Book Group Template
DATE:
GROUP #:
MEMBERS: Jenn, Dean, Steph, Brianna
For your reading of Montana 1948, book groups will meet four times to discuss the novel and address each aspect listed below. Take notes on your wiki for each of your meetings and save it to your group’s Wiki, noting the date and members names at the top.
This is the reading/book discussion schedule. Be sure you have completed each part prior to the book discussion day.
1) Part One, Friday, March 19th
2) Part Two, Tuesday, March 23rd
3) Part Three, Thursday, March 25th
4) Afterward/Epilogue, Friday, March 26th
Directions: Write your notes for every category below on your group’s wiki space. Be sure to discuss in your groups:
• Imagery/ Symbolism Why is this not complete?
Part Two: Imagery/ Symbolism
The wind represents the freedom the mother feels when outside. It reminds her of her home in North Dakota. “But I always loved it, that feel of rushing air. Bringing something new, was the way I felt.” (Watson 65)
“I might have recognized that all this talk about wind and dirt and mountains and childhood was my mother’s way of saying she wanted a few moments of purity.” It was her escape, to let her mind roam free and not have to worry about reality.
When David killed the bird, he felt calm. It was his release of all the pain and anger he was bottling up. He knew about his uncle, but couldn’t tell anybody. “ This wasn’t the first time I has killed and it wouldn’t be the last, and I felt the way I often did, that extraordinary mixture of power, sadness, exhilaration, and fear.” (Watson 69)
I think David’s killing of the bird was kind of a warning of what was coming. Frank made an agreement to stop raping Indian girls, but then he possibly might be the murderer of Marie. He gets his excitement out of hurting women, but maybe he found a new way of treating them…. Taking their life.
Part Three: imagery/Symbolism
Wesley is stuck in a situation of respecting his brother and following the law. He thinks he should bring his brother to jail, but doesn’t want to let the whole town know what is going on.
“So yes I mean it. Let him go. Let him do whatever he wants to whomever he wants. I don’t care anymore. I just want my house back. I want my family safe.” (Watson 143) – Gail talking to Wesley about how she wants Frank out after the men from Grandpa’s ranch come to break him out.
The jars breaking were a forewarning what was going to happen the next morning. Frank had broken into the pantry and started smashing all packed up food. “ I’m not going down there,” my father explained to me. “That’s just what he wants. No let him get it out of his system.
That is exactly what Frank did, after breaking all the jars he took the glass and cut himself. Committed suicide. “I could see only his right arm, but I knew the cut there was one of a matching set.”
• Character Behavior or Psychology:
For Part one you must focus on characterization of the main characters listed below.
For each character, discuss all three modes of characterization:
1. What the character says
2. What the character does
3. What others/narrator says about the character
You must use textual evidence for each of these three elements of characterization
Narrator’s Father:
-Wesley is David’s father and is married to Gail
-Wesley doesn’t really like Indians but he isn’t against them
-Wouldn’t let David wear moccasins when he got them on his birthday
“He wear those and soon he’ll be as flat-footed and lazy we an Indian” page 34.
-Wesley was living in the shadows of his brother Frank
-The Narrators father loved working on the farm and living on it. “My father often spoke of how difficult it was from him to move from the ranch its open expanses to the tiny apartment where he and his brother slept on a fold-out couch, he felt like crying.” Page 20
-Wanted to be a lawyer but had to take over his father’s job, which was sheriff, and he could not have taken it.
-Wesley’s father doesn’t really see what Wesley did in the war; he only really congratulated his other son Frank for saving people in the war. Wesley ruined his knee in combat.
-Wesley keeps respect with everyone in the town so he gets chosen to become sheriff again
-Frank and Wesley have a good relationship but you can tell by reading it that Wesley is jealous because is and has everything better.
Narrator’s mother (Gail)
1. What she says-
-She is a very caring person
-When she finds out Marie is sick she is asking her all these questions because she cares about her.
