Author Question: Does the story rely more on the use of detail or on plot to get its pointacross? What will be an ... (Read 614 times)

Jipu 123 · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

Does the story rely more on the use of detail or on plot to get its pointacross?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Identify the point of view of the story. Do you think the narrator is maleor female? What details lead you to that conclusion?

What will be an ideal response?

billybob123 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

The story relies much more on detail than on plot. In fact, theres hardly anything in this text that could even be described as a plotline. Even the episode involving the nun from the narrators school is a brief anecdote. The narrator describes the house into which her family has moved and matches it up, detail by detail, with the dream house that her parents have always dangled before the children. It is through these descriptions and the contrast between them that the point of the story is vividly and unmistakably conveyed.

Answer to Question 2

Cisneros presents her material through the eyes and the sensibility of a very young first-person narrator; everything in the text is limited to her perspective. Ask your students whether the narrator is male or female, and they will no doubt automatically assume the latter because the author is a woman; then ask them what details in the story prove the point (the narrator shares a bedroom with Nenny end of paragraph 5, who is my sister end of paragraph 1).