Notes

Great question! This novel is a good one for learning more vocabulary. Whether or not every word on a particular vocabulary list will be "new," though, will depend on each individual student. For example, maybe you already know the word "malady," but your classmates don't. So, I'll suggest 40 good words from the novel that are likely to be new to most students--but they'll all be useful and worth knowing! For the definitions, I referred to the Oxford English Dictionary.  In most cases, the definitions themselves suggest the synonyms. When they didn't, I referred to Thesaurus.com for synonyms. In each entry below, you'll see the word followed by the sentence from the story, a definition from the OED, and finally the synonyms. 1. Malady "A victim to one hundred and seven fatal maladies." A specific kind of illness; an ailment, a disease. Illness. Disease. 2. Seedy "We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about i...

Montresor brings Fortunato into the catacombs beneath his home. Montresor knows all his servants will be away enjoying the Mardi Gras celebrations, so his home is empty. Montresor leads the drunken Fortunato down a winding staircase into the dark, damp catacombs. Catacombs, or cemeteries the Romans built under ground, have ledges against the walls on which they put dead bodies, so they pass old bones. Their way is lit only by the two flambeaux or torches that they carry. A webwork of white mold lines the walls, causing Fortunato to cough. They pass under low arches, and the mold--or nitre--on the walls increases, making the walls look mossy. Finally, they enter into a crypt and at the end of it, a smaller crypt, lined on three sides with human bones. Beyond that is a small niche. This is the final destination, where Montresor chains Fortunato up and bricks him in to die. 

As chapter seven closes, the reader recognizes a series of ends. Myrtle Wilson's life has violently ended, and with it, her dream of escaping the Valley of Ashes. With Daisy back in the Buchanans' home, deep in conversation with Tom, it seems her relationship with Gatsby will end. Nick's disgust with Jordan's callousness in the wake of Myrtle's death suggests that their relationship is winding down. Nick notes that it is September, the end of the summer. And Nick's final observation of Gatsby at chapter's end is that he stood outside Daisy's house, "watching over nothing." If we look back to chapter one where Nick tells us that he returned to the Midwest from the East in the autumn, we realize that Nick's time in New York is also coming to the end. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.

Although he is struggling to maintain his humanity, in the opening of  1984  Winston Smith reflects the dehumanizing tendencies of his society. He goes to see a violent war movie and has violent fantasies towards Julia, though he does not even know her name. After he becomes involved with her and they fall in love, he begins to truly reclaim his humanity: he has someone to protect, love and be loyal to, someone he can share time and space with in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop. In this room, he and Julia replicate normal, loving human life before the Party took over. In the ruins of the post-apocalyptic world of  The Road,  it is the relationship of the father and the son and the love they share as they travel south with their shopping cart that keeps them human. When they see a group, including a pregnant woman, roasting a newborn baby on a spit, the contrast becomes clear: the father would never sacrifice the son that way, and so the two become an emblem of humanity in the...

When he was in prison, Malcolm X learned about the Nation of Islam and became what is historically known as a Black Muslim. The Nation of Islam emphasized a strict moral code and reliance upon other African Americans. Black Muslims did not work toward integration; rather, they aimed to open up their own schools, churches, and other community organizations. Malcolm X wanted black people to take pride in their heritage, which extended to a desire for African Americans to have their own state. He considered this state to be something African Americans had a right to, and was okay with violence being used as one means of achieving this state. This put him in contrast with Martin Luther King, Jr., who advocated exclusively for non-violent protests.  Malcolm X softened on his stance later on, and eventually left the Nation of Islam in 1963. He continued to identify as Muslim, though, and made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964. Also in 1964, Malcolm X met with Martin Luther King, Jr. to discuss...

The expansion of the Ottoman state from a tiny principality in Anatolia into one of the largest empires of its time had a profound effect on early modern Europe, much of which endures to this day. Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453, marking the final end of the eastern Roman (or "Byzantine") Empire. Angered by the memory of the Crusades, and by the ongoing Reconquista of Muslim Andalusia by Spanish and Portuguese Christians, the Ottomans declared an embargo on European trade with Asia. European traders sought alternate routes to the Far East, beginning the Age of Exploration which led to the discovery of the Americas and of the Pacific Ocean. By that time, however, Ottoman rule in southeast Europe was already well established. The very word "Balkans" to describe the region between the Adriatic and Black seas originated with the Turks, who named it after Balkh (Bactria) -- a Persian province in what is now northern Afghanistan. Their expansion led to ...

The answer to this question can be found in Chapter 12: The Professor. In Chapter 11, we learn that Morrie's mother had passed away seventy years ago, and the pain of losing her is still fresh in Morrie's mind. Morrie was eight years old when he found out about his mother's death. The telegram had come from the hospital, and Morrie had been forced to read it aloud to his father, a Russian immigrant who could not read English. Morrie remembers how devastated he was on the day of the funeral. When an aunt wailed about Morrie's misfortune, Morrie had burst into tears. At the cemetery, he tried to remember all the tender moments they had shared before her death. Morrie's mother had operated a candy store until her illness had made it impossible to do so. Morrie recalls that the family had lived in a cramped and dismal-looking apartment behind the candy store. In due time, his father had remarried. Morrie's new stepmother was a gregarious and ebullient Romanian immig...