Lit Test, Works – Flashcards

-Metaphors: figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of a specific word of comparison such as like, as, than, resembles. -Near end of selection uses a metaphor that compares his triumph over Mr. Covey. to resurrection from the dead: "It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heavens of freedom." metaphor adds a spiritual dimension to the story by connecting a physical victory to victory of the soul - Another metaphor was "rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom...." showed that he was soon to give up on freedom but this encouraged him, MAIN REASON WAS TO LEAVE US WITH THE IDEA OF RESURRECTION AND PUSH THE MESSAGE ALONG. -he spices it up with exaggeration -Purpose: inform about evils of slavery. How he regained his self worth and dignity. -Actual story: -He could not work, was sick, so he was beaten by Covey. -Pleaded with master to protect him. -Master in debt to Covey so gave him Douglass. -Said Covey was a good man. -Slavery is romanticized. Shows that the owners had no moral obligations. -Writing style: plain, states facts, not detailed. -Ironic because it is plain and story is serious. -Wants to show off the events more thn his description -This contradicts the actions in story. -"I suppose I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild beasts, and barely escaped them" -Possible metaphor. Beast: Covey, master/slave owners.... slaves themselves because they are less than people: treated like beasts. -This description of himself and condition makes the story more realistic. -Covey treats Frederick kindly on Sunday, the religious day. -Great hypocrisy. because on all other days he treats him like trash but on this day treats him well because it is sunday. -Douglass fought back and kicked butt. -The cause of him revolting is being treated unjustly. -This shows that the human spirit wants to fight back when this done (being treated unjustly)."from whence came the spirit, I don't know- I resolved to fight; and suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose." -Another metaphor was "rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom...." showed that he was soon to give up on freedom but this encouraged him, MAIN REASON WAS TO LEAVE US WITH THE IDEA OF RESURRECTION AND PUSH THE MESSAGE ALONG.

-Slaves had to work while singing. -masters wanted this -singing: They know where you are and your working. The master's know you are not thinking of escaping not planning. -a silent slave- planning- they can find you. -The slaves get an allowance of clothing once a year -They get a a food allowance once every month. -Potato famine in Ireland is a comparison to the suffering and singing of the slaves. (singing in ireland) -The songs were wild and wailing. They showed the suffering. Ethos is the characteristic spirit of a culture,era,community,institution etc.,as manifested in its attitudes,aspirations,customs etc.;the character of an individual as represented by his or her values and beliefs;the prevalent tone of a literary work in this respect.

Letter to his son: -Was a fan of Washington -Was a fan of Evertt's "Life of Washington." -Wants to remember Washington's role in creating the U.S. -He doesn't want war, but knows it will happen. -He feels/knows the South has been aggrieved (treated unfairly) by North. -He says that he will stay with his people/state of Virginia. with south. -Claims that secession is revolution. This is terrible, we are revolting. -He claims that maybe this wouldn't be happening if government was made better. Lee is saddened by the current state of the US Says the Union is between a state of anarchy and civil war (chaotic) Wants it to be peaceful Says the 1st 4 states have already succeeded, and 4 more (including his own) are expected to follow Believes North has been unfair to South Does not want revenge Shows Internal Conflict -Takes pride in his country but feels loyal to his state Believes Constitution should be valued and the Union kept intact If South succeeds, no real government would be established War does not entice Lee He will mourn for his country, but must return to his native state Will not fight unless for defense This work is a literary letter. Lee wrote it to his son, but it was intended for a wider audience. The internal conflict shown in this letter is that Lee does not want war or secession but refuses to take up arms against his state (Virginia). The tone of "Letter to His Son" is one of resignation and sadness.

-he knows he is going to die. -was feeling worry, fear, guilt, sadness, and the PULL BETWEEN HIS LOVE FOR HER AND HIS SENSE OF DUTY. -never mailed -he says he owes his duty to those who went before him in the revolution -wants to help maintain the government. -Describes how great his love for both her and his country is. -thinks of moments spent together -hopes he will return unharmed. -says last breath on battle field will be her name -apologizes if he ever hurt her. -says if dead can come back and roam earth, he will always be near her. -soft breeze on her cheek will be his breath. and if a cool fan cools throbbing temple it is his spirit passing through her. -tells her not to mourn him. -he is waiting for her because they shall meet again.

