Breaking Ground

Breaking Ground

If this is your first blogging experience or if you have a hard time with introductions, starting your blog for this course may feel a little daunting. As you generate new posts and begin to feel the blogging experience as a form of conversation you're likely to find that it gets a good deal easier.

Here are some ideas for your first post.

1. A post on the book jacket notes that "the novel invites us to enter into the hearts and thoughts of the leading characters." True enough. But the narration of Robert's story differs slightly from the narration of Lark's story. How does it differ? And what difference, if any, does the difference make?

2. A novel like this one, with multiple perspectives and multiple storylines, has to begin somewhere. Why do you think Phillips chooses to begin her story when and where she does, in the mind of Corporal Robert Leavitt?

3. In his novel The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner makes brilliant use of a severely retarded narrator named Benji, who in his strangeness and naivete is able to see things as others cannot, to communicate things others will not. Based on the reading you've done so far, how would you describe Phillips' use of multiply disabled Termite? Is he simply the object of others' actions and feelings or does he have some agency--some power--of his own?

4. Phillips makes a number of distinctive choices in her way of telling this story. Choose one feature of the narrative you find striking or important. Describe it and talk about its significance.