Closed Promt 2 #2

In the introduction to Ann Petry's novel, The Street, she uses personification, imagery, and figurative language to show Lutie Johnson's relationship to the weather and urban setting. Perty's use of musical devices throughout her introduction gives the reader a sense of if they were reading lyrics to a song or lines of a poem. The beautiful language juxtaposes the ugly weather and bleak city setting, by emphasizing how unpleasant it is outside on the street.

Throughout the introduction, Perty uses an abundance of personification to give the scene movement and life. A couple of the many examples are phrases such as: "Fingering its way along the curb, the
wind set the bits of paper to dancing high in the air", "stuck its fingers inside their coat collars", and "It found every scrap of paper along the street". All of these examples are discussing the biting wind on the street, and by calling the wind "it," Petry gives a sort of life to the wind as it plays with the passers-by on the street. Personification is an important tool that allows the author to turn the wing into something more than just that: something meaningful, and alive.

Secondly, Ann Petry uses imagery to paint concise pictures of the screen on the street and the weather affecting the passers-by on the street. As the reader reads, "A few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to its violent assault" they gain a feeling as if a memory of having to cover all their body so the biting wind outside will not be able to rip the warmth off of their skin. "Her eyeballs were bathed in a rush of coldness and she had to blink in order to read the words on the sign swaying back and forth over her head," is another example of Perty using distinct feelings such as being cold to paint such a vivid picture of the screen. The most vivid of all sentences in this excerpt would have to be, "because its original coat of white paint was streaked with rust where years of rain and snow had finally eaten the paint off down to the metal and the metal 55 had slowly rusted, making a dark red stain like blood," due to the scenes graphic description of the slowly receding pain and the stains that were left in the original paints place.

Finally, Petry used an abundance of figurative language in this excerpt of The Street, by doing so it makes the scene feel like that of one that would be in a song or poetry. The abundance of figurative language can be seen in sentences like, "It even took time to rush into doorways and areaways and find chicken bones and 20 pork-chop bones and pushed them along the curb." The wind did not literally rush into doorways and find chicken bones and exactly 20 pork-chop bones, Petry simply wrote this to explain how strong the wind was, in that it could have picked up and taken away the bones. Another example is, "It found all the dirt and dust and grime on the sidewalk," because yet again the wind did not literally lift up all of the dirt. Although the wind pay of scooped up plenty of dirt and make it swirl throughout the air, the figurative language allows the reader to imagine a scene of chaos and whether attacking the streets of this city.

The Street, by Ann Petry is a beautiful literary work that shows an abundance of musical devices such as, personification, imagery, and figurative language to paint the picture of a cold and windy day in the city. With that being said, Petry did a wonderful job of showing the reader exactly what she wanted them to see on that unpleasant November day in the city.

How to approach colleges

As a high school junior I have been starting to think about colleges and what sort of school I want to go to for several years of my upcoming life.

At first I was dead set on going to U of M, simply because that is what my family told me I should go. As I got older and started to recognize my strengths and weaknesses as a student I realized I wanted nothing to do with a big state university! I wanted a small school that could provide me with a quality one on one education.

So that got me thinking how big do you want your school to be? Do you want big classes? Do you want small classes with one on one attention?

Once I knew how big I wanted my college to be, I had to ask myself how far away from home do I want to be? I want to be within a couple hours of home.

With those two ideas in mind, I knew I wanted a liberal arts college in Michigan. And with that I took to google! "Liberal arts colleges in Michigan" did the trick, and with the click of a button I was being informed of all these little colleges all across mid Michigan.

I started taking notes on all the different schools I wanted to research. With these notes I took to the schools websites to investigate their programs. I also used several online sources on how I should go about looking at colleges.

I am still a junior in high school, so I have plenty of time to look around, but it is honesty so fun to visit colleges!!

Just this last weekend I went to my first college this last week and it was amazing! The environment was so positive and it felt like everyone was there for their education, not because they were forced into being there.