Blog #4: Summer Reading Prompted Writing

	Definition	Quote Example from Summer Reading	Effect of this Literary device?	Effect of this literary device in my summer reading passage
Tone And Mood	Tone: Reflects the speaker’s attitude toward the subject of the work. Mood: The feeling the reader experiences as a result of the tone.	“Mom-pell-ion!” she screamed the word as a crake cries, from some deep place within her from which human voices are not usually drawn.” (257)	The way a person feels about an idea, event, or another person can be quickly determined through facial expressions, gestures and in the tone of voice used.	Whenever there seems to be good fortune for the characters, something that haunted them in the past always comes back to bite them on the butt.
Diction	The choice and use of words and phrases in speech and writing; the style of enunciation in speaking or singing.	“Elinor, by his side, was also clad in white: a simple gown…There were delicate pink mallow flowers, and blue larkspur, deep-throated lilies, and sprays of fragrant roses…”She looks like a bride,” I thought. But funerals, too, have flowers, and winding sheets are white.” (256)		The choice of the word funeral in the quotation creates a negative mood/tone. Even though everyone is well-dressed and Elinor holds a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and Mompellion wants the town to move on to a better future, this book still holds a feeling of negativity after the chaos of the plague.
Figurative Language	Language that uses figures of speech; non-literal language usually evoking strong images.	“…the large miner’s knife she had pulled with such effort the decaying sinews of my father’s hand. Her other arm was occupied, clutching the maggoty remnant of her daughter’s corpse…”(256-257)	The writer allows all readers to come up with many different meanings for the words in the novel.	When someone has succumbed to their madness, you would expect them to burst in a calm scene (example diction quote) with a weapon in hand, what I didn’t expect was for Aphra to drag her last child’s corpse, which is already decaying, to the scene as well.
Imagery	The verbal expression of a sensory experience and can appeal to any of the senses.	“The shriek that answered him was a raw, ragged thing, a piercing sound that rent the air and echoed around…” (256)	Imagery helps use words/phrases to describe an event or thing, so that the reader can visualize a picture of what the author is trying to describe.	As I read this line in the passage, it gives me Goosebumps to think what could sound so ragged, like nails on a chalkboard or even worse.
Syntax	The arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences.	“Any one of us could have stopped Aphra. I could have done it. The ravages of her madness had thinned her down to a wisp.” (256)	Syntax in literature gives the sum of the words meaning in a way that simply listing words never would.	Aphra’s life and family are in ruins, and if this happened to anyone else, they become just a body of rage and madness that doesn’t care who dies to seek justice in their own psychotic way.

                                                                                                                                                         


First Draft:

After reading, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, the book the passage I read reflects the novel as whole. The passage is told what happened after the plague finally began to die down and the villagers were about to be released form their oaths so they could leave and seek out any loved one that may have survived. The book started with the current time after the plague, where some might not understand what has caused some of the characters to be so depressed and gloomy.

 In the passage you find the rest of the uninfected in a Church service that would release them from oath to remain in the village and keep the disease from spreading, so they could journey out to find any loved ones who were not in the village at the time. Aphra Bont, who lost her whole family and succumbed to her madness and use of witchcraft to keep her remaining family, "alive", yet she ignored her last child's death and hanged her up like a string puppet and began to use charms and rely on witchcraft to keep her family alive. As we begin the scene where the Rector asked for them to give thanks "...the shriek that answered him was a raw, ragged thing..."For whaaaaat?" 

Final Draft:
After reading, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, the book the passage I read reflects the
novel as whole. The passage is told what happened after the plague finally began to die down and the villagers were about to be released form their oaths so they could leave and seek out any loved one that may have survived. The book started with the current time after the plague, where some might not understand what has caused some of the characters to be so depressed and gloomy.

 In the passage you find the rest of the uninfected in a Church service that would release them from oath to remain in the village and keep the disease from spreading, so they could journey out to find any loved ones who were not in the village at the time. Aphra Bont, who lost her whole family and succumbed to her madness and use of witchcraft to keep her remaining family, "alive", yet she ignored her last child's death and hanged her up like a string puppet and began to use charms and rely on witchcraft to keep her family alive. As we begin the scene where the Rector asked for them to give thanks "...the shriek that answered him was a raw, ragged thing..."For whaaaaat?" Clearly her madness got the best of her which became anger and then hate. She wanted to take Mompellion's life,“Any one of us could have stopped Aphra. I could have done it. The ravages of her madness had thinned her down to a wisp.”  Before she could, his wife, Elinor, took the killing blow. As they held the last of the funerals for the newly deceased, "It was Mr. Stanley who prayed at the graveside, for Michael Mompellion was not capable to do it. He had expended the last of his strength in the Delf, fighting those who tried, finally, to lead him away from Elinor's body." Michael was crushed and fell into a deep depression afterwards that even his caretaker, Anna Frith, had trouble of raising his spirits. The passage then started back up at the current time as Anna Frith reflected all that has happened to her and her friends.

This passage has worked its way up from the beginning of Anna Frith's life before the plague to the current time after Elinor's death in the passage. Aphra's actions resulted from the plague, though no one knew the cause, except Anna and her friend who was among the first to die was because of the flea infested cloth from London. Ignorant as the people were at the time, ignored the warnings to burn the material and helped spread it.  First Aphra's husband, Josiah, died for his crimes of greed and attempted murder, raised her insanity, and as one by one her children, minus Anna perished, she went ballistic and needed take the rage out on someone, and that was Mompellion as he was the judge for Josiah's crime and had her shunned for pretending to be a ghost of an alleged witch and sell charms to make extra money to keep her family going. Our actions can have consequences and those consequences can be reasonable or unreasonable. Aphra's actions had the biggest impact as result of the story and the resulting feeling of depression and gloom since she lost everything because of the plague and she couldn't do anything to save her family and took the life of a respected individual as result and killed herself.