Virginia Woolf Sketch of the Past
Directions: Answer the questions in the following format using short paragraph answers. Please leave your answers in the outline format. Cut-and-paste the outline format into a document, then simply type your answers into the outline. 1. What is the main idea, or thesis, you feel the writer is advancing. HINT: It will likely not be an obvious, single sentence. You will likely have to paraphrase it in a few sentences. 2. Interesting thought the writer uses to address his/her topic: a) Identify a specific idea the writer uses to address his/her topic that caught your attention. b) Explain that idea in your own language. c) Why do you think the writer is using this idea to advance his/her main idea? 3. Curious language (words and phrases you find unique, confusing, and/or worth mentioning): a) Choose three (3) words and/or phrases, then explain each with a definition. b) Write a brief note how understanding the word or phrase helped you understand the larger idea(s) in the essay. 4. Names of people mentioned in the reading, if any, important to the ideas in the writing. a) What makes the person mentioned important to the idea(s) in the writing? b) What specifically about the person, or his or her ideas, is significant to the direct meaning of the paragraph in which you found the person? 5. Background information: a) Name a specific piece of background information that you feel is important to know about the author as it relates to the reading. b) What is significant about this piece of information in regards to the idea(s) in the writing. 6. Critical thinking questions: a) Describe Woolf's attitude toward memoir writing. What conflict(s) does she reveal about writing about her life? b) What do you think she means when she writes of “lying in a grape and seeing through a film of semi-transparent yellow”? What is the significance of that metaphor? c) What is your first memory that you can recall from your childhood? What first image is it that you recall?
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1. What is the main idea, or thesis, you feel the writer is advancing. HINT: It will likely not be an obvious, single sentence. You will likely have to paraphrase it in a few sentences.
The article is essentially an autobiography the author wrote in the year 1939. The main idea that Virginia Woolf is advancing is the intricacy of describing any human being, as well as the importance of comparison with other people. She questions her personality – the type of individual that she turned out to be in the course of the years: who was I then? (Woolf, 1939). The author states that a lot of memoirs are failures since they often leave out the individual to whom things occurred, hence it is not easy to describe any human being.
2. Interesting thought the writer uses to address his/her topic:
a) Identify a specific idea the writer uses to address his/her topic that caught your attention.
The specific idea that caught my attention is that many memoirs are not successful. They omit the person to whom things happened, and the reason for this is that describing a human being is very difficult.
b) Explain that idea in your own language.
A lot of memoirs written do not effectively serve the purpose that the writer intended simply because they exclude the individual himself or herself to whom the events happened. One of the key reasons for this is certainly that those who write memoirs find it so hard to describe a person. For the readers of the memoir, the events described therein are not very meaningful if they do not know the person to whom they happened.
c) Why do you think the writer is using this idea to advance his/her main idea?
Virginia Woolf is basically using this idea to advance her main idea in order to recount the challenges that people encounter when they write memoirs. She also did so to inform those who may want to write memoirs the importance of properly describing the person to whom the events happened.
3. Curious language (words and phrases you find unique, confusing, and/or worth mentioning):
a) Choose three (3) words and/or phrases, then explain each with a definition.
(i) Well-to-do: this means well-off, prosperous or affluent.
(ii) Obscure: unclear, difficult to understand, vague or ambiguous
(iii) Standard of comparison: benchmark, point-of-reference or yardstick used to compare with something else.
b) Write a brief note how understanding the word or phrase helped you understand the larger idea(s) in the essay.
The work well-to-do helped me to understand the larger context in that I now understand that the writer was from a prosperous, affluent family; her parents were well-off. The word obscure helps me to understand that she descended from many people some of them are not known; they are insignificant and not famous. The term standard of comparison helps me to understand that she had to have some benchmark to compare herself to.
4. Name...