[Teşekkür: Yekta Kopan'a, yukarıdaki fotoğrafını yayınlama izni verdiği ve özgeçmiş bilgilerine ulaşmamda yardımcı olduğu için teşekkür ederim.]

Yekta Kopan Kimdir?

1968’de doğdu. Hayalet Gemi dergisindeki çalışmalarıyla tanındı. İlk kitabı Fildişi Karası 2000 yılında yayımlandı. 2006 yılında İstanbul Uluslararası Tiyatro Festivali bünyesinde Tiyatro DOT tarafından sahnelenen ve bir Bülent Erkmen projesi olan İki Kişilik Bir Oyun’un metnini yazdı. Oyun Almanya, İtalya ve Hollanda’da sahnelendi. dtv (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag) tarafından yayınlanan Alles Blaue, alles Grüne dieser Welt seçkisinde bir öyküsüyle yer aldı. Daha Önce Tanışmış mıydık? adındaki e-kitabı altKitap.com tarafından okura ulaştırıldı. 6 yaş öncesi için yazdığı ve Şilili ressam Alex Pelayo tarafından resimlenen çocuk kitabı Burun, Marsık Yayıncılık tarafından 2009 yılında yayımlandı. Aşk Mutfağından Yalnızlık Tarifleri 2002 yılında Sait Faik Hikâye Armağanı’na, Karbon Kopya Dünya Kitap 2007 Yılın Telif Kitabı Ödülü’ne değer görüldü.

Mevsim Normalleri (Yekta Kopan)

["Mevsim Normalleri"ni, Yekta Kopan'ın 2001 yılında Can Yayınları'ndan çıkan ve 2002 Sait Faik Hikaye Armağanı ödülünü kazanan Aşk Mutfağından Yalnızlık Tarifleri isimli kitabında bulabilirsiniz. ]

1. Yekta Kopan’ın hikayesi, haber müdürünün sözleri ile başlamaktadır. Bu sözler hikayeye ve okuyucunun hikayeyi anlamasına nasıl yön vermektedir?
2. Hikayedeki anlatıcının özelliği nedir? Kopan’ın böylesi bir anlatıcı seçmesindeki neden(ler) ne olabilir? Yorumlayınız.
3. Yekta Kopan’ın hikayesinde okuyucu nasıl konumlandırılmıştır? Hikaye ve okuyucu arasındaki ilişkiyi hikayeyi okurken kendinizi gözlemleyerek değerlendiriniz. Daha sonra sınıftaki arkadaşlarınıza onların gözlemlerinin ne olduğunu sorarak karşılaştırma yapınız.
4. Hikayedeki anlatıcının kadına yaklaşımını değerlendiriniz.
5. Kopan, hikayesine neden “Mevsim Normalleri” ismini vermiş olabilir? Yorumlayınız.
6. “Sefalıköy” kasabasının adına, hikaye içinde özel bir anlam yükleyebilir miyiz?
7. Sefalıköy kasabası halkı hikayede neyi temsil etmektedir? Davranışlarının ardında hangi nedenler yatmaktadır? Kasaba halkı size neyi anlatmaktadır?
8. Hikayenin ilk paragraflarında rastladığımız hemşire ile ilgili anlatımlar medyanın kullandığı teknikleri anlamamıza nasıl yardımcı oluyor. Televizyonda ya da diğer medya metinlerinde hikayedekine benzer örnekler bulabilir misiniz? Bulduğunuz örnekleri arkadaşlarınızla tartışın.
9. “Mevsim Normalleri”nin diğer bölümlerini de dikkatle inceleyerek medyanın haber hazırlarken kullandığı teknikleri bulunuz. Bu tekniklerin arkasındaki anlamları ve seyircinin üzerindeki olası etkilerini tartışınız. Sizce her bir seyirci aynı şekilde etkilenebilir mi? Nedenleri tartışınız.

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, Ekim 2009
(Lütfen, kaynak göstererek kullanınız)

Yekta Kopan’ın internet sitesi / Yekta Kopan’ın Can Yayınları’ndaki internet sitesi / Yekta Kopan’ın NTV’deki Gece ve Gündüz Programı / Yekta Kopan’ın NTV’deki Programının Video Galerisi /

Turkish Short Fiction in the Classroom:
Study Questions for Sevgi Soysal’s “Hanife”

Sevgi Soysal (1936-1976)
Turkish short story writer and novelist

The questions below are based on the English translation of “Hanife” that first appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Vol. XXVI, no. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 145-152.

