EWRT 1C Class 20

AGENDA

Author Introduction: Stephen King

Discussion: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Historical ContextLiterary StylePOVNarratorThemes and Concepts

Stephen King 1947-

• AKA: Steve King, Richard Bachman, John Swithen, and Eleanor Druse

Stephen King: Brief Biography• King was born in Portland, Maine, and except for his

elementary school years, he lived much of the rest of his life there. He received a B.A. in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, prepared to teach high school English. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

• King ended his high-school teaching career with the success of Carrie, Published in 1974.

Genre• King is best known for writing Horror, but he does venture into

a more mainstream genre with some of his novels and stories. King himself compares his writing to medieval morality plays [allegorical drama popular in Europe especially during the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the characters personify moral qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death or youth) and in which moral lessons are taught.] The Green Mile, for example, is often referred to as both a tragedy and a morality play. I will leave you to figure out if Shawshank fits the description of a morality play.

Historical Context

• Alcatraz operated as a prison from 1934 to 1963. A little over 1,500 men were housed there during its relatively brief stint as one of America’s most notorious prisons. One of the more famous prisoners was Robert “Birdman” Stroud who got his nickname while in prison at Leavenworth. Stroud became an ornithologist while at Leavenworth and became very well-known in birding circles, though few knew he was a prisoner for much of the time. Stroud was an avid reader and lived much of his life in solitary confinement. Books and birds were his best friends.

• Stroud may be the inspiration for King’s character, Brooks Hatlen, the only other prisoner we meet with a college degree.

Historical Context: The Great Escape

• One summer night in 1962, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin escaped from Alcatraz. They chiseled away sections of the wall around the air vent in the rear of their cells with the handles of steel spoons. While inmates played instruments loudly at a concert, Morris and the Anglin brothers broke through the backs of their cells and into the utility tunnel. They climbed the pipes and made it to the roof of Alcatraz prison. They launched into the San Francisco Bay in a raft made of prison raincoats. Some think that one or more of them escaped to Central or South America due to their library records and attempts to learn Spanish. More think they drowned.

Group Discussion: Shawshank

The Narrator

Point of view

Reliable or not?

Themes/Concepts

Symbols

Major Characters

QHQs

Major Characters

• Red• Andy Dufresne• Samuel Norton• Tommy Williams• Byron Hadley• The Sisters

LITERARY STYLE

• Who is the narrator?• How did the first-person narrative

affect the story?• Why does the author choose to tell the

story through Red’s eyes and not Andy’s?

• Is he reliable? Why or why not?• The readers can’t know the truth

because we only hear the story from Red’s narration of Andy’s narration and other sources. Yet, in the story Red swears that Andy is telling the truth about being an innocent man. It’s up to the readers to decide whether Andy is innocent or not

Themes and Symbols?

• Hope• Red on the other hand did murder but he has a chance to redeem himself and takes

Andy’s advice, “hope is a good thing.”• Red’s description of Andy is that “there was none of that sullen desperation about him

that seems to afflict most lifers after awhile; you could never smell hopelessness on him.”

• Corruption• How does “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” by Stephen King depict the

correctional system through the narrator Red?

• Crime• Red readily admits to the murders he committed and he knows he deserves to be in

prison. • When we first get introduced to Andy we learn that he was charged for the murder of his

wife and her lover. However, we also learn through Red’s narration that Andy denies ever committing the murders, and that he was just an unlucky guy.

• Isolation and Imprisonment• Time

Themes/Concepts:

Symbols• Rita Hayworth• What does the poster of Rita Hayworth and the other women symbolize?• Why does [the Rita Hayworth poster] get a place in the title?

• Andy Dufresne• What is Andy Dufresne is symbolic of and what does he represent to Red

and to the rest of the inmates at Shawshank?• Warden Norton• Warden Norton represents the faults of the prison system.

• The Bird• What did Sherwood Bolton’s bird, Jake, represent? What did it symbolize

when the Red found it dead after it had been released?• Rocks

QHQs

HOMEWORK Read Bloom’s “Trauma

Theory Abbreviated” Read Balaev’s “Trends

in Literary Trauma Theory”

Post # 18: QHQ Bloom or Balaev

Work on Essay #2: Due Wednesday, week 9 before class.