The+Portable+Phonograph


 * Short Stories - Literary Devises **

**Title:** The Portable Phonograph

**Point of View:** Third Person

**Protagonist:** Dr. Jenkins

**What type of character is the protagonist?** The protagonist is a dynamic and round character.

**Antagonist:** The antagonist is the musician, and what the world has become after the war.

**Describe the setting:** This story is located on a prairie on an old war ground north of the remains of a road. The men are sitting in a cell that was once the mouth of a mine tunnel by a frozen creek. The time frame is probably in the past, as they are using a phonograph to play music, and the mood and atmosphere is kind of lonely, somber, and even eerie.

**Type of Conflict:** Man VS. Man (Dr. Jenkins VS. Musician) and Man VS. Society (the people left after the war VS. what the world has become).

**Describe the main conflict:** The main conflict is that the four men are survivors of a war, and that they are trying to adapt to how they need to start living. The musician misses his old life so much that he actually wanted to steal Dr. Jenkins’ portable phonograph. The writer is also in a desperate need for paper so he can write. They all just want to go back to how things used to be, where it wasn’t every man for himself.

**Describe the climax of the story:** The climax of the story is when Dr. Jenkins takes out the phonograph and starts playing the music. The four men have emotional changes when the music is played, especially the musician. I think this is the turning point because they all become really vulnerable when they hear something from the past.

Over the course of the story, Dr. Jenkins goes from being ‘self satisfied,’ to calm and serene, to nervous and twitchy. He is quite happy to have been reading his book, and then goes into kind of a trance when the music starts playing. However, when the music stops, he does get a bit nervous and pushy for people to leave and is extra careful about hiding his treasures.
 * How does the protagonist change over the course of the story? **

The theme is about appreciating what you have, because you don’t know what it’s like to miss it once it’s gone. The theme relates to the title in a way that the portable phonograph was one of Dr. Jenkins’ prized possessions, and that it was one of the only things he had left, along with his books. He treated it with such care because he knew that eventually it would break and his records would wear out, and there would be no way he could get another. If we appreciated our possessions as though we couldn’t get new ones, our things would probably last longer, and we’d get more joy and use out of them.
 * Describe the relationship between the title and the theme. **

The main conflict helps to illustrate the theme by showing how things can be taken away from you before you know how good they are. The war these men have endured has obviously left them with very little or nothing. It’s not like they were expecting the war to come, so they weren’t cherishing all they had - clothes, food, shelter, and even little things, like books and music. The other main conflict between Dr. Jenkins and the musician is the same idea. Music was obviously a huge part of the musician’s life, and it seems as though he was left with no connection to any type of music whatsoever, which is why he felt the need to steal the phonograph.
 * How does the main conflict help to illustrate the theme? **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The climax helps to illustrate the theme by letting the reader understand just how important and touching the music is to these four men. It really shows their real emotions and helps us comprehend just how much they’ve lost.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How does the climax help to illustrate the theme? **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Give examples of each of the following literary terms in the story (use quotes): **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The red sunset, with narrow, //black cloud strips like threats across it,// lay on the curved horizon of the prairie.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Simile: **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“In the bank above it was dug a sort of cell, with a single opening, //like the mouth of a mine tunnel.”//

