Alliteration and Assonance. Alliteration is the repetition of sounds at the beginnings of syllables, as in bats in the belfry or dead as a doornail. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end in different consonant sounds, as in wake and fate or bloom and June. Create a graphic organizer like the one below. As you read, list in the left-hand column the words in each line that contain similar sounds, and then identify the similar sounds as examples of alliteration or assonance in the right-hand column.

• A player piano is a type of piano, or keyboard instrument, that plays automatically, without a human player. Player pianos were popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but faded from use when the phonograph and radio took their place. A roll with holes punched in it tells the player piano what notes to play for a particular piece of music. Today, few people rarely see or hear a player piano, except in movies or television shows about the Old West.
• The twentieth century was a period of great technological change, and many writers of this period explored humans’ relationship to technology in their writing. Writers imagined both a future where life is made better and easier through the use of machines and a future in which machines and humans are at odds. Much of twentieth-century fiction about technology poses questions such as “Will machines ever replace humans?” and “What distinguishes humans from machines?” In “Player Piano,” John Updike explores the difference between humans and machines by writing from an unusual point of view—that of a player piano.

Explain whether you think a machine or a computer can make music as well as a human musician can.