- done to address the blood bath of gettysburg. greatest single battle of war. -lincoln made this speech months after he battle on November 19. Battle was on july 1-3 1863. -the President spoke not only about American independence, but about freedom in general. -" Lincoln honored the Union dead and reminded the listeners of the purpose of the soldier's sacrifice: equality, freedom, and national unity. -Lincoln effectively summed up the consequences of the war in ten sentences. The controversies that rule the exact words and transcriptions merge in agreement of the main strain of thought. Lincoln stressed on the harmony between the early settlers and the Native Americans in the early years. He highlighted the fact that liberty and equality were the core components for the emancipation of America. Lincoln urged the common man and politician to consider the lives lost in the attempt to save the nation from colonization, and pay tribute to the unsung heroes. He emphasized on the fact that the Gettysburg Address may be forgotten in time, but not the soldiers who willingly laid down their lives. He urged the gathering to take up the cause and complete the task at hand, to usher in a government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people'. -There is repetition and parallelism "new nation, that nation or any nation".... "we are engaged" "we are met".. "that nation" "that war" "that field" "that nation".... so conceived, so dedicated..... we can not dedicate. we can not hallow... who struggled here, who fought here..... what we say here, what they did here..... "to be here dedicated, to be dedicated here..... to the unfinished work, to the great task.... to that cause.... that from these honored dead, that these dead, that this nation.... shall not have died in vein, shall have a new birth, shall not perish for the earth.... of the people, by the people, for the people.

-----Mary Boykin Chesnut was the wife of James Chesnut, a former U.S. senator from South Carolina and an aide to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. During the course of the war, Mary Chesnut traveled from city to city in the South as the capital of the Confederacy changed. She kept up with the war news through her husband and their wide circle of knowledgeable and influential friends. Mary Chesnut was sophisticated, witty, and sensitive. Her diaries present an invaluable firsthand view of life in the South during the war. ----Mary Chesnut had been in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1861, when the attack on Fort Sumter took place, beginning the Civil War. As she had been present at the beginning of the war, Mary Chesnut was also present at its end. In Columbia, South Carolina, she received the news, increasingly discouraging, from the field. ---Talks about the battle at atlanta. claims they lost it and that agony is gone. makes a reference to the bible "like david, when the child was dead, I will get up from my knees, will wash my face, and comb my hair. (Chesnut alludes to 2 Samuel 12:20-23 in the Bible, where David weeps and prays for his sick child.) --claims there is no hope, will not try to hae fear --in one passage we learn from hear from a Dr, Dr. Palmer hat he is for freedom to govern our own country as they see fit --the war is basically over she knows its over they have lost. -in the last entry, she claims Mr chestnut met a poor creature coming from the surgeons with a certificate and radiant face. the creature says,, "general see. I am exempt from service, one leg utterly useless, the other not warranted to last 3 months".

