FICTION AND ITS WORLDING

UNIT ONE

THE STORYTELLING IMPULSE

1 WHERE DO STORIES COME FROM?
Lets start with the beginning of it all: Where did story come from? How did it come about?
In The Nature of Narrative, Scholes and Kellogg posit that narrative or loosely, story is as old as
language itself. It is almost impossible to locate the origin of story except in the invention of language.
Probably, as soon as man could utter sounds, story was born.
Somewhere, sometime, someone had a great idea. He took it into his head to utter the words once upon a
time. By doing so, he lit bonfires in the imaginations of his listeners.
Imagine, then, the first caveman who invented the first story of the world. In the day he saw something
that captured his fascination perhaps some beast with three horns and countless warts, or the most
beautiful cavewoman in the world, naked, supple, slowly emerging from the seas foamy shores. His
fascination, his terrific experience, impelled him to communicate the sight to his friends. That night, he
went home, gathered his friends round the bonfire, uttered some fairly comprehensible mumbles, and
began the story of his encounter. And as soon as he began his story, his friends, open-mouthed, wanted
nothing else in the world but to find out the middle and end of his story.
2 WHAT IS STORY?
Thus our hypothetical caveman gives us a lasting model for the story. Every story shares the common
function of someone telling something to someone about something. Schematically,
tale
recipient
of the tale

teller
(something
told about)

In each story, there is (1) a teller who narrates the story, (2) a tale, the story material, something told
about, (3) and a recipient of the tale, the listener, the reader.
3 SIGNIFICANCE OF STORY
Given this model, you then begin to appreciate the significance of story. Highly intersubjective, this
model highlights the communicative impetus, the impulse to share, inherent in the act of storytelling.
Hesiod tells us how the founding myths (mythos in Greek means story) were invented to explain how
the world came to be and how we came to be in it. Myths were stories people told themselves in order to
explain themselves to themselves and to others. But it was Aristotle who first developed this insight into
a philosophical position: the art of storytelling defined as the dramatic imitating and plotting of human
action is what gives us a shareable world.
What applies in the level of the community also applies to the level of the individual. Everyday, at school,
we gossip about others or tell stories about ourselves. In a way, gossip, too, is story, and gossip emanates
from a highly personal need to communicate. When someone asks you who you are, you tell your story.
That is, you recount your present condition in the light of past memories and future anticipations. You
interpret where you are now in terms of where you have come from and where you are going to. And so
doing you give a sense of yourself as a narrative identity that perdures and coheres over a lifetime. It is
this act, this act of storytelling, that gathers together an existence, which would otherwise be scattered
over time.
Lastly, we see in this act of storytelling an act of ordering experience. When we tell others of a particular
incident, we dont tell every single minute detail that happened every second, every minute, every hour
of the day. We usually organize, re-order, the details, skip parts, and highlight others to make a
recognizable beginning, middle, and end. In this way, story emerges as a principle of ordering time and
re-interpreting experience. Without story, time may simply be a random flow of chaos.
4 THE STORY
We will have another occasion to discuss the development of story in detail. For now, it is sufficient to
simplify:
The story, as soon as it was born of the first caveman, eventually proliferated and evolved into various
forms. In the ancient period, myths, legends, folktales, and epics were some of the primary stories. They
were part of the total oral culture of the people. Come the medieval period, there were the romances,
allegories, confessions, chronicles, etc. The modern period was a time for the novel and the short story. It
was a period of great experimentation that explored and pushed the limits of imagination. Today, in the
postmodern period, a complication arises: some scholars posit the death of the story thesis.
6 THE DEATH OF STORY?
Circa 1960s, commentators of the story came up with different pronouncements, all proclaiming the death
of the story:

Fiction, it seemed, had been overcome with the nausea of the end. Writers had become shrill
and unconvincing obvious and dull.
Its readership was in terminal decline.
Perhaps narrative will not continue much longer to be entrusted to print and bound between
hard covers.
[And] there is always the screen, if the page proves no longer viable.

From these statements, we then gather two reasons for the supposed death of the story. First, after the
modern period, the period of great experimentation, fiction loosely, story had gone exhausted. It

seemed that there was no longer a new story to tell, or a new way to tell a story. Second, and as
important, the great age of mass media arrived (television, film, computers, etc.), competing with story, a
form conventionally in print.
7 THE STORY IN OUR AGE
However, further investigation will prove this thesis misguided. As we have seen in our discussion in
class, most contemporary forms of media still subscribe to the principles of story. Films, advertisements,
music videos, news articles to name a few of our contemporary forms remain permeated with stories,
are stories in themselves. We are everywhere still surrounded by stories. In fact, [our] new technologies,
far from eradicating story, may actually open up novel modes of storytelling quite inconceivable in our
former cultures.
8 SOURCE
Kearney, Richard. On Stories. New York: Routledge, 2002.

THE FICTIONAL DREAM

1
Debbie was a very stubborn and completely
independent person and was always doing things her
way despite her parents efforts to get her to conform.
Her father was an executive in a dress manufacturing
company and was able to afford his family all the
luxuries and comforts of life. But Debbie was
completely indifferent to her familys affluence.
Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative
Craft

2
Debbie would wear a tank top to a tea party if she pleased, with fluorescent earrings and ankle-strap
sandals.
Oh, sweetheart, Mrs Chiddister would stand in the doorway wringing her hand. Its not nice.
Not who? Debbie would say, and add a fringed belt.
Mr Chiddister was Artistic Director of the Boston branch of Cardin and had a high respect for what he
called elegant textures, which ranged from handwoven tweed to gold filigree, and which he willingly
offered his daughter. Debbie preferred her laminated wrist bangles.
Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
3 SHOWING VERSUS TELLING
Fiction works mostly by showing rather than telling. It shows by using specific, definite, concrete,
particular details. Details are definite and concrete when they appeal to the senses. That is, when they can

