ENG311

Writing in Context: Turn of the Century

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.

“Turning the Century”

1. What did you learn that surprised you?
2. How might this information inform your study of early 20th-century literature?
3. After you finish your readings, consider how does what was written 100 years ago still speak to us today?
4. How do these “texts” serve as a discussion of the issues of the day?
a. Consider that these writers lived in different countries and were of slightly different social classes.

“The Letters of a Crewe Factory Girl”

1. Why do you think Nield Chew uses the letter as her means of expression?
a. Why is her subject appropriate to this form?
b. What does a letter allow her to do that a fictional story would not, and vice versa?
2. How does Nield Chew use detail to tell her story?
a. What might be her purpose in creating general rather than specific descriptions?
3. Who is Nield Chew’s audience?
a. Although she is writing to the Chronicle, her audience is not the paper/the editor? Who might she have in mind?
4. Thinking back on your earlier work in this module, how important is context (the historical and cultural world of the text) to Nield Chew’s story?
a. Given the period, what did Nield Chew hope to accomplish from her letters?
b. How do her efforts to affect change impact us today?

“The Jungle”

1. 1. A story can be told from many points of view. Point of view is like the view through the lens of a camera. Both of us can be looking at something through our own lens and the picture we take of the same thing will be very different as a result of our differing focuses. This is true for the point of view of a story. The “voice” of the person(s) telling the story becomes the lens through which the story is “seen.” Another character may have told the story in a different way with a different focus because their story is from a different perspective. Because the same story can be told from different perspectives, it’s never the same story. The story told depends on who is telling the story. We must consider “point of view,” therefore, when we study a story.
a. How does that point of view, that perspective, affect the story told?
b. How would the story be different if told from a different perspective?
2. Consider the “point of view” of Sinclair’s story.
a. What is the effect of this point of view?
3. Look at the last section of Chapter 9. The paragraph begins, “There were men in the pickle rooms,”
a. Why does the narrator pay such close attention to detail?
b. How are you affected by the way these details are layered?
4. What is the setting of Sinclair’s story?
a. Why is setting (place, time, the circumstance of the story) important to Sinclair’s story?
5. Thinking back on your earlier work in this module, how important is context (the historical and cultural world of the text) to Sinclair’s story?
a. What might be Sinclair’s message to readers?
b. Is Sinclair’s message limited to readers of his period, or is it relevant today