The Shining Houses

3rd person narration (limited point of view) Style initially mirrors the nature of

storytelling over memories Commentary on society today Leaves readers to question their values and

perspectives

The Shining Houses - Characterization

Mrs. Fullerton – friendly Unlike Mary’s other neighbours who were

still sorting out life and deciding what to take seriously. Pg64. “Mrs. Fullerton had no doubts or questions of this kind.” – Wise

Adaptability and intuitiveness evident when describing Mr. Fullerton’s departure from her life. “He’s no more dead than I.” stated calm.

o Optimistic – pg. 65 After discussing her husbands departure she said, “I don’t mind changes either, that helps out my egg business.”

The Shining House - Diction

Mrs. Fullerton’s property – described with words such as, fixed and impregnable. Pg. 66

Mrs. Fullerton physical appearance – mouth painted, a spidery and ferocious line of red. Pg. 64

Her age and lack of education (grammar)– pg. 64 She said about Mr. Fullerton, “May of gone up North..But he’s not dead. I would of felt it.”

Dialogue – discloses character traits and conveys mood.

Irony- pg. 70 Mary searches for the right words in the face of her friends uttering words such as, shack, eyesore, filth, property, value.

TSH – Metaphors/Simile/Personification

Simile / Metaphor - Mrs. Fullerton – pg. 64“Her eyes showed it, black as plums with a soft

inanimate sheen; things sank into them and they never changed.

Pg. Metaphor 66 “The new, white and shining houses, set side by side in long rows in the wound of the earth.”

Pg. Personification 67 “”The face of each house – those ingenuously similar houses that looked calmly out at each other, all the way down the street.”

The Shining Houses - Setting

Mrs. Fullerton’s pg. 66 “house/surroundings self-sufficient with a complicated and unalterable layout of vegetables…or a goat.” and “no open or straightforward plan, no order that an outsider could understand.”

VS Modern Subdivision Pg. 66 Green Garden

subdivision - earth was raw, wounds of earth, unimaginable

upheavals of earth – pg. 67 those ingenuously similar houses that looked calmly out at each other, all the way down the street.

TSH - Setting

Time change to evening.Pg. 72 “outside it was quite dark, the white houses

were growing dim, the clouds breaking and breaking, and smoke blowing from Mrs. Fullerton’s chimney. The pattern of Garden Place, so assertive in the daytime, seemed to shrink at night in the raw black mountainside.”

The Shining Houses- Alliteration

Pg. 64 “Broad, blithe, back of Mr. Fullerton”

TSH - Imagery

Re: The natural devastation due to development. Pg. 64 “the bulldozers had come in to clear away the brush and the second-growth and great trees of the mountain forest; in a little while the houses were going up among the boulders, the huge torn stumps, the unimaginable upheavals of that earth. The houses were frail at first, skeletons of new wood standing up in the dusk of the cold spring days.pg. 66-67

TSH - Foreshadowing

Pg 65. With regards to the fellow who had been talking and eating cherries with Mr. Fullerton…Mrs. Fullerton stated, “Mr. Fullerton went and talked to him, eating my cherries I intended for a pie, but that man would talk to anybody, tramp Jehovah’s Witness, anybody – that didn’t need to mean anything.” ironically it did.

TSH - Capitulation

Pg. 72 Mary’s last word is a capitulation (surrender / give up). “Yes,” said Mary.

This is Mary’s response to Carl who concludes that Mrs. Fullerton must allow her home be torn down and relocate for the good of the community.

TSH – Atmosphere / Mood

Contrast between Mrs. Fullerton’s style of run down home amongst the new houses of Mimosa and Marigold and Heather drive. pg. 68 “dark. Enclosed, expressing something like savagery in their disorder and the steep, unmatched angles of roofs and lean-tos; not possible on these streets, but there.”

pg. 68 Mary said of the Edith’s house “The house seemed too hot.”

Pg. 71 “The spirit of anger rose against them.”

TSH - Pathos

Pg. 65 “Husbands maybe come and go, but a place you’re lived fifty years is something else. I always had the idea he might of suffered a loss of memory and it might come back . That has happened.”

Pg. 66 “Mrs. Fullerton said. “Come and pick your own and they’re fifty cents a box. I can’t risk my old bones up a ladder no more.”

TSH - Theme

Self-Interest VS altruism (is selfless concern for the welfare of others)

- People who might normally behave altruistically (idealistically) or practice social tolerance, are often blinded to the needs of others by their own self-interest or materialism.

o Power of ‘the mob’- Holding onto one’s personal attitudes and beliefs can

seem ultimately impossible when confronted with the cynical or materialistic mentality of a group of one’s peers acting in concert as ‘a mob’.

TSH Discussion topics

Do you agree with the motivation of the “people who win” in this story?

What underlying beliefs and values are revealed in their words and behavior?

Do you agree with Mary that “they are good people”?

To what extent does Alice Munro offer a fair and balanced portrait of these characters?

AND I SAID NOTHING  In GermanyThey first came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade-unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics,and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.Then they came for me––and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-- Pastor Martin Niemoller, 1945