be heard, smelled, tasted, touched, even felt. It is these details that constitute the lifeblood of fiction. They
are the stuff of persuasiveness.
Consider, for instance, someone telling you he understands bird talk. I understand bird talk, you know.
I can talk to birds. We are struck by the sheer absurdity of the lie. Now compare:
4
When I first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. Seven
years ago, the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands his house been empty ever
since; a log house, with a plank roof just one big room, and no more; no ceiling nothing between the
rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat,
taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, and
thinking of the home away yonder in the states, that I hadnt heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay
lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, Hello, I reckon Ive struck something. When he
spoke the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didnt care; his
mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side,
shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up
with his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings which signifies gratification, you understand
and says, It looks like a hole, its located like a hole blamed if I dont believe it is a hole!
Mark Twain, Bakers Bluejay Yarn
5 THE ART OF LIES
In The Art of Fiction John Gardner argues that the first job of any piece of fiction is to convince us readers
that the events it recounts really happened, or to persuade us they might have happened given small
changes in the laws of the universe. We know fiction is an artful lie, an artful invention; but we believe
through the willing suspension of disbelief. For the moment we hush our doubts, we silence our
reasonable skeptic side, and we simply believe. But if we suspend our disbelief, this is only because we
are constantly presented with proofs in the form of closely observed details that what is said to be
happening is really happening.
6 FICTION AS DREAM
An implication of this vividness, this suspension of disbelief, is the way we usually experience fiction as
an illusion, a sort of a movie inside our heads. Of this reading experience, Gardner notes:
If we carefully inspect our experience as we read, we discover that the importance of physical detail is
that it creates for us a kind of dream, a rich and vivid play in the mind. We read a few words at the
beginning of the book or the particular story, and suddenly we find ourselves seeing not words on a page
but a train moving through Russia, an old Italian crying, or a farmhouse battered by rain. We read on
dream on not passively but actively, worrying about the choices the characters have to make, listening
in panic for some sound behind the fictional door, exulting in characters successes, bemoaning their
failures.
7
One time during a thaw, moisture was trickling from the tree bark in the yard; the snow on the roofs of
the buildings was melting. She stood on the threshold, then went to fetch her parasol and opened it. The
sun came through the dove-colored silk parasol, its rays moving over the white skin of her face. She
smiled beneath it at the mild warmth of the season, and you could hear drops of water, one by one,
falling on the taut-stretched silk.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
8

The branches are bare, the sky tonight a milky violet. It is not quiet here, but it is peaceful. The wind
ruffles the black water towards me.
There is no one about. The birds are still. The traffic slashes through Hyde Park. It comes to my ears as
white noise.
I test the bench but do not sit down. As yesterday, as the day before, I stand until I have lost my thoughts.
I look at the water of the Serpentine.
Vikram Seth, An Equal Music
9
Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of
the truck, beat-up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the
door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders,
hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying son of a bitch, son of a bitch; then, and as
easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jacks big teeth
bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and
Alma looking out for a few seconds at Enniss straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still
they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each others toes until
they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and
daughters, Little darlin.
Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain
10
Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a
tentShe slid further down, introducing herself to the rest of him. His neck. His nipples. His chocolate
stomach. She sipped the last of the river from the hollow of his navel. She pressed the heat of his erection
against her eyelids. She tasted him, salty, in her mouth. He sat up and drew her back to him. She felt his
belly tighten under her, hard as a board. She felt her wetness slipping on his skin. He took her nipple in
his mouth and cradled her stomach in his callused palm. Velvet gloved in sandpaper.
At the moment she guided him into her, she caught a passing glimpse of his youth, his youngness, the
wonder in his eyes at the secret he had unearthed and she smiled down at him as though he was her
child.
Once he was inside her, fear was derailed and biology took over. The cost of living climbed to
unaffordable heights; though later Baby Kochamma would say it was a Small Price to Pay.

And a history lesson for future offenders.

He held her against him, resting his back against the mangosteen tree, while she cried and laughed at
once. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, but was really no more than five minutes, she slept leaning
against him, her back against his chest
Slowly the terror seeped back into him. At what he had done. At what he knew he would do again. And
again.

An hour later Ammu disengaged herself gently.

I have to go.
He said nothing, didnt move. He watched her dress.
Only one thing mattered now. They knew that it was all they could ask of each other. The only thing.
Ever. They both knew that.

Even later, on the thirteen nights that followed this one, instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. The
Big Things ever lurked inside. They knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had nothing. No
future. So they stuck to the small things.
They laughed at ant-bites on each others bottoms. At clumsy caterpillars sliding off the ends of leaves, at
overturned beetles that couldnt right themselves. At the pair of small fish that always sought Velutha out
in the river and bit him. At a particularly devout praying mantis. At the minute spider who lived in a
crack in the wall of the back of the verandahand camouflaged himself by covering his body with bits of
rubbish a silver of wasp wing

[T]hey knew that they had to put their faith in fragility. Stick to Smallness. Each time they parted, they
extracted only one small promise from each other:
Tomorrow?
Tomorrow.
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

11
But as already hinted at in [6], fiction not only seeks to convince us and therefore cast its illusion upon us.
Perhaps, more importantly, fiction makes us feel.
The purpose of all the arts, including literature, is to quell boredom. People recognize that it feels good to
feel and that not to feel is unhealthy. Literature offers us feelings for which we do not have to pay. It
allows us to love, condemn, condone, hope, dread, and hate without any of the risks those feelings
ordinarily involve. Fiction must contain ideas, which give significance to characters and events. If the
ideas are shallow or untrue, the fiction will be correspondingly shallow or untrue. But the ideas must be
experienced through or with the characters; they must be felt or the fiction will fail also.
Much nonfiction writing also tries to persuade us to feel one way rather than another, and some
polemics and propaganda, for example exhort us to feel strongly. But nonfiction works largely by
means of reason and reasoning in order to appeal to and produce emotion. Fiction tries to reproduce the
emotional impact of experience. The job of fiction is to focus our attention not on the words, which are
inert, or on the thought those words produce, but through these to felt experience, where the vitality of
understanding lies. As Gardner puts it:
In great fiction, the dream engages us heart and soul; we not only respond to imaginary things sights,
sounds, smells as though they were real, we respond to fictional problems as though they were real: We
sympathize, think, and judge. We act out, vicariously, the trials of the characters and learn from the
failures and successes of particular modes of action, particular attitudes, opinions, assertions, and beliefs
exactly as we learn from life. Thus the value of great fiction, we begin to suspect, is not just it entertains
us or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not just
that it broadens our knowledge of people and places, but also that it helps us to know what we believe,
reinforces those qualities that are noblest in us, leads us to feel uneasy about our faults and limitations.
12 SOURCES
Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. New York: Longman, 2000.
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Trans. by Mildred Marmur. New York: Signet Classic,
1964.
Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Vintage Books,
1985.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: HarperPerennial, 1997.

