Homework for Thursday Feb 11--"A&P"

Read John Updike's "A&P" (220)

Note:  "Green" that I asked you to read is missing a page so don't bother!

Blog on any of the following topics for Updike for extra credit or to make up for missing blog:

1. Sammy's "objectification" of the girls: how does Updike get us "inside" adolescent mind?

2.  How are other customers in the store described? What does Sammy's view of them tell us about how he sees ordinary life in this New England town?

3.  How is this a coming of age story?

4.  Sammy's decision: why does he do what he does?  What is the mood at the end of the story?

5.  Updike is famous for writing "detail-sticky prose", for "threading observational beauty atop a loose plot"; for "chronicling moments of the heart's self-awareness"  (John Freeman, "Truth Skillfully Arranged: John Updike's Uninhibited Fiction,"): find examples of any of these things.

Homework for Feb. 9-11 and End of Semester Schedule; Final Essay Topic

For February 9, read "Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

IMPORTANT-LAST PAGE OF STORY MISSING FROM COURSEPAK: HERE IS LINK TO ONLINE VERSION OF STORY:

https://www.d.umn.edu/~csigler/PDF%20files/oates_going.pdf


SPECIAL NOTE: I HAVE DRAFTED FINAL ESSAY TOPIC AT BOTTOM OF POST BELOW--PLEASE DO BRIEF BLOG ON THIS TOPIC SO WE CAN DISCUSS IN CLASS NEXT WEEK (THIS WILL BE YOUR FINAL BLOG).

WEEK OF FEB 9-11:

Bring to class your ideas and images for Visual Essay (Essay #2).  Please include a summary of main traits of your female character.  We will do some peer critique of your ideas.

We will also continue screening of Moolaade.

Here is end of semester schedule:

Thurs. Feb. 11: Peer critique of Essay #2

Tues. Feb. 16: Submit Revision of Essay #2 (THIS IS OUR LAST CLASS)

Friday, Feb. 19: submit final essay-reflection

Monday Feb. 22: conferences, return of essays, grades to be submitted

Final Essay Topic:

In the majority of texts we have studied, two themes have been surfaced in our discussion:

1. ways in which women experience male control, domination (cultural effects of patriarchy)
2. ways in which they respond to this experience by creating their own space, discovering their own voice, and, sometimes, outsmart their "colonizers."

Choose TWO texts we have read (NOT ones you have already written about) and trace the female characters' movement from recognition of a problem to confrontation and response.  How are the recognitions similar/different?  How are the responses similar/different? Whose response seems most creative and/or effective?

Homework for February 4: "Boys and Girls" and "The Youngest Doll"

Please read both of these stories and be sure to read additional essay on The Youngest Doll.  Do brief focused blog on any one story and any one or two questions below.  Try to include a juicy quotation that we can use for discussion:

"Boys and Girls"

This is a story about how gender (not sex) is constructed.  Gender is a prescribed set of behaviors that we learn. A note about the calendars: they depict colonization of Canadian territory, overcoming of natives, of animals.  They may also be pornographic--connection between subjection of nature and women?

1.  How are different "spaces" in the story "assigned" to males or females?

2.  How does the daughter initially seek to align herself with father and male identity?  What specific things does she do that support her assumed masculine identity?

3.  Men have the power/capacity to "enclose" nature (animals and women).  How do foxes and horses participate in this metaphor of enclosure, control?

4.  Discuss the role of the mother--her movement within and across "spaces" and her desire to enclose daughter?  How do others in story also seek to repress girl?

5.  Why is Flora important--symbolically and literally for the girl?  Why does she do what she does?

6. Story's ending: do you think she gives in, succumbs, to being a "girl" or is there another way to read the ending?

"The Youngest Doll"

Be sure to read the article about Puerto Rico and "Operation Bootstrap" so you understand the social context of this story--the demise of the sugar plantation aristocracy, the rise of sweatshops by American businesses.  As you read the story think about what the various characters and events might represent.  My questions below lead you to a "mapping" of the various historical events onto the story.

1.  The story is an example of "magical realism"--look up and think about what elements in the story seem magical but at the same time real--why is this an effective literary device?  For example, the early scene in which the young woman goes for a swim and is bitten by a prawn--how is this literally true but also symbolic?  What is she bitten by?

2.  How might the various dolls and women in the story also be the "body" of Puerto Rico under change?

3.  What do the doctor and the doctor's son represent?  Why is the key scene in which the doctor admits he deliberately did not cure the woman of the prawn bite important?

4. The aunt eventually has created 126 dolls of all ages.  How might they be connected to the economic events discussed in article?

5.  The youngest girl decides to marry the doctor but there is evidence she does not like him--what is the evidence?  What is wrong with the doctor?

6.  How do you read what has happened at end of story? What has happened to the girl?  What is the significance of the prawns?  Do the women, the aunt and the niece, have a kind of revenge?