Discussion Questions for End of Things They Carried

1. Does your opinion of O'Brien change throughout the course of the novel? How so? How do you feel about his actions in "The Ghost Soldiers"?
2. Reread the first paragraph of "The Lives of the Dead." How does O'Brien set us up to believe this story? What techniques does he use to convince us this story is "true"? In general how are details used in this collection of stories in such a way their truth is hard to deny?
3. In your opinion, why does O'Brien choose to include this story about a young girl named Linda in this collection? What does it accomplish?
4. In many ways, this book is as much about stories, or the necessity of stories, as it is about the Vietnam War. According to O'Brien, what do stories accomplish? Why does he continue to tell stories about the Vietnam War, about Linda?
5. Reread the final two pages of this book. Consider what the young Tim O’Brien learns about storytelling from his experiences with Linda. How does this knowledge prepare him for not only war, but also to become a writer? Within the parameters of this story, how would you characterize Tim O’Brien’s understanding of the purpose of fiction? How does fiction relate to life, that is, life in the journalistic or historic sense?
6. Assume for a moment that the writer Tim O’Brien created a fictional main character, also called Tim O’Brien, to inhibit this novel. Why would the real Tim O’Brien do that? What would that accomplish in this novel? How would it strengthen a book about “truth”?
7. Tim O’Brien makes use of repetition as an important stylistic device. What effect does repetition have? Is it effective? Why? Cite an example of his use of repetition in a short story form from each section of the novel and what it achieves in each story.
8. What are some of the characteristics of modern literature found in these stories?
9. Which of these stories did you like best? Why?

So here is Banned Book Link

hot.aol.com/2010/09/27/start-reading-for-banned-books-week/?icid=main|main|dl9|sec1_lnk3|173581

Day Under Fire

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5UpcvFW03M

THE BIG READ--Tim O'Brien's TheThings They Carried

This year, the NEA's "The Big Read" is Tim 'Brien's "The Things They Carried".
Locally, Writers and Books is sponsoring a series of events that you can experience. Check out their calendar of events at: wab.org
Tim O'Brien will be speaking at the University of Rochester on Nov. 4 at 7 pm and at MCC on Nov. 5 at 12 noon.

Here is the website for The Big Read with lots of interesting information and a 28 minute radio interview with Tim O'Brien:
www.neabigread.org/books/thethingstheycarried/radioshow.php

The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

Last night I learned about this novel and have ordered a copy of it. This relates to O'Brien's The Things They Carried. You might want to check this out. I'll share passages with you.

By Edward J. Santella (Malden, MA USA) - See all my reviews--a post
This review is from: The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam (Paperback)
When visiting Vietnam last year, a man stopped me outside the war rememberance museum in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. He carried a shrink wrapped stack of books three feet high and tried to sell me a knock-off copy of "The Sorrow of War". When I told him I'd read it, he broke into a bright smile. He then offered to sell me Greene's "The Quiet American". When I told him I'd read that too, his eyes sparkled, his smile stretched and he put his arm around my shoulders. He took me to meet his friends. He said something in Vietnamese to them. All of a sudden I felt like I was a rediscovered lost relative.

"The Sorrow of War" is a book that's not so much read as experienced. There is no escaping the intensity and naked reality presented. The author is a survivor of the American War who fought in the North Vietnamese Army, but Bao Ninh is kind to neither the North Vietnamese Army nor the Americans and its allies. There's no romanticism in this novel, only honesty.

Originally banned by the Communist government, the book proved so popular that the government reconsidered and lifted the ban. It's now a national treasure.

In my next life, when I'm a teacher, I will assign this to my class to be read back-to-back with Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried". These books could stop a war.

Literary Terms for Friday Quiz

Figurative Language and Figures of Speech

New literary terms for next week:

hyperbole
irony
metaphor
metonymy
oxymoron
paradox
personification
simile
synedoche
understatement (litote)
asyndeton
polysyndeton

AP English Paper #1

AP paper #1 Things They Carried
4-5 page paper, 12 pt. Time font, typed, double-spaced, MLA citation and style, due Oct. 4

How would one read O'Brien's The Things They Carried "literarily" versus "literally"? Using examples from your readings of the text, discuss the rhetorical devices O'Brien uses to tell "story truth" versus "happening truth"--or how he proceeds to tell "a noble lie." Be sure to use MLA citation for this paper.

