All the Pretty Horses: A Harkness

APH Harkness Questions

First, a Note: Please bring your Perrine textbooks with you to class on Tuesday.  

For at least three of the questions below, try to have a thoughtful response prepared, and a page citation or two that will help back you up. 

These questions can be considered in almost any order, but my hope is that our Harkness discussion can touch on at least four of them in the course of 15-20 minutes.

Your discussion may also follow questions of your own that you bring with you or that occur to you in the course of your talk: “what’s the deal with” questions, or questions about a character’s motivations in a particular scene, etc.

1.      How is this novel a typical Western?

2.      How does it deviate from the myth?

3.      In what ways is this a Romantic novel?

4.      Does the novel undercut its Romanticism in any way? Is there anything in this novel, that is, that suggests a more tragic, realistic perspective on the western myth?

5.      Who has power/control in this novel?

6.      How do they wield this control?

7.      Is there a wilderness to be tamed? How is it characterized?