Friday, December 7, 2007

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Test

Choose one of the following, copy the choice on to your blog, and post your response by Thursday, Dec. 13th by midnight. Your grade is based on how specific and detailed you are in your explanation.

1) How is the power of imagination a major theme of the story?

2) Why do you think the author chose to end the novel this way? (Please don't say " to make it more interesting and keep us guessing.")

3) There are many ironies present in the story. Choose one major irony and explain how/why the irony shapes the meaning of the story.

4) If you choose the following and answer the question well, you will receive 10 points extra credit:
In the early chapters of Pere Goriot by Honore Balzac (the same author that the guys read in the novel you are reading), the narrator describes the setting and conditions of early 19th century Paris where the main characters live.

"...in that famous valley of ever-peeeling plaster and muddy black gutters, that valley where suffering is always real and joy very often false, and the everyday turmoil so grim that it is difficult to imagine any castastrophe producing more than a momentary sensation there... A Parisian losing his way here would see nothing but lodging houses and institutions, penury or boredom, old age declining into death, bright youth pressed into drudgrey."

In what ways does Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress relate to this passage from Pere Goriot?

1 comment:

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