While reading each story, you might want to jot down answers to these questions to help develop an interpretation and analysis for the story.
Title:
Author:
Date of Publication:
1. PLOT SUMMARY (The arrangement of events in the story)
a. Tell in two or three short sentences what happens in the story.
b. Does the story progress in chronological order, or does it begin in the middle or at the end? Is the plot cyclical? Is there any foreshadowing in events? In tone?
2. CHARACTERS (The people, animals, or forces that inhabit the story and interact in the conflict)
a. Who is the protagonist (major character)? Give name, chief character trait at the beginning, chief character trait at the end, and the way he/she is changed (if at all) by the outcome of the action.
b. Who is the antagonist (most important minor character–a story may have several antagonists)? What kind of person is the antagonist contrasted to the protagonist?
c. Other important minor characters. Give name, character traits, importance to story.
d. Do the names of the characters reflect their role in the story? Do the minor characters serve as foils to the major character?
3. CONFLICT (A series of problems or obstacles with which the protagonist must contend)
a. What is the central conflict (usually internal)? State the opposing forces as specifically as possible (? vs. ?). Remember, the central conflict is usually the beginning key trait vs. the ending key trait or some opposing trait.
b. What are the important minor conflicts (usually external)?
c. What is the climax (the specific plot event at which the reader becomes aware who wins the central conflict)?
d. What is the resolution or new state of affairs? What is the result of the outcome of the conflict?
4. SETTING (The place and time, era, season, atmosphere, climate, “world” in which the action occurs)
a. What are the time and place of the story?
b. Does setting affect the action or influence characters’ behavior?
c. Is the setting symbolic or ironic?
5. POINT OF VIEW (The voice or persona the author creates to tell the story)
a. What specific type of point of view is used (first person; third-person limited, omniscient, objective)?
b. Is the narrator a participant in the story? Major or minor participant?
c. Does point of view affect characterization? Is the point of view biased or unreliable?
6. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE (The use of literary devices or figures of speech to produce a secondary level of meaning in the story)
a. Does the author use imagery or strong sensory language? What effect does the imagery have on tone or characterization?
b. Does the author use symbols? Identify the literal object, action, or person and its symbolic meaning.
c. Does the author use irony? What is the discrepancy between expectation and reality?
d. Does the author use allusions? Explain the significance.
e. What secondary meaning does figurative language produce in the story?
7. TONE (The author’s emotional attitude toward the major character and his/her situation, as gauged by the reader’s emotional response, or mood, at the end of the story)
a. Identify the tone of the opening paragraph.
b. Identify the dominant tone (reader’s emotional reaction as a result of the outcome of the conflict). Ask yourself: How do I feel about the character at the end of the story?
c. Identify two or three dominant elements (those elements of fiction most instrumental in producing the tone).
d. Does the author make a deceptive use of tone to trick the reader and heighten the impact of the outcome?
8. CENTRAL IDEA (Dominant idea or theme implicit in the story; central idea goes beyond a specific statement of the action to express a general idea about the subject of the story.)
a. Assemble the facts of the story.
1. Identify the general subject of the story.
2. Tell in one sentence what happens in the story, including outcome.
3. Reidentify the protagonist, including his dominant character trait and his change or lack of change as a result of the outcome of the conflict.
b. Put the three facts listed above into one statement.
c. Translate this specific statement into more general terms. Do not mention specific characters or events in your general statement of central idea
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Thank You, Ma’am (by Langston Hughes)
She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a
long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and she
was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke
with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s weight and the weight of the purse
combined caused him to lose his balance so, intsead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the
boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around
and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by
his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled.
After that the woman said, “Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here.” She still held him. But
she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, “Now ain’t
you ashamed of yourself?”
Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, “Yes’m.”
The woman said, “What did you want to do it for?”
The boy said, “I didn’t aim to.”
She said, “You a lie!”
By that time two or three people passed, stopped, turned to look, and some stood watching.
“If I turn you loose, will you run?” asked the woman.
“Yes’m,” said the boy.
“Then I won’t turn you loose,” said the woman. She did not release him.
“I’m very sorry, lady, I’m sorry,” whispered the boy.
“Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash your face for you. Ain’t you got
nobody home to tell you to wash your face?”
“No’m,” said the boy.
“Then it will get washed this evening,” said the large woman starting up the street, dragging the
frightened boy behind her.
He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans.
