Study Questions for “The Lottery” (Shirley Jackson, 1948)

1. What is the significance of choosing a small town as the setting for “The Lottery”? How is it described in the opening paragraph of the story? Why is it unnamed?
2. What could be the significance of the summer season for the story? What is the significance of the date “June 27th”? [Suggested text: J. Yarmove's Jackson's "The lottery". Explicator (1994), 52, 242-245]
3. How does Shirley Jackson prepare the reader for the main theme of the story in the second and the third paragraphs? For example, what could be the reason for an emphasis on the name “Delacroix”? What could Bobby Martin’s surname signify? [Suggested reading: Helen E. Nebeker's "The Lottery": Symbolic Tour de Force in American Literature, Mar1974, Vol. 46 Issue 1]
4. What is the symbolic value of the stones?
5. What do Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves and Mr. Martin represent in the story?
6. Discuss the symbolic value of the three legged-stool and the black box?
7. What does Old Man Warner represent in the story?
8. What is the significance of the surname “Hutchinson”?
9. What does the lottery mean to the townspeople in the story? Do they all have the same reaction? Do they question their obedience? Why? Why not? Provide examples.
10. What could be the significance of the 3rd person narration in “The Lottery”? What could be the impact of this on the readers?
11. What does the story reveal about the place of men and women in this small town? Give specific examples from the story
12. What critique of capitalism does the story seem to be offering?
13. What does the story’s title reveal about our everyday lives?
14. What does the story reveal about human nature?
15. What makes the ending of the story so shocking?
16. Identify examples of irony in the story and discuss them.
17. Read Shirley Jackson’s husband Stanley Edgar Hyman’s comment on Jackson and discuss how “The Lottery” reflects the historical context of its times: “Her fierce visions of dissociation and madness, of alienation and withdrawal, of cruelty and terror, have been taken to be personal, even neurotic, fantasies.  Quite the reverse: they are a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb.” [as cited in Joan Wylie Hall's Fallen Eden in Shirley Jackson's The Road Through The Wall, REN, 46.4, Summer 1994, p. 265]

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, May 2009

Study Questions for Battle Royal (Ralph Ellison, 1952)

1. What is the significance of the first person narration in Ralp Ellison’s “Battle Royal”?
2. Why does the narrator need to first discover that he is an invisible man in order to understand who he is?
3. What is the significance of the grandfather’s dying speech? Why does he call himself a traitor and a spy in the enemy’s country?
4. Comment on the significance of the circus imagery as used in the story. Give examples.
5. In “Battle Royal”, animal imagery is used very often. Identify the references to animals in the story (for example, “lion”, “baboon”, “bird”, “panda”, “cottonmouth”, “wolf”, “crab”, “rat”…) and discuss how they contribute to the story.
6. Examine the references to the “magnificent blonde” in the story. What animal imagery is used in her portrayal? What does she mean to the white audience? What does she mean to the black boys taking part in the battle royal? How do the black boys react to her and why?
7. Examine the narrator’s reactions towards the “magnificent blonde”. Give examples.
8. What is the resemblance between the white female body and the black male bodies as depicted in the story?
9. Why do you think there is always an emphasis on “blindness” in the story? Provide examples.
10. What is the significance of Booker T. Washington in the story?
11. What is the symbolic value of the battle royal?
12. What could be the significance of the smoky atmosphere in the hall where the battle royal takes place?
13. What is the significance of the fight on an electrified rug?
14. How does Ellison’s story challenge the respectability of the white Southern male?
15. At the end of the story, the narrator dreams that he is at a circus with his grandfather: why does the grandfather refuse to laugh at the clowns?
16. Comment on the following quote from the story: “To Whom It May Concern… Keep This Nigger-Boy Running”.
17. What do you think about the ending of the story? To what extent do you think the narrator has gained maturity?
18. Examine the theme of “American Dream” in the story.
19. How does the story define the concept of “success”?

