9.18 Setting and "Brownies"

Class on 9.22 will be in CAS 236.

At the beginning of class, if you haven't done so already, I asked you to set the "permissions and sharing" on your site to "anyone with a link".

Also, I announced that for next week, for our work on Structure, we will be reading "10th of December" (link to the right)  NOT Raymond Carver in your book.

Finishing up POV.  We started class with you shareing your ideas for how to write a story about Point of View using "Say Yes".  We came up with a number of focus ideas, including the following.

• Discuss how  Wolff uses POV to tell us a story where the narrator knows less than the reader.  (what does the narrator tell us?  what does he "miss"?  How does Wolff present the narrator's observations in a way so that the reader can get more than the narraotr?)
• Use "Say Yes" as an example of a special kind of "unreliable" narrator: a narrator who does not distort or misrepresent what happens - but rather simply fails to interpret it fully
• Discuss how or whether the main character's POV changes throughout the story.  What (if anything) allows him to see his relationship to his wife differently?  When his POV shifts - how does the information he conveys to the reader change?

Setting as a focus for writing about Stories.  At that point we segued to talk about Setting.  We did a very brief review of the distinctions your chapter makes between Setting as a place, and Atmosphere, the emotions, impressions, or feelings associated with that place/scene in a story.

Setting for Brownies = kids camp = 7-9 year lod girls

Atmosphere= the “feelings’ from the kid culture = sneaky, snooty, jealous, herd mentality, bullying, racism,

Leaders = the most ignorant, meanest , loudest

Priviledge

Racist standards for beauty (operate from outside the immediate setting = from the culture at large

Another part of the setting is the events in the characters lives that make them feel behave the way they do, the way they saw tropp 909, what they thought was “pretty” (long straight hair etc.

Packer closes with Laurel (the main character) relating part of that “setting” => telling it diretly and reflecting on it

List (sequence) of "local" settings in "Brownies"
1. camp

2. flashback to school\

[As we talked about the move from 1 to 2, we though there were interesting similarities and contrasts between these two settings.  While they were very different places, they were similar in that the same kids were on top, and they used the same ways to instill fear/control the kids who they had power over.]

3. Suburbs of Atlanta

4. Troop 909 at camp, getting off bus

5. Bathroom - Arnetta makes her accusation about Troop 909 

6. Flashback (tells us who Daphne is - winning the poetry contest)

7. Stream = watching Troop 909

8. Bathroom Daphne cleans up + the our Troop makes a Plan

9. Singing scene = backstory on Octavia - showing something about familes and where these girls come from

10.  Bathroom confrontation

11. Camp leader - craziness "they will apologize"

12. Bus going home

13. Flashback - Laurel’s story=> denoument

As we talked about these settings we noted which were "inside/confined=> places where people had to deal with eachother, and which were "outside" - where people could watch from a distance, and there was no need to "work things out" because there was an option to leave.  We also noticed instances where Packer gave us clues about the identities of Troop 909, but the "setting" (and the sequence of settings - what those settings set us up to "see" ) caused us to read right past those clues. 

You also pointed out that the flashbacks and the girls assumptions and values reached out the larger cultural setting: where the dominant standards of "beauty" and behavior in many ways were "against" our troup.  

The approache we took to brainstorming ideas about setting for this story was a little different than the approach taken in your book.  The book, as with its approach to POV, asked a series of questions and prompted you to do some writing about features related to setting. This is a great approach, but I figured you can read, so we took a different direction. 

In our class discussion, you  said many more things that I didn't write down but that would make really great papers!

For next class:

Read:  Chapter 7: Structure, p. 112; 10^th of December, George Saunders

Write:  Brainstorming for a paper on setting.  We used "Brownies" for our discussion, but your brainstorming can refer to any of the stories we have read so far.  Post your brainstorming to Drafts/Invention, sub-page Short Stories.  Name your document: YourLastNameSetting.

Great class today!   See you next week.