End of Chapter Writing for The Dew Breaker

You are reading Edwidge Danticat’s book, The Dew Breaker on a few different levels. One, you are approaching the text as a Literary Historian (researcher) and two as a reader who is interested in an author’s craft or, more specifically, how Danticat does what she does.

When you reach the end of a chapter (or story) :

• Identify some feature within the text (e.g., imagery, theme, incident, passage, narrative structure, framing device, style, sentence construction, message or moral, etc.) which happens to strike you as strange, unfamiliar, remarkable, or problematic, and explain what it is that you find so unusual about that particular element or how it differs from what you might have expected.
   

• Consider how this feature is operating within the text, what function or purpose does it serve in the chapter/story? What purpose does it serve for the text as a whole? Why do you think it was represented in this way rather than some other way?
   

• Then explain how this feature helps you to interpret the general meaning of the text as you explore the particular implications and consequences of your new understanding.

Examples of questions about the features of a text:

• How is the text organized?
   

• What is the dramatic situation and tone? What particular uses of language define the tone?
   

• What metaphors and images do you find? How are they connected? What patterns do you see? Is there a dominant metaphor? What significance(s) is there to the order in which metaphors are presented?
   

• How is the text organized as an experience to the ear? [It will help to read the text aloud, maybe even several times]. Note some peculiarities in what you hear when you read the text. Can you point to any arrangements of words or syllables which affect what you heard? In what ways to the arrangements of sound connect ideas or metaphors? In what ways do they work against the explicit "point" of a particular line or paragraph?
   

• How is the plot shaped? What are the implications of the beginning and ending point of the text?
   

• What is the climactic or decisive "turning point" of the text, and what are the implications of this arrangement?
   

• Similar questions can and should be asked about characters, settings, and the point of view from which the text is presented to us.

You never know - this "end of chapter writing" may lead you to new “research” (woo-hoo)