Reading Response Prompts

 
These prompts are meant to get you thinking about what you have read and to help focus your thoughts for your reading responses. You can respond to any of them, or, if you have another idea you would rather explore, you are free to write about that instead. Even if you choose to pursue an idea of your own, however, or are not writing a response that day, you should still spend at least a few minutes thinking about each of the prompts in preparation for class. In any case, I suggest doing the reading first, then checking the prompts.  For more information, review the listserv assignment.

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms: Book One, Chapters I-XII

Simply put, Ernest Hemingway revolutionized narrative fiction. His writing style is like nothing that had appeared before him, and he has inspired a huge percentage of popular narrative fiction after him. Indeed, after Hemingway, the predominant writing style almost instantly came to be seen as old-fashioned. Yet in many ways, he breaks the rules of what is conventionally considered good or even correct writing. Certainly his grammar, syntax, and use of punctuation are unconventional. Examine any passage of narrative (not dialogue) in these chapters and identify its most important technical features. Consider both what he includes and what he leaves out.

First-person narration puts the reader into the story. We experience the events of the novel through the narrator, and thus we are forced to identify with him. What kind of person is this narrator?  Given how little he talks about himself — look how long it takes him even to tell us his name — how does Hemingway convey his psychology and his character to us?

The narrator may not be forthcoming about his opinions — either with us or with the novel’s other characters — but he records (faithfully, we assume) various conversations about the war, women and sex, and even metaphysics. Discuss how Hemingway explores these issues through character like the young priest, Rinaldi, Catherine Barkley, and Manera.

 
Home | Syllabus | Class Calendar and
Schedule of Assignments
| Resources