Analysing a passage for AP Lit

rebeccar
Sun, 01 Apr 2012 02:27:11 +0000

Neither winter nor summer seemed to happen more often than the other.
This clarifies the first sentence a bit more-- in the village, the times of winter and summer are not extremely distinguishable or polar opposites. For most places, winter is very cold and snowy and summer is very hot and sunny. In other places in the world, it is cold year round, or hot year round, etc. This village does not have a standard seasonal year. Based on the rest of the passage, I’m assuming it is one of those places where it is cold a lot.
Winter was simply something that happened. It was not a huge production. Being in the wintertime was just like, oh, hey, it’s winter.
You are taking this WAY too literally. If someone said, “oh, you must try the cake,” obviously they don’t mean if you don’t try the cake, you will die and the consequences will never be the same.
One’s nose goes numb with coldness.
How is this difficult to imagine? Just picture patches of frost in an abstract pattern.
Polar means related to the North or South pole, generally, so that word makes sense. How should we know why it’s green? You can’t expect the reader to just know, “oh, clearly it was a green lava lamp or a lampshade with a green hue”. There is no way to know why it was green just from this paragraph, and no reason why you need to know.
Again, how the heck should we know why there was a silence? It’s not like there’s going to be a question about it. The point is, there is a silence. No one making noise. Words like strange and hard in this context, to me, have different connotations than a tranquil, comfortable silence in a warm field, for example.
Why shouldn’t it creak and throb? I’m sitting in my bedroom right now on a still night and I can hear the windows and house creaking and the trees rustling outside. The author is just building up the setting and describing the surroundings.


I wouldn’t exactly call this an easy passage, but I definitely think you’re analzying it the wrong way. You don’t need an answer to every single detail. Rather, look at the paragraph as a whole. Clearly, if it says “there was a silence” with no explanation, there’s not going to be a question that says, like,
Why was there a silence?
a) The household is quietly mourning someone’s death.
b) Everyone is sleeping.
c) The house is inhabited by monks who are sparse with their words.
d) For some supernatural reason, no one in a mile radius can speak.
etc. Obviously, we can’t know, so you simply don’t need to know, so don’t look for something that isn’t there.

I hope this helps. It’s crucial to analyze but there’s no reason to go about it in this way. Also, I think you repeated a number a number :). Good luck on the test!