English 10
Mr. Rooney (Rm. 227)
“What Happened During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heyden
Elements of Literature Fourth Course
Objective: TSWBAT articulate a well-constructed opinion about “What Happened During the
Ice Storm” by discussing the story’s literary elements, and comparing it with other stories that
explore the same plot and setting.
1. The Do Now
a. “Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke like glass.”
- Simile (pg. 1005)
- What sort of imagery is evoked by the simile “like glass”?
- Complete and Incomplete Sentences
b. “Some of them lifted their heads and turned them from side to side, but they were
blindfolded with ice and didn’t flush.”
- Metaphor (pg. 1000)
c. Brief Recap of the Story
2. Word(s) of the Day
a. Pheasants
b. External Conflict (pg. 997)
3. Round-table Discussion
a. Length of the story
- Plot
b. Setting
- Functioning as a character
c. Farmers, Livestock, Barns, Pheasants, Gravel Roads, Barbed-Wire, Grass Seeds, Fields
d. The Boys
e. “The boys had not brought clubs, or sacks, or anything but themselves.”
f. “Things around them were shining and dripping with icy rain.”
g. The Ending
- “He covered two of the crouching pheasants with his coat, rounding the back of
of it over them like a shell.”
- The Farmers Vs. the Boys
4. Excerpt from “To Build a Fire” and White Fang by Jack London
a. Man Vs. Nature
b. Compare and contrast stories
5. Writing Exercise
a. Please write one paragraph describing a winter setting. Please use at least two similes
and one metaphor in your writing. Please use complete sentences.
6. Homework
a. Please read “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet
- pg. 265 - 272 in your Elements of Literature textbook
English 10
Mr. Rooney
“What Happen During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen
The Do Now
Please underline the complete sentence once, double-underline the incomplete sentence twice,
and circle the simile.
“Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke like glass.”
A complete sentence has both a noun and a verb.
An incomplete sentence only has a noun or a verb, but not both.
A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things using the words “like” or “as”.
Examples of Complete Sentences:
Jan went to the store.
The deer ran into the woods.
My cousin ate three plates of nachos.
Examples of Incomplete Sentences:
Went to the store.
Ran into the woods.
My cousin three plates of nachos.
Examples of Similes:
My love is a like a red, red rose.
You were as brave asa lion.
They fought like cats and dogs.
English 10
Mr. Rooney
“What Happen During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen
Word(s) of the Day
a. Pheasant
“Pheasants … are long-tailed birds of open woodlands and fields, where they feed in small
flocks.”
“The males of most species are strikingly coloured; the females are
inconspicuously coloured.”
“The pheasant prefers grain fields near brushy cover.”
“The green pheasant of Japan is mainly metallic green. It is
sensitive to earth tremors not felt by humans and calls in concert when a quake impends.”1
b.
External Conflict
External conflict is the struggle between a character and an outside source such as nature or
another character. In Lord of the Flies, the boys are stuck on an island. This is an example of a
character conflicting with nature. Throughout the novel, the characters Jack and Ralph argue.
This is an example of a character conflicting with another character.
Often, conflict in a narrative story is discussed as:
Man vs. Man
Man vs. Nature
Man vs. Society
Man vs. Self
Internal/ External Conflict
1"pheasant". Encyclopædia
Sep. 2015.
Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc 2015. Web. 07
English 10
Mr. Rooney
“What Happen During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen
Round-table Discussion
To begin the discussion, please talk quietly amongst your peers about the story. Based on your
assigned group, reread the paragraph and write down five (5) ideas or thoughts for discussion.
Group 1:
One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! people said when things outside started to
shine with ice. But the freezing rain kept coming. Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke
like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their
livestock into the barns, and most animals were safe. But not the pheasants. Their eyes froze
shut.
Group 2:
Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with clubs to harvest the pheasants that sat
helplessly in the roadside ditches. The boys went out into the freezing rain to find pheasants too.
