The Shining Houses

1
The Shining Houses

• 3rd person narration (limited point of view)
• Style initially mirrors the nature of
  storytelling over memories
• Commentary on society today
• Leaves readers to question their values and
  perspectives

2
The Shining Houses - Characterization

• Mrs. Fullerton friendly
• Unlike Marys other neighbours who were still
  sorting out life and deciding what to take
  seriously. Pg64. Mrs. Fullerton had no doubts or
  questions of this kind. Wise
• Adaptability and intuitiveness evident when
  describing Mr. Fullertons departure from her
  life. Hes no more dead than I. stated calm.
• Optimistic pg. 65 After discussing her husbands
  departure she said, I dont mind changes either,
  that helps out my egg business.

3
The Shining House - Diction

• Mrs. Fullertons property described with words
  such as, fixed and impregnable. Pg. 66
• Mrs. Fullerton physical appearance mouth
  painted, a spidery and ferocious line of red. Pg.
  64
• Her age and lack of education (grammar) pg. 64
  She said about Mr. Fullerton, May of gone up
  North..But hes not dead. I would of felt it.
• Dialogue discloses character traits and conveys
  mood.
• Irony- pg. 70 Mary searches for the right words
  in the face of her friends uttering words such
  as, shack, eyesore, filth, property, value.

4
TSH Metaphors/Simile/Personification

• Simile / Metaphor - Mrs. Fullerton pg. 64
• Her eyes showed it, black as plums with a soft
  inanimate sheen things sank into them and they
  never changed.
• Pg. Metaphor 66 The new, white and shining
  houses, set side by side in long rows in the
  wound of the earth.
• Pg. Personification 67 The face of each house
  those ingenuously similar houses that looked
  calmly out at each other, all the way down the
  street.

5
The Shining Houses - Setting

• Mrs. Fullertons pg. 66 house/surroundings
  self-sufficient with a complicated and
  unalterable layout of vegetablesor a goat. and
  no open or straightforward plan, no order that
  an outsider could understand.
• VS
• Modern Subdivision Pg. 66 Green Garden
  subdivision
• - earth was raw, wounds of earth, unimaginable
  upheavals of earth pg. 67 those ingenuously
  similar houses that looked calmly out at each
  other, all the way down the street.

6
TSH - Setting

• Time change to evening.
• Pg. 72
• outside it was quite dark, the white houses
  were growing dim, the clouds breaking and
  breaking, and smoke blowing from Mrs. Fullertons
  chimney. The pattern of Garden Place, so
  assertive in the daytime, seemed to shrink at
  night in the raw black mountainside.

7
The Shining Houses- Alliteration

• Pg. 64 Broad, blithe, back of Mr. Fullerton

8
TSH - Theme

• Self-Interest VS altruism (is selfless concern
  for the welfare of others)
• People who might normally behave altruistically
  (idealistically) or practice social tolerance,
  are often blinded to the needs of others by their
  own self-interest or materialism.
• Power of the mob
• - Holding onto ones personal attitudes and
  beliefs can seem ultimately impossible when
  confronted with the cynical or materialistic
  mentality of a group of ones peers acting in
  concert as a mob.

9
TSH - Imagery

• Re The natural devastation due to development.
  Pg. 64 the bulldozers had come in to clear away
  the brush and the second-growth and great trees
  of the mountain forest in a little while the
  houses were going up among the boulders, the huge
  torn stumps, the unimaginable upheavals of that
  earth. The houses were frail at first, skeletons
  of new wood standing up in the dusk of the cold
  spring days.pg. 66-67

10
TSH - Foreshadowing

• Pg 65. With regards to the fellow who had been
  talking and eating cherries with Mr.
  FullertonMrs. Fullerton stated, Mr. Fullerton
  went and talked to him, eating my cherries I
  intended for a pie, but that man would talk to
  anybody, tramp Jehovahs Witness, anybody that
  didnt need to mean anything. ironically it did.

11
TSH - Capitulation

• Pg. 72 Marys last word is a capitulation
  (surrender / give up). Yes, said Mary.
• This is Marys response to Carl who concludes
  that Mrs. Fullerton must allow her home be torn
  down and relocate for the good of the community.

12
TSH Atmosphere / Mood

• Contrast between Mrs. Fullertons style of run
  down home amongst the new houses of Mimosa and
  Marigold and Heather drive. pg. 68 dark.
  Enclosed, expressing something like savagery in
  their disorder and the steep, unmatched angles of
  roofs and lean-tos not possible on these
  streets, but there.
• pg. 68 Mary said of the Ediths house The house
  seemed too hot.
• Pg. 71 The spirit of anger rose against them.

13
TSH - Pathos

• Pg. 65 Husbands maybe come and go, but a place
  youre lived fifty years is something else. I
  always had the idea he might of suffered a loss
  of memory and it might come back . That has
  happened.
• Pg. 66 Mrs. Fullerton said. Come and pick your
  own and theyre fifty cents a box. I cant risk
  my old bones up a ladder no more.

14
TSH Discussion topics

• Do you agree with the motivation of the people
  who win in this story?
• What underlying beliefs and values are revealed
  in their words and behavior?
• Do you agree with Mary that they are good
  people?
• To what extent does Alice Munro offer a fair and
  balanced portrait of these characters?