Choose one chapter from the novel In His Steps, making certain that it is an important chapter to the overall plot of the story. Reread the chapter carefully, take notes on it, and develop an outline for a literary critique using the instructions given. Write an essay of at least 350 words in which you:

Summarize the plot of the chapter. Analyze any minor conflicts addressed in the chapter.
Analyze the characters featured in the chapter.
Interpret the theme(s) addressed in the chapter.
Identify and evaluate any literary devices or figures of speech that appear in the chapter.
Describe how the events in the chapter relate to the entire literary work, and explain why the chapter is important to the book as a whole.
Use your planning and revising strategies you have learned.

how is the underlined gerund phrase used in the sentence?  

josh's plan, rushing the passer, seemed sound to us.

a.

object of a preposition

b.

direct object

c.

appositive

d.

subject

when connie willis was 12 years old, her mother died. in january of 2003, willis was interviewed for locus magazine. she recognized that death is a major issue in her writing, specially because the vacuous and appalling things that people tend to say in order to support you when someone you loved dies.

but there is another aspect that i have learned from connie willis's quote. in his famous work "danubio", the italian writer claudio magris describes literature as house removals. some messages reach us, other messages get lost in the labyrinth. those messages which are our inheritance teach us how to live and how to die, how to love and how to hate, how to laugh and how to cry. i think that tales really shape us if we listen to them. maybe through the stories we read we learn how to emphatize with others, knowing that the bells tolls for every each of us.