Some Short Short Stories to Read Barthelme and others

AGENDA:
Go to this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/short-story-read_n_4220181.html


READ: "The School" by Donald Barthelme
“A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room” by George Saunders
"A Clean Well-Lit Place"  Ernest Hemingway
"A Worn Path" Eudora Welty
"Happy Endings" Margaret Atwood
"How to Become a Writer"  Lorrie Moore 

Post a comment on your reading. Which story interested you the most?the least? Why?
From a writer's perspective, what technical details interested you in the storytelling?
POV? Characterization? Plot? Setting? Conflict? Language? Imagery?

Continue to work on your own short story for workshop.

Remember, this marking period you will need to have 20 pages of fiction writing-You can combine a longer short story (5-10 pages) with flash fictions or short short stories, but you will need 20 pages by the end of the marking period.

Battle Royal Questions

• Answer 3 questions of your choice:
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• What is the significance of the first person narration in Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal”?
• Why does the narrator need to first discover that he is an invisible man in order to understand who he is?
• What is the significance of the grandfather’s dying speech? Why does he call himself a traitor and a spy in the enemy’s country?
• Comment on the significance of the circus imagery as used in the story. Give examples.
• In “Battle Royal”, animal imagery is used very often. Identify the references to animals in the story (for example, “lion”, “baboon”, “bird”, “panda”, “cottonmouth”, “wolf”, “crab”, “rat”…) and discuss how they contribute to the story.
• Examine the references to the “magnificent blonde” in the story. What animal imagery is used in her portrayal? What does she mean to the white audience? What does she mean to the black boys taking part in the battle royal? How do the black boys react to her and why?
• Examine the narrator’s reactions towards the “magnificent blonde”. Give examples.
• What is the resemblance between the white female body and the black male bodies as depicted in the story?
• Why do you think there is always an emphasis on “blindness” in the story? Provide examples.
• What is the significance of Booker T. Washington in the story?
• What is the symbolic value of the battle royal?
• What could be the significance of the smoky atmosphere in the hall where the battle royal takes place?
• What is the significance of the fight on an electrified rug?
• How does Ellison’s story challenge the respectability of the white Southern male?
• At the end of the story, the narrator dreams that he is at a circus with his grandfather: why does the grandfather refuse to laugh at the clowns?
• Comment on the following quote from the story: “To Whom It May Concern… Keep This Nigger-Boy Running”.
• What do you think about the ending of the story? To what extent do you think the narrator has gained maturity?
• Examine the theme of “American Dream” in the story.
• How does the story define the concept of “success”?

Ralph Ellison/Short Story #1

AGENDA:

WRITING: Work on Short Story #1 for workshop on Wednesday.  Story should be at least 5 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman font. 
Choose a distinct POV--1st, 2nd, 3rd, or multiple perspective.
Choose the TENSE---Past or present.
Develop the characters, and let the story project your writer's voice and style! 
By now, you should know who you are as a writer and what you want to write about. 

READING: For homework, Read Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal"

https://schoolworkhelper.net/ralph-ellisons-battle-royal-symbolism/

https://www.enotes.com/topics/battle-royal-ralph-ellison

Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913^[a] – April 16, 1994) was an American novelist, literary critic, and scholar. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953.^[2] He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory(1986). For The New York Times, the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus."^[3] A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.

Where is the Voice Coming From? Eudora Welty

AGENDA:

If Wishes Were Horses: Amy Bonnefons

http://www.amybonnaffons.com/

https://storyterrace.com/en-US/amy-bonnaffons/

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/fashion/shedding-skins-at-the-zoo.html

Eudora Welty:

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/joyce-carol-oates-reads-eudora-welty

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/07/06/where-is-the-voice-coming-from

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-quiet-greatness-eudora-welty

https://www.enotes.com/topics/where-voice-coming-from

Where is the Voice Coming From?

This story has a background in fact. Welty wrote it on the night she learned of the murder of Medgar Evers, a local black civil rights leader much like the fictional Roland Summers, which took place in 1963 in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. Unaware of the killer’s identity, yet familiar with the bitterness of racism and class resentment, she created a poor white narrator who so closely resembled the real murderer that several details of the story had to be altered before its publication in The New Yorker, in order to avoid prejudicing the case.
A major strength of the story is the speaker’s voice, rich in local dialect, which also reveals him as uneducated and self-righteous. A proud man, he feels himself betrayed by everything in which he has believed. Clearly, he is a man overwhelmed by a growing movement he does not comprehend and cannot prevent. By allowing this narrator to tell his own story, Welty does not treat him as a stereotypical villain but presents him with understanding and even a certain level of compassion.
The credibility of the story is increased by passing references to historical persons, including Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi; Caroline Kennedy, the young daughter of then-president John F. Kennedy; and James Meredith, the African American student whose enrollment integrated the University of Mississippi. In addition, sensory details are plentiful. When the narrator describes his early morning journey to Summers’s neighborhood, he offers a litany of typical street and business names, locating the familiar railroad tracks and the lighted bank sign that gives the time and temperature. He notes the brutal heat, even at night; the intense emotional pressure that he experiences; and his sudden relief when Roland Summers falls.
Perhaps the most obvious symbol is the gun. Although the gun bestows temporary power on a powerless man, the narrator tells his wife that he threw his rifle in the weeds because the barrel was scorching hot and because there was really nothing worth holding on to anymore. At the story’s end, he has replaced the gun with his old guitar, an enduring part of his own past, while he plays and sings “a-Down” to comfort himself—a mindless refrain and a foreshadowing, for now he, not Roland Summers, is going down.

