The Lady with the Pet Dog Metaphor Activity
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9 pages
Language Arts,
Literature
For:
Grade 8
Grade 9
Grade 10
Grade 11
Excerpt From This Document
This activity gives students an opportunity to practice examining and analyzing metaphors. Metaphors express images, emotions, actions, experiences, and nuances through direct and indirect comparisons, allowing readers to access deeper levels of meaning in the text. In this activity, students will classify and analyze different kinds of metaphors in order to develop close reading skills and draw inferences from the text.
Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Lady with the Pet Dog” is about two unhappily married people finding one another while on vacation in Yalta. Gurov, an older man who has had many extramarital affairs, meets the young Anna Sergeyevna and the two begin an affair. After a note from her husband takes Anna away from Yalta, Gurov hopes to forget her. However, upon returning to Moscow, he can’t seem to keep Anna out of his mind. Metaphors are employed throughout the story to offer insight into the characters, with Gurov’s use of figurative language highlighting the emotions he associates with their affair and how he comes to love Anna.
Skills: analysis, drawing inferences from text, close reading, identifying the relationship between words
Learning Objectives:
In completing this activity, students will
- examine metaphors in a text;
- classify metaphors in a text as direct and indirect;
- analyze metaphors by focusing on the two things being compared and interpreting how one of them is described through the comparison.
About this Document
Our eNotes Classroom Activities give students opportunities to practice developing a variety of skills. Whether analyzing literary devices or interpreting connotative language, students will work directly with the text. The main components of our classroom activities include the following:
- A handout defining the literary elements under discussion, complete with examples
- A step-by-step guide to activity procedure
- An answer key or selected examples for reference, depending on the activity
In completing these classroom activities, students will be able to classify and analyze different literary elements, thereby developing close-reading skills and drawing deeper inferences from the text.