A Virtual Reading--Shelter-in-poems American Academy of Poets

Here's the link.  It's free, but I think you need to register.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shelter-in-poems-a-virtual-reading-tickets-103370060634

SOTA SPIRIT DAY--Extra Credit

Post a picture of yourself with or without SOTA gear or just hold up a SOTA sign.

To find out more, go to SOTA Community on Google Classroom.  Code:  kfoad43

Week #2/MP4 Assignment---"Boys and Girls" by Alice Munro

AGENDA:
I hope you're staying well.

Here is Weekly Assignment #2 for MP4/Week 2.  The pdf which is attached on Google Classroom has the short story as well as several literary analyses.  DUE FRIDAY, MAY 1.

Here is the link to the short story, though:
http://www.giuliotortello.it/shortstories/boys_and_girls.pdf


Also, work on revising (look at previous post) or creating a new short story to share at a Zoom workshop (invite forthcoming as we check on our schedules).  There will be credit for worshipping so plan on worshipping a short story this marking period!



AGENDA:

Read "Boys and Girls" by Alice Munro and answer the discussion questions.


"Boys and Girls" is a short story by Canadian author Alice Munro that first appeared in Dance of the Happy Shades, a collection of fifteen short stories by Munro published in 1968 by Ryerson Press.Discussion Questions "Boys and Girls"

1. Who is the narrator? What perspective does she have on the events in the story?

2. Where and when does the story take place?

3. What roles are assigned to men and to women in the world of this story? How do the mother, the father, Henry Bailey, the narrator, and her brother Laird exemplify aspects of these masculine and feminine roles?

4. What people and things represent freedom in this story? What people and things are not “free”?

5. What do you see as the primary conflict in the story; in other words, what does the dramatic tension come from?

6. What do you see as the turning point in the story?

7. What changes occur in the course of the story --to the girl, to her fantasies, to her relationship with Laird and her father?

8. The phrase “only a girl” is used in two different situations. What meaning does the phrase have for the girl in each situation? How does it contribute to the overall meaning of the story?

9. This sort of story is called a “coming of age” or “initiation” story. Why do you think that is? What is the girl “initiated” into? Of what does she become aware?

10. In “Boys and Girls”, what does the girl gain? What does she lose? Do you think what she becomes reflects nature or nurture? Do you see these changes and losses as necessary?

  

Literary Hub--A REALLY good resource

This is a really good resource with great links. Lots of suggestions for books, articles, etc.--quarantine reading!

https://lithub.com/

Extra Credit---BOA EVENT

BOA Is Here Virtual Poetry Salon Celebrate National Poetry Month from the comfort of your own living room with BOA's first ever virtual poetry salon! Tune in to hear readings, stories, and more from seven BOA poets with new books from BOA Editions. We hope you'll join us! Event Details Time, Date, Place: 8:00–8:30 PM Eastern, Tuesday, April 28, simultaneous premiere on Facebook and YouTube. Videos will be archived on both platforms for on-demand viewing. Admission: Free, no registration required. Closed captioned. Follow BOA on Facebook to get a reminder or subscribe to our YouTube channel to get a notification when the salon premieres! Featured Poets Diana Marie Delgado is the author of Tracing the Horse (BOA, 2019). Her work is rooted in her experiences growing up Mexican-American, and she is a member of the Canto Mundo and Macondo writing communities. She currently resides in Tucson, where she is the Literary Director of the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona. Deborah Paredez is a poet, performance scholar, and cultural critic whose writing explores the workings of memory, the legacies of war, and feminist elegy. She is the author of Year of the Dog (BOA, 2020). Born and raised in San Antonio, She lives in New York City where she is a professor of creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University. Matt Morton is the author of Improvisation Without Accompaniment (BOA, 2020), which won the 18th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He serves as associate editor for 32 Poems and is a Robert B. Toulouse Doctoral Fellow in English at the University of North Texas. He lives in Dallas, TX. Rick Bursky is the author of Let's Become a Ghost Story (BOA, 2020) and I’m No Longer Troubled By the Extravagance (BOA, 2015). Originally from New York City, Bursky lives in Los Angeles where he works in advertising and teaches poetry in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program. Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of Rue (BOA, 2020) and the James Laughlin Award-winning The End of Pink (BOA, 2016). After spending many years directing Pleiades Press, she now teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Minnesota and lives with her family in The Twin Cities. John Gallaher is the author of Brand New Spacesuit (BOA, 2020) and In A Landscape (BOA, 2014). He is also the co-author with G.C. Waldrep of Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA, 2011), which was written in collaboration almost entirely through email. He is the co-editor of The Laurel Review and The Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics. He lives in Marysville, Missouri, where he is an assistant professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University. Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist and disability rights activist. She is the author of Cyborg Detective (BOA, 2019) and The Book of Goodbyes (BOA, 2013), which won the Isabella Gardner Award and the James Laughlin Award. Weise identifies as a cyborg, and her essays on cyborg identity and disability rights have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, and elsewhere. She hosts a series of satirical videos highlighting literary ableism under the persona Tispy Tullivan. Stay tuned to the end of the broadcast for a special treat from BOA's video archives!

