Instruction
In this forum, you'll need to write a post of at least 200 words (about one double-spaced typed page) in length that analyzes the formal features of "Snow" and "Happy Endings" in order to make and support some claims about the meaning of the content in each story. You'll want to answer all the questions in the prompt, and you may need to review this week's lecture (which reviews and introduces some of these terms) before you write your post.
Consider how point of view, setting, and theme work in the two pieces of fiction that you read this week.
First, compare the narrative perspective of "Snow" to the narrative perspective of "Happy Endings." How does the fiction written in the first-person retrospective differ from fiction written in the third-person omniscient? Are readers likely to feel differently about the characters based on the kind of narrator each writer selects?
Then, consider both temporal and geographic settings in the fiction. One writer chooses to make the setting very specific--choosing a place and time and adding rich detail to help readers understand the story--whereas the other writer chooses to only vaguely sketch out the setting in the most general way. Why might each writer have made their respective choices? How does having a sense of time and place (or not having a sense of time and place) affect how you understand each piece of fiction?
Finally, analyze the themes in the two pieces of fiction. What abstract concepts do Atwood and Alvarez explore? What insights do they offer to their readers? What didactic purposes does their fiction serve?