ALICE MUNRO
ENGL 206, Lauren Porter
03.20.14
Alice Munro
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Born July 10th, 1931 in Wingham Ontario to
Anne and Robert Laidlaw.
1949-1951- Western University of Ontario,
studying English
1951- Leaves University and marries James
Munro, a fellow Student
1968- Dance of the Happy Shades published
1972- Marriage breaks up, she moves back
to Ontario
1974-Writer in residence at University of
Western Ontario
1976-Honorary doctorate from the
University of Western Ontario. Marries
Gerald Fremlin.
1980- Writer in Residence at the University
of British Columbia in Vancouver, then at
University of Queensland, Australia.
Has won many awards. Most recently, the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/12/3/1386085564755/Alice-Munro-1980s-001.jpg
Books
• Dance of the Happy Shades (1968)
• Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
• Something I’ve Been Meaning to
Tell You (1974)
• Who Do You Think You Are? (1978)
• Moons of Jupiter (1978)
• The Progress of Love (1986)
• Friend of My Youth (1990)
• Open Secrets (1994)
• Selected Stories (1996)
• The Love of a Good Woman (1998)
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship,
Love, Marriage (2001)
• Runaway (2004)
• The View from Castle Rock (2006)
• Too Much Happiness (2009)
• Dear Life (2012)
http://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Alice-Munro-0081.jpg
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
https://ebooks-imgs.eb.sonynei.com/product/400/000/000/000/000/554/225/400000000000000554225_s4.jpg
“Material”
• “Material” is a story about a woman who dredges up old memories
of her writer ex-husband Hugo by reading one of his short story
collections. She tries to come to terms with these feelings and tries
to write a letter to Hugo to compliment him on his story, but her
deeper, more unpleasant feelings spill onto the page instead.
“Material” is about the choices women have to make in marriage,
and the difficulties of dealing with incompatible partners.
“Tell Me Yes or No”
• A married woman has an affair with a married man while they are
both living in couple’s housing at university. When her lover moves
away with his wife, they send letters back and forth, and those
letters become the center of her world. When she reads about his
death by a heart-attack in a newspaper, she goes to the town
where he lives and finds his wife’s bookstore. The wife notices her
and thinks she recognizes her, and gives the narrator a packet of
letters that she didn’t write. She returns them to the wife and
leaves back home. “Tell Me Yes or No” is about a woman coming to
terms with the death of her lover, and what is real and what
becomes unreal when memories are rewritten.
“The Ottawa Valley”
• The story centers on one summer a girl spends with her mother and
her extended family, as well as exploring how the narrator and her
mother are finding out that the mother has Parkinson’s disease. The
girl doesn’t understand at the time that her mother can’t control
the outcome of her illness. The narrator tells this account of that
summer to understand and to remember her mother and her
illness, and to get rid of those memories, because she can’t seem to
let them go. All the while building a better understanding and a
deeper connection with the Ottawa Valley. This story is about
remembering her mother and trying to come to terms with the
past.
Ontario, Canada
http://www.greenfuels.org/uploads/crfaplants09-13_map_web.jpg
Wingham, Ontario: https://goo.gl/maps/oSPv8
Ottawa Valley, Canada
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/so05/indepth/images/map.gif
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/autumn-vista--ruralfarm-fields-and-meadows-aerial-view-of-the-ottawa-valley--peak-fall-colorschantal-photopix.jpg
http://www.ottawavalleyculture.ca/map/
Craft Analysis
• Language: dense, direct, un-ornamented, purposeful
• Characterization: raw, flawed, done mostly through dialogue and
narrator judgments, pulls you into the thought process of the
character and what is most important to them
• Sense of Place: Firmly set in Canada, done through character
relationships with the land, through setting description (utilizing
her language style)
• Use of Point of View: first person (emotion, direct, confessional),
third person (still connected with the characters, focus on story)
• Use of Dialogue: characterization, purposeful, moving the plot
forward
• Summation: used to move the plot forward, take a step back and
think
The End~!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-55l6GBSUjH8/ULPDN3eSsPI/AAAAAAAAH1o/gKUOGRNcpYA/s1600/Algonquin+Park-7.jpg