Thursday, October 16, 2003

Response 7 due.

Reading

Notes

Remember that reading a short story is very different from reading an essay. For Susan Sontag’s “The Way We Live Now,” I have tried to emphasize ways of looking at the story, not only through answering questions, but also through summarizing basic plot elements. This is probably clear as mud (a cliché to be avoided except when you are the instructor writing at the last minute), but the “questions” below should make this clearer.

As usual, unless I specify otherwise, please write one or two sentences in response to the following questions:

  1. In five to ten sentences, summarize the plot (the action) of the story. (Helpful questions to ask yourself during this exercise include “What is going on?” “Who is doing what?” and “When I reread the story, can I see a direct relation between cause and effect?” but you don’t need to answer these questions explicitly.)
  2. Sontag uses several rhetorical effects in the story; perhaps the most prominent is indirect discourse. Look at the difference between the two sentences in quotation marks: “He said that he was going for a walk,” and “He said, ‘I am going for a walk.’” What role does indirect discourse play in Sontag’s short story? Is it effective?
  3. Sontag writes in a very rambling style. What does this do to the tone of the story?
  4. What do you think of the narrator?

There are, of course, many other questions and things to discuss; feel free to ask some of your own. See you in class! (I will be collecting your answers, partly to see how you handle plot summary, so make sure to write your answers.)

Other things to note for this class:

See you in class!