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, May 2009.
Useful links: Ralph Ellison’s A Party Down At The Square / An Interview with Ellison /

Study Guide for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922)

1. How does Benjamin’s aging in reverse help you understand the story, the issues it deals with, and its characters?
2. What does the story reveal about the concept of beauty? You may like to study the portrayals of Hildegarde Button and Benjamin Button.
3. Identify and comment on how men and women are positioned in the story.
4. Find one example which shows how gender is socially constructed.
5. Comment on how “age” and “aging” are defined in the story. Do you think they are still defined in the same way in the contemporary world? Why? Why not?
6. What does the story reveal about class and race issues? Give examples.
7. Comment on the portrayal of journalism in the story? How similar is it to today’s journalism?
8. Why does the story always have an emphasis on “concealing” or “hiding”? What could this tell you about the societal norms?
9. In what ways would you call Benjamin’s being perceived as a source of shame or a threat symbolic? What would his otherness suggest about his society’s attitude toward him?
10. In what ways would you call the story a social satire?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, March 2009

Useful links: David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button / A Brief Life of Fitzgerald /

Study Guide for Ernest Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain” (1925)

1. Read the opening paragraph of the story closely and discuss how it helps to set the tone of the story and how it provides the readers with the theme(s) of the story. For example: Why are there only two Americans stopping at the hotel? What do “the public garden” and “the war monument stand” for in the story? What is the importance of the emphasis on the weather in the opening paragraph? What is the symbolic value of the artists? What is the reason for the narrator’s emphasis on the emptiness of the square?
2. What is the significance of the rain in the story?
3. Identify what the female protagonist is called in the whole story and discuss in what ways this could be significant.
4. Why does the narrator describe the cat as “crouched under one of the dripping green tables”?
5. Make a comparison between George and the hotel keeper. What is the function of each of these characters in the story?
6. What is the significance of the man in a rubber cape in the story?
7. Identify the horizontal and vertical images in Hemingway’s story and discuss how these images help you to understand the story.
8. What could be the metaphorical value of the maid’s question to the wife: “Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signoria?” (“Have you lost something, Madam?”)
9. Why does the hotel keeper make the American wife “feel very small and at the same time really important”?
10. Discuss the references to the wife’s hair: Why does George like his wife’s hair “the way it is”? Why does the wife want to “make a big knot at the back”?
11. There are two cats in the story. What does each of them symbolize? Why does the wife want a kitty to sit on her lap and purr?
12. Extension Activity:
    Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory”: Hemingway views his writing style as “fashioned on the “principle of the iceberg,” for “seven eights of it [is] under water for every part that shows” (cited in Thomas Strychacz, 1999,  in The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway, Scott Donaldson (Ed.), p. 59). In other words, as Hemingway said, “You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood” (cited in Elizabeth Dewberry, 1999, in The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway, Scott Donaldson, Ed., p. 23)
    Discuss Hemingway’s metaphor of “iceberg” in relation to his short story “Cat in the Rain”.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, January 2009

Richard Wright (1908-1960)

“The Man Who Killed A Shadow” can be found in Eight Men, a collection of short stories, first published in 1961.

About the author /
Watch: Prophets and Poets, a film by Ross Spears /

Discussion Questions for Richard Wright’s The Man Who Killed A Shadow

Do some research about Richard Wright’s life to identify some biographical elements in “The Man Who Killed A Shadow”. [Suggested reading: Robert Bone, 1969, “Richard Wright-American Writers 74: University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers]

Do some research about Richard Wright’s literary work such as “Native Son” and “Black Boy” and identify some common themes in his work that can help you understand “The Man Who Killed A Shadow”. [Suggested reading: Robert Bone, 1969, “Richard Wright-American Writers 74: University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers]

Identify some references in the story that concentrate on Saul’s fear of shadows. Why does Saul always have a fear of shadows? What do shadows mean to him? Why does he feel that “shadows would some day claim him”? Why is Maybelle a shadow to him?

Saul describes her family as a “shadow” as well.  What does this mean? How can both his own people and Maybelle be shadows?

What is Saul’s perception of Maybelle? How does he form such a perception? Identify quotations from the story to justify your view.

What is the significance of the name “Saul”?

Both Saul and Maybelle can be called victims of their society. Explain how they are victimized by their own society.