ELEMENTS OF FICTION
STORY FORM AND STRUCTURE: PLOT It all begins with desire. A story begins with a central character, and
this character lets call him or her the storys protagonist needs or desires something. Odysseus desires
to return to his home in the island of Ithaca. Cinderella desires to marry the prince. Romeo and Juliet
desire to be with each other. In each case the characters desire is specific and concrete, not a desire of the
general abstract type, i.e. the need to survive and perhaps prosper, the need to love and be loved. Before a
characters need can stand as a metaphor for something abstract, it must first be something physical,
specific and concrete. Thus:

A sailor/ his house

A young maiden who has lost her fortune/ a prince who has her glass slipper
Daughter of the rival family and son of the rival family/ son of the rival family and daughter of
the rival family

Imagine, then, the story as this: It is a story about a character and his desire; it is a story about this
characters quest to achieve this desire.
2
But in fiction: no conflict, no story.
Jan and Jo meet in college. Both are beautiful, intelligent, talented, popular, and well adjusted. Theyre of
the same class, religion, and political persuasion. They are sexually compatible. Their parents become fast
friends. They marry on graduating; and both get rewarding work in the same city. They have three
children, all of whom are healthy, happy, beautiful, and popular. All the children succeed in work and
marriage. Jon and Jo die peacefully, of natural causes, at the same moment, at the age of eighty-two, and
are buried in the same grave.
No doubt this love story is interesting to Jan and Jo. But not to us readers: we might not even lift a finger
to turn the page. Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction, fundamental because in literature only
trouble is interesting. Charles Baxter puts it best: Say what you will about it, Hell is story-friendly. If you
want a compelling story, put your protagonist among the damned. The mechanisms of hell are nicely
attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. Its
about what happens when stories are over.
Thus: desire and conflict.
3 DESIRE AND CONFLICT
So the central characters in question attempt to fulfill their desires, despite the best efforts of what well
call antagonists other characters or situations that stand between protagonists and the satisfaction of
their desires. A conflict has graced their lives. The sea god Poseidon, offended by Odysseus at the start of
Homers epic, places 10 years worth of obstacles in the Ithacans way to prevent him from reaching
home. The stepmother constantly counters Cinderellas efforts to marry the prince. The Montague and
Capulet families, the feuding clans that they are, prevent Romeo and Juliet from being together.

A sailor/ his house/ the sea in between them

A young maiden who has lost her fortune/ a prince who has her glass slipper/ the wicked
stepmother
Daughter of the rival family and son of the rival family/ son of the rival family and daughter of
the rival family/ the lovers respective families in between them

Hence the story becomes: a story about a central character and his frustrated need (technically, conflict).
A frequently used critical tool divides possible conflicts into several basic categories: (1) man against
man, (2) man against nature, (3) man against society, (4) man against machine, (4) man against God, and
(5) man against himself.

To summarize: A story consists of a characters need for something concrete and specific, not abstract
and general and the characters attempts to resolve this need, in spite of the conflict. It is this dynamic
that compels us readers to turn the page: Will he achieve his desire or not? Will he succeed or not? We
become interested, then, in the story: What happens next?
4 CINDERELLA AND THE INVERTED CHECKMARK
Once conflict is established and developed in a story, the conflict must come to a crisis and resolution.
Schematically:
CLIMAX
The slipper fits

DENOUEMENT
Wedding

You may not

Clock strikes 12
And they lived happily ever
after

DEVELOPMENT

Be home by
midnight

Everyone must try the

slipper

Prince falls in love

with C.

You cant go

Fairy Godmother
Stepmother
ACTIVATING
INCIDENT
OPENING

Invitation to the
ball

Cinderella

5 A GLADIATORIAL VIEW OF FICTION

This diagram in [4] shows us that a story is [like] a war. It is sustained and immediate combat. (1) The
characters are fighters (2) who fight over something a stake thats worth their fighting over. (3) They
have their fight dive into a series of battles with the last battle the crisis the biggest and most
dangerous of all: the crisis makes the outcome inevitable. There can no longer be any doubt who wins. (4)
So that, after the crisis, a definitive change occurs and there is a walking away from the fight.
6 SOME TERMS RELATED TO PLOT
in medias res
flashback
flashforward
foreshadowing
organic plot

episodic plot

THE NOTION OF CHARACTER IN FICTION Recall: the storytelling process begins with a character. It is the
protagonist, or main character, who sets the story in motion, who makes the story special, memorable,
meaningful. When we talk to one another about the stories and novels that have meant most to us, we
speak about, more than what happened, who made it happen.
This is perhaps understandable since we can sympathize only with what is human. We may describe a
landscape as tragic because nature has been devastated by industry, but the tragedy lies in the cupidity
of those who wrought havoc, in the dreariness, poverty, or disease of those who must live there.
A conservationist or ecologist (or a novelist) may care passionately about nature and dislike people
because they pollute oceans and cut down trees. Then we say he or she identifies with nature (a wholly
human capacity) or respects the natural unity (of which humanity is part) or wants to keep the earth
habitable (for whom?) or values nature for its own sake (using standards of value that nature does not
share).
By all available evidence, the universe is indifferent to the destruction of trees, property, peoples, and
planets. Only people care.
2 OUR PRIMARY INTEREST IN FICTION
Because we are endlessly and always fascinated with the human, it stands to reason then that character is
also our primary interest in fiction. We successfully engage with fiction only to the extent that we find its
characters interesting, we find them believable, and we care about what happens to them.
3 AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS INTEREST
Part of the fascination with the characters of fiction is that we come to know fictional characters so well,
perhaps at times too well. In real life we come to know people for the most part only on the basis of
externals on the basis of what they say and do; the essential complexity of their inner lives can be
inferred only after years of close acquaintance, if at all.
Fiction, on the other hand, often provides us with direct and immediate access to that inner life to the
intellectual, emotional, and moral complexities of human personality that lie beneath the surface.
4 PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONIST
The term character applies to any individual in a literary work. The major or central character of the plot
is the protagonist; his opponent, the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends is the
antagonist.
The protagonist is usually easy to identify: without him/her there is no story. For instance, without
Cinderella, there is no Cinderella; without Odysseus, there is no Odyssey.
The antagonist, on the other hand, is more difficult to identify, especially when he is not a human being
(i.e. a hostile environment). Or for instance, in A Day in the Country, can we so easily locate an antagonist?
Is there an antagonist at all?
Note that the terms protagonist and antagonist do not imply judgment about the moral worth of either,
for both embody a complex mixture of both positive and negative qualities.
5 FLAT AND ROUND CHARACTERS
To describe the relative degree to which fictional characters are developed by their creators, we
distinguish between flat and round characters.