-She asks, “What’s Wrong”
- She checks her temperature, she asks, “How long have you’ve been feeling sick”
- Gail is basically interrogating her but she is doing it to help her.
- Gail wants to get a doctor for her but she refuses so they call uncle Frank.
2. What she does-
- She works on the farm, unlike usually women, and plants and likes flowers
- Right now she is taking care of Marie
- She is checking up on her
- She puts blankets on her so that Marie can sweat off the temperature
- She tells Wes to call uncle frank to check up on her
- She stays in the room with while uncle Frank is observing her.
- She tells Wes about uncle Frank and what he does to his patients
3. What others say about her-
- David says how she would have none of it referring to Marie having a cold.
- David is basically saying how caring his mother is for other people
- She is demanding sometimes when she tells David to stay out of the room while she is in there with Marie.
- Everyone thinks that she is very caring and loving
- Even though Marie was Indian a different race she still cared for her as if she was her daughter.
Uncle Frank (and Aunt Gloria) Uncle Frank - One of the town’s doctors of Mercer County.
- Comes to visit Marie when she is sick.
- Narrator: “ And my father was, in many respects, an impressive man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and pleasant-looking. But Frank was all this and more. He was handsome- dark, wavy hair, a jaw chiseled on such precise angles it seemed to conform to some geometric law, and he was tall and well built as my father, but with an athletic grace my father lacked.”
- Witty, charming, at smiling life ease with life and everything in it.
- Marie was scared to be in the same room as him
- Quote by Frank: “ They’re used to being treated by the medicine man. Or some old squaw. But a doctor comes around and they think he’s the evil spirit or something.” – is racist against the Indians, like his brother
- David’s parents talk after Frank leaves and they find out he has molested and raped many other Indian girls. Wes doesn’t deny anything, and David and his mother have a hard time looking at him the same way the did before. They all know that Frank is guilty.
Aunt Gloria
- Narrator: “Aunt Gloria was barely five feet tall, and she had silver- blond hair. She and Frank had been married five or six years but had no children.”
- “Prettiest woman I have ever seen.” (Watson 34)
Grandfather - Was proud of his son, Frank, for serving the war as a doctor and when they needed soldiers- “There’s not a community in the country that wouldn’t be proud to have him. But he came back to us. My son. Came back to us.
- He used to be the town sheriff until he passed the job onto Wes.
- Narrator: “Why did my grandfather first run for sheriff? This one I can probably answer, from my memory and knowledge of him. He wanted, he needed, power.”
•
~ Interesting Passages (at least two passages, cited in proper MLA format)
~This passage tells you about what the Uncle has done to these poor girls, and the reason as to why Marie doesn't want to be alone with him. She wanted Dr. Snow because she has gone to the Uncle before and some of the things the Mother says has happened to her, but not to the worst extent.
~"His tone must have angered her, because her voice went right back to where it had been earlier, and though it seemed each word was the product of effort it also seemed born out of absolute determination. "What things? I'll tell you what things. Your brother makes his patients--some of his patients--undress completely and get into indecent positions. He makes them jump up and down while he watches. He fondles their breasts. He--no, don't you turn away. Don't! You asked and I'm going to tell you.All of it. He puts things into these girls. Inside them, there. His instruments. His fingers. He has... your brother I believe has inserted his, his penis into some of these girls. Wesely, your brother is raping these women. these girls. These Indian girls. He offers his services to the reservation, to the BIA school. To the high school for athletic physicals. The he gets these girls where he wants them.... Oh! I don't even want to say it again. He does what he wants to do." (page 47 Watson) PART 2:
Important Passages
~This passage shows that Uncle Frank has always had a thing for Indian girl, it shows that ever since he was young he has been messing around with Indian girls.
