1) Please pick 3 “meaty” quotations from “Man of the House” and re-type them on a word document (and please save this!). At least one of your quotations should concern the narrator.
a. You might want to look at passages in which Flurry describes how he feels (e.g., how he feels about missing school, about his mother). What do those passages tell you about his character?
b. You might also look at passages that suggest a theme of the story.
c. You could also consider the narrator’s descriptions of other characters; what details does she use to describe a certain character and what do those details tell us about that character’s personality? About the narrator’s personality?
2) After each quotation, write a summary and an analysis. Remember that in your analysis, you should dig into the quotation and infer information; tell us something that’s not plainly stated but that’s implied. A rich quotation will give the reader much more information than it directly states on the surface.
3) Also, don’t forget the page number of your quotation. Look at the example on the other side of the page for how to place the page number correctly.
4) As a rule of thumb, your analysis of the quotation should be roughly two times the length of the quotation.
5) Try to insert specific words from the quotations into your analyses (see example below).
Example from “Raymond’s Run”:
“I don’t play the dozens or believe in standing around with somebody in my face doing a lot of talking. I much rather just knock you down and take my chances even if I am a little girl with skinny arms and a squeaky voice, which is how I got the name Squeaky” (1).
Summary: In this quotation, the narrator says that she doesn’t believe in insulting other people—“play[ing] the dozens”—or “standing around” listening to insults about her; she would prefer to fight the other person physically even though she’s small and has a “squeaky” voice.
Analysis: Here, the narrator shows she’s tough. Despite being a small girl with a “squeaky” voice, she’s not afraid of “tak[ing] her chances” and getting beaten up. Being tough for Squeaky therefore means being willing to fight and being unafraid of getting hurt. What she really dislikes is people “standing around... in [her] face” and insulting her. Squeaky is very direct; she doesn’t want to bother wasting her time with words and she won’t tolerate any nonsense.