Outside Reading- Week 1, Post A

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Vocab

1.) caliper (17): an instrument for measuring thicknesses and internal or external diameters inaccessible to a scale, consisting usually of a pair of adjustable pivoted legs.
2.) prescient (58): knowledge of things before they exist or happen; foreknowledge; foresight.

Figurative Language

1.) Similie. "The next contraction twisted down her spine like a cobra, wrapped itself around her belly, and sank its fangs"(40). This is a similie because Alex compares her contractions to a cobra attacking her using like.

2.) Imagery. "She dropped the blankets near an ambulance and swam into a sea of confusion, bobbing along with the other parents in the hope that she might catch her lost child drifting before being overwhelmed by the tide"(51). This is imagery because I can imagine what the scene might look like just by reading that paragraph, and how the author compares it to a sea could be exactly how it might look like.

3.) Imagery. "Patrick's head was spinning and his pulse was a military tattoo [...]"(23). Patrick is so overwhelmed by the accident that although his head was not actually spinning but he probably felt that way by all the chaos, and i could imagine how it might have felt to not know what to do.

Quote

"They all sort of looked alike, too[...]the girls carbon copies of Courtney, by studious design. Josie slipped inconspicuously into the heart of them because she looked like Courtney too[...]If she appeared the same on the outside, it was that much easier to ignore the fact that she didn't really know how she felt on the inside"(17). This quote is signifacant because Josie knows that she is the same as the others, yet she does nothing about it. It's important because it affects how Josie acts towards others later on in the novel.

Theme

I think that the emerging theme is be yourself, and be who you want to be;not others. Also, keep track of your actions.