Tuesday/ Wednesday "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" in class essay.

Learning Targets:

1. I can cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

2. I can determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

3) I can analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

4) I can determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings'

5) I can analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

6) I can analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (irony)

In  class: 1. Have you made up last Friday's vocabulary quiz?  Remember there is a zero there, until you have done so.Vocabulary quiz "Weatherall" words this Friday, May 15

   2. Please turn in your "Granny Weatherall" organizer, even if it is not complete.

3. Powerpoint review of the short story. If you were absent, or wish your own copy, I can copy it onto your thumb drive.

4. In class essay: Due at the close of class on Wednesday.

Choose one of the following:

“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Ann Porter   essay information

Due at the close of class on Wednesday, May 13

Begin by rereading the background material, which is copied from your graphic organizer. Pay particular attention to the stream of consciousness technique, as was also just reviewed in the powerpoint. If you were absent, I can copy it for you on your thumb drive.

Type of work: In this short story, Porter, created an intimate view into one woman’s deathbed sentiment. She used characterization through indirect presentation, symbolism, irony, figurative language and an intriguing third person point of view to carry the reader on this journey with Granny to her final moment. This story is told partly with a narrative technique known as “stream of consciousness”. With this technique, an author portrays a character’s continuing “stream” of thoughts as they occur, regardless of whether they make sense or whether the next thought in a sequence relates to the previous thought.

Example of Modernism.  This list should look very familiar.

1. implied, rather than overtly stated themes.

2. fragments (think of a puzzle with pieces missing; consider the world after World War I).

3. omitting of expositions (background information about events, settings, characters that help the reader make sense of the novel, short story or, in this case, the poem).

4. omitting transitions (think of a dream, where anything and everything may be juxtaposed without any seeming logic.)

5. omitting a resolution (so how does the story play out? who knows? You figure it out for yourself.

6. lack of explanations ( why did this happen? Again, you figure it out; draw your own conclusions.)

7. sense of uncertainty, paralysis and ANGST.

Narration

Told in third-person point of view by a narrator who frequently reveals the thoughts of Granny Weatherall in language that Granny would use if she were speaking. Because Granny is disoriented, these thoughts focus on present perceptions one moment and on old memories the next. Her perceptions and recollections favor her positive view of herself.

Setting

The action takes place in a bedroom in the home of Granny Weatherall’s daughter Cornelia. Granny, about eighty, is lying face up in the bed. She is dying of an undisclosed illness. The time is probably the late 1920s. Flashbacks, however, date as far back as the late 1860s, when Granny's fiancé abandoned her on the day they were to be married.

Major characters

Ellen Weatherall: Feisty woman of about eighty who ruminates about events in her life as she lies dying in the home of her daughter Cornelia. Because of her illness, she is lucid one moment and disoriented the next. A painful memory, one she had repressed for sixty years, surfaces and haunts her at the hour of her death. It is the memory of the day—sixty years before—when her fiancé, George, jilted her. After she later married a man named John, she gave birth to four children. John died young but Granny carried on, rearing the children, working her farmland and orchard, and caring for animals.

Cornelia: Daughter of Granny. While her mother is on her deathbed, Cornelia takes care of her.

George: Man who abandoned Granny on the day he was to marry her.

John: Deceased husband of Granny.

Happsy- daughter, who died at birth or in childbirth

Themes

The usefulness of denial

Responding to loss with perseverance

Repression

Following in Christ's Footsteps

The sanctity of the human heart and the existential loneliness of the human condition

 Motif – waste, order

Choose one of the following topics for your essay. Due at the end of class on Wednesday.

 Begin with an MLA heading.

Use the 5 paragraph formula; a minimum of 300 words. You must weave in textual evidence from the story.

1.Discuss why stream-of-consciousness technique is particularly appropriate for "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall", considering the subject of the story. Begin by thinking about the purpose of the technique.

2. Discuss the development of two of the following themes in “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.”