Fiction 3 : Initiation story
Boys and Girls
"Boys and Girls" (1964 / 1968) is a short story by Alice Munro, the Canadian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 which deals with the making of gender roles.
Synopsis
Whenever she shares her daily routine farmwork with her father, the young narrator is taken to be a boy by visitors. She tries to keep away from any work in her mother's range of tasks because she does not really take any interest in that kind of work. The narrator remembers that by the time she was eleven years old she was faced with more and more expectations of what a girl should be like and what she should do or not do. Her role in the family began to change, and the narrator concludes with telling the story of an event in which she behaved according to her intuition, is squealed on by her younger brother and subsequently is being assigned the new gender role by her father. The narrator's last comment reads: ″Maybe it was true.″
Narration
Narration is the use of—or the particularly chosen methodology or process (also called the narrative mode) of using—a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration encompasses a set of techniques through which the creator of the story presents their story, including:
Narrative point of view : the perspective (or type of personal or non-personal "lens") through which a story is communicated
Narrative voice : the format (or type of presentational form) through which a story is communicated
Narrative time : the placement of the story's time-frame in the past, the present, or the future
Character (novel)
Character (original Dutch title Karakter) is a novel by Dutch author Ferdinand Bordewijk published in 1936. Subtitled "Een roman van zoon en vader", "a novel of son and father", it is a Bildungsroma that traces the relationship between a stern father and his son. Character is Bordewijk's best-known novel, and the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.
If we’re lucky, writers and readers alike, we’ll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we’ll ponder what we’ve just written or read; maybe our hearts or our intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we’ll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves," as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.
feisty
(of a person, typically one who is relatively small or weak) lively, determined, and courageous
dreary
dull, bleak, and lifeless; depressing
monotonous
dull, tedious, and repetitious; lacking in variety and interest
dismissive
feeling or showing that something is unworthy of consideration
diagnostic
concerned with the diagnosis of illness or other problems
characteristic of a particular species, genus, or phenomenon
a distinctive symptom or characteristic
John Gardner (American writer)
John Champlin Gardner Jr. (July 21, 1933 – September 14, 1982) was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is perhaps most noted for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view.
Grendel (novel)
Grendel is a 1971 novel by American author John Gardner. It is a retelling of part of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf from the perspective of the antagonist, Grendel. In the novel, Grendel is portrayed as an antihero. The novel deals with finding meaning in the world, the power of literature and myth, and the nature of good and evil.
rival
a person or thing competing with another for the same objective or for superiority in the same field of activity
compete for superiority with; be or seem to be equal or comparable to
souvenir
a thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or even
Memento mori
Memento mori (Latin: "remember (that you have) to die") is the medieval Latin theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. It is related to the ars moriendi ("The Art of Dying") and related literature. Memento mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character, by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife.
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