WEEK 1 Assignment Due!

Please post on Google Classroom for Week 1 credit.

Reminder: "White Angel" Reading and Questions Due

AGENDA:

AGENDA:

Just a reminder to post your "White Angel" assignment on Google Classroom.  That's where I can give you credit and feedback on your work.  You can always email me with questions and thoughts (I'd love to hear from you!).

Office hour meetings are on Thursdays at 11am, and Mr. Craddock and I will have a whole Creative Writing meeting on next Monday at 11am (a chance to meet everyone in the department). Invites forthcoming.

Stay well.  Miss you.

New Marking Period / Michael Cunningham "White Angel"

AGENDA:

Welcome to a new marking period.  I hope you are staying healthy and well. Remember you can still send me missing and extra credit work on Google Classroom this week.  You are responsible for assigned work this marking period and I hope we can Zoom on Fridays to workshop work and check-in

Assignment for Week #1--Due Fri. 4/24

Please read the following article and short story.  This is a week long assignment.  Don't be overwhelmed.  Take your time.  Post your responses on Google Classroom. Answer the questions for
"White Angel" and explore the strategies for revision which we will
discuss later.

Revision--20 Thoughts by Matt Salesses

Read: Scribner text pg. 229/ the pdf can be found on Google Classroom

Michael Cunningham (The Hours)  "White Angel"   

https://fictionwritersreview.com/shoptalk/stories-we-love-white-angel-by-michael-cunningham/

Answer the following questions:
https://d39smchmfovhlz.cloudfront.net/I7siaXGoFlqWAHTlfPwj4ti5AGAtNvABjnFKEkKSUc4fG8P0.pdf

New work for Workshop/Revisions

A Month of Revision

by Matt Salesses

http://necessaryfiction.com/writerinres/AMonthofRevision

A linked list of all Revision Month posts can be found below.

I am amazed that the good and wise Steve Himmer has let me have the run of the place for a month. I am going to mess this house up and only talk about how to clean it. For July, I have decided to play History. I have decided to launch a war on first drafts and erect the memorial to edits. Revision is where we do our most important work as writers, or at least where we can. And yet, for as much as we love and hate it, for as much as we talk about it, we don’t really talk about it. (See: What We Talk About When We Talk About Revision, which I’ve revised right out of this introduction.) I want that to change. I want us to teach revision up front when we teach writing, to demystify it, to make it the first thought rather than all reaction. One downside of workshops — which I love, don’t get me wrong — is that we only address the issues that come up. I think we can offer tips and strategies and experience and frustration from the beginning. I think we can say, this is where we’re going, and this is how we can make sure we get there.

