TODAY IN CLASS
We worked with James Joyce's "Araby" and accomplished three early goals concerning elements of fiction:
1) How an author can use setting to develop character--the boy's naive view of the world is established through his "trusting in appearances" view of the dead priest, his possessions, and the surrounding yard.
2) How patterns of detail and imagery are concentrated so that description gains meaning--we looked at the long third paragraph about the boys' late afternoon play sessions to establish the dense references to light and dark.  Investing this pattern with meaning is still a work in progress.
3) Seeing the potential universality in the boy's experience--although my examples may have been silly, it's important to recognize that the boy's interest in/attraction to Mangan's sister is not foreign to most teen-age (and human!) experience.

But we stopped right at the point where some of you still start to call the boy a creepy stalker . . .

FOR TOMORROW
1) Review the story for further concentrated examples of light/dark imagery.  Although no further section of text is as dense as the passage we already annotated, there are at least four other places in which several references to light and dark occur within a short space of text.  Find at least one such passage--preferably two--and jot down key phrases in your notes as you did in class today.
2) Though there is nothing further to write out for tomorrow, be looking at the hand-out of terms, and start making connections between elements on that list and the relevant components of Joyce's story.