Activity: Short Friday

Now that we've read three chapters of Chapman's commentary, we have a number of critical concepts at our disposal: character, setting, chronology, plot, discourse, etc. However, I want to return to Chapman's discussion of "getting the point" in Chapter 1. Re-read that section (pages 11-12) and work with your group write a strong statement of the point of "Short Friday." Before you start writing, you may want to talk about Singer's approaches to character, setting, chronology, etc., and how he uses one or more of these to signal to the reader what his point might be. Try to push past any initial resistance to the story you might have; assume that this story has something to say to a college student in North Carolina in 2013, and that it's your job to find it.