~"Grandfather laughed a deep, breathy cuh-cuh-cuh that sounded like half a cough and half laugh. “Come on, Wesley. Come on, boy. You know Frank's always been partial to red meat. He couldn't have been any older than Davy when Bud caught him down in the stable with that little indian girl. Bud said to me, “Mr. Hyden, you better have a talk with that boy. He had that little squaw down on her hands and knees. He's been learnin' from watching the dog or the horses and the bulls.' I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some young ones out there who look a lot like your brother.” (Page 72 Watson)
~This passage talks about when David sees Uncle Frank walked out of his house before Gail saw Marie dead two hours later.
~ "I was going fishing with Charley and Ben and we had just come from Ben's house and we were riding our bikes along the tracks. We were going out to Fuller's gravel pit. Then I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't want to go all the way back to our house to go, so I used Len and Dasiy's outhouse," (In 1948 most, but not all, of the houses in Bentrock had indoor pluming, yet many homeowners chose to keep their outhouses operational. They saved water, for one thing, and they were useful in case of emergency--if the pipes froze in the winter, for example.) "I told Charley and Ben to go on ahead and I'd catch up. While I was sitting there I saw someone cutting across our backyard. There's a knothole you can see out of. I was pretty sure it was Uncle Frank. Then I got out and watched him go down the tracks. he was going toward town. I'm pretty sure it was him."
"You're pretty sure, David?" my father aske abruptly.
"What do you mean, you're pretty sure?"
"I mean I'm sure. I know it was."
"Did he have his bag with him?"
"I think so. Yeah. Yes, he had it." PART 3:
~This passage is when David goes down into the basement and finds his father holding his uncle in his arms. And realizing that he killed himself.
~"Uncle Frank lay on the floor, his head cradled against my father's chest. The gash across Uncle Franks wrist had already started its useless healing: the edges of the wound had begun to dry and pucker; the blood, what was left in him, had begun to blacken and congeal. I could see only his right arm, but I knew the cut there was one of a matching set." (Page 160 Watson)
• Questions/ Predictions you have: Part One:
- Why Does Uncle Frank Rape his patients?
- Why does he take advantage of people that are sick and can hardly move?
- Why is Gail so caring for Marie?
- I think that Marie is going to get rapped by Uncle Frank later in the book
- People know that uncle Frank is guilty so I think the father Wes is going to do something about it. Part Two:
Questions
• Why is Uncle Frank sexually attracted to Indian girls if he has such a beautiful wife?
• Why doesn’t Wes do anything to his brother like arrest him for rapping with all these girls?
• Why was Uncle Frank at the scene when Marie was killed?
• Did Frank kill Marie because he didn’t want her to tell them more?
• Why did lens start drinking again?
Predictions
• I think frank did kill Marie because he didn’t want her to give them any more information for them to through him in jail.
• Uncle Frank killed her and now his own brother is going to have to throw him in jail.
• Len will confront Frank and do something about it. Part 3
Questions
• Why Uncle Frank kill himself, why didn’t he just go to jail?
• Why didn’t he just go to jail in the first place?
• Why did grandpa Hayden blame all if this on his son Wes?
• Why do they move to another town?
• Why don’t the grandparents and Gloria talk to David and everyone anymore?
Predictions
• I predict that they will move on and forget about this all and never talk about it again.
• I predict that no one is going to tell anyone the true story behind this
• I predict David will remember this for the rest of his life and always wonder why?
• I predict that the grandfather will die and the grandmother will try to contact the family.
• Connections to modern life or your personal life Part One: The book has the same conflict as we do now in modern United States. Older men in the United States have molested women and girls from other ethic groups. In my many Law and Order SVU episodes I saw men bring women or children from other countries to the United States and molests them and the women/children don’t really say anything until it’s to late.
In connecting in my personal life, I know something that abused their power. They used their power to get out of things that they had to do. I abused my power of being the older sister by making my younger sister to do chores for me. Part Two: In part two the new conflict is how Gal is starting to convince Wesley that Uncle Frank sexual abuses Indian girls. Brother vs.. Society Uncle Frank vs. conflict now Connections to this in modern life is that people go in situations where it is brother vs. brother, maybe not this big of a deal like in the book but it can be like in a race or in a contest. In my own personal life I don't have a brother but I have a sister and sometimes its Sister vs. Sister. Part 3: In part three one of the conflicts was when Frank killed himself. Today this conflict is brought up with people. Teens, women, men kill themselves to escape problems. For Frank it was Man vs. Himself, in my life i have never came up with a problem like this but I have heard stories of people that go threw with suicide and get help and survive.
