Long Paper #2

Your second long papers are due on Monday. (See previous post for topic.)

A word about interpreting quotes:

A lot of you tend to write things like this:

Mami  was  nervous,  like  a  frozen  person  without  reactions,  as  shown in this  quote : “Why  don't  you  help  me  to  unpack?  Mami  suggested. Her hands  were  very  still,  usually  they  were  fussing  with  a  piece  of  paper,  a sleeve,  or  each  other.”

 That's not quite enough.

Saying Mami is "nervous" in this quote is ONLY valid if you guide the reader through the steps that led you to this conclusion:

1. We know, because Yunior tells us, that Mami's hands are "usually" in constant motion, "fussing  with  a  piece  of  paper,  a  sleeve,  or  each  other."

2. But in this scene, where the boys are unknowingly headed towards confrontation with their father, her hands are "very still."

3. Holding your hands still when your natural inclination is to have them in constant motion requires effort; tension. 

4. We can therefore guess (infer) that Mami is feeling really tense.

5. In the context of this scene, there's only one reason for her to be feeling tense--it's the possibility of conflict between her husband and her sons.

6. Why would this make her tense? 

7. Yunior says, in the middle of narrating the scene, that if he'd known his father better he wouldn't have turned his back on him, which implies danger coming from Papi--and more specifically, physical violence. (Physical violence is the kind of danger that can be mitigated when you can see it coming.)

8.So when Mami is tense in this scene, we're able to gather that she's afraid of her husband doing physical harm to her sons.

9. Therefore, we can guess that Mami is "still," in this scene, in the same way that a gazelle is still when it's near a lion. She's frozen, like a deer freezing in front of the headlights of an oncoming car.

You have to show your work, like long division.