full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Iseult Gillespie: Why should you read Flannery O'Connor?
Unscramble the Blue Letters
For O’Connor, no subject was off lmitis. Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to explore the possibility of puios thought and upinuos behavior co-existing in the same person. In her novel The Violent Bear it Away, the main character grppelas with the cohcie to become a man of God – but also sets fires and commits murder. The book oenps with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position: “Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave.” This lveaes a passerby to “drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it […] with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”
Open Cloze
For O’Connor, no subject was off ______. Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to explore the possibility of _____ thought and _______ behavior co-existing in the same person. In her novel The Violent Bear it Away, the main character ________ with the ______ to become a man of God – but also sets fires and commits murder. The book _____ with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position: “Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave.” This ______ a passerby to “drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it […] with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”
Solution
- opens
- choice
- pious
- leaves
- limits
- unpious
- grapples
Original Text
For O’Connor, no subject was off limits. Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to explore the possibility of pious thought and unpious behavior co-existing in the same person. In her novel The Violent Bear it Away, the main character grapples with the choice to become a man of God – but also sets fires and commits murder. The book opens with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position: “Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave.” This leaves a passerby to “drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it […] with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
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frequency |
tom shiftlet |
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Important Words
- afraid
- bear
- behavior
- body
- book
- boy
- breakfast
- bury
- catholic
- character
- choice
- commits
- compromising
- day
- dead
- devout
- digging
- dirt
- dogs
- drunk
- explore
- finish
- fires
- god
- grapples
- grave
- leaves
- limits
- main
- man
- marion
- murder
- opens
- passerby
- person
- pious
- possibility
- prophet
- reluctant
- sets
- sitting
- subject
- table
- thought
- top
- uncle
- unpious
- violent