1. Reading literally differs from reading literarily in several ways, including your relationship to the "truth" of the text, as well as its meaning.

2. When you read literally, you are trying to find meaning; when you read literarily, you are attempting to make meaning.

3. Literary texts provide various signals that invite us to read them literarily; they open themselves to multiple interpretations.

4. Good literary questions call attention to problematic details of the texts under analysis and encourage readers to return to the texts to reconsider those problems.

5. Such formal features as plot, setting, character, point of view, and theme provide you with opportunities to ask specific questions that will help you analyze a short story.

The Things They Carried Discussion Questions

"Stockings"
1. What did Dobbins do with his pantyhose when his girlfriend dumped him?
"Church"
1. What did the monks at the temple help Henry Dobbins do?
2. How does Kiowa feel about the soldiers camping at the temple?
"The Man I Killed"
1. What is paragraph one of the story about?
2. What did the young man hope some day to become?
3. What is Kiowa doing throughout the story?
4. What is Tim doing?
5. What did the boy fear about his performance in battle?
6. How did the other boys at school treat him?
7. What does Tim’s examination of the boy’s body tell us about Tim’s feelings about his death?
8. What was the boy carrying?
9. What does Kiowa keep insisting Tim do?
10. How does Tim respond?
"Ambush"
1. Why did Tim throw the grenade at the young man?
2. What could Tim have done instead?
3. What is the significance of the story’s final image?
"Style"
1. What was the young girl doing when the company came to her village?
2. What did Azar do that night?
3. How did Henry Dobbins respond?

"Speaking of Courage"
1. As the story opens, what is Norman Bowker doing?
2. What happened to Norman's friend Max?
3. On pg. 129, what does Max say about the necessity of God as an "idea"?
4. What happened to his old girlfriend, Sally Kramer?
5. How long has he been doing his present activity? (see pg. 140)
6. What day of the year does this story take place?
7. Which one of his medals was Norman Bowker especially proud of?
8. What medal did he almost win?
9. How did the Song Tra Bong change during the rainy season?
10. What was it about the river that especially got to Norman?
11. What did the town not care to know about?
12. What does the word "bivouack" mean?
13. What did the old women of the ville yell to the men when they bivouacked in the field?
14. What did the soldiers realize was the purpose of the field?
15. In the field, what was the difference between courage and cowardice?
16. What happened to the platoon late in the night?
17. Who did Norman hear screaming?
18. What did Norman see in the glare of the red flares?
19. How did Norman try to save Kiowa?
20. What made him fail?
21. What would Norman never be able to do?
22. Where is Norman at the very end of the story, and what is he looking at?







"Notes"
1. What did Norman do to himself in 1978?
2. What did he feel had happened to him in Vietnam?
3. What does he ask Tim to do?
4. What had O'Brien felt smug about?
5. According to O'Brien, what are you doing when you tell stories about your own experience?
6. How did O'Brien feel about the short story he published from a chapter in "Going After Cacciato"?
7. Ultimately, what "ruined" the story?
8. What did Norman have to say about the story?
9. How did O'Brien revise the story for The Things They Carried?
10. Who was "in no way responsible" for Kiowa's death, according to O'Brien?

Review AP Diagnostic Packet #1

Sept. 16, 17---Discuss questions about The Things They Carried; Quiz on literary terms on Friday; HMWK: Diagnostic packet #1 AP

Review Diagnostic Packet #1

HMWK: Read 117-154 Focus on "Speaking of Courage"

How to Write a Good Intro/ "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong"

QUICKWRITE:
Introductory paragraphs can often be formulaic and boring. For example, the NYS exam asks you to:

A. Acknowledge the quote
B. Interpret the quote, making a philosophical statement relating to the human condition. Then agree or disagree with it (although that can be implied by your interpretation of the statement).
C. Provide two examples from your reading (authors and titles) and explain how they
relate to the quote.
(You can use literary terms subtly in the body of your essay. You do not necessarily need them in the intro.)