When Steve asked me to “reside,” I had the grand idea to create a sort of Rolodex for revision methods, fears, hopes. Something we could come back to as writers every time we needed to be picked up from a disappointing draft, every time we were wondering how to find the heart of a story. Have a piece that loses momentum halfway through? Look under M. I asked some of my favorite young writers to talk about revision with specificity. More than: keep editing and editing until it’s done. Instead: how they edit, what they look to cut or add, tips or tricks, how they know it’s done.

Sometimes I had to pull teeth. Sometimes I had to ask for revisions of revision essays. I wanted this month to be as helpful as possible, on the most practical, or practicable, level.

So I thought I would start off by putting my money where my mouth is (online, mostly).

Hopefully, over the next month, as we all revise our manuscripts — and I’ll be talking about how mine has changed over 8 years, as I make a last ditch effort to “finish” it — we’ll all be able to take away one new strategy, we’ll all be encouraged to do better. I know I have found a few new tricks to try. Hopefully, our first drafts will be a distant memory. This month, you’ll find some of us talking about the same things again and again, because they can’t help but be talked about. You’ll find little gems like how to use the computer to your advantage. I’ve even asked poets for help! (No offense, poets, you’re the best.) You’ll find love and hate and math and intuition. You’ll find something for everyone, and, with luck, something just right for you.

Here are 20 thoughts to start:

1. To me, the most important question to ask as I revise is: Am I bored here? The best “advice” I’ve ever heard on revision was from the wonderful teacher and writer Margot Livesey. It was something like this: if you are bored, it’s not because you’ve read that section so many times, it’s because it’s boring.

We tell ourselves all sorts of excuses — and that our writing would be interesting to someone else, reading for the first time, is one of the worst. Good writing is always engaging, even after reading it over and over. We reread favorite books. If it’s boring to you, then why would it interest your readers? Just about the worst offense a writer can commit is to be boring.

2. It’s hard to revise because you know what you were intending, and you might read that into what is there. Sometimes it helps to change the font, change the margins, change the medium. Do something to divorce yourself from the text before you read it again, anything to trick yourself into thinking it’s something you’ve never seen before. To revise, I have to will myself to see my work as someone else’s.

3. Rewrite. You’ll see this one mentioned several times. Type the draft out again in a new document, in this way making sure you are using the words you really want to use.

4. Read out loud. A similar idea. Your ear will hear the points that ring false.

5. Cut up your story.

Specifically, cut it up so each scene is on its own piece of paper, each section of narrative summary, each description of a character, each flashback, each memory, each flash forward, and so on. Then lay out all those pieces on your floor — I use columns. Is each piece in the right place? Some things to think about: The order of information contributes to tension/suspense. (If you have relevant backstory that would increase the stakes of the present situation, that backstory should come before it. If the mystery of what happened in the past is adding suspense, then the backstory might come after. But don’t cheat.) Character descriptions usually come as soon as we meet the character, for good reason (not obvious — I once took a class in which where someone asked why Michael Chabon kept describing his characters as soon as they were introduced). Also, flashbacks can be broken up. They don’t have to be all in one piece. So can scenes. Also, think about the length of each piece. This is contributing to the pacing and rhythm: don’t put all the longer sections together, or the shorter; intersperse.

6. Write down the gist of each scene on a sticky note. Then line them up, again in columns. If there are two scenes on one page, then put those two sticky notes in one column. One over three pages, then put that sticky note over three columns. Now take a look. For visual people, you might see where a scene is starting to drag, or where it ends too quickly.

7. You can do the same for what the reader learns on each page. Ideally, we should continue learning things (which increases stakes, desire, conflict, etc.) until we know enough for the story to start moving toward an ending.

You can also do this for the themes on each page. This can help you see what the story is about and whether everything is working together thematically.

8. For problems with plot, it can actually help to write out a movie-like treatment: write out all the action (book-length) in four pages. Just the action. “Hamlet sees his father’s ghost. His father’s ghost says he’s been murdered.” Is there at least one big thing happening by the end of the first page to start us down a path that we can’t turn back from? Is there something new introduced after the second page? Is there a turn at the end of the third page, that will lead us to the ending?

