1. The Blanket
Floyd Dell

2. Warm-up activities

3. Please answer the questions
1. Can you tell a story according to the picture?
2. How do you think of the family environment in the picture?
3. What is the moral of the picture?

4. Background information
1. About the author: He was born in Barry in 1887 and lived in Chicago. Like his better-known contemporary, Dell wrote about the restlessness and disillusionment that characterized America in the years between World Wars I and II, as well as the lighter side of the Jazz Age. He had strong left-wing political beliefs and many of his works reflect that views, and were reprinted by radical publishing houses in the 1970s.

5. Background information
2. His main works:
1) Moon-Calf, 1920
2) Janet March, 1923
3) Runaway, 1925
4) An Old Man's Folly: A Novel, 1926
5) An Unmarried Father, 1927
6) Homecoming --- An Autobiography
7) The Golden Spike, 1934

6. Text analysis
1. Understand the structure of the text by answering the following questions:
Part one (p. 1): The whole situation of the story.
what would happen to the family?
Part two (p. 2-9): Grandson and granddad’s feelings towards what’s happening.
1) How the author builds up the sorrowful atmosphere indirectly in the second part?

7. Text analysis
2) What’s the attitude of the granddad to being asked to leave the family?
Part three (p.10-26): What happened when dad returned with the girl.
1) what’s the girl’s attitudes to the grandfather’s leaving?
2) what kind of person the girl is?
3) why the boy wants to cut the blanket into two?
4) why they all crying together?

8. Text analysis 2. What’s the meaning and function of the blanket?
Its meaning:
The blanket has different meanings to three characters—granddad, son, and the girl. For the granddad, it is the last thing that his son left him in this family and it also indicates that he’ll leave the family forever. For the son, it means departure from his granddad and it’s the embodiment of his father’s coldness to his granddad. And for the young girl, it means too much money; it’s too expensive for an old man.

9. Text analysis Its function:
In the first part, the blanket refers to the real thing that Dad brought for Granddad. In the second part, it is used as a clue to disclose the granddad and son’s feelings. But in the third part, it serves as a mirror reflecting the girl’s selfish inner mind.

10. Text analysis 3. Character analysis : 1) Granddad:
easy-going old man; trying his best to make easier; being consistent with his way of life to deal with the hard problems in life; self-sacrificing to maintain the happiness of the whole family;
2) The boy:
naïve, but full of righteousness, respecting old man; clever;

11. Text analysis
3) Dad:
reluctant to send his father away, he wants and tries to be good but has no good choice. Living under the pressure from his future young wife, he has to do so. But finally, with his son’s words, his conscience came back.
4) Girl:
pretty, but cold-blooded, greedy, mean.

12. Key points in the text 1. useful words and phrases:
1) embarrassment (p.12): embarrass, embarrassed, embarrassing, e.g.
He could not hide his embarrassment at his children's rudeness.
He didn't want to embarrass her by asking questions.
I felt embarrassed about how untidy the house was.
She asked a lot of embarrassing questions

13. 1. useful words and phrases
Fill in the blanks with the different forms of embarrass:
1) To her -----, she couldn't remember his name.
2) The revelations in the press have the government.
3) Lori gets----- if we ask her to sing.
4) This incident is deeply for the government.

14. 1.useful words and phrases
2) be off doing
3) send away
4) tune up
5) take sb. off
6) cast down

15. 2. Useful grammatical structures
1) with somebody/something doing something, e.g.
It was a fine September night, with a thin white moon riding over the roof.(para.2)
…and he’d never want to sit here on the porch again with Granddad gone. (para.7)
More examples:
We jumped into the water with bullets whizzing past our ears.
I can't do my homework with all this noise going on.

16. 2. Useful grammatical structures
Similar structures:
with sb.or sth done
with sb.or sth +adj/adv/prep. Phrase
2) It is /was …… that /who …….
……it was he that wanted to go to that ugly government place, …… (para.4)
3) …… must have done sth.
It must have cost something, that. (para.13)

17. Further discussion of the text
What is the moral of this picture?
Make a comparison between the picture and the text, and then what can you learn from them?
What is the appropriate/ideal relationship among family members?

18. Please write a summary of the article with not less than 150 words.
Assignment
Please write a summary of the article with not less than 150 words.

19. That’s the end!
Thank you!