Entry 1_ Đào Thị Thu Hương (10032047)

Entry 1

Item 1: Poem

Fame is a fickle food [1]

                    ( Emily Dickinson)

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but not

The second time is set

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the

Farmer’s corn

Men eat of it and die

Rhetorical devices:

·        Consonance: fame – fickle – food, crumbs – crows...

·        Simile: Fame – fickle food

·        Metaphor: fickle – likely to change → fickle food – changeable fame, crows – people who always inspect and look at the crumbs of the fame struck person...

Message:

Fame is always changing, and people that chase after it will be tied to the

world in a continuing cycle of births and deaths.

Item 2: Story

Encouragement: The Gift Opener [2]

(From Writer's Whirlpool)

In high school, I was terrified of taking an English class from one particular teacher. I heard she was hard from student informants. I doubted my ability to comprehend and keep up with the concepts, the teacher and the really smart students. I tried to get out of it but could not. I planned to do the minimum until I learned we had to write something everyday in a journal, let her read it, criticize it and grade it. Me? Write daily about something personal and let someone more knowing than me read it? I feared not graduating more than I feared not being good enough.

I rambled through the routine, wrote whatever and gambled with true feelings. In return, I received praise, encouragement, silence, gentle guidance and freedom to write my thoughts my way. Needless to say, writing then has helped writing now because that journal assignment was much more than an English lesson. It has helped shape my acceptance of this and other gifts as the purest form of praise to the Great Giver of Gifts. It opened my confidence, self view and worldview just enough. I learned another method to understand and communicate with myself and others.

Encouragement in any form is a gift opener. We do angelic things when we consider the needs of others.

Rhetorical devices:

·        Simile: Encouragement – gift opener

·        Metaphor: gift opener ( open someone’s confidence and abilities, help someone to be better)

Message:

Encouragement in any form is a gift opener that helps someone be more confident and successful.

Item 3: Cartoon

Rhetorical devices:

·        Overstatement: a boy is using so many kinds of advanced technology at the same time.

·        Metonymy: Computer, laptop, headphone... – advanced technology, lighting – electromagnetic wave that harms people.

Message:

          People depend too much on advanced technology, which harms people’s health.

Source:

1. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182804
2. http://www.usiku.net/simile-metaphor-allegory.htm
3. http://scpoc.blogspot.com/2011/05/technology-helpful-or-harmful-by-hannah.html