Flat characters embody or represent a single characteristic, trait, or idea, or at most a very limited number
of such qualities. The really flat character, E.M. Foster writes, can be expressed in one sentence.
Round characters are just the opposite: they embody a number of qualities and traits, and are complex
multidimensional characters of considerable intellectual and emotional depth who have the capacity to
grow and change.
6 DYNAMIC AND STATIC CHARACTERS
Dynamic characters exhibit the capacity to change. Static characters, on the other hand, leave the plot as
they entered it, largely untouched by the events that have taken place. An author sometimes creates static
characters as foils to emphasize and set off by contrast the development taking place in others. Look back
to the characters in the past stories weve read in class. Who are dynamic? Static?
7 METHODS OF CHARACTER PRESENTATION
In fiction, characters are often drawn via five methods: authorial interpretation, appearance, action,
speech, and thought.

Authorial Interpretation: the author telling us the characters background, motives, values,
virtues, and the like.
Appearance: beauty is only skin deep, one may argue, but people are embodied, and whatever
beauty or ugliness there is in them must somehow surface in order for us to perceive it. In the
world of fiction, details of appearance (what a character wears and how he looks) often provide
essential clues to character.
Action: as Henry James put it, What is character but the determination of incident? What is
incident but the illustration of character? Behavior is a logical and necessary extension of
psychology and personality. Inner reality can be measure through external event. In short, what a
given character is is revealed by what the character does.
Speech: characterizes in a way different from appearance, because speech represents an effort,
mainly voluntary, to externalize the internal and to manifest deliberated thought.
Thought: in fiction, we have the privilege of entering a characters mind, sharing at its source
internal conflict, reflection, and the crucial processes of decision and discovery.

SETTING: TIME, PLACE, AND CONTEXT Some places we judge as mellow or harsh. And our judgment alters
according to what happens to us. For instance, in some rooms you are always trapped; you enter them
and escape them as soon as you can. Other rooms invite you in, to nestle or carouse. Some landscapes lift
your spirits; others depress you. Cold weather gives you energy and bounce, or else it clogs your head
and makes you huddle, struggling. You describe yourself as a night person or a morning person. The
house you loved as a child now makes you, precisely because you were once happy there, think of loss
and death.
The point is: Our relation to place, time, and weather is always charged with emotion. So that in fiction,
as in real life, setting can be used to dramatic effect.
2 SETTING AND DRAMATIC EFFECT IN FICTION
The dramatic effects produced by setting in a piece of fiction are many and varied. They cannot be
anticipated and enumerated as neat categories. One must carefully read and immerse oneself in the text
itself in order to be able to evaluate the dramatic effect/function of setting in the larger design of the
story.

10

Hence, the following functions of setting are not dogmatic, but mere suggestions, entry points, so to
speak, in analyzing setting:

Background: No dramatic effect. Setting exists solely to lend the fiction verisimilitude, a sense of
reality, as if to merely show this story is happening in some place and at some time. Setting
bears no clear relationship to action or characters, or at best a relationship that is slight or
tangential.

Harmony: Is there harmony between character and setting? In this story, or at least at this
particular point in the story, why must there be harmony between character and setting? What
dramatic effect results?

Conflict: Is there conflict between character and setting? In this story, or at least at this particular
point in the story, why must there be conflict between character and setting? What dramatic
effect results?

Suggestive/Symbolic: Does the setting suggest the characters state of mind, her feelings and
emotions, or any aspect of her character? Does it suggest the influence of the macrocosm
(universe/nature) on the microcosm (locale/a particular characters life)? Does it symbolize some
other thing beyond what is seen or read in the surface? In this story, or at least at this particular
point in the story, why must there be conflict between character and setting? What dramatic
effect results?

POINT OF VIEW A story must have a plot, characters, and a setting. It must also have a storyteller: a
narrative voice, real or implied, that presents the story to the reader. When we talk about narrative
voice, we talk about point of view, the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of
vision, from which the story is told. The relationship between narrator and story, teller and tale, governs
the readers access to the story and determines just how much he can know at any given moment about
what is taking place. In point of view, we are concerned primarily with the question: who speaks?
2 WHO SPEAKS?
Who speaks? Who is telling the story? A story can be told in the third person (she walked out into the
resplendent moonlight), second person (you walked out into the resplendent moonlight), and first
person (I walked out into the resplendent moonlight).
3 THIRD PERSON: OMNISCIENT AUTHOR
a. The omniscient author has total knowledge. In his capacities, he is God. He can:
b. Objectively report what is happening;
c. Go into the mind of any character
d. Interpret for the reader that characters appearance, speech, actions, and thoughts, even if the
character cannot do so;
e. Move freely in time or space to give us a panoramic, telescopic, microscopic, or historical view;
tell us what has happened elsewhere or in the past or what will happen in the future, and
f. Provide general reflections, judgments, and truths
4 THE SHE-WOLF, Giovanni Verga
(a) She was tall and slim, and though no longer young, had the strong firm breasts of the dark-haired
woman. (e) In the village they called her The Wolf because she could never be sated. (d-e) It was a good
thing the Wolf never came to church, even at Easter or Christmas, either for mass or for confession. (d-e)
Father Angiolino of the Church of Saint Mary of Jesus, a true servant of the Lord, had lost his soul on her

11

account. (b-d) Poor Maricchia, a good and decent girl, cried secretly, because she was the Wolfs
daughter
5 THIRD PERSON: LIMITED OMNISCIENT AUTHOR
The limited omniscient author tells you the story with only some, and not all, of the omniscient authors
capacities. Most commonly, he can see events objectively and also grants himself access to the mind of
one character, but not to the minds of others, nor to any explicit powers of judgments.
6 EVELINE, James Joyce
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window
curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tiredOne time there used to be a
field there in which they used to play every evening with other peoples childrenEverything changes.
Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.
7 THIRD PERSON: OBJECTIVE AUTHOR
The objective authors knowledge is restricted only to external facts that might be observed by a human
being; to the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
8 HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS, Ernest Hemingway
The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building.
What should we drink? the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.
Its pretty hot, the man said.
Lets drink beer.
Dos cervezas, the man said into the curtain.
Big ones? a woman asked from the doorway.
Yes. Two big ones.
The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on
the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of the hills. They were
white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.
9 SECOND PERSON
First and third persons are most common in literature; the second person remains an idiosyncratic and
experimental form. But it is worth mentioning in class because several contemporary authors have been
attracted to its possibilities.
The second person is the point of view of the story only when a character is referred to as you. Only when
you become an actor in the drama, so designated by the author, is the story or novel written in second
person.
10 HOW TO BECOME A WRITER, Lorrie Moore
First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie
star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age
say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku
sentences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing
leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom.
11 FIRST PERSON
A story is told in the first person when it is a character who speaks. The term narrator is sometimes
loosely used to refer to any teller of a tale, but strictly speaking a story has a narrator only when it is told
in the first person by one of the characters.

12

This character may be the protagonist, the I telling my story, in which case the narrator is a central
narrator. Or, the character may be telling a story about someone else, in which case he or she is a
peripheral narrator.

IRONY Generally, irony makes visible a disparity between appearance and reality. More fully and
specifically:
between what is and what seems to be
between what is and what ought to be
between what is and what one wishes to be
between what is and what one expects to be
Incongruity is the method of irony; opposites come suddenly together so that the disparity is obvious to
discriminating readers. There are many kinds of irony; here are common ones:
2 VERBAL IRONY
In verbal irony, perhaps the most common form of irony, people say the opposite of what they mean. For
example, if the day has been terrible, you might say, Boy, this has been a great day! The hearer knows
that this statement is ironic because of the speakers tone of voice or bodily expressions or because the
hearer is familiar with the situation and immediately sees the discrepancy between statement and
actuality.

Understatement minimizes the nature of something. It was a pretty good game, one might say
after seeing a no-hitter.
Overstatement exaggerates the nature of something. After standing in a long line, you might say,
There were about a million people in that line!
Sarcasm is irony in its most bitter and destructive form.

3 SITUATIONAL IRONY
In situational irony, the situation is different from what common sense indicates it is, will be, or ought to
be. It is ironic, for example, that an old man turned 98, won the lottery, died next day. Its like a death row
pardon ten minutes too late. Its like rain on your wedding day, a free ride when youve already paid, a
good advice that you just didnt take.
4 DRAMATIC IRONY
Dramatic irony occurs when characters state something that they believe to be true but that the audience
knows to be false. An example is Oedipus Rex. Like all Greek tragedies, the Oedipus Rex dramatizes a myth
that its audiences knew. Thus when Oedipus at the beginning boasts that he will personally find and
punish the killer of King Laius, the audience recognizes this boast as ironic. Oedipus does not know, but
the audience knows, that he himself is the unwitting murderer of Laius. The key is the readers
foreknowledge of coming events.

THEME How does a fiction mean? In a manner of speaking, every piece of fiction beats around the bush. It
does not tell you directly what it wants to say. It is unlike an essay or an advertisement which tells you

13

directly and explicitly what it wants to say. In fiction, everything is simply suggested, rendered, hinted at,
and it is up to us to surmise its meaning. In fact, we cant even know what its author originally intended
to say. Further, fiction possesses an excess of meaning: It can mean a lot of things at the same time. And,
at other times too, it can become an existential joke and mean nothing at all. It is this that perhaps makes
reading fiction sometimes difficult and frustrating.
But this should not be an unwelcome nuisance. One of the many pleasures of fiction is its rendition of an
experience. Fiction does not tell you anything directly, does not explain, does not argue, does not preach,
in the way, say, an argument, a textbook, or a priest does. Fiction does not tell you anything directly
because it wants you to experience things directly. Fiction brings you the full impact of experience.
Fiction brings you the full experience of life. It allows you to see for yourself the fictional sights, hear for
yourself the fictional sounds, move and walk around the fictional ground, and feel for yourself its
emotions. This is in the first place why we say we simply do not read a story: we experience it.
2 THEME IN FICTION
Most literature textbooks discuss theme by way of a warning: theme is not the message, not the moral, of
the story, and the meaning of a piece cannot be paraphrased. Theme contains an idea but cannot be stated
as an idea. Theme suggests a morality but offers no moral. What is theme then?
First of all, theme is what a story is about. But that is not enough, because a story may be about a mother
who seduces her daughters husband or a young girl yearning to escape her father or a man who has not
heard his own laughter, and those would not be the themes of those stories.
Second, a story is also about an abstraction, and if the story is significant, that abstraction may be very
large. ONCE UPON A TIME is about society and racism, MARIA DOS PRAZERES about love,
WILDERNESS TIPS betrayal and deceit, but these abstractions say little about the themes of any of the
stories.
A more useful way of approaching theme, then, is to ask the question: What about what its about? What
does the story say about the idea or abstraction that seems to be contained in it? What attitudes or
judgments does it imply? Above all, how do the elements particular to fiction contribute to our
experience of those ideas and attitudes in the story?
3 HOW FICTIONAL ELEMENTS CONTRIBUTE TO THEME
What follows is as short a story as youre likely to encounter in print. It is spare in the extreme almost,
as its title suggests, an outline. Yet the author has contrived in this miniscule compass to direct every
fictional element toward the exploration of several larger themes.

A MAN TOLD ME THE STORY OF HIS LIFE

Grace Paley

Vicente said: I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor with my whole heart.

I learned every bone, every organ in the body. What is it for? Why does it work?
The school said to me: Vicente, be an engineer. That would be good. You understand
mathematics.
I said to the school: I want to be a doctor. I already know how the organs connect.
When something goes wrong, Ill understand how to make repairs.
The school said: Vicente, you will really be an excellent engineer. You show on all the
tests what a good engineer you will be. It doesnt show whether youll be a good
doctor.
I said: Oh, I long to be a doctor. I nearly cried. I was seventeen. I said: Perhaps youre
right. Youre the teacher. Youre the principal. I know Im young.