Explain Maybelle’s perception of Saul Sanders in relation to Earle B. Bryant’s critique of the sexualization of racism in “The Man Who Killed A Shadow”.  Identify quotations from the story to justify your view. [Bryant’s article "The Sexualization of Racism in Richard Wright's 'The Man Who Killed a Shadow'" is available in Black American Literature Forum,  16, Fall 1982, pp.  119-21]

Why is Saul’s world separated from the white one “by a million psychological miles”?

Identify quotations from the story which demonstrate the social stratification in Saul’s world.

Why does Saul drink whiskey so much?

To what extent does the story offer a critique of American-Americans?

Why does Saul kill Maybelle?

What is the symbolic value of Maybelle’s ring?

In relation to the following quotation, discuss why Saul feels no fear or regret after killing Maybelle. You may like to identify other quotations as well. “When at last the conviction of what he had done was real in him, it came only in terms of flat memory, devoid of all emotion, as though he were looking when very tired and sleepy at a scene being flashed upon the screen of a movie house”

What is the significance of the name “Maybelle Eva Houseman”? When does Saul learn her name and how does this affect him?

What does the last paragraph reveal about white America’s perception of African-Americans?

Examine Saul and Maybelle’s actions in relation to Freud’s belief that “people repress their most unsettling desires because of fear of social disapproval” (Felgar, 2000, p. 111). [Suggested reading: Robert Felgar’s “Student Companion to Richard Wright, 2000]

Essay topic: According to Robert Staple (as cited in R. W. Connell’s “Masculinities”, 1995), “the level of violence among black men in the United States can only be understood through the changing place of the black labour force in American capitalism and the violent means used to control it” (p. 81). Examine Saul Sander’s brutal murder of Maybelle Eva Houseman in relation to Staple’s argument.

Extension activity: Choose a men’s magazine or a sports magazine, and then examine how African-American men are portrayed in the magazine (either in the articles or in the pictures) you have chosen. How do these magazines depict African-American men and their bodies? Can you identify any patterns in their construction? What do these patterns reveal about cultural values? Discuss your finding with your friends in the classroom.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, December 2008

Useful link: Richard Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost A Man /

Discussion Questions for Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” (1894)

In the first paragraph of the story, Mrs Mallard is represented as a woman “afflicted with a heart trouble”. Comment on the dual meaning of her “heart trouble”.

What is the significance of the protagonist’s being addressed as “Mrs. Mallard” and mostly as “she”? When is her name revealed in the story? Why?

What does the story reveal about Mrs. Ballard’s social class? How?

What does the setting of the story signify?

What is the symbolic value of the storm image in the third paragraph?

Comment on the significance of “the open window” in the fourth paragraph.

Identify the imagery Chopin uses in the fifth and sixth paragraphs and discuss its symbolic value.

What is the reason for Mrs. Ballard’s “physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul”?

Why does Chopin describe her as someone who “sank, pressed down”? (paragraph 4)

How is Mrs. Mallard’s marriage to Brently Mallard portrayed in the story? What does Mr. Mallard’s death mean to Mrs. Mallard?

Study the description of Mrs. Mallard’s face in paragraph 8. How does it contribute to your understanding of the themes in the story?

Read the following quotation from the story: “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle; and elusive to name…” (paragraph 9). And discuss what “it” refers to, why Mrs. Mallard “was waiting for it, fearfully” and why it is “elusive to name”.

Read the following quotation from the story: “Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will – as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.” (paragraph 10). And discuss what “this thing” refers to and why Mrs. Mallard is represented as “powerless” in the paragraph.

“She said it over and over under her breath: free! free! free!” Comment on the quotation.

What is the overall impact of the narrative voice on your perception of Mrs. Mallard?

Towards the end of the story, Mrs. Mallard walks like “a goddess of Victory”. Why?

What is the symbolic value of Mrs. Mallard’s (Louise’s) descending the stairs?

In the last paragraph of the story, the doctors say that the cause of Mrs Mallard’s death is “joy that kills”. What does this mean?

How would you explain the irony in the concluding paragraph of the story? Can you identify any other ironies in the story?

What do you think about the ending of the story? How would you conclude the story and why? Why do you think Kate

Chopin chooses to conclude her story through the doctor’s declaration of Mrs. Mallard’s death?

