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Comprehension guide for Alice Munro’s short story: “Red Dress—1946”
BEFORE-READING STRATEGY: PREDICTING.
Make some predictions about this story before you begin to read. These are just guesses! There is
no right or wrong answer.
1. I think this story will be easy/hard to read because
2. I think would take me about
minutes to read this story on my own.
3. I think the dress in the story is red because
4. I think Alice Munro (the writer) included the year “1946” in the title because
5. Some things that might help me understand this story are
6. I think this story will be about
DURING-READING STRATEGY: VISUALIZING.
When a new setting, character, or object is introduced in the story, take a moment to make a vivid
mental picture of it in your head based on someone you know, a place you’ve been (or seen in
movies or pictures), or an object you are familiar with. Do some research (Google, dictionary,
encyclopedia, ask a friend) if you have to!
7. One of the characters in this story is a mother. When I am reading about her, I am
visualizing
8. The story starts in a kitchen that overlooks “stubble fields and bare vegetable gardens” and a
road. I visualize this kitchen as
9. The protagonist (main character) of the story is a 13-year-old girl. When I think of her, I
think of
10. She has a friend named Lonnie. I visualize her as
As you read the rest of the story, stop to visualize each new character, setting, and object in your
mind. If you find a detail that is different than what you visualized (like the mother’s legs
“marked with lumps of blue-green veins), just alter the image in your head to match!
DURING-READING STRATEGY: RELATING.
Find moments of emotion that you can relate to your own life. Spend a few moments thinking
about similar moments in your own life. Ask yourself how what the protagonist is dealing with
is similar to what you might be dealing with?
11. “She enraged me, talking like this to Lonnie, as if Lonnie were grown up and I were still a
child” (148). Have your parents/guardians ever treated you differently than your friends of
the same age?
12. “I felt like a great raw lump, clumsy and goose-pimpled. I wished I were like Lonnie, lightboned, pale and thin; she had been a Blue Baby” (148). When do you feel out of place and
wished you were more like one of your friends?
13. “All the stories of my mother’s life which had once interested me had begun to seem
melodramatic, irrelevant, and tiresome” (149). Our protagonist seems to be pulling away
from her mother. Have you felt something like this toward your parent/guardian?
Note other places in the story where you identify with a character:
When they did questionnaires to find out if they had personality and would be popular.