But the formation of groups is often exclusive as well as inclusive: the "we" set off against the "they," the ins against the outs. The values that bind the members of one group are felt as contrasted to alien and opposed values of other groups. Clashes of personal aims and needs take on intensified acuteness when the persons think of themselves as representing, or embodying, a common cause. A single person may be torn by divided group loyalties, conflicts of duty or of duty to the group with strong inclinations to escape or transcend its limited concerns.

One of the greatest rewards of literature is that it can help us to reach across those man-made walls that divide culture from culture, or class from class, and to mitigate that emotional blindness which consists of our inability to sympathize with the feelings and aspirations of others who have different life-goals and lifestyles. Literature is ready for that hardness of heart that shuts us in and keeps us apart.

Conflict refers to the basic opposition of forces out of which the plot comes. It is the source of play or story or the reason anything happens at all. Plot means the chain of events or action. Structure is a broader term dealing with the way in which the whole work is put together. Conflicts in literature reflect the conflicts of life. We may find conflicts between individuals, such as a direct protagonist-antagonist relationship or parallel conflicts involving minor characters. Often we find the conflict between the individual and society. Society may be represented by a school, a club, an army unit, or even more abstractly, an economic system or political order. Often the individual is defeated after a heroic struggle. The individual may also be pitted against nature. Here the setting itself is a force, and setting and conflict must be considered together. Rather than fighting an exterior force, the individual may experience conflict within himself. This psychological conflict leads us deep into the subtle, hidden motivations of the character; and we have to be alert to extremely slight shades of meaning. The resolution of a conflict of ideas often represents the working out of a major theme. Conflict leads to an over-balancing of forces into action. That action is plot. Plot involves causation. One event causes another, and the inter-relationship of these events is often complex. Plot, of course, influences the structure of work; and by looking at the traditional plot, we can see a highly developed pattern.

The traditional plot is often represented by a triangle:

The beginning exposition establishes the setting and introduces the characters and conflict. The rising action, beginning with an activating circumstance, represents a chain of events of rising suspense and intensity. The crisis, sometimes called the turning point, is the moment at which the outcome is determined. The falling action denotes the working out of events after the crisis, and the resolution finally closes the action and resolves the conflict.

In addition to plot, structure may involve a number of other techniques. Works of fiction as well as drama may be built around a number of scenes, indicating a unity of action in one place at one time. The writer can also manipulate time as a part of his structure. He can telescope events or break the chronology by means of the flashback. By using a stream-of-consciousness, the novelist or short story writer can move freely through a character's memory or daydream. He may also give his work structure by a pattern of symbols or by tracing the stages in the development of a character. The theme of a work may impose its own structure, and events may be focused around the development of the idea. As a last point we can say that a work has emotional structure. The total effect of a work creates an emotional response. That response is really the expression of the structural unity of the work.

BACKGROUND

Richard Wright (1909-1960) was born in Natchez, Mississippi, and was entirely self-educated. Throughout the Depression, he held a series of menial jobs, only gradually turning to writing as a livelihood. Wright established himself as this country's leading black author in 1940, with the publication of Native Son, a novel that had a profound influence on the writings of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. Wright's central themes involve the tensions of being black in a white society. Black Boy (1945) is considered one of the finest autobiographies written by an American author. "Almos' A Man" embodies a theme central to Wright's work: the struggle for personal freedom crucial to establishing one's identity. Wright was critical not only one of the repressive society which systematically discriminated against blacks, but of the passive, frightened response of many blacks, to this discrimination. "Almos' A Man" first appeared in 1961 as "The Man Who Was Almost a Man." "Almos, A Man" was first published in 1940 and later appeared as "The Man Who Was Almost A Man", in a collection Eight Men.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS "ALMOS' A MAN"

1. What is David like? Is he a child or an adult? List the things that suggest each.

2. Why does David want a gun? Do you think his wish is sensible?

3. How does David get along with his mother? With his father? How do they get along with each other?

4. In what way does David's shooting Jenny suggest a break with his boyhood?

5. In the scene at Jenny's grave, how do his parents treat him? Is the punishment fair? How does he feel about the treatment and the punishment?

6. Is David's decision to leave justified? How has he changed at the end? How has he not changed?

STUDY ASSIGNMENT:

Read "On Richard Wright" and "Almos' A Man" (Vol. 1, 275-280). How does this discussion of the story compare with your own view of what Richard Wright is attempting to get across?

