Sheehy English 11

Upon finishing the book, please write a 300 word article considering the question, “What are your feelings about this book?” It’s a generic question, I realize, but I leave it frustratingly generic in order to allow you maximum flexibility in how you respond.

Please look back to the chapters you’ve read most recently, or even further if you choose, and use 3 or 4 lines from the text to frame your thinking. (I say three or four because if you can hit the word count by considering only three passages, then you may stop.)

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Having read the first chapter of Of Mice and Men and discussed it through both the reading of each other’s blogs and an almost circle discussion, we move to chapter two (pp. 17-37). Before I tell you what I’d like you to do to respond to chapter 2, I’d like to remind you of two of our literary focuses through this book.

The first is characterization, in particular, the indirect characterization Steinbeck uses to portray each of the men (and the one woman) in the story. If I were to demand that you describe George’s characteristics to me, most of you would support your points or cite what George does and what he says. That’s indirect characterization. Steinbeck uses the dialogue of these characters to convey what they are like. They each speak uniquely, and if we were to remove the “George said” comments from it entirely, my guess is that we’d be able to follow the dialogue fairly well. Note how much you learn about characters from the conversations that surround them.

The second literary focus is on character foils - those characters who contrast one another. The most obvious one is George and Lennie (George is smart, Lennie is slow; George is small and quick, Lennie is large and strong), but more come. Can you identify others as they arrive?

Now, as to responding to chapter two — I had you search out at least four important passages as you read, and for this article I’d like you to share those passages and comment on them. I’ll list a series of questions below here to help you know what to say, but ultimately I’m looking for you to comment in 300 words what your reaction to these passages is.

• What is interesting about these passages?
• What makes these passages stand out?
• What has happened here that seems significant?
• What are the likely consequences on the story of the passage you’ve read? (That is, predict.)
• What questions does the passage raise?
• Can you identify in particular with the event or theme that the passage addresses?
• What is your reaction (emotional or otherwise) to what you’ve read here?

Put page numbers by all of your passages so others in the class can find them in their books easily.

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Filed under: Of Mice and Men

When we read stories — especially those from Faulkner — we talked about how a writer loads every detail into it with the most specific intentions. While he was talking about short stories, I think Of Mice and Men (and really, any truly great novel) does the same thing. Each detail, each descriptive point, is intentional and leads us towards the place Steinbeck wants to take us.

For an example, see this seemingly tiny line on page 2:

They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other.

When I read that this time around, I stopped to consider when I have ever seen anything do that. Ducks? Military parades? But even with soldiers, it would be hard for me to imagine two guys walking along in an open field in a single file line. That’s more the kind of thing you see when a teacher or principal is leading a student down the hall for punishment. Here, though, we’ve got two best friends walking like that. One simple image, conveying so much about the relationship between George and Lennie. George in the front, Lennie walking behind like an eager puppy.

Speaking of Lennie and puppies, it is also interesting to me how Steinbeck uses images of animals to describe Lennie — in particular, big animals. Now, I have read the book before and I have noted this characteristic of Steinbeck’s writing about Lennie, but now that I am atuned to it, I see it everywhere.

Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man . . . dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. (2)

[Lennie] drank with long gulps, snorting into the water like a horse. (3)

Lennie dabbled his big paw in the water and wiggled his fingers so the water arose in little splashes. (3)

With all that in two pages, you might be tempted to say Steinbeck overdoes it, but we can decide that later. What, though, is he trying to do? In many of my classes we discuss similes and why authors use them. Homer uses them a lot in The Odyssey, and poets use them a lot. In many of those instances, the author’s intention is to make the unfamiliar seem familiar by comparison. Here, Steinbeck makes the image familiar, but also he makes us associate the character with other things — things like large animals. If you weren’t paying attention, you might find the effect almost subconscious, I would think. It might be fun to test someone out like that — do a picture association test at the end of the book. We could say “Lennie Small” and then hold up a series of pictures and see which one the reader connects most closely with Lennie. Perhaps a bear?