14

The school said: And besides, youre going into the army.
And then I was made a cook. I prepared food for two thousand men.
Now you see me. I have a good job. I have three children. This is my wife, Consuela. Did
you know I saved her life?
Look, she suffered pain. The doctor said: What is this? Are you tired? Have you had too
much company? How many children? Rest overnight, then tomorrow well make tests.
The next morning I called the doctor. I said: She must be operated on immediately. I
have looked in the book. I see where her pain is. I understand what the pressure is,
where it comes from. I see clearly the organ that is making trouble.
The doctor made a test. He said: She must be operated at once. He said to me: Vicente,
how did you know?

It may be said this is a story is about the waste of Vicentes talent through the bad guidance of authority.
Lets start then by saying waste and power are its central themes. How are the elements of fiction
arranged in the story to present them?
The conflict is between Vicente and the figures of authority he encounters: teacher, principal, army,
doctor. His desire at the beginning of the story is to become a doctor (in itself a figure of authority), and
this desire is thwarted by persons of increasing power. In the crisis action what is at stake is his wifes life.
In this last battle he succeeds as a doctor, so that the denouement reveals the irony of his having been
denied in the first place.
The story seems told from the point of view of a first-person central narrator, but with an important
qualification. The title, A Man Told Me the Story of His Life, and the first two words, Vicente said,
posit a first-person peripheral narrator reporting what Vicente said. If the story was titled My Life and
began I wanted to be a doctor, Vicente might be making a public appeal, a boast of how wronged he
has been. As it is, he told his story privately to the barely sketched author who now wants it known, and
this leaves Vicentes modesty intact.
The modesty is underscored by the simplicity of his speech, a rhythm and word choice that suggest
educational limitations (perhaps that English is a second language). At the same time, the simplicity helps
us identify with Vicente morally. Clearly, if he has educational limitations, it is not for want of trying to
get an education. His credibility is augmented by understatement, both as youth But perhaps youre
right. Youre the teacher. and as a man I have a good job. I have three children. This apparent
acceptance makes us trust him at the same time as it makes us angry on his behalf.
Its consistent with the spareness of the language that we do not have an accumulation of minute or vivid
details, but the degree of specificity is nevertheless a clue to where to direct our sympathy. In the title
Vicente is just A Man. As soon as he speaks he becomes an individual with a name. The school,
collective and impersonal, speaks to him, but when he speaks it is to single individuals, the teacher,
the principal, and when he speaks of his wife she is personalized as Consuela.
Moreover, the sensory details are so arranged that they relate to each other in ways that give them
metaphoric and symbolic significance. Notice, for example, how Vicentes desire to become a doctor
with my whole heart is immediately followed by, I learned every bone, every organ in the body.
Here the factual anatomical study refers us back to the heart that is one of those organs, suggesting by
implication that Vicente is somebody who knows what a heart is. He knows how things connect.
An engineer, of course, has to know how things connect and how to make repairs. But so does a doctor,
and the authority figures of the school havent the imagination to see the connection. The army, by
putting him to work in a way that involves both connections and anatomical parts, takes advantage of his
by-now clear ability to order and organize things he feeds two thousand men but it is too late to repair
the misdirection of such talents. We dont know what his job is now; it doesnt matter, its the wrong one.

15

As a young man Vicente asked, What is it for? Why does it work?, revealing a natural fascination with
the sort of question that would be asked on an anatomy test. But no such test is given, and the tests that
are given are irrelevant. His wifes doctor will make tests, but like the school authorities he knows less
than Vicente does. In fact one could say all the authorities of the story fail the test.
This analysis, twice as long as the story, doesnt begin to exhaust the possibilities for interpretation, and
you may disagree with any of the suggested ones. But it does indicate how fictional elements all reinforce
the themes of waste and power.

SOURCES
Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft.
Chua, Jonathan. Enjoying Fiction.
Griffith, Kelly. Writing Essays about Literature.
Sexton, Adam. Master Class in Fiction Writing: Techniques from Austen, Hemingway, and Other Greats.

16

THE SHE-WOLF

Giovanni Verga (Italy, 1883)

Verga, Giovanni (18401922) novelist, dramatist. Giovanni Verga was

born in Catania, Sicily. He intended initially to pursue a career in law; he
abandoned his studies to concentrate on writing novels. His early works
were romantic in tone, but his later and, subsequently, better-received
novels beginning with The Malavogolia Family (1881) were written in the
emerging Italian realist style known as verismoHis attention to detail in
his faithful depictions of late 19th-century life in both Sicily and southern
Italy gained him much praise.
Although Verga began his career writing novels, he is best known for his
dramatic works. His first play was an adaptation of his short story Rustic
Chivalry (1884). A tale of lust, love, and murder, the play, set in his native
Sicily, gained popularity when it was further adapted as an opera by the
composer Mascagni. Cavalleria Rusticana continues to be performed
throughout the world.
Vergas second dramatic work, In Porters Lodge (1885), again treats the themes of love and violence.
This time, he moves the setting to the city of Milan, thus
exemplifying the universality of his themes.
In fact, the major criticism against
Vergas dramas has been that he
indulges in the violent nature of
reality, focusing on murder, lust,
adultery, suicide, and other crimes of
passion at the expense of the poetry and
humor of Sicily. This is equally true in
several of his later plays including The
She-Wolf (1896) and The Wolf Hunt
(1902). However, it is his unsentimental
depiction of reality that makes his plays
successfulThe remainder of his life,
during which many translations of his
works were produced internationally,
passed quietly. He died in 1922, well
remembered for his contributions to Italian
realistic literature.
Gabriele Lavias 1996 film
adaptation.

he was dark-haired, tall and lean, with firm, well-rounded breasts, though she was
no longer young, and she had a pale complexion, like someone forever in the grip
of malaria. The pallor was relieved by a pair of huge eyes and fresh red lips that
looked as though they would eat you.
17

2.

In the village they called her the She-Wolf because, no matter what she had, she was
never satisfied. The women crossed themselves whenever they saw her coming, lone as
a stray bitch, with the restless and wary appearance of a starving wolf. She would
gobble up their sons and their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with those red lips of
hers, and draw them to the tail of her skirt and transfix them with those devilish eyes, as
though they were standing before the altar at St Agrippina's. Luckily the She-Wolf
herself never set foot inside the church, either at Easter or at Christmas or to hear Mass
or to go to confession. Father Angiolino of St Mary of Jesus, a true servant of God, had
lost his soul on her account. Maricchia, poor girl, a good and worthy soul, shed tears in
secret because she was the She-Wolf's daughter and nobody would ever want to marry
her, even though she too had a fine trousseau tucked away in a chest and a patch of
decent land in the sun, like any other girl in the village.

