Ten Short Stories - The hitchhiker

        “Ten Short Stories” is written by Roald Dahl, a famous writer.  One of his short stories is titled “The Hitchhiker”.

        “The Hitchhiker” is a story about the author going to London one day during June on his BMW. On his way, he meets a hitchhiker. After letting the hitchhiker in, the author drove off again. On the way to London, the two men started chatting. Then, they talked about the author’s car. The hitchhiker asked how fast the BMW is. The author states that the car can go up to 129 miles an hour, but the hitchhiker does not believe. Therefore, the author started speeding up. Just when the car reached 120 miles an hour, the deafening sound of the police siren could be heard. Then, a policeman with his police motorcycle stopped them, and after some questioning, the policeman demanded for the author’s driver license. The author obediently handed over his license. After recording both the author and the hitchhiker’s particulars, the policeman drove off. The author and the hitchhiker continued their trip to London. Then, the author asked about the hitchhiker’s job. Finally, the hitchhiker told him that his job is a finger smith, a better word for a pickpocket. The hitchhiker had shown the author the speed of his fingers, which was very fast. Then, at the end, the hitchhiker took out the books in which the policeman had recorded their particulars. The author was very surprised. Finaly, the hitchhiker gave the idea to destroy the books by burning them.

           I feel that the story “The Hitchhiker” is very interesting and a bit of suspense is included in the story. The author keeps pressing the hitchhiker for his job but the hitchhiker refuses to reveal till the end, which will make the readers want to read on. Therefore, I feel that Roald Dahl is very good at writing so he can come up with such an interesting book.

Something valuable that I had learnt so far

    
       In this year, I had learnt much in Language Arts. Firstly, I learnt about poetry. Although poetry is a difficult subject of  Language Arts, I found out that analyzing a poem is not a difficult as it seems to one. We just have to follow the ten-steps rule, which worked most of the time. Also, I think that poems are actually quite interesting when you can try to figure out what the poet is trying to tell his audience.
      Secondly, I learnt about how I can find out the meaning of a word through skills like the context and  finding a the word's root word, etc. This helped me in my comprehension skills, although I did not score well for the vocabulary part this time. I guess what I lack is reading and practise, since practise makes perfect. I target to score at least a 4 out of 5 in the future tests.
      Thirdly and lastly, I learnt about the SEE format for our comprehension's comparison question where we have to compare Passage A and Passage B. I think that it is very effective to use this in any subject, since firstly, we need a sentence, which is the 'S'. Also, we need to give examples/ evidence and the elaboration to complete what the question is asking for.

Poem Analysis

Q2) Snapshotland is a land far away, something magical. It is also a relaxing place about taking photographs.

Q4) People in Snapshotland not growing old, people are always happy

Q5) "Snapshotland is the promised land" - metaphor
       "right" and "sight" - assonance
       "smooth sand", "smile and smile and smile" etc - alliteration

Q6) Description of time freezing is a lot and there are many words that start with 's'

Q7) There is always something about happiness in the poem (every stanza has something about it) and time is like frozen

Q8) The people in Snapshotland are photographs.

Q9a) Third Person

Q9b) General Public

Q9c) Relaxed

Q9d) Relaxed

Q9e) It shows the time of Snapshotland

Q9f) It allows people to feel the happiness in Snapshotland