That’s enough from me on this one. It’s time for me to turn to you and see what you’re saying. Obviously I have no problem writing more words about a book than the writer put originally in the book.

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• Original image: ‘Poloa Vienan‘

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Filed under: Of Mice and Men tagged Of Mice and Men, sheehy, steinbeck

Last weekend, during our “spring break” I spent some time in a local coffee shop doing some reading (selections from The Portable Faulkner) and making a withdrawal on the gift card I’d been given (a white chocolate mocha was the item of interest, though my first sip almost burned my esophagus when I forgot how hot they make those silly things).

Anyway, on the other side of the fireplace sat an old fella, presumably drinking something less snooty than I - maybe a cup of black house blend? His was an aura of simple genuineness - he’d ridden his bike and rested it up against the front window, and then when he sat in that cushioned chair he read nothing and looked at nothing in particular. He just stared at others in the shop, possibly fixing one eye’s peripheral gaze on his unlocked property outside. He reminded me of the folks I have seen at McDonalds on a late morning - sitting comfortably and patiently in a booth with a cup of cheap coffee, content to watch the ever-cycling crowd. Thus, I assumed the black coffee.

I did not stare at him, as I was too interested in my reading to be drawn away from it long, and I was therefore surprised when a gruff voice broke the rhythm of Faulkner’s “That Evening Sun.” I looked up to see the old man leaning over me with a stern expression. I hadn’t heard what he had said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, have you noticed you’ve got a hole in your pants?”

“Yes. I have. It’s all my own, though. It wasn’t there when I bought them, and I’m too cheap to buy a new pair.”

“Smart[alec]. What are you reading there?”

“Faulkner. Short stories.” I anticipated his next question and chose to answer it: “They’re pretty good.”

“Garbage.” I anticipated wrong.

With his next words, he dropped himself into the chair beside me, dumping his coffee with a haphazard motion onto the small end table between us. It had a lid, I couldn’t see what it was. “You’re just readin’ that because it’s got his name in huge yellow print on the bindin’. If no one were here - includin’ the silly image you’ve got of yourself - you’d be readin’ the Reader’s Digest sittin’ on that shelf.”

“Wow. That’s strong. I’ll give you the Digest’s joke section. But other than that, I don’t know. What happened between you and Faulkner? Bad introduction in high school?”

“Faulkner, Hemingway, Great Gatsby. You can have them. A bunch of hoity toity ‘watch me and my fancies’ writers. You can’t make any sense out of ‘em, and you can’t enjoy ‘em.”

“Hemingway as hoity-toity? That’s a new one. What would you read? Who’s better?”

“Anybody. Stephen King for one. Somebody who understands it ain’t about fancy stuff, it’s about readin’. Like gettin’ to the next page. Your ‘literature-men’ ” - With this he cast the back of his hand towards my book, as if to brush it out of my hands - “write like they think the reader is going to read it twice.”

“Maybe they will. Don’t you want to think back on something when you’ve read it?”

“Think back? To recall a great scene, sure. To figure out what the heck I just read, no way. If you can’t get it from readin’ it, it ain’t worth gettin’.”

“But thinking on it is the beauty of it. What if you thought back to a great scene and when you remembered it, you suddenly realized it meant more than you first thought?”

“That’s what they say. That ain’t how it works. You think back to it and you wonder why they put that in there. And you don’t know. And the truth is no one knows either, ‘cept a few other hoity-toities who pretend to know and make other people read it.”

“Well, no one said it was easy. But I think regular folks can get this stuff. You could. You probably get it more than you know. All you have to do is reach up to the higher levels of meaning -”

“Now you’re talking like one of them again.” This time he cast the back of his hand to his ear, indicating the rest of the shop behind us? I wasn’t sure how broadly he meant them to be. “You make more sense when you’re defending your ridiculous pants.”

