Guide for Responding
First Thoughts
1. Two important things happen at the end. How did you feel when the narrator's father dismissed her as “only a girl”? How did you feel about the girl's reaction?
I'm not sure but from my perspective the girl felt as if the father thought that since she is small and a woman she doesn't know what she is doing.
Shaping Interpretations
2. One of the conflicts in the story takes place between the narrator and her mother. What does the mother expect of her daughter? Why does the narrator feel that her mother is her enemy”?
Her mother expected her daughter to help with the housework and the narrator felt that her mother was jealous because she did what she wanted, that is, she did not behave like a lady and she did not have to do the things that women of that time had to do.
3. Why does the girl find her father's work more interesting than her mother's?
Identifies with her father and wants to help him in every way possible. She enjoys working on his fox farm.
4. After the girl watches her father shoot Mack, how does her attitude toward men's work change? How would you account for this change?
Mack inspires a change in the girl although she does not articulate any fear or shame, she becomes more adult in the process.
5. What other changes does the girl experience after the shooting incident? Try listing them on a chart.
She accepts her new integrity without any protest and that she was only a girl. Through the text suggests that to stay true to one’s self courage can be used to find integrity in face of society.
6. Another conflict in this story takes place in the girl's mind.What do you think the girl decided when she says, “l was on Flora's side”?
The young woman saw her youth and willpower manifested in Flora, and to her, letting her escape was a way of giving herself one last chance to be wild and free.
Connecting with the Text
7. What generalizations about boys and girls could you make based on this story? What generalizations could you make based on the poll on page 58?
They assume that females and males are different We see someone’s sex as an important predictor of their abilities and interests and assume that if we know someone is a girl or a boy, we know a lot about them.
8. In your own experience, are the roles of girls and boys (or men and women) as distinct as they are in the rural Canada of this story?
I think not since it still continues the same stereotype of women and men.
Challenging the Text
9. Do you like the way Alice Munro ended the story, or do you wish something else had happened? Explain.
I liked it a little bit, I would have preferred the family to understand the girl but I know that was not going to happen since at that time and currently they had those stereotypes that the man is the boss and the women must follow what say the man.
