ENG311

Writing in Context: The Progressive Era

Directions: Use this document to write your answers to the guiding “Reader Response” questions that have been posed here about each of your readings. Then, use these responses to help you formulate your response to the Quizzes.

“The Open Boat”

1. Identify the four men in the boat by their positions on the ship.

a. How are their identities tied to their work?

i. In other words, how are they defined by what they do?

2. How do the men’s relationships change as a result of their predicament?

3. In the end, what have they gained by their experience – what knowledge, what ability if any?

a. What have they lost?

4. How do you think Crane’s work positions him as a realist and naturalist writer?

a. What does his work say about our relationship to nature and each other?

“The Souls of Black Folk”

1. How does Du Bois address the question, “What does it mean to be a problem?”

2. Study the following passage from your reading:

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, -- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.”

What does Du Bois mean by these statements?

a. How do you interpret the “second sight” he attributes to the Negro?

3. Du Bois claims that although freedom had been the goal for centuries, it did not live up to its promise. How does he explain this issue?

a. In what ways are his arguments distinctly “realistic?”

4. Although Du Bois is not discussing the impositions of the “natural world,” he is discussing the social and political limitations of a group’s experience. What does he identify as the limitations of this group’s experience?

a. What call for action is he making?

“Trifles”

1. How does Glaspell differentiate the natures of her male and female characters?

a. Consider, for instance, the positioning and actions of the men and women when they enter the farmhouse.

2. What evidence do the women discover that provides them a window into Minnie’s world?

a. How do they feel about their findings?

b. What do they consider in terms of their relationship to Minnie’s situation?

3. How do the women “read” what they find in Minnie’s kitchen?

a. Why do the men miss this evidence?

4. Why do the women determine to hide their knowledge?

a. What has occurred during their time in the farmhouse that makes the women unite to defend Minnie?

“Mending Wall” 1. What tradition do the speaker and the neighbor engage in every year?

a. How does the speaker feel about this tradition?

b. How do you know the speaker feels this way?

c. What might the speaker be saying to us about blindly following traditions?

d. What elements of the poem help the speaker convey his stance on traditions? Pay attention to all aspects of the poem: word choice and placement; line length and breaks; stanza formation, punctuation or lack of, use of parenthesis; tone and how it is conveyed.

2. What does the speaker mean by the first line, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,”?

a. Why is the line repeated later in the poem?

3. How does the “Mending Wall” suggest that humans are responsible for both real and imagined boundaries that protect and divide?

a. What type of walls/fences do we build in our lives and why? What are we keeping out; what are we protecting? Think both figuratively and literally.

4. What real-world issue does the poem address – then and now?

5. What might Frost have been trying to urge people to see and do?