3.

Then it happened that the She-Wolf fell in love with a handsome young fellow back
from the army, when the two of them were hay-making on the notary's farm. She'd
fallen for him lock, stock and barrel, her flesh burning beneath her thick cotton bodice,
and, staring into his eyes, she was overcome with the kind of thirst you would
experience down in the valley on a hot midsummer day. But he just kept scything
calmly away, head down over the hay, saying "What's the matter, Pina?" In the vast
expansive fields, where all you could hear was the chirping of the crickets as they leapt,
with the sun beating straight down, the She-Wolf tied up sheaf after sheaf, bundle after
bundle, showing no sign of fatigue, never looking up for an instant, never putting her
lips to the flask, just so long as she could be there behind Nanni, while he scythed away,
asking her every so often, "What is it you want, Pina?"

4.

One evening she told him, while the men, exhausted from their day's labours, were
nodding off to sleep in the barn, and the dogs were filling the dark air of the countryside
with their howling, "It's you I want! You that are beautiful as the sun, and sweet as the
honey! I want you!"

5.

"It's the unmarried daughter of yours that I want," Nanni replied, laughing. The SheWolf thrust her hands into her hair, tearing at the sides of her head without uttering a
word, then strode off and stayed away from the barn. But then the olive-crushing season
came round in October, she set her eyes on Nanni again because he was working next
door to were she lived, and the creaking of the press kept her awake the whole night
long.

6.

"Pick up that sack of olives," she said to her daughter, "and come with me." Nanni was
pushing the olives under the mill wheel with his shovel, and shouting "Get up there!" to
the mule to keep it moving.

7.

"Do you want my daughter Maricchia?" Pina asked.

8.

"What are you going to give her?" Nanni replied.

9.

"She's got the things her father left, and she can have my house into the bargain. All you
need to leave me is the corner of the kitchen to spread out my palliasse."

10.

"In that case we can talk it over at Christmas," said Nanni.

11.

Nanni was covered in grease sweat from the oil and the fermenting olives, and
Maricchia wanted nothing whatever to do with him, but when they got home her
mother grabbed her by the hair and said to her through clenched teeth: "If you don't take
him, I'll kill you!" You would have thought the She-Wolf was ill, and people were saying
that when the Devil grows old he goes into hiding. She never wandered about the
village any more, she didn't stand on the doorstep flashing those crazy eyes of hers. Her
son-in-law, whenever she fixed those eyes on him, began to laugh, and pulled out his
scapular to bless himself with. Maracchia stayed at home, breastfeeding the children,
18

while her mother went off to the fields to work alongside the men; just like a man, in
fact, digging, hoeing, rounding up the cattle, and pruning the vines in all weather, in
January with an icy wind from the east, or August with the sirocco from the south, when
at the end of the day the mules would be drooping their heads and the men would be
sitting asleep, propped against the wall with their mouths hanging open. 'In hours that
run from dusk till dawn goes no good woman ever born,' and Pina was the only living
soul you could see out and about, picking her way over the boundless fields that
stretched into the heat haze of the far distance towards Etna, shrouded in mist, where
the sky bore down on the horizon. "Wake up!" said the She-Wolf to Nanni, who was
lying asleep in the ditch under the dust-laden hedgerow, resting his head between his
arms. "Wake up, I've brought you some wine to wet your throat."
12.

Nanni opened his eyes wide, stupefied, still half-asleep, to find her standing over him,
white-faced, thrusting her breast towards him and fixing him with her coal-black eyes,
and he stretched out his hands, groping the air.

13.

"No! No good woman's abroad from dusk till dawn!" bewailed Nanni, pressing his face
down again into the dry grass of the ditch as hard as he could, with his fingernails
tearing at his hair. "Go away! Go away! Keep away from the barn!"

14.

She did go away, did the She-Wolf, tying up her splendid tresses as she went, staring
ahead of her toward the hot fields of stubble with her coal-black eyes.

15.

But she kept going back to the barn, and Nanni said nothing. In fact, whenever she was
late arriving, in the hours that run from dusk till dawn, he would go and wait for her at
the top of the ashen-white, deserted lane, with beads of sweat standing out on his
forehead. And afterwards he would thrust his hands through his hair and repeat every
time, "Go away! Go away! Don't come back to the barn!"

16.

Maricchia wept day and night, and stared at her mother with tear-filled eyes aflame
with jealousy, looking like a wolf-cub herself, every time she saw her returning pale and
silent from the fields.

17.

"You wicked slut!" she cried. "You wicked slut of a mother!"

18.

"Shut up!"

19.

"You thief! Thief!"

20.

"Shut up!"

21.

"'I'll tell the police sergeant, that's what I'll do!"

22.

"Go ahead and tell him!"

23.

She did go ahead, with her children clinging round her neck, totally unafraid, and
without shedding a tear. She was like a mad woman, because now she too loved the
husband they had forced upon her, all greasy and covered in sweat from the fermenting
olives. The sergeant had Nanni called in, and threatened him with prison and the
gallows. Nanni stood there sobbing and tearing his hair. He denied nothing, and didn't
even try to make excuses. "I was tempted!" he cried. "I was tempted by the Devil!"

24.

He threw himself at the sergeant's feet, pleading with him to send him to prison.

25.

"For pity's sake, sergeant, take me out of this hell on earth! Have me killed, send me to
prison, never let me set eyes on her again, ever!"

26.

But when the sergeant spoke to the She-Wolf, she replied, "No! I kept a corner of the
kitchen to sleep in, when I gave him my house as a dowry. The house is mine. I don't
intend to leave it." Shortly after that, Nanni was kicked in the chest by a mule, and was
at death's door. But the parish priest refused to bring him the bread of Christ until the
19

She-Wolf left the house. The She-Wolf went away, and her son-in-law could then
prepare to take his leave of the world as a good Christian. He confessed and made
communion with such an obvious show of repentance and contrition that all the
neighbours and onlookers were in tears at the bed of the dying man. And it would have
been better if he had died then and there, before the Devil returned to tempt him and to
take him over body and soul as soon as he recovered.
27.

