Tag: Donald Barthelme

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: “The School” Follow-Up

Posted on by janemlucas

Yesterday in class we examined Donald Barthelme’s “The School” as another potential subject for your analysis. In groups of three and four, you and your classmates considered these elements.

  • The narrator and the narrative voice
  • Conflict
  • A short passage that strikes you as interesting, revealing, or strange

The Narrator and the Narrative Voice

The words and phrases you and your classmates used to describe the narrator, Edgar, and his voice include “awkward,” “casual,” “detached,” “emotionless,” “lack[ing] empathy,” “mixing humor with unease,” “mono[tonus],” not “filter[ing] any of his thoughts.”

Do any of those descriptions seem at odds with the narrator’s words and actions? If so, what might account for that discrepancy?

Conflict

Most of the groups addressed the existential conflict of life versus death. The children want the plants and animals in their classroom to live. They want the Korean orphan, Kim, to live; they want their classmates and relatives to live, but the children are repeatedly faced with death.

A couple of the groups addressed Edgar’s internal conflicts. On group observed that he could not explain death to them because he was trying to protect their innocence. Another group noted that Edgar could not broach the subject of death because of his uncertainty as well as the absurdity of the circumstances: the unbelievably large number of deaths.

Another group pointed to the death of the trees–perhaps due to poor soil–as a particular instance of the existential conflict.

Interesting, Revealing, or Strange

Most of the groups noted the childrens’ request for Edgar to “please make love with Helen” (11) as a strange line. Other lines mentioned include “You know what I mean” (8), “As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ” (9), “And then there was this Korean Orphan” (9), and “is death that which gives meaning to life?” (10).

In this post, I am not including your sentences that demonstrate why those lines are interesting, revealing, or strange, but we will address some of those next Monday when we revisit Barthelme’s story. Remember that they are “triggers for analysis” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 24). That is why your journal assignment from yesterday asked you to repeat the interesting-revealing-strange exercise with the text you have tentatively chosen as the subject of your analysis.

Works Cited

Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley. Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “‘Interesting,’ ‘Revealing,’ ‘Strange,'” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 24.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Donald Barthelme’s “The School”

Posted on by janemlucas
“The School,” originally published in The New Yorker magazine, was one of twenty-one stories chosen for the annual Best American Short Stories anthology in 1975.

This morning in class we will examine Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School,” and in groups of three or four you will address in writing some of the elements of the story that you might explore in an analysis. As I mentioned last week, the essays, article excerpts, and chapters that we have studied thus far are among the texts you may choose as the subject of your analysis, which you will begin drafting next week. “The School” is another text you may analyze.

The elements of Barthelme’s story that you will consider this morning are these:

  • The narrator and the narrative voice
  • Conflict
  • A short passage that strikes you as interesting, revealing, or strange

Whether you analyze Bartheleme’s story or one of our other readings, you will begin your first paragraph with a summary of the text. Remember that a summary is an objective synopsis of a text’s key points. It should be written in third person and present tense. For example, if you choose to analyze “The School,” you might summarize it this way:

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the deaths of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the unexplained death of a Korean orphan, followed by the unexpected deaths of classmates and family members.

Notice that the summary above does not comment on the story in any way. What follows the summary will be the beginning of your commentary, or analysis, the thesis statement that offers your particular close reading, or interpretation, of the story. The passage below is the same as the one above, but at the end of it I have added a thesis statement in bold.

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the death of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the unexplained death of a Korean orphan, followed by the unexpected deaths of classmates and family members. With conversational narration, accumulation of detail, and a shift in fictional mode, Barthelme deftly depicts the reality of the fleeting nature of life, even as the story itself veers from reality.

If were to continue to write the analysis that I began in the previous paragraph, I would follow that opening paragraph with body paragraphs that address each of the three story elements that I include in my thesis: (1) conversational narration, (2) accumulation of detail, and (3) shift in fictional mode.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Introducing Donald Barthelme

Posted on by janemlucas
By University of Houston [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

As an introduction to Donald Barthelme, whose fiction we will examine in class tomorrow, read this biographical sketch. After you read the sketch, compose a one- or two-paragraph journal entry that includes what you have learned about his writing style, and what you have learned about readers’ and critics’ mixed responses to his fiction.