The same version is also available in “Short Stories by Turkish Women Writers” (1988, 1994) Translated by Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy.
Publisher: Indiana University Turkish Studies.

1. Comment on Sevgi Soysal’s use of setting in the first paragraph. How does it contribute to our understanding of the story?
2. What is the reason for the emphasis on Hanife’s fists in the first paragraph?
3. What link(s) can you establish between Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Hanife as depicted in the first two paragraphs?
4. How does the first paragraph introduce the theme of gender roles? Find other examples of gender roles in the rest of the story.
5. Comment on Sevgi Soysal’s use of narrative voices in “Hanife”. How does the author’s technique affect our understanding of the story?
6. Comment on Sevgi Soysal’s use of “darkness” and “light” in the first two paragraphs.
7. Discuss the significance of guns as depicted in the second paragraph.
8. What is the significance of the old woman’s song?
9. How do women and children react to Hanife’s death? What makes them act in the way they do?
10. Identify how Sevgi Soysal depicts the passing of time in the first three paragraphs.
11. What is the function of the poplar tree in the story?
12. What does “Ahmet Aga” represent in the story?
13. At the end of the fifth paragraph, the narrator says that honor is “like the sky”? Why?
14. What is the significance of Esma’s old shack in the story?
15. Make a list of the adjectives, nouns and noun phrases used for describing Hanife. What do they reveal about the society in which Hanife lives?
16. What is the connection between “land” and “women” in the story?
17. What does the story tell you about women and economic (in)dependence?
18. Do you think that women are the only victims in the story? What about men? Would you call them victims as well?
19. Essay Topic: In “Who is who in contemporary women’s writing” (2001), Jane Eldridge Miller writes that Sevgi Soysal’s characters are “rebels, usually from provincial backgrounds, trying to find solutions to personal problems which are connected to larger social issues” (p. 306). In light of this quotation, discuss whether you would call Hanife a rebel.

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, June 2009
Useful link: Study Questions for “Bliss”

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 /

Discussion Questions for Frank O’Connor’s “My Oedipus Complex” (1950)

1. Why is the story told from a child-narrator’s point of view? What is the impact of narrative voice on the story and on your response to the story?
2. Why do you think Frank O’Connor prefers to integrate humor into the story?
3. Make a comparison between Larry’s image of himself, his father and his mother at the beginning of the story and at the end of the story.
4. Discuss the symbolic significance of the war imagery in the story.
5. Discuss the symbolic significance of the enemy imagery in the story.
6. What is your understanding of the adult world in “My Oedipus Complex” in relation to Larry’s world?
7. In his depiction of Larry’s relationship with his mother and father, discuss how Frank O’Connor manages to demonstrate the shifts in mood in his story.
8. In relation to the following quotation from the story, discuss Larry’s perception of God: “I began to think that God wasn’t quite what he was cracked up to be.” (You can find other references to God in the story to justify your view)
9. According to Kate Murphy (1990), there are two types of world in Frank O’Connor’s stories: “the natural or normal worlds through which every person successively progresses in the process of growing up, and a number of ‘unnatural’ worlds which the individual elects or in which he arbitrarily finds himself” (p. 313).   Discuss Murphy’s argument in relation to Frank O’Connor’s “My Oedipus Complex”. [Suggested reading: “Grappling with the world” By: Murphy, K.. Twentieth Century Literature, Fall90, Vol. 36 Issue 3, pp. 310-343]
10. Comment on the following quotation: “I could not help feeling sorry for Father. I had been through it all myself, and even at that age I was magnanimous.”
11. What is the significance of the model railway at the end of the story?
12. According to Austrian physician Sigmund Freud, personality develops in childhood through a number of stages, which can be called “Freud’s Stages of Personality Development.” Do some research to find out what these stages are, at what age each stage occurs, what the characteristics of each stage of personality development are, and how fixation or lack of resolution in one stage will affect the child and lead to behavioral disorders in his/her adult life.
13. Discuss to what extent Frank O’Connor’s story fits Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, January 2009