For a BASIC INTRO, you can do ABC. Yet, if you want to score higher and be more creative and interesting, try one of the other organizational structures.

BAC (highly recommended) or BCA (ending with the quote)
CBA or CAB (possibilities, too)

Try one of the other structures right now by rewriting your own intro.
How do these other structures work? Which ones will work well for you?

DISCUSSION GROUPS:
HMWK: POST A COMMENT TO THE INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONS
"The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong"

Interpretive questions:
In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," what transforms Mary Anne into a predatory killer? Does it matter that Mary Anne is a woman? How so? What does the story tell us about the nature of the Vietnam War?

The story Rat tells in "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is highly fantastical. Does its lack of believability make it any less compelling? Do you believe it? Does it fit O'Brien's criteria for a true war story?


Basic Level I Reading Comprehension Questions
1. What was Rat’s reputation among the men of Alpha Company, when it came to telling stories?
2. What does Rat insist about his story in this chapter?
3. What was the military discipline like at the outpost?
4. Who were the Greenies and what were they like?
5. Who did Mark Fossie bring to the outpost?
6. What was their plan together, since elementary school?
7. What does Rat say are the similarities between Mary Ann and all of them?.
8. What did Mary Anne begin to do when casualties came in?
9. Where had Mary Anne been the first time she stayed out all night?
10. How did she change as a result of her conversation with Fossie the next morning?
11. How did she respond to Fossie’s arrangements to send her home?
12. When and under what circumstances did Rat see her next?
13. On pg. 106, what is Mitchell Sanders’ attitude about Rat’s way of telling a story?
14. What does Rat have to say about the soldiers attitude toward women?
15. What did the Rat, Fossie, and Eddie find when they entered the Greenies hootch?
16. What kind of jewelry was Mary Anne wearing?
17. What does Mary Anne tell Fossie about his presence in Vietnam?
18. What does Mary Anne say she wants to wants to do with Vietnam?
19. At the bottom of pg. 113, what does Rat say about "the girls back home"?
20. What is the metaphor that Rat uses to explain Mary Anne’s experience with Vietnam?

On the Rainy River and others

HMWK: Read "Sweetheart Of the Song Tra Bong" for discussion tomorrow and the shorter "Enemies" and Dentist"

1. "Love," "Spin" "On the Rainy River"

Some Issues for this reading selection –

1. Short interlude pieces – what are they for? Examine titles
2. "Keep Your Eye On…" (characters Bowker, Azar) What do we learn about them?
3. "Spin" – moments of quiet; if this were music it would be meditative in tone.
"That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story." (O'Brien 40)
4. "On the Rainy River" – let go of clichés of soldiers – what’s the "right thing to do" for Tim? Kill/die because he was embarrassed not to --
5. Introduction of fictional aspect of novel – "hallucinations" at the river.

Metafiction:
Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work.

Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as the 9th-century One Thousand and One Nights and Chaucer's 14th-century Canterbury Tales. Cervantes' Don Quixote is a metafictional novel, as is James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). In the 1950s several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "nouveau roman". These "new novels" were characterized by their bending of genre and style and often included elements of metafiction. It became prominent in the 1960s, with authors and works such as John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, Robert Coover's The Babysitter and The Magic Poker, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and William H. Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome Wife. William H. Gass coined the term “metafiction” in a 1970 essay entitled “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction”. Unlike the antinovel, or anti-fiction, metafiction is specifically fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself.

Questions for discussion:

Why is the first story told in the third person? What effect does it have on you as a reader to then switch to the first person in “Love”? O’Brien also uses the second person in this collection. For example, in “On the Rainy River,” the narrator, trying to decide whether to accept the draft or become a draft dodger, asks: “What would you do?” (page 56). Why does the author use these different perspectives?

Who is Elroy Bendahl, and why is he “the hero of [the narrator’s] life” (page 48)?


At the end of "On the Rainy River," the narrator makes a kind of confession: "The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war" (61). What does this mean?

