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Keeping Fit ... the final story

• Check books & vocab ... and there's lots of vocab.
• Themes for Moment Before the Gun Went Off & Keeping Fit
  

Let's get down to the reading.
1. What is the nature of the relationship between the woman and the white man? Find evidence to support.
2. What happens literally and figuratively in their relationship and why?
3. When the protagonist returns home, what has changed about him and why?
4. What is his relationship like with his family and wife—has it changed?
5. Over what is he conflicted and why? Name them ALL.
6. What is the symbolism of the bird?

The BIG PICTURE: It's easy to see how the struggle between discrete races perpetuate division; however, in what specific way do the stories "Keeping Fit" and "What Were You Dreaming"/"Some Area Born to Sweet Delight"/"Moment Before the Gun Went Off" illustrate a deeper, more insidious (subtle) division among people of the same race and why? What exactly do these characters not understand about the situation in South Africa?

The Moment Before the Gun Went Off

To start: (10 min) What did you learn about Van der Vyver the second time reading this story? How did the story change the second time?

The narrator
1. Who is the narrator and what is the narrator’s attitude towards white Afrikaner ruling party, to blacks, and to Europeans?
2. What do these attitudes tell us about why people are divided in SA and in our larger world, maybe regardless of race?

Van der Vyver
1. What does the action of his crying in the police station suggest to us? Are you surprised by this reaction—why or why not? Does this make him more likable—why or why not?
2. What do we learn about him by his action at the funeral?
3. What does it show us in the description “he does not let her clothing, or that of anyone else gathered closely make contact with him’ (116). How does this moment contrast with “The farmer carried him in his arms, to the truck. He was sure, sure he could not be dead. But the young black man’s blood was all over the farmer’s clothes, soaking against his flesh as he drove” (117)? What do we learn about Van der Vyver?

The moment
1. What exactly was the moment like for Lucas and Van der Vyver before the gun went off? What does this say about their relationship? p 116-117
2. Why is this moment compared to the moment that he and Lucas’s mom share at the funeral? What does it suggest to us about their relationship? p 116

To close: 1. In what way is this story about difference? About misconception? 2. What is the more tragic element of this short story in your mind?

Jump stories: Making connections

Part 1. We do need to fill in theme ideas for Terraloyna, so if you could brainstorm themes for this story and hand them in to me, I will fill in the sheet accordingly.

Part 2. We are almost done with our Jump reading (we have only one more new story to read), so as we approach our final writing assignment I'd like you to look over the themes we have come up with and find connections between the stories. In other words, the final essay will ask you to make some argument about how a theme is expressed in three different stories. As for making the connections, please post your ideas here so we all can learn from your brilliance. Be specific in nature and grounded in the text.

Writing about re-reading: The Second Time

Overarching question to keep in mind:
How do you as a reader bring a different self to a body of work at different times in your life?

For this in-class writing, I ask you to address all of the following questions in a well thought out response (1 1/2 - double spaced, no more than one page). Please do not simply answer the questions one after another. The questions posed are meant to build on one another so you think deeply about not only who you were when you first experienced your novel but also what the novel meant to you.

I suggest you do some brainstorming before you start writing. Maybe answer each of the questions and then see how you can weave those answer into a cohesive and comprehensive response. This is NOT a SPA structured writing. This is personal writing. You can use I, you can be more casual, but you still want to have a solid structure and purpose.

The Facts

1. Title & author of the book.
   
2. How old were you when you previously read this book?
3. Where were you when you read this book?
4. What time of year did you read this?
5. Did you read this book for pleasure or for school? If for school, what grade and what teacher assigned it? If for pleasure, who suggested you read it?
6. What was going on in your life while you were reading this book?
   
7. Have you ever recommended this book to anyone else?
8. Have you ever shared your passion for this book with anyone else?

The impressions

1. What made you choose to re-read this book?
2. What is your dominant impression/strongest memory from when you last read this book?
   
3. How have you changed since the last time you read this book?
4. Do you expect the book to be different? better? worse? more/less interesting?
   
5. What impressions of the book do you hope remain the same?
6. What impressions of the book might change?

Feel free to incorporate other information. The more thoroughly you respond to these questions, the more material you will have to work with when we revisit them at the end of your reading.

When you are done with this, please proceed to the next activity on the blog: Making Connections.