WELCOME STUDENTS!

This is a place for us to discuss openly and honestly the literature we are reading. Here we are all just communicating our thoughts on what we are reading. There are no right and wrong answers. However, you are expected to be polite, mature, and on topic.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Walking on broken glass...

In the Prologue of the novel, David tells of "a series" of images that remain from the summer of 1948: a young Sioux woman, feverish on the bed in his house; his father kneeling on the kitchen floor, begging his mother to help him; his mother holding a 12 gauge shotgun, intending to use it;  and the sound of breaking glass and the odor of rotting vegetables.  By the end of Part Three, all of these images have been fully revealed and because of the "broken jars," David believes everything will go back to the way it was before.  His twelve-year-old innocence fails to realize that those jars are broken forever. Select any image from the novel (you don't have to select one from the Prologue), and discuss what was revealed in the moment and what consequence comes to the Haydens via that event. CATCH:  You may not write on any image already discussed by a classmate.   (The deadline to post a response is midnight, March 18, 2014. No credit will be given to plagiarized responses.)

1 comment:

Tiffany Bates said...

"The sound of breaking glass" and "the odor of rotting vegetables" is the last event in David's sequence in the prologue. The event is revealed to be Uncle Frank held in "jail" in the family's basement. Also in the basement is the preservatives and other canned food items that the women of the home had spent hours preparing. The sound of breaking glass is Uncle Frank smashing the jars in the basement. The next morning, Uncle Frank is revealed to be dead from suicide. He had used the shards of glass to slice his wrists open and he bled to death. The odor is that of the spilled preservatives and blood. The moment that Frank is revealed to be dead changes everything for the Haydens instantly. They lose their place within the Hayden family (thanks to grandpa Julian). Of course, two people had died in their home and with the surrounding events and family agitators, the family relocates and never returns.