9. List all the decisions your protagonist makes. The same for everyone else. Who makes the most decisions? That might be your true protagonist. Or try to have the protagonist make more. Also, make sure each character is making decisions that get in the other characters’, esp. the protagonist’s, way.

Related: Who is moving the action forward in each scene? Is it the protagonist? If it’s not, can it be?

Related:

What does the character want: _________

What stops the character from getting it: __________

What makes it easier: _________

That which fills in the third blank, should probably go.

10. Style guide (this is mine, and might not be for everyone, but I’m thinking music and readability):

• Value nouns and verbs over adjectives and especially adverbs.
• Value consonants over vowels.
• Value hard consonants (e.g. k) over soft consonants (e.g. g).
• Value words of one syllable over words of two syllables over words of three syllables, etc. Though precision is important, and sometimes the right word is the longer word.
• Each sentence should include more stressed syllables than unstressed syllables (a la Lish).
• A sentence with a masculine ending (stressed syllable) sounds stronger than one with a feminine ending (unstressed syllable).
• Avoid using the word was when possible. A lot of this has to do with using the right action verb.
• Avoid introductory clauses (e.g. Closing my eyes, I smiled) except when used as time or location markers (At five o’clock, When I got back from the store, In the supermarket).
• Using common words, or colloquial words, in new ways, is more interesting than using uncommon words in normal ways.
• Avoid “begin” or “start” or intermediate actions (e.g. I began to sing. He started walking. He got up from the couch and went to the door. Just write: I sing. He walked. He went to the door.)
• Value consonance and assonance over alliteration.
• In almost all instances, use “say” or “ask” instead of other dialogue tags.

11. Try this: Cut the opening paragraph. Cut the last paragraph. Do that for each scene. Now rewrite the ones that have to be there, let the rest die.

12. In each paragraph, look at opening sentence and last sentence in particular. It is important what goes where. Things that will come back in the future should go in the middle, generally. Important things in the moment should go at the beginning or end. A good last line is a good last line, but often only an okay middle line.

13. I would never say showing is better than telling, but it’s important to get it right. Should this be a scene, is a good question to ask. Does it need to be dramatized? Or can it be summarized? I am of the mind that emotions should be shown, not told.

Related: Ask yourself: Am I telling right after or before showing something? Am I explaining what I mean right after saying it better and more directly? (See what I did there?)

14. Indirect speech for voice. Direct speech for drama. Indirect for information, usually. Indirect for things like: “The car is that way,” which should probably be: She pointed him to the car. Or: She sighed and pointed to the car. Or: She walked to the car instead of answering. And so on.

15. Backstory: can it fit into the dialogue somewhere, where someone else’s interest in it can bring it out, increasing our own, as well as making it a direct concern in the present of the story?

16. Is this metaphor relevant to the story? Is it right for the POVcharacter? Does it do the job better than a concrete description. I am starting to gravitate more and more to the concrete, in revision, over metaphor.

17. Write a scene taking the protagonist out of the main conflict. Write an unexpected visit or phone call. Sometimes, we need to be broken out of the tight coil of the plot.

18. Use recurring images/objects to ground the reader. A birthmark or deformity or dyed hair or simple dimple that we can be reminded of, can bring up the entire picture of a character we had when we first met her. An object in the story can be used to remind us of various storylines, or to remind us of theme. Objects can be attached in the reader’s mind to these things, and when they come up in the story, they can point us in the right direction or keep us aware of something that might otherwise fade into the background.

19. Change the point of view. If all else fails and it didn’t already seem obvious, you might try changing the point of view (whether it’s needed or not). Even if you change it back, the shift might be enough to see the story new.

It occurs to me that a lot of these thoughts are about seeing. Remember: re-vision.

20. Does the length match the reach?

Grading--MP3 and MP4 coming up

AGENDA:
I hope you are doing well.  I am so sorry your senior year has been so cruelly affected like this. Please know that I miss you so much.