Literary Terms for Friday Quiz

Here are the new words for Friday's quiz:
Know logos, pathos, ethos

Click the words for examples of these AP terms. For a definition, see your AP packet.

• caricature
• clause
• colloquial/colloqualism
• conceit
• connotation
• denotation
• diction
• didactic
• euphemism
• extended metaphor

Critical Lens on Summer Novels

In class, write critical lens essay on two novels read this summer.

Discussion Questions How to Tell a True War Story

How to Tell a True War Story – Study Guide Questions (pgs 67-85)

1.) Who does Rat Kiley write a letter to?

2.) What sort of things does Rat write about his friend – Curt Lemon?



3.) What did his friend do on Halloween?



4.) What happens when he sends the letter?

5.) List at least four elements of a “true war story”.
>
>
>
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6.) What happened to Curt Lemon?




7.) In a true war story, why is it hard to separate what happened and what seemed to happen?




8.) Why can a true war story not be believed?



9.) Summarize Mitchell Sander’s story about the six men patrol that goes up to the mountains for a listening post operation.






10.) What does Rat Kiley do to a baby buffalo? How do you explain his actions?



11.) The narrator quotes the familiar “war is hell” but adds that it is “not the half of it.” What does he mean?



12.) Why does the woman cry over the buffalo but like the grenade story? What is the deeper meaning of his saying that she wasn’t listening?




13.) What does the narrator mean by saying that the story was a love story and that stories are “never about war”?

Several Discussion topics for The Things They Carried

1. There is an epigraph at the beginning of the text. What is an epigraph? How do writers use them? This epigraph is a citation from John Ransom's Andersonville Diary. Who was he? What was Andersonville? Who "wrote" or "edited" the Diary? Given what you discover about the epigraph and what it introduces, what do you think it accomplishes?
2. "On the Rainy River" questions the American war in Vietnam (40), referring to a series of names and places. Look them up. What was the USS Maddox? Where is the Gulf of Tonkin and what is its relationship to the Vietnamese War? Who was Ho Chi Minh? What was SEATO? What were the Geneva Accords? What was the Cold War and why are dominoes mentioned?
3. Compare the "things" the soldiers carried in Vietnam to the "things" soldiers are carrying in Iraq, both standard issue and personal objects.
4. At the end of "On the Rainy River," the narrator makes a kind of confession: "The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war" (61). What does this mean?
5. According to Mitchell Sanders, "What you have to do...is trust your own story. Get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself" (106). What is "metafiction"? Why might someone call this book metafiction? See this web site about O'Brien for more information: http://illyria.com/tobsites.html
6. Are there any clues about what O'Brien thinks of his narrator? What should the reader think of him?
7. One of the web sites treating O'Brien and his books leads to a site about magical realism. What is magical realism? Here's the site: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/magreal.htm. Find other examples of magical realism in the novel.
8. Tim O'Brien once made the following assertion in an interview with Texas Monthly: "Good movies -- and good novels, too -- do not depend upon 'accurate portrayals.' Accuracy is irrelevant. Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape; finally makes us look inward at ourselves." (Texas Monthly, Nov. 2002. Qtd. In http://illyria.com/tobhp.html#Newsletter )

