According to the color of candy that you received, please gather in groups.

You will be discussing the question that corresponds to your group number.

Please thoroughly discuss your answer to the question, digging deep into the significance of the text, and how language and message are working.

Your group will present your question and answer to the class—please be prepared to answer questions, and defend your opinions.

1. There is a lot of “rank” in this story, but the hero is a private. Do you believe this is significant in any way?

2. What point, if any, can you see in the image of the white linen trousers of the men of the battery?

3. Is there heroism in Collin’s behavior—in the fetching of the water, or his return to the wounded officer?

4. The ending of the story is ambiguous—what do you think happened?

5. What significance do you read into the empty bucket?

Reaction? Did the ending take you by surprise?

Did you catch onto any clues as you were reading that hinted that all was not as it seemed? (The story is packed with them…but sometimes it takes a second reading to really catch on!)

The story is divided into three parts—broadly, what occurred in each part?

Read the following description of Peyton Farquhar from section two, and on a clean sheet of paper, record what you learn about him from this (both factually, and inferentially).

“Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army…and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile, he did what he could. No service was too humble…no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith had without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.”

Desperate to contribute to the Southern cause and prove his devotion

Determined to achieve distinction, he is vulnerable to the trap set for him

Unprepared and foolish, allows his desire for renown to lead him right into his captors’ hands

Placed his own motives ahead of his responsibility to his family

Exhibits a damning gap between his true character and inflated perception of his abilities and role in the world

Please grab a buddy for the next few questions

You’ll discuss the questions, then each record your own answers on your own paper

You’ll connect in beautiful ways and forge a deep and lasting friendship

There is another “gap” in the story that mirrors the gap between who Farquhar actually is, and who he would like to be. What is it?

The fantasized escape that runs counter to the actual execution in the story mirrors the gap between who Farquhar actually is and who he would like to be. In his world of illusion, he is able to outwit his captors and make it back to the family fold—whereas the reality of his situation is much more grim. Farquhar’s overindulgence of fantasy in both his image of himself and his reimagining of his fate ultimately undoes him. He cannot realize his desires in the real world, and at the end of his life, he is prey to the same delusions and misinterpretations that led him to the gallows to begin with.

“A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!”

“The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness…what he heard was the ticking of his watch.”

“As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant.”

“From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat…”

“Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward…”

“in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly around…”

“gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water…”

“All that day he traveled…” “He must have traveled the entire night…”

If “the fluidity of time” is a theme of this story, what do you see supports this? What events in the story, what in the story’s structure, bears this claim out?

The story’s structure, which moves from the present to the past to what is revealed to be the imagined present, reflects this fluidity.

The second section interrupts what at first appears to be the continuous flow of the execution taking place in the present moment.

Poised on the edge of the bridge, Farquhar closes his eyes, a signal of his slipping into his own version of reality, one that is unburdened by any responsibility to laws of time. As the ticking of his watch slows and more time elapses between the strokes, he drifts into a timeless realm.

In the brief window of time between the officer stepping off the plank and Farquhar’s actual death, time slows and alters to accommodate a comforting vision of Farquhar’s safe return to his family.

If “the blurred line between reality and illusion” is a theme, what evidence in the story supports this?

Farquhar creates his fantasy world out of desperation: he is about to die, and imagining his escape is a way of regaining control over the facts of his current state

This hybrid world of the real and fantastic is mirrored in the figure of the Northern scout; he projects one version of the truth while embodying another

By the time the fantasy world of the third section is in full swing, Farquhar’s illusion has, for both him and reader, become reality. Yet just as his belief that the Northern scout is indeed a Confederate soldier leads him to execution, his belief that he is escaping can have but one outcome: the reality of his death.

We see the color gray referenced throughout this story…what might be the significance of that color choice?

Please collect the practice assessment handout.

Kindly construct a thesis and compose a thorough and in-depth literary analysis (remembering all that we covered on Wednesday!)

If you would like to deviate from the structure provided, you are welcome to do so! Just text me your idea, and I’ll provide feedback as soon as I’m able. (Texts after 8:30 at night will be ignored, and will make me resent you. Yeah.)