Đỗ Thị Kiều Vân

Entry 1_Đỗ Thị Kiều Vân

Entry 1

Item 1: Poem

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Rhetorical devices:

1.      A rhetorical question: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

2.      Rhyme: day-May, temperate-date, shines-declines, dimmed-untrimmed, fade-shade, ow’st-grow’st, see-thee.

3.      A symbol: a summer’s day – the beauty of the beloved.

Message:

            The bright endless summer’s day can not be compared with the immortal beauty of the beloved.

Item 2: Fable

The ants and the grasshopper

Aesop

In a field one summer's day a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content.  A group of ants walked by, grunting as they struggled to carry plump kernels of corn.

"Where are you going with those heavy things?" asked the grasshopper.

Without stopping, the first ant replied, "To our ant hill.  This is the third kernel I've delivered today."

"Why not come and sing with me," teased the grasshopper, "instead of working so hard?" 

"We are helping to store food for the winter," said the ant, "and think you should do the same." 

"Winter is far away and it is a glorious day to play," sang the grasshopper.

But the ants went on their way and continued their hard work.

The weather soon turned cold.  All the food lying in the field was covered with a thick white blanket of snow that even the grasshopper could not dig through.  Soon the grasshopper found itself dying of hunger.

He staggered to the ants' hill and saw them handing out corn from the stores they had collected in the summer.  He begged them for something to eat.

"What!" cried the ants in surprise, "haven't you stored anything away for the winter?  What in the world were you doing all last summer?"

"I didn't have time to store any food," complained the grasshopper; "I was so busy playing music that before I knew it the summer was gone."

The ants shook their heads in disgust, turned their backs on the grasshopper and went on with their work.

Rhetorical devices:

1.      Metaphor:

-          The ants – people who are laborious, always prepare for their future carefully.

-          The grasshopper – people who enjoy themselves all the time without working. With them time is playing time, not working time.

Message:

Always be aware of the virtues of hard working and have to planning for the future. There is a time to work and a time to play, therefore, does the right thing before too late.

Item3: Satirizing cartoon.

Rhetorical devices:

1.      Bathos: A college professor has no advice for his student about the real world. On the other one, he just gets the knowdlege about the academic concern.

2.      Metonymy: The college professor – the old passive education system.

Message:

The old passive education system, too much academy without or less practice, which have ruined young people’s activity, creation, daily skills,….

Sources:

1.      http://www.poemslovers.com/love_poems/famous_love_poems/poems/9341.html

2.      http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/grasshopper/mstory.htm

3.      http://www.funnytimes.com/cartoons.php?cotw_id=20080806#.UFl4BJE4SSo