An acknowledged expert on the Civil War, the American historian and novelist Shelby Foote (1916- ) was born in Mississippi and served as a captain of field artillery during World War II. Several years after that war he signed a contract to write a short history of the Civil War but soon realized that he would have to go "whole hog on the thing." In the end, Foote's classic three-volume work, The Civil War, ran to three thousand pages and took twenty years to complete. The questions and answers in this reading are culled from many hours of on-camera conversations with Ken Burns, maker of the documentary film series The Civil War. Why are we drawn to the civil war? Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you're going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.... Did the soldiers on both sides really know what they were fighting for? Early on in the war, a Union squad closed in on a single ragged Confederate. He didn't own any slaves and he obviously didn't have much interest in the Constitution or anything else. And they asked him, "What are you fighting for anyhow?" And he said, "I'm fighting because you're down here." Which was a pretty satisfactory answer. Lincoln had the much more difficult job of sending men out to shoot up somebody else's home. He had to unite them before he could do that, and his way of doing it was twofold. One was to say the Republic must be preserved, not split in two. That was one. And the other one he gave them as a cause: the freeing of the slaves. But no one on either side thought it would last long. Those few individuals who said that it would, William Tecumseh Sherman° for instance, were actually judged to be insane for making predictions about casualties which were actually low. There was even a congressman, I believe from Alabama, who said there would be no war, and offered to wipe up all the blood that would be shed with a pocket handkerchief. I've always said someone could get a Ph.D. by calculating how many pocket handkerchiefs it would take to wipe up all the blood that was shed. It would be a lot of handkerchiefs. Did the South ever have a chance of winning? I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. At the same time the war was going on, the Homestead Act was being passed, all these marvelous inventions were going on. In the spring of 1864, the Harvard-Yale boat races were going on and not a man in either crew ever volunteered for the army or the navy. They didn't need them. I think that if there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other arm out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that war.... How did the war change us? What did we become? The Civil War was really one of those watershed things. There was a huge chasm between the beginning and the end of the war. The nation had come face to face with a dreadful tragedy and we reacted the way a family would do with a dreadful tragedy. It was almost inconceivable that anything that horrendous could happen. You must remember that casualties in Civil War battles were so far beyond anything we can imagine now. If we had 10 percent casualties in a battle today, it would be looked on as a blood bath. They had 30 percent in several battles. And one after another, you see. And yet that's what made us a nation. Before the war, people had a theoretical notion of having a country, but when the war was over, on both sides they knew they had a country. They'd been there. They had walked its hills and tramped its roads. They saw the country and they knew they had a country. And they knew the effort that they had expended and their dead friends had expended to preserve it. It did that. The war made their country an actuality. Before the war, it was said, "The United States are...." Grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. After the war, it was always "The United States is..."—as we say today without being self-conscious at all. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an "is."

