Literature is full of "types". What are the limits of these types? However, can we do away with types? (Beckett provides a pertinent answer (137)). Finally, explain why a type is not necessarily a flat character?
-When one is trying to write one's life, what are the questions one must ask oneself? (140)
-Why is the notion of "truth" in autobiography problematic?
Fatou Diome's The Belly of the Atlantic
-The football games used to be well attended. "One Saturday […] Platini and his teammates played without the usual clamour to boost them" (29). Who is Platini? (Do a search) Why did this happen?
-How is the colonizer's presence still felt even after Senegal's independence? (32)
-What is expected of a woman on the island of Niodior? (37-8) Why do these women allow themselves to interfere with the narrator's life? (38)
What do we know about Monsieur Ndétare? (Ch.4) What characterizes him? What do the narrator and Ndické owe him?
What do we learn about Madame Sarr, the grand-mother of the narrator, something that did not even cross the mind of the little girl?
-Why is the little girl considered an outsider? (50-1)
-How does the "man from Barbès" describe life in France? Then we have an element of "surprise" (Abbott, 57). What is this element of surprise? What tradition enables the man of Barbès to continue fooling his audience? (Remember Abbott, 6)
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