Setting and Narrator-- and dang, it's still cold

Hey, it's warmer-- just seven below zero today. 

Sarcasm for days. 




Yesterday in APLit, we read Jack London's "To Build a Fire"-- seemed appropriate. We had a conversation about how setting can become a character. I made the connection between that idea and the second half of the Patriots/Broncos game-- the snow and wind became more than just the physical setting. It became a force of its own, something that took on a life, could have been personified. And so it is in London's short story. 

I don't feel bad at all for pushing these kids into a new zone of understanding when it comes to reading fiction -- or anything at all, for that matter. Close reading and deep analysis has gone by the wayside in our contemporary times, and I truly believe that it is a skill that can save lives, whether literally or figuratively. Wait'll they get a load of how we need to really take a hard look at the narrator of a story! They are so used to just dismissing the narrator as just the disembodied voice that tells the story-- well, hell. Check out the narrator in something like Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and you'll see that we really do need to pay attention to how the reader is being manipulated. 

Anyhow, that's what's up in my little corner of edu-world. 

No comments on the wider world--it's still scary and horrible out there. I'm trying to be a bright light, but I feel like a dim C7. 

Ciao for now, and hold those you love close,

C

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