Reading questions:

DISCUSS.  Think, Pair, Share  Post a summary comment for your group
1. The opening two lines of the story accomplish two literary purposes: first, they characterize the narrator, and secondly, they set the tone of the story. Explain how these brief lines achieve both.
2. Why is the narrator nameless? Give him a name and explain your choice with references to the text. What is the significance of Roland Summers’s name?
3. As we discussed before we read, this story contains inflammatory language. How many instances did you underline? Why is this language used in the story?
4. Throughout the story, the criticisms leveled at Roland Summers by the narrator reveal a deeper emotion. Look at passages like:  “And his street’s paved.”  “There on his paved driveway, yes sir.”  “It was mighty green where I skint over the yard getting back. That nigger wife of his, she wanted nice grass! I bet my wife would hate to pay her water bill.” What do all of these statements tell us about what Roland Summers has and the narrator does not? What emotion does this create within the narrator?
5. When you read, you highlighted the story for references to “hot” or “heat.” What effect does Welty’s use of this motif create in the story? What is the literary term for this technique?
6. The story’s narrator mentions a mockingbird. When does he do so? Where is the bird? When does it stop singing? What does the narrator mean by saying, “I was like him. I was on top of the world myself. For once.” How else is the narrator like the mockingbird? How do his references to the mockingbird contribute to the characterization of the narrator?
7. What is the name of this town? What is the historical allusion? What does this suggest about the political and social climate in the town? In the narrator’s mind, how is this name appropriate to his situation? The story also alludes to important events in the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Do Summers’s television appearance and the demonstration the narrator describes downtown refer to actual events? If so, what were they?
8. What is the relationship between the narrator and his wife? How does her criticism add to his characterization?
9. By the end of the story, how does the narrator feel? What is his plan? Why do you think Welty chose this conclusion?
10. What is the significance of the title of the story? Other titles that Welty considered were “It Ain’t Even July Yet”; “Voice from an Unknown Interior”; “From the Unknown” and “A Voice from the Jackson Interior.” Was the one she selected the best choice? Can you answer the question in the title? Where is this “voice” coming from?

The Shawl Cynthia Ozick

AGENDA:

Please post responses to questions on "Heat" "Hunters in the Snow"and "The Shawl"

HMWK:  Read "If Wishes Were Horses"

Continue to work on your exercises synaesthesia or others or (or "Because")

Questions for "The Shawl":

1. Where and when does the action take place?

2. Does Rosa think Stella is responsible for Magda’s death?

3. Why doesn’t Rosa run to protect Magda at the end?  Is it because she fears death?  Because she is traumatized?  Because she is physically exhausted?

4. What do we make of Magda’s physical appearance?

5. What is the significance of the shawl?

Point of View

"The Shawl" is written in an omniscient third person point of view. It is omniscient because the narrator can see things through the eyes of all the characters. For instance, the narrator tells readers that "Stella wanted to be wrapped in a shawl," and that "Rosa did not feel hunger" -things which could only be known by that character. The point of view is said to be thIrd person because the narrator speaks about the characters from the outside, refer­ring to them as "she" or "he."

The Shawl Themes

"The Shawl" is noteworthy because of its scrupulous control of its limited point of view, with the point-of-view character being the mother of a starving infant during the Holocaust. There is nothing in the story about the political conditions in Germany’s Third Reich, which developed a policy of mass extermination of Jews; yet, within just a few pages, the story provides an inside view of the horror as it affected those who were the victims of this unspeakable policy. The story requires great attention, for the details are not described objectively but rather appear as they have been filtered through the suffering eyes and mind of the major figure, Rosa.

Survival

Underlying Ozick's story is the theme of survival. Rosa struggles with this constantly. During the march to the concentration camp, Rosa struggles over whether or not she should pass Magda to an onlooker, possibly ensuring her child's survival. Rosa decides against this, however, realizing that she would risk her own life in doing so and could not guarantee Magda's safety. Rosa chooses survival in the moment for both of them, rather than probable death for herself and uncertainty for her child. As Rosa struggles over what to do about Magda, Stella longs to be Magda: a baby rocked and sleeping in her mother's arms. Rosa also thinks that the starving Stella gazes at Magda as if she wishes to eat the child. Magda, though far too young to have any knowledge of what is happening to and around her, gives up screaming and quietly sucks on the shawl.