The woman said, “You ought to be my son. I would teach you right from wrong. Least I can do
right now is to wash your face. Are you hungry?”
“No’m,” said the being dragged boy. “I just want you to turn me loose.”
“Was I bothering you when I turned that corner?” asked the woman.
“No’m.”
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“But you put yourself in contact with me,” said the woman. “If you think that that contact is not
going to last awhile, you got another thought coming. When I get through with you, sir, you are
going to remember Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones.”
Sweat popped out on the boy’s face and he began to struggle. Mrs. Jones stopped, jerked him
around in front of her, put a half-nelson about his neck, and continued to drag him up the street.
When she got to her door, she dragged the boy inside, down a hall, and into a large kitchenette-
furnished room at the rear of the house. She switched on the light and left the door open. The boy
could hear other roomers laughing and talking in the large house. Some of their doors were open,
too, so he knew he and the woman were not alone. The woman still had him by the neck in the
middle of her room.
She said, “What is your name?”
“Roger,” answered the boy.
“Then, Roger, you go to that sink and wash your face,” said the woman, whereupon she turned
him loose—at last. Roger looked at the door—looked at the woman—looked at the door—and went
to the sink.
Let the water run until it gets warm,” she said. “Here’s a clean towel.”
“You gonna take me to jail?” asked the boy, bending over the sink.
“Not with that face, I would not take you nowhere,” said the woman. “Here I am trying to get
home to cook me a bite to eat and you snatch my pocketbook! Maybe, you ain’t been to your
supper either, late as it be. Have you?”
“There’s nobody home at my house,” said the boy.
“Then we’ll eat,” said the woman, “I believe you’re hungry—or been hungry—to try to snatch my
pockekbook.”
“I wanted a pair of blue suede shoes,” said the boy.
“Well, you didn’t have to snatch my pocketbook to get some suede shoes,” said Mrs. Luella Bates
Washington Jones. “You could of asked me.”
“M’am?”
The water dripping from his face, the boy looked at her. There was a long pause. A very long
pause. After he had dried his face and not knowing what else to do dried it again, the boy turned
around, wondering what next. The door was open. He could make a dash for it down the hall. He
could run, run, run, run, run!
The woman was sitting on the day-bed. After a while she said, “I were young once and I wanted
things I could not get.”
There was another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened. Then he frowned, but not knowing he
frowned.
The woman said, “Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was
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going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that.” Pause.
Silence. “I have done things, too, which I would not tell you, son—neither tell God, if he didn’t
already know. So you set down while I fix us something to eat. You might run that comb through
your hair so you will look presentable.”
In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up
and went behind the screen. The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now,
nor did she watch her purse which she left behind her on the day-bed. But the boy took care to sit
on the far side of the room where he thought she could easily see him out of the corner of her eye,
if she wanted to. He did not trust the woman not to trust him. And he did not want to be mistrusted
now.
“Do you need somebody to go to the store,” asked the boy, “maybe to get some milk or
something?”
“Don’t believe I do,” said the woman, “unless you just want sweet milk yourself. I was going to
make cocoa out of this canned milk I got here.”
“That will be fine,” said the boy.
She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa, and set the table.
The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that
would embarrass him. Instead, as they ate, she told him about her job in a hotel beauty-shop that
stayed open late, what the work was like, and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes,
red-heads, and Spanish. Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake.
“Eat some more, son,” she said.
When they were finished eating she got up and said, “Now, here, take this ten dollars and buy
yourself some blue suede shoes. And next time, do not make the mistake of latching onto my
pocketbook nor nobody else’s—because shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet. I got to
get my rest now. But I wish you would behave yourself, son, from here on in.”
She led him down the hall to the front door and opened it. “Good-night! Behave yourself, boy!”
she said, looking out into the street.
The boy wanted to say something else other than “Thank you, m’am” to Mrs. Luella Bates
Washington Jones, but he couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the
large woman in the door. He barely managed to say “Thank you” before she shut the door. And he
never saw her again.
For the worksheet you choose either one story to read and answer the question to the story
After completing the worksheet I need these discussions questions answered about the story
For this assignment, I would like you to share with your classmates the story you have chosen to analyze. In addition to sharing the story, I would like you to answer the following questions and complete the following tasks:
1. Why did you choose the story?
2. What do you think the message of this story may be?
3. Find two quotes from the story. Explain what they mean and how they relate to the story’s message.
Please address these questions and tasks by numbering them in your response as they are numbered above.
