Tag: narrative arc

Educating Rita, Act One

Educating Rita is not only a play about learning, it is a play about learning how to write critical or academic essays—that is, about exactly what we are engaged in doing in this class. So I’d like to begin our discussion by looking closely at three scenes from Act One that center on essays that Rita has drafted and Frank has read:

• Scene Three: Essay on Howard’s End
• Scene Four: Essay on Peer Gynt
• Scene Eight: Essay on Macbeth

Groups

What does Rita learn about critical writing in this scene? What, if anything, does Frank? Is there anything in addition that we as readers of the play might notice? Ground your comments in three or four key phrase or lines from the scene.

Fastwrite

What do you notice about the “narrative arc” that these scenes describe? Straight? Broken? Simple? Complex? What, if anything, does this first act of the play suggest to you about the process of learning how to write at a university that you had not thought about before?

Julie Walters and Michael Caine

To Do

1. Class, Wed, 9/18: Finish reading Educating Rita. Locate a scene in it that you can relate (connect or contrast) with either your own experiences in learning how to write, or a scene from another book or film you’re familiar with. I’ll ask you to do a fastwrite on that connection in class.