Point of View is the vantage point from which a writer tells a story. -omniscient, in which the narrator seems to know everything bout all the characters pr events -objective, in which the narrator reports without comment, much as a camera would record a scene. -third-person-limited, in which the narrator zooms in on the thoughts and feelings of a single character "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is divided into three sections. In section I, Peyton Farquhar is standing on a railroad bridge, twenty feet above the water. His wrists are bound behind his back, and around his neck is a noose that is tied to a beam overhead. He is positioned on loose planks that have been laid over the crossties of the train tracks to create a makeshift platform. Two soldiers from the Northern army, a sergeant, and a captain immediately surround him, awaiting the execution. Beyond them, armed sentinels stand at attention. The bridge is bordered on one side by forest and, across the stream, open ground that gives way to a small hillock on which a small fort has been erected. A motionless company of infantrymen, led by their lieutenant, stands assembled before the fort. As the two soldiers finalize the preparations, they step back and remove the individual planks on which they had been standing. The sergeant salutes the captain then positions himself on the opposite end of the board supporting Farquhar, as the captain, like the soldiers, steps off and away from the crossties. Awaiting the captain's signal, the sergeant is about to likewise step away, sending Farquhar to dangle from the bridge's edge. Farquhar stares into the swirling water below. He watches a piece of driftwood being carried downstream and notes how sluggish the stream seems to be. He shuts his eyes to push away the distractions of his present situation and focus more intently on thoughts of his wife and children. He suddenly hears a sharp, metallic ringing, which sounds both distant and close by. The sound turns out to be the ticking of his watch. Opening his eyes and peering again into the water, Farquhar imagines freeing his hands, removing the noose, and plunging into the stream, swimming to freedom and his home, safely located outside enemy lines. These thoughts have barely registered in Farquhar's mind when the captain nods to the sergeant and the sergeant steps away from the board. In section II, we learn that Farquhar was a successful planter, ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Unable to join the Confederate army, he yearned to help the South's war effort in some significant way. One evening in the past, Farquhar and his wife were sitting on the edge of their property when a gray-clad soldier rode up, seeking a drink of water. The soldier appeared to be from the Confederate army. While his wife was fetching the water, Farquhar asked for news of the front and was informed that Northern forces had repaired the railroads in anticipation of launching another advance, having already reached the Owl Creek bridge. Any civilian caught interfering with the North's efforts in the area, the soldier went on to reveal, would be hanged. Farquhar asked how a civilian could attempt some form of sabotage. The soldier told him that one could easily set fire to the driftwood that had piled up near the bridge after the past winter's flood. The man, who was actually a Northern scout in disguise, finished his drink and rode off, only to pass by an hour later heading in the opposite direction. Section III brings us back to the present, at the hanging. Farquhar loses consciousness as he plummets down from the side of the bridge. He is awakened by currents of pain running through his body. A loud splash wakes him up even more abruptly, and he realizes that the noose has broken—sending him falling into the stream below. Farquhar sees a light flicker and fade before it strengthens and brightens as he rises, with some trepidation, to the surface. He is afraid he will be shot by Northern soldiers as soon as he is spotted in the water. Freeing his bound hands, then lifting the noose from his neck, he fights extreme pain to break through the surface and take a large gasp of air, which he exhales with a shriek. Farquhar looks back to see his executioners standing on the bridge, in silhouette against the sky. One of the sentinels fires his rifle at him twice. Farquhar can see the gray eye of the marksman through the gun's sights. Farquhar then hears the lieutenant instructing his men to fire, so he dives down to avoid the shots. He quickly removes a piece of metal that sticks in his neck. Farquhar comes back up for air as the soldiers reload, and the sentinels fire again from the bridge. Swimming with the current, Farquhar realizes that a barrage of gunfire is about to come his way. A cannonball lands two yards away, sending a sheet of spray crashing over him. The deflected shot goes smashing into the trees beyond. Farquhar believes they will next fire a spray of grapeshot from the cannon, instead of a single ball, and he will have to anticipate the firing. Suddenly he is spun into a disorienting whirl, then ejected from the river onto a gravelly bank out of sight and range of his would-be executioners and their gunfire. He weeps with joy and marvels at the landscape, having no desire to put any more distance between him and his pursuers, when a volley of grapeshot overhead rouses him. He heads into the forest, setting his path by the sun and traveling the entire day. The thought of his family urges him on. Taking a remote road, he finds himself in the early morning standing at the gate of his home. As he walks toward the house, his wife steps down from the verandah to meet him. He moves to embrace her but feels a sharp blow on the back of his neck and sees a blinding white light all about him. Then silence and darkness engulf him. Farquhar is dead, his broken body actually swinging from the side of the Owl Creek bridge. POINT OF VIEW: The First sections point of view is objective 3rd person. The second section is more of an omniscient point of view The final section seems to be third-person-limited.

Motivation is the reason for a character's actions/behavior. Mrs. Sommers motivation in this story was to feel like she was rich again, to get away from everything. -15 dollars-wanted to spend it wisely. -ends up buying -silk stockings -boots -gloves -shoes -magazines -snacks -She was touching her stockings and felt feint/starts blushing -went to play- wants to be entertained by people. -Rich then poor. -Cable car- wants it to go on forever (doesn't want it to go back to her normal life) she wants freedom from her life.

