Description
Determine Point of View ? Irony, Satire
Read the literature excerpts from ?What Stumped the
Bluejays? by Mark Twain (following). As you read, determine
the author?s message by separating what is directly stated from
what is really meant by the author, in cases of satire, sarcasm,
irony, or understatement. Consider the author?s point of view
and why they decided to use satire, sarcasm, irony, or
understatement to convey their message to the audience.
Demonstrate your understanding of satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement by
choosing at least three passages from the text and writing short explanations of the
author?s meaning for each passage. Include evidence from the text to support your
explanation. Some instances of satire, sarcasm, irony and understatement are already
underlined within the text.
As you are reading, watch out for these types of writing:
Satire ? using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, bad,
etc. Example: a writing or play that depicts a well-known leader in the opposite
light ? such as a fool or a despicable beggar ? to make fun of or to make a critical
point.
Sarcasm ? using words that mean the opposite of what you really want to say,
especially to show irritation, to insult someone, or to be funny.
Example: You look gorgeous with that peeling, sunburned nose.
Irony ? when something is strange or funny because things happen in a way that
seems to be the opposite of what you expected. Example: My school email
system marks mail from the school as SPAM.
Understatement ? deliberately making a situation seem less important or serious
than it is. Example: I need to have heart surgery on Friday because I?ve got a little
trouble with my heart.
ASSESSMENT: See ?Short Answer Grading Rubric? below.
4 ? Outstanding
Student addressed at least
three passages, including
giving evidence or support
from the text that supports
the author?s message. The
analysis or arguments are
pertinent to the topic.
Arguments or conclusions
are logical, supported with
evidence.
3 ? Good
Student addressed
two passages of the
text. The analysis or
arguments are
pertinent to the topic.
Some arguments are
logical and some are
reasonably
supported.
2 ? Fair
Student addressed
one passage of the
text. The analysis
or arguments are
not consistently
pertinent, logical,
or supported.
1 ? Poor
Student did not
address any
passage of the text.
The analysis or
arguments are
rarely logical and
poorly supported.
Excerpts taken from ?What Stumped the Bluejays? by Mark Twain
1. Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no question about
that; but I suppose there are very few people who can understand them. I
never knew but one man who could. I knew he could, however, because he
told me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who had
lived in a lonely corner of California, among the woods and mountains, a
good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the
beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate any
remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. According to Jim Baker, some
animals have only a limited education, and use only very simple words, and
scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas, certain other
animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command of language and a ready
and fluent delivery; consequently these latter talk a great deal; they like it;
they are conscious of their talent, and they enjoy “showing off.” Baker said,
that after long and careful observation, he had come to the conclusion that
the bluejays were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts.
Said he:
2. There’s more to a bluejay than any other creature. He has got more
moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and mind
you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. And no rnere
commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out book talk – and
bristling with metaphor, too – just bristling! And as for command of language
– why you never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. No man ever did. They
just boil out of him! And another thing: I’ve noticed a good deal, and there’s
no bird, or cow, or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay. You
may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does – but you let a cat get
excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed,
nights, and you’ll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant
people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating,
but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use. Now I’ve never heard a
jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as
ashamed as a human; they shut right down and leave.
3. You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure – because he’s got
feathers on him, and don’t belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwise he is
just as much a human as you be. And I’ll tell you for why. A jay’s gifts, and
instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn’t
got any more principle than a congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a
jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go
back on his solemnest promise?Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A
jay can cry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan
and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor,
a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do – maybe better. If a jay
ain’t human, he better take in his sign, that’s all. Now I’m going to tell you a
perfectly true fact about some bluejays. When I first begun to understand
jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. Seven
years ago, the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands his
house – been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank roof – just one big
room, and no more; no ceiling – nothing between the rafters and the floor.
Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with
my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the
leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder
in the states, that I hadn’t heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay lit
on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, “Hello, I reckon I’ve
struck something.” When he spoke, the acorn dropped out of his mouth and
rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn’t care; his mind was all on the
thing he had struck. It was a knothole in the roof. He cocked his head to one
side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum looking
down a jug; then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink or two
with his wings – which signifies gratification, you understand – and says, “It
looks like a hole, it’s located like a hole – blamed if I don’t believe it is a
hole!”
4. Then he cocked his head down and took another look; he glances up
perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings and his tail both, and says, “Oh,
no, this ain’t no fat thing, I reckon! If I ain’t in luck!–why it’s a perfectly
elegant hole!” So he flew down and got that acorn, and fetched it up and
dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back, with the heavenliest smile
on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude
and that smile faded gradually out of his countenance like breath off’n a
razor, and the queerest look of surprise took its place. Then he says, “Why, I
didn’t hear it fall!” He cocked his eye at the hole again, and took a long look;
raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of the hole
and took another look from that side; shook his head again. He studied
awhile, then he just went into the details – walked round and round the hole
and spied into it from every point of the compass. No use. Now he took a
thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back of his head
with his right foot a minute, and finally says, “Well, it’s too many for me,
that’s certain; must be a mighty long hole; however, I ain’t got no time to
fool around here, I got to tend to business; I reckon it’s all right – chance it,
anyway.”
5. So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried to
flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was
too late. He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised up and
sighed, and says, “Confound it, I don’t seem to understand this thing, no
way; however, I’ll tackle her again.” He fetched another acorn, and done his
level best to see what become of it, but he couldn’t. He says, “Well, I never
struck no such a hole as this before; I’m of the opinion it’s a totally new kind
of a hole.” Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell, walking up and
down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself;
but his feelings got the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose
and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a
little thing. When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for
half a minute; then he says, “Well, you’re a long hole, and a deep hole, and
a mighty singular hole altogether – but I’ve started in to fill you, and I’m
d****d if I don’t fill you, if it takes a hundred years!”
6. He just had strength enough to crawl up onto the comb and lean his back
agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions and begun to free
his mind. I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity in the
mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say.
7. Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops
to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him the whole circumstance, and
says, “Now yonder’s the hole, and if you don’t believe me, go and look for
yourself.” So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says, “How
many did you say you put in there?” “Not any less than two tons,” says the
sufferer. The other jay went and looked again. He couldn’t seem to make it
out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays come. They all examined the
hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it,
and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of
humans could have done.
8. They called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty soon this whole
region beared to have a blue flush about it. There must have been five
thousand of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and
cussing, you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole
and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the
jay that went there before him. They examined the house all over, too. The
door was standing half open, and at last one old jay happened to go and
light on it and look in. Of course, that knocked the mystery galley-west in a
second. There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor. He flopped his
wings and raised a whoop. “Come here! ” he says. “Come here, everybody;
hang’d if this fool hasn’t been trying to fill up a house with acorns!” They all
came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door
and took a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had
tackled hit him home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter,
and the next jay took his place and done the same.
9. Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for an
hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain’t any use to tell
me a bluejay hasn’t got a sense of humor, because I know better. And
memory, too. They brought jays here from all over the United States to look
down that hole, every summer for three years. Other birds, too. And they
could all see the point, except an owl that come from Nova Scotia to visit the
Yosemite, and he took this thing in on his way back. He said he couldn’t see
anything funny in it. But then he was a good deal disappointed about
Yosemite, too.
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