What is the significance of the title of the story? Why is Chopin’s story limited to what happens within an hour?
Would you call Chopin’s story a challenge against its time? Why? Why not?

Essay topic:
To what extent and in what ways can Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” be regarded as a critique of phallocentrism.

Essay topic:
Write an essay demonstrating how Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” (1894) can be connected to  Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” (1859) and “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex” (1871). [Useful sources:  1) Introduction: The Origin of Species / 2)   "Darwin Said to Influence 19th-Century Writer's Fiction" by Ellen K. Coughlin in The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 18, 1991 / 3) "Kate Chopin's Quarrel with Darwin Before The Awakening." by Bert Bender, Journal of American Studies 26 (Aug 1992): 185-204 ] [Useful links: BBC: Darwin / PBS: Darwin / PBS Video: Who was Charles Darwin?]

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, December 2008

Useful links: Ideals of Womanhood in Victorian Britain / Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening (PBS) / A chronology of key events in Kate Chopin’s life /

Discussion Questions for Ha Jin’s The Bridegroom

Examine the concepts of “other”, “otherness” and “othering”, and then identify how Huang Baowen is “othered” by the community in Muji City. What are the consequences of feeling “othered”? Provide examples from the story.

Identify the references to homosexuality in Ha Jin’s story. What do these references reveal about how homosexuality is perceived? Are there different views or is there only one perspective?

Why does Baowen learn martial arts? What does this reveal about cultural values?

Examine how the arrested men describe the Men’s World Club, and then in relation to their description discuss the symbolic value of the club for these men. Can you find, in Ha Jin’s story, other settings whose symbolic value is in contrast with that of the club?

According to Louis Althuser, class rule is maintained by two important forces: “Repressive State Apparatus” and “Ideological State Apparatus”. The former includes “the army, police, prisons and law courts” whereas the latter operates with the help of “education, the church, party politics, the family and the media” (Branston & Stafford, The Media Student’s Book, 1996, pp. 122-123). How can this theory explain people’s perception of and reaction to Baowen’s homosexuality in the story?

Identify the references to marriage and then discuss how marriage is portrayed in the story. For example, how does Cheng’s view of marriage differ from Beina’s? What does marriage mean to Beina? What does it mean to Baowen? What does it mean to the community at large in Muji City?

Identify how masculinity and femininity are portrayed in the story, and comment on how you react to these portrayals.

What makes Ha Jin’s story universal?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, December 2008

Relevant links: About the author / About the author -2 / Study Guide for Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain

Discussion Questions Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics” (1981)

1. What is the importance of the story’s title? Why do you think the author chose the title of a magazine for his short story?
2. What is the importance of the narrator’s emphasis on the snow’s melting into dirty water?
3. Identify all the settings in the story and discuss what they signify.
4. Identify all the imagery about light and dark in the story and discuss how such imagery contributes to your understanding of the story.
5. Identify all the references to windows and doorways in the story and discuss how they contribute to your understanding of the story.
6. In what ways would you call Carver’s writing style “minimalist”? Please explain by giving examples from the story.
7. What is the symbolic value of the flowerpot?
8. Identify all the references to the baby in the story and then in relation to these references, discuss what the baby means to his parents.
9. What do you think “the issue” refers to in the last sentence of the story: “In this manner, the issue was decided.”
10. The last sentence of Carver’s story is: “In this manner, the issue was decided.”
    In his “Technique and Stability in the Fiction and Poetry of Raymond Carver” (1998), Arthur F. Bethea highlights the Latin root of the verb “decide” used in the last sentence of the story. Find out how Bethea’s argument can help you understand the story.
11. The last sentence of the story is a passive sentence (“In this manner, the issue was decided.”) Do you think this could be significant? Why? Why not?
12. According to Norman German and Jack Bedell (1998), Carver’s “Popular Mechanics” can be compared to the story of Solomon and the two mothers. Discuss to what extent you think German and Bedell’s argument can be considered valid.
13. Make a list of the major themes of the story.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, December 2008

Relevant links: Raymond Carver’s Cathedral / Listen to “Wired for Books: Raymond Carver“

Study Guide for Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” (First printed in the Atlantic Monthly in 1981)

Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

Discussion Questions for “Cathedral”

Identify the narrative voice and comment on its significance for Carver’s story.

