V4 - week 5 - KEY Literary devices (incomplete) & poetry Vegetarians & Incident

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

Today's objectives

• Literary devices (poems/novels/plays)

• Poetry 

Vegetarians - R. McGough

Incident - Norman MacCraig 

Literary devices (poem/novels)

What is..... (LIST NOT COMPLETE - CHECK YOUR POETRY BOOKLET FOR EVERYTHING)

• Alliteration
• Repetition
• A metaphor
• A simile
• Personification
• A limerick
• A vilanelle
• A stanza
• Irony
• Hyperbole
• A symbol
• Narrator
• Setting
• Onomatopoeia 

Literary devices

What is.....

• Alliteration - FIRST CONSONANTS of stressed meaningful words are the same

• Repetition - using the same words or sentence more than once

• A metaphor - a comparison WITHOUT as or like (i.e. He is the black sheep in the family; She is England's rose)

• A simile - a comparison WITH as or like (i.e. My love is like a red, red rose; She sings like a nightingale.)

• Personification - to attribute personal nature or human characteristics to something non-human;  or the representation of an abstract quality in human form .

Literary devices

What is.....

• A limerick - a short , usually humorous poem of 5 lines with the rhyme scheme: a-a-b-b-a -> a-lines long, b-lines short

• A vilanelle - a poem of 6 stanzas: 3 lines each, last stanza = 4 lines, with the rhyme scheme: aba-aba-aba-aba-aba-abaa. 

• A stanza - a unified group of lines in poetry. Such a group may consist of any number of lines. Most common are: couplet (two lines); tercet (three lines); quatrain (4 lines), sestet (6 lines, usually two tercets or three couplets) and octave (8 lines, usually two quatrains) 

• Irony - 

       a) verbal irony = when the opposite of what is meant is said; 
      b) situational irony = when the opposite of what is expected happens; 

      c) dramatic irony = when the audience knows something the character (play/movie/novel) doesn't

Literary devices

What is.....

• Hyperbole - an exaggerated statement that's not meant to be taken literally by the reader. It is often used for comedic effect and/or emphasis. Example: "I’m so hungry I could eat a horse." The speaker will not literally eat an entire horse  but it emphasizes how starved the speaker feels. 

• A symbol - something in a story or poem that literally is what it is and stands for something else (i.e. a rose often symbolizes love; a dove often symbolizes peace etc.)  

• Narrator - the person telling the story (i.e. "I" = first person narrator; could be third person omniscient)

• Setting - the time and place when story/poem occurs

• Onomatopoeia - a word that sounds like its meaning (cuckoo, sizzle)

Vegetarians   -                  Roger McGough 

Vegetarians are cruel, unthinking people. 

Everybody knows that a carrot screams when grated. 

That a peach bleeds when torn apart. 

Do you believe an orange insensitive 

to thumbs gouging out its flesh? 

That tomatoes spill their brains painlessly? 

Potatoes, skinned alive and boiled, 

the soil's little lobsters. 

Vegetarians   -                  Roger McGough 

Don't tell me it doesn't hurt 

when peas are ripped from the scrotum, 

the hide flayed off sprouts, 

cabbage "shredded", onions beheaded. 

Throw in the trowel 

and lay down the hoe 

Mow no more 

Let my people go! 

LITERARY DEVICES IN VEGETARIANS

FIND AN EXAMPLE OF:

PERSONIFICATION

METAPHOR

ONOMATOPOEIA

PUN

https:

Vegetarians

1) Why does the narrator feel that vegetarians are cruel and unthinking people?

2) What happens when "a carrot screams when grated" "a peach bleeds when torn apart" and "a tomato spills its brains"? What literary device is this?

Vegetarians

3) What does the narrator mean when he says that "potatoes,..., the soil's little lobsters"?  What literary device is this?

4) The narrator makes a final appeal in the  last 4 lines. 

A) What is he saying? B) What is the origin of these lines (where do they come from)?

5) Why does McGough write such a poem on Vegetarians? 

      What does he want to express with it?

Q. 1 - Cruel and unthinking vegetarians -> Because they kill and torture vegetables, like butchers do with animals ->  animals are kept and killed in different ways, this also happens to vegetables and fruit.

Q. 2 - Fruit and vegetables are seen as having human qualities - literary device = personification

Q. 3 - Soils little lobsters = a metaphor (a comparison without as or like). Both lobsters and potatoes are boiled alive and eaten

Q. 4A. Stop eating vegetables

Q. 4.B. - Negro spirituals; the Bible

Q. 5. He wanted to ridicule vegetarians, and show that their arguments, as valid as they may be, can also be used as counterarguments to validate meat eaters. 

Incident                     Norman MacCraig (1910-1960) 

I look across the table and think 

(fiery with love) 

Ask me, go on, ask me 

to do something impossible, 

something freakishly useless, 

something unimaginable and inimitable 

Like making a finger break into blossom 

or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes 

or remembering tomorrow. 

Incident - continued       Norman MacCraig (1910-1960) 

I will you to ask it. 

But all you say is 

Will you give me a cigarette? 

And I smile and, 

returning to the marvelous world 

of possibility 

I give you one 

with a hand that trembles 

with a human trembling. 

The incident

• What is this poem about?

• What can you say about the person speaking and the other person he is speaking to (relationship wise)?

• " I will you to ..."  -> what does this mean?

The incident

• What does the following mean:

Ask me, go on, ask me 

to do something impossible, 

something freakishly useless, 

something unimaginable and inimitable 

Like making a finger break into blossom 

• What do you call this comparison in stanza 1  (underlined)? 

• What actually happens?  

The incident - key

• He (= narrator)  is really in love with her (or the other person), but it might be one-sided, and (s)he has no idea how he feels

• He tries to force him/her to ask him a question by sending out "vibes"  with his mind

• So he can prove his love to him/her

•  Ask me, go on, ask me 

to do something impossible, 

something freakishly useless, 

something unimaginable and inimitable 

Like making a finger break into blossom =  Simile 

• She asks him something easy/simple/mundane, so he cannot express or prove his love to her