Oct. 27 Class Discussion

In Monday’s class we have a discussion of Martel’s “Manners of Dying” and talked about how we understand the story, and how to understand these different versions of the same event.

There are several possibilities to this question. Firstly, the author just wants to compare how one person but with different characters would behave when facing the same event happen to him. It is an interesting but also challenging practice because sometime it is difficult that we creates many characters in one story, and they both have distinctive image features so we need to describe them differently since they must not behave the same even in the same plots. I think the author did very well that he writes a same story with the same protagonists Kevin who shows different characters in nine versions. Another possibility is that these nine letters are separate templates that the warden Harry Parlington keeps in his office and just filling out the name of the individual when necessary. It is a reasonable way to understand if we related it with story plots. The third understanding to this question is that we consider these 9 situations that are all equally real or possible, the just happen in parallel universes. Therefore, Kevin is a person really exists and is going to face up his execution. In one universe he is timid, and shows extreme fear before his death. But in other parallel worlds, Kevin can be clam, humorous, spiritual, or thoughtful which reflect in different letters.