DATE:
GROUP #:
MEMBERS: Jenn, Dean, Steph, Brianna
For your reading of Montana 1948, book groups will meet four times to discuss the novel and address each aspect listed below. Take notes on your wiki for each of your meetings and save it to your group’s Wiki, noting the date and members names at the top.
This is the reading/book discussion schedule. Be sure you have completed each part prior to the book discussion day.
1) Part One, Friday, March 19th
2) Part Two, Tuesday, March 23rd
3) Part Three, Thursday, March 25th
4) Afterward/Epilogue, Friday, March 26th
Directions: Write your notes for every category below on your group’s wiki space. Be sure to discuss in your groups:
• Imagery/ Symbolism
Why is this not complete?
Part Two: Imagery/ Symbolism
- The wind represents the freedom the mother feels when outside. It reminds her of her home in North Dakota. “But I always loved it, that feel of rushing air. Bringing something new, was the way I felt.” (Watson 65)
- “I might have recognized that all this talk about wind and dirt and mountains and childhood was my mother’s way of saying she wanted a few moments of purity.” It was her escape, to let her mind roam free and not have to worry about reality.
- When David killed the bird, he felt calm. It was his release of all the pain and anger he was bottling up. He knew about his uncle, but couldn’t tell anybody. “ This wasn’t the first time I has killed and it wouldn’t be the last, and I felt the way I often did, that extraordinary mixture of power, sadness, exhilaration, and fear.” (Watson 69)
- I think David’s killing of the bird was kind of a warning of what was coming. Frank made an agreement to stop raping Indian girls, but then he possibly might be the murderer of Marie. He gets his excitement out of hurting women, but maybe he found a new way of treating them…. Taking their life.
Part Three: imagery/Symbolism• Character Behavior or Psychology:
For Part one you must focus on characterization of the main characters listed below.
For each character, discuss all three modes of characterization:
1. What the character says
2. What the character does
3. What others/narrator says about the character
You must use textual evidence for each of these three elements of characterization
Narrator’s Father:
-Wesley is David’s father and is married to Gail
-Wesley doesn’t really like Indians but he isn’t against them
-Wouldn’t let David wear moccasins when he got them on his birthday
“He wear those and soon he’ll be as flat-footed and lazy we an Indian” page 34.
-Wesley was living in the shadows of his brother Frank
-The Narrators father loved working on the farm and living on it. “My father often spoke of how difficult it was from him to move from the ranch its open expanses to the tiny apartment where he and his brother slept on a fold-out couch, he felt like crying.” Page 20
-Wanted to be a lawyer but had to take over his father’s job, which was sheriff, and he could not have taken it.
-Wesley’s father doesn’t really see what Wesley did in the war; he only really congratulated his other son Frank for saving people in the war. Wesley ruined his knee in combat.
-Wesley keeps respect with everyone in the town so he gets chosen to become sheriff again
-Frank and Wesley have a good relationship but you can tell by reading it that Wesley is jealous because is and has everything better.
Narrator’s mother (Gail)
1. What she says-
-She is a very caring person
-When she finds out Marie is sick she is asking her all these questions because she cares about her.
-She asks, “What’s Wrong”
- She checks her temperature, she asks, “How long have you’ve been feeling sick”
- Gail is basically interrogating her but she is doing it to help her.
- Gail wants to get a doctor for her but she refuses so they call uncle Frank.
2. What she does-
- She works on the farm, unlike usually women, and plants and likes flowers
- Right now she is taking care of Marie
- She is checking up on her
- She puts blankets on her so that Marie can sweat off the temperature
- She tells Wes to call uncle frank to check up on her
- She stays in the room with while uncle Frank is observing her.