Although the blind man calls the narrator “Bub”, he is never named in the story. Why not?  The narrator’s wife is never given a name either? Why not?

What does the blind man’s train journey signify in the story?

Study the opening paragraphs of the story and discuss what the representation of the narrator reveals about his character and his relationship with his wife.

What do the opening paragraphs of the story reveal about the narrator’s wife? What do we learn about her past and her present?

Why do you think the narrator does not name his wife’s ex-husband but simply calls him “the officer”?

Why do you think the narrator’s wife’s relationships with the blind man and her ex-husband are important for our understanding of the narrator?

What is the symbolic value of the blind man’s touching the face of the narrator’s wife?

What does poetry mean to the narrator’s wife? What does it mean to the narrator?

What is the symbolic value of the tapes the narrator’s wife sends to the blind man?

What is the significance of the narrator’s imagining the blind man’s deceased wife?

What happens at the dinner? Do you see any change in the narrator?

Locate the paragraphs in which there are references to media and comment on how they function in the story.

Discuss the symbolic significance of the cathedral in the story.

Why do you think the blind man asks the narrator to close his eyes while drawing a cathedral?

How is the narrator presented in the closing paragraphs of the story? Is there any change? Justify your view with quotations from the story.

Make a list of the themes in the story.

To what extent would you describe Carver’s story as a religious story? Why? Why not?

Extension activity: Raymond Carver’s fiction and Edward Hopper’s paintings demonstrate some thematic links. Do some research about Hopper’s paintings and Carver’s fiction and identify some possible links between the two. (Hopper Bio / Hopper 1 – Video / Hopper 2 – Video / Hopper 3-Video Podcast / )

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, December 2008

Study Guide for Hemingway’s The Killers (1927)

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

1. In “Hemingway on Writing”(1957, College English), Robert C. Hart calls Ernest Hemingway “a chronicler of the the lost generation” (p. 314).  Do some research about the Lost Generation writers and discuss in what ways this concept helps you understand Hemingway’s “The Killers”. (Suggested text: “The generation that wasn’t lost” by Malcolm Cowley, The English Journal, Vol 33, No. 2, Jun 1991)
2. According to Quentin E. Martin (“Explicator”, 1993, Vol. 52, Issue 1), Hemingway’s story can be interpreted as “a concise and dramatic representation of certain aspects of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and Werner Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy (or uncertainty)” (p. 53). Discuss how this argument is possible.
3. In “Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen” (2005), Stephanie Harrison argues that “the effect Hemingway achieves in his fiction is through absence, not presence” (p. 414). Harrison also quotes Gabriel Garcia Marquez who says that Hemingway’s stories “give the impression something is missing, and this is precisely what confers their mystery and beauty” (as cited in Harrison). Discuss Hemingway’s style of writing in “The Killers” in relation to Harrison and Marquez’s views.
4. Hemingway’s story is full of false impressions.  For example, there is confusion about time in the opening moments of the story. Identify the other false impressions in the story and discuss what they signify in relation to the nature of the universe.
5. Comment on the physical description of the two killers: why are they depicted as identical and clownish?
6. What does the name of the town, Summit, suggest?
7. Why do you think the killers use the expression “bright boy” very often?
8. What is the significance of the following quote:  (Max tells George) “You ought to go to the movies more. The movies are fine for a bright boy like you.”
9. Identify how Sam, George and Nick react when when they find out the killers are after Ole Andreson. Then discuss what these reactions reveal about these three characters.
10. Why do you think there are repeated references to “doors” and “walls” in the story?
11. What is the symbolic value of the name Ole Andreson?
12. In what way(s) could Ole Anderson’s being a prizefighter have a symbolic value?
13. Why do you think Ole Anderson refuses to take action?
14. Examine the significance of Chicago as mentioned in the story.
15. Analyze the last five lines of the story: Why does Nick decide to leave the town? What does he discover at the end of the story? How does George react when Nick says he wants to leave the town?
16. What message(s) does the story convey as far as the nature of the world is concerned?
17. Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Killers” has attracted not only readers but also filmmakers. In 1946 Robert Siodmak turned it into a film starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. In 1956 when he was a student, Andrei Tarkovsky made a 19-minute short film of “The Killers”. And in 1964, Don Siegel directed the third film version of the story. The Criterion Collection presents all these versions on a 2-disc DVD box set. Watch these three versions and discuss how faithful each film is to Hemingway’s story.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, November 2008

