Question description
I have two stories and I need you to answer 3 questions of each one.
The Cask of
Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe’s
1. What can the reader infer about Montresor’s social position and
character from hints in the text? What evidence does the text provide that
Montresor is an unreli-able narrator?
2. Who is the auditor, the “You,” addressed in the first
paragraph of “The Cask of Amontillado”? When is the story being told?
Why is it being told? How does your knowledge of the auditor and the occasion
influence the effect the story has on you?
3. What devices does Poe use to create and heighten the suspense
in the story? Is the outcome ever in doubt?
Lusus Naturae by Margaret Atwood
1. How and why does the protagonist’s attitude toward her own
situation change over the course of the story? How and why does she
paradoxically become more alive and powerful after she “dies” and as
she becomes more and more “invisible”?
2. Why does she nonetheless choose to make herself
“visible” at the story’s conclusion (par. 30)? What new insight might
this episode provide into both her character and situation, on the one hand,
and “normal” human behavior, on the other? How, for example, might
the conclusion complicate the idea that the story is exclusively about illness
or disability and our attitudes toward it?
3. What conflicts does the protagonist’s condition create for the
story’s other characters? How do they each understand that condition? How might
the story encourage us to view their attitudes and behaviors?