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Introducing the Story
Literary Skills Focus: Style
Reading Skills Focus: Questioning a Narrator’s Credibility
Writing Skills Focus: Think as a Reader/Writer
Feature Menu
Typhoid Feverby Frank McCourt
What can we do to make the best of unpleasant circumstances?
Typhoid Feverby Frank McCourt
Click on the title to start the video.
Typhoid Fever Introducing the Story
Life is hard in 1930s Ireland.
Jobs and food are scarce.
Life-threatening disease is everywhere.
Typhoid Fever Introducing the Story
[End of Section]
When ten-year-old Frankie contracts typhoid fever, he’s taken to a “fever hospital” for isolation.
and learns about language, life, and death.
Despite the nurses and nuns, Frankie makes friends . . .
Typhoid Fever Introducing the Story
Writers have different styles. Style comes through in how a writer uses language in a piece of writing.
formalcasual
straightforward
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
A writer’s style can be plain,
humorous, sentimental,
ironic, formal, irreverent, and
more.
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
Are you going to tell me what you look like?
I have black hair.You and millions.I have brown eyes with bits of green
that’s called hazel. You and thousands.I have stitches on the back of my
right hand and my two feet where they put in the soldier’s blood.
Oh, did they?They did.You won’t be able to stop marching
and saluting.
From Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Copyright © 1996 by Frank McCourt. Reproduced by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.
Writers can combine several elements to help create a particular style.
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
• diction
• sentence structure
• tone
• voice
Style starts with diction—the words a writer chooses.
Formal Informal
Long words with Latin roots
pertinacious
Short Anglo-Saxon words
stubborn
Diction may be formal, informal, or somewhere in between.
Contractions
You tell ‘em. You’re not headstrong.
Slang
bullheaded
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
Formal Informal
Formal diction is what makes many classic novels sound old-fashioned to modern readers.
Occasionally Rob Roy suffered disasters and incurred great personal danger. On one remarkable occasion he was saved by the coolness of his lieutenant . . . a fine active fellow, of course, and celebrated as a marksman.
from Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
A writer today might say:
Rob Roy sometimes got into trouble. Once, his coolheaded, sharp-shooting lieutenant saved him from danger.
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
Sentence structure—the way words are put together—also affects style.
Sentence patterns create rhythm and pace.
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
Clambering across the trusses—those boards that frame out a roof—is easy for my older brother, Clive, because he’s been working on construction sites since way back in high school.
Short, simple sentences can create suspense or excitement—driving the story at a quick pace.
“Whoa!” Tammy called. It was too late. The runaway calf lurched. Splash. It was caught in the river current. “I have to make this one count,” she said to herself as she lassoed the frightened calf.
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
Long, complex sentences might slow your reading, but they can help provide a complete picture of a character.
He stops mopping the floor and calls to Patricia in the next room, I was telling Frankie you’re a lovely girl, Patricia, and she says, You’re a lovely man, Seamus. He smiles because he’s an old man of forty and he never had children but the ones he can talk to here in the Fever Hospital. From Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Copyright © 1996 by Frank McCourt. Reproduced by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
Writers use tone, too. It shows the author’s attitude toward a subject, a character, or the audience.
The tone of a piece of writing may be
admiring
affectionate
bitter
comic
mocking
serious
soothing
vengeful
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
Voice refers to the writer’s distinctive use of language. McCourt creates a unique voice through
• simple language appropriate to a ten-year-old
• humorous tone
• long, rambling sentences strung together with the word and
[End of Section]
Typhoid Fever Literary Skills Focus: Style—Diction, Tone, and Voice
In “Typhoid Fever,” Frank McCourt describes events in his life that took place more than fifty years earlier.
McCourt told an interviewer that people always wanted to know how he could remember so much.
Typhoid FeverReading Skills Focus: Questioning a Narrator’s Credibility
Did he “embroider” or embellish his stories? Or did events really happen as he describes them?
Credibility means “believability.” Not all narrators are credible, or reliable.
Typhoid FeverReading Skills Focus: Questioning a Narrator’s Credibility
Good readers ask themselves whether the narrator is telling—or even knows—the truth.
Good readers do not simply accept everything they read.
In autobiography and memoirs, the author is also the narrator.
Typhoid FeverReading Skills Focus: Questioning a Narrator’s Credibility
To judge the credibility of such a narrator, you need to determine how much you trust the author’s memory.
• Can adults remember conversations, events, and thoughts that took place when they were children?
• What circumstances affect the author’s memory of these events?
Read this brief passage from the selection.
The nurse takes my temperature. ‘Tis up a bit, have a good sleep for yourself now that you’re away from the chatter with Patricia Madigan below who will never know a gray hair.
She shakes her head at Seamus and he gives her a sad shake back. From Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Copyright © 1996 by Frank McCourt. Reproduced by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.
Typhoid FeverReading Skills Focus: Questioning a Narrator’s Credibility
What details in this scene might make you question McCourt’s memory of the incident?
Into Action: As you read, use a chart to record details and facts that may have affected McCourt’s memory of the incidents he describes.
[End of Section]
Detail/Fact Possible Effect on Memory
McCourt is an adult writing about when he was ten years old.
A long time has passed, which may make it difficult to remember details accurately.
Typhoid FeverReading Skills Focus: Questioning a Narrator’s Credibility
Frankie is recovering from typhoid.
Find It in Your Reading
Some of McCourt’s words may be unfamiliar because they’re from a dialect—or variation—of English. For example, he refers to his mother as “Mam.”
Typhoid Fever Writing Skills Focus: Think as a Reader/Writer
Mam visits me on Thursdays. I’d like to see my father, too, but I’m out of danger, crisis time is over, and I’m allowed only one visitor.
From Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Copyright © 1996 by Frank McCourt. Reproduced by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.
As you read, write these unfamiliar words and their meanings in your notebook.
[End of Section]
Vocabulary
internal adj.: on the inside.
relapse n.: process of slipping back into a former state.
induced v. used as adj.: persuaded; led on.
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
potent adj.: powerful.
clamoring v. used as adj.: crying out, demanding.
Ms. Johnson, our anatomy teacher, put a
chart of the body’s internal organs on the
screen.
The word internal often refers to the inside of the body or an organization.
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
c. extended
b. external
Which of the following words is the opposite of internal?
a. extraneous
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
Relapse is used to describe falling back into a situation or condition.
Leo can’t compete in the swim meet
because he had a relapse of the flu.
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
Dr. Russo said the relapse was a sign that Lucky’s infection was still active because _____
. . . the dog’s condition began to deteriorate again.
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
Being induced, or persuaded, means “feeling influenced to do or think something.”
Induced by her friends, Priya agreed to go to soccer camp.
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
Which person looks as though she could be induced to get on stage and perform?
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
Potent is another word for strong, powerful, compelling, or effective.
Miranda’s potent vocals overshadowed the entire choir.
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
Potent is the opposite of
delicate
feebleweak
frail puny
fragile
flimsy
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
The volunteers, now clamoring for
something to eat, had finished a hard day’s
work.
The word clamoring means “to demand something noisily or desperately.”
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
Which of the physical senses does the verb clamoring most affect?
Typhoid FeverVocabulary
[End of Section]
The End