Mr.Kennedy
AP English Modernist Novel
Guide Questions
Wise Blood. Tell why Enoch Emery is in the novel. Explain his purpose.
Describe the humor of this novel. What makes it funny? What type of humor is this?
What is being said about redemption? Does the novel present any possibilities of redemption?
What is being said about commercialism?
Why change point of view with Mrs. Flood?
What makes this novel disturbing and unsettling? What aspects of the modern world make the world of Wise Blood so chaotic?
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Explain some of the epiphanies that mark Stephen’s growth.
Tell how the external influences Stephen’s psyche.
According to the novel what is the role of art and the artist.
Tell how the Deadalus and Icarus myth functions within this novel.
Explain the quote from late in the novel, “I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
How would you recognize Stephen Deadalus if he sat next to you at school?
The Things They Carried. Explain the concept of “story truth.”
Explain the structure of this work. Tell how the chapters stand alone yet fit together.
Tell how incremental repetition functions in the novel. Why doesn’t the author explain the entire incident on one occasion?
What elements does Kathleen bring to the work? Why is she in it?
Describe the humor of this work.
What is the difference between Timmy, Tim and Tim O’Brien?
The Sound and the Fury. How do the dates of the episodes function?
What are all the things that have been corrupted and fallen from grace in the novel?
Why does Faulkner present the opening episode in Benjy’s voice? What is the rhetorical stance taken by the choice of this bewildering voice?
Caroline, Caddy, Miss Quentin and Dilsey present varying aspects of femininity. What is the cumulative impact of these feminine portrayals?
In a famous quote Faulkner said, “The past isn’t over.” Tell how that perspective influences this novel.
Tell how this novel questions the ability of language and narrative to capture the truth. What makes this novel an example of Modernist literary technique?
Tell how time functions in this novel.
Tell how water is used as a symbol.
Saturday. McEwan is interested in the contrast between the human capacity for empathy, which is strengthened by the act of reading fiction, and our capacity for violence against each other: "We are capable of acts of extraordinary destruction. I think it's inherent. I think one of the great tasks of art is really to explore that. . . . I personally think the novel, above all forms in literature, is able to investigate human nature and try and understand those two sides, all those many, many sides of human nature."* How does Saturday engage in this juxtaposition of violence with empathy? Which of the characters in the novel are most attuned to the experience of others? In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, a wealthy society woman learns at a party she is hosting that a shell-shocked veteran of World War I has killed himself by jumping from a window. She feels guilty and ashamed that she hasn't shared his suffering and fears that her privileged life has cut her off from real empathy. Does Henry's decision to operate on Baxter reflect a similar sense of guilt or responsibility? Why does Henry not share Rosalind's desire for revenge? McEwan's choice to locate the narrative perspective within a single point of view (Henry's) focuses the reader on the subject of human consciousness. Stuck in traffic just before his collision with Baxter, Henry thinks, "A second can be a long time in introspection" [p. 80]. How does the description of Henry's introspection, which makes up a large part of the novel, affect its pace? If you have read other novels (like those of Virginia Woolf, Henry James, or James Joyce) that delve as closely as Saturday into the representation of human consciousness, how does McEwan's approach differ? Why might McEwan have chosen "Dover Beach" as the poem that saves Daisy by appealing so powerfully to Baxter [pp. 228-30]? What does it mean to him? What emotions does the poem's speaker express? Saturday is unique in that it limits its time frame to a single day in recent history--February 15, 2003--a day that most readers will remember because of the massive anti-war demonstrations that took place. What is the effect of this straitened approach to time, and its attendant view of history-in-the-making? How, in light of world events since then, does it feel to look back to that day, before the war in Iraq began?
