SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
QUESTIONS.
THE OLD MANSE.
(Riverside Literature Series, No. 69.)
Are there narrative portions in “The Old Manse”? paragraphs of exposition?
Do you term the whole narration, description, or exposition? Why?
Frame a sentence which you think would be an adequate topic sentence for the whole piece.
What phrase in the first paragraph allows the author to begin the second with the words, “Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse,” etc.? Where in the second paragraph is found the words which are the source of “my design,” mentioned in the third? How does the author pass from the fourth paragraph to the fifth? In the same way note the connections between the succeeding paragraphs. They are most skillfully dovetailed together. Now make a list of the phrases in the first fifteen pages which introduce paragraphs, telling from what in the preceding paragraph each new paragraph springs. Do you think that such a felicitous result just happened? or did Hawthorne plan it?
Does Hawthorne generally introduce his descriptions by giving the feeling aroused by the object described, a method very common with Poe?
In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 18, what do you think of the selection of material? What have guided in the inclusion and exclusion of details?