The marking period ends today, but I still can accept missing work and extra credit assignments for this marking for one more week. Hooray!
Grades will be calculated on all your assigned work turned in (or not) by March 13. 

IMPORTANT: I am giving a 10/10 for any and all blog posts for reading and writing assignments after that date.
PLEASE, please take advantage of this and post on the blog or in Google classroom as appropriate.
You will be happy you did! Your grade will be raised a lot! Email me and let me know what you post.

Marking Period 4 begins on Monday and I will be posting new reading and writing assignments.  I also want to have Zoom meetings to share our thoughts and writings, maybe once a week.  Let me know when you are available, or I'll just schedule a meeting, invite you and see who shows up!

I am sending Ms. Rudy a page of your poems from the 1st semester for the yearbook.  I hope you trust my judgment in selecting one from each of you.

Stay well...let me know if you have questions or concerns.  You can chat with each other on Google Classroom!

End of marking period Friday 4/17

AGENDA:

Please make sure that you have uploaded Short Story#2—1st person, monologue—to Goggle Classroom.  It will be counted as an assignment for this marking period .

Anything else, such as readings, questions about the readings, extra writing, willbe counted for extra credit!  Please consider doing some of this to raise your grades!  I’ll be generous with the extra credit!

Stay well.  Miss you.

Poetry online--another resource

Check out this wonderful website:

http://greenmountainsreview.com/the-social-distance-reading-series/

Terrance Hayes (Golden Shovel poem, etc.) does a great reading.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find "by Flannery O'Connor

AGENDA:

Read "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=Y29sbGVnaWF0ZWFjYWRlbXkubmV0fG1zLWZlcnJhcm8tcy1jbGFzc3xneDo1ODI3ZGI2YTEzZjdjZjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX5sLPwnYAs

Consider the following discussion questions.  Post a response on the blog to FIVE (5) of them.

1. Why does the Grandmother insist on wearing her nicest suit on the road trip with her family?

2. What is the significance of the Mis-fit's name?

3. What role does faith and religion play in this story?

4. Characterize the grandmother. Do you feel any sense of compassion for her? Why or why not?

5. What is the significance of the Misfit's response to the grandmother just before he kills her?

6. Characterize the Misfit. Do you think that the Misfit presents valid reasons for the violent way he lives his life? Is there ever an excuse for violence?

7. Explain how O'Connor uses her characters to comment on one another.

8. How would you describe the importance of family to each of the characters in the story?

9. What is the relationship between the grandmother and her grandchildren? Does this relationship surprise you?

10. What are some ways in which O'Connor infuses the story with humor?

John Wideman--"Fever"

AGENDA:

Read John Wideman's "Fever"--a difficult and complex story that is very insightful as we experience our own epidemic in 2020.  Take your time with this one and post a response just to let me know you read it and perhaps to get a conversation going.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Wideman_Fever.pdf

Fever

John Edgar Wideman

https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/protestant-christianity-biographies/richard-allen

To help you understand "Fever":

from Project Muse:

