1.

Song to Celia by Ben Jonson

Tone or Mood of the Author:
Jonson borrowed the conventions of courtly love for the poem but
manipulated them to create his own unique voice. Jonson expresses
the cult of the beloved in his own poem through his vision of the lady
whose kisses are sweeter than the nectar of the gods and whose
breath can grant immortality. Upon reading the poem, one could
assume that Jonson could be relating his feelings for a certain lady who
gave him the inspiration to write Song to Celia.

2. The Inevitable Day (Excerpt from Dr. Faustus) by Christopher

Marlowe
Theme:
The Inevitable Day is a tragic drama written by Christopher Marlowe.
Unlike most tragedies The Inevitable Day is not to focus on the rise and
fall of kings and kingdoms; its to explore the battle for the soul of a
single, relatively unimportant individual and to ask questions about sin
and salvation as they relate to everybody.

3. The Whistle by Benjamin Franklin

Plot:
Benjamin Franklins short story The Whistle is a story of observations
that the author makes through the course of his lifetime that lead him
and the reader to believe that people don't see recognize the
important things in life. In the beginning he tells a story of his
childhood. When he was seven years old his pockets had been filled
with coppers from family members over the holidays. He then went to
a toy store where he became interested in a whistle. He used all of his
coppers to pay for this whistle. Then he went home and whistled all
around the house annoying the rest of his family. He told them what he
had paid for his whistle and they told him he paid four times more than

what it was worth. Ben then started to think of the others things he
could have purchased; now the whistle became more of a problem
than a pleasure.

4. Rip Van Winkle

Character:
Rip is a simple minded soul who lives in a village by the Catskill
Mountains. Beloved by the village, Rip is an easy going, henpecked
husband whose one cross to bear is a shrewish wife who nags him day
and night.

5. to a Waterfowl
Setting:
William Cullen Bryant is said to have written "To a Waterfowl" while
walking in the environs of Cummington, Massachusetts (the rural
village where he spent his childhood). The features of that environment
find their way into "To a Waterfowl." The fact that the poem is even
about a waterfowl suggests that the speaker is in some kind of wooded
area where there are ample water sources, such as the rivers and lakes,
and ample room for the different waterfowl of the area to make the
kind of nest described late in the poem. It is also the kind of place where
people would live off the land, so to speak, more than they would in a
place like Boston. If "To a Waterfowl" evokes an early nineteenth-century version
of rural Massachusetts, it also evokes a less external setting: the heart of man .
"To a Waterfowl" isn't just about a waterfowl, it's also about the
speaker's relationship to that waterfowl (this is his way of "living off"
the land, you could say). The setting of this poem is very much, then,
the time period in a person's life when they stumble upon or realize a
profound spiritual truth.
For the speaker of this poem, that spiritual truth is this: even though
the waterfowl appears to be just floating aimlessly in the sky, it is

actually being guided and controlled by a powerful spiritual force. If the

bird's life is informed by a spiritual energy, then so is the speaker's. "To
a Waterfowl" dramatizes a scene that we usually associated with
solitude, where we observe things and discover something when we
least expect it.

6. Dr. Heideggers Experiment

Literary Device: Allegory
The Rose
The rose anticipates what happens to the guests. Dr. Heidegger first uses it to demonstrate
the rejuvenating power of the elixir; and later it withers right before the same thing
happens to the old guests. If you believe that the elixir is nothing more than alcohol, then
the rose is a key part of the dramatic show that Heidegger puts on for his guests in order
to convince them that they are in fact growing young and then old again.
This is another example of Heidegger's wisdom in contrast to the folly of his guests.
While they place importance solely on youth and beauty, Heidegger's emotions, like his
character, are not so shallow.