Choose a sudden fiction from this week's reading to respond to. Some questions to direct at this story:
- How does this story introduce its main ideas?
- What images are paramount? What other senses besides for sight are emphasized?
- POV? Tense?
- Some shorts present big ideas (the history of the world), some present small (a brief moment in time). Which does this short have?
- Many shorts are funny. Many are dark. Some are both. Which is this? How is this tone created?
- Some are fantastical like fairy tales and some are vivid realism. What is this?
- What questions do you have at the end of this story? What answers does it give you?
You can apply these questions to as many stories as you want in this collection.
In regards to "Homage", by Nadine Gordimer.
ReplyDeleteQ: What images are paramount? What other senses besides for sight are emphasized?
A: The images that are paramount may be focused on the "lover" of the narrator, from the description of how he looks at the narrator as well as the narrator's attempts to remember him after his disappearance. one senses besides tough that are emphasized would be touch, as the author describes her physical interaction with her lover revolving around kissing one another's necks.
Q: Some shorts present big ideas (the history of the world), some present small (a brief moment in time). Which does this short have?
A: This short seems to have "evolution" as it's big idea due to the author's lover seem to have taken forms between different creatures as well as requesting a biologist to make a diagram about evolution possibly in concerns with her lover.
Q: Many shorts are funny. Many are dark. Some are both. Which is this? How is this tone created?
A: This short is a tragedy due to her husband having either passed away or disappeared to a point in which the author is trying to keep him in her memory, remembering and wanting to see him in places he longer appears in, like the bathtub.
Q: Some are fantastical like fairy tales and some are vivid realism. What is this?
A: This seems to be fantastical considering the husband having gone through what the author perceives as evolution from human to ape, ape to turtle, and lastly, from turtle to salamander. This may be an hallucination or wishful thinking on her part.
The rememberer has a theme of evolution behind it with the writer saying her lover turns to an ape, turtle, and a salamander. I believe the writer tries to convey three crucial parts in her relationship. I'm not to sure what they symbolize but if I were to take a guess it would be that the salamander might mean slimy, in that her had lied to her. The turtle might mean he took things to slow in their relationship and the ape could possible mean a time he was abusive to her in their relationship.
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