7. Explanation Acceleration

Last updated 9 months ago

2 questions

Excerpt from Cicada Summer
by Andrea Beaty

The cicadas are everywhere. They came back to Olena two days ago, after seventeen years of hiding in the ground and waiting. Waiting to climb into the sunlight. Waiting to climb the bushes and trees. Waiting to sing.

They waited so long. Then, thousands of them crawled out of the ground and up into the trees and bushes in just one night. Their song sounds like electricity buzzing on a power line, getting higher and higher and louder and louder until the air nearly explodes from the noise.

There are a hundred cicadas on the oak tree outside Mrs. Kirk’s sixth-grade classroom. I stand at the window watching them buzz from branch to branch. Their bodies are thick and clumsy, and I wonder how they can fly at all with their thin, little wings.

Then I see the cicada on the bookshelf next to me. It stares at me with its black marble eyes, and I stare back. I’m so close, I could thump it off the shelf if I wanted.

I could, but I don’t.

At first, no one else notices the cicada. The other kids are hunched over their spelling tests, ready to spell entangled or fearful or mottled or some other word.

This week’s words are adjectives, but Mrs. Kirk picked the wrong ones. She should have chosen words like sweaty or noisy or stifling. Stifling would be a good word today. It’s so hot, it feels like July and the buzzing of the cicadas squeezes into the room and pushes out the air until no one can breathe. It’s stifling.

I stare at the cicada, but even without looking, I know what’s going on behind me. In the front row, Judy Thomas is wound up like a tiger ready to pounce on the next spelling word. She presses her pencil so hard against the paper that the lead nearly breaks. When Mrs. Kirk says the next word, Judy will spell it as fast as she can in her perfect handwriting, and then look around to make sure she’s the first to finish. Of course she will be. She always is.

In the back row, where the hopeless cases sit—where there’s a desk with my name on it—Rose Miner is cheating off Tommy Burkette. Mrs. Kirk knows they’re doing it, but she’s too hot and too tired to care. Besides, the only person in the whole world who spells worse than Rose is Tommy, so it doesn’t make much difference anyway.

After a while, the cicada on the shelf starts buzzing and Rose screams like it’s Godzilla or something and Ricky Fitzgerald stands up and yells, “It looks like the cicada that got my grandma!”

Ricky Fitzgerald has told the story about the cicada that got his grandmother about a hundred times in the last two days. He says the last time the cicadas came around, one flew into his grandma’s hair and made her run crazy around the yard until Ricky’s grandpa came out with the sheep shears and lopped off half her hair.

I’ve seen his grandma’s hair. She has one of those beehive hairdos that’s tall and  round and really hard from all the hairspray she uses. I can see why a cicada would land there. A hair cave like that would be a great place to get out of the sun.

That’s what I think, but Ricky says it attacked his grandma to suck out her brains and make her into a zombie.

Ricky Fitzgerald is a dork.

Mrs. Kirk sighs the same way she has about ninety-nine times since the cicadas showed up and Ricky started telling his story.

“Thank you, Ricky,” she says.

But before Ricky can say another word, Mrs. Kirk says, “Bobby, would you get rid of it, please?”

I could reach up and touch the cicada without trying, but Mrs. Kirk doesn’t ask me. Bobby Bowes gets up from his desk and walks right in front of me. He grabs the cicada in one hand and opens the window screen with the other. He tosses the insect outside, closes the window screen, and sits down again without a word. He doesn’t say, “Move, Lily,” or anything. He doesn’t even notice me standing there.

He doesn’t notice because I’m invisible.

Most people would say that’s a lie. They’d say that I’m not invisible because they can see me as plain as day. Most people are wrong. It’s not my skin that makes me invisible. It’s my silence. My silence and the trick I do with my eyes where I never look anybody in the face.

You can tell everything about a person by looking in their eyes. I don’t want anybody to know anything about me, so I look away.

I’ve been invisible for two years now.

