For Esmé-with Love and Squalor

Qualities of Character

• Take out your notes on the narrator/Sergeant X and Esmé
• DO NOW: With a partner brainstorm all the qualities you can think of for each character. (Make sure your conclusions are based on evidence)
• DO NEXT: What "story" do these qualities, when combined, tell you about the characters?

For example, In Looking for Alaska, Alaska Young is intelligent, reckless and miserable. As a result, she is able to charm her friends and hide the fact that she is a suicidal mess.

Notice that my "story" has a little cause and effect in it? Notice that the traits I chose compliment each other in an interesting way.

Character and Language: Looking at Two Similes

1) What ideas are underscored when Salinger describes Sergeant X as being a man "like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective"?

2) What ideas are underscored when Sergeant X feels his mind “dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack”?

Now that you are familiar with the story and its main characters, answer the following questions:

1) In what way is this story, as Tillie Olsen suggests, "a healing riddle"?

2) In what way is this story, as John Berger suggests, "a form of prayer"?

3) What is the significance of our narrator becoming "Sergeant X"? Why X?

Homework: Now that you're thinking symbolically, write a paragraph on the significance of the watch.

• But wait what does "significance" really mean? Also, what assumptions do you have about the giving of gifts?