Questions on "A Doctor of the Old School," from the "Bonnie Brier Bush"
Reading edition
I
1. a. What has been accomplished in your sympathies by this? 2. b. Has this been through direct statement of things calling for your sympathies, or through "effects"? c. Is the method cumulative and gradual, or direct and insistent? d. Would you say that the method here is objective or subjective? e. What symbols do you find that you have employed largely, and for what purpose have the devices for which two of these stand been employed? f. Would you say that the author puts much or little meaning into his words? Is the style diffuse and thin, or does it accomplish much with few words? Indicate a paragraph or page that justifies your conclusion and say how. g. Are the inferences which you are made to draw logical or emotional, and do they seem to you delicate and subtle or simple and direct? Indicate some of them in confirmation of your conclusion.
II
1. a. Do you see any change in the method of presenting MacLure here? b. How is it an advance in the development of the story or not? c. Was Part I. preparation for this or not, and if so, how? d. Does this have a definite climax and dénouement, and if so, where?
III
1. a. How does this make an advance upon the preceding in the revelation of MacLure? b. Does it in any way get nearer to elemental human feeling? c. Does it anywhere appeal directly to sensation? d. Do you find in this any feeling for the mystery of existence? Does it seem to be an integral part of the story, coming from its essential emotion and free from obtrusive moralizing, or not? e. Is there any increase in intensity of feeling in this or not, and if so, how is it indicated in the symbols you have employed? f. Has MacLure now been presented to us with full showing of his distinguishing characteristics or not? and do we find in him a vital human nature?
IV
1. a. Do you think a death-bed scene a good subject for literary presentation or not? Why? b. Would you call it a difficult thing to present or not? c. Do you find anything objectionable here? d. Has the interest of the whole story depended upon incident or upon showing of character? e. Does this Part IV. serve in any particular way to round out our knowledge of MacLure, and if so, in what way? f. What is the especially appealing thing in the portrait of MacLure? And what in the fortune and circumstance of his life? g. Does this appeal touch in any fashion upon our sense of a something inscrutable governing our lives? h. Which of the different sorts of subject-matter (see section 9) seem to you to be the more largely employed here? So far as it is concerned with experience, is it a reviving of what we have experienced or an addition to our knowledge of life? Is there in it a truth that you could formulate into a law of life, or is the truth so much a matter of emotion as merely to touch the sensibilities and so give us a wider vision?