Life in the camp is a constant battle for survival. Rosa, apparently caring more about Magda's survival than her own. gives most of her food to her child. Stella, caring mostly about her own survival, gives no food to Magda. Magda herself turns to the shawl for comfort: it is her "baby, her pet, her little sister"; when she needs to be still—and stillness is necessary to her survival—she sucks on a corner of it.

Halfway through the story, Stella takes Magda's shawl because she is cold. It is, perhaps, the only one of her afflictions that she can do anything about. There is no food to ease her hunger, and there is nothing she can do to escape from the camp; but Magda's shawl might ease her cold. This, too, is a form of reaching for survival. Stella has chosen to bring what small comfort she can to herself, ignoring the potential cost to Magda and Rosa.

Magda, knowing no better, leaves the barracks in her search for the shawl. Again, Rosa has to make a choice about her survival. If she runs to Magda, they will both be killed. If she does nothing, Magda will be killed. The only solution she can think of, however slim, is to get the shawl to Magda before she is discovered by the camp's guards. She runs for the shawl and returns to the square with it, but she is too late. A soldier carries Magda away toward the electric fence at the other side of the camp. Rosa watches her baby fly through the air, hit the fence and die, then fall to the ground. Again, there are choices. If she goes to Magda, she will be shot; if she screams, she will be shot. Rosa chooses survival, using the shawl to mute her scream.

Motherhood and Nurturing

Closely linked to the theme of survival are issues of motherhood and nurturing. Throughout "The Shawl," Stella longs to be nurtured. On the march, she longs to be a baby, comforted by her mother's arms. In the camp, she longs for food, sometimes causing Rosa to think that she is "waiting for Magda to die so she could put her teeth into the little thighs.'' She takes the only bit of nurturing she can find: warmth from Magda's shawl.

The issues of motherhood are more complex. Because she is a mother, Rosa cannot think only of herself, as Stella does. Each decision must be weighed. What is the possible benefit to her? To Magda? What are the possible costs? With each decision, Rosa must decide whether it is in her best interest to sacrifice herself, her baby, or both of them.

Prejudice and Tolerance

Issues of prejudice and tolerance are also raised in "The Shawl." Rosa, Stella, Magda, and the others are imprisoned or killed in concentration camps simply because they are Jewish. Prejudice exists on then- part too—at least on the part of Stella. Looking at Magda's yellow hair and blue eyes, she says "Aryan," in a voice that makes Rosa think she has said, "Let us devour her."

The issue of tolerance is raised in the camp itself. Rosa and Magda are not alone in the barracks they occupy. The other occupants are aware of Magda's existence and of Rosa's deception. In the camp, "a place without pity," they cannot know what might happen to them if Magda is discovered in the barracks. Yet no one reports her presence.

Betrayal

Rosa constantly fears that Stella—or someone else—will kill Magda to eat her. While this does not happen, it is Stella's betrayal that costs Magda her life and Rosa her child. "The Shawl'' points to one reason for this kind of betrayal: the inhuman treatment Stella has received has made her pitiless. "The cold went into her heart," the narrator says. "Rosa saw that Stella's heart was cold." 

https://www.enotes.com/topics/shawl

https://www.arts.gov/partnerships/nea-big-read/the-shawl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFIgXhScfzY

Hunters in the Snow--Tobias Wolff

AGENDA:

Tobias Wolff
Hunters in the Snow
Questions adapted from Holy Huddle

1. Describe the development of Frank and Tub’s relationship after Kenny is shot. What factors are at play here? Do you find it believable that they leave Kenny in the back of the truck while enjoying the warmth of a roadhouse—twice? Why or why not?

2. Lying is a common theme is Wolff’s stories. Identify places in the story where there’s a disconnect between what the characters think/feel/assert, and the reality of their situations. Are the characters actually lying? Deluding themselves?

3. In what ways are Kenny, Frank, and Tub products of our society?

4. Discuss the three principal characters in this story. How are they motivated? Who is the most sympathtic? What themes are suggested by their interactions?

5. When asked to list his favorite books, writer David Sedaris had this to say about In the Garden of the North American Martyrs: "[Wolff’s] stories are like parables, and after reading one I always vow to become a better person." Assuming that Sedaris subscribes to the dictionary definition of parable, how is "Hunters…" like a parable?

parable
(n): a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle 

WRITING
When you finish your questions/discussion, I would like you to begin planning for your first major writing piece. You can do one of the following:

• Choose another prompt provided on Monday
• Develop/expand the prompt you already started
• Generate your own idea for a story (let's hope to be able to workshop next Thursday)

HMWK:
Read Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl"