1. how does the speaker in “the river merchant’s wife: a letter” change over the course of the poem? use evidence from the poem to support your answer that is at least a paragraph long.

2. how does the author in “first love” change over the course of the memoir? use evidence from the memoir to support your answer that is at least a paragraph long.

Answer 1.

The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter was written by Li Bai and adapted by Ezra Pound. This poem is about a young girl that writes a letter to her husband, where she recalls how she felt through the years, and then shifts to the actual time where she is writing.

Each stanza changes because it is about a different time of their lifes, the first stanza is about when they first met, when they were childs, and liked to play. This stanza lets us know they didn't fall in love immediately with the last two lines: "And we went on living in the village of Chokan; Two small people, without dislike or suspicion".

The second stanza talks about when they got married, she recalls she was fourteen and that she was a shy and quiet person. "I never laughed, being bashful".  And during the third stanza the speaker changes the tone of the poem, and talks about how she grew into loving her husband one year later, "I desired my dust to be mingled with yours".

The fourth stanza changes the tone again, talking about when the husband went away one year later, it also changes the time, she is now talking about the present "And you have been gone five months" and about how much she misses him "The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead".

In the following stanza the speaker changes back to the past and recalls how the husband didn't want to leave his wife when he left. Afterwards, the following stanza also shifts to the present and how time is passing by and the wife misses her husband.

The final stanza is the message why she was writing the letter, she asks her husband to let her know if he is coming back so that she could be there to meet him.

Answer 2.

First Love is a short story written by Judith Ortiz Cofer, that talks about a young girl and her crush. "I fell in love, or my hormones awakened from their long slumber in my body, and suddenly the goal of my days was focused on one thing: to catch a glimpse of my secret love".

The young girl is a Puerto Rican girl, while the boy is a rich Italian guy, she begins changing her behavior because of her crush, she starts to observe the boy at the first chance she has; she gets in fights with her mom because she wants to go to the supermarket (where the Italian boy works) just to see him. When the Italian boy finally talks to her, she starts getting more excited. Afterwards she started fighting and lying with his father, all because of her "secret love". The young girl recalls that time as a time when she thought she didn't deserve good things and how she learned to make herself noticed. "I learned to make myself visible and to relish the little battles required to win the greatest prize of all".

the answer:

in the first part of the story running is all that matters to squeaky. running gives her confidence and defines who she is. at the beginning of the story she says that other kids call her mercury because she runs very fast. in the text she refers to herself as "miss quicksilver".

the line that provides the best evidence that squeaky has self-confidence is

" and i continue with my breathing exercise, strolling down broadway toward the ice cream man on 145th with not a care in the world cause i am miss quicksilver herself".