Tuesday, October 4, 2011

_Heart is a Lonely Hunter_ Day Six

Apropos of today's class, start thinking of potential prompts for paper 2, and vet those questions here with your peers!

13 comments:

  1. Why is it that the characters who want to change the world, or who possess great vision, are the loneliest?

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  2. Every character has a certain relationship with religion. Explain this relationship and how it may be a self-delusion.

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  3. Each character embodies a different sense. How does this influence the characters' different perspectives of the world and the relationship between them.

    -Jesse

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  4. How is cruelty employed in the narration, and what effect does this have on the story?

    -Fanny Du

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  5. How does McCullers use weather in important scenes to add to the effect of the story?

    The narrator says this about Mick after her experience with Harry: "She was a grown person now, whether she wanted to be or not" (238). Is Mick fully a grown person at this stage? Why or why not?

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  6. Each character has obstacles standing in the way of their dreams such as sickness, death, poverty, separation, and incompetence. How do the ways each character deal with those obstacles dictate the degree of their desire for those dreams and the likelihood of finding success.

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  7. Multiple characters in the story have estranged relationships within their family. Aside from contributing to their loneliness, Describe how this leads them to their blind faith in Singer.

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  8. As discussed in class, the "character wheel" represents spokes connected to the core, which is represented by John Singer. In effect, the core, Singer, must be holding the spokes up. Does this mean that without a core the characters are meaningless?

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  9. With each character we experience a monumental change as they continue to grow through the novel. (For example Dr. Copeland...refer to pages 261-262) For what purpose do these characters change like so and how does this radical change of each individual speak to the sense of lonliness that they experience?

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  10. Mick loses her virginity in chapter 11, but the loss of her innocence is treated very differently. There is no transformation of Mick, no sudden maturing. Instead, the loss has no meaning whatsoever. Why is this?

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  11. Each character can be classified as static (meaning they have no desire to leave the town) or dynamic (meaning they have aspirations to leave the town). Which characters fall into each group and why? For the dynamic characters, what is preventing them from leaving the town? How do the pervasive themes of loneliness and inability to communicate play into why the characters are either static or dynamic?

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  12. "Mick Kelly, I think you're the most selfish person I've ever known. You don't care a thing in the world about anybody but - ....but it was true" (266). Compare to other characters who believe in ideas larger than themselves - i.e. lifting the status of black community, freedom and such ideas - Mick Kelly is protrayed as being absorbed in her passion for music, not aware of the human codition around her like other characters are. How does her age and gender highlight her nature and why separate her from Jake, Singer and Dr, Copeland in this way? What philosophical ideas does she represent?

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  13. Througuoght the novel, McCullers has created characters that act as figureheads for groups of people of their time. What type of social group might Mick's lover Harry represent?

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