Alex E. Blazer	Course Site	Syllabus
Study Questions	Exam

Assignments

Traversing the Real of Fiction

English 261N (07131-7): Introduction to Fiction

Summer 2001, T/R: 7:30 - 9:18 PM, Derby Hall 80

Study Questions

What does fiction mean? What does fiction do? How does fiction function? What is the relationship between fiction and reality? What themes—what truths—might fiction confront us with? First and foremost, at the heart of fiction is friction; at the heart of darkness lies intense internal conflict. However, the other elements of fiction function to not only illustrate but also develop those internal conflicts. A question about one element of fiction will overlap with another element and will always point to the core conflict that the text issues. Use these questions about characterization, fiction and film, imagery, point of view, plot and structure, setting, symbolism, theme, and tone to help you analyze any literary text. Then use these study questions regarding the function of particular elements of fiction to help you interpret the texts in this course.

1. John Barth: "Lost in the Funhouse"

• plot and structure
• Why does the story self-consciously reflect on conventional story-telling techniques, including plot and structure?
• What is the effect of this self-reflexiveness on the plot and structure of the story itself?
  on the reader's response to the story as well as the meaning of the story?
• How does the story play with the reader's expectations of conventional narration?
• How does the plot and structure mirror one's experience in a funhouse?
• Does Ambrose or the author-narrator ever resolve his conflict? Does Ambrose ever make it out of the funhouse, metaphorically speaking?

2. Robert Coover: "The Babysitter"

• plot and structure
• How does the story subvert conventional plot and structure?
• How does the core conflict present itself in the contrasts among the different versions or the similarities throughout the alternate realities?
• How does the plot of the different segments reflect the plot of the television programs that the babysitter is watching? To what effect?

3. William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury

• imagery
• What are the recurrent images in each of the separate sections? Which images repeat across sections?
• Do these images serve to unify the novel, if not the narrators?
• What do the sensory images that Benjy returns to again and again (sarsparilla, Caddy smelling like trees, among others) tell the reader about Benjy's character?
• How do the images of honeysuckle, the shadow, Caddy's muddy drawers, among others, make Quentin's abstract thoughts concrete? How do they fail?
• Why does Jason often use financial imagery?
• How is the "literary" imagery of the fourth section distinct from the three kinds of imagery that come before it?
• point of view
• Compare and contrast the three brothers' narrations. What does Quentin tell us that Benjy cannot and vice versa? What about Jason's narrative abilities and denials?
• Why does Faulkner move from first-person narration in the first three sections to third-person narration in the final section? What effect does this change have on one's interpretation of the overall story?
• Why is Caddy prohibited from telling her story in her own words? What is the thematic effect or meaning of seeing her only through her brothers' eyes and never through her own voice?

4. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

• characterization
• Compare the narrator's mental state from the beginning and the ending of the story.
• What, if anything, is inititially wrong with the narrator? What does she become?
• Describe the process of her deterioration. Who and/or what pushes her over the edge?
• Characterize the narrator and John's marriage. How does he treat her? How does she react to him? How does her attitude toward him change within the course of their stay?
• conflict
• What is the narrator's internal conflict? If she is "of two minds" what are they?
• What is the external conflict of the story? How do John and the narrator engage and cover over their tension?
• How does the "rest cure" affect the narrator's internal conflict?
• How does writing affect the narrator's internal conflict?
• setting
• In what kind of society do the narrator and John live? How does it construct their roles in their relationship? How does it determine how they treat and feel about about one another? How does it produce the narrator's original mental state? How might it further affect her mental life?
• Where are they spending the summer? What kind of house is this? What kind of room?
• How does the narrator react to her room? Why?
• symbolism and allegoy
• What does the color yellow represent in the context of this story?
• What do the barred patterns in the wall-paper symbolize?
• What does the woman in the wall-paper symbolize? Why does she shake the wall-paper? Why does she creep? And why does the narrator creep?
• theme
• What does the story say about insanity and its causes?
• the treatment of women's mental health?
• the relationship between the cure and the sickness?