- She tells Wes about uncle Frank and what he does to his patients
3. What others say about her-
- David says how she would have none of it referring to Marie having a cold.
- David is basically saying how caring his mother is for other people
- She is demanding sometimes when she tells David to stay out of the room while she is in there with Marie.
- Everyone thinks that she is very caring and loving
- Even though Marie was Indian a different race she still cared for her as if she was her daughter.
Uncle Frank (and Aunt Gloria)
Uncle Frank
- One of the town’s doctors of Mercer County.
- Comes to visit Marie when she is sick.
- Narrator: “ And my father was, in many respects, an impressive man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and pleasant-looking. But Frank was all this and more. He was handsome- dark, wavy hair, a jaw chiseled on such precise angles it seemed to conform to some geometric law, and he was tall and well built as my father, but with an athletic grace my father lacked.”
- Witty, charming, at smiling life ease with life and everything in it.
- Marie was scared to be in the same room as him
- Quote by Frank: “ They’re used to being treated by the medicine man. Or some old squaw. But a doctor comes around and they think he’s the evil spirit or something.” – is racist against the Indians, like his brother
- David’s parents talk after Frank leaves and they find out he has molested and raped many other Indian girls. Wes doesn’t deny anything, and David and his mother have a hard time looking at him the same way the did before. They all know that Frank is guilty.
Aunt Gloria
- Narrator: “Aunt Gloria was barely five feet tall, and she had silver- blond hair. She and Frank had been married five or six years but had no children.”
- “Prettiest woman I have ever seen.” (Watson 34)
Grandfather
- Was proud of his son, Frank, for serving the war as a doctor and when they needed soldiers- “There’s not a community in the country that wouldn’t be proud to have him. But he came back to us. My son. Came back to us.
- He used to be the town sheriff until he passed the job onto Wes.
- Narrator: “Why did my grandfather first run for sheriff? This one I can probably answer, from my memory and knowledge of him. He wanted, he needed, power.”
•
~ Interesting Passages (at least two passages, cited in proper MLA format)
~This passage tells you about what the Uncle has done to these poor girls, and the reason as to why Marie doesn't want to be alone with him. She wanted Dr. Snow because she has gone to the Uncle before and some of the things the Mother says has happened to her, but not to the worst extent.
~"His tone must have angered her, because her voice went right back to where it had been earlier, and though it seemed each word was the product of effort it also seemed born out of absolute determination. "What things? I'll tell you what things. Your brother makes his patients--some of his patients--undress completely and get into indecent positions. He makes them jump up and down while he watches. He fondles their breasts. He--no, don't you turn away. Don't! You asked and I'm going to tell you.All of it. He puts things into these girls. Inside them, there. His instruments. His fingers. He has... your brother I believe has inserted his, his penis into some of these girls. Wesely, your brother is raping these women. these girls. These Indian girls. He offers his services to the reservation, to the BIA school. To the high school for athletic physicals. The he gets these girls where he wants them.... Oh! I don't even want to say it again. He does what he wants to do." (page 47 Watson)
PART 2:
Important Passages
~This passage shows that Uncle Frank has always had a thing for Indian girl, it shows that ever since he was young he has been messing around with Indian girls.
~"Grandfather laughed a deep, breathy cuh-cuh-cuh that sounded like half a cough and half laugh. “Come on, Wesley. Come on, boy. You know Frank's always been partial to red meat. He couldn't have been any older than Davy when Bud caught him down in the stable with that little indian girl. Bud said to me, “Mr. Hyden, you better have a talk with that boy. He had that little squaw down on her hands and knees. He's been learnin' from watching the dog or the horses and the bulls.' I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some young ones out there who look a lot like your brother.” (Page 72 Watson)
~This passage talks about when David sees Uncle Frank walked out of his house before Gail saw Marie dead two hours later.
