User:Atcovi/ENG9112018 (Native Son)

Native Son vocabulary, references, tone words for Book 1, “Fear”


 * Vigilante – A person that is trying to take the law/justice into his/her hands but doesn’t have the authority to do so.
 * Lynch - Hanging
 * Emasculating – Taking away a man’s manhood/masculinity
 * Belittling – Make someone feel little
 * Cynical – Dark, demented, not positive
 * Apathetic – Showing feeling of no concern
 * Epigraph – An inscription on a building
 * Allusion (know the 5 types and examples; also know the meaning of the allusion to Job that is Wright’s epigraph (Biblical, Literal, Historical, Mythological, Popular Culture)) - a figure of speech that refers to a well-known story or event in order to make the reader understand the text better
 * Prophetic – Accurately describing or predicting things
 * The Relief – Welfare system
 * Irked (p. 17) – Irritated/annoyed
 * Wistful (p. 16) - Regretful longing
 * Pensive - Thoughtful
 * Brooding amusement - Unhappy amusement (oxymoron)
 * Oxymoron - Contradicting terms are put together
 * Tantalized (and allusion) – Mythological allusion.
 * Sonorous (and significance of tone) - Speech that is rich and deep
 * Pool room (See G. Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool”) – Place where Bigger and his friends hang out. Also, a place where people skip school to play games or smoke.
 * Compelling - Evoking attraction/interest
 * Transferred fear (p. 25) - Fear that is being exchanged from one another
 * Bigger “longed for a stimulus powerful enough…” (. 28) - a motive strong enough
 * “curtain of indifference” - a culture of differences in everyday fields, such as the economic way how white and blacks used to live back then (house vs. apartment).
 * Rhythms of his life: indifference and violence (changing moods, antithesis) p. 29 and what these suggest
 * Debutantes – A young woman comes out (when a 21-year-old daughter is being introduced into a society in an affluent family)
 * Mrs. Thomas’s associations – Very religious; religious hope
 * Elation - Great happiness
 * Deferential (and know the posture—see p. 48) – Slouching/won’t look straight in the eye
 * Peggy is Irish—explain the significance of that -- That she was foreign and her opinion about the Daltons stood a level-ground.
 * NAACP—Dalton’s relationship with it (p. 53) – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
 * What Peggy says about the Daltons - Positive things, examples like she pointed out that Mr. Dalton supported Bigger's people (colored people), Mrs. Dalton was extremely rich, and they work hard and live a clean life. She also points out that they treat Peggy like family.
 * How does Bigger feel toward Mrs. Dalton? - Bigger is worried and somewhat mad about her--he is scared that she will get him fired since she was mentioning that he should be in a union. He is also frustrated when Mrs. Dalton and her friend, Jan, force him to eat at a restaurant when he clearly refused to do so.