It stands to reason that an urban crisis of such magnitude cannot be captured by means of one of the conventional short story patterns, especially not if in addition the author intends to reconstruct its racial dimension. Wideman wisely dispenses with a linear plot and a character portrait, instead choosing a different pattern, a combination of single textual units, which careful selection, deliberate fragmentation, and associative arrangement has made representative of a wealth of similar happenings [End Page 718] and experiences. The synecdochic effect is enhanced by the frequent elimination of the names of characters, focalizers, or narrators, who thus either seem exchangeable or are made to stand for typical experiences, attitudes, or moods. Of the thirty-five sections, about one-third can be connected in one way or another to Richard Allen who thus appears as the writer of his and Jones’ Narrative (128, 129) as an internal focalizer (133, 156), as a character described by one of his brothers (139), as a homodiegetic narrator (144, 146, 148), as a letter-writer (19), and even, depending on one’s interpretation, as the author of the story (142). If one adds the six sections in which Allen functions as the addressee in the discourse of Master Abraham, an old Jewish merchant, the sections related to him comprise about half of the entire number. The remaining sections may be attributed to James Forten in 1782 (143), to Benjamin Rush (147), to a slave on the Middle Passage or in a boat escaping from Santo Domingo (130), to a wise old African slave (131), to an old African American at the close of the Civil War (155), to a young black male nurse in an old age asylum of the 1980s (159), and to a heterodiegetic narrator who cites definitions (129, 130, 156), gives objective reports from a modern vantage point (128, 147, 159), or begins and closes the story with cryptic remarks that are even more ambiguous than some of the other sections (127, 160, 161). Whereas the rapid shift of narrators and focalizers appears to place the story securely in the tradition of American modernism (Eliot, Dos Passos, Faulkner), the wide generic range of the different textual units and their extremely fragmentary quality are strongly reminiscent of Melville’s Moby Dick and, together with the striking oscillations of narrative distance and the frequent absence of the focalizer’s or even the narrator’s identity, give it the quality of a postmodern montage.

“Fever” draws much of its energy from the tension between closed and open form. One of the most fascinating aspects of this collage is Wideman’s ability to treat the textual fragments as singular voices and then to make these voices interact and echo each other so that a fascinating kind of communal song emerges which manages to overcome the single experiences of anxiety and apprehension, the ordeals of pain and suffering by means of a sober and dignified celebration of black bravery and selfless dedication. Maybe this is what an early reviewer means when she speaks of the “oddly impartial narrators” of Wideman’s book who “seem to be looking down upon the planet with genuine omniscience” and who “speak with the neutrality of gods” (Schaeffer 30). In this particular story, however, the narrative situation is more complex; underneath the celebratory tone, one can always recognize the counterpoint of a dazed, apathetic, almost fatalistic strain which occasionally rises to heights of caustic comment or descends into depths of oracular rumblings. Paradoxically, it is on such a note that the story begins and ends. And thus, we are never allowed forget that, whereas the biological epidemic may be survived, suppressed, or eventually prevented, the spiritual plague, the inner sickness, will merely change signifiers. Yet, before looking for messages or meanings in this story, it will be helpful to single out some of the structural devices by means of which the tension between open and closed form is maintained.3

Although “Fever” has no linear plot, it is nevertheless possible to recognize tendencies towards coherence within particular textual clusters. If we ignore the introduction, sections reporting on the development of the epidemic loosely follow [End Page 719] the chronological sequence of the fever as outlined above. Even those sections, or parts of sections, dealing with other events appear in more or less chronological order, analeptic passages generally preceding proleptic ones. Additional coherence is achieved by means of underlying formal devices such as bracketing and repetition. These are easily recognized in the cluster of sections devoted—or attributable—to Richard Allen, but they are typical of the entire text.

http://muse.jhu.edu/article/6053

Reviewers of Fever also single out the title story, noting its uniqueness, its range, and its message. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, writing for The New York Times, calls ‘‘Fever’’ ‘‘almost majestic in its evocation of the goodness and evil of the human heart.’’ She further notes the peculiar perspective used by Wideman in this collection, which she expresses as ‘‘not quite human but godlike, not limited by the conventions of ordinary storytelling.’’ She finds that ‘‘Fever’’ makes use of this style of storytelling successfully, culminating in ‘‘an almost unbearably anguished meditation on human nature in plague time, the power and sadness of the story are enormous, its vision triumphant.’’

Wideman’s career can be characterized by his search for new ways to explore themes and ideas and to express the African-American experience. ‘‘Fever’’ is a boldly experimental work, one that floats back and forth between time periods and narrators and thus defies easy labeling or analysis. Randall Kenan of The Nation forthrightly deals with Wideman’s slipping back and forth in time; he presents his own reasoning: ‘‘It is as if Wideman is again playing games with us, forcing us to see the past and the present as one; how we are affected by what has gone before, not only in our thinking but in our acting and in our soul-deep believing.’’ Despite the story’s elusive nature and Wideman’s claims to Rosen that the story ‘‘shouldn’t be tied to any historical period,’’ reviewers note his evocation of a specific period in American history. Other reviewers comment on the way Wideman collapses time to present a composite picture of a certain place and mindset. Cara Hood writing for the Voice Literary Supplement claims that present-day Philadelphia emerges as the protagonist of the story.

