Today’s Agenda
•1) Collect papers
•2) Journal Entry:
•a. I want you to imagine for a moment that Stephen King has contacted you. He has offered you five million dollars to turn your life story into a new novel. King is asking that you help him out by telling him about what you think the most important moments in your life have been so far. He says he needs to know about at least three major related events in your life for his novel. For the next 10 minutes, I want you to write about these three events and explain how they are related.
•3) Group Work
•a. For the next five to seven minutes, I want you to discuss the following: If someone close to you BUT NOT YOU were to describe the three events you have written about, how would their description of these events be different than YOUR description?
We’ll begin today by looking at John Updike’s short story “A&P”
Let’s look at John Updike’s “A&P”
6) What was our general experience of this short story: GUT REACTION
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ect…
Now that we’ve expressed our gut reactions, let’s begin INTERPRETING the story by noticing that there are a lot of DETAILS in it:
Details about
PEOPLE
PRODUCTS
ENVIRONMENT
But notice that, even though we have all these details, they come to us FROM ONE POINT OF VIEW.
Sammy isn’t just reporting things as he sees them. He colors them with his subjectivity.
7) How does Sammy color our view of what is going on in the A&P
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2
3
ect…
8) How would it be different through someone else’s eyes?
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2
3
ect…
9) What can we tell about Sammy by paying attention to his observations
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2
3
ect…
MAJOR LESSON FOR TODAY: WHEN YOU APPROACH A SHORT STORY, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSIDER WHO YOUR POINT OF VIEW IS, AND HOW THE STORY MIGHT BE DIFFERENT IF IT WERE TOLD FROM ANOTHER, DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW.
Now that we have thought about point of view, it is important to understand that most short stories have a PLOT.
Plot: The series of events that make up the story.
Example of a Plot:1) Consider the order of events in the Wizard of Oz. What are they?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
2) These events are related by causes. They have causal relationships. One event makes another event happen.
We break plots up into EXPOSITION, RISING ACTION, CLIMAX, FALLING ACTION
Exposition: Information that establishes the stories setting and characters
Rising Action: A series of increasingly more dramatic incidents
Climax: The moment of greatest conflict in the story
Falling Action: All post-climax parts of the story. They tend to be increasingly less dramatic as the story comes to its conclusions.
What would be the plot of the The Story of an Hour? or A&P?
Now let’s talk about Sarah Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.
Reaction?
Let’s talk about the story’s Plot: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action
What is the plot structure?
Homework:
Read for next time:
Flannery O’Conner A Good Man is Hard to Find
Post a 1.5 page paper on the following topic: If the Yellow Wallpaper were told by John, how would the story be differnent? Explaine how his point of view would change the differet parts of the story’s plot structure: i.e. exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action.
In April of 2006, my father left for first deployment to Iraq. This was a huge moment in my life because I had to keep the family farm going at least throughout the spring and summer until I started school again. My brother was still away at college so I was left to take care of the snow during the winter and to get potatoes to the store. This experience helped me to become more family oriented and appreciate them all much more. My father’s deployment caused me to decide to join the National Guard as well. Then last summer I was going to basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. This was a difficult time for me personally because I had never spent this much time away from home without anyone I knew. It helped me to grow as a person and to become more task-driven and disciplined. After I returned home from that I enrolled into college here at Husson where the National Guard is helping me to pay for college and I branch out of my comfort zone even more by meeting new people and doing new things.
Comment by Gabe Cheney — September 30, 2008 @ 4:39 pm |
The three major events in my life would have to be first and foremost, graduating High School! This was an achievement for me because I was never a very good student. I always tried my best, but when it came down to finals, I jsut couldn’t get that fantastic grade. It also was a big event because it turned the point in my life when I knew i was finally growing up and going into the big world. Graduating high school is something that my father never acomplished, so I was proud that I had done something right in my fathers eye. My second event was the day I decided to further my education. I am the only one out of my mother, father, and brother to further their education. I knew what i had to do to be able to make a sizable income in the state of Maine, and also have a life outside of my job at the same time. So this right here, was a bigger step then the rest of my family had ever taken. And lastly, another event in which I feel was an important part of my life, was working while going to school. I am in my fourth year of college and have been full time all 4 years. While doing so I have also worked a full time job to pay for my schooling. I feel that if I can work a full time job, attend class, and keep up my grades and homework, I can succeed in life.