Bonus Assignment Follow-Up

Thanks to those of you who took advantage of yesterday’s bonus assignment: Annaliese Abboud, Gi Amitrano, Cameron Anderson, Adrienne Brown, Kylie Bussell, Myra Chatwal, Reese Danback, Amanda Franco, Dorian Grosber, Garrett Hickey, Raven Houston, Jorja Mangeot, Mariana Pavajeau, Heloise Richer, Ellie Tejada, and Bailey Upchurch.

Each of the two literacy narratives listed below were named by more than one student as the narrative with the most effective title. Four students named “G is for Grandma“; two students named “Yo Soy Hockey.”

The ten listed below were each named by one student as the literacy narrative with the most effective title.

A title should be intriguing and revealing (as well as relevant), but a title that reveals too much robs the writing of its intrigue. With that in mind, review the titles above and ask yourself whether any of them reveal too much?

A Lesson in Less is More

In one of last Friday’s Scrabble games, the one pictured above, the members of team one realized that with the a in age, they could play the letters v, r, i, o, u, and s to spell various. (Note that the p was later added above age.) Playing six letters to form a three-syllable, seven-letter word is an appealing move, especially if it means ridding yourself of undesirable letters, such as v, i, and u–though a u is highly desirable if the q has not been played. However, playing various as team one played in the game above comes with a risk: the placement of the word set up team two to play on the triple-word square, which they did. By playing the four letters m, o, t, and e, team two scored a double-triple through parallel play, forming three words: mote (a tiny piece of substance), mu (a Greek letter), and os (a bone). Various, with its i on a triple letter square earned team one twelve points. The double-triple mote and mu with os earned team two thirty-two points. Team one earned an average of two points per letter played; team two earned an average of eight points per letter played, evidence that less is more.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, we will read and discuss one of Donald Barthelme’s short stories. That story and the texts we have studied thus far in English 1103–“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into Life,” the excerpt from the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird,” and the excerpt from “The Falling Man”–are among the pieces of writing that may serve as the subject of your upcoming analysis. Before you begin drafting that assignment on Wednesday, September 24, we will examine another text that may serve as your subject.

Posted in English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Donald Bartheleme’s “The School”

Posted on by janemlucas

Today in class, after I collect your worksheets for lesson four of Check, Please! we will examine Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School,” and in groups of three or four you will address in writing some of the elements of the story that you might explore in an analysis. Among the elements of Barthelme’s story that you will considered are these:

  • the narrator and the narrative voice
  • conflict
  • narrative shift (Where does “The School” make an unexpected turn?)

Whether the subject of your analysis is Bartheleme’s story or one of our earlier readings, you will begin your first paragraph with a summary of the text. Remember that a summary is an objective synopsis of a text’s key points. It should be written in third person and present tense. For example, if you choose to analyze “The School,” you might summarize it this way:

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the deaths of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the unexplained death of a Korean orphan, followed by the senseless deaths of classmates and family members.

Notice that the summary above does not comment on the story in any way. What follows the summary will be the beginning of your commentary, or analysis, the thesis statement that offers your particular close reading, or interpretation, of the story. The passage below is the same as the one above, but at the end of it I have added a thesis statement in bold.

Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the death of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the death of a Korean orphan, followed by the deaths of classmates and family members. With conversational narration, accumulation of detail, and a shift in fictional mode, Barthelme deftly depicts the reality of the fleeting nature of life, even as the story itself veers from reality.

If I were to continue to write the analysis that I began in the previous paragraph, I would follow that opening paragraph with body paragraphs that address each of the three story elements that I include in my thesis: (1) “conversational narration,” (2) “accumulation of detail,” and (3) “shift in fictional mode.”

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.