Steinbeck’s The Long Valley Literary Tour Guide Project

Assignment Introduction

We have spent the last several weeks traveling with John Steinbeck throughout his central California homeland. Steinbeck’s stories bring to life his California, and as we have discussed, setting is key to these stories. While this is true, setting is not the only element at work in his collection. Steinbeck’s stories work to capture both the physical and psychological importance of this place. He accomplished this goal by using the tricks of his trade: literary elements.

Your assignment is to take your classmates on a tour through the world of your assigned short story. Like any good tour guide, you want to pique your audience’s interest in your proposed trip. With this in mind, you will be preparing both a written tour brochure and creating a commercial to sell your wondrous adventure to the would-be adventurers.

Brochure:

Your written brochure will capture the highlights of your literary tour for your classmates (a.k.a. your prospective tourists). You need to showcase your expertise about your story’s literary world. Your brochure must include the following pieces:

1. PLOT:

Provide an overview of the story’s plot by listing and discussing major plot developments. Focus on the following questions to help you frame this section of your brochure: How is the story organized? Is the story told chronologically or is it sequenced out of order? Does the author employ techniques such as flashbacks or dream sequences, stream of consciousness, foreshadowing, etc to develop his/her plot?

This information can be presented in paragraph form or as a set of “driving directions” that bullet-points plot developments that would-be tourists will follow as they travel through your story.

2. CHARACTER:

Describe the story’s central characters: provide the name, age (if known), three descriptive adjectives, appearance, personality, function in the novel, and 2-3 key quotes (with page numbers) with an explanation of what that quote reveals about the character.

You also must write a “found poem” about one of the central characters. Choose words, lines and/or sentence fragments from the text that you feel describe this character. Put these “found” lines together into a poem of at least 10 lines. The point of including this poem is to introduce the would-be traveler to the colorful personalities found in your story’s world.

3. SETTING:

Choose several images that showcase the setting for your travelers. Attach text from the story to the images, and explain why you have made these choices.

Questions to ask as you prepare this portion of the brochure: Where and when does the story occur? How is the environment described? Is there any symbolic meaning in the settings? How does the author use the setting? What atmosphere/mood is created with the setting? How important is setting to the story?

4. SYMBOLISM:

Choose at least 2 of the story’s symbols and provide a photograph that captures this symbol for your audience. Attach textual quotes to the images that highlight their uses in the story.

Question to ask as you make your choices: What function does the symbol serve in the story?

5. THEME:

A quality travel brochure previews major attractions for travelers. For this section you need to include a discussion of at least 3 of the story’s major themes. Your discussions need to explain the importance of the theme to the story as a whole, and should be supported by textual evidence.

Questions to ask as you prepare this section: What are the story’s major ideas? How does the author convey these ideas? What literary elements does he employ to create the theme?