What is an "accurate portrayal?" How does The Things They Carried function as art? Does it provide "accurate portrayals?" Of what?
9. Try taking any two chapters (or just Chapter 1 or just Chapter 3) and find all the metaphors and similes that O'Brien uses. List them and discuss how they work.
10. In the set of review snippets on the front pages of our paperback edition of the book, the one from The New Yorker says that "...events are recalled and retold again and again, giving us a deep sense of the fluidity of truth and the dance of memory." What does this comment refer to? Are there examples in the text that gave rise to it? What makes truth fluid? And how can memories dance?
11. O'Brien talks about courage in a range of ways. Discuss.
12. Compare Hemingway's war stories to O'Brien's. (For instance, in his collection In Our Time, which surely inspired "On the Rainy River"). Do O'Brien's characters exemplify Hemingway's definition of "guts" as "grace under pressure"? Hemingway also writes, "in modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason." Is the Vietnam War experience different from that of WWII?
13. "Stories are for joining the past to the future" (38). Is this statement true? Can "stories" affect the future?
14. "Love" is the title of an entire chapter. Are there other treatments of love in the work?
15. In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," what happens to Mary Anne Bell? (89).
16. What is the form that the chapter "Good Form" talks about? (179).
17. What do the following sentences mean? "I want you to know what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (179).
18. How can the narrator answer his daughter's question in both the ways he speaks of in "Good Form" and be honest?
19. Using O'Brien's The Things They Carried as a model, what is the weight of the things students carry?
20. Where are soldiers of color in this narrative vs. where were they in real life in the Vietnam War?
21. O'Brien makes intertextual references to Brigadoon, Barbarella, and The Man That Never Was. What is intertextuality? In what way do these references add to the fabric of the novel?
22. What is the legacy of Vietnam for America today?
23. Is it possible to "win" a war? Are there any victors?

Discuss "The Things They Carried"

"What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty. As a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded. He also carried between 10 and 15 pounds of ammunition draped in belts across his chest and shoulders."

"The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among them were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellant, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, and two or three canteens of water."

"They carried the land itself--Vietnam, the place, the soil-powdery-orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatiques and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity."

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intanigbles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specifc gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide...They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing."

* Briefly discuss the differences between "literal" things that the soldiers carried and "figurative" things. What are some "literal" and "figurative" things that the students carry with them every day to school?

HMWK: Study for quiz, read "How to Tell a True War Story"
Friday--Quiz on vocabulary
Monday --Write critical lens from Summer reading

Literary Terms for Quiz Friday

1. Allegory
2. Alliteration
3. Allusion
4. Ambiguity
5. Analogy
6. Antecedent
7. Antithesis
8. Aphorism
9. Apostrophe
10. Atmosphere
11. Anaphora

Ambush

View part of O'Brien video

Read "Ambush"

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."

A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tim's went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Discussion questions

* Why does the narrator lie to his daughter, and how does he justify it? Do you think she will ask him the same question when she's older? Why/Why not?
* The narrator "keep[s] writing war stories." What does he expect the writing to do? Do you think it is working?
* Why doesn't the narrator let the soldier pass? How do you think you would have reacted in a similar situation?
* Why do you think the narrator focuses on the gory details of the soldier's death?
* Kiowa tells the narrator that it was a "good kill." What does this phrase mean in its military context? Do you agree or disagree with Kiowa's interpretation? Why/Why not?
* How do individuals justify killing during wartime when they would not kill during times of peace? What does this tell you about humans' tendencies toward self-preservation?
* What steps could the narrator take to end his own torment about killing the man? How can we come to grips with the guilt we feel over some of our actions?

Post a comment.

HMWK: For tomorrow, read "The Things They Carried" short story

Discussion Questions Eat, Pray, Love

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Gilbert writes that “the appreciation of pleasure can be the anchor of humanity,” making the argument that America is “an entertainment-seeking nation, not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one.” Is this a fair assessment?

2. After imagining a petition to God for divorce, an exhausted Gilbert answers her phone to news that her husband has finally signed. During a moment of quietude before a Roman fountain, she opens her Louise Glück collection to a verse about a fountain, one reminiscent of the Balinese medicine man’s drawing. After struggling to master a 182-verse daily prayer, she succeeds by focusing on her nephew, who suddenly is free from nightmares. Do these incidents of fortuitous timing signal fate? Cosmic unity? Coincidence?

3. Gilbert hashes out internal debates in a notebook, a place where she can argue with her inner demons and remind herself about the constancy of self-love. When an inner monologue becomes a literal conversation between a divided self, is this a sign of last resort or of self-reliance?

4. When Gilbert finally returns to Bali and seeks out the medicine man who foretold her return to study with him, he doesn’t recognize her. Despite her despair, she persists in her attempts to spark his memory, eventually succeeding. How much of the success of Gilbert’s journey do you attribute to persistence?