Comment by Jen Campbell — September 30, 2008 @ 4:41 pm |
Goldilocks and the three bears.. major events:
1. bears make pourage
2. goldilocks running away
3. bears go for a walk
4. eating pourage
5. trying out the chairs/ breaking one
6. trying out the beds/ sleeping in one7. bears come home.
Comment by Jen Campbell — September 30, 2008 @ 5:15 pm |
Post a 1.5 page paper on the following topic: If the Yellow Wallpaper were told by John, how would the story be different? Explain how his point of view would change the different parts of the story’s plot structure: i.e. exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action.
Exposition: Information that establishes the stories setting and characters
Rising Action: A series of increasingly more dramatic incidents
Climax: The moment of greatest conflict in the story
Falling Action: All post-climax parts of the story. They tend to be increasingly less dramatic as the story comes to its conclusions.
I think that if John were telling the story the exposition of the story would be completely different. Each person has their own views on people and things in the world, so Johns would be completely different. His exposition would describe events and people different because he is the one keeping his wife in the home and he sees no wrong by it, where as his wife does. So when describing people he would also have different ways of explaining them, such as explaining his wife, he would say that she is sick, where as she doesn’t think she really is and that leaving would make her better when he thinks to stay there will make her better.
The rising action in the piece of writing would be different if John was telling the story because John’s reaction to certain things is going to be completely different from his wives. For example, John would possibly describe the color of the wallpaper enjoying to look at rather than dull, smoldering, revolting, and repellent. John finds enjoyment out of seeing his wife struggle, he is causing her to go into depression and a mental break down, so when she breaks down he would say it was a great thing, where as his wife would think of it as something horrible happening to her.
The climax of the story is said to happen at the end of a story. The end of this story ended in a way that John’s wife was happy. The ending of this story could have been told by John as heartbreak, because she did in fact go loony, but she also left him there, lying on the floor. There are endless possibilities to the different climaxes that could have happened at the end of the story if John were telling it.
John’s perception of the falling action could be more of a rising action in his eyes. He would possibly describe it as more of a good thing when his wives family leave because she can get back to going through a break down and he can focus more on that happening, where as she is sad when they leave because she is now alone.
A story is always going to be different when someone else tells it. Not everyone thoroughly tells a story to its full potential, and they often leave out parts that others don’t. This story in particular would be completely different because the whole story is told through the eyes of John’s wife, and if he were to tell it, it would be told in a completely different way!
Comment by Jen Campbell — October 2, 2008 @ 12:45 pm |
Gabe Cheney
Adam Crowley
EH 112
2 October 2008
“Yellow Wallpaper”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The point of view that this story is told from is of a middle aged woman who is going mentally ill. She has a very unique view on everything she sees. Her husband is controlling and practical. Each room in the house that she is staying in poses a different problem. The biggest one is the wallpaper in the room that she sleeps in. Since the story is told from her point of view, we have no choice but take what she says as truth. We could be skeptical of what she is saying but since we have no other way of getting the information, we can’t form any other opinions. If this same story was told from her husbands, John, point of view we would be looking at it completely different. It might not even have the same title.
The biggest difference in how the story would be told is that John is stable. When the wife gets there and starting in on the exposition, she seems care free. She describes the house like it’s just another summer home where she and John can get away. John, I think would be thinking about how he is going to be taking care of his wife while still keeping his job as a physician. As stated in the story John is very practical so he is probably thinking through every little detail about his wife, causing him the be stressed and always doing something. If he was able to put all that aside and think about other things, he wouldn’t look at the house and think of the gardens and flowers like his wife does, he might look at it and think about having a social event there or a farm perhaps. His wife also eludes to a mistress in John’s life so there might be some kind of hint to that relationship is he were to be writing.
The rising action would probably not be centered around the wall paper as it is originally. John doesn’t care about the wallpaper. As a matter of fact he thinks that keeping it there is a good idea so that his wife can get over it mentally instead of making an exception for it. Again, I think that this would be centered around him trying to get help for his wife, and maybe some of his work as a physician.
The climax would be the same situation. He would come home to find his wife, doing something inconceivable in the bedroom with the door locked. I can only imagine the panic that must have sent him into. The story would probably tell more about the thoughts running through his head while he was going down to get the key too.
The falling action probably would have more to do with after he wakes up from fainting. It might have something to do with him finding his wife doing something else crazy or maybe him putting her into an asylum for better treatment.
Comment by Gabe Cheney — October 2, 2008 @ 2:09 pm |
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