“Okay, okay. What I’m saying is that with some careful reading, some real curiosity - maybe asking other people questions and seeing what a group of people can figure out in conversation - you might get more than you thought you could.”

“Sounds cute. You got an example?”

“Well actually, yeah.” I reached into my bag and withdrew a folder full of essays from my juniors. I don’t know why I had them - I never bring work home and when I do, like this time, I never do anything with it - but I pulled one out this time and handed it to the old man, who took it willingly.

I didn’t hope for much. His eyebrows furrowed as he took the essay from me - a thin, three page sample - and the grimace stayed. Even when he lifted his coffee to his mouth and sipped it, his expression never broke. If you’d taken a picture and photoshopped out the paper, you’d have thought he was drinking the worst cup of coffee in town.

When he finished, he flipped the pages back to the beginning. “Some of these stories he read sound pretty good.”

“They are good. But they’re by your hoity-toity folks - O’Connor, Fitzgerald, Faulkner.”

“They don’t all sound good.” He shot me a look of reproach. “But some of ‘em do.”

“He argues that the more than meets the eye part is what makes the story great.

“I suppose it could - like he said. But I’d have to read these stories to see for myself.”

I held out the copy of the Portable Faulkner and raised my eyebrows.

“Some other time. I got places to go.” With that he struggled out of the chair and took a hunched step to the fireplace, which he grabbed with one hand as he straightened his frame. He laughed through his nostrils one time as he walked away, and I heard him remark without ever looking back to me, “If you’d spend less money on that fancy-coffee you might be able to buy yourself some pants.”

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The assignment: Please write the essay that the old man read. Make it three pages long (I recommend at least 6 paragraphs) and use three stories to support your explanation that a story can have more to it than meets the eye, and that often that “more” is what makes it great.

Put your essay in MLA format.

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Having read Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” you know there’s no way to escape writing about it. Maybe in some corner of my pinky finger there had been hidden a cell that might have let you out of a written assignment for this story, but then I read Kyriana’s and Nate’s fabulously articulate responses to O’Connor’s other story, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” and I couldn’t wait to hear more insight and perspective on more of O’Connor’s work. From a teacher’s perspective, this is what I saw in their articles: effective, engaging personal essays that expressed top-level reading. My natural response is to attempt to bring on a bit more.

For this article, however, I am going to dictate the format a little bit. I want to give you a chance to write an article that injects quotes from the text like little asides. It would be the writing equivalent of when a radio announcer makes a statement and then jumps to a sound bite - but where the sound bite is not specifically introduced or acknowledged in the language around it. I did this a lot in radio when I’d make little promotional spots. One time I wrote a letter to my brother to say happy birthday, and I filled the letter with ridiculous advise and bits of wisdom. After each bit of wisdom the audio would cut to a quote from a movie that we had seen and loved. I never said anything about the quotes, they were just there to augment my points by juxtaposition. In that case, obviously, they were also there to get a laugh.

I do this at times in my blog (see this article on the meaning of poetry for an example), and I think it’s a perfect form for the medium. I take the quotation in question and at the most opportune time I insert it as its own paragraph. I set that paragraph apart with the block quote formatting (located in the tool bar ) and never specifically mention the quote. But it does fit in that context, and it does support my point. I also do this with photographs which I pull usually from a search engine that mines Flickr.

The advantage to you, of course, is that you don’t have to worry about how to punctuate the quote in your article. You simply stick it in there and keep trudging along with your insight.

That is what I want you to do in terms of format. In terms of writing, I want you to use the same general topic that you had for “Winter Dreams” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own“: say something interesting about the story by reflecting on it personally, and do so in at least 250 words. Use four quotes from the story as asides to support your reflection. For “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” you should feel free to compare it to “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” since you’ll see obvious similarities. You don’t have to do so, however.

Write on!

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• Original image: ‘rustic country store‘ by: Je Kemp
• Original image: ‘vintage Sinclair pump‘ by: Je Kemp

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Filed under: Assignments, Quizzical Writers