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Diagnostic date _________ Raw score_________ Proficiency level 0 1 2 3
Summative date _________ Raw score_________ Proficiency level 0 1 2 3
Grade_____
12th Grade Diagnostic/Summative Assessment
Analyzing the Influences that Shape Themes Across Eras
Reading Unit 5
Name _______________________________________________ Period ___________
____/3 Beginning of unit
1. In “Just Lather, That’s All”, Hernando Téllez creates the main character,
the barber. Analyze the ways in which the character changes or evolves
throughout the text.
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____/3 Beginning of unit
2. Analyze the literary elements of the text and use those elements to infer
a possible theme.
Title: “Just Lather, That’s All” by Hernando Téllez
Subject
Characters Setting
Conflict
Symbol(s)
Other
and
literary
resolution
device(s)
Theme: (What might the author be trying to say about life or human behavior?)
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
2
____/3 End of unit
1. In “Just Lather, That’s All”, Hernando Téllez creates the main character,
the barber. How does the character change or evolve in the text? What
does the character learn or discover?
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____/3 End of unit
2. Analyze the literary elements of the text and use those elements to infer
a possible theme.
Title: “Just Lather, That’s All” by Hernando Téllez
Subject
Characters Setting
Conflict
Symbol(s)
Other
and
literary
resolution
device(s)
Theme: (What might the author be trying to say about life or human behavior?)
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
3
Refer to the texts “Just Lather, That’s All” and “The Love of Long Ago”.
____/3 Beginning of unit
3. These works were written in different time periods. What societal
influences are reflected in the texts?
Selection
Possible societal influences
Text evidence
“Just Lather,
That’s All” by
Hernando Téllez
Excerpt from
“The Love of
Long Ago” by
Guy de
Maupassant
____/3 Beginning of Unit
4. In “The Love of Long Ago”, Guy de Maupassant uses the relationship
between a grandmother and granddaughter to provide commentary on
the meaning of love and marriage.
• What inferences can you make about both character’s values?
• What role does each character play?
• What inferences can you make about a possible theme based on
your character analysis?
Support your responses with text evidence.
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Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
4
Refer to the texts “Just Lather, That’s All” and “The Love of Long Ago”.
____/3 End of unit
3. These works were written in different time periods. What societal
influences are reflected in the texts?
Selection
Possible societal influences
Text evidence
“Just Lather,
That’s All” by
Hernando Téllez
“The Love of
Long Ago” by
Guy de
Maupassant
____/3 End of Unit
4. In “The Love of Long Ago”, Guy de Maupassant uses the relationship
between a grandmother and granddaughter to provide commentary on
the meaning of love and marriage.
• What inferences can you make about both character’s values?
• What role does each character play?
• What inferences can you make about a possible theme based on
your character analysis?
Support your responses with text evidence.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
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Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
5
The following multiple-choice questions are to be answered at the
beginning of the unit. You will be asked to revise incorrect responses at
the end of the unit.
____/4 Beginning of unit
____/4 End of unit
Directions: Read the multiple-choice questions and write the letter of the
best response.
5. The society of the historical period described in “The Love of Long Ago”
seems most influenced by –
A. politics or political philosophy.
B. religion or moral values.
C. class or gender roles.
D. ethnic or cultural diversity.
6. Hernando Téllez is a modern author. All of the following features of this
text classify it as modern writing except –
A. use of situational or verbal irony.
B. deals with issues of war and government repression.
C. reflects on a changing society.
D. addresses politics using satire.
7. In “The Love of Long Ago”, which passage best represents a possible
theme of the text?
A. “Yes, yes, darling. Are there no love stories? Is gallantry, then, dead in
France, that they no longer talk about abductions or adventures as
they did formerly?” (Paragraph 5)
B. “We marry only once my child, because the world requires us to do so,
but we may love twenty times in one lifetime because nature has
made us like this.” (Paragraph 12)
C. “Since the Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society.”
(Paragraph 14)
D. “And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to
bestow on her a great passion, one sole, eternal passion in
accordance with the dream of modern poets…”(Paragraph18)
8. Hernando Téllez uses the image of the blade to convey –
A. evil.
B. power.
C. honesty.
D. competency.
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
6
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
7
“Just Lather, That's All” by Hernando Téllez
(Adapted)
He said nothing when he entered. I was passing the best of my razors back and forth
on a strop. When I recognized him I started to tremble. But he didn't notice. Hoping to
conceal my emotion, I continued sharpening the razor. He took off the bullet-studded
belt that his gun holster dangled from. He hung it up on a wall hook and placed his
military cap over it. Then be turned to me, loosening the knot of his tie, and said, "It's hot
as hell. Give me a shave." He sat in the chair. I estimated he had a four-day beard. The
four days taken up by the latest expedition in search of our troops. Carefully, I began to
prepare the soap. "The other boys in the group should have this much beard, too." I
continued stirring the lather.
