<p>I have been studying for the AP Lit test and this passage came up.</p>
<p>''Winter was no more typical of our valley than summer, it was not even summer's opposite; it was merely that place. And somehow one never remembered the journey towards it; one arrived, and winter was here. The day came suddenly when all details were different and the village had to be rediscovered. One's nose went dead so that it hurt to breathe. and there were jigsaws of frost on the window. The light filled the house with a green polar glow; while outside - in the invisible world - there was a strange hard silence, or a metallic creaking, a faint throbbing of twigs and wires.''</p>
<p>You might think this is an easy passage, but for me this hard as hell. Let's see.</p>
<ol>
<li>''Winter was no more typical of our valley than summer,'' - no more typical than summer???</li>
<li>''it was not even summer's opposite;'' - why shouldn't it be? after all, summer's hot, winter's cold. In the summer, days are longer and during winter, days are shorter. So, winter has to be summer's opposite, right?</li>
<li>''it was merely that place.'' - what do you mean?</li>
<li>''the village had to be rediscovered'' - what if you didn't want to rediscover the village? Would your life turn upside down?</li>
<li>''one nose's went dead'' - i'm not what's being meant here. :-)</li>
<li>''jigsaws of frost'' - difficult to imagine :-)</li>
<li>''the light filled the house with a green polar glow'' - why was the glow 'green' and 'polar'?</li>
<li>''there was strange hard silence'' - why was there a silence? why was it 'strange' and 'hard'?</li>
<li>''or a metallic creaking, a faint throbbing of twigs and wires'' - what are creaking? why was it a metallic creaking? Whys should twigs and wires throb faintly?</li>
</ol>
<p>As you can see, this passage is killing me. I would really appreciate any form of help, even a comment for consolation.</p>
<ol>
<li>Neither winter nor summer seemed to happen more often than the other.</li>
<li> This clarifies the first sentence a bit more-- in the village, the times of winter and summer are not extremely distinguishable or polar opposites. For most places, winter is very cold and snowy and summer is very hot and sunny. In other places in the world, it is cold year round, or hot year round, etc. This village does not have a standard seasonal year. Based on the rest of the passage, I’m assuming it is one of those places where it is cold a lot.</li>
<li>Winter was simply something that happened. It was not a huge production. Being in the wintertime was just like, oh, hey, it’s winter.</li>
<li>You are taking this WAY too literally. If someone said, “oh, you must try the cake,” obviously they don’t mean if you don’t try the cake, you will die and the consequences will never be the same.<br></li>
<li>One’s nose goes numb with coldness.</li>
<li>How is this difficult to imagine? Just picture patches of frost in an abstract pattern.</li>
<li>Polar means related to the North or South pole, generally, so that word makes sense. How should we know why it’s green? You can’t expect the reader to just know, “oh, clearly it was a green lava lamp or a lampshade with a green hue”. There is no way to know why it was green just from this paragraph, and no reason why you need to know.</li>
<li>Again, how the heck should we know why there was a silence? It’s not like there’s going to be a question about it. The point is, there is a silence. No one making noise. Words like strange and hard in this context, to me, have different connotations than a tranquil, comfortable silence in a warm field, for example.</li>
<li>Why shouldn’t it creak and throb? I’m sitting in my bedroom right now on a still night and I can hear the windows and house creaking and the trees rustling outside. The author is just building up the setting and describing the surroundings.</li>
</ol>
<p>I wouldn’t exactly call this an easy passage, but I definitely think you’re analzying it the wrong way. You don’t need an answer to every single detail. Rather, look at the paragraph as a whole. Clearly, if it says “there was a silence” with no explanation, there’s not going to be a question that says, like,
Why was there a silence?
a) The household is quietly mourning someone’s death.
b) Everyone is sleeping.
c) The house is inhabited by monks who are sparse with their words.
d) For some supernatural reason, no one in a mile radius can speak.
etc. Obviously, we can’t know, so you simply don’t need to know, so don’t look for something that isn’t there.</p>
<p>I hope this helps. It’s crucial to analyze but there’s no reason to go about it in this way. Also, I think you repeated a number a number :). Good luck on the test!</p>
<p>By reading the passage, I would think the speaker is trying to say that the winter season is a lot more brutal than their summer’s season. The speaker points the extremes in the winter weather and makes summer sound more tolerable. The change in weather is changed unexpectedly when the speaker says that “somehow one never remembers the journey towards it”</p>