Although Ritter’s education and much of her writing is as a playwright, she is becoming increasingly known as a humorist. Her recent collection of short writings “Ritter in Residence†was a commercial success and her short stories have earned her a reputation as one of Canada’s funniest women writers. Born in Regina, Ritter attended McGill University for her degree in English literature and then attended the University of Toronto’s Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama. Starting in 1970 she taught drama at Loyola College in Montreal but turned her attention to writing in 1973. Her first play, A Visitor from Charleston, received poor reviews, but two of her later efforts, The Splits and Automatic Pilot, were commended for their witty dialogue and vibrant characters: the latter play won the Chalmers Award in 1980. Ritter has also written for television and radio, and has published many short stories in magazines.
Month: September 2006
Exploring the Text
- After you have read this piece, respond to it in your journal. You may wish to take some of the following questions into consideration:
- What impression of this piece did you have when you read the first five paragraphs? Did it feel like a story? If not, explain why.
- When you were half way through, did you have any idea of where the story was going?
- Do you enjoy Ritter’s style? If you do, describe the passages you enjoyed most. If you don’t, explain why. Have you read any other works that had a similar tone? Explain.
- Describe the dominant tone of this piece—or is there more than one tone? Explain. What do you think was Ritter’s aim in writing it? Evaluate her success in achieving her aims.
- Ritter satirizes the “kind of meaningless adjective-noun†phrase so much admired by commercial airlines. Working with at least two other people reread this piece, collecting as many examples as you can of such jargon. Airline staff, of course, are not the only people who use meaningless, ambiguous phrases: so do some psychologists, some educators, some business people, characters on some television shows, and many advertisers. Join up with a few other students so there are four or five groups in the class. Work with your group to collect examples of such phrases over a one-week period. Arrange your findings in an eye-catching bulletin-board display. Make certain you do not give viewers the idea that these are admirable phrases!
Personal Response
Imagine that your mind is being invaded by a flight attendant but the transformation is not complete. You don’t quite know what is happening but you know you are not always in control of what comes out of your mouth or of what you write. Assume you are writing to a close friend to describe a recent game, part, or trip. Write the letter. Before you begin, decide whether you are aiming for comedy, pathos, or horror.
Media
Watch the 1978 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers . Watch special effects—music, camera techniques, sound effects, juxtaposition of scenes, etc.—are used to create horror? Rewrite one of the scenes from Ritter’s piece to create an atmosphere of horror, script it, and then try the results on videotape or audiotape.
Language
The profession of flight attendant is not, of course, the only one that has its own peculiar language; every job does. Working with four other students, create a situation in which a number of people with different jobs/professions might be talking in a group: a traffic accident, a community meeting, a home and school meeting, etc. Be very specific about the nature of the situation. Each of the group members should privately select a profession and take a day or two to think about and/or research the kind of language people in that profession use. When the group next convenes, get into role and discuss the chosen situation with the others. Remember, you have an opinion to express but you also have to respond to the others in-role. Try not to stereotype. After the exercise, see if the others in the group can guess your role. Did you feel you were convincing in your role? When did you find it most challenging?
“Fairie Tale” by Janice Elliott (England)
If many modern and postmodern fictions are about the process of writing stories, Janice Elliott’s “Fairy Tale†is about that process being at once motivated and overwhelmed by the writer’s own desire—a desire she obviously shares with us, her readers—to hear stories. And the story she, and we, really want to hear is not just any story, but our story, the story in which we are hero/heroine, the story in which our dreams come true.
In other words, we want to hear a fairy tale. But if we start out to tell ourselves one (and who else is likely to undertake the task?), we find we have a more demanding audience than we expected—our sophisticated, critical, feet-planted-firmly-on-the ground selves. Unlike children, adults are not content to hear their own names glorified with the title of princess or knight. They want the best of both worlds—the dream career and the knight in shining armour: the perfect house, congenial neighbours, an understanding mate, and a secret lover, a felicitous forest, and children who fall asleep at convenient times. In adult fairy tales, a person can enjoy both the status of “good womanâ€/â€good man†and “boundless ecstasy†beside a bubbling brook. But, like that other fairy-tale character, the old woman in the vinegar bottle who wants to be God, the importunate adult wants safeness that entropy can beseige even perfection. Therefore, like Elliott, the adult must create a fairy tale whose plot is forever deferred by innumerable ironic asides and by countless new beginnings. In adult fairy tales there can be no “happily ever after†because the tale itself never ends, but, like Finnegan, begins again—and again—and again.
Janice Elliott, 1931—
Janice Elliott was born in Derby, England, and was educated at Oxford. She has written over twenty novels for adults and four for children, and has contributed stories to many anthologies and magazines. She is also well known as a critic, spending seventeen years as a regular book reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph, and as a journalist on the editorial staff of House and Garden, House Beautiful, Harper’s Bazaar, and the Sunday Times. Her most famous work is probably the novel Secret Places which earned her the Southern Arts Award for Literature in 1981, was adapted to film in 1984, and re-released by Twentieth Century—Fox/TLC Films in 1985. She is admired for her talent at creating mood and atmosphere, and her crisp but revealing dialogue. Her other novels include the post-World War II trilogy A State of Peace, Private Life, and Heaven on Earth; Summer People, a futuristic work of social criticism; and the impressionistic Magic.
Exploring the Text
- There is a lot of humour in Elliott’s tale, and much of it depends on the element of surprise. But not all people find this kind of humour effective. Share your feelings about the humour in this story with one other person, focusing first on the sections you found most amusing and then on those you did not find amusing.
- The forest, with its “black heart,†is a pervasive image in this piece. Working with one other student, collect all the information you can about this forest and the characters’ relationship to it. Examine your collected materials and speculate on the significance of this image. Compare your ideas with those of other groups in a whole-class discussion.
- Analyze Caresse’s long speech to her guests beginning, “O, we are so lucky†down to and including “I had a silly afternoon in the forest today (p. 115). Focusing on tone, diction, and sentence structure, write a critique of this passage. What do these elements suggest about Caresse’s state of mind?
Personal Response
Keep a progressive record of your responses to this short fiction as you read “Fairy Tale” for the first time. Although the author has divided it into sixteen sections, we can combine some of these to form a total of eight sections: section one, section two, section three; sections four plus five; six plus seven and eight; section nine; ten plus eleven and twelve: and, finally, sections thirteen plus fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen together. As you read each of these eight main sections, keep a record of your responses. Explain how the story makes you feel, why you feel this way, and what you think will happen next. Take time to explore your feelings. Let yourself wander through your own responses just as you wander through the story. Above all, be honest. When you have finished writing, think back over the story as a whole. Select three adjectives that you feel best describe this story. Compare your responses and choices with those of others in your class.
Media
The tone in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail is similar in some ways to the tone of this short fiction in that it, too, seems to shift back and forth between a respect for, and a parodying of, the fairy-tale genre. View this film and select three scenes from it to compare with three scenes form “Fairy Tale.†Remember you are focusing on tone, not plot. Look for differences as well as similarities.