Category: Intratextual Explorations

“Fairy Tale” and “The Tower” Essay

Argue in an essay any(one) of these critical questions:

  • Compare ideas the authors suggest to you about the gender role of the protagonist?
  • How do various literary elements of each work – plot, character, point of view, setting, tone, diction, images, symbol, archetypes etc. – reinforce its meaning?
  • Compare how psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire are presented consciously or unconsciously by each author.
  • Compare what each author suggests about the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict? Do they provide resolutions to conflicts?
  • Compare how you felt when reading the last paragraph of each story. Explain what each story suggests to you about the nature of reality. Was Caroline’s descent beyond the 470th step “real”? Is the typewriter “real”? How are the Tower and Caresse’s “neat pile of typing paper” similar/different? What function do our memories serve in defining who we are? At the end, are Caroline and the “good woman” alive? Are they dead?
  • Compare what the authors are saying about boundaries. We discussed severally the boundary between the known and the unknown in the monomyth pattern.

“The Hobby” and “The Tower”

“After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.” – Paulo Coelho, The Witch Of Portobello

Compare what each author(Marghanita Laski and Eric McCormack) have to say about love?

or

How do we find the courage to be true to ourselves – even if we are unsure of who we are?

“The Tower” and “The Hobby” Essay

Argue in an essay any(one) of these critical questions:

  • Compare ideas the author’s suggest to you about the gender role of the protagonist?
  • How do various literary elements of each work – plot, character, point of view, setting, tone, diction, images, symbol, archetypes etc. – reinforce its meaning?
  • Compare how psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire are presented consciously or unconsciously by each author.
  • Compare what each author suggests about the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict? Do they provide resolutions to conflicts?
  • Compare how you felt when reading the last paragraph of each story. Explain what each story suggests to you about the nature of reality. Was Caroline’s descent beyond the 470th step “real”? Is the Old Man’s train “real”? How are the Tower and the Kitchener house similar/different? What function do our memories serve in defining who we are? At the end, are Caroline and the Old Man still alive? Are they dead?

“The Quiet One” and “The History of Macbeth” Essay

A wise person once said, “Be careful what mask you put on, it may stick.” Explain clearly what this quotation means. both Ned in “The Quiet One”(15) and Macbeth in “The History of Macbeth”(47), find themselves wearing “masks” (cast in roles) that make them uneasy – roles they feel they have been forced into, roles they did not choose. Explain what these roles are. To what extent have others forced these characters into their roles, and to what extent did they assume the roles willingly? Make comparisons, remembering to use quotations from the text to support your ideas. Explain why each character might or might not be able to escape from his role. Write about the following ideas: To what extent do you sometimes feel forced into a role yourself? Do you see any way out of it? Why or why not?

“An Ounce of Cure” and “The Quiet One” Essay or Narrative

Ned, in the “The Quiet One,” spends a good deal of time worrying about being “a different breed” from his friends. By Contrast, the protagonist of “An Ounce of Cure” agonizes over the “painful banality” with which she behaves while in love with Martin Collingwood. Both, however, are shocked out of their dramatized feelings by what Munro calls, “the terrible and fascinating reality of … the way things happened.”

  1. Analyze and compare the incidents that startle the two adolescents out of their more or less self-inflicted miseries. What do the two incidents have in common? In what ways do they differ? How would you feel if you had experienced these incidents? Do you think they would change your life? If so, in what way? Now, compare what the two protagonists have to say about how they were affected by the incidents. Are you convinced by what they say their experiences did to them? Explain why or why not in an essay.
  2. Imagine that Ned, in the “The Quiet One,” attends the same school as the narrator of “An ounce of Cure.” Their English Language Arts teacher has instructed them to work together as a group to analyze the pressures adolescents unwittingly exert on each other. Write a narrative in which your characters discuss the pressures their peers do or do not exert on them.

“The Hobby” and “The Sea Devil” Essay

In The Hobby , the old man’s hobby is recreating a world similar to the one he knew for sixty years.  In The Sea Devil,   the man’s hobby is fishing—a world that contrasts with the man’s regular occupation.  What do the two hobbies have in common?  In what way do they differ?  Referring to at  least three details from each story, compare the two works.

“The Sea Devil” and “The Tower” Essay

The man in The Sea Devil, and Caroline in The Tower, both begin adventures in the late afternoon or evening.  In one way or another both come up against an evil force that seems to be bent on their destruction.  Work with the two stories, analyse (a) the nature of this force, (b) the protagonist’s method for dealing with it, and (c) why the force did or did not triumph in the end.

“The Hobby” and “A Report For An Academy” Essay

Both the old man in The Hobby  and former ape in A Report For An Academy  have dedicated their lives to a learned behaviour.  McCormack calls the old man’s obsession with railroads a hobby—though it is obviously far more than that.  Could the former ape’s obsession with living the life of a human also be called a hobby?  Compare both obsessions, focusing on the following ideas (and any others you may think of):  what the “hobbyist” in each case was before he knew anything of the world he came to be absorbed in; how he learned to be what he now is; what personal price he paid for his success; and what effect his hobby has on others.

“The Hobby” and “Another Part of the Sky” Essay

Both the old man in The Hobby and Collins in Another Part of the Sky have become dangerously absorbed in their work.  The old man has clearly passed the point of being able to extract himself from the world of the railways; Collins may have been saved from a similar fate by the experience Gordimer describes in this short story.  Write a couple of paragraphs describing how the old man might, upon learning of the boy’s death, have been as shaken as Collins is at the end of Another Part of the Sky,  or describing how Collins might, as a widower enduring forced retirement, look back on his work and on his marriage if he had not had this experience of shattering self-recognition.

“Invasion of the Airline Stewardess” and “Fairy Tale” Essay

In Invasion of the Airline Stewardess, Ritter remarks on a group of employees, almost exclusively female, who are at once denatured, defined, and curiously empowered by the ersatz language they speak.  In Fairy Tale, Elliott portrays a writer who builds a world, a family, asocial life, that runs exactly the way she wants it to; but not for long, for even her characters rebel, leave, fade out.  Compare what Ritter and Elliott seem to be saying about women, words, and power.  Do you think either story (or both) would work as well if the stewardesses were stewards, or the “good woman” were a “good man”? Explain.