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"But we did all right, you know. We got the main ones. We brought back some dead,
and we've got some others still alive. But pretty soon they'll all be dead."
2
3
"How many did you catch?" I asked.
"Fourteen. We had to go pretty deep into the woods to find them. But we'll get even.
Not one of them comes out of this alive, not one." He leaned back on the chair when
he saw me with the lather-covered brush in my hand. I still had to put the sheet on him.
No doubt about it, I was upset.
4
“The town must have learned a lesson from what we did the other day," he said.
"That was a fine show, eh?"
5
"Very good," I answered, turning back for the brush. The man closed his eyes with a
gesture of fatigue and sat waiting for the cool caress of the soap. I had never had him
so close to me. The day he ordered the whole town to file into the patio of the school to
see the four rebels hanging there, I came face to face with him for an instant. But the
sight of the mutilated bodies kept me from noticing the face of the man who had
directed it all, the face I was now about to take into my hands. His name was Torres.
Captain Torres. A man of imagination, because who else would have thought of
hanging the naked rebels and then holding target practice on certain parts of their
bodies? I began to apply the first layer of soap. It was likely that many of our faction
had seen him enter. And an enemy under one's roof imposes certain conditions. I would
be obliged to shave that beard like any other one, carefully, gently, like that of any
customer, taking pains to see that no single pore emitted a drop of blood. Yes, I was
secretly a rebel, but I was also a conscientious barber, and proud of the preciseness of
my profession. And this four-days' growth of beard was a fitting challenge.
6
I took the razor, exposed the blade and began the job, from one of the sideburns
downward. The razor responded beautifully. Bit by bit the skin emerged. The razor
rasped along, making its customary sound. I paused a moment to clean it, then took up
the strop again to sharpen the razor, because I'm a barber who does things properly.
7
The soap was drying on his face. I had to hurry. I glanced at the clock: two-twenty in
the afternoon. The razor continued on its downward stroke. I attempted to cover the
neck area smoothly. One of the tiny pores could be opened up and issue forth its pearl
of blood. A good barber such as I prides himself on never allowing this to happen to a
client. And this was a first-class client. How many of us had he ordered shot? How many
of us had he ordered mutilated? It was better not to think about it. Torres did not know
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Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
8
that I was his enemy. He did not know it nor did the rest. It was a secret shared by very
few, precisely so that I could inform the revolutionaries of what Torres was doing in the
town and of what he was planning each time he undertook a rebel-hunting excursion.
So it was going to be very difficult to explain that I had him right in my hands and let him
go peacefully -alive and shaved.
The beard was now almost completely gone. Under the stroke of my razor Torres was
being rejuvenated—rejuvenated because I am a good barber, the best in the town, if I
may say so. A little more lather here, under his chin, on his Adam's apple, on this big
vein. How hot it is getting! Damn him for coming, because I'm a revolutionary and not a
murderer. And how easy it would be to kill him. And he deserves it. Does he? No! What
the devil! No one deserves to have someone else make the sacrifice of becoming a
murderer. What do you gain by it? Nothing. Others come along and still others, and the
first ones kill the second ones and they the next ones and it goes on like this until
everything is a sea of blood.
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I could cut this throat just so, zip! zip! Out of his neck a gush of blood would spout
onto the sheet, on the chair, on my hands, on the floor. I would have to close the door.
And the blood would keep inching along the floor, warm, ineradicable, uncontainable,
until it reached the street, like a little scarlet stream. I'm sure that one solid stroke, one
deep incision, would prevent any pain. He wouldn't suffer. But what would I do with the
body? Where would I hide it? I would have to flee, leaving all I have behind, and take
refuge far away, far, far away. But they would follow until they found me. "Captain
Torres' murderer. He slit his throat while he was shaving him a coward." And then on the
other side. "The avenger of us all. A name to remember. (And here they would mention
my name.) He was the town barber. No one knew he was defending our cause."
