Short Story Assignments:

Read these short stories over the long break. If, for some reason, these links do not work, these
stories are in the public domain. Just Google the title.

Story of an Hour: http://my.hrw.com/support/hos/hostpdf/host_text_219.pdf

The Yellow Wallpaper: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm
A Good Man is Hard to Find: https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~surette/goodman.html
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World: http://www.utdallas.edu/~aargyros/hansomest.htm

Short Story Assignments:

Read these short stories over the long break. If, for some reason, these links do not work, these
stories are in the public domain. Just Google the title.

Story of an Hour: http://my.hrw.com/support/hos/hostpdf/host_text_219.pdf

The Yellow Wallpaper: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm
A Good Man is Hard to Find: https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~surette/goodman.html
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World: http://www.utdallas.edu/~aargyros/hansomest.htm

Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

PART 1: With your small group, glance back over the short story and pick out the words and phrases
that stand out to you regarding Mrs. Mallards state of being before and after the truth is revealed
(the realization that life might actually be better without her husband). Include the emotions she goes
through, the thoughts that she has to herself, and the imagery that relates to her changing states of
being. Use direct quotations.
Arrange them in a chart on the poster like the diagram shown below. LEAVE SOME SPACE at the bottom
of the poster for Parts 2 and 3!
How she imagines life before the realization

How she imagines life after the realization

PART 2: Discuss the open window. Pick out the images that the open window provides and write
what each image might symbolize on the poster beneath the chart.
PART 3: Why do you think Chopin chose to end this story this way? What do her short sentences and
abrupt ending do for the story as a whole? Brainstorm ideas and write them on the poster beneath your
chart. PUT YOUR NAMES on the back of your poster paper before you leave the station.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for
you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just soI can see a strange,
provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous
front design. (4)
PART 1: Examine the ink-blot picture on the table. Take about 5 minutes to free-write about the
picture by yourselves on the loose-leaf paper provided. What does the picture look like to you?
What emotions do the pictures evoke, if any? Are you able to form any truths about the image?
After 5 minutes are up, talk about what you wrote about.
PART 2: Read this out loud at your table:
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is being treated for a condition with what was
termed in the late 1850s by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell as the resting curea treatment that
consisted primarily in isolation, confinement to bed, dieting, electrotherapy and massage.
Interestingly, Dr. Mitchell was Charlotte Perkins Gilmans physician and she had to undergo
such treatment.
Beginning in the 1960s, the ink-blotting technique became popular among
psychologists. In this psychological test, the subjects perceptions of inkblots are recorded and
then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some
psychologists use this test to examine a persons personality characteristics and emotional
functioning (Rorschach, Wikipedia).
Take another sheet of loose-leaf paper and answer the following questions as a group:
1. How was your experience examining the ink-blot picture similar to the narrators
examination of the images in the wall paper?

2. Sometimes, to the outside observer, psychologists techniques dont make much sense to
us. Discuss how Perkins might have felt about the resting cure, having had to undergo
this treatment herself. What were some of the frustrations you may have had while trying
to examine the ink-blot picture?
When you are finished with Part 2, write the names of your group members at the top of the sheet
of paper and leave it at your station. Put your names on your freewrites and stack them in the
center of the table.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery OConnor

PART 1: Below is an excerpt from Flannery OConnors essay Some Aspects of the Grotesque in
Southern Fiction. It details some characteristics of grotesque literature. Read this excerpt out loud
at your table and answer the questions below on the loose-leaf paper provided.
In these grotesque works, we find that the writer has made alive some experience which we
are not accustomed to observe every day, or which the ordinary man may never experience in
his ordinary life. We find that connections which we would expect in the customary kind of
realism have been ignored, that there are strange skips and gaps which anyone trying to
describe manners and customs would certainly not have left. Yet the characters have an inner
coherence, if not always a coherence to their social framework. Their fictional qualities lean
away from typical social patterns, toward mystery and the unexpected.
1. In A Good Man is Hard to Find, what is the experience which we are not accustomed to
observe everyday?

2. OConnor refers to skips and gaps that are left out by the characters as they are trying to
explain their manners and customs. Think about the conversation between the Misfit and the
grandmother towards the end of the story. What might they be skipping when trying to
explain their points of view?

PART 2: Here is another excerpt from the same essay. Read it out loud at your table and answer the
following questions on the same sheet of loose leaf paper.
Henry James said that Conrad in his fiction did things in the way that took the most doing. I
think the writer of grotesque fiction does them in the way that takes the least, because in his
work distances are so great. He's looking for one image that will connect or combine or embody
two points; one is a point in the concrete, and the other is a point not visible to the naked eye,
but believed in by him firmly, just as real to him, really, as the one that everybody sees.

3. Think back to our reading of Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness. Brainstorm the similarities and
differences of writing style in Heart of Darkness and A Good Man is Hard to Find. Why do you
think OConnor drew the comparison between Conrads work and grotesque fiction?
4. What might the concrete image and the point not visible to the naked eye be in the short
story?

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In this story, the townspeople discover a dead body washed up on their shores. They take it into their
home, dress it up, and weave elaborate stories about himeven though they had no idea who the
man was or where he came from.
In your small group, imagine that you had to write an obituary for a random person. Youve never
met this person. You have no idea where he came from. Be creative! Consult the sample obituary
provided if you need help structuring one.
Some guiding questions to consider:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

What might the name of this man be?

Where might he be from?
What do his clothes suggest about him?
What does his expression tell you?
What was his profession? Did he go to college?

Picture of Random Dude:

Sample Obituary: