Summary ENG1501 Short Story Analysis

ENG1501 Short Story Analysis.Think about before reading the short story 1. Look up the word ‘soliloquy’ online or in a dictionary and write down its meaning. What does this make you think the story will be about? 2. Read the story twice and summarise what happens in it in in no more than four sentences. 3. Underline any words that you do not understand and look up what they mean online or in a dictionary. Write down the words and their meanings. Close reading Narration 1. Read the first four paragraphs of the story again. The fourth paragraph is one line long and reads: ‘Just like life’. This is the key to understanding what this story is about: the narrator compares a visit to the supermarket to different experiences in life. 2. Identify the kind of narrator used and justify your answer. Write a paragraph in which you explain the effect of this kind of narration. Plot and setting 1.The plot in this story is unusual. What is more important: the action that takes place or the thoughts of the narrator? Write a paragraph in which you explain your answer. 2. The title of the short story gives a very clear indication of where the story is set. Write a paragraph in which you explain how significant the setting is to the story’s overall meaning. Symbolism In the following sections, we are going to look at a few examples of the extended metaphor in the story in detail but there are other examples that we are not going to cover here. Find these on your own and make sure that you understand them. 1. Read the extract below carefully: As you move towards the cheese trough, you catch a glimpse of yourself in an unexpected mirror. You have an urge to charge it with gross misrepresentation. A distortion of yourself leers up at you as you lean over. Your face is a creased feta cheese white. 1.1 What literally happens in this section? Explain it in your own words. 1.2 The last sentence in the section is a metaphor. Explain the effect of the metaphor (i.e. what is being compared to what? What do these things have in common? What is the effect of this?). 2. Read the following paragraph which comes directly after the one quoted above: Other cheeses present a range of past complexions; chubby, baby-smooth Mozzarella; frecklefaced Pepato; bride-white Camembert; tanned Red Cheshire; jaundiced Cheddar. You cast a furtive eye on the blue-veined Gorgonzola up ahead and settle, after all, for the feta. 2.1. The words in bold are different kinds of cheeses. Look up pictures of each of these cheeses online if you do not know what they look like. 2.2 Now look up online or in a dictionary what the word ‘complexion’ means, if you have not already done so. 2.3 Think about the words used to describe each of the cheeses: ‘baby-smooth’; ‘frecklefaced’; ‘bride-white’; ‘tanned’; ‘jaundiced’. What figure of speech is being used here? Write a paragraph in which you explain the effect. (Think back to the narrator’s statement, ‘Just like life’.) 2.4 Why do you think the narrator chooses the feta cheese after all? Write a paragraph in which you explain your answer. To answer this question, you need to think carefully about the progression in the description above (from ‘baby-smooth’ to ‘jaundiced’). Consider what you think the ‘blue-veined Gorgonzola could represent. 3. Read the following paragraph carefully: A little further on there’s a refrigerator shelf stacked with great plastic breasts of milk. You hold one in each hand, feeling the weight, pressing them gently. They are as full as yours used to be. A brimming cup of C. And nippleless. As yours are now, awaiting reconstruction. For a moment, weighing the smooth packets in the scales of your palms, you think you won’t bother after all, with that final artifice. You have no need now of nipples. Either for feeding or for flirting. 3.1 Look up the words ‘literal’ and ‘figurative’ in the Toolkit on page 87 of Tutorial Letter 501. 3.2 Write down the literal meaning of this paragraph. 3.3 The figurative meaning of this paragraph is introduced through the use of personification in the first sentence. Identify the personification and comment on its effectiveness. 3.4 Sometimes authors convey meaning through implying something rather than stating it directly. What is the narrator implying when she says, ‘As yours are now, awaiting reconstruction’? 3.5 What is the ‘final artifice’ the narrator feels she will not bother with? Explain why she comes to this decision. 4. Reread pages 223 and 224 of the story. In this section, the narrator compares the men she could have married but did not to grocery items in the supermarket. 4.1 Identify the four grocery items she associates with each of the men. 4.2 Write a few sentences about each of these men, explaining what their associated grocery item reveals about their personalities. Theme What is the theme of this short story? Write a paragraph in which you explain your answer and provide evidence from the short story as substantiation. ANSWERS Think about before reading the short story 1. Look up the word ‘soliloquy’ online or in a dictionary and write down its meaning. What does this make you think the story will be about? A soliloquy is “an act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when by oneself”. The word is usually used to refer to characters in a play who give monologues about their thoughts or the events of the play. Thus, you might either say that you think that the short story will be about someone’s thoughts or feelings, or have something to do with a play or stage production. 