Reviewers do not overlook the significance of Wideman’s message in examining his style. Herbert Mitgang in the New York Times finds that even after reading the story, he is left with the knowledge of Wideman’s search for ‘‘some sort of universality’’ to the human condition. Some reviewers, however, do not care for the way in which Wideman attempts to get his message to readers. For instance, Clarence Major of the Washington Post believes ‘‘Fever’’ to be the most ambitious if not the most artistically successful story of the collection. Mitgang recognizes the importance of what Wideman is saying when he writes that Wideman’s ‘‘voice as a modern black writer with something to report comes through.’’ Despite this praise, Mitgang does not believe that the rest of the stories are successful, asserting in his review of the collection that they add nothing to Wideman’s reputation as a writer.

In Wideman’s extensive and accomplished body of work, ‘‘Fever’’ occupies only a small spot. Yet, if it accomplishes nothing more, it demonstrates Wideman’s careful exploration of relationships among people and the effects that these relationships have on society. Wideman’s interest in the issues he raises in ‘‘Fever’’—including racial relations, communication, personal freedom, and violence— is seen in the works that he has written later in his career. Philadelphia Fire picks up the final section of the story in its fictionalization of the 1985 MOVE bombing. The Cattle Killing explores the devastating effects of racial prejudice on the African Americans who remained behind in Philadelphia during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in greater detail. The body of Wideman’s work strengthens Robert Bones’ assertion, made in 1978, that Wideman is ‘‘perhaps the most gifted black novelist of his generation.’’

Source: Short Stories for Students, ©2012 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.

