unit 3: prose fiction 1 — kazuo ishiguro’s The remains of the day
meeting 6: what remains of the remains of the day
At the beginning of today’s class, we’ll study the parts of the sample prose analysis on the excerpt from Johnny Got His Gun. What score would it get, according to the rubric? I’d also like to hear your sample thesis statements.
We’ll then finish our discussion of The Remains of the Day:
Is Mr Stevens’ final speech to Miss Kenton, er, Mrs. Benn at the bottom of 239 motivated once again by emotional withdrawal and false dignity or by sacrificial silence for her sake because she’s married? Is this genuine love or more emotional withdrawal? What am I really asking? Is Stevens redeemed at the end of the novel?
What are the purposes of the epilogue? What loose ends are tied tightly? What loose ends are still dangling or frayed?
What’s THE thematic question of the book?
Homework:
During our next class, you’ll write your first prose analysis. To prepare, read one more set: I have for you a sample passage from The Mayor of Casterbridge and the corresponding prose analysis essays. Response 2A is another model: notice the line of reasoning simply and clearly follows the chronology of the passage.
Please bring a charged device, laptop or iPad, as you’ll be typing your response in AP Classroom.
meeting 5: the remains of the day’s plot
After the vocabulary quiz, I’ll share two stories, alike in many respects but with a few key differences. These differences determine whether a story has a plot or merely a series of events.
Key points from today about plot:
(1) Plot is a careful ordering of related events, linked to character, that leads to a fundamental change in the world of the story.
(2) Character determines incident; incident illuminates character.
(3) Narrative structure can be linear, circular, meandering; it can follow a prescribed pattern or veer from the form.
Is Mr Stevens’ final speech to Miss Kenton, er, Mrs. Benn at the bottom of 239 motivated once again by emotional withdrawal and false dignity or by sacrificial silence for her sake because she’s married? Is this genuine love or more emotional withdrawal? What am I really asking? Is Stevens redeemed at the end of the novel?
What are the purposes of the epilogue? What loose ends are tied tightly? What loose ends are still dangling or frayed?
What’s THE thematic question of the book?
Homework:
Read the passage from Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Write a thesis about the complex relationship between the young man and his father. Read the sample essay. Compare its thesis to yours. Score the sample essay.
meeting 4: messrs., misses, drs., sirs, and lords
There are three key episodes in the latest reading: (1) the “turning point” between Mr Stevens and Miss Kenton, (2) the conversation in Mr and Mrs Taylor’s cottage, and (3) the episode in 1935 with Mr Spencer. We’ll cover all three, and I’d ask three students to lead us through the episodes, one for each. Summarize it; take us to the key passage; lead us through a close reading; explore the implications.
In his chapter on names in The Art of Fiction, David Lodge says that in fiction names “are never neutral”. In fact, he says, “[t]hey always signify, if it is only ordinariness” (35). Let’s brainstorm the thematic work ‘names’, specifically ‘titles’, accomplish in this novel.
In the second half of class today, I’d like for us to return to the passage from Middlemarch. Recall the conversation at your table: what did you decide about the complex relationship between husband and wife? Now, use my thesis and intro model to write one of your own.
Homework:
Finish The Remains of the Day, pages 205-245.
meeting 3: “trivial matters,” “simple oversights”
Good reading often means recognizing patterns and building a network of passages that begin to speak to one another. Let me begin today by taking you through one such network that I’ve been annotating, a series of moments in which Mr. Stevens seems almost obsessed with minimizing mistakes, failures, and embarrassments as things smaller and more forgivable than they really are. Taken together, these passages might help us understand why Stevens is so quick to rationalize the behavior of the people he loves.
I’ll ask one or two of you to take us to a moment from the recent reading that stands out to you.
In the second half of class, we’ll read a prose passage and begin to discuss prose analysis thesis statements. Note that your first prose analysis has been scheduled for either November 3 or 4.
Homework:
Read The Remains of the Day, pages 164-201.
meetings 1/2: the task of prose analysis
Prose analysis is the work we do on a single page to help us uncover larger ideas in a work of fiction. We’ll begin our study of Ishiguro’s novel with our first real prose analysis of the year, using a passage from The Remains of the Day. Here’s your prompt:
The following excerpt is from Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel The Remains of the Day. In this passage, a son in his middle years visits his dying father in the father’s bedroom. Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Ishiguro uses literary elements and techniques to portray the complex relationship between the father and the son.
Let’s consider the features of the prompt first and then work the passage together.
After, there are three questions I’d like us to consider:
What is your wider impression of Mr. Stevens beyond our close reading passage?
What do you see Ishiguro setting up thematically in the early going?
What is the genre of the novel as far as you can tell?
At the end of the class, I’ll introduce periodic sentences, your next sentence type. [BB] [KK]
Homework:
For meeting 2:
(1) Read “Point of View” and “The Unreliable Narrator” in David Lodge’s The Art of Fiction.
For meeting 3:
(1) Read The Remains of the Day, pages 129-164, stopping at the end of the paragraph ending “I have never quite been able to decide.”
