recitation

Too-cool-for-school upper-class students at Santa Monica High scoffed when administrators in 2002 reinstated a daily recitation of the pledge of allegiance.

These exchanges, which take place several times per week at Vance rallies now, have become ritualistic, playing out more or less the same way: A reporter starts into a question that Vance may not like, the crowd boos and yells, Vance and the reporter both wait for relative calm to return to the venue, and then Vance provides a reasonably polite recitation of his talking points.

He then recalls the closing lines of Universal’s 1941 film “The Wolf Man,” a final moment in which a character offers a poem-like recitation about the end of suffering, a climax he describes as “one of the saddest scenes ever.”

This recitation of names creates a powerful ritual.

She only read the poem, and her recitation was interrupted at times by applause.