5. Ernest Hemingway: "The End of Something" and "Soldier's Home"

• tone
• What do Hemingway's simple style and plain diction suggest about his attitude toward the world these characters inhabit (and which he created)?
  his attitude toward the real world?
  What kind of consciousness might this iceberg effect be trying to present with such language?
  What might it be attempting to repress?
• Given their conversation (and lack thereof), how does Marjorie feel about Nick? What is Nick's attitude toward Marjorie? toward himself?
• What does Krebs' lying about the war reveal about his attitude toward the war, his actions in it, and the audience to whom he lies?

6. James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• characterization
• What kind of boy is Stephen? How does he interact with and react to his parents, peers, priests, and women? How do they interact and react to him?
• How does he develop over time? In what ways do his primary character traits change as he reaches adolescence and manhood? What aspects of his personality remain the same? Chart over time his relationship with parents, with religion, with politics, with religion, with peers, with women.
• In what ways does Stephen set himself from his peers and parents and religious authority? Why does he do so?
• Do any discrepancies or disparities exist between the views he espouses to family and friends and priests and what he actually thinks?
• setting
• What is the significance of Stephen's charting of his place in the universe?
• How is Stephen's psyche molded (netted) by his place in society as a lower-middle class Irish boy raised by a devout mother, lackluster father, and intellectual and disciplinarian Jesuits in a country, colonized by England, full of religious tension between Catholics and Protestants as well as religious and political rivalries between religious leaders and nationalist leaders battle for power? What inspires Stephen to cast off the nets? How might such tensions allow or even encourage him to rebel?
• Does art afford the artist to transcend his time and place?

7. David Lynch: Blue Velvet

• characterization
• What is Jeffrey searching for? What does Jeffrey desire?
• What does he like in Sandy? What does he like in Dorothy?
• How and why does he juggle the two woman?
• Why does he persist in his investigation even as it turns violent?
• How does he feel about Frank Booth? How does he "really" feel about Frank?
• conflict
• What inner conflict might Jeffrey's investigations serve to deepen or unravel?
• What constitutes the conflict between Jeffrey and Frank Booth?
• imagery
• What do the opening and closing images of the white picket fences, red roses, and red fire engines tell us about the world we're viewing?
• point of view
• Who does the camera predominantly focus on?
• What do the dream montages tell us about Jeffrey's character, his inner conflict?
• plot and structure
• What is the outer, external, frame conflict that sets the story in motion?
• How and why does the movie seem to diverge from that conflict? That is, after the mystery is solved, what new conflict appears in its place and sustains the film?
• setting
• Where and in what time period does this film take place in? Why is it difficult to judge?
• What might this ambiguity have to do with the theme of the film?
• symbolism
• What does blue velvet represent for Frank Booth?
• What is a love letter according to Frank Booth?
• When and why does Frank Booth say, "Now it's dark"?
• What does the candle represent? The candle flickering in slow motion?
• What do the overwhelming noises mean? Where are they inserted?
• What do the robins and the insects represent?
• theme
• What does the film say about the relationship between good and evil in our normal, everyday lives?
• What does the film say abbout human sexuality? About the yoking of sex and violence?
• tone
• What is the atmosphere of the film? What does the polar setting (lght of day/dark of night, quaint small town/evil city) say of the tone of the film? How might the melodramatic and absurd acting impact the feel of the film and the filmmakers attitude toward his subject matter?

8. Toni Morrison: Beloved

• symbolism and allegoy
• Who does Beloved represent? What idea/set of ideas does does Beloved represent?
• Why is Sethe's scar referred to as a chokecherry tree?
• Why does Baby Suggs' ponder color? What do the colors pink and red mean in this novel?
• What is in Paul D's tin box? Why is it rusted shut? What opens it up?
• Why does Stamp Paid carry the ribbon?
• theme
• What does the story say about humanity' inhumanity and cruelty?
• about the relationship between past trauma and present psyche?
• about the possibility of overcoming traumatic realities?

9. Edgar Allan Poe: "The Fall of the House of Usher"

• conflict
• How does Roderk interact with the physical world?
• How does that interaction affect his inner world?
• What is Roderick so afraid of? Why is Roderick so terrified?
• What is the connection between Roderick and Madeline?
• What is the conflict between the two?
• Ditto for Roderick and the narrator.

10. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Slaughterhouse Five

• characterization
• What does the narrator mean when he says that there aren't many characters in thenovel?
• Is Billy a dynamic character? Does he change and evolve?
• conflict
• Why does the author find it difficult to write about the war and Dresden?
• What is Billy Pilgrim's core conflict?& Is Billy psychotic? Why might the question not matter?
• imagery
• Given the absurd or surreal nature of the novel, what is the function of the horrifyingly realistic imagery?
• point of view
• What is the significance of the authorial frame narrative? How does the author's introductory chapter prepare the reader to engage the horrific reality of war in in the coming chapters?
• plot and structure
• Why is the story written in such a nonlinear fashion? How does this play into the Tralfmagorians' view of time and of good literature?
• setting
• When was this novel written? When does it take place? How do both time periods affect the worldview of the other? How do they affect Billy Pilgrim?
• symbolism
• How does the meaning of the smell of mustard gas and roses change throughout the novel?
• theme
• What does the novel say about human cruelty? about the reason and structure of war?
• about humanity's ability to deal with the traumas of war?
• tone
• How does Vonnegut feel about World War II? about the Vietnam War? about Roland Weary? about Billy Pilgrim?

11. Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse

• point of view
• What type of narrative point of view does Woolf use?
• In comparing and contrasting the narratives of the dinner scene with the "Time Passes" section, how does the point of view shift between the two? How does the point of view shift internally?
• How does third-person blend into first-person narration in this novel? To what thematic effect? Why does Woolf bridge first and third person?
• symbolism
• What does the Lighthouse represent?
• What do the abundant references to windows suggest?
• What is the significance of Lily's painting of Mrs. Ramsay and James? Why describe their shape as triangular? Where else do we seen triangles in this particular story? in our public depository of symbolic imagery (hint: iconography)?

Exam Review

the texts

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

Edgar Allan Poe: "The Fall of the House of Usher"

James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Ernest Hemingway: "The End of Something"

"Soldier's Home"

Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse

William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury

 

the elements of fiction

characterization

conflict

imagery

point of view

setting

symbolism

tone

 

The quizzes asked for (more or less) "just the facts, ma'am." The exam compels you to build an interpretation using textual evidence. You've proven that you've read the material on the quizzes, so you don't need to litter the exam with gratuitous plot summary. Instead, showcase your analytical abilities by providing strong, thesis-driven readings of the texts. Use the text inasmuch as it fuels your ideas, your making of sense of the texts.

 

Be prepared to discuss each author, and be prepared to make connections among multiple texts. There will be no questions that allow you to discuss the texts in isolation; rather , you will compare and contrast texts. You will be asked to write two or three essays from a set of four to six discussion questions. Each question will require you to discuss two or three texts, and you won't be able to discuss a text more than once on the exam.

 

Here are the issues that will appear on the exam in some form or another.

1. The elements of fiction: Don't just know their functions, rather be able to apply them to each story, not just the story focused on as an in-class example. Be able to compare and contrast how the elements function differently in different works of literature.
2. The conflicts between individual and society: Why do many of these characters find it difficult to adapt to or simply exist in society? Why do many of these characters rebel or exile themselves? How does this rebellion or self-exile succeed or fail? How and why do some characters come back into the fold?
3. The conflicts between men and women: What puts men and women in conflict? How does sexuality simultaneously unite and separate men and women? In other words, how does sexuality function, and how does it fail to function?
4. The conflicts within families: How and why do some of the families we've read flourish? How and why do some decline? What distinguishes the (relatively) functional families from the deteriorating families? What pits children against their parents? How do these children overcome their resentments, if at all?
5. Time and history: How does the historical time period mold the characters and their conflicts? Alternatively, how and why are certain characters obsessed with their particular eras and/or with the concept of time itself?
6. The function of fiction: How does the reading or writing fiction, broadly defined as any work of art, help certain characters flee from the harsh realities of life? Alternatively, how does fiction engage the traumatic and help certain characters traverse the real?