Part 16 (1/2)
At the beginning of Chapter 2, Vangie states that there is a great deal ”they never tell you about being a girl.” How does this lack of information affect Vangie? Can Vangie gain the knowledge she seeks through means other than hard experience? Do girls today confront a comparable lack of access to information?
When Vangie reflects on June's involvement with two brothers, she states that ”none of us did anything for long unless we wanted to.” What is Vangie saying here about choice? About self-knowledge? Are there other instances in the novel where Vangie seems to struggle to understand herself or her own role in an event?
What is the significance of Vangie's dream of the owl at the end of chapter 17? How does her experience of this dream contrast with Del's interpretation of the dream in chapter 24? Why does Vangie reject the religious devotion that seems to bring Del such comfort?
Del makes a valiant effort to rehabilitate himself after his overdose and seems to cleave to the principles of a twelve-step program. What undermines his efforts to change?
How would you characterize the relations.h.i.+p between Vangie and June? Why does Vangie turn away from June at the end of the book, at a moment when her friends.h.i.+p would have probably been particularly important to June? What does Vangie mean in chapter 25 when she says, ”I could not keep letting [June] touch me”?
After tremendous intimacy and friends.h.i.+p, Del and June are still ”strangers” to Vangie, ”all the more strange because I loved them,” she says. What is Vangie saying here about the nature of love?
Although Vangie makes numerous missteps over the course of the novel, she also takes certain steps to expand her world and to increase the number of choices she has. Identify some of those steps. Is Vangie a character who is bound to be determined by her environment, or are there hints that she will go beyond the limited world of Mahanaqua?
The characters in Swimming Sweet Arrow seem to talk more easily about explicit s.e.xual acts than about virtually anything else. While the physicality of the s.e.x in the novel cannot be denied, how does s.e.x also serve as a metaphor in Swimming Sweet Arrow?
What is the role of the water imagery in the novel? Besides the t.i.tle, where else does it occur?
Why is it important to Vangie to tell this story? Why does she struggle until she can say, ”There. Now it is all written down”?
Maureen Gibbon's suggestions for further reading.
The Professor's House.
by Willa Cather.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras.
The Nick Adams Stories.
by Ernest Hemingway.
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence So Long, See You Tomorrow.
by William Maxwell Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro Train Whistle Guitar.
by Albert Murray The Atlas by William T. Vollman Winter Wheat by Margaret Walker.
Maureen Gibbon's suggestions for viewing.
Each of these films is currently available on video.
Desert Bloom Gas, Food, Lodging.
Ruby in Paradise The Boys of My Youth.
by Jo Ann Beard.
”Utterly compelling ... uncommonly beautiful.... Life in these pages is an astonishment.... The Boys of My Youth speaks volumes about growing up female and struggling to remain true to yourself.”
- Dan Cryer, Newsday ”Reading Jo Ann Beard's prose feels as comfortable as falling into step beside an old, intimate friend.... She remembers (or imagines) her childhood self with an uncanny lucidity that startles.”
- Laura Miller, New York Times Book Review Dale Loves Sophie to Death
by Robb Forman Dew
Winner of the National Book Award ”A novel that profoundly satisfies both the mind and the heart.”
- Robert Wilson, Was.h.i.+ngton Post Book World ”Like Virginia Woolf, Robb Forman Dew reaches into the flow of daily life to break open a single moment. She captures beautifully the s.h.i.+ft and flux of feelings, friends.h.i.+ps, perspectives, the child in the adult and adult in the child.”
-Jean Strouse, Newsweek This Body
by Laurel Doud
”A frisky, riveting debut.... With Doud's brightly visceral prose and deft sense of tragicomedy, This Body proves equally engrossing for the senses, soul, and mind.”
- Megan Harlan, Entertainment Weekly ”Lots of fun.... Every woman has had the fantasy of waking up in a younger, skinnier body. But what if you had to die first? And what if the body you came to one year after your death belonged to a freshly OD'd junkie?”