Louise Mallard has heart trouble, so she must be informed carefully about her husband's death. Her sister, Josephine, tells her the news. Louise's husband's friend, Richards, learned about a railroad disaster when he was in the newspaper office and saw Louise's husband, Brently, on the list of those killed. Louise begins sobbing when Josephine tells her of Brently's death and goes upstairs to be alone in her room. Louise sits down and looks out an open window. She sees trees, smells approaching rain, and hears a peddler yelling out what he's selling. She hears someone singing as well as the sounds of sparrows, and there are fluffy white clouds in the sky. She is young, with lines around her eyes. Still crying, she gazes into the distance. She feels apprehensive and tries to suppress the building emotions within her, but can't. She begins repeating the word Free! to herself over and over again. Her heart beats quickly, and she feels very warm. Louise knows she'll cry again when she sees Brently's corpse. His hands were tender, and he always looked at her lovingly. But then she imagines the years ahead, which belong only to her now, and spreads her arms out joyfully with anticipation. She will be free, on her own without anyone to oppress her. She thinks that all women and men oppress one another even if they do it out of kindness. Louise knows that she often felt love for Brently but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She feels ecstatic with her newfound sense of independence. Josephine comes to her door, begging Louise to come out, warning her that she'll get sick if she doesn't. Louise tells her to go away. She fantasizes about all the days and years ahead and hopes that she lives a long life. Then she opens the door, and she and Josephine start walking down the stairs, where Richards is waiting. The front door unexpectedly opens, and Brently comes in. He hadn't been in the train accident or even aware that one had happened. Josephine screams, and Richards tries unsuccessfully to block Louise from seeing him. Doctors arrive and pronounce that Louise died of a heart attack brought on by happiness. Themes The Forbidden Joy of Independence In "The Story of an Hour," independence is a forbidden pleasure that can be imagined only privately. When Louise hears from Josephine and Richards of Brently's death, she reacts with obvious grief, and although her reaction is perhaps more violent than other women's, it is an appropriate one. Alone, however, Louise begins to realize that she is now an independent woman, a realization that enlivens and excites her. Even though these are her private thoughts, she at first tries to squelch the joy she feels, to "beat it back with her will." Such resistance reveals how forbidden this pleasure really is. When she finally does acknowledge the joy, she feels possessed by it and must abandon herself to it as the word free escapes her lips. Louise's life offers no refuge for this kind of joy, and the rest of society will never accept it or understand it. Extreme circumstances have given Louise a taste of this forbidden fruit, and her thoughts are, in turn, extreme. She sees her life as being absolutely hers and her new independence as the core of her being. Overwhelmed, Louise even turns to prayer, hoping for a long life in which to enjoy this feeling. When Brently returns, he unwittingly yanks Louise's independence away from her, putting it once again out of her reach. The forbidden joy disappears as quickly as it came, but the taste of it is enough to kill her. The Inherent Oppressiveness of Marriage Chopin suggests that all marriages, even the kindest ones, are inherently oppressive. Louise, who readily admits that her husband was kind and loving, nonetheless feels joy when she believes that he has died. Her reaction doesn't suggest any malice, and Louise knows that she'll cry at Brently's funeral. However, despite the love between husband and wife, Louise views Brently's death as a release from oppression. She never names a specific way in which Brently oppressed her, hinting instead that marriage in general stifles both women and men. She even seems to suggest that she oppressed Brently just as much as he oppressed her. Louise's epiphany in which these thoughts parade through her mind reveals the inherent oppressiveness of all marriages, which by their nature rob people of their independence.

-Tall tale, a humorous story characterized by outrageous exaggeration and outlandish events. -the story demonstrates a key aspect of all humor: It's not only what you say but also how you say it that makes people laugh: -hyperbole- outrageous exaggeration -understatement- saying less than what is really meant, usually for ironic purposes. -comic comparisons- similes and metaphors that surprisingly link very dissimilar things and thus create colorful, outlandish images. -comic characters and situations- unusual people dealing with unlikely events; probably the oldest and most reliable comic device. -Hyperboles and understatements are usually used for ironic purposes. -Vernacular- the language commonly spoken by people in a particular place or region. In the frog story, it helps twain create vivid characters and capture the flavor of a rough and tumble mining camp in the gold rush era. A vernacular usually includes unique vocabulary, characteristic idioms (expressions and constructions that make no literal sense, such as raining cats and dogs), and dialect forms (local variations of spoken words).