"Leave me alone!" he said to the She-Wolf. "For God's sake, leave me in peace! I stared
death in the face! The poor Maricchia is in despair! The whole village knows all about it!
It's better for both of us if I don't see you . . ."

28.

He would have liked to tear out his eyes so as not to see the eyes of the She-Wolf, who
made him surrender body and soul when she fixed them upon him. He no longer knew
what to do to release himself from her spell. He paid for Masses for the souls in
Purgatory, and asked the parish priest and the sergeant to help him. At Easter he went
to confession, and did penance in public by crawling on his belly for six feet over the
cobblestones in front of the church. After all that, when the She-Wolf returned to
torment him, he said to her:

29.

"Listen! Just you stay away from the barn, because if you come looking for me again, I
swear to God I'll kill you!"

30.

"Go ahead and kill me," replied the She-Wolf. "It doesn't worry me. I can't live without
you."

31.

When he saw her coming in the distance, through the sown fields, he stopped digging at
the vine with his mattock, and went and wrenched the axe from the elm. The She-Wolf
saw him coming, pale with frenzy, the axe glittering in the sun, but she never stopped
for a moment or lowered her gaze as she carried on walking towards him, with her
hands full of bunches of red poppies, devouring him with her coal-black eyes. Ah!
Nanni stammered. May your soul roast in Hell!
Trans. Alfred Alexander

20

THE LOVE OF A DEADLY WOMAN

A Study Guide to The She-Wolf
1
REVIEWING CHARACTER

Physical appearance is one of the most obvious ways by which to build a character. That
is, physical appearance can reveal something about ones character. In this story, is
physical appearance significant to the build-up of the character of the She-Wolf?

Another means of revealing character is through what other characters say about him/her.
What does this method reveal about the character of the She-Wolf?

A more important method by which character is revealed is through the characters

actions themselves. Actions speak louder than words, goes the old saying. Or: You
are what you do. What action/s committed by the She-Wolf strike you most, and what
do these reveal about her character?

Make conclusive remarks about the She-Wolfs character. Compare/contrast her with
her daughter Maricchia. How similar of different are they?

2
DESIRE + CONFLICT = PLOT
Every story begins with desirethe strong, burning desire of a character. What is the concrete
desire of Pina? What antagonistic force/s impede the achievement of this desire? How does the
interplay between these forces set into motion the story:

What is the storys climax?

Nanni threatens to kill her if

she comes again

If there is one, what is the storys resolution?

NOTES:

Nanni, on the brink of death, must be

anointed by the priest, so Pina must
leave

So Pina forces their

marriage, while keeping a
part of the house to her,
and she begins to seduce
Nanni
But Nanni likes the
daughter instead

Nanni gets well and The

Wolf returns to seduce him
again

But Pina has the law on her side too: according to their
agreement shell keep part of the house, so she stays

So Pina forces their marriage, lives

with them, seduces Nanni again and
again; Nanni gives in

1. The inverted checkmark is

a convenient way of
visualizing a storys plot and
mapping out its movement.
2. On the right side are the
events that favor the
protagonists desire. On the
left, the antagonistic forces.
3. Fill in the event in the
missing boxes.
4. Encircle the activating
incident.
5. Given the diagram, what do
you think is the relationship
between character and plot?

Pina falls in love with Nanni

OPENING How does the story begin? By way of an immediate

action/event? Or merely exposition/description?

21
6. Which characters are
static? Dynamic? Flat? Round?

3
SETTING: PLACE, TIME, AND MILIEU
After this review of plot and character, our judgments of the characters are already set in place:
the protagonist of the story is on the side of what we usually label as evil, and the rest are but
her helpless victims (though this might be contestable in the case of Nanni). The next question
now is: how might an analysis of the setting against which this domestic drama is set affect our
judgments so far?

Close read details pertinent to setting and flesh out the settings economic, religious, and
social/cultural life:

ASPECT OF
SETTING

DESCRIPTION

SUPPORTING PASSAGES
(Cite key words or paragraph
number)

GEOGRAPHIC
ECONOMIC
Rich or poor?
Occupations? Etc.
RELIGIOUS
Religion?
Beliefs? Etc.
SOCIOCULTURAL
Mores and
traditions?
Practices?
Taboos? Etc.

Would you say that the setting is a relatively civilized and orderly society?

Review the following details below:

(a) staring into his eyes, she was overcome with the kind of thirst you would
experience down in the valley on a hot midsummer day. But he just kept scything
calmly away, head down over the hay, saying "What's the matter, Pina?". In the vast
expansive fields, where all you could hear was the chirping of the crickets as they
leapt, with the sun beating straight down
(b) One evening she told him, while the men, exhausted from their day's labours, were
nodding off to sleep in the barn, and the dogs were filling the dark air of the
countryside with their howling
(c) Maricchia stayed at home, breastfeeding the children, while her mother went off to
the fields to work alongside the men; just like a man, in fact, digging, hoeing,
rounding up the cattle, and pruning the vines in all weather, in January with an icy
wind from the east, or August with the sirocco from the south, when at the end of
the day the mules would be drooping their heads and the men would be sitting
asleep, propped against the wall with their mouths hanging open.
(d) 'In hours that run from dusk till dawn goes no good woman ever born,' and Pina
was the only living soul you could see out and about, picking her way over the
22

boundless fields that stretched into the heat haze of the far distance towards Etna,
shrouded in mist, where the sky bore down on the horizon.

Can we say that only the force of civilization is present and at work in the storys
setting?

4 TOWARD THEME
Now that weve studied the storys more important elements in detailhere, plot, character,
and settingwe can now begin approaching the theme/s of the story. Theme asks the
questions: So what is this story all about? What does it say about human nature?
One way of articulating the theme of the story is by thinking of the story as some sort of
struggle between two abstract forces represented by concrete details in the story. An important
step then is the identification of a central tension motivating the story, a tension that may be
expressed in the form of a binary opposition.
For instance, in this story, one obvious opposition is: She-Wolf v. Maricchia. But this is still
speaking in concrete terms. What does each side represent in abstract terms?

Go back to your answer in [1]. What kind of love does Maricchia represent? How
does her society view this kind of love?

What about the She-Wolfwhat kind of love does the She-Wolf represent? How
does her society view this kind of love?

Relate the opposition of the She-Wolf and Pinna with the setting. Are they in any
way mirrored in any aspect/s of the setting? Explain.

Now, what is this story all about? What does it say about the human condition?

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