2. Read the story twice and summarise what happens in it in in no more than four sentences. On a very basic level, a woman is walking through a grocery store and buying some items. She then reflects on her life, on aging and on her relationships. 3. Underline any words that you do not understand and look up what they mean online or in a dictionary. Write down the words and their meanings. Please share some of these definitions as comments below if you found any definitions of interesting words. Close reading Narration 1. Read the first four paragraphs of the story again. The fourth paragraph is one line long and reads: ‘Just like life’. This is the key to understanding what this story is about: the narrator compares a visit to the supermarket to different experiences in life. Look closely at these paragraphs and think about what the story is saying about life, and how this extended metaphor works in the story. An extended metaphor is a comparison that carries on for a long time across multiple lines of a story or poem. Thus, how is the supermarket ‘Just like life’ in multiple different ways? For a question like this, you could list some of the ways that the narrator compares her shopping experience or the supermarket to life experiences. 2. Identify the kind of narrator used and justify your answer. Write a paragraph in which you explain the effect of this kind of narration. The story has a second-person narrator. We can see this in the use of the word ‘you’ throughout the story, as though the speaker is speaking directly to one other person, in this case the central character of the story. The voice seems to suggest that the speaker is speaking to herself in the second-person voice, as very intimate and personal details are shared. However, the fact that the speaker does not use the first-person voice suggests that there is some sense of distance from herself, and she looks at her life with an outsider point of view. Plot and setting 1. The plot in this story is unusual. What is more important: the action that takes place or the thoughts of the narrator? Write a paragraph in which you explain your answer. Here you could choose either of these options. If you choose the action as more important, you should explain how all of the events of the story impact on your overall understanding of it. It would be easier to say that the thoughts of the narrator are more important, as they give us insight into the extended metaphor and they also allow us to understand the major themes of the story, namely aging, feeling out of place, and loneliness. 2. The title of the short story gives a very clear indication of where the story is set. Write a paragraph in which you explain how significant the setting is to the story’s overall meaning. The words ‘supermarket soliloquy’ explain to us that we will read a story set in a supermarket that explores the thinking of someone in this setting, thus it gives us clear ideas of what we can expect. Why do you think a supermarket is significant for the themes of this story? It is a place of forced interaction with many other people, a place that is busy and where people have to go regularly in order to survive. It is a place that has rules and regulations, and is ordered in certain ways. All of these ideas might link to the speaker’s view of life and how disillusioned she feels with her life. She seems frustrated and cynical, which might be attitudes that are appropriate to the supermarket space of consumerism, ‘fake’ interactions and the need to pay despite the ‘free’ entrance. Symbolism In the following sections, we are going to look at a few examples of the extended metaphor in the story in detail but there are other examples that we are not going to cover here. Find these on your own and make sure that you understand them. 1. Read the extract below carefully: As you move towards the cheese trough, you catch a glimpse of yourself in an unexpected mirror. You have an urge to charge it with gross misrepresentation. A distortion of yourself leers up at you as you lean over. Your face is a creased feta cheese white. 1.1 What literally happens in this section? Explain it in your own words. The speaker sees herself reflected in a mirror and does not like her reflection. 1.2 The last sentence in the section is a metaphor. Explain the effect of the metaphor (i.e. what is being compared to what? What do these things have in common? What is the effect of this?). The speaker’s face is compared to creased feta cheese. The metaphor can be seen as appropriate due to the idea that the speaker is middle-aged and thus might have wrinkles just like the creases in the cheese, and the speaker might be pale and thus see her face as “feta cheese white”. 