Week 4: Youth and Quest
Week 4 (Sept. 9-15): Youth and Quest
This week’s stories offer poignant revelations into childhood, youth, and the quest for identity.Weekly Activities
Complete the assigned readings and post the required discussion responses.
Think about the different narrative and linguistic methods used to present youthful confusion and alienation. Which do you find most effective?
Weekly Objectives
To consider ways that short fiction can dramatize youthful alienation and the search for
identity, love, and meaning
To examine in each story the way a particular point of view shapes the way we think and
feel
Week 4 Lecture: Youth, Disorientation, and
the Quest for Identity
Week 4 Lecture:
Youth, Disorientation, and the Quest for Identity
This week’s lecture is below, followed by discussion questions, plus YouTube videos featuring James
Joyce’s “Araby.” If you enjoy the reading (audiobook) of “Araby,” please note that YouTube has
readings of all the other stories in Joyce’s marvelous story collection Dubliners.
San Francisco’s Main Library
Some of the world’s greatest literary works have focused primarily on children.
childhood into adulthood, suggesting that the child is indeed the father of the man, or the mother of
the woman.
