Introducing the Story

Literary Skills Focus: Style

Reading Skills Focus: Questioning a Narrator’s Credibility

Writing Skills Focus: Think as a Reader/Writer

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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The End