Select two of the reflection pieces you’ve written for expansion, polishing, and revision. You’ll have my comments and our in-class discussions to draw upon. The finished products will each be 500 words long, and I’ll ask you to turn them in at the end of the class, in lieu of a final exam. These writing assignments will help you delve deeper into the two pieces you wrote earlier, sharpening your thoughts, and expanding where necessary. You are not expected to come up with something “original,” but by observing your own reactions carefully, many of you will. You don’t have to agree with what you wrote earlier. In fact, you might have changed your mind since writing the first version. Feel free to note that if it’s the case. Please give each of these short essays a title to help provide focus.
The instructions of 1-7: answer the following questions for Klyuchareva’s “One Year in Paradise.”
1. What is the motivation of the storyteller in leaving his job and his Moscow apartment?
2. How does the name of the town figure in the story?
3. What is the map of Russia doing here? Which parts fall off and which parts remain at the end?
4. Do you feel that the story has a “turn” or “reveal” like some of the others we’ve read (for instance, the moment when Marya remembers her childhood in “In the Cart” or the moment when the narrator of “My First Goose” mentions the bleeding of his heart)? If so, where is it?
The instructions of 1-9: We’ll get as far into “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” as possible today, using the segmented reading method we used with Chekhov at the beginning of class. I’ll ask you to write your reflection piece on the last segment we’re able to finish in our class discussion today, using the following questions:
1. What is the pattern of Ivan Ilyich’s life? (How does he make decisions about his direction? How does he set goals and achieve them?)
2. How would you characterize Ivan Ilyich’s domestic life?
3. How do you understand this line from the beginning of segment II: “The past history of Ivan Ilych’s life was most simple and ordinary and most terrible”? What is most simple and ordinary about the history of Ivan Ilyich’s life, and what is most terrible about it?
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