They saw dark spots along a fence. Pheasants, all right. Five or six of them. The boys slid their
feet along slowly, trying not to break the ice that covered the snow. They slid up close to the
pheasants. The pheasants pulled their heads down between their wings. They couldn't tell how
easy it was to see them huddled there.
Group 3:
The boys stood still in the icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of steam. The pheasants'
breath came out in quick little white puffs. Some of them lifted their heads and turned them from
side to side, but they were blindfolded with ice and didn't flush. The boys had not brought clubs,
or sacks, or anything but themselves. They stood over the pheasants, turning their own heads,
looking at each other, each expecting the other to do something. To pounce on a pheasant, or to
yell Bang! Things around them were shining and dripping with icy rain. The barbed-wire fence.
The fence posts. The broken stems of grass. Even the grass seeds. The grass seeds looked like
little yolks inside gelatin whites. And the pheasants looked like unborn birds glazed in egg white.
Ice was hardening on the boys' caps and coats. Soon they would be covered with ice too.
Group 4:
Then one of the boys said, Shh. He was taking off his coat, the thin layer of ice splintering in
flakes as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. But the inside of the coat was dry and warm. He
covered two of the crouching pheasants with his coat, rounding the back of it over them like a
shell. The other boys did the same. They covered all the helpless pheasants. The small gray hens
and the larger brown cocks. Now the boys felt the rain soaking through their shirts and freezing.
They ran across the slippery fields, unsure of their footing, the ice clinging to their skin as they
made their way toward the blurry lights of the house.
English 10
Mr. Rooney
“What Happen During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen
Excerpts from Various Stories Exploring the Themes of Man vs. Nature and Man vs. Man
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London
Empty as the man’s mind was of thoughts, he was most observant. He noticed the
changes in the creek, the curves and the bends. And always he noted where he placed his feet.
Once, coming around a bend, he moved suddenly to the side, like a frightened horse. He curved
away from the place where he had been walking and retraced his steps several feet along the
trail. He knew the creek was frozen to the bot- tom. No creek could contain water in that winter.
But he knew also that there were streams of water that came out from the hillsides and ran along
under the snow and on top of the ice of the creek. He knew that even in the coldest weather these
streams were never frozen, and he also knew their danger. They hid pools of water under the
snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick
covered them, and in turn was covered by the snow. Sometimes there was both water and thin
ice, and when a man broke through he could get very wet.
That was why he had jumped away so suddenly. He had felt the ice move under his feet.
He had also heard the noise of the snow-cov- ered ice skin breaking. And to get his feet wet in
such a temperature meant trouble and danger. At the very least it meant delay, because he would
be forced to stop and build a fire. Only under its protection could he bare his feet while he dried
his socks and moccasins.
He stood and studied the creek bottom and its banks. He decided that the flowing stream
of water came from the right side. He thought a while, rubbing his nose and face. Then he
walked to the left. He stepped carefully and tested the ice at each step. Once away from the
danger, he continued at his four-mile pace.
During the next two hours he came to several similar dangers. Usually the snow above
the pools had a sunken appearance. However, once again he came near to falling through the ice.
Once, sensing dan- ger, he made the dog go ahead. The dog did not want to go. It hesitated until
the man pushed it forward. Then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it
fell through the ice, but climbed out on the other side, which was firm. It had wet its feet and
legs. Almost immediately the water on them turned to ice. The dog made quick efforts to get the
ice off its legs. Then it lay down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed
between the toes. The animal knew enough to do this. To permit the ice to remain would mean
sore feet. It did not know this. It merely obeyed the commands that arose from the deepest part of
its being.
But the man knew these things, having learned them from expe- rience. He removed the
mitten from his right hand and helped the dog tear out the pieces of ice. He did not bare his
fingers more than a minute, and was surprised to find that they were numb. It certainly was cold.
He pulled on the mitten quickly and beat the hand across his breast.
White Fang by Jack London
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by
a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and
ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation,
lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There
was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was
mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of
infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life
and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of
wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their
mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into
crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which
dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full
surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force
down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed,
was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled—blankets, an axe, and a
coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow
oblong box.
