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ACTIVITY 1.5 continued
13 Direct students to the Language and Writer’s Craft feature about Verb Mood. Have students discuss the different types of verb mood and how writers use different verb moods to create voice.
24 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 9
9781457304651_TCB_SE_G9_U1_B1.indd 24
10/6/15 12:37 PM
24 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 9
ACTIVITY 1.5
continued
Defining Experiences
My Notes
6. Key Ideas and Details: What can you infer from the text as to Lizabeth’s reasons for her final act of destruction?
The narrator describes in detail all of the emotions that make her feel as if she has lost her mind: need, hopelessness, bewilderment, and fear. These overwhelming emotions make her want to destroy something, anything. Her choice of the marigolds is perhaps not a conscious rejection of their symbolic hope, but it is an act of desperate hopelessness nonetheless. RL.9–10.1
7. Craft and Structure: How does the author use juxtaposition to show how Lizabeth has changed through her experience?
Juxtaposition occurs when Lizabeth describes Miss Lottie through the adult eyes of compassion and understanding, no longer seeing her as a witch but
as a broken woman who nevertheless still fought to keep some beauty and dignity in her life. This new mature and realistic view of Miss Lottie, tinged with compassion and understanding, makes clear how Lizabeth has left childish ways behind and become a woman. RL.9–10.5
Working from the Text
Language and Writer’s Craft: Verb Mood
Writers use verb mood to express an attitude. Verbs may be in one of three moods: indicative, imperative, or conditional. Almost all verbs we use are indicative, which is used to state a fact or describe something. The imperative mood is used to give a command or make a request. The conditional form of a verb expresses something that has not happened or something that could happen hypothetically. In the below example, the author shares an image with us that should have evoked humor but did not.
“It should have been a comical sight—the old woman with the man’s hat on her cropped white head, leaning over the bright mounds, her big backside in the air—but it wasn’t comical, it was something we could not name.”
The subjunctive form of the verb is used to express doubt or describe a wish, a doubt, or a situation contrary to fact. When using the verb “to be” in the subjunctive, use were rather than was. The subjunctive form is often used in a clause beginning with if.
PRACTICE: Which mood is demonstrated in each of the examples below? How does the narrator’s use of verb moods help create her voice in the story?
Example 1: “Perhaps we waited for a miracle, amorphous in concept but necessary if one were to have the grit to rise before dawn each day and labor in the white man’s vineyard until after dark, or to wander about in the September dust offering some meager share of bread.
Example 2: “Y’all git some stones,” commanded Joey now and was met with instant giggling obedience as everyone except me began to gather pebbles from the dusty ground. “Come on, Lizabeth.”
Example 3: “We had crouched down out of sight in the bushes, where we stifled the giggles that insisted on coming.”
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.