Friday, September 09, 2011
Entry 1: Dao Thi Viet
Entry 1
Item 1: Poem
Friends Until The End
By Xoxo
Day and night you give me light,
Whenever I’m out of sight.
You always ask the breeze,
To wipe away all my tears,
Whenever I can sense the fear.
You are the sun that lights my day,
And the stars that brighten my way.
You are like a firefly that kisses me goodnight,
With light so bright during a blue starry night.
The flowers sob because it turns this way,
But it should reach its very last day.
A distance from sky to land can’t keep us apart,
For you will always be in my heart.
Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/friends-until-the-end
Rhetorical devices:
– Rhyme: light-sight, tears-fears, day-way, apart-heart, goodnight-night,…
– Simile: you are the sun…, the stars…, you are like a firely…
– Metaphor: nounphrase “a distance from sky to land” means death
Message: a true friend plays the important role in everyone’s life. Even when this friend dead, he is always in survivor’s heart.
Item 2: Short story
The chef cook and his daughter
A daughter complained to her father about life and how things were so
hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted
to give up. She was tired of struggling. It seemed that as soon as one
problem was solved, a new one arose.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with
water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In
one he placed carrots, in the second he placed eggs, and the last he
placed ground coffee beans. He let them sit and boil, without saying a
word.
The daughter sucked her teeth and impatiently waited, wondering what he
was doing. In about twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He fished
the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and
placed them a bowl. Then he ladled the coffee out and placed it in a
bowl. Turning to her he asked.
“What do you see?” “Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.
He brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and
noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break
it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. She smiled as she tasted its
rich aroma.
She said, “What’s the point?”
He explained that each of the items had faced the same adversity –
boiling water – but each reacted differently.
The carrot went in strong and hard. But after being subjected to the
boiling water, it softened and became weak.
The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid
interior. But after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became
hardened.
The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the
boiling water, they had changed the water.
“Which are you?” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your
door, how do you respond? Do you become weak, like a carrot, hard on the
inside, like an egg, or do you change the circumstances, like the coffee beans?”
Rhetorical devices:
– Metaphor: carrots (people who become soft and weak when facing the adversity), eggs (people who become hard after facing difficulties in life), and the coffee beans (people who can change the curcumstances when getting the misfortune).
Message: There are different ways to react to hardship. Don’t be weak or suppress things – change circumstances from within.
Source: http://go.webassistant.com/wa/upload/users/u1000057/workspaces/30stories/#heaven
Item 3: Cartoon
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/series/cartoon
Rhetorical devices:
– Climax: pesticides are sprayed to butterfly, the bird eats butterfly and dead on weed, finally crushing weed.
– Metaphor: by using images of a butterfly and a bird, the author would like to reflect the item “environment”.
Message: pesticides is harmful for people and have bad effects to the environment and other animals around us before crushing weed. So people should limit the use of pesticides and be careful when using it.