N & Q on Fernand Leger's Painting The City

1. How and where does the truncation, mentioned in the analysis by R&J, extend to human figures? What are the implications about city life through this particular truncation (to use the terminology of R&J)?

2. (A) What repeated figures in the painting relate to technology, and what might the implications be of this motif in the painting? (B) How is the figure of stairs or a stairway repeated in the painting, and what might the implications be of this motif in the painting? (C) How is the concept of order or disorder conveyed by the painting? How does this concept apply thematically in the painting?
 

N & Q on Wilfred Owen's Poem "Dulce et Decorum Est"

Vocabulary: sludge (line 2); blood-shod (line 6); floundering (line 12); lime* (line 12); writhing (line 19); froth-corrupted (line 22); vile (line 24); zest (line 26); ardent (line 26); "dulcet" (related to the Latin word in line 27); "decorum" (related to the Latin word in line 27; cf. the use of this word as a technical term in Ch. 15 of R&J); "pro" (related to the Latin word in line 28)

1. (a) How does each of the four stanzas of the poem function as a thought unit? (b) For what reason or reasons might the third stanza be so short?

2. (A) What same figure of speech (from the figures of speech discussed in Ch. 17 of R&J) is used in line 1, 2, 12, 14, 20, and 23? What are the meanings in each instance, and how do some of the instances connect with each other? (B) In what lines is the figure of speech metaphor used? What are the meanings in each instance, and how do some of the instances connect with each other? (C) In what lines is the figure of speech hyperbole used? What are the meanings in each instance, and how do some of the instances connect with each other? (D) In what lines is the figure of speech personification used? What are the meanings in each instance, and how do some of the instances connect with each other? (E) How do the figures of speech related to old age suggest an effect of war on the soldiers (and what age are the soldiers presumed to be)? (F) Besides the implication of 2E, what negative effects of war are suggested in the figure of speech in line 20?

3. (A) Why is one word printed all in capital letters in line 9? (B) How do the punctuation marks as well as word all in capital letters convey a particular tone in line 9?

4. (A) By implication, what age and status are the listener -- the "you" -- addressed in lines 17-28? (B) What are the implications that the address to the listener as "my friend" (line 25), has a particularly ironic tone?
 

N & Q on Thomas Hardy's Poem "The Workbox"

Vocabulary: joiner* (line 3); borough (line 4); profferer (line 7); warrant* (line 9); scantling (line 10); wayward (line 11); doom* (line 18); accidental* (line 34); wan (line 36)

1. How might this poem be seen to have the two parts of stanzas 1-5 and 6-10? How does each form a distinct unit of thought or action or plot?

2. How might the initial address to the wife by the husband, "See, here's the workbox, little wife" (line 1), contain multiple tones, some intentional and some unintentional, from the husband? How is a complex portrait of the husband created by Hardy from this mixture of tones?

3. (A) How is the wife's answer (stanza 7) evasive, and consequently suggestive of not telling the truth (or the complete truth)? (B) The majority of students at first mistakenly conclude, after some class discussion of the poem and re-reading of the study questions by R&J, that the poem contains a murder mystery and that the wife is a murderer, given her evasive answer (stanza 7), John Wayward's death from an undetermined cause (stanza 3), and the narrator's revelations in the poem's final stanza (stanza 10). However, taking into account the onomastic symbolism of the decedent's surname (pondering the meaning of the English word wayward) in relation to what the decedent did before death (namely, leave the village before the joiner's wife "was a woman grown" [line 28]), and that the joiner's wife apparently had an emotional attachment to the decedent (suggested -- how? -- in stanzas 6 and 10), from what other cause besides murder (including the ruling out of a presumably undetectable poison) could the decedent have died as a result of leaving the very young woman with whom he shared some emotional relationship? Why might she now feel guilty (not as a murderer) for Wayward's death, as well as for lying to her husband (not that such a thing could happen in reality -- this literary work, after all, is only a poem)? (C) Given the hint of suspicion (as pointed out by R&J) in the husband's query (stanza 6), why might the wife have lied through evasion (stanza 7)? Since she has no cause to be worried about being accused of murder, what is she afraid of?

4. How does the designation of the husband's occupation accumulate multiple meanings in the poem?
 

N & Q on Langston Hughes' Poem "Theme for English B"

1. Vocabulary: Winston-Salem (line 1), Durham (line 2), Harlem (line 9)

2. (A) How might the poem's nine stanzas (some of them single lines) be structured or organized into the three parts of stanzas 1-3, 4-6, and 7-9? How is each of these parts a distinct thought or content unit? (B1) How is this three-part structure appropriate for the writing assignment that the speaker has been given? (B2) Why isn't a poem what the teacher expects to receive in response to the writing assignment; for what reasons might the speaker violate the teacher's expectation? (B3) What device of rhythm and meter (see Ch. 16 of RJc3) is used in the last line of stanza 6 (line 24)? (C) For what thematic or content reason in each instance, as well as collectively, are some stanzas only single lines?

3. (A) In which stanzas, and where in the stanza, is rhyme used? (B1) How does the poem display variability in many components of form (rhyme, line length, stanza length)? (B2) In what way or ways might the poem's variability in form relate to the themes, ideas, or content of the poem? (B3a) How does the last line of stanza 8 relate to 3B1-2? (B3b) How is the older, white English teacher only "somewhat more free" than the speaker (stanza 8; line 40)? (C) How is the poem ultimately about not only the speaker but also about America (cf. the last line of stanza 7)? (D) How is identity a main subject of the poem?

4. (A) What details and words are picked up or repeated in more than one stanza? (B) How does the speaker explore more than one meaning of the word "colored"? (C1) How old is the speaker of the poem, within the poem? (C2) How old was Langston Hughes when he composed the poem? (C3) What can be inferred or deduced from C1-C2? (D) How does the referent of the pronoun you change in the poem?

5. The figure of speech zeugma involves the yoking together of incongruous items, conveying ideas through this incongruity. How is there a kind of zeugma in the last line of stanza 6 (line 24), and what idea or themes may be conveyed thereby?