1.  In what ways could geography be important to understanding a piece of literature?  Think of a novel, story, film, video game, etc. in which the geography plays a large role. What is the role of geography in the piece?

2.  Let’s say your family tells you that you’re going on a vacation…  What’s the first question that comes to mind?

3.  WHERE?! Of course!  Any writer has to ask this question as well. Settings don’t just appear out of nowhere, they have to be created by the author.  Because of this it makes sense to think about the implications of place setting in a piece of fiction

4.  Some writers pick one spot and stick with it  William Faulkner – Yoknapatawpha, MS  Thomas Hardy – Wessex, England  Matt Groening (The Simpsons) – Springfield  Despite this, most authors like to move around, and for good reasons

5.  Huck Finn people…Tell us a bit about the geography of Huck Finn  In Cold Blood people…Is geography important in your book? How?  A Passage to India?  The Road?

6.  What do we think of when geography comes up?  Hills, creeks, deserts, beaches, latitude and longitude, etc.  You’d be right to say these things, but geography can have a pretty profound affect on the people who have to deal with it politically, historically, economically, and culturally

7.  Why was Napoleon unable to conquer Russia?  Why was Charleston the original capital of South Carolina  What made the Panama Canal such a big deal?  While geography may be land formations and the like, these things have influence

8.  Jared Diamond discusses the role of Geography in Guns, Germs and Steel  Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions. The first step towards civilization is the move from nomadic hunter-gatherer to rooted agrarian. Several conditions are necessary for this transition to occur: 1) access to high protein vegetation that endures storage; 2) a climate dry enough to allow storage; 3) access to animals docile enough for domestication and versatile enough to survive captivity. Control of crops and livestock leads to food surpluses. Surplus frees people up to specialize in activities other than sustenance and supports population growth. The combination of specialization and population growth leads to the accumulation of social and technologic innovations which build on each other. Large societies develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which in turn lead to the organization of nation states and empires. (Source: Wikipedia)

9.  Because of the massive influence of Geography, in literature geography has implications also about characters, plot, theme, symbolism, etc.  If you met a character in China you would probably expect them to behave differently than say a character who lives in Spain.

10.  Affect on Mood/Tone  “A singularly dreary tract of country,” “a few rank sedges,” “white trunks of decayed trees,” “the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn,” “bleak walls,”  Why do you think Poe uses these descriptions of geography/architecture in “Fall of the House of Usher?”

11.  Affect on Character  Why do so many characters “leave home” in stories and novels?

12.  Sometimes the geography can nearly become a character in itself  The jungles of Vietnam in Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato  The mountain road in T.C. Boyle’s “The Swift Passage of the Animals”

13.  Sometimes sending a character south might be a way for the author to delve into their subconscious as if we’re going deeper and deeper into the mind  Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”  Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

14.  Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” set in the bogs of Northern Ireland

15.  Hills and Valleys  Jack went up the hill to fetch a pale of water right?  But come on! We know that the author had him go up a hill so he could tumble back down it right?

16.  High altitudes: snow, ice, purity, thin air, clear views, isolation, life, death  Low altitudes: swamps, crowds, fog, darkness, fields, heat, unpleasantness, people, life, death

17.  Write three questions you have about the story.  In what way does Hemingway use geography to expand the “message” of the story?  What other interesting devices do you see Hemingway using? How? Where?