~ "I was going fishing with Charley and Ben and we had just come from Ben's house and we were riding our bikes along the tracks. We were going out to Fuller's gravel pit. Then I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't want to go all the way back to our house to go, so I used Len and Dasiy's outhouse," (In 1948 most, but not all, of the houses in Bentrock had indoor pluming, yet many homeowners chose to keep their outhouses operational. They saved water, for one thing, and they were useful in case of emergency--if the pipes froze in the winter, for example.) "I told Charley and Ben to go on ahead and I'd catch up. While I was sitting there I saw someone cutting across our backyard. There's a knothole you can see out of. I was pretty sure it was Uncle Frank. Then I got out and watched him go down the tracks. he was going toward town. I'm pretty sure it was him."
"You're pretty sure, David?" my father aske abruptly.
"What do you mean, you're pretty sure?"
"I mean I'm sure. I know it was."
"Did he have his bag with him?"
"I think so. Yeah. Yes, he had it."
PART 3:
~This passage is when David goes down into the basement and finds his father holding his uncle in his arms. And realizing that he killed himself.
~"Uncle Frank lay on the floor, his head cradled against my father's chest. The gash across Uncle Franks wrist had already started its useless healing: the edges of the wound had begun to dry and pucker; the blood, what was left in him, had begun to blacken and congeal. I could see only his right arm, but I knew the cut there was one of a matching set." (Page 160 Watson)
• Questions/ Predictions you have:
Part One:
- Why Does Uncle Frank Rape his patients?
- Why does he take advantage of people that are sick and can hardly move?
- Why is Gail so caring for Marie?
- I think that Marie is going to get rapped by Uncle Frank later in the book
- People know that uncle Frank is guilty so I think the father Wes is going to do something about it.
Part Two:
Questions
• Why is Uncle Frank sexually attracted to Indian girls if he has such a beautiful wife?
• Why doesn’t Wes do anything to his brother like arrest him for rapping with all these girls?
• Why was Uncle Frank at the scene when Marie was killed?
• Did Frank kill Marie because he didn’t want her to tell them more?
• Why did lens start drinking again?
Predictions
• I think frank did kill Marie because he didn’t want her to give them any more information for them to through him in jail.
• Uncle Frank killed her and now his own brother is going to have to throw him in jail.
• Len will confront Frank and do something about it.
Part 3
Questions
• Why Uncle Frank kill himself, why didn’t he just go to jail?
• Why didn’t he just go to jail in the first place?
• Why did grandpa Hayden blame all if this on his son Wes?
• Why do they move to another town?
• Why don’t the grandparents and Gloria talk to David and everyone anymore?
Predictions
• I predict that they will move on and forget about this all and never talk about it again.
• I predict that no one is going to tell anyone the true story behind this
• I predict David will remember this for the rest of his life and always wonder why?
• I predict that the grandfather will die and the grandmother will try to contact the family.
• Connections to modern life or your personal life
Part One: The book has the same conflict as we do now in modern United States. Older men in the United States have molested women and girls from other ethic groups. In my many Law and Order SVU episodes I saw men bring women or children from other countries to the United States and molests them and the women/children don’t really say anything until it’s to late.
In connecting in my personal life, I know something that abused their power. They used their power to get out of things that they had to do. I abused my power of being the older sister by making my younger sister to do chores for me.
Part Two: In part two the new conflict is how Gal is starting to convince Wesley that Uncle Frank sexual abuses Indian girls. Brother vs.. Society Uncle Frank vs. conflict now Connections to this in modern life is that people go in situations where it is brother vs. brother, maybe not this big of a deal like in the book but it can be like in a race or in a contest. In my own personal life I don't have a brother but I have a sister and sometimes its Sister vs. Sister.
Part 3: In part three one of the conflicts was when Frank killed himself. Today this conflict is brought up with people. Teens, women, men kill themselves to escape problems. For Frank it was Man vs. Himself, in my life i have never came up with a problem like this but I have heard stories of people that go threw with suicide and get help and survive.