Useful links: About Hemingway 1 / About Hemingway 2 / About Hemingway 3 / A Case of Identity / The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 / PBS: American Masters/ A Hemingway Retrospective by CNN /

Study Guide for Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost A Man”

About the author
Watch: Prophets and Poets, a film by Ross Spears /

(Wright’s story was first printed in 1940 in Harper’s Bazaar under the title “Almos’ a Man”and then in Eight Men, a collection of short stories, in 1961, under the title of “The Man Who Was Almost A Man”)

1. Identify the narrative voice in the story and discuss its significance. (You may like to concentrate on the first paragraph).
2. What do Mr. Hawkins and Joe represent in the story? Justify your claim with examples from the text.
3. What does the catalogue in the story symbolize?
4. Discuss whether Dave has role models to guide him through his adolescence. Why? Why not?
5. What is the symbolic value of Dave’s keeping the gun tied to his thigh?
6. Identify what Dave tells Jenny before he pulls the trigger and comment on the significance of this act.
7. What is the symbolic value of Dave’s killing the mule?
8. Comment on the following quotes from the story: “They treat me like a mule, n then they beat me.”
9. Identify when the narrator first lets the reader know about Dave’s surname. Why do you think this could be significant?
10. Examine the last section of the story and identify how pulling the trigger successfully affects Dave. Justify your view with quotations from the story.
11. What does Dave’s getting on the train symbolize? Do you believe that Dave has become mature at the end of the story? Why? Why not?
12. Comment on the significance of the title.
13. Writing task 1: In relation to Dave, Dave’s father, Mr. Hawkins, Joe and Dave’s mother, discuss the significance of the gun as a phallic symbol in the story.
14. Writing task 2: To what extent would Richard Wright’s story offer a critique of capitalism?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, November 2008

Useful link: Study Guide for Richard Wright’s The Man Who Killed A Shadow /

John Cheever (1912-1982)

“Reunion”was first published in the Oct 27^th, 1962 issue of The New Yorker. You can find it in the collection “The Stories of John Cheever”, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979.You can listen to Richard Ford reading John Cheever’s “Reunion” here.

Read an interview with John Cheever here.

Read and listen: Learning to appreciate John Cheever’s stories

Study Guide for “Reunion” (John Cheever, 1962)

1. Identify the narrative voice in Cheever’s story and discuss how it contributes to your understanding of the story and its characters. For example, how does it help you understand the son and his father?
2. Comment on the following quotes from the story: “I would have to plan my campaigns within his limitations” / “I smelled my father the way my mother sniffs a rose” / “I hoped that someone would see us together. I wished that we could be photographed.”
3. Why does Charlie he regard his father as his doom and future?
4. What is the function of the secretary in the story?
5. What does the Grand Central Station symbolize in the story?
6. What do the restaurants symbolize in the story?
7. What does the story reveal about “class”, “race” and “gender”?
8. What is your interpretation of the way Charlie’s father is represented in the story? Does he like his son?
9. Why does Charlie call his father “daddy” at the end of the story?
10. Examine the first and the last sentences of the story. What is common and why? How do you interpret the ending of the story? Does Charlie accept or reject his father?
11. Why does Charlie’s father want to get him a newspaper? Could this have any symbolic value in the story?
12. What is the significance of the title? Although the story depicts Charlie’s reunion with his father, the word “Reunion” is used without a definite or an indefinite article. Why?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, November 2008
Useful link: Study Guide for John Cheever’s The Enormous Radio

Study Guide for John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums” (1938)