In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a
second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over,—a man whom the Wild had
conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the
Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to
destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees
till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry
and crush into submission man—man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum
that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.
But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so
coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them
the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But
under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny
adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and
alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.
They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every
side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many
atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending
vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds,
pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue selfvalues of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving
with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and
forces.
An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale light of the short sunless day was beginning to
fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its
topmost note, where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a
lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The
front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the narrow
oblong box, each nodded to the other.
“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell
The bed was good, and the pajamas of the softest silk, and he was tired in every fiber of his
being, but nevertheless Rainsford could not quiet his brain with the opiate of sleep. He lay, eyes
wide open. Once he thought he heard stealthy steps in the corridor outside his room. He sought to
throw open the door; it would not open. He went to the window and looked out. His room was
high up in one of the towers. The lights of the chateau were out now, and it was dark and silent;
but there was a fragment of sallow moon, and by its wan light he could see, dimly, the courtyard.
There, weaving in and out in the pattern of shadow, were black, noiseless forms; the hounds heard
him at the window and looked up, expectantly, with their green eyes. Rainsford went back to the
bed and lay down. By many methods he tried to put himself to sleep. He had achieved a doze
when, just as morning began to come, he heard, far off in the jungle, the faint report of a pistol.
General Zaroff did not appear until luncheon. He was dressed faultlessly in the tweeds of a
country squire. He was solicitous about the state of Rainsford's health.
"As for me," sighed the general, "I do not feel so well. I am worried, Mr. Rainsford. Last
night I detected traces of my old complaint."
To Rainsford's questioning glance the general said, "Ennui. Boredom."
Then, taking a second helping of crêpes Suzette, the general explained: "The hunting was
not good last night. The fellow lost his head. He made a straight trail that offered no problems at
all. That's the trouble with these sailors; they have dull brains to begin with, and they do not know
how to get about in the woods. They do excessively stupid and obvious things. It's most annoying.
Will you have another glass of Chablis, Mr. Rainsford?"
"General," said Rainsford firmly, "I wish to leave this island at once."
The general raised his thickets of eyebrows; he seemed hurt. "But, my dear fellow," the
general protested, "you've only just come. You've had no hunting--"
"I wish to go today," said Rainsford. He saw the dead black eyes of the general on him,
studying him. General Zaroff's face suddenly brightened.
He filled Rainsford's glass with venerable Chablis from a dusty bottle. "Tonight," said the
general, "we will hunt--you and I."
Rainsford shook his head. "No, general," he said. "I will not hunt."
The general shrugged his shoulders and delicately ate a hothouse grape. "As you wish, my
friend," he said. "The choice rests entirely with you. But may I not venture to suggest that you will
find my idea of sport more diverting than Ivan's?"
He nodded toward the corner to where the giant stood, scowling, his thick arms crossed on his
hogshead of chest.
"You don't mean--" cried Rainsford.
"My dear fellow," said the general, "have I not told you I always mean what I say about
hunting? This is really an inspiration. I drink to a foeman worthy of my steel--at last." The general
raised his glass, but Rainsford sat staring at him.
"You'll find this game worth playing," the general said enthusiastically." Your brain against
mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina against mine. Outdoor chess! And
the stake is not without value, eh?"
"And if I win--" began Rainsford huskily.
"I'll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeat if I do not find you by midnight of the third
day," said General Zaroff. "My sloop will place you on the mainland near a town." The general
read what Rainsford was thinking.
English 10
Mr. Rooney
“What Happen During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen
Writing Exercise
Please revisit the agenda for the day. Choose one of the conflicts we learned about, Man vs.
Nature or Man vs. Man. Write a brief short story or poem exploring that conflict. If you choose
to write a story, please use complete sentences only. If you choose to write a poem, please feature
a simile.
Please do not forget about Homework.
Please read “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet
- pg. 265 - 272 in your Elements of Literature textbook
- The story can also be found online. Google “by the waters of babylon .pdf”.
- Please take notes in preparation for discussion.