2. Read the following paragraph which comes directly after the one quoted above: Other cheeses present a range of past complexions; chubby, baby-smooth Mozzarella; frecklefaced Pepato; bride-white Camembert; tanned Red Cheshire; jaundiced Cheddar. You cast a furtive eye on the blue-veined Gorgonzola up ahead and settle, after all, for the feta. 2.1. The words in bold are different kinds of cheeses. Look up pictures of each of these cheeses online if you do not know what they look like. This might be a good exercise to visually see the images that the speaker uses in the story. Try to do this for any images that you find in poems and stories that you might need a visual reminder of. You can then see the types of ‘complexions’ that the speaker refers to. 2.2 Now look up online or in a dictionary what the word ‘complexion’ means, if you have not already done so. Her complexion is the colour of her skin. 2.3 Think about the words used to describe each of the cheeses: ‘baby-smooth’; ‘frecklefaced’; ‘bride-white’; ‘tanned’; ‘jaundiced’. What figure of speech is being used here? Write a paragraph in which you explain the effect. (Think back to the narrator’s statement, ‘Just like life’.) These are further metaphors to link the colour of the cheeses to the complexion of the protagonist at different points in her life. The metaphors also show the progression of age, from childhood to middle-age. 2.4 Why do you think the narrator chooses the feta cheese after all? Write a paragraph in which you explain your answer. To answer this question, you need to think carefully about the progression in the description above (from ‘baby-smooth’ to ‘jaundiced’). Consider what you think the ‘blue-veined Gorgonzola could represent. The ‘blue-veined Gorgonzola’ could represent old age, as it is a ripe, aged cheese. The choice of the feta might show an acceptance of the speaker as middle aged, as she earlier says that the feta resembled her face with creases and that is white. 3. Read the following paragraph carefully: A little further on there’s a refrigerator shelf stacked with great plastic breasts of milk. You hold one in each hand, feeling the weight, pressing them gently. They are as full as yours used to be. A brimming cup of C. And nippleless. As yours are now, awaiting reconstruction. For a moment, weighing the smooth packets in the scales of your palms, you think you won’t bother after all, with that final artifice. You have no need now of nipples. Either for feeding or for flirting. 3.1 Look up the words ‘literal’ and ‘figurative’ in the Toolkit on page 87 of Tutorial Letter 501. 3.2 Write down the literal meaning of this paragraph. The speaker holds two bags of milk in her hands and feeling their weight. 3.3 The figurative meaning of this paragraph is introduced through the use of personification in the first sentence. Identify the personification and comment on its effectiveness. The words “breasts” of milk compare the bags to human breasts, thus giving the milk human-like qualities. It is effective as it allows the speaker to reflect on her own breasts. 3.4 Sometimes authors convey meaning through implying something rather than stating it directly. What is the narrator implying when she says, ‘As yours are now, awaiting reconstruction’? The narrator might be implying that she has had breast cancer and has had to have parts of her breasts surgically removed in order to excise the cancerous tissue. She has not had reconstructive surgery on her breasts yet, and thus she does not have nipples, just like the bags of milk. 3.5 What is the ‘final artifice’ the narrator feels she will not bother with? Explain why she comes to this decision. The narrator says that she will not reconstruct nipples on her breasts, because she does not need them for either breastfeeding or for ‘flirting’ or attracting partners. She might feel cynical about her life as a middle-aged woman, and not think that she will find a sexual partner in future. She also no longer can breastfeed and thus does not need nipples for this purpose. 4. Reread pages 223 and 224 of the story. In this section, the narrator compares the men she could have married but did not to grocery items in the supermarket. 4.1 Identify the four grocery items she associates with each of the men. The four items are tea, a Kreepy-Krawly (a pool cleaning device), Superglue and mushrooms. 4.2 Write a few sentences about each of these men, explaining what their associated grocery item reveals about their personalities. Here, you could explore the metaphors in more detail. For example, using ‘tea’ to describe her young lecturer whom she had a crush on. The tea might indicate a sense of serenity, peace, and perhaps even the image of being scholarly and sipping a cup of tea in a study or library. The title, A Cup of Tea, is also the title of a short story by Katherine Mansfield which focuses on a character of wealth and sophistication, and on insecurity of physical appearance, all themes that might link to the main character. You could explore the other images in the same way. Theme What is the theme of this short story? Write a paragraph in which you explain your answer and provide evidence from the short story as substantiation. You could see the theme as aging, primarily, and explain how all of the different images and the extended metaphor show a life that is reminisced upon. Expand on this by giving examples if you are asked a question about theme in your exams. You could also include subthemes of loneliness, love, or cynicism. “Man lands on the moon” by Sindiwe Magona Think about before reading the short story 1. Look at the title of the short story and write three sentences in which you predict what the short story will be about. 