Phrase: The cow in the shed/ Under the table
Clause: This train goes/ The house has four windows/ Because we don't have any butter
Explanation:
The difference between a clause and a phrase is that clauses always contain a subject (agent of the action) and a verb (action), while phrases usually contain one of these elements or might contain none of these. This makes clauses to express a complete idea in some cases. Knowing this, let's analyze each section to know if it is a clause or phrase:
This train goes -This contains a subject (This train) and a verb (goes), which makes it a clause
The house has for windows -This contains a subject (The house), a verb (has), and it expresses a complete idea; therefore, this is a clause
The cow in the shed- This includes a subject (the cow) but not a verb, which makes it a phrase
Because we don't have any butter -This includes a subject (we) and a verb (have), so it is a clause
Under the table -The word "table" can act as a subject but there is no action, thus, this is just a phrase.
This story vascillates between the everyday humdrum life of Water Mitty, the hen-pecked husband sterotype, and the extravagant adventures he lives in his daydreams. Mitty flits in and out of reality, his daydreams concocted by a stream of consciousness association triggered by the sputtering of his car's exhaust pipe, a pair of gloves, and finally a freshly lit cigarette. In such a way this docile "hubby" gets to be the captain of an icebreaker, a famous surgeon, a defendent in a murder trial and finally a fighter pilot taken captive distaining a firing squad. Mitty's imagination is his "second life," which nurtures his deflated ego and helps hims escape the insufferable mediocrity of his existence.
If you do a graph of the plot line of this story, it would look very much like a cardiograph printout, with the steady horizontal line of Mitty's real life intermittantly broken by the highs and lows of his "virtual" existence.
