unit 3: prose fiction 2
MEETINGs 1/ 2: solzhenitsyn, free-indirect style
Here is Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Commencement Address in 1978. I encourage you watch if you have time.
Welcome to unit 3, a challenging but rewarding unit that will prepare us for our largest project of the year—the reading of War and Peace. In this unit, we’ll balance 5 or 6 shorter works of fiction, a handful of David Lodge chapters, 3 written assignments, AP-style MCQs, and our usual cyclical work. Stay on top of your reading; continue to participate in class; take good notes; give yourself enough time to write your assignments. Learn to work hard not just for this class but for next year as well.
I’ll start class today. Please listen to a few riffs on Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to get us started. I’ll ask you guys to discuss any of them that interest you or any others that come to mind. Most of today’s class will find us meandering about the novel.
Riffs: Ivan and Alyosha are names from classic Russian works of fiction. Are they a nod to those classics? | What solace does work provide? | If former prisoners are in control, why do they treat the prisoners as they do? | Is the novel a theodicy? |Are we meant to see Shukhov as heroic? | What does the narrator’s short reflection at the end contribute to the rest of the novella? Why tabulate the last 3 days? | Why does the story seem so foreign as a narrative? What components are conspicuously missing? | What are the features of the novel? | Page 49
Key point from the end of meeting one: Third-person narrators rely on three types of discourse to allow us access to a character’s interior space: direct, indirect, and free-indirect. Here’s the handout from class.
Key point from the end of meeting two: One sign of a writer’s skill and command is the artistic concentration of language: with an image, a figure, a symbol, or a detail, a writer makes abstract ideas concrete. Images evoke sensory experience; figures transfer something intangible to something tangible; symbols pack a noun with plurality of meaning; details root meaning in the concrete world of the story. Which of the four does Solzhenitsyn rely on most?
Homework after meeting 2:
(1) Study for your next vocabulary and sentence composition assignment.
(2) Read Chapter 9 in the David Lodge text, “The Stream of Consciousness”. In what ways is stream of consciousness narration similar to free-indirect style?
(3) Read and annotate James Joyce’s short story “A Painful Case,” which I’ve provided to you as a handout. Annotate? Yes, annotate, specifically with an eye to the narration styles. Note moments of direct, indirect, free-indirect, and even what’s close to stream of consciousness. How do the styles allow the narrator to inflect the emotions of the characters?
MEETING 3: joyce, “a painful case”
The Anatomy of 50 Great Sentences: [C]
After the vocabulary quiz, we’ll pass through the phases of our first story from Dubliners, which I’ve identified as follows: (1) The ordinary, ordered existence of Mr. James Duffy, (2) Mrs. Sinico wears away at the rough edges of Mr. Duffy’s character, (3) Mr. Duffy exiles himself from life’s feast, (4) Mrs. Sinico’s suicide, (5) “A Painful Case”, (6) Mr. Duffy’s response, (7) Phantom Hand and Epiphany
Key points from today’s class:
(1) Setting can amplify our understanding of and even have an impact on a character’s interior life.
(2) As Mrs. Sinico reorients Mr. Duffy to a greater reality about himself, the 3rd-person narrator increases free-indirect style, mirroring Mr. Duffy’s increased emotional intelligence.
(3) The short story often relies on exactitude and careful placement of detail. “A Painful Case” relies heavily on sound and silence as an objective correlative to aid our understanding of Mr. Duffy.
Homework:
(1) Read “Epiphany” in David Lodge’s The Art of Fiction, pages 146-8.
(2) Read and annotate James Joyce’s short story “Araby” in the Dubliners packet.
MEETING 4: joyce, “araby” and “eveline”
David Lodge says that an epiphany is any passage in which “external reality is charged with a kind of transcendental significance for the perceiver.” He goes on to say that some might seem like an anticlimax, a moment of defeat or frustration. That seems right in Dubliners. What’s the realization in the epiphanic anticlimax in both “A Painful Case” and “Araby”?
In the second half of class today, we’re going to read “Eveline” in five sections, in a style writer George Saunders recommends for approaching a new story for the first time. Divide your text as I indicate, and we’ll begin.
Why pair “Araby” and “Eveline” together? What do they have in common stylistically? What do they have in common thematically? Select a lens through which you can view both of Joyce’s stories. Work together to make a claim that differentiates the stories thematically.
MEETING 5: joyce, dubliners
Today we’ll finish our discussion of all three stories from Dubliners. Then I’ll set your next essay assignment of the semester.
We’ll review what we covered about prose analysis in Unit 1 and apply a prompt to a passage from James Joyce novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. We’ll finish an MCQ set over the same passage.
Homework:
(1) Begin work on your untimed prose analysis.
(2) Read James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”. It’s in the Baldwin anthology sent to you over the summer.
