beethoven, Academia, Dudu, Felix, Bach, Chaucer, Einstein, Dali, Scabiosa, Nemu, and Mr. Spock.”

5. Discussion Questions

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6. “A gold wedding ring begins with the death of a star.”

Week One: First Light by Richard Preston

1. In Richard Preston’s non-fiction book First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe (1987, 1996), he concentrates on the use of the Hale Telescope to find quasars. The author first describes some of the pieces of technology that the team of astronomers add to the telescope by using their quotes and the details the astronomers offered, then he shows why Maarten Schmidt wanted to find quasars by giving background information on him, and to conclude he describes how the telescope works by explaining how it was developed and constructed using details that came from the woman who wrote George Ellery Hale’s biography and interviews and details with those who constructed the telescope. His purpose is to show how the science behind the search for quasars is really done in order to show that “science is a lot weirder and more human than most people realize.” He seems to have a scientific audience in mind because the book is about something that involves a lot of science and astronomy.

2.  - quasars: a pointlike source of brilliant light of all colors. Quasars are very distant, primeval objects, deep in lookback time, near the limit of the visible universe. Thought to be a hot, burning core of a galaxy which contains a black hole at its center.

 - lookback time: the amount of time it takes for light from an object to reach earth. Looking farther outward toward the sky is equivalent to looking backward in time, since the farther one sees outward, the more ancient the image one sees.

 - Dark time: the moonless time of the month

 - 4-shooter: electronic camera somewhat larger than a refrigerator, designed and built by James Gunn with a team of builders. The camera is installed at the bottom of the Hale Telescope.

 - Redshift: reddening, or lengthening, of light waves emitted by an object that is receding from earth. Used as a gauge of relative distance to an object in the sky. The higher the redshift, the farther away the object is.

 - Slew: to move a telescope very quickly across the sky

 - Photons: waves and particles

3. Tone: Inquisitive

4. Rhetorical strategies: 

5. Discussion Questions:

- If quasars are rarely seen, how do they know that an object is a quasar? How dod they know that quasars don't burn n the chemical or nuclear sense?

- Why does Richard Preston change from the team of astronomers working on "Big Eye" to the Shoemakers and their search for comets that may hit Earth?

- Why can't a telescope like Hale's Telescope be built in an are like today (or in the 1980s)? Does that mean that the search for quasars or the edge of the universe won't go any farther than Hale's Telescope allows?


6. “At the end of the sky lies the beginning.”