Exploring the Text

  1. The protagonist, Collins, notes that words present the truth inadequately, not just because facts can be recorded inaccurately, but because words are insufficient for recording experience.
    • What mistake was made in the newspaper article about him?  What is suggested by the glib phrase “the man who pulled down prison walls and grew geraniums in their place?”  What is missing from this verbal description?
    • Why are the newspapers “stupid” that said “crime wave…robbery…old man knifed in the street?”  Or “the police are investigating and have situation well in hand.”  What do these factual accounts omit?
  2. The protagonist thinks that the freedom the boys escape to is not very appealing.  Describe it.  Why might the boys see it as preferable to being in a reformatory—even a reformatory without walls?  Are the boys in the reformatory imprisoned by other things?  Is Collins also—trapped perhaps by his self-image?  Explain your answer.
  3. Why is Collins so upset about the boy who escaped?  Is it that he’s “an idealist” and cannot “take the blow to his pride?”  Are Collins’s expectations of himself unrealistic?  Explain.
  4. The police sergeant assumes the boy beat up the old lady.  On what are the police basing their assumption?  What realities of the situation make it difficult for the police to behave otherwise?  Are Collins’s attitudes towards the boys in his reformatory more or less humane?  More or less practical?  Explain.
  5. What does Collins assume Ngubane has come to tell him?  What realization hist Collins as he lies in bed?  Why does he repeat to himself the lines from the newspaper:  “the man who pulled down prison walls and grew geraniums?”  Is this line more true than he had imagined at the beginning of the story?
  6. Look at the references in the story to the sky:  the title “Another Part of the Sky;” “the great hard polished winter sky that shone of itself…without answer” (p. 154); the “pang which had never yet found the right moment to claim attention lifted feebly like an eye of lightning that opens and shuts in another part of the sky” (p.157).  What does the sky seem to represent?  Why do you think Gordimer titled the story as she did?  (Look especially at “another part.”)  Does the sky image relate to the epiphany at the story’s climax?

Personal Response

A “found poem” is a poem made of a group of words not originally intended as a poem, but distilled from its context and arranged effectively on the page using white space and enjambment.  For example, the end of this story might be arranged this way:

The silence
of his wife, going about her business whilst he
worried, nine years
he worried, turned from
her
to this problem or that
if you search
one face you turn
your back
on another.

Choose a segment of this story that seems especially vivid and significant.  Experiment with arrangements on the page that seem most effective in appropriateness and/or tension between the content and the form. If another student has chosen the same passage as you have, compare your versions.

Media

Imagine you are a reporter.  The boy from the reformatory has been found by police and charged with the beating of the woman, and you are assigned the task of interviewing Collins as part of your preparation for writing the article.  What would Collins tell you?  What news article would you write?

Enrichment

To extend the reference to discrimination suggested in the response of the police to the attack on the lady, read or view one of the following texts and write a reader response journal about your impressions:  Cry Freedom, A Dry White Season, Dreamspeaker, Of Mice and Men, Anne Frank:  Diary of a Young Girl,  “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, or In the Heat of the Night.

Language

  1. Gordimer’s story is characterized partially by the use of colons, semi-colons, and dashes.  Read over the first page and a half of the story carefully, noting where colons and semi-colons appear.  Substitute periods for each of these.  Note where dashes occur.  Substitute periods or parentheses for these.  Comparing the original and altered versions, answer the following questions:
    • What do semi-colons and colons seem to mean?  What connections do they establish between ideas before and after?
    • How does the meaning of words set off by dashes change when placed in parentheses?  when separated by a period?
  2. Revise a piece of your own writing by experimenting with colons, semi-colons and dashes.  How can you establish connections between ideas and subordinate ideas?

Language

Consider this description of Collins attempting to fall asleep:

He lay and the darkness came up to him, the darkness spread out to the edges of his being, the darkness washed away the edges of his being as the sea melts the edges of the sand.  But just as it was about to smooth out his head and wash down the pinnacles of his features like a sandcastle, a return of consciousness rose within him and swept it away.  (p. 159)

To what is falling asleep compared?  What does the comparison suggest to us about falling asleep?  do you find this extended metaphor appropriate?  If not, what comparison would you make?

“Invasion of the Airline Stewardesses” by Erika Ritter (Canada)

From its first appearance in English literature (in the Anglo-Saxon poem “The Dream of the Rood”) to the present, the dream vision has been the traditional vehicle by which an ordinary person becomes the bearer of important news—often a warning of some future event—to others.   In Invasion of the Airline Stewardesses  Erika Ritter infuses this vehicle with her own parodic wit, poking fun at the popularity of the film on which the piece is based, at airline jargon, and perhaps even at her own irritable reaction to that jargon.  But her “haunting airborne dream” can also be seen as a serious dream vision, albeit “specially designed [for our] listening pleasure.”  Although she refuses to preach, Ritter seems to be genuinely concerned about the invasion of jargon and meaningless phrases into our language, and has chosen a memorable confection to let us know of that concern—a confection that both entertains and persuades.

  1. Read Alden Nowlan’s “A Matter of Etiquette” from Between Tears and Laughter. Nowlan makes the point that while the kind of language we might use when addressing the Queen is very different from the kind of language we might use when digging a sewer, each has its own “prescribed sentences” that are accompanied by “formalized gestures.”  Many cartoons are based on a situation in which a certain kind of discourse is used in a totally inappropriate context.  See any copy of The New Yorker or any of Gary Larson’s Far Side collections.
  2. Construct responses with other students to the question, “How are you?” in the following situations:
  • in the school corridor, your principal asks….
  • in his/her office, your doctor asks…
  • at breakfast, your mother asks…
  • after a regular practice at school, your coach asks…
  • on the sidewalk after school, your best friend asks…

Think of additional situations and responses.

Erika Ritter, 1948—

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.

Exploring the Text

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.