Wednesday, September 14, 2016

SCASI questions for Wednesday Sept 21

Speaking of Courage
       (Setting, Style) What contrasts does Tim O’Brien establish between the lake and the swampy field where the platoon camped? How do features of his style help point up the contrasts?
       (Character) In what different ways is Norman Bowker detached?
       (Action) How does Bowker’s repeated drive around the lake give the story both its shape and its symbolism?
       (Ideas) What does this story have to say about the nature of courage?
Notes
       (Setting) What sense does this account give of the America to which the platoon has returned?
       (Character) How does Tim O’Brien’s own character emerge in the narrative?
       (Action, Style) What contributions do the extracts from Norma Bowker’s letter make to the piece?
       (Ideas) Tim O’Brien has set out the account as if it is a story in its own right. What features in it would allow us to accept it as such?
In the Field
       (Setting, Style) What effect do the references to the golf course, and the style in which they are made, have on us as we read?
       (Character) How does Tim O’Brien establish and sustain a sense of Kiowa’s character?
       (Action) What effect do the switches of viewpoint in the narrative have?
       (Ideas) How does the theme of loss run through this story?
Good Form
       (Setting) What effect is produced here by the single detail of setting (‘He lay in the centre of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe’)?
       (Character) Why does Tim O’Brien bring Kathleen into this account?
       (Action) How in this story does Tim O’Brien set past against present?
       (Style) How does Tim O’Brien use language to shock us here?
       (Ideas) Explain the paradox of the story’s final two paragraphs.


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