Entry 1_ Phan Thùy Linh

Entry 1

Item 1: Poem

The Road Not Taken [1]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost (1915)

Rhetorical devices:

1. Rhyme: wood – stood, fair – wear , day – way, I – by, etc.

2. Metaphor

· “two roads”: personal choices

· “took the other”: making choices few other people had made

· “grassy and wanted”: the choices which many people choose.

3. Antithesis: When the traveler comes to the fork in the road, he wishes he could travel both.

Message:The author encourage us to make personal choices and rationalizing our decisions, whether with pride or with regret and accepts the consequences. “Life's a journey - travel it well”.

Item 2: Cartoon [2]

Rhetorical devices:

1. Overstatement: A city with full of smog, cars and factories.

2. Metonymy: the talking tree – enviroment

Message: Everyday, human being is destroying the enviroment by polluting the air with smog, poisoned gases, etc without any sense of cognitive. They do not seem to care about this problem.

Item 3: Story

Where to make effort? [3]

EVER HEAR THE STORY of the giant ship engine that failed? The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure out how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a youngster. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom. Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

“What?!” the owners exclaimed. “He hardly did anything!” So they wrote the old man a note saying, “Please send us an itemized bill.”

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer............$2
Knowing where to tap...............$9998

Rhetorical devices:

Metaphor

• giant ship engine that failed:success that everyone wants to archive
• where the old man tapped on the ship: where we put our effort in

Message: Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort in your life makes all the difference.

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[1] http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html

[2] http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/smog.asp

[3] www.moral-stories.org/knowledge/