Text interpretation, entitled “Back to Real”, written by João Ubaldo Ribeiro. The proposed activities are aimed at students enrolled in the first year of high school.
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João Ubaldo Ribeiro
Reluctantly, I remember that it's time to leave Itaparica. This Sunday, I should find myself back at the usual stop. There is an ironic melancholy in this, because the earthly paradise can only be reached for a limited time. Like marriage, which has been said to be like a cage: the bird that is outside wants to get in, the one that is inside wants to get out. It's true, and I suppose it has to do with human nature. My trick, with regard to the island, is to take long enough to leave it and still want to stay. So I preserve the nostalgia and the charm of what I relived, in those days so brief that I have just passed. I can't spend the rest of my life just watching the parties that, at this time of year, here seem to happen every day, talking and spying on the birds, chatting with my ghosts and being sweetly irresponsible, as if nothing else in the world had importance.
And the fact is that the Itaparica that I present to you does not exist, it is not possible that it exists. My countrymen, although perhaps picturesque to outsiders' eyes, are people like any other, with the defects and qualities you see in people everywhere. Of course, they are not in a world and a country apart, they have problems and anxieties like everyone else, although softened by these gentle airs, this peace welcoming, these green and blue waters of the Bahia Sea, these endless sandbanks, Nature awakening the half-baked poet who lives in so many of we. For me, in particular, there are still some fleeting suggestions from childhood and youth that are increasingly remote and more romanticized, smells, glimpses of the landscape, feelings that, from being so far away, already seemed dead.
No, my fate is different and so I return to our universe of a big city and full of threats, of frightening newspapers with their chilling news. I am forced to read again, every day, about unimaginable crimes in their cruelty and perverse refinement, landslides, calamities, wars, corruption beyond all limits, Rio transmuted into a kind of wild west, fear spreading its sticky wings about all of us, who are not even safe at home, to the point that sometimes it feels incredible that we can still smile and celebrate something. It shouldn't be, but that's how our lives go, and even in the face of these facts, we have to go on, thanking God for the grace of each new day. (…)
1) The text, as the title “Back to reality” suggests, is constructed through opposition. Identify it.
2) The author used a metaphor to characterize the universe of the big city. Tick it:
a) “[…] big city and full of threats […]”.
b) “[…] fear spreading its sticky wings over all of us […]”.
c) “[…] landslides, calamities, wars, corruption beyond all limits […]”.
d) “[…] we are not even safer at home […]”.
3) Explain the idea introduced by the connectors underlined below:
The) "Thus I preserve the longing and the enchantment of what I relived, in those short days that I have just passed.”.
b) “[…] they have problems and anxieties like everyone else, although softened by these gentle airs […]”.
4) Check the alternative in which the omission of the unstressed pronoun indicative of reflexive action is noticed:
a) “Reluctantly, I remember that it is time to leave Itaparica.”.
b) “[…] I should find myself back to the usual stop.”.
c) “And the fact is that the Itaparica that I present to you does not exist.”.
d) “[…] with the defects and qualities that are seen in people anywhere.”.
5) The words are accented for the same grammatical reason:
a) “is” and “already”.
b) “distant” and “ironic”.
c) “unimaginable” and “incredible”.
d) “childhood” and “paradise”.
By Denyse Lage Fonseca – Graduated in Languages and specialist in distance education.
At answers are in the link above the header.
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