Download
1 / 8
80 likes | 251 Views
“The Found Boat”. Alice Munro. The strength of her fiction arises partially from its vivid sense of regional focus , most of her stories being set in Huron County, Ont, as well as from her sense of the narrator as the intelligence through which the world is articulated. . Alice Munro.
E N D
“The Found Boat” Alice Munro
The strength of her fiction arises partially from its vivid sense of regional focus, most of her stories being set in Huron County, Ont, as well as from her sense of the narrator as the intelligence through which the world is articulated. Alice Munro
Lake Huron Toronto
About rural southwestern Ontario. • "'I don't think it's very different at all from the Midwest,' she says. 'There are nice old-looking towns, substantial towns, with big brick houses and big shade trees, large churches - many large churches -and factories that tend not to be operating any more. There's good farming land, and the lake - Lake Huron, 10 miles from where I live. And there's a kind of ritualistic wildness - pretty wild, self-destructive driving, a whole culture of sports -hockey is the big thing. . . . “
Alice Munro: Themes and Style • Gender Issues 1. the dilemmas of the adolescent girl coming to terms with family and small town 2. the problems of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly. • Style • Emphasis on an explosive moment—a moment of revelation or a turning point. • ''I don't understand where the excitement is supposed to come in a novel, and I do in a story. . . . I kind of want a moment that's explosive, and I want everything gathered into that.''
“The Found Boat” Five Parts: • Discovery of the boat • Fixing the boat • Rowing the boat down the river • The Pedder Train Station • Truth or Dare
“The Found Boat”--Questions • How do the boys and girls relate to each other differently in these five parts? How does Eva feel about Clayton? • Do you find the girls to daring in taking off their clothes? • Symbolic meanings of • debris, river, the forsaken train station, Clayton’s action, the names of Eva and Clayton.
Gendering process in “The Found Boat” • The division of boys and girls in the beginning of the story, as well as in the process of boat-fixing. • The trip as a trip of transgressing gender boundaries. • The trip ends up re-confirming gender boundaries, since women’s bodies are vulnerable to rape and in need of protection. • Ironically, it is the boy, but not God, that give “Eva” (Eve) her sense of shame.
