Car Crash While Hitchhiking & A Perfect Day for Bananafish Stories Response
I need you to Read the 4 Stories I uploaded below and respond to each of them following the reader response guide. (approx. 250 words per story)
Reader Response Guide
Consider these questions for your responses to assigned short storiesand to all peer work, both for work groups and full-class workshops.Not all questions will be equally applicable to all works, especiallyexercises. Use your best judgment. This is not a form to be filled out,just important questions to guide your criticism. Remember that thecritique must be honest while still being respectful. Don’t just tellpeople what they would want to hear.
Reading Experience
Describe your experience readingthe story. This is always the first consideration for both reader andwriter. Did you care about the characters? What kept you interested?Were you ever confused or bored or find yourself rushing through certainparts or struggling to connect details? Did you laugh or respondemotionally? Did you understand intellectually without caring or feelingemotionally invested? The writer wants to know how the story affectedyou (or not) as you read it, before anything like literary analysistakes place.
Character
Briefly describe the story’s maincharacters, their conflicts, what they want, and what’s at stake foreach? There should be important stakes! Writers aren’t always aware ofhow a character is coming off in a story: Likable? Sympathetic?Interesting? Intelligent? Funny? How does it seem like the writer wantsyou to feel about the characters v. how you actually feel about them,particularly the protagonist? What psychological and emotional factorsare at the center of the conflict and story? How are the characters madecomplex and interesting? Are they depicted vividly and believably? Whatroles do characters other than the protagonist play? How does theprotagonist change over the course of the story? A story often not evenconsidered a story if the protagonist doesn’t change, even only if inhis/her perception or understanding of events. Knowing this shouldprevent you from writing about frivolous/trivial/unimportant things.
Conflict
Identify the story’s primary opposingforces, both explicit and implied. There should be pressure in a story, afeeling that something important is going to happen. You can call itpsychological, spiritual, existential. But it should feel like twotrains are headed toward each other on the same track, and a collisionis imminent. This is a generalization of course; there are exceptions toall rules. But the rules are rules for a reason: it’s what the readerexpects, and stories typically have lesser effect when they’re ignored.Example: Joe robs a bank. Obviously he wants money. But what’sunderneath that? What does the robbery mean to him beyond the obvious?His story should explore some aspect of who he is at his core, of how heperceives himself, of how he relates to the world. This should compelyou to explore your characters in some depth.
Plot
Identify and discuss the story’s central eventsand how they develop the conflict from page to page, scene to scene.Plot refers to the chronological order of events. Structure refers tothe order in which those events appear in the story, regardless ofchronology. Comment here on structure as well to the extent it’srelevant.
Prose
Discuss the qualities of the writing: the useof suggestive details, sensual language, voice, imagery, humor, tone.Consider also elements of the story’s composition: grammar andpunctuation, but also style, clarity, use of precise and active verbs,reliance on adjectives and adverbs to modify noun and verb choices.
Goals
Consider that a story should build toward asingleness of effect. Every line, every event, every detail shouldcontribute to its final effect. (That’s from Poe, but for most writers,readers and editors, it still stands.) Consider also that stories areoften judged based on how the events have “changed” the characters. Whateffect does the story seem to want to achieve by the end? Is itsuccessful? If not, what might make it so?
for example;
It’s sufficient to say, “On page 4,” or “In the restaurant scene”¦” Generalized or vague responses like, “I liked it,” “I couldn’t get into it,” or “That character was interesting” will not be highly rewarded. The more specific the response, the better the grade. Reader Response to a single story should be no longer than a page or so. They’re not meant to be mini-essays, neither are they question and answer. Just give the story some thought and tell me what you think.
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Attachments
20190604103048johnson_denis__car_crash_while_hitchhiking (560 kB)
20190604103050salinger__j.d.__a_perfect_day_for_bananafish_ (755 kB)
20190604103052burroway____seeing_is_believ