5. Prayer and meditation are both things that can be learned and, importantly, improved. In India, Gilbert learns a stoic, ascetic meditation technique. In Bali, she learns an approach based on smiling. Do you think the two can be synergistic? Or is Ketut Liyer right when he describes them as “same-same”?

6. Gender roles come up repeatedly in Eat, Pray, Love, be it macho Italian men eating cream puffs after a home team’s soccer loss, or a young Indian’s disdain for the marriage she will be expected to embark upon at age eighteen, or the Balinese healer’s sly approach to male impotence in a society where women are assumed responsible for their childlessness. How relevant is Gilbert’s gender?

7. In what ways is spiritual success similar to other forms of success? How is it different? Can they be so fundamentally different that they’re not comparable?

8. Do you think people are more open to new experiences when they travel? And why?

9. Abstinence in Italy seems extreme, but necessary, for a woman who has repeatedly moved from one man’s arms to another’s. After all, it’s only after Gilbert has found herself that she can share herself fully in love. What does this say about her earlier relationships?

10. Gilbert mentions her ease at making friends, regardless of where she is. At one point at the ashram, she realizes that she is too sociable and decides to embark on a period of silence, to become the Quiet Girl in the Back of the Temple. It is just after making this decision that she is assigned the role of ashram key hostess. What does this say about honing one’s nature rather than trying to escape it? Do you think perceived faults can be transformed into strengths rather than merely repressed?

11. Sitting in an outdoor café in Rome, Gilbert’s friend declares that every city—and every person—has a word. Rome’s is “sex,” the Vatican’s “power”; Gilbert declares New York’s to be “achieve,” but only later stumbles upon her own word, antevasin, Sanskrit for “one who lives at the border.” What is your word? Is it possible to choose a word that retains its truth for a lifetime?

Discussion Questions The Bell Jar

About This Book


"I was supposed to be having the time of my life."

As it turns out, Esther Greenwood--brilliant, talented, successful, and increasingly vulnerable and disturbed--does have an eventful summer. The Bell Jar follows Esther, step by painful step, from her New York City June as a guest editor at a fashion magazine through the following, snow-deluged January. Esther slides ever deeper into devastating depression, attempts suicide, undergoes bungled electroshock therapy, and enters a private hospital. In telling her own story--based on Plath's own summer, fall, and winter of 1953-1954--Esther introduces us to her mother, her boyfriend Buddy, her fellow student editors, college and home-town acquaintances, and fellow patients. She scrutinizes her increasingly strained relationships, her own thoughts and feelings, and society's hypocritical conventions, but is defenseless against the psychological wounds inflicted by others, by her world, and by herself. Pitting her own aspirations against the oppressive expectations of others, Esther cannot keep the airless bell jar of depression and despair from descending over her. Sylvia Plath's extraordinary novel ("witty and disturbing," said the New York Times) ends with the hope, if not the clear promise, of recovery.



1. What factors, components, and stages of Esther Greenwood's descent into depression and madness are specified? How inevitable is that descent?

2. In a letter while at college, Plath wrote that "I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar." Is this the primary meaning of the novel's titular bell jar? What other meanings does "the bell jar" have?

3. What terms does Esther use to describe herself? How does she compare or contrast herself with Doreen and others in New York City, or with Joan and other patients in the hospital?

4. What instances and images of distortion occur in the novel? What are their contexts and significance? Does Esther achieve a clear, undistorted view of herself?

5. Are Esther's attitudes toward men, sex, and marriage peculiar to herself? What role do her attitudes play in her breakdown? What are we told about her society's expectations regarding men and women, sexuality, and relationships? Have those expectations changed since that time?

6. Esther more than once admits to feelings of inadequacy. Is Esther's sense of her own inadequacies consistent with reality? Against what standards does she judge herself?

7. With what specific setting, event, and person is Esther's first thought of suicide associated? Why? In what circumstances do subsequent thoughts and plans concerning suicide occur?

8. In addition to Deer Island Prison, what other images and conditions of physical and emotional imprisonment, enclosure, confinement, and punishment are presented?

