Analysis: Read over your handout on How to Analyse an Essay and create point form notes to demonstrate your analysis of the essay. Please submit these notes along with your answers to the following questions. Answer each question using complete sentences. Use specific evidence from the essay to support your answers.
Activate prior knowledge
Title: April Fools on Polar Circus allows me to infer that essay is possibly about an April Fools prank gone terribly wrong on the mountain or a stressful incident that ultimately makes the climbers “April fools”
Already know: Polar Circus is an alpine climb on Cirrus Mountain in the Athabascan Icefields of the Canadian Rockies, April Fools is celebrated every year on April 1 by playing practical jokes and spreading hoaxes
Unfamiliar vocab:
Couloir- A couloir (a French word meaning "passage" or "corridor"), is a narrow gully with a steep gradient in a mountainous terrain. A couloir may be a seam, scar, or fissure, or vertical crevasse in an otherwise solid mountain mass.
Undulating- To move with a smooth wavelike motion.
Knoll- a small hill or mound
Classify the essay as formal or informal:
Essay is informal as topic is of interest to the writer
Appeals to a general audience
Topic is serious but the essay strives to entertain and interest reader
Vivid language …show more content…
The climb itself occurs on April Fools day and the author compares herself and her partner to “April Fools” when she states,”The April fools, married with fear and laughter on Polar Circus." I can distinguish them as fools myself as anyone who would deliberately put themselves in danger to complete a climb at that time of year is insane, no matter how passionate they are about the activity. She also concludes that because of this fear and foolishness, she becomes wiser as shown through the thesis: "The tango with fear makes me