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The wet, blue-green notes tinkled forth from the old machine, and //were individual, delectable presences// in the cell.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Metaphor: **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Out of the sunset, through the dead, matted grass and isolated weed stalks of the prairie, //crept// the narrow and deeply remains of a road.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Personification: **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Under the wuthering arch of the high wind, a V of wild geese fled south. The rush of their pinions sounded briefly, and the faint, plaintive notes of their //expeditionary talk//.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“At the final, //whispering disappearance//, but moving quietly so that the others would not hear him and look at him, he let his head fall back in agony as it were drawn there by the hair, and clenched the fingers of one hand over his teeth.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Symbol**: “No,” the old man said. “I have become accustomed to the thorns, but they are not really good. For you, my young friend, we will have good music tonight. “After all,” he added generously, and beginning to wind the phonograph, which creaked, “they can’t last forever.” <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, nor we,” the man who needed to write said harshly. “The needle by all means.” <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The old man states that the records can’t last forever, and the writer says that they won’t last forever either. This symbolizes that the men are also getting old and worn out; the records from the thorns and needles, and the men from the war.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Foreshadowing (give both elements):** “The fourth man said nothing. He sat in the shadow farthest from the fire and sometimes his body jerked in its rags from the cold.” Throughout the story the fourth man is quite nervous, and then he leaves quickly at the end. This foreshadowed that at the end he would lurk outside the cell because he wanted to steal the phonograph and felt the urge to do it the entire time he spent inside.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Irony**: “Oh, thanks,” said the young man. “Thanks,” he said again in a low, excited voice, and then stifled his coughing with a bowed head. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I find it ironic how the musician was so polite to Dr. Jenkins, and at one point even begged him not to use a steel needle because he didn’t want the records to be wrecked. At the end the musician became jumpy and came back to steal the phonograph, despite his little friendly act from before. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The musician rose last, but then abruptly, and went quickly out at the door with saying anything. The others stopped at the door and gave their thanks in low voices.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Imagery:** “Out of the sunset, through the dead, matted grass and isolated weed stalks of the prairie, crept the narrow and deeply rutted remains of a road. In the road, in places, there were crusts of shallow, brittle ice. There were little islands of an old oiled pavement in the road, too, but most of it was mud, now frozen rigid.” Almost the whole beginning of the story is so detailed that you could actually draw it.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Humans tend to take certain things for granted. We don’t always appreciate what we have, which is why we can sometimes be selfish and greedy. People can go on and on about how they need an iPhone when they have a perfectly good phone, or a certain brand of clothing, or a new car. What they don’t realize is that some people don’t even have food, a home, clothing, or even rights on other sides of the world. In the ‘Portable Phonograph,’ the four men have close to nothing, yet they can still appreciate the sound the music. If we could imagine what our world would be like where everybody appreciated every little thing they owned, no one would go hungry or cold. If we all understood how much having just $15 or your own room meant, no one would go to the extreme of stealing anything - even a phonograph.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Describe the relationships between the class theme and the story. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This story is set in the past, right after a giant war. The war has swept out most of humanity and there is not much left in the world. I know this story is set in the past, because it involves a phonograph, which people don’t exactly use at the moment. They probably won’t use phonographs in the future, seeing as we have amazing technology right now. I know that a war recently happened because the author of the story describes the damage from the tanks and bombs. “The frozen mud still bore the toothed impress of great tanks, and a wanderer on the neighboring undulations might have stumbled, in this light, into large, partially filled-in and weed-grown cavities, their banks channelled and beginning to spread into badlands. These pits were such as might have been made by falling meteors, but they were not. They were the scars of gigantic bombs, their rawness already made a little natural by rain, seed, and time.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1. When is this story set? What has recently happened? Support your opinion with details from the story. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The purpose of the men’s meeting is to remember things from before the war - the past. They gather to listen to what is left of music and books. The author compares the unwrapping of the book bundle to a ceremonial rite because the books are considered treasures that are worth a lot. None of the other men own any books, because the war has taken all their special possessions away from them. The men become awestruck because these are some of the only pieces of their past that are left.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2. What is the purpose of the men’s meeting? Why does the author compare the unwrapping of the book bundle to a ceremonial rite? **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The significance of the books that were saved are that they are all original books that are well known and were super popular in their time, and still are to this day. The author obviously chose them for the reason that people would know around what time they were written as to give clues to when the story takes place. No recent works of fiction are included because the story takes place before the present. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Shakespeare, the Bible, Moby Dick, the Divine Comedy,” one of them said softly.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">3. What is the significance of the books that were saved? Why are there no recent works of fiction included? **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I think the significance of Dr. Jenkins clutching the lead pipe at the end of the story is that he not afraid to go to the extreme to keep his treasures safe. They are all he has left of his old life and he want to preserve them, which means that he will do whatever he needs to do to protect them, even if it means violently hurting somebody.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">4a. What do you think is the significance of Dr. Jenkins clutching the lead pipe at the end of the story? **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I think that after Dr. Jenkins goes to sleep, the musician will try to steal the phonograph. I think that he might undo the canvas door and then become too scared and run away. Mr. Jenkins will wake up and notice the door is open, so he’ll check his hiding place and see that his treasures are safe. The three men will return to his place that same night to listen to more stories and music, and once again the musician will try again to steal the phonograph. I think that it would take the musician quite a few tries to steal the phonograph successfully, mostly because he is young and nervous, but also because he is sick and his cough can easily wake somebody up.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">4b. What do you think might happen next? Discuss, using references from the story. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Completion 5/5 <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Effort 5/5 <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Content 5/5 <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Questions 8/8

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">total 23/23

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Presentation with Varada: https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AYBsXTmomrvbZDRyOHEzcl8waHNwa2h6Z3M&hl=en_GB

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 * |||| || || || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">===Portable Phonograph - Slideshow===


 * <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">CATEGORY || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">4 || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">3 || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">2 || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">1 ||
 * <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">Content || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">All required slides complete with insightful responses and support || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;"> All required slides. Responses are adequate but may not be fully supported. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">May be missing 1-3 slides and information is cursory and not fully supported. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">Missing more than 3 slides and content is inaccurate. ||
 * <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">Citations || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;"> All citations are present and in the proper format. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">All citations are present however there are 1-3 errors in format. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">Missing 1-3 citations. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">Missing more than 3 citations. ||
 * <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">Images || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">All images are relevant and add significant incite to the meaning of the text. All images are clear and unpixelated. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">Most images are relevant and add incite into the meaning behind the text. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;"> 1-5 Images have no clear connection to the text and some images are pixelated. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">Several images (more than 5) have no clear connection to the text. ||
 * <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 11pt;">Spelling/Grammar || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">No discernible spelling or grammar errors. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;"> 1-3 errors. || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">3-6 errors || <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: arial,verdana,tahoma; font-size: 9pt;">More than 6 errors ||

total 12/16