IV.

WRITING (9+1)
Consider the following excerpt:
Picture a late-June morning in 1918, a time when Montgomery wore her prettiest spring dress
and finest floral perfume same as I would wear that evening. Our house, a roomy Victorian on
Pleasant Avenue, was wrapped in the tiny white blooms of Confederate jasmine and the purple
splendor of morning glories. It was a Saturday, and early yet, and cloudy. Birds had congregated in the
big magnolia tree and were singing at top volume as if auditioning to be soloists in a Sunday choir.
From our back stairways window I saw a slow horse pulling a rickety wagon. Behind it
walked two colored women who called out the names of vegetables as they went. Beets! Sweetpeas!
Turnips! they sang, louder even than the birds.
(Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, St. Martins Press, New York, 2013, p. 9)

1. What does the atmosphere of this introductory paragraph suggest in point of:
a) (cultural) location;
b) narrators gender and age.
Give your interpretation supported on (at least) three arguments for each one of the two points.
(5 pts)
2. Mention (at least) two characteristics of the 1st person narrative strategy and identify them in the
above-quoted text. Can you give another example of 1st person narrative from your literary lectures
bibliographies? How could you compare the two instances of 1 st person narrative: this one you are
contemplating right here and the other one from your mandatory literary bibliography?
(4 pts)