lesson 1: figurative language

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!



In this poem, the poet uses "Oh,dear,"(hyperbole) to show how surprised he is.
The poet uses the messy things in the room(symbolism) to show why should the owner of this room be ashamed of himself.


I like this poem as I find it quite amusing as the poet is actually writing about himself when he said that it was his own room. The poet says a lot of dirty and messy things in his room to show that his room is messy.

Information on Anita Desai

Anita Desai was born in MussooSherie, a hill station north of Delhi.She began to write in English at the age of seven, and published her first story at the age of nine. Desai was educated in Delhi at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School and Miranda House, Delhi University, where she received in 1957 a B.A. in English literature.She had started to write short stories regularly before her marriage.Since the 1950s Desai has lived in New Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, and other Indian cities. She has been a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Academy of Letters in Delhi and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has taught at Girton College and Smith College in England, and at Mount Holyoke College in the United States. In 1993 she became a creative writing teacher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has spent there for one semester each year and the rest of her time in India. Desai is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. She received the Guardian Award for Children's Fiction for the novel The Village by the Sea, and the 1978 National Academy of Letters Award for Fire on the Mountain.


These are some of the stories she made:


* The Peacock, 1963
* Voices in the City, 1965
* Bye-Bye, Blackbird, 1971
* The Peacock Garden, 1974
* Where Shall We Go This Summer?, 1975
* Cat on a Houseboat, 1976
* Fire on the Mountain, 1977
* Games at Twilight and Other Stories, 1978
* Clear Light of Day, 1980
* Village by the Sea, 1982
* Baumgartner's Bombay, 1988
* Journey to Ithaca, 1996
* Fasting, Feasting, 1999
* Diamond Dust, 2000
* The Zigzag Way: A Novel, 2004

diary entry of Hari(When he is in Bombay)

Dear dairy,
Today when i reached finally reached Bombay, my jaw dropped when I saw the amount of traffic and what Bombay looked like. When we reached Kala Ghoda, we were addressed by a man called Sayyid Ali who informs us about the side effects of a factory coming to Rewas. I was surprised that the man was able to read my mind and know so much about the lives of people in Thul even thought he was a city-man. I was stunned that a coconut in Bombay could actually cost as much as 2 rupees where in Thul I could just climb up a coconut tree and get one. I was disappointed that the De Silvas had gone to Thul after all the trouble I had gone through to get here.Fortunately, the watchman of the building, Hira Lal took me to a man called Jagu who could provide me with a meal and shelter.