Nadia’s stage fright
clark benson

nadia sat at the piano, tapping her shoe to keep time with the rhythm of the song she had been practicing for a month. her dog lucky, her biggest fan, lay near her feet. at first, nadia had to shoo him away and distract him with his favorite toy, a blue rubber ball. but now, lucky had found the ideal spot on the floor; close enough to be near nadia, but far enough away that he wouldn’t disturb her playing.

2nadia had practically perfected this particular song, but she had to perform it at the school talent show and was relentless in her practicing. before she started to play, she had a routine to prepare herself. first, she would stretch and wiggle her fingers to get them loose for playing. then, she would take a few deep breaths to relax and clear her mind from the day’s activities. finally, she would close her eyes and imagine herself playing the song; she envisioned her hands moving along the keys.

after nadia performed this routine, the song seemed to flow freely from her fingertips. of course, she knew well enough that hours of practicing had resulted in her playing the song so well. still, her routine allowed her to clear her mind and quiet the butterflies in her stomach.

4nadia knew those butterflies would be worse once she had to play the song in front of her entire school. when she decided to participate in the school talent show, she had chosen a more complicated piece of classical music. nadia had been playing the piano since she was seven, and she truly wanted to challenge herself.

when the big night finally arrived, nadia prepared backstage. she watched her classmates display their own various talents. then came the moment that both excited and terrified her; she was up next.

6the audience’s applause sounded like ocean waves and made her feel welcome. still, she could feel those butterflies fluttering in her belly, and she felt her palms start to sweat. nadia had already performed her routine backstage, but it seemed as if it hadn’t worked this time! she sat down on the piano bench and looked at the black and white keys, which seemed unfamiliar now.

7for a moment, she panicked and glanced at the audience in front of her. nadia spotted her mother in the first row. seeing her mother made her think of home and lucky. this time, when she looked down at the piano keys, she imagined she was at home with lucky beside her. in that moment, her nerves settled as she forgot about the audience eagerly awaiting her performance. now that it was just her and lucky, she struck the first note, and the other notes just fell in line with ease. when nadia hit the last note, she turned to the audience and smiled. just as she did, the audience erupted in applause.

what does the figure of speech butterflies in her stomach reveal about nadia?
a) that nadia has an unusual medical condition in which small butterflies live in her stomach
b) that nadia is extremely nervous about performing her piano routine in the school talent show
c) that, while nadia loves her dog lucky, she has an allergic reaction to his being too close to her
d) that nadia is confident about her skill as a pianist and can't wait to perform in the school talent show

The answer would be B.

Explanation: The expression butterflies in your stomach mean that you are nervous.

the metamorphosis is based on an evident father-son problem. this story shows, as a result of the unthinkable transformation of the son in an insect, the deformation and destruction of the individual caused by the authoritarian and hierarchical structures of the family. the narrative begins with the transformation into an insect of enormous proportions of the traveling salesman gregor samsa, a lonely, introverted and submissive, who keeps his family with his work. when he worked, he was appreciated by everyone, but, now that he can not work, he is despised, especially by his father, but this is going to be joined, painfully for the protagonist, first his mother and, finally, his own sister, grete, with whom he had held a special relationship of complicity and affection for many years.

condemned by a deep sense of responsibility, gregor fears the reaction that his frightful aspect will incite in his family. he feels guilty for not being able to continue being useful to the beings he maintained. his own family, however, is ashamed and runs away from him, and even tyrannizes and resists him. the father, of a severe and despotic character, humiliates him and treats him with great cruelty. all his attempts to escape from the confinement to which he is subjected in his own room fail before the hostile rejection of the beings that surround him. prisoner in his lair and unable to continue playing the only function of making money he had, finally chooses, with the consent of his parents and sister, to die of starvation. with this, he is freed from a servile and unhappy existence. the family appreciates gregor while he fulfills the interests. but when he is unable to continue earning money, it becomes a problem, a shame, and family relationships begin to become tense, until coexistence becomes impossible.

awnser:

the thousand and one nights – or, as i prefer to call them in the following forpurely practical reasons: the arabian nights – as we perceive them three hundredyears after antoine galland’s epochal french adaptation bear a distinct arabicimprint. meanwhile, the commonly accepted model for their textual historyacknowledges various stages in the conceptualization and effective formation ofboth the collection’s characteristic frame story and the embedded repertoire. thevast majority of tales in the preserved manuscripts of the nights has beenintegrated into the collection during two periods of arabic influence, the so-calledbaghdad and cairo periods (gerhardt 1963: 115–374). these “arabic” stages arepreceded by an iranian version, probably dating to pre-islamic times, which in itsturn profits from both structural devices and narrative contents originating fromindian tradition. considering the eminent position that iran and iranian culturehold in the early stages of the textual history of the arabian nights, surprisinglyfew details are known concerning the collection’s relation to and its actualposition within the iranian cultural context. in the following, i will discuss linksbetween the arabian nights and iranian culture on several levels. in surveyingthese links, i will treat five major areas: (1) the iranian prototype of the nights; (2) tales of alleged persian origin; (3) persian characters within the tales; (4)persian translations of the arabian nights; and (5) the position of the arabiannights in modern iran