Think of your own image or symbol for the past three weeks of your life (sunshine, darkness, fire, water). With a group of classmates, make a composite list of of your images/symbols. List the themes suggested by these images/symbols.
Tag Archives: images
A Prisoner Released
Write an essay about your experiences in which you contrast a situation in which you were a prisoner in “the cave” with a situation where you were released from that “cave.” Use specific details and images to show your readers both situations clearly.
Modern “gods”
Consider modern “gods” that we worship in society. Then write an essay in which you develop an analogy between a person or a thing and a god. Be sure to use images, details, and words and phrases that clarify and support your analogy.
Animals in a Natural Setting
Observe carefully the actions of several animals in a natural setting (or a pasture), and then write a narrative in which specific details and images are used to show the reader events that occurred.
Significant Details
Write a description of a place that holds significant meaning for you, showing your readers why it has that significance through your use of specific details and images.
A Sunrise on the Veld
Read “A Sunrise on the Veld,” by Doris Lessing
Respond to the Story
- Describe the boy’s feelings and state of mind before he comes upon the buck. Describe a time in your life when you experienced a similar emotion.
- Why does the boy not shoot the buck?
- How does the boy feel at the end of the story? What has caused his mood to change so dramatically?
Poetic Language
The author, Doris Lessing, expresses the boy’s thoughts and feelings very poetically in the two paragraphs before the boy hears the buck’s cries. With a partner, discuss some of these phrases and the images they create. What emotions do the images raise? Is the use of poetic language effective? What types of writing techniques are used?
Using phrases from these two paragraphs, write a poem that expresses the character’s joy at being young and alive. You could draw or find an illustration that captures the spirit of your poem.
(Extra: use any Walt Whitman poem as a model)
Nature and Ecology
Environmental Disaster
Write about an environmental disaster that you have either witnessed or heard about recently in the news.
First jot down notes on a blank page under three headings: “Land,” “Air,” and “Water.” Now draw on these notes to classify, in an essay, the effects of the disaster in each of your three categories. Do not withhold frightening or gross information, for it will show the reader the importance of your subject. In your second draft add more sense images and sharpen your transitions. Read your final draft aloud to someone keeping enough eye contact to judge which passages have the strongest effect.
