LITERARY ELEMENTS #1 When the Legends Die

Literary Elements #1 When the Legends Die           Name:

Chapters 1-6: Part 1 Bessie

1.  What 2 inferences can you make from the underlined passages below? (An inference is a conclusion/guess you make from evidence.  The information is not directly stated.)
 (page 4 R, 4 W)

Blue Elk rubbed his hands together.  They were the soft hands of a man who has not worked in a long time.  He said, “Bessie!  Stop the wailing.  The wailing is for another woman.  Let her make the mourning.”

2.  What inference can you make about Blue Elk from the underlined passage below? (An inference is a conclusion/guess you make from evidence.  The information is not directly stated.)
 (page 5 R, 5 W)

Blue Elk said to her (Bessie), “For the cost of two horses I could settle this.”

“I have not the cost of two horses.”

“One horse,” Blue Elk offered.

“I have not the cost of one goat.

3. Metonymy = a word or phrase is used to stand in for another word.   Examples: The office called.
    Please lend a hand.  The White House issued a statement.This new dish is delicious.
Find an example of metonymy on page 5R/5W.

4.  What literary element is this?
Blue Elk says, “My people do not lie,” but when the Sheriff asks what Bessie said, Blue Elk tells him, “She says her husband did not come here.” She had actually said, “I have not the cost of one goat.”    [p 5 R,  5W]

5.  What evidence in the text on page 8 R/ 10W might explain why Blue Elk tells his people on Horse Mountain that they must return to the reservation and then he will get them jobs at the sawmill in Pagosa?

6.  Even though George Black Bull is paid $2/day to work at the sawmill, why can’t he quit his job and go back to the reservation? [p.11R/14W]

7.  Frank No Deer stole money from George Black Bull three times.  Why was this such a serious offense to George, so serious that George killed him for it?  [Make an inference.]

8.  On page 3 and page 13 Red [3 & 17 W], what gesture is used by George towards his wife Bessie and by again by Bessie with her son, Thomas?  What does the gesture mean?

9.  Find an example of personification on page 14 R/ 19 W.

10.  What does Bessie do after she uses the grasshoppers to catch fish, and before she and her son go to sleep at night? [Page 15-16R, 20-21W ]

11.  What literary element is this?  “There at the foot of Bald Mountain…”

12.  The father was unsuccessful at hunting deer the first time he hunted?  What made the difference the second time he hunted, according to his wife? [p17R/ 23 W]

13. Bessie wanted a round lodge rather than a square house made of lodge pine logs.  What did the roundness symbolize? [p18 R/ 24 W].

14. What literary element is this?  “The wind sang a song of wide skies and far mountaintops.”   [p18 R/ 25 W].

15. What literary element is this?  “First snow came, six inches of it in the night, fluffy as cotton grass in bloom.”   [p18 R/ 25 W].

16. What literary element is this?  “Winter is long in the high country, and short white days can bring black hunger.”   [p19 R/ 26 W]

17. How much time has passed now? “They lived as people lived in the old days, and a third time the aspens turned to gold and showered leaves on the lodge he had made as she wanted it, round like the year.”  [p19 R/ 27 W].

18.  What literary elements are in this passage?  “They sang the death songs for him, in the darkness with the stars watching them.  Then they went down the mountain and back to the lodge.  She said to the boy,  “Now you are the man.”  [p 21 R/ 29 W].