“The Living Room” Classical Humanities

“The Living Room” is a short story narrated on NPR’s Radiolab. Today we will listen to it, respond to some discussion questions, and write and think about the ideas presented in the story. Please have your RAW Book and a pen/pencil.

Why is this window all that the narrator thinks about now? At this point in the story, please respond to the following questions in your RAW Book: Why is this window all that the narrator thinks about now? How has she become a part of their lives? What details in the story are clues that the couple is changing?

Now please respond to these last questions: Why is the narrator so emotionally invested in this couple? What is the significance of the juxtaposition of the party in the apartment downstairs with what is happening in the couple’s apartment? What is the significance of the fact that there were three people at the young man’s deathbed? What is the narrator trying to accomplish when she obeys an impulse to rush over to the young woman as the coroner is taking the body away? Why does the narrator ultimately consider this act “perverse”?

Writing Workout In your RAW Book, write at least ½ a page responding to the following ideas: The act of closing curtains over an open window is both a literal and a metaphorical concept in “The Living Room”. When and why does a person close their own curtains? What window are they covering up and why? Have you ever done so? Why? Do you think the young woman in the story will ever open her curtains again?