Today in class we will read the second half of Stephen King‘s short story “Strawberry Spring,” which was published in Ubris magazine in 1968 and included in King’s first short story collection, Night Shift (1978).
For the collaborative exercise that you will complete after we read the story, I will ask you to determine whether you can identify any details that indicate why the narrator may have murdered any of his victims. Although there is no indication that the narrator knew Gale Cerman, Adelle Parkins, or Marsha Curran, he did know Ann Bray. I will also ask you to try to identify the two literary allusions in King’s story.
We will address those points near the end of class today, and I will expand on them in tomorrow’s blog. Also in class today, we will discuss King’s story as another possible subject for research and how you might develop a final essay and annotated bibliography on “Strawberry Spring”–or one on your chosen subject–into a larger project for an upper-level course.
Next Up
We will review “Strawberry Spring” at the beginning of Wednesday’s class, and you will have the remainder of the period to continue work on your final essay and annotated bibliography.
Jane Lucas 