Journals

Journals
1-“Life shrinks of expands in proportion to one’s courage”
-Our life depends on how we make use of it. If we use it foolishly, then we're the ones going to suffer. But if we make good use of it, we improve. Our mistakes are not made by people around us. It is our own, we just can't blame ourselves. Nobody does. If we have the courage, and of course the knowledge, we can be betterpersons.

2-An old man, Don Tomasito, the baker, played the tuba. When he blew into a huge mouthpiece, his face would turn purple and a thousand wrinkles would disappear as his skin filled out.
Discuss
*How does the second sentence enrich and intensify the first?
-The second sentence enriches and intensifies the first one by adding details so the reader can see how Don Tomasito playedthe tuba
*Contrast the second sentence with the following.
When he blew the tuba, his face turned purple and his cheeks puffed out.
Which sentence more effectively expresses an attitude toward Tomasito? What is the attitude and how it is communicated?
-The sentence that we see in the original text is better because the author is trying to describe and old men, and when you use descriptions ashis cheeks puffed out doesn’t mean that is an old men.

3- Until I returned to Cuba, I never realized how many blues exist. The aquamarines near the shoreline, the azures of deeper waters, the eggshell beneath my grandmother’s eyes, the fragile indigos tracking her hands. There’s a blue, too in the curves of the palms, and the edges of the words we speak, the blue tinge to the sand of theseashells and the plump gulls on the beach. The mole by Abuela’s mouth is also blue, a vanishing blue.
*The narrator details the blues of the landscape and the blues of her grandmother (abuela). What connection is revealed by this juxtaposition of images?
- It’s just that her grandmother belongs in Cuba. Landscape is part of what Abuela is... part of her culture and heritage. Cuba is also part ofAbuela, but Abluela also contributes to the narrator's ideas and feelings about what Cuba is. So they both have something to give the other, in a way. They both provide something for each other.

*Why is the last blue in the passage a vanishing blue?
- Perhaps the author has the blue representing the sky Cuba, the land of her grandmother

4- But that is Cooper's way; frequently he willexplain and justify little things that do not need it
and then make up for this by as frequently failing to explain important ones that do need it.
For instance he allowed that astute and cautious person, Deerslayer-Hawkeye, to throw his
rifle heedlessly down and leave it lying on the ground where some hostile Indians would
presently be sure to find it - a rifle prized by that person above allthings else in the earth - and
the reader gets no word of explanation of that strange act. There was a reason, but it wouldn't
bear exposure. Cooper meant to get a fine dramatic effect out of the finding of the rifle by the
Indians, and he accomplished this at the happy time; but all the same, Hawkeye could have
hidden the rifle in a quarter of a minute where the Indians could not havefound it. Cooper
couldn't think of any way to explain why Hawkeye didn't do that, so he just shirked the
difficulty and did not explain at all
* What is Twain's tone in this passage? What is central to the tone of this passage: the
attitude toward the speaker, the subject, or the reader
- The tone of this passage is sarcastic, critical and simple to comprehend. The central to the tone is thesubject.
* How does Twain create the tone?
-Twain create the tone by cause and effect
5- “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible”
-What he meant was a bit deeper. The most incomprehensible thing in the universe is actually that human can comprehend it! He was referring to intelligence, intuition, imagination; the things that make us humans understand...