Useful links: About Frank O’Connor / Frank O’Connor- Audio-Visual /

Buy the book here /

Discussion Questions for D. H. Lawrence’s “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter” (1922)

1. What does the title of the story reveal about the portrayal of Mabel?
2. On reading the 1st paragraph, what sense do you get of the relationship between Mabel and her brothers? Do the following opening paragraphs reinforce this view? Why? Why not? Please provide examples from the other paragraphs to justify your opinion.
3. Identify the animal imagery used in the description of each of the brothers and comment on what such imagery signifies about the characters and the social values of their time.
4. Comment on the following quotation: “His [Joe’s life] was over, he would be a subject animal now.”
5. In relation to the following quotation, comment on the reason(s) for Mabel’s silence: “They had talked at her and round her for so many years, that she hardly heard them at all.”
6. How do you think the way Jack Ferguson is dressed up in earlier parts of the story helps you understand his personality?
7. Comment on the significance of the following quotation: “At this point Mabel rose from the table, and they [Mabel’s brothers and Jack Ferguson] all seemed to become aware of her existence.”
8. The narrator seems to emphasize the eye contact between Mabel and Jack. Identify in which sections of the story these eye contacts are emphasized and discuss how they contribute to the story’s thematic concerns and development. (Suggested reading: “D. H. Lawrence and Tradition”, by Jeffrey Meyers, Studies in Short Fiction, Summer 1989, Vol. 26 Issue 3, p. 346)
9. Identify the paragraphs in which the narrator tells us about Mabel’s father, her mother and her mother’s grave. How does this information in these paragraphs help you understand Mabel?
10. Why does the narrator describe Jack Ferguson as “slave to the country-side”?
11. Comment on the significance of the following quotation: “It was grey, deadened, and wintry, with a slow, moist, heavy coldness sinking in and deadening all the faculties.”
12. What does Jack Ferguson think about working class people? What makes him think so?
13. The pond is a major symbol in the story. Examine its symbolic value by providing quotations from the story. Discuss whether it always symbolizes the same thing whenever used or whether it is polysemic.  What really happens in the pond?
14. Think about what the following can symbolize in the story: the kitchen fire, the whisky, the blanket, the hand, the flame.
15. How does D. H. Lawrence portray Mabel and Jack after Mabel regains consciousness in the kitchen? For example, why is Jack Ferguson described as “amazed, bewildered, and afraid”? Why does he kiss her “half in anger”?
16. Towards the end of the story, after Mabel and Jack change their clothes, we can see a change in their behaviors. How? Why? For example, why does Mabel tell Jack that she does not like him “in those clothes”?
17. What does the story tell you about the nature of love in general? What does the story reveal about social class and love? What do you think will happen to Mabel and Jack in the future?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, January 2009

Useful links: D. H. Lawrence: Biography – Penguin Books / The Life of Lawrence: BBC World Service /
Buy the book here /

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 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“

“And of Clay Are We Created” is the final story in Isabel Allende’s “The Stories of Eva Luna”

Questions

Examine the narrative voice in Allende’s story and identify its characteristics: Why does the narrator use first person plural in some parts of the story? (For example, look at the first and fourth paragraphs). Is the narrator simply a reporter of events? What is the narrator’s relation to Rolf? To what extent does the narrator undergo change? Discuss the impact of the narrative voice on the story.

What is the role of the narrator in our understanding of Rolf? What does the narrator reveal about the journalistic qualities of Rolf at the very beginning of the story and later in the second part of the story? Make a comparison between these and then discuss how such a comparison would help you understand both Rolf and the narrator.

Comment on how Isabel Allende makes use of “television screen” in her story.

What is the function of the “President” in the story?

What is the the trapped girl’s relation to Rolf and to the narrator?

How does the narrator address Rolf in the last paragraph of the story? In what way(s) could this be significant in the story?

What is the significance of the title of the story?

Find some stories of natural disasters in the media and examine reporters’ treatments of such events and the people who suffered in these. Would you consider them sensational? Why? Why not?

Discuss whether reporters should be emotionally involved in their stories as is the case in Allende’s story. How do you believe an emotional involvement might affect a reporter’s journalistic approach?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, September 2008

Video: Isabel Allende