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And what of all this? Murderer or hero? My destiny depends on the edge of this
blade. A blade like this doesn't fail. It is my best. But I don't want to be a murderer, no sir.
You came to me for a shave. And I perform my work honorably. I don't want blood on
my hands. Just lather, that's all. You are an executioner and I am only a barber. Each
person has his own place in the scheme of things. His own place.
12
Now his chin had been stroked clean and smooth. The man sat up and looked into
the mirror. "Thanks," he said. He went to the hanger for his belt, pistol and cap. I must
have been very pale; my shirt felt soaked. Torres finished adjusting the buckle,
straightened his pistol in the holster and after automatically smoothing down his hair, he
put on the cap. From his pants pocket be took out several coins to pay me for my
services. And he began to head toward the door. In the doorway he paused for a
moment, and turning to me he said:
13
"They told me that you'd kill me. I came to find out. But killing isn't easy. You can take
my word for it." And he headed on down the street.
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Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
9
“The Love of Long Ago” by Guy de Maupassant
(Adapted)
In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with shepherds paying
court to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in hoop-skirts, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a
very old woman, who seemed dead as soon as she ceased to move, was almost lying
down in a large easy-chair, at each side of which hung a thin, mummy-like hand.
1
Beside her, on a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair hanging in braids
down her back, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There was a pensive expression in her
eyes, and it was easy to see that she was dreaming, while her agile fingers flew over her
work.
2
But the old lady turned round her head, and said: "Berthe, read me something out of
the newspapers, that I may still know sometimes what is going on in the world."
3
The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it. "There is a
great deal about politics, grandmamma; shall I pass that over?"
4
"Yes, yes, darling. Are there no love stories? Is gallantry, then, dead in France, that
they no longer talk about abductions or adventures as they did formerly?"
5
The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper. "Here is one,"
she said. "'Gloomy Drama. A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to be led astray
by a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her lover, whose heart proved fickle, she
shot him with a revolver. The unhappy man is maimed for life. The jury, all men of moral
character, condoning the illicit love of the murderess, honorably acquitted her.'"
6
This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a trembling voice,
she said:
7
"Why, you people are mad nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given you
love, the only enchantment in life. Man has added to this gallantry the only distraction
of our dull hours, and here you are mixing up with it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were
to put mud into a flagon of Spanish wine."
8
Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation. "But,
grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married, and her
husband deceived her."
9
The grandmother gave a start. "What ideas have they been filling your head with,
you young girls of today?"
10
11
Berthe replied: "But marriage is sacred, grandmamma."
The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of gallantry, gave a
sudden leap. "It is love that is sacred," she said. "Listen, child, to an old woman who has
seen three generations, and who has had a long, long experience of men and women.
Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry to found a family, and we form
families in order to constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. When we
marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine fortunes, unite
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Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011
10
similar races and aim at the common interest, which is riches and children. We marry
only once my child, because the world requires us to do so, but we may love twenty
times in one lifetime because nature has made us like this. The world has made laws to
combat our instincts--it was necessary to make them; but our instincts are always
stronger, and we ought not to resist them too much, because they come from God;
while the laws only come from men."
Berthe opened her eyes wide in astonishment. She murmured: "Oh! grandmamma,
we can only love once." The grandmother raised her trembling hands toward Heaven,
as if again to invoke the defunct god of gallantries. She exclaimed indignantly:
13
"Since the Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have
attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every corner of
existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion. People have written poetry
telling you that people have died of love. In my time poetry was written to teach men
to love every woman. And when a fresh caprice came into our hearts, we were not
slow in getting rid of the last Lover--unless we kept both of them."
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The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out: "So, then, women have no honor?"
The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of Voltaire's irony,
she had also a little of Jean Jacques's glowing philosophy: "No honor! because we
loved, and dared to say so, and even boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among
the greatest ladies in France, had lived without a lover, she would have had the entire
court laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only to enter a convent.
And you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will love but you alone, all their lives. As
if, indeed, this could be the case. I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order
that society should exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you understand? There
is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! How you
spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought,
like a dress."
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The young girl caught the old woman's trembling hands in her own. "Hold your
tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!"
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And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to bestow on her a
great passion, one sole, eternal passion in accordance with the dream of modern
poets, while the grandmother, kissing her on the forehead, quite imbued still with that
charming, healthy reason with which gallant philosophers tinctured the thought of the
eighteenth century, murmured: "Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such folly
as that, you will be very unhappy."
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Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
12th Grade English Language Arts Framework
March 2011