Pg. 6 “The North Wind and the Sun” – Aesop
1. North Wind is a very blunt figure. To obtain its goal, it is very direct and forceful. Also, short tempered. The Sun, on the other hand, is very manipulative and intelligent.
2. Before thinking of the human’s reaction, North Wind revealed his full force.
3. The Sun manipulated the human to take the cloak off rather than forcing him to do so, which lead to the Sun’s victory.
4. The human is only a pawn in the story comparing to the two mighty forces.
5. A pretty obvious moral from the fable. The North Wind’s forceful approach failed to the Sun’s persuasive (manipulative, aforementioned) approach. Therefore, force lost against persuasion.

Pg. 8 “Independence” – Chuang Tzu
1. He exposes his point when he explains about the sacred tortoise and its choice of freedom. Tzu uses 3 sentences to come to his point.
2. Rather than just answering to the officials, the protagonist explains about the tortoise to make the officials understand his answer.
3. Chuang Tzu definitely has courage. Historically, Chinese government revolves around the king’s order. Going against the king’s, in this case the prince’s, order can make one’s life miserable.

Pg. 19 “A & P” –John Updike
1. Product details are rather realistic. Certain action, such as punching in codes at the cashers aslo is very true to life. This makes the reader feel like he/she is part of the story.
2. Shammy reveals himself throughout the story. First, he starts as more of a narator and by the end of the story, he was trying to act heroic. In the fact that he wanted some kind of “reward” for his action, he definitely was less of a hero but the fact that he did kept his word and quit was rather heroic.
3. The first paragraph of the story seems to be the exposition. He introduces the three girls, what kind of job he does, what kind of setting the story takes place. Queenie was extremely detailed because, obviously, she is the key figure of the story. Shammy’s maturity (feelings to her?) grew as he noticed a more positive aspect of her.
4. Yes. In the beginning, they were “just girls” that was dressed in bathing suit. Towards the end, all of them had a nickname and Shammy quites his job to try to get attention from them.
5. The dramatic conflict happens when the girls approaches Shammy and at the same time Lengel came in the store. The crisis starts when Lengel approaches the girls. The climax happens when he says “I quite”, trying to grab the girls attention.
6. He quites the job because he embarrest the girls in front of people and felt that was inappropriate. Also, he wanted to be a “hero” by trying to defend the girls.
7. Yes; 9th paragraph, were the interaction between McMhon, the meat man, and the girls occur.
8. He mentions that his life is going to be harder because Lengel and his parents are friends and he totally quite the job for a rather immature reason. The conclusion is he tried to get attention from the girls and failed.
9. Not only at “A & P”, but in any supermarket store, people go to shop and not expect anything dramatic to happen. If something does happen, they look at it and goes back to shopping.