2. Read the story twice and summarise what happens in it in in no more than four sentences. 3. ‘Indigenous knowledge systems’ is a term used to describe traditional beliefs. These beliefs vary from culture to culture and are usually passed down from generation to generation in the form of oral story telling. Can you think of any stories told to you by your grandparents or elders in your community that warn you of magical creatures or events? Write a paragraph in which you explain a traditional belief with which you are familiar. 4. Underline any words that you do not understand and look up what they mean in a dictionary. Write down the words and their meanings. Close reading Setting Is this short story set in one location? Write a paragraph in which you motivate your answer. Remember that setting refers not only to the physical space but also the historical context in which a story takes place. Characterisation 1. How many characters are in the story? 2. Choose any one of the characters and complete the following table. Remember that the story may not necessarily give you all the information you need. Prompt Response Evidence (How do you Know this?) Is this character the one telling the story? How important a role do they play in the narrative? Are they male or are they female? Are they old or are they young? What kinds of clothes do they wear? Are they educated or uneducated? How do they speak? What can you deduce about their economic status? What are the distinguishing features of their personality? How do they relate to the other characters in the story? Are they experiencing some kind of inner turmoil or conflict? Do they stay the same over Plot 1. This story makes use of what is known as a ‘frame narrator’ where you find a story within a story. Write a paragraph in which you identify the main story and the secondary story. 2. Does this short story have a clear conflict, climax and resolution? Write down three sentences in which you justify your answer. 3. What conflict and tension do the characters experience? 4. Is this plot chronological? Justify your answer. Narration 1. The main story and the secondary story employ different types of narration. Identify the narrative perspective of each. 2. Why do you think the author chose to use more than one narrative perspective? Write a paragraph in which you explain your answer. Theme 1. The story details three generations of women, each with her own set of beliefs. Explain the belief system associated with the granddaughter, the mother and the grandmother. 2. Read the final two paragraphs of the story again and explain in a paragraph why they are ironic. 3. Based on your answer above, what do you think is the theme of this short story? Write a paragraph in which you explain how the author conveys this theme. ANSWERS 1. Look at the title of the short story and write three sentences in which you predict what the short story will be about. In the case of this story, you could say that the title is misleading. You might expect the story to be about the events of someone landing on the moon, yet this is only mentioned in passing at the end of the story. You might predict that the story is about science, innovation, adventure, space travel or similar topics. 2. Read the story twice and summarise what happens in it in in no more than four sentences. An old woman, Makhulu, tells the story of when she was a child and encountered a place under water where spirits of those who had died can be found, or where supernatural events can take place. The young girl, Makhulu as a child, encounters her cousin who is not yet a zombie, which means that she has not been transformed by the spirits of the afterlife. Makhulu has a chance to save her, but no one will believe Makhulu about what happened. 3. ‘Indigenous knowledge systems’ is a term used to describe traditional beliefs. These beliefs vary from culture to culture and are usually passed down from generation to generation in the form of oral story telling. Can you think of any stories told to you by your grandparents or elders in your community that warn you of magical creatures or events? Write a paragraph in which you explain a traditional belief with which you are familiar. Here, you can reflect on your own traditional beliefs or those of your culture of origin. We all have them, and some have come to be known as “knowledge” while others have been denigrated or seen as inferior forms of beliefs or ways of understanding the world. This question allows you to be critical of what we know and of how we can compare knowledge. For example, Makhulu in the story challenges the knowledge of the moon landing, claiming that this is simply also something that people believe, and why should they then not believe her experiences? What separates a “belief” and a “fact” or a piece of “knowledge”? Try to think about this distinction, as it is an important theme of the story. What can be known and what can not be known for sure? 4. Underline any words that you do not understand and look up what they mean in a dictionary. Write down the words and their meanings. See comments in your previous lesson about the utility of this step.