Honors Constructing Meaning

Essential Questions
1. What in the text indicates historical events?
Some things that indicate historical events are the story teller writing in past tense, implying that events have already taken place. "The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years old, actually about fifty.” This shows that the story takes place “In 1820, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest.”

2. What in the text would not fit in a different time period?
“There was no physician within miles, no neighbor; nor was she in a condition to be left, to summon help.” This could never take place today. There are telephones and vehicles, which means that these events could not take place nowadays. Cincinnati is an urban setting, so there aren’t any woods or log houses. “When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his ax to hew out a farm—the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support—he was young, strong and full of hope.” One can only use a rifle in special conditions, and only a select amount of citizens are able to get their hands on a gun. “With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it.” “In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart.” Getting married is not mandatory.

3. What in the text indicates the beliefs and values of the author?
“Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way affected...” This shows that the writer is wary and scared. Also, it shows that the author things grief is very hurtful and powerful.

Essential Questions
1. What in the text concerns women or marriage?
“In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart.” The only involvement of a woman or mention of marriage is the introduction of the wife’s character and she plays the role of the dead wife who fell sick.

2. What in the text indicates the writer is male or female?
"I never saw him. These details I learned from my grandfather. He told me the man's story when I was a boy. He had known him when living nearby in that early day."

3. What in the text indicates assumptions about women and female roles in society?
Murlock was married to a woman, but there wasn’t much about the roles of females.

Essential Questions
1. What in the text explains what the main character is thinking? “He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair and putting the finishing touches to the simple toilet, doing all mechanically, with soulless care. And still through his consciousness ran an undersense of conviction that all was right—that he should have her again as before, and everything explained. He had had no experience in grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know he was so hard struck; that knowledge would come later, and never go.” Descriptions such as “soulless care” and “grief” show that the death of his spouse was very painful emotionally.

2. What in the text might be symbolic of underlying feelings or thoughts?
“The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping clapboards weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay, had a single door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however, was boarded up—nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living today who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you shall see.”

3. What in the text depends on irrational fears or beliefs?
“I shall have to make the coffin and dig the grave; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight; but now—she is dead, of course, but it is all right—it must be all right, somehow. Things cannot be so bad as they seem.”