Read William Carlos Williams’s short story, The Girl with the Pimply Face (starting on page 154 in the text,The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, edited by Joyce Carol Oates.)
Before writing anything for this week’s discussion, consider these questions about the girls in The Girl with the Pimply Face and Old Woman Magoun (these are not the essay questions):
How do they differ? (That should be easy.)
How are they the same? What characteristics do they share?
How would their teachers perceive them?
How would girls in class view them?
How would boys in class view them?
Would they be friends?
In a modern middle school cafeteria, if there were no other seats left and they sat together during lunch, what would they talk about?
Now that you have read both stories and considered those questions, here is this week’s essay topic for the discussion:
Show us how you think the stories would be changed if the characters switched places. Put Lily in the depression-era family visited by the doctor, and put the pimple-faced girl in Old Woman Magouns’ care. What changes? Does anything change? How and why? Provide details, using facts from the stories (with in-line citations). Like any good challenge, this requires some analysis and a bit of imagination.
Things to keep in mind:
Did you address the topic in the first paragraph? Did you stay on topic to the end? Did you prove your topic / thesis using facts from the stories?
Sample Solution
