Red Dress-1946″
Exploring Literary Technique: Characterization & Conflict
1. What changes does the narrator of the story undergo during the evening of the school dance? What causes her to change?
2. Alice Munro sets her narrator amidst several conflicting personalities. Compare the characters first of Lonnie and Mary Fortune and then of Mason Williams and Raymond Boulting. How do the two girls differ from each other? How do the two boys differ from each other? Which set of characters is drawn more vividly by Munro? What statement does Munro make by sketching certain characters in more detail than others? What conflicting ideas does the narrator get from each of these characters? What effects do they have upon the narrator?
3. To what extent does the narrator establish her own identity and independence? To what extent does she conform to the opinions of her peers? To what extent do the opinions of adults influence her?
4. “Red Dress – 1946” is told by a first-person narrator looking back on her youth. However, the narrator sometimes involves herself immediately in the story and sometimes remains distant from it. Re-read the story, observing these shifts in the narrator’s stance. Where do they occur? What purpose do you think these shifts serve for the author?
5. Re-read the last paragraph of “Red Dress – 1946.” How has the narrator’s voice changed in this paragraph? In what way does she regard her mother and herself in a new manner?
Sample Solution
Red Dress by Alice Munro is a story about an adventure into struggles of discovering sexuality as well as trying to fit in. Our thirteen year old narrator is uncomfortably stepping out of the “safe boundaries of childhood.” She is terrified. At the dance, the narrator is a bundle of nerves as she watches the older students arrive and contemptuously ignore the younger students. At one point, a popular boy in school dances with the girl and then leaves. When she realizes he is not going to continue dancing with her, she is embarrassed. When no one else asks her to dance, she feels like something is seriously wrong with her, so she runs off and hides in the bathroom.