BACKGROUND

Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873. When she was nine she moved to a farm in a largely unsettled area of Nebraska. Educated in the classics by her grandmother, Cather went on to the University of Nebraska. At age twenty-three, she moved to Pittsburgh where she wrote as a drama critic, later teaching English in a Pittsburgh high school before becoming editor-in-chief of McClure's Magazine in New York City. Cather's work was strongly influenced by her family's pioneer farming existence, yet the influence of Pittsburgh city culture was equally important. Indeed, the contrasts between the heard, isolated pioneer life and the world of art, which answers yearnings of a more romantic vision of life, informed much of her work.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS "PAUL'S CASE"

1. What are your first impressions of Paul? How does the meeting in the principal's office reveal Paul's character?

2. How is Paul's feeling about the arts revealed in his actions at the concert hall? How does this explain the nature of his trouble at school?

3. How well does Paul judge art? (Consider the cases of the theater production and the opera singer.)

4. How does Paul's father treat him? How does Paul feel about his father? Contrast Paul and his father as they walk down Cordelia Street on Sunday morning; are you critical of Paul here, or sympathetic?

5. Contrast Paul's attitude toward the arts with that of Charlie Edwards.

6. What events occur that make Paul decide to leave town?

7. What is Paul's life in New York City like? Does he believe he has made his dream come true? Do you?

8. How does Paul resolve his conflicts at the end? How do you feel about his actions?

STUDY ASSIGNMENT:

Read "On Willa Cather and 'Paul's Case'" (Vol. 2, 189-194). How does your view of the story differ from Rosellen Brown's analysis?

BACKGROUND

Henry James (1843-1916) came from an upper class New York family, and was educated in New York, Boston, and Europe. He became a major literary figure in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, though his popular and critical reputation was established primarily after his death. In 1918, T.S. Eliot called him "the most intelligent of his generation." He is regarded as a master literary craftsman, and his stories and novels evince a technical perfection and a deep grasp of human psychology. "The Jolly Corner," written in 1906, is typical of James in that it contrasts the genteel, antique world of Europe with the bustling modern world of America. Moreover, it presents a common Jamesian theme: the lost opportunities of life. The year before its publication, James himself had returned to America after a long exile, so the story seems, at least in part, autobiographical.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS "THE JOLLY CORNER"

1. What is your first impression of spencer Brydon? How is it formed?

2. What doesn't he like about America?

3. What is the question about his own life that plagues him?

4. What does the Jolly Corner represent to Brydon? Why won't he sell it?

5. Brydon's dealings with Wilkes suggest to Alice Staverton what Brydon might have been had he stayed in America. What is her notion?

6. What is Alice Staverton's role in Brydon's struggle to understand what he might have been?

7. Do you think that Brydon actually sees a vision of himself in the house, or just imagines one?

8. What does his "double" look like? What does it reveal about what he would have been?

9. How does Brydon change as a result of his vision? How, in particular, does his relationship with Alice change?

STUDY ASSIGNMENT:

How does the filmed version of this story differ from the text? Do the filming changes enhance or detract from the meaning of the story? Which version do you like best? Explain.

BACKGROUND

Ernest Hemingway (189901961) was the son of a prosperous physician in Oak Park, Illinois. As a boy he was strong, rugged, handsome, and intelligent-qualities he prized highly both in his life and his fiction. At eighteen, he became a cub reporter; at nineteen, he went off to World War I, and was seriously sounded while serving as an ambulance driver in Italy. His wartime experiences served as the basis for many of his stories, and for the novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). After the war, Hemingway lived in Paris, where he began developing his literary talents. The writer's goal, he once declared, was to write "the truest sentence that you know." Hemingway's vision was an intensely masculine one in which personal honor, courage, and dignity were the only protections against a confused, amoral world. "Soldier's Home," published in 1925, was part of an outpouring of post-war literature that challenged the American myth of piety and patriotism - an outpouring that included Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, (1919), Sinclair Lewis's Babbit (1922), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS "SOLDIER'S HOME

1. By the time Krebs comes home, the town has returned to normal. What kind of readjustment does this demand of Krebs?

2. Describe Krebs. Do you like him? Why or why not?

3. How does Krebs get along with his family? With the town in general?

4. Krebs liked the war because it was "simple." What does that mean? How is life in town not so "simple"?

5. Why does Krebs plan to leave town? How has he changed at the end of the story? How has he not changed?

STUDY ASSIGNMENT:

"On Ernest Hemingway and 'Soldier's Home'" (Vol. 1, 251-255) is the critic's analysis of the short story. Does this view coincide with your interpretation of the story? If not, how does it differ?