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Title: “Going to the Moon”Author: Nino RicciSelection: short story (Echoes 12, 210-217)What Happens?The narrator reflects on his childhood growing up in Windsor as a new Canadian.Element of FictionFrom the textBeyond the textCharacterNarrator - “grade one” (212)Miss Johnson - “She was so beautiful and soft and gently rounded” (216)Parents - “my mother’s swollen hands, our poverty, our strangeness” (216)Joe - “he was six years older. . . but at school he seemed diminished” (212)Young, inexperiencedMaternal, caretakerEmphasizes isolation, disconnect, sense of judgementSupport and strength contrasted by alienation and need for protectionSettingCity - “Windsor is a kind of purgatory to me” (211)House – “stuck there is our narrow brown brick house out of sheer inertia” (211)School – “When my class filed into the grade one classroom and I saw again the varnished desktops, the polished floors, the multicoloured alphabet that ran across the tops of the blackboards” (212)What is purgatory? Stalled or stuck in between culturesWhat is inertia?Stuck – economic / social statusStructured and nurturing environment A place to escape Sense of movement and hopeThemeIsolation – “All my life, it seemed suddenly, was merely waiting for the fulfillment of that promise, for a redemption from the narrowness and meanness of the world I came from, but it seemed possible finally that nothing would change, that I was stranded in my own small world as on some barren planet, with no way to bridge the gap between the promise and the hundred humiliations that kept me from it, that refused simply to fall away from me like an old skin” (215-216)Emphasizes the alienation experienced by new immigrants, the need for a connection.Points out that people are not always accepting of new and different cultures.Stresses the hope and desperation of the experience.Also signifies the change in perspective, depending on stage of life / experience.Narrative Point of ViewFirst personReflection“All my life, it seemed suddenly, was merely waiting for the fulfillment of that promise” (215)Experience is life changing and informs the person the narrator becomes.Narrator recognizes the impact of the alienation and expresses his conflicted and changing emotions.Literary DevicesSimile – “we had to hide ourselves within like animals changing the colour of their fur to fit into a landscape” (212)AlliterationImageryAllusionsSymbolismPersonificationMetaphorEmphasizes the isolation and shame felt by the narratorPrejudice / bullying (ignorance)AssimilationSurvivalStyleDialogueSongPunctuationDictionConnotation – “its image loomed” (211)Evokes emotion and sense of intimidationDaunting to break through boundariesWhat’s Important?Why?First Person Narrative point of view / Reflection“leaving us stranded there at the river’s edge as on an island, and finally we rose up together and began to make our way home” (217)Character“my humiliation was not something that other people did to me but something I carried inside me like a sin, that was there even if other people did not see it” (216)Setting“the room’s gloomy elegance made it seem sad somehow, as if it knew that it didn’t belong to the rest of the house, its only purpose to remind us of the things that were forbidden to us” (212)“Everyday she set some new vision before us like a brightly wrapped gift” (213)Literary DevicesReread the paragraph that begins at the bottom of page 215 and continues on page 216.ThemeAlienation, prejudice, loneliness, strength, family, self image, mentors, etc.Q. The narrator reflects on a specific period in his childhood. What does this reflection reveal about the narrator’s struggle and the source of his comfort?Q. What does the narrator learn about the alienation he felt as a child?Q. What does this suggest about the damage of prejudice?Q. How is setting used to establish mood? Find and explain two examples of contrasting moods.Q. Quote examples of each of the following literary devices:AlliterationSimileDiction / connotationMetaphorIdentify the significance of each device by explaining what is being emphasized.Q. List several ideas that the story encourages readers to consider. For one, explain what is being said about the idea. Support your explanation. ................
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