Notes from Today

VOCABULARY WORDS FOR 5/9

72. supercilious (adj)—excessively proud; arrogant

SAMPLE SENTENCE:

73.  cajole (v)—coax; wheedle; flatter; sweet talk

SAMPLE SENTENCE:

Then, copy down this quote at the top of a blank sheet of paper:

It was an extraordinary gift of hope…such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.  No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily close out my interest in the abortive (fruitless/without a product) sorrows and short-winded (short-lived/not lasting) elations (ecstasy) of men (HUMANS).

1. Extraordinary—amazing—positive connotation (other words with positive connotations from passage: hope, gift, dreams, elations)—GATSBY—From these words, Gatsby is characterized as a good man.
2. Prey—hunted (Animals that are hunted: rabbits, mice, deer—animals of innocence/purity)  This word choice illuminates Gatsby’s vulnerability, innocence, and purity.  He is the prey.  It also emphasizes Gatsby’s helplessness in the situation.
3. It—The thing/the person—The story, although titled The Great Gatsby, is really about the “it” that preyed upon Jay Gatsby.  The narrator chooses to tell this story because he is truly bothered by what preyed upon Gatsby.  Thus, the focus of the story is the “it” and not GATSBY himself.  The “it” is what changes our narrator.  The “it” closes our narrator off from society.
4. IT—FOUL DUST—PREDATOR—Right from the start, our narrator indicates to us that it is a battle between GOOD (GATSBY) AND BAD (IT).
5. wake—funeral—The word “wake hints at/provides us with the image of death. It also brings to mind the image of water (waves).  It highlights the concept of the rippling effects of water.
6. From the last section of this passage, we can see that this experience had a traumatizing effect on our narrator.  He feels that sorrows are useless and that happiness is always short-lived.

3: Arthur Miller's Intention

        Read the following excerpt from an interview with Arthur Miller.  Throughout the year, we have discussed that an author writes to expose the injustices he/she sees in the world.  With this in mind, were Miller's intentions  SUCCESSFULLY AND EFFECTIVELY conveyed through The Crucible.  Use one (1) THOROUGH EXAMPLE in your response to support your claim. 

Miller’s response to why he wrote the play:

…I wished for a play that would show the sin of public terror as it divests man of conscience, of himself. I had known of the Salem witch hunt for many years before “McCarthyism” had arrived and it had always remained in inexplicable darkness to me. When I looked into it now, however, it was with the contemporary situation at my back, particularly the mystery of the handing over of conscience, which seemed to me the central and informing fact of the time. The central impulse for writing was not the social, but the interior psychological question of that guilt rising in Salem which the hysteria merely unleashed, but did not create. Consequently, the structure reflects that understanding, and it centers on John, Elizabeth, and Abigail.

NOTE: You may have to look up some of the vocabulary to truly understand Miller's point.