Table of Content
1. Introduction. The Necklace, Guy de Maupassant. Responding to Literature: Likes and Dislikes. I. READING AND WRITING ABOUT FICTION. 2. Fiction: An Overview. Stories for Study: Neighbors, Raymond Carver. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien. Everyday Use, Alice Walker. 3. Plot and Structure: The Development and Organization of Stories.Stories for Study: The Three Strangers, Thomas Hardy. What I Have Been Doing Lately, Jamaica Kincaid. Blue Winds Dancing, Tom Whitecloud. 4. Characters: The People in Fiction.Stories for Study: Barn Burning, William Faulkner. A Jury of Her Peers, Susan Glaspell. Shopping, Joyce Carol Oates. Two Kinds, Amy Tan. 5. Point of View: The Position or Stance of the Narrator or Speaker.Stories for Study: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce. The Song of Songs, Ellen Gilchrist. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson. The Old Chief Mshlanga, Doris Lessing. How to Become a Writer, Lorrie Moore. 6. Setting: The Background of Place, Objects, and Culture in Stories.Stories for Study: The Portable Phonograph, Walter Van Tilburg Clark. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad. The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick. The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe. 7. Tone and Style: The Words That Convey Attitude in Fiction.Stories for Study: The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin. Soldier's Home, Ernest Hemingway. The Found Boat, Alice Munro. First Confession, Frank O'Connor. Luck, Mark Twain. 8. Symbolism and Allegory: Keys to Extended Meaning.Stories for Study: The Fox and the Grapes, Aesop. The Myth of Atalanta, Anonymous. Unfinished Masterpieces, Anita Scott Coleman. Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Loons, Margaret Laurence. The Parable of the Prodigal Son, St. Luke. The Hammon and the Beans, Americo Paredes. The Chrysanthemums, John Steinbeck. The Thimble, Michel Tremblay. 9. Idea or Theme: The Meanings and the Messages in Fiction.Stories for Study: The Lesson, Tony Cade Bambara. Araby, James Joyce. The Horse Dealer's Daughter, D.H. Lawrence. 10. Five Stories for Additional Study and Enjoyment. Snow, Robert Olen Butler. The Curse, Andre Dubus. The Point of It, E.M. Forster. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, Katherine Anne Porter. II. READING AND WRITING ABOUT POETRY. 11. Meeting Poetry: An Overview. Schoolsville, Billy Collins. Hope, Lisel Mueller. Here a Pretty Baby Lies, Robert Herrick. Sir Patrick Spens, Anonymous. Poems for Study: My Last Duchess, Robert Browning. Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Emily Dickinson. Catch, Robert Francis. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost. The Man He Killed, Thomas Hardy. Eagle Poem, Joy Harjo. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, Randall Jarrell. Ogichidag, Jim Northrup. Where Children Live, Naomi Shihab Nye. A Christmas Carol, Christina Rossetti. Sonnet 55: Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monument, William Shakespeare. True Love, Judith Viorst. It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free, William Wordsworth. 12. Words: The Building Blocks of Poetry. The Naked and the Nude, Robert Graves. Poems for Study: The Lamb, William Blake. Green Grow the Rashes, O, Robert Burns. Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll. next to of course god america i, E.E. Cummings. Holy Sonnet 14: Batter My Heart, Three-Pe