1. ELIT 48C Class 21
Discrete versus Discreet

2.  "These two words, originally derived from the same
Latin word, are pronounced identically and also
share the idea of 'keeping apart.' But they have
acquired quite different meanings:
 A number of usage books define discreet as
“prudent,” “judicious,” “tactful,” or “circumspect.”
 Discrete is defined as “separate” or “distinct.”

3. Chair Poet?
'I consider myself a
poet first and a
musician second. I
live like a poet and
I'll die like a poet.'
Bob Dylan

4. Agenda
 Lecture
o Maxine Hong Kingston
o The Road: The Age of
Terror
o The apocalypse
o Themes
o Concepts
o Symbols
 Discussion
o QHQ
 The Future
o Self-Assessment
o Last Chair Poet

5. Historical Context: Women in Chinese
Society
Kingston takes revenge on centuries of Chinese female
oppression in The Woman Warrior, the larger work from
which “No-Name Woman” was taken. From the days of
Confucius through the early twentieth century, the
Chinese placed men above women and family above
social order. When people married, new family ties
formed, and new wives became subservient to their
grooms’ parents. Women from the higher classes lived
extremely secluded lives and suffered such treatments as
foot-binding. The Chinese chose young girls who were
especially pretty to undergo foot-binding. The binder
bent the large toe backward, forever deforming the foot.
Men favored women with bound feet, a sign of beauty
and gentility, because it signified that they could support
these women who were incapable of physical labor.

6. Setting
The narrator grows up in Stockton, California,
where she was born in 1940. The events that
actually occur in her life take place in California.
Her imagined warrior life and her mother's "talk
stories," however, take place in China. For
example, the story of No-Name Aunt, the ghost
aunt, occurs in China from about 1924 to 1934.

7. Style
Kingston combines fact with fiction—relying
on her own memories, her mother's "talk
stories," and her own vivid imagination—to
create a view of what it is like to grow up a
Chinese-American female.
She reworks traditional myths and legends to
modernize their messages.
Some critics argue that her dependence on
inventiveness (from the myths and legends)
renders her writing difficult to classify as
autobiography or fiction.

8. Postmodern Aspects
 Shrugs off old forms and limits: Her work differs from most
autobiographies in that it is not a first-person narration of the
author's life.
 Multiple genres and approaches: memory, fantasy,
speculation, translation, and point of view.
 Moves away from the metanarrative: Kingston struggles to
reconcile her identity as a member of two cultures, Chinese
and American, who does not feel entirely at home in either
culture. It is a story of an individual.
 Themes: Kingston combats what Shirley Geok-Lin Lim has
called "the cultural silencing of Chinese in American society
and ….. the gendered silencing of women in Chinese
society,” through the telling of stories about women who are
either literally or mythically her ancestors. Her words are her
weapons against silence, racism, and sexism.

9. Themes
1. In “No Name Woman,” the Woman Warrior is a
theme.
2. Two major themes I kept thinking of reading
this were these notions of desiring and being
desired.
3. There is definitely a theme regarding gender
inequality
4. The theme that wraps around this reading is
shunning.
5. One theme that I picked up from reading
Chapter One: No Name Woman was the
pressure of being a woman in Chinese society.
Themes

10. Symbols
1. One important symbol from “The
Woman Warrior” is the villagers.
1. In “No Name Woman,” from The
Woman Warrior, the the circle–or
“roundness” (799)–is symbolic of societal
conformity and constraint.
1. What is the point of the outcast table?

11. QHQs
1. Who is the warrior women?
2. How does Kingston use storytelling as a way to get her
message across?
3. Why did the narrator choose to rebel against her
mother’s orders and immortalize her aunt through her
works?
4. What is the significance of Kingston imagining different
versions of her aunt’s story?
5. Why was Maxine Hong Kingston worried about making
herself “American-pretty” in her childhood? (798)
6. In ways can the rigidity of society foster creativity and
imagination in the formation of an individual’s identity,
apart from the influence of his or her culture?
7. How can individuals cut people off from their own
family?

12. QHQ
1. What are the cultural conflicts that the narrator of
the story has to face?
2. How does Kingston’s story reflect the consistent
ideas of rape culture?
3. “Adultery is extravagance. … Instead of letting
them start separate new lives like the Japanese,
who could become samurais and geisha…” Is
Kingston’s reflection on the Japanese adultery-
culture a statement on the liberties and
restrictions on men and women who adulterer?
4. How does Maxine reconcile the fact that her
aunt’s suicide was unjust?
5. Was suicide the only way out?
QHQs

13. The Road
 Set in a conceivable future, after a global catastrophe,
The Road tells the story of a father and a son as they
tread along a forsaken highway awash with marauders
and cannibals.
 It is perhaps the most chilling commentary of the post-
9/11 world. The post-apocalyptic setting plays upon the
public’s fear of terrorism, pandemics, genocide, and
weapons of mass destruction.
 We can also hear the poetic passages of desolation and
are reminded of Dante’s descent into hell or T. S. Eliot’s
The Waste Land.
 McCarthy also wrestles with the ever-present question of
the existence of God: the father tells the boy, “There is
no God and we are his prophets.”

14. The Setting
 The Road is set in some undetermined location.
 There is mention of distant mountains, several rivers
and creeks, the Piedmont (a plain that runs along the
eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains), and a
coastline.
 The landscape and the air are soaked in thick, gray
ash.
 Vegetation has been destroyed. There are no fish in
the water.
 When snow falls, it collects the ash in the air and falls
to the earth already gray.

15. 1. What caused the devastation of
the land? Provide the clues you
used to come to your conclusion.
2. Discuss a theme from the novel:
Destruction, survival, isolation,
death, or hope
3. Examine the concept of trust and
mistrust in The Road.
4. Analyze the symbol of innocence
and how it pertains to the son in The
Road.
5. Introduce another concept or
symbol
Discussion Questions

16. What caused the
devastation of the land?
Provide the clues you used
to come to your conclusion.

17. Discuss a theme from the
novel: Destruction, survival,
isolation, death, or hope

18. Themes Tensions
 Destruction
 Survival
 Isolation
 Death
 Man against
nature
 Good guys vs. bad
guys
 Right and Wrong

19. Examine the concept of
trust and mistrust in The
Road.

20. Analyze the symbol of
innocence and how it
pertains to the son in The
Road.

21. Introduce another
concept or symbol

22. Posting: Self-Assessment
The blogging post points (100) require self-
assessment. Consider three aspects of your
responses:
• First, how many of the posts did you make? (26
possible)
• Second, what was the quality of your response?
• Third, how timely were your submissions?
Write a brief argument justifying your numerical
grade.
This is due before the final. Please submit it as an
email to palmoreessaysubmission@gmail.com

23. End of Days
 Class 22
 Self-assessment due
 Discuss Revision
 Class 23: Date and Time
 Final Exam
 Revision of essay #1 due before class begins
 Essay #2 due before class begins

24. HOMEWORK
Post #: 28 (The last one)
1. Discuss the novel as a postmodern work
2. Use a critical lens to start a discussion
3. Discuss the American Dream as it manifests in
The Road
4. QHQ
Write Self-Assessment
Work on Essay 2