AP Language & Comp.
“Chicxulub” by T.C. Boyle
-Pronounced CHEEK-shoe-lube
-A Mayan name meaning "tail of the devil''
Name: __________
1. What is one of the speaker’s major arguments in this piece (in your own words)?
2. Provide a line that supports this argument.
3. Provide a line that is a good example of stream of consciousness1:
4. Provide a line that you just really liked:
Copy the line,
but you may use
ellipses…we all
have different
versions.
5. What effect does his switching modes of discourse have on the reader? How does the switching
back and forth serve to convey tone or theme? (We are studying what language says and what it
does.)
6. What did you think about the ending? (Don’t tell me whether you liked it or not.)
7. What elements make Boyle’s piece a narrative? (List several.)
8. susurrus (which is also an onomatopoeia,) pelagic, tegument, ontogeny, phylogeny – all words that I
had to look up when I first read this piece. O, adept, astute and analytical AP student 2, what words
did you look up (or wish you had)?
Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue
and is characterized by a character's fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings.
2 Name that rhetorical device!
1