This posting offers reader response ideas about the short story.

This posting uncovers these ideas: Read Tobias Wolfe's "Say Yes" .While reading, begin to journal your responses using the following guidelines and categories, and prior to writing your precis, write a journaled response focusing on these categories. Needs to be 3 Paragraphs Journal Your First Impressions: Take time to gather your thoughts - to pull together what seems most significant. Include any questions the story may have raised in your mind. Keep a Running Commentary: Jot down your observations, queries, and comments as you read along. Journal Your Personal Response: A considerable amount of effective writing about literature does offer the results of close readin... click for more

Lorraine Hansberry's play is assessed in terms of characters, plot, climax, etc.

This posting addresses these issues: Where do the major elements of a play's structure begin and end in Hansberry work? For example, what part of the play marks the beginning of the work's climax? (1 Paragraph) In Acts I and II, how does Bobo serve as a foil to Walter Lee? Among the other supporting characters, what is the role of Joseph Asgasi and George Murchison? What role do they play in Beneatha's life? How does Hansberry use Karl Linder to throw added light on the conditions of American society in the 1950s? Besides taking the lead role in the family, after her husband dies, what does Lenna's (Mama) role symbolize in the play. What role does Ruth project?

Help with creating characters is brainstormed.

This posting offers starting ideas for this task: Create a character, real or imagined, with a distinct manner of behaving or style of talking. Put this character in a situation where he or she plays a public role (the public persona shown to others) and contrast it with the character's private persona (the real character when no one is watching). Narrate your episode or vignette in first person point of view (as in the Bambara story) or in third person point of view (as in the Parker story). In this assignment you are creating a new character, not writing about a character in literature, movies, or TV.

This posting offers evidence about how these poets apply imagery. It also covers a plethora of ideas about aging themes in poetry.

This posting compares and contrasts how Justice, Simon, Coffer, and Yeats advance their themes on aging and identity through imagery.

Raymond Carver's use of characters is briefly examined in his short story.

These questions are uncovered: What kind of first person narrator is Jack? Does Jack try to analyze and explain Dummy's actions (his possessiveness of his tools, his grief at the loss of his fish, and his murder of his wife and suicide) or does he just narrate them without analysis? How would you describe the intellectual level of this narrative based on the average number of words per sentence in the first three paragraphs of this story, the construction of the sentences, and the vocabulary used? Is the intellectual level of the narration consistent with Jack's apparent ability or inability to analyze and explain the events he describes?