Prompts for "Birdland"

I hope you are enjoying "Birdland." Here are the prompts for Tuesday.

1. Remember that for structuralist critics, people, animals, names, places, and events are all surface phenomena, or parole, that represent invisible organizing structure(s), or langue. What organizing structures lie behind the surface phenomena in "Birdland"?

2. Jonathan Culler would argue that the way you interpret "Birdland"--indeed any text--is determined by the langue, or underlying structure, of interpretation that you have learned. What rules or codes of interpretation influence the way you make meaning when reading Knight's story? To answer this well, you should not be analyzing the story itself, but rather the system, or structure of analysis, the rules and guidelines, that dictate your interpretation.

3. Which of Northrop Frye's mythoi does "Birdland" correspond to? Use specifics from the text in your answers.

4. Which of Greimas's plot types are carried out by the actants in "Birdland"? What is the "grammar" of the story? Be specific in your answer.

5. What is the narrative structure of "Birdland"? Contractual? Performative? Disjunctive? Again, please use specifics.

6. Using either Frye's or Schole's Fictional Modes, discuss the character types in "Birdland." You might also want to address the power of the protagonist.

Thank you. I appreciate your good efforts on these responses. Just give one of them a shot, and we will try to illuminate structuralism more fully on Tuesday.