Sula 3-6

Find your favorite phrase from the reading (one sentence maximum) and say why. If someone else has taken your phrase, find a different phrase that you like, unless you have something substantively new to say about the first phrase. Good luck!

"A Rose for Emily," revisited

Emily's father and his horsewhip supposedly kept "not good enough" men away from the door of his house and away from his daughter Emily.

1. Can you see how the above might be connected to Emily's odd, probably insane, behaviors--not wanting to admit her father was dead, and keeping the dead body of her lover Homer in a bed and sleeping with it? Can you explain the connection?

2. If you can see a connection regarding (a) above, what might Faulkner be suggesting about the role of social class and people's sense of social status in a southern town like the one Emily lives in?

"A Rose for Emily"

Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi


Please note that this blog prompt assumes you've finished reading the story. It contains spoilers.

1. Find a sentence that draws your attention and quote it, and try to put into words what drew your attention.

2. Try to locate an instance of foreshadowing.

3. True or false: Emily's life included its grotesque elements. Not her appearance; her life.

4. In addition to being creepy and a tour de force of story-telling, this story might be satirizing (making fun of) or at offering a critique of (criticizing) something--what, for example?

5. Try to explain, in your own words, what happens in section V. Once someone has done so, feel free to offer emendations or add details, but don't just repeat someone else's explanation.

6. Notice something about the story that no one else has noticed yet.

guiding questions

Write down a guiding question for one of the short stories we've read. Or say why you think someone else's guiding question would work well as a guiding question. Then you'll choose a guiding question--it can be one that doesn't appear on this blog, or it can be one of these--and start an analytical chart. Complete at least one row (piece of evidence--handle and grapple--implications or questions raised). Do more if you can. Bring your row (or more) to class tomorrow.

But first, your guiding question or comment about someone else's:

Cathedral 27-32 (to the end)

1. Find a place where the author's particular use of language matters and explain.

2. How would you describe the diction (word choice) and/or syntax (order of words) in this story?

3. Look at the very end of the story paragraphs 125-136): comment.

4. Is it possible to say that one development in the story is that the narrator grows as a human being by the end of the story? If so, what has enabled him to grow?

5. If you would agree that the narrator grows as a human being, juxtapose in your mind that idea and the fact that the characters eat and drink heavily and smoke pot. Comment.

6. Notice something no one else has noticed about the reading, and comment.

Cathedral 23-27 through paragraph 55

1. Find a place where language is used in an interesting way, and explain.

OR

2. Is there evidence in this reading assignment that the marriage between the narrator and his wife is not all that it should be?

OR

3. In paragraphs 45 and 46, the narrator says that they did some "serious eating," and they do some serious drinking of alcohol, too. Note also the detail that they leave their dirty plates on the table and "[don't] look back." Comment.

OR

4. At this point in the reading, what adjectives might you use to describe the narrator? The blind man? Why?

OR

5. Notice something no one else has so far about this reading assignment.

CAthedral pp. 21-23, par. 1-16

1. Can you find a place where the author uses language in a notable way? Explain.

OR

2. The story begins, "This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he was on the way . . ." Comment on the word "this" and/or the grammatically-not-necessary use of the word "he."

OR

3. Comment on the character of the narrator.

OR

4. Given the information we have at this point, how would you describe the relationship between the narrator's wife (before she married the narrator) and the blind man?

OR

5. Notice something that no one else has noticed yet about the reading.