9. What are the primary relationships in Esther's life? Is she consistent in her behavior and attitudes within these relationships?

10. Esther bluntly tells Doctor Nolan that she hates her mother. What is Mrs. Greenwood's role in Esther's life and in the novel? Is Esther just in her presentation of and attitude toward her mother?

Discussion Questions Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

By Stephen Chbosky

Discussion Questions

1. Why do you think Charlie wants to remain anonymous? Have there been times when you wish you could have, or did?

2. Would you be friends with Charlie? Why or why not?

3. What do we learn about Michael? Do you sympathize with Charlie's reaction?

4. What do you think about Susan's relationship with her boyfriend? When Charlie tells Bill, did you think Bill would call his parents? Do you think that was the right thing to do? What do you think of her parent's reaction?

5. Discuss Charlie's reaction to his brother and sister throwing a party. What did you think about the couple in his room? What about Charlie's response?

6. What do you think being a wallflower is? Do you agree with Bob's definition?

7. How do you feel about Patrick and Brad's relationship? Do you think Patrick is understanding of Brad's feelings? What chance at a relationship do they have? Do you think that you can have a 'true' relationship built on secrets?

8. Charlie mentions that his dad "had glory days once." What do you think Charlie's glory days will be? Do you think he is worried about not having any?

9. Discuss Charlie's family holidays. Are there elements that are universal to every family dynamic? Has anything about Charlie's family surprised you? Describe aunt Helen. What kind of person is she?

10. Talk about the mixed tapes in the story. Are you familiar with the songs and bands? Why do you think Charlie speaks about them so often?

11. Do you like that the story is told through letters? Do you feel you know the kind of person Charlie is? His friends and family?

12. Several important issues come upduring the course of the book, ranging from molestation to drug use. How does Charlie deal with these? How have the issues affected his friends and family?

13. Charlie has a few breakdowns. Do you feel hopeful for him? How much of his past explains his present?

14. Charlie's friends are moving away at the end of the story. Where does this leave Charlie? Can he make new friends?

15. Bill is very supportive of Charlie. How does this affect Charlie?

Stephen Chbosky grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Southern California's Filmic Writing Program. His first film, The Four Corners of Nowhere, premiered at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win Best Narrative Feature honors at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. He is the recipient of the Abraham Polonsky Screenwriting Award for his screenplay Everything Divided as well as a participant in the Sundance Institute's filmmakers' lab for his current project, Fingernails and Smooth Skin. Chbosky lives in New York.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is his first novel.

Discussion questions Time Traveler's Wife

About This Book


Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals—steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Questions


1. In The Time Traveler's Wife , the characters meet each other at various times during their lifetime. How does the author keep all the timelines in order and "on time"?

2. Although Henry does the time traveling, Clare is equally impacted. How does she cope with his journeys and does she ultimately accept them?

3. How does the writer introduce the reader to the concept of time travel as a realistic occurrence? Does she succeed?

4. Henry's life is disrupted on multiple levels by spontaneous time travel. How does his career as a librarian offset his tumultuous disappearances? Why does that job appeal to Henry?

5. Henry and Clare know each other for years before they fall in love as adults. How does Clare cope with the knowledge that at a young age she knows that Henry is the man she will eventually marry?

6. The Time Traveler's Wife is ultimately an enduring love story. What trials and tribulations do Henry and Clare face that are the same as or different from other "normal" relationships?

7. How does their desire for a child affect their relationship?

8. The book is told from both Henry and Clare's perspectives. What does this add to the story?

9. Do you think the ending of the novel is satisfactory?

10. Though history there have been dozens of mediums used for time travel in literature. Please cite examples and compare The Time Traveler's Wife to the ones with which you are familiar.

September 2/3 Agenda

Discuss AP Essay grading scale and criteria.

Share essays and peer edit in groups of 4. Establish rubric and categories of overall PURPOSE/main idea (MEANING), handling of prompt, organization and development, sentence structure (SYNTAX), use of language (DICTION), grammar and usage.

Handout: AP Resource packet

Assignment: Go over AP terms --first ten words "the A list" for quiz next Friday

First novel: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien