Sula 56-66

1. Note that Nel is teasing toward Chicken, while Sula is kind. Can you make a guess as to what motivates each to behave the way she does?

2. Chicken goes under water and is gone--suddenly drowned. Can you connect this incident with any other part of the book?

3. Can anyone make sense of the meeting between Sula and Shadrack?

4. Can you explain what is racist about the bargeman's reaction to finding Chicken's body? "Ham's sons" refers to dark-skinned people with African ancestry, named after one of Noah's sons (from the Bible).

Sula 41-56

Heroin being cooked in a spoon


1. Find an example of irony. of whatever kind, and explain.

OR

2, Find an example of a smile or matephor, and say what is being compared to what, and try to say what the metaphor or simile suggests about the author's way of seeing the world.

OR

3. Compare Hannah Peace with Helene, Nel's mother (who is featured in pages 17-29).

Sule 29-41

The kind of shoe Eva might have worn, but only one.

Continuing to keep our focus on language, can you find an example of diction (word choice) that seems to stand out or matter? What makes it stand out or matter? OR find an image that seems to matter, and explain why. As usual, if yours has been taken already, try to take another, unless you have something new or substantive to say.

You've been doing a good job.

One more thing: I said in class that Sula would come into the next section. I misremembered. Sula the character enters the story on page 49.

Sula 17-29

Find what for you is the most interesting piece of imagery and say what the imagery might say about setting, character, or theme. If someone takes your image, use another image, unless you have something substantively new to say. Iamgery: a p lace where the author makes the reader use his powers of sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch.

Sula 7-16

Find an image and say what it says about either the setting, the character the image is connected to, or about Morrison's style. Try to be specific. If someone else has taken your image, write about a different image unless you have something substatively new about the image. Remember that an image is a word or phrase that evokes the reader's sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch.

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?