-HYPERBOLES: bore me nearly to death infernal reminiscence The first is hyperbole (i.e., exaggeration) because surely the tale did not bring about our frame-narrator's death (the story is first narrated by the friend of the man who wrote from the East, then narrated by Simon Wheeler: "I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:"). The second is hyperbole because the allusion to infernal Hell fire in describing the recollection of a memory is too strong and surely chosen by the narrator to express his exaggerated annoyance rather than to actually describe the "reminiscence." he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico (talking about the bets) After being fed lead"quail(buck) shot" (ammunition) Wheeler said Daniel the frog was "planted as solid as an anvil." Earlier in the story, Wheeler describes Smiley's bull pup, saying that when money was bet on him "his underjaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat." -Another hyperbole is when he describes how the mayor runs. -hyperbole: dog is a monster, bites the back legs, named Andrew (after president Andrew Jackson) exaggeration of the dog fight/betting incident. Makes it funny that the dog tries to grab the back legs but can't. because he fails it is funny. COMPARISON: The frog is compared to a doughnut and a cat. comparing two dissimilar things in order to create comedy. SATIRE: Satire is an essential component of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Satire is a technique that involves the manipulation of stereotypes and the use of exaggeration to point out the folly of a person or situation. In "Jumping Frog" Twain pokes fun at the tall tale genre, the American West, and the American East. Instead of merely using the tall tale for humorous effect, Twain also uses it to challenge various stereotypes held by many Americans at the time. According to these stereotypes, individuals living in the western United States were often uneducated, gullible fools. By contrast, Americans living in the eastern part of the United States were supposed to be well educated, sophisticated, and cultured. In a satirical twist, Twain's sophisticated easterner actually comes across as an impatient and self-absorbed snob who is fooled by both his friend and the garrulous Wheeler. Likewise, Wheeler is ultimately revealed to be not a rube but a good-natured and experienced storyteller whose deadpan delivery is merely a front that enables him to fool his supposedly sophisticated listener. Dialect shows regionalism. IRONY: -says it will be a monotonous narrative, but it will be funny

A man from the East comes to a western mining town. At the request of a friend, the narrator speaks with Simon Wheeler in order to ask after a man named Leonidas W. Smiley. Instead of giving the narrator the information that he asks for, Wheeler launches into a tall tale about a man named Jim Smiley. The story goes something like this: Jim Smiley was a man who would bet on anything. He turned a frog into a pet and bet a stranger that his frog, Dan'l Webster, could jump higher than any other frog. While Smiley wasn't looking, the stranger filled Dan'l Webster with quail (buck) shot, and Smiley lost the bet. Before he could figure out what happened, the stranger disappeared with the $40 he won by cheating. Sick of the long-winded tale about Jim Smiley and his frog, the narrator tries to escape from Wheeler before he launches into another story. The narrator realizes that his friend probably intended for him to suffer through Wheeler's tedious tale. Another Summary: Initial Situation The narrator enters the tavern in Angel's mining camp. A friend has asked the narrator to find Simon Wheeler and to ask him about the Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley. Simon Wheeler doesn't remember a Reverend Smiley but he does start to tell a tale about Jim Smiley, a man who loved to make bets. Conflict Smiley makes bets with an old horse and an old dog. We learn from the start that Smiley loves to gamble, but more important perhaps, he likes to bet on animals that don't seem like they have a good chance of winning. He has an old asthmatic mare that doesn't look like it can win horse races but always manages to come out on top in the last few seconds of the race. He also has a dog named Andrew Jackson that doesn't look like he can win a fight - and in fact loses fights until there is money on the table. Complication Smiley starts to educate a frog so that it can beat other frogs at jumping. One day, Smiley starts educating a frog that he names Dan'l Webster. For three months, he does nothing but teach this frog how to jump higher and faster than any other frog. Then he puts the frog on the market, so to speak, and starts making bets. Climax A stranger fills Smiley's frog with quail (buck) shot and the frog loses. One day, Smiley bets a stranger forty bucks that his frog can beat any other frog. The stranger says he doesn't see anything special about Dan'l Webster. The bet is on but while Smiley goes to get the stranger a frog, the stranger fills Dan'l with quail (buck) shot. When the two frogs try to jump, Dan'l can't even move. The stranger takes the money and leaves. Suspense Smiley goes after the stranger but the stranger has already skipped town. When Smiley discovers what the cheater has done, that is, when Dan'l Webster burps out quail(buck) shot, he starts out after him—but he's too late. The stranger has disappeared with Smiley's money. Denouement Wheeler is interrupted from his story-telling. When Wheeler is interrupted from finishing the story, he tells the narrator to wait. When he comes back, he tries to continue his tall tale but the narrator interrupts and says, not quite good-naturedly, that he needs to go. Conclusion The narrator leaves the saloon. The narrator leaves, thinking his quest was fruitless.

