World Literature Final Study GuideExcerpt from "Snow" from How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Álvarez

Our first year in New York we rented a small apartment with a Catholic school nearby, taught by the Sisters of Charity, hefty women in long black gowns and bonnets that made them look peculiar, like dolls in mourning. I liked them a lot, especially my grandmotherly fourth grade teacher, Sister Zoe. I had a lovely name, she said, and she had me teach the whole class how to pronounce it. Yo-lan-da. As the only immigrant in my class, I was put in a special seat in the first row by the window, apart from the other children so that Sister Zoe could tutor me without disturbing them. Slowly, she enunciated the new words I was to repeat: laundromat, cornflakes, subway, snow.

Soon I picked up enough English to understand holocaust was in the air. Sister Zoe explained to a wide eyed classroom what was happening in Cuba. Russian missiles were being assembled, trained supposedly on New York City. President Kennedy, looking worried too, was on the television at home, explaining we might have to go to war against the Communists. At school, we had air raid drills: an ominous bell would go off and we'd file into the hall, fall to the floor, cover our heads with our coats, and imagine our hair falling out, the bones in our arms going soft. At home, Mami and my sisters and I said a rosary for world peace. I heard new vocabulary: nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout, bomb shelter. Sister Zoe explained how it would happen. She drew a picture of a mushroom on the blackboard and dotted a flurry of chalk marks for the dusty fallout that would kill us all.

The months grew cold, November, December. It was dark when I got up in the morning, frosty when I followed my breath to school. One morning as I sat at my desk daydreaming out the window, I saw dots in the air like the ones Sister Zoe had drawn random at first, then lots and lots. I shrieked, “Bomb! Bomb!” Sister Zoe jerked around, her full black skirt ballooning as she hurried to my side. A few girls began to cry.

But then Sister Zoe's shocked look faded. “Why, Yolanda dear, that's snow!” She laughed. “Snow.”

“Snow,” I repeated. I looked out the window warily. All my life I had heard about the white crystals that fell out of American skies in the winter. From my desk I watched the fine powder dust the sidewalk and parked cars below. Each flake was different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.

“The Drought” by Gary Soto

The clouds shouldered a path up the mountainsEast of Ocampo, and then descended,Scraping their bellies gray on the cracked shingles of slate.

They entered the valley, and passed the roads that wentTrackless, the houses blown open, their cellars creakingAnd lined with the bottles that held their breath for years.

They passed the fields where the trees dried thin as hat racksAnd the plow’s tooth bit the earth for what endured.But what continued were the wind that plucked the birds spineless

And the young who left with a few seeds in each pocket,Their belts tightened on the fifth notch of hunger—Under the sky that deafened from listening for rain.

Excerpt from Judgment at Nuremberg by Abby Mann

The following is an excerpt from Judgment at Nuremberg. The play is set at the end of World War II as the international community becomes aware of the crimes committed by the Nazis during the war. In 1948, a series of trials are held in Nuremberg, Germany, with the intent of bringing to justice those guilty of crimes against humanity.

JUDGE HAYWOOD: The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen[1] of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nation-wide government-organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of legal and moral principle common to all civilized nations. [Pause.]

The Tribunal has carefully reviewed the record and found therein abundant competent evidence to support, beyond a reasonable doubt, the charges brought against these defendants. Herr Rolfe, in his skillful defense has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. [Pause.]

This Tribunal does not believe that the United States or any other country has been blameless of the conditions which made the German people vulnerable to the blandishments[2] and temptations of the rise of Nazism. But this Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their acts. The principle of criminal law of every civilized society has this in common. Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of this crime, any person who is an accessory to this crime is guilty. [Pause.]

Herr Rolfe further asserts that the Defendant Janning was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought to be the best interests of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the government of which he was a part. Janning's record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts—if all of the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacs—then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, ordinary men—even able and extraordinary—men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs . . . The murder of children . . . How easily that can happen. There are those in our own country today, too, who speak of the protection of country. Of survival. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn't a rock. And it's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the world—let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth . . . and the value of a single human being.

[1] significant part of a grievance

[2] something that tends to coax or cajole

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884

Excerpt from Poke the Box by Seth Godin

TERMS AND STRATEGIES to be MINDFUL OF FOR THE FINAL

Central Idea Main Idea Supporting detail Theme Citing textual evidence Objective summary Ethics Morality Cause vs Effect of ideas summarizing Supporting evidence Poetic Devices (terms) Meaning of words in context Context clues OPTIC TP-CASTT SOAPST Syntax Inferring/ Implies /implying Diction Tone Mood

Literary Deviceso Figurative Deviceso Sound Devices

Connotative meaning of words foreshadowing Author’s point of view (opinion/

perspective) Rhetoric Impact of a line or part of a

paragraph Rhetorical Appeals (ethos,

pathos, logos) How a part or sentences, or

paragraph contributes to the whole meaning

Tension Comma Usage Subject-verb agreement Transition Words Quotation Intext citations Elaboration of a quote

Irony Character development (STEAL) How complex characters develop

over the course of the text Author’s choices in voice and

style Cultural perspective of a text How two different mediums

present an idea

Claim Reasoning Evidence How an author develops their

claim, reasoning, evidence, and counter-argument (rebuttal, refutation, concession)