The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates, Sumaries

Rules of the Game: This Chapter is about a young girl named Waverly Jong, who learns to play chess. She meets an old man who teaches her all the tricks, and then her mom puts her in competitions. Waverly yells at her mom for taking credit for her chess skills.
The Voice from the Wall: In this chapter we find out that Lenas mom probably killed her first baby or something like that. The mom freaks out the whole chapter about protecting Lena, and then after the moms baby dies, the mom also dies. We also meet Lena's neighbor, a 12 year old girl who fights with her mom all the time but they are still friends.
Half and Half: Rose wants to divorce her husband and her mom wants her to fight for her marriage. Much of the chapter is spent reviewing how when she was a young girl, the Hsu family went to the beach, and then Bing fell into the water and died.
Two Kinds: This chapter is basically all about how throughout her whole life, Jing-Mei's mom tries her whole life to make her daughter into some wort of prodigy/genius, but she doesn't want to admit it. Jing-Mei's piano teacher is deaf, and she discovers that she can play random notes and her teacher wont notice. When Jing-Mei plays at a talent show, she sucks and disappoints her whole family.

11-20 SAT Words

I do not like arid places, such as the desert.
I am assiduous in reading my English book.
Antanopoulos is currently in an asylum.
It is good to be a benevolent person.
I like seeing movies where they attempt to display the camaraderie of friends.
Someone should censure her potty mouth.
I drive in a very circuitous manner.
Circus people are clairvoyant.
If my friends would collaborate more, things would be easier.
Please show compassion when grading the I.O.P.'s

Key Passage Highlighting

Key:
Imagery
Odd Diction
Repetition
Odd Puncuation
Alliteration




Passage:
Jarvis sat, deeply moved. Whether because this was his son, whether because this was almost the last act of his son, he could not say. Whether because there was some quality in the words, that too he could not say, for he had given little time in his life to the savouring and judging of words. Whether because there was some quality in the ideas, that too he could not say, for he had given little time to study of these particular matters. He rose and went up the stairs to his room, and was glad to find his wife not there, for here was a sequence not to be interrupted. He picked up the Abraham Lincoln and went down to the study again, and there opened the book at the Second Inaugural Address of the great president. He read it through, and felt with a sudden lifting of the spirit that here was a secret unfolding, a track picked up again. There was increasing knowledge of a stranger. He began to understand why the picture of this man was in the house of his son, and the multitude of books.

Cry, The Beloved Country. Gender Roles

    The author uses gender roles consistently throughout the novel. He appoints traditionally female tasks to the women in the book, such as taking care of children, "She went to the kitchen and came back with the child." As a less developed country, South African society continues to view the female role as a mothering, nurturing, stay at home, role. Also, when Stephen Kumalo goes to Johannesburg, he goes because his sister is sick, "This young woman is very sick, and therefore i ask you to come quickly to Johannesburg." Paton creates a situation in which out of two siblings, Stephan's brother and sister, his sister becomes sick because she is the weaker gender. In third world countries, especially over 50 years ago, females are viewed as inferior and expected to raise children, stay home, etc. The effect of these gender roles are to aid us in understanding the time period and why everything happens like it did.

The Power Structure

      In both Lord of the Flies and The Power of One, the protagonist is in control. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph is in control when he decides to not give in to Jack and his group. Equally, in The Power of One, Peekay refuses to give in when the boys are bullying him. Ralph took control at the beginning of the book over the boys, and gradually lost control over everyone but himself. Peekay was in control of only himself at the beginning of the book, and by learning to box he gained the respect of the African men and women; their respect for him gave him some degree of power to persuade and control if necessary. In both stories, Peekay and Ralph never lost the ability to make their own decisions even though they were confronted with certain situation were it was just them versus a crowd. The power structure falters at moment but never completely fails.

Key Passage 2-3, Symbol

Between Key Passages 2 and 3, Golding writes an important paragraph about a littlun, Henry, and his footprints on the beach. "He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them." The footprints symbolize the lack of control that Henry feels about his new life. By controlling "them", the creatures that were trapped in his footprints, Henry is relating to his old life and how much he misses it. His feelings are echoed by all the other boys.

Key Passage 1

Golding uses alliteration near the beginning of page 31 to emphasis a crucial sentence. "They found a piglet caught in a curtain of creepers, throwing itself at the elastic traces in all madness of extreme terror." The repetition heard is so prominent that skimming the sentence becomes hard to do. He chooses to accentuate this sentence specifically because it is the boys first encounter with a pig. The pigs situation is very similar to that of the boys during the course of the book, they are trapped and unable to escape and eventually go crazy from fear of the beast. Also, hunting pigs is a primary cause in Jack's downward spiral to a much more primitive and uncivilized nature than Ralph's. The difference between the boys is what makes up much of the books conflict.