Week 4: George Saunders

Week 4: College Reading and Writing: Suffolk County House of Corrections at South Bay

George Saunders: Annotating, Summarizing, Imitating, Analyzing

to annotate: to make notes on something to help you understand it better

to summarize: to put something in your own words

to imitate: to create an original piece of writing based on something you have read

to analyze: to consider a question on the text, providing supporting examples from the text

Exercise: Read and annotate

1. Read the story out loud and underline any words you need to look up

2. Write any questions you have in the margins

3. Put tricky sentences into your own words in notes in the margins

"Sticks" by George Saunders

Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he'd built out of metal pole in the yard. Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veteran’s Day a soldier,  on Halloween a ghost. The pole was Dad's only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first time I brought a date over she said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.

We left home, married,  had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dressing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby. We'd stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom's makeup. One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.

Exercise: Questions for Comprehension

1. Why does the speaker sit there "blinking" when his date says "what's with your dad and that pole"? What in the text makes you think that?

2. How many siblings does the speaker have?  What in the text makes you think that?

3. What's the speaker's childhood like?  What in the text makes you think that?

Exercise: Summarize the story

Write a paragraph summarizing the story in your own words, with quotations from the poem, in-tect citation, and a Work Cited Page

example summary, incorporating quotation and in-text citation:

In his story "Sticks," George Saunders uses seasonal decorations to show family life for the speaker. The father in the story has no other way to express his "glee," and uses the "Sticks" to reveal greater and greater instability over time (Saunders).  At the end of his life the father uses "that pole"  to ask "FORGIVE?" but his children apparently don't respond (Saunders). He dies, they sell the house, and the father's way to communicate is left "by the road on garbage day" (Saunders).

Work Cited Page

Saunders, George. Tenth of December. Random House, 2014.

Exercise: Analysis

Question for analysis: Why do you think the children choose not to respond to the father's "FORGIVE?" (Saunders)?

Exercise: Imitation

Write your own story about a weird way someone expresses themselves.  It can be a real person you know, or yourself, or someone you make up!