Blog 2 Reflection on Boys and Girls by Alice Munro
Reflection on Boys and Girls by Alice Munro
Blog Question #2
Reflection: In the story "Boys and Girls," look very carefully at the descriptions of the areas where the father and mother work, and where the children sleep. How does the narrator feel about each of these areas, and how can you tell? Do these descriptions illustrate one or more binaries?
Children’s Bedroom- The bedroom was a place in the household where Laird and the narrator knew they were alone and had each other to protect while in the darkness of the night. The brother and sister would dream and settle their evening with each through singing or conversation. Their bond as brother and sister is relevant throughout the story and I think strongest in their bedroom where they share a room and because their Mother and Father don’t visit.
The binaries in the story can be: dark and light, childhood and adulthood and life and death.
The story is told by a narrator who has a younger brother and lives on a farm with her Father and Mother. The characters in the story farm to help make an income their family of four and their animals can live on. The narrator is uncomfortable with expectations because she is a girl in context to what a boy’s expectations are and what will be expected of them as adults.
The girl would talk about her curiosities about what her father and Henry did when they killed a horse:
“It was not something I wanted to see; just the same, if a thing really happened, it was better to see it, and know.”
The narrator also talks about noticing her Father when walking through the home with a gun. Her father questions her actions of being outside. An example of this is on page226:
“What are you doing here?” He said
“Nothing”
“Go on up and play around in the house.”
He sent Laird out to the stable.
This is a good example of adult and childhood (the narrator is just a child and her father and Henry are adults) as well as gender role expectations during the early 1930’s and how the boys were treated differently than the girls. The girls were sheltered and the boys were going to be outdoors working.
I feel that Boys and Girls by Alice Munro bring up cultural differences that are threaded within a family and make each family unique.
B. Looking Ahead: Next week, you're going to learn something about another literary element known as "intertextuality," or the use of previous texts in a work. To help you recognize some of the intertextuality in "The Boat," do a little "googling."
Intertextuality in “The Boat”
- Ernest Hemingway
- The Tempest
- Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill”
Three important allusions are to...
Thomas Hardy character Eustacia Vye-From Hardy’s Return of the Native
· Daughter of sea captain
· everyone considers her an oddity and some of the women are sure she is a witch
· Native is a dark haired, dark eyed
· selfishly loathes the place where she lives dreaming romantically of living elsewhere.
· Stands aloof from her community.
· ends her life drowning herself, along with her lover who tries to save her but ends up drowning as well.
Moby Dick- is a story by Herman Melville.
o sailor Ishmael, who narrates of the story.
o Moby Dick is a great whale, who is being pursued by a Captain Ahab whose leg was torn off by the whale.
o Ahab’s pursuit is obsessed,
o Ahab even hires a private harpoon crew
o In the end Moby Dick rams the ship and sinks it,
· Ham Peggoty, faithful former housekeeper for his Mother.
· Envies David Copperfield, enter, leaves and re enters David Copperfields life from childhood into adulthood.
· Tashtego the harpooner. Mother described as hurling “iron-tipped harpoons” at father
David Copperfield. - David Copperfield . - Ham Peggotty, Friend of David’s
- Lives by the sea
- Ham dies rescuing David’s friend who is in shipwreck
§ Ham Peggoty dies trying to save Steerforth's life.
o Ham Peggotty drowns.
o kind and loving family of David Copperfield’s nurse Clara who is a dedicated and faithful.
o Ham and his uncle Mr. Peggotty are both sailors.
o Ham is also the fiance to Emily, but she leaves him for another sailor Steerforth.
o Ham later saves Steerforth from a shipwreck only to lose his own life while doing so.