CAS EN 141 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Forces, Vagueness
1 May 2018
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Lecture 1: Course Overview
Look for 3 Major Elements
• Changes in behavior, speech, plot, etc.
o These will not necessarily give thematic insight but readers can ask why change
happens
▪ Important not only to notice changes but their effects as well
• Conflicts
o 3 types –
▪ good v. bad (ex: person rivalry)
▪ needs/desires/wellbeing of individuals v. social forces (ex: poverty)
• 3 types of social forces: 1. Economic, 2. Political, 3.
Cultural/Religious
▪ interpersonal (ex: moral values)
o After noticing conflicts, there are two questions:
▪ Is the conflict inevitable or unavoidable? If so, why?
▪ Can the conflict be resolved? If so, how? If not, why?
• Patterns
o These are presented as similarity (between behaviors, actions, feelings) rather
than pure repetition (repeating of events)
o Important to ask why is the pattern present or why did the author choose to input
it?
Definitions:
• Ambiguity – when events can be seen in multiple ways
o Important to note that this differs from vagueness
• Vagueness – when things are not understood
• Thematic – the author’s insights
• Plot – the causal connections between actions and how particular ones can affect other
actions
• Point of View – the perspective from which the story is being told from, which can be
different and biased regardless of the type of POV
o First – POV of a character within the story
o Third – POV of an outside perspective/person
• Author – the person who wrote the story
o Important to note that this person controls the narrator, who is essentially a part of
the story regardless of the type of POV
• Narrator – the voice who is telling the story
• Setting – the time and location of a story
• Technical – how a story is told
• Social v. Psychological – common and collected events v. individual or mental events
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