1. In The Story and Its Writer (Ann Charters, Ed., 1998) Jay Parini writes that the story “opens with a personified landscape, a paysage moralise in which the weather and geographical setting are deeply symbolic” (p. 1530). Examine the opening paragraphs of the story to identify the details of the imagery of the weather and the geographical setting. Then discuss how Steinbeck’s description helps to reinforce the major themes of the story and what it reveals about the characters in the story. For example, comment on what the following would stand for: fog, rain, clouds.
2. Identify the details of Elisa’s physical description in the earlier paragraphs of the story and discuss what it reveals about her as a wife and a gardener. What is the symbolic value of Elisa’s chrysanthemums and her garden?
3. Study the conversations between Elisa and her husband at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the story and discuss what the conversations reveal about them?
4. Comment on what the following quotes might reveal about Henry: “I wish you’d work out in the orchard and raise some apples that big.” /“You look strong enough to break a calf over your knee, happy enough to eat like a watermelon.”
5. Why does Steinbeck use a limited third person narrator in his story? How does this narrative voice affect your understanding of the story?
6. Why is the tinker given no name in the story?
7. Identify the paragraphs that describe Elisa’s encounter with the tinker and then discuss the symbolic value of her encounter with this man.
8. What could Elisa’s taking a bath after the tinker’s departure signify? What does Steinbeck’s description of Elisa’s looking at herself in the mirror reveal about her?
9. Analyze the tinker’s character in relation to the following quote from the story: “She tried not to look as they passed it, but her eyes would not obey. She whispered to herself sadly, “He might have thrown them off the road. That wouldn’t have been much trouble, not very much. But he kept the pot,” she explained. “He had to keep the pot. That’s why he couldn’t get them off the road.”
10. Why does Elisa think about the prize fights at the end of the story?
11. Comment on the last paragraph of the story. Why does Elisa cry weakly – like an old woman?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, October 2008
Photo: Courtesy of Digital Vision

Useful links: Life and Times of Steinbeck /  Frequently Asked Questions / Listen to Steinbeck’s Banquet Speech – Nobel Prize in Lietarture 1962 / The National Steinbeck Center / Center for Steinbeck Studies / Fast Facts About Steinbeck / Watch: PBS Video /YouTube Video: Reflections on Steinbeck /

John Cheever (1912-1982)
American short-story writer and novelist.
Pulitzer Prize: 1979 Fiction - The Stories of John Cheever

Discussion Questions for John Cheever’s The Enormous Radio (1953)

Examine the first paragraph of the short story to discuss how the narrator represents Jim and Irene Westcott in the opening paragraph of the story. For example, examine what the following might suggest about the Westcotts: a) Irene’s coat of fitch skins dyed to resemble mink b) Irene’s “wide, fine forehead upon which nothing at all had been written” c) Jim’s youthful appearance.

What does “Westchester” mean to the Westcotts as mentioned in the first paragraph?
According to the narrator, to what extent and how are the Westcotts different from their neighbors as far as the first paragraph is concerned?

How does the narrator describe the old radio in the second paragraph? Does the old radio reflect anything about the Westcotts?

How does the narrator describe the new radio? What might be the reason(s) for such a description? Why does Irene want to conceal it behind a sofa?

What could having the new radio fixed symbolize?

In what ways could the author’s choice of an apartment building as the main setting be significant for the story?

Examine the possible reasons(s) for Irene’s growing addiction to the new radio.

Discuss the symbolic value of the enormous radio in relation to the major themes of the story.

In the fourth paragraph of the second part of the story, the narrator makes use of “weather” and “climate” in his/her descriptions. In what way(s) could this be considered symbolic? “As the afternoon waned, the conversations increased in intensity. From where Irene sat, she could see the open sky above the East River. There were hundreds of clouds in the sky, as though the south wind had broken the winter into pieces and were blowing it north, and on her radio she could hear the arrival of cocktail guests and the return of children and businessmen from their schools and offices.”

In the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (edited by Cassill, 1995), there is a reference to Socrates’s saying that the “ unexamined life is not worth living”. Discuss this in relation to the Westcotts.

Essay Topic: James O’Hara (in John Cheever’s Flowering Forth: The Breakthroughs of 1947, published in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, Autumn, 1987), argues that “Cheever, or any storyteller, is our enormous radio, and we are the Westcotts” (p. 53). Discuss O’Hara’s statement in relation to the main issues depicted in the story.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, August 2008

Useful links:
Listen to the radio play of the Enormous Radio (CBS).
About John Cheever (Pearson Longman)
An interview with John Cheever