Required

The narrator’s point of view often affects the way stories are told. In the “Excerpt from Bloomability” and the “Excerpt from Cicada Summer” how does each author use narrative point of view to tell their stories? How are these points of view similar and how are they different? Use details from both stories to support your response.
In your response, be sure to:
explain how point of view affects the way the story is told in the “Excerpt from Bloomability”
explain how point of view affects the way the story is told in the “Excerpt from Cicada Summer”
describe how these points of view are similar and how they are different use details from both stories to support your response

     In both excerpts, there is a different narrator. The narrator in "Excerpt from Bloomability" and Lily in "Excerpt from Cicada Summer" have points of view that affect how they tell their story.
     In "Excerpt from Bloomability," the narrator is trying to decide who she wants to be. I know this because the text states "Sometimes I wanted to be the same, because then you'd have friends, and you wouldn’t be just the new kid." This shows _______ . This affects how the narrator in "Excerpt from Bloomability" tells her story. In "Excerpt from Cicada Summer," Lily is lost and seems to not want to find herself. I know this because the text states "It’s not my skin that makes me invisible. It’s my silence." This shows _______ . That’s how Lily affects how "Excerpt from Cicada Summer" is told.
     I think they are similar because they both went through a time when they were having trouble figuring out who they should be. In "Excerpt from Bloomability," the narrator could choose to be who she is or choose to be who she wants to be. I know this because the text states "I felt like Miss Average." The text also states "I also wanted to be different. I wanted to be interesting." This shows _______ . In "Excerpt from Cicada Summer," the text states "He doesn’t even notice me standing there. He doesn’t notice me because I’m invisible." This shows _______ . Both of these show that both of the narrators have had some trouble figuring out who they were.
     I think these girls are also different, however. They are different because in "Excerpt from Bloomability," the text states "Here everybody was from different places, not just me. Most of the people were new, not just me." This shows _______ . But in "Excerpt from Cicada Summer," Lily does not feel like she has her feet on the ground. Because of this, she decided that she would be invisible, not looking anyone in the eye. I know this because in the text it states "I’ve been invisible for two years now." This shows _______ . They are different because one of them, not feeling like they had their feet on the ground, got to a place where she felt happy and like she belonged. But for the other one, she became unsocial, thinking that would fix all her problems.
     In conclusion, both of the narrators felt like they did not know who they were. But what’s different is that one of them fixed her problem, and the other one did not.

Required

     In this response, I will tell you how the points of view affects the way the story is told in "Excerpt from Bloomability" and "Excerpt from Cicada Summer," show how they are similar, and show how they are different.
     In this paragraph, I will explain how the point of view impacts the way the story is told in the "Excerpt from Bloomability."  According to the text, "I felt like Miss Average. I was neither tall nor short, neither chubby nor slim." Also, the text states "Sometimes I wanted to be the same, because then you’d have friends, and you wouldn’t be just the new kid, but inside, deep inside my bubble, I also wanted to be different."  This shows _______. According to the text, "Guthrie was different and he was interesting, and so was Lila. What I liked about them was that Guthrie was complete Guthrie through and through, and Lila was Lila through and through." This shows _______. All in all this is how the point of view of "Excerpt from Bloomability" impacts how the story was told. 
     In this paragraph, I will tell you how the point of view in "Excerpt from Cicada Summer" impacts the way the story is told. The main character, Lily, is in sixth grade, taking a spelling test. She does not seem very happy because she says, "This week's words are adjectives, but Mrs. Kirk picked the wrong ones. She should've chosen words like sweaty or noisy or stifling. Stifling would be a good word today." This shows _______ . According to the text, "I could reach up and touch the cicada without trying, but Mrs. Kirk doesn't ask me. Bobby Bowes gets up from his desk and walks right in front of me. He grabs the cicada in one hand and opens the window screen with the other. He tosses the insect outside, closes the window screen, and sits down again without a word. He doesn't say, "Move, Lily," or anything. He doesn't even notice me standing there." This proves _______. 
     In "Excerpt from Bloomability" and "Excerpt from Cicada Summer," the point of view of the main characters are similar because their both unhappy. In "Excerpt from Bloomability," the main character is unhappy because _______ . In "Excerpt from Cicada Summer" Lily is not happy because _______ .
    The point of views are different because the main character in "Excerpt from Bloomability" wants to fix it and Lily in "Excerpt from Cicada Summer" doesn't. Lily just stays in the way things are but the other main character wants to change and probably will.
     In this essay I showed how the points of view affected the story is told in "Excerpt from Bloomability" and "Excerpt from Cicada Summer." I also showed how the points of view of the main characters are similar and different.