Satire uses humor to critique people or institutions with the intention of improving them. (Satire is a type of writing that ridicules the shortcomings of people and institutions in an attempt to bring about change.) Exaggeration- overstating something to make it look ridiculous irony- stating the opposite of what is really meant

Twain satirizes human nature by describing a series of scientific experiments that he conducted while he compared humans with the "lower animals".The studies did not/favor humans. For example: puts a python with a bunch of baby cows, python eats 1, doesn't kill the others. Man is put in a cage, they all kill eachother (don't like eachother). Shows that we are the lower animal because our impulses (thirst for blood) makes us less of a person than an animal. "in the course of my experiment i convinced myself that man is he only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, then waits for a chance offers and takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals. Cats and roosters, vulgarity and obscenity and how they are only in humans. The purpose of these experiments is to show that we are not superior. He pokes fun at Charles Darwin and his evolution theory.

In this essay Twain uses satire to prove a point to readers. He begins the essay saying that he has studied the habits and dispositions of men to those of other animals. He finds the results humiliating because man can obviously be seen as the lower of the two. He states that he used the scientific method to draw each of the conclusions he makes in the essay. His first example is that of an earl who has a buffalo hunt just for the sport of it. He compares this to animals who never take more than what they need. From this he concludes that while men freely practice averice, animals are never miserly. He also discovers from his experiments that man is the only type of animal that harbors insults and waits for a chance to seek revenge. The higher animals, as Twain calls them, do not know the passion of revenge. He concludes that cats are one of the only higher animals who have loose morals. However, he defends them by saying that the cat is innocent because he is unconsciously being loose in morality and that man is immoral because he chooses to be that way. Indecency, vulgarity, and obscenity are things that only men know of because man invented them. Therefore, man is the only animal that blushes because only man has occasion to. Twain makes an arguement concerning man and war as well. The other animals engage only in individual fights while man must have wars. Man is willing to slaughter his own kind and take away the land of his brother. Man is the only animal who sets himself apart in his own country and is patriotic. This patriotism causes man to have armies and try at every turn to grab a slice of other men's countries. Man is also the only religious animal. Man claims to love his neighbor as himself but is willing to cut the throat of his neighbor is he is not of the same religion. Man also claims to be the reasoning animal. Twain claims that the evidence of his experiments prove man does not reason but is a maniacal animal. His final experiment was to put a cat and a dog in a cage and teach them to be friendsin one hour. He then, in another hour, taught them to be friends with a rabbit. He continued in this manner until he had added a fox, a goose, a squirrel, doves, and a monkey. These higher animals lived in peace together. He then places some men in a cage. He added an Irish Catholic from Tipperary and a Scottish Presbyterian from Aberdeen. He next placed a Turk from Constantinople, a Greek Christian from Crete, an Armenian, a Methodist from Arkansas, a Buddhist from China, a Brahman from Benares, and a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping into the cage. When Twain later came back to view the results the cage of higher animals were in perfect shape but the cage full of men had been reduced to an assortment of gory pieces. The so called reasoning animals had disagreed on some theological matter and taken the matter on. By reading this essay, I realized that there are many things that we as humans can improve in the way we live our lives. Mark Twain uses the comparison of an earl and an anaconda to show humans' wastefulness: "the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn't; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn't." The earl kills an entire herd of buffalo and only eats one, while the anaconda never kills more animals than it will eat. Twain also shows people' s greed by comparing them to squirrels. In this experiment "the squirrels . . . made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter's supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane," showing that humans will not stop when they have everything necessary to survive. Instead we continue to collect things that we do not need, simply to have it because we are greedy. In yet another example of why he thinks that humans are the lowest animal, Twain explains that humans see wrongdoing and the loss of innocence because they create it. He says, "Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity-these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed." This shows that humans are the only animal subject to "indecency, vulgarity, and obscenity" because they create strict rules to follow, and have set morals in the first place. the "higher animals" are innocent because they do not have the knowledge of these things.