Name:______Date:______
English 8Period:______
Stargirl Section 2 (Chapters 6-10)
Vocabulary:
1.amorphous: (adj) lacking definite form
2.bafflement: (n) to be in the state of frustration or confusion
3.blithely: (adv) gaily, joyously, lightheartedly, casually
4.dormant: (adj) lying asleep or as if asleep
5.elated: (adj) exultantly proud and joyful
6.proximity: (n) the state, quality, sense or fact of being near or next
7.liberation: (n) the act of setting free, as from oppression, confinement
8.acclamation: (n) a shout or salute of enthusiastic approval
Study Guide Questions:
1.Why did Leo and Kevin pay a visit to Archie?
2.What did Stargirl’s solution to the problem of Hillari’s birthday reveal about her?
3.What was Archie’s relationship to Stargirl?
4.Why didn’t Hillari drop Stargirl’s pet rat down the stairwell?
5.How was it revealed that Stargirl had gained great popularity at Mica High?
6.How did Stargirl change life at Mica High?
7.Why were several of Stargirl’s acts of generosity considered inappropriate by some of the townspeople? How did two of these sympathetic gestures create tension?
8.Do you think people should select a name for themselves, as Stargirl has done?
9.What do you suppose Archie meant when he said of Stargirl, “She is us more than we are us. She is, I think, who we really are”?
10.Why do you suppose Archie did not give specific advice to the boys? Why did he often speak in riddles?
11.Why do you think Archie wanted Leo and Kevin to observe Stargirl? What did he hope they would learn?
12.Why do you think people reacted so strongly to Stargirl either in a positive or negative way? Why was it hard to be indifferent to her?
Literary Devices:
1. An analogy is a comparison of two or more similar objects which suggest that if they are alike in certain respects, they will probably be alike in other ways as well.
They lie dormant and waiting, these mud frogs, for without water their lives are incomplete, they are not fully themselves. For many months they sleep like this within the earth. And then the rain comes. And a hundred pair of eyes pop out of the mud, and at night a hundred voices call across the moonlit water…it was wonderful to see, wonderful to be in the middle of: we were the mud frogs awakening all around.
a. How were the students at Mica High analogous to mud frogs?
2. Foreshadowing refers to the hints or clues that an author provides to suggest later events in the story. What do you think Leo foreshadowed when he said, “It was a golden age, those few weeks in December and January. How could I know that when the end came, I would be in the middle of it?”
3. Personification is a literary device in which an author grants human qualities to nonhuman object.
Senor Saguaro was a cactus, a thirty-foot-tall giant that towered over the tool shed in the backyard. It had two giant arms high on the trunk. One struck straight out; the other made a right turn upward, as if waving “adios!” The wavering arm was green from the elbow up; all else was brown, dead. Much of the thick, leathery skin along the trunk had come loose and crumples in a heap about massive foot: Senor Saguaro had lost his pants. Only his ribs, thumb-thick vertical timbers, held him up.
a. What is being personified? What does it suggest about the significance of this cactus plant?
4. What is being compared in the following simile?
From the moment we arrived at school the next day, the atmosphere bristled like cactus paddles.
- What does this suggest about the mood at school?
Stargirl/ Study Guide 2