Analysis 

"Fever" is a story of slavery and disease, both caused by the poison in men's hearts. It is a complex narrative composed of many different voices that use a range of points of view, or perspectives: third-person limited, third-person omniscient, first-person, and even first-person plural (the collective "we"). In fact, this, along with the nonlinear, or non-chronological, structure, is the most striking feature of the story. At its essence, "Fever" tells the story of a free black man who, during the course of a yellow fever epidemic in 1793 Philadelphia, discovers he is still enslaved. Eighteenthand nineteenth-century Philadelphia was known as a refuge for runaway slaves, a city founded on Quaker egalitarian ideals. However, through the perspective of Allen, we learn that Philadelphia at the time of the story does struggle with inequality; although blacks and whites can come together to celebrate the founding of Allen's church, Allen was forced to build the church because blacks were not allowed to sit in the front of white churches. The Delaware River, which brings white and black immigrants, slaves and freed (and escaped) slaves, is thick with waste, and forms an invisible barrier between white and black. Here, white immigrants learn English and move on, while black immigrants, though they learn English, are destined to live the remainder of their days in the squalid filth of the caves they have dug for themselves. These caves are a symbol of the dark future Allen sees for his people, who, having obtained their freedom, have fallen victim to poverty and complacence. He tries to preach to them of dreams of parting the river like Moses and leading them away, but he is interrupted by the outbreak, which only throws the racial division of the city into sharper relief. Blacks are accused of both having caused the plague and being immune to it, the latter only when it serves the purposes of the white population. Nevertheless, the central question of the story is why Allen, a free man, chooses to stay in the infected city and treat the whites. Allen, obsessed by what he sees as spoil all around him—both physical waste in the river and the dissolution of the sinners among his people—is conflicted between his desire to save his people and the waste he sees among them. In fact, they fling waste at him, curse him, spit at him; they do not seem to want his help, while the white population does. It is this sense of duty to those who demand his help that Allen, on the surface, believes is keeping him in the city. In watching Dr. Rush bleed the sick and autopsy the dead, Allen sees that all the victims, black and white, are the same on the 9 inside, their blood sluggish and vile, much like the river and the poisoned arteries and veins of the city. The city is a key metaphor in the story, compared both physically and figuratively with the people who have been left in it during the outbreak. It is wasted and dying, its streets the veins and arteries that distribute the poison. The poison—prejudice, poverty, hopelessness and isolation—manifests itself in a devastating fever that enslaves everyone, both black and white. While this epidemic runs its course, everyone is a slave —and everyone is equal. Free from both slavery and infection, Allen could choose to run away before he carries the infection home, but he does not. He recognizes the possibility when he sees the black servant who remained with her dying family, but he is unable to make the same choice he would demand of her. Some of the narrative voices function as Allen's internal critics, cursing and insulting him in an effort to get him to leave. Despite his vision of leading his people, Allen is never able to make that decision. Although he ostensibly remains to save lives, whether black or white, Allen also recognizes that the anarchy reigning in the city is an opportunity to advance him. People need him, and they want him because he has worked with a famous white doctor; their physical wellbeing is far more valuable than their souls to both Allen and the people he treats. Allen suffers from the same temptation as the people he preached to, one of the voices suggesting he's more comfortable remaining enslaved, is perhaps afraid of the responsibility of being truly free—able and obligated to make his own decisions and accept the consequences. This is his hypocrisy, and his downfall, and it is foreshadowed directly by the story of the old Jewish merchant who tells Allen that in seeking his fortune he lost his family. In tending to the sick white population, Allen abandons his own freedom in the hope of obtaining more materially, but in doing so, he loses what he loves the most, his wife and daughters, who die of the fever. Family seems to be a central bond in the story, without which the entire community can never overcome the poison killing it. The essential isolation of every character, from the dead couple found back-to-back to the Jewish merchant to the old man in the future— the orphan who carries his unborn parents in his belly—seems to result from a loss of family, and an inability to clearly envision a positive future, or past. The devastation of the city results from the destruction of many families, and the isolation of slavery, whether self-imposed or not, is as much a poison as the fever. Present-day narrators offer a deeper view of slavery than could have been provided by Allen's single perspective, in that they show that while the institution of slavery has been abolished, much of mankind is still enslaved—isolated, impoverished, hypocritical. As the epidemic ends and a new day dawns, the city turns its back on the horror rather than face it, much like the dead husband and wife Allen longed to rearrange. In the same stroke, two hundred years pass and the municipal government of Philadelphia purges violence with violence in attempt to restore its illusory glory. The firebombing results in the deaths of half a dozen children. 10 There is no traditional structure to this story, any recognizable beginning, middle, or end. Rather, the narrative—and the narrators themselves—moves in and out of the central time of the story, lending perspectives of both time and distance. The opening imagery, in which the trees are described as barren women, foreshadow the conclusion, which uses the voices of present-day characters to describe a Philadelphia as sick and dying as it was in 1793. The opening description of winter, the epidemic of the summer, and the recurring theme of the ebb and flow of the water that gave birth to the city all make for a cyclic narrative, in which the reader is brought to understand that as long as poison exists in men's hearts, epidemics will recur and slavery will continue. 

Tobias Wolff/Hunters in the Snow

AGENDA:

Hope you are all doing well and staying healthy.

I need to hear from you on Google Classroom and here on the blog!
You can post your writing on Google Classroom.  Short Story #2 is needed if we are to run an online workshop with Zoom. There is also another assignment where you can post any new writing (any genre) so that your portfolio grows.  This is not the time to stop reading and writing.
Thanks to those of you who have already posted.

Please let me know that you are continuing to work on your portfolios.  Instruction is continuing throughout the month of April, and I'd like to give you a specific reading assignment to respond to here on the blog.

READING: Tobias Wolff's "Hunters in the Snow"--a powerful classic short story!

Here is the link:
https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/huntsnow.html

Please respond on the blog to the following questions:

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 

Let me hear from you soon!  I miss you!