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Activity #1 Read the following passage and think about the author’s word choice (diction):
Twenty bodies were thrown out of our wagon. Then the train resumed its journey, leaving behind it a few hundred naked dead, deprived of burial, in the deep snow of a field in Poland.
— Elie Wiesel, Night

Answer the following questions:
1. This scene describes the transporting of Jews from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, both concentration camps in World War II. In this selection, Wiesel never refers to the men who die on the journey as men. Instead, he refers to them as bodies or simply dead. How does his diction shape the reader’s understanding of the horror?

2. How would the meaning change if we substituted dead people for bodies?

Activity #2 Read the following passage and answer the questions below:
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
— Philip Larkin, “Church Going”

1. What feelings are evoked by the word thud?

2. How would the meaning change if the speaker let the door slam shut?

Activity #3 Read the following poem and answer the questions below:
Wind rocks the car.
We sit parked by the river,
silence between our teeth.
Birds scatter across islands of broken ice . . .
— Adrienne Rich, “Like This Together, for A. H.C.”

1. What are the feelings produced by the word rocks? Are the feelings gentle, violent, or both?

2. How would the meaning change if we changed the first line to Wind shakes the car?