Unit 1: Vocabulary from Readings 3

His father was a problem too. He objected to the T-shirt logo, calling it disgusting and vulgar.

The tub full of soapy water, the can of polish, and the bag of rags had been neatly placed in front of a makeshift table made from two car seats and a piece of plywood.

He usually dismantled every small feature by hand before sending the vehicle into the cementerio, as he called the lot.

Maybe she thought he had X-ray eyes like Superman, or maybe she was mocking him.

Luis thought his father must be really lonely to polish utensils only he used anymore. They had been picked out by his wife, though, so they were like relics.

...she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose.

In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach.

So now, on nights when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm.

But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different, that I learned to play only the most earsplitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.

I assumed my talent-show fiasco meant I never had to play the piano again.

There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.

This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste.

But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

...and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its rôle, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

“Who dares”—he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!”