PAEE: 204-the end

Quiz

Free write: "I struggled to my feet and began to walk. My father had been right — the paintings were not to be found — and had turned back as soon as he sensed this, which was almost instantly. I had gone on, blindly. I was a work on paper: weightless, sketchy, all impulse" (210). What is Max realizing about himself? What insight does this offer us into his character? Into the character of his father?

Now -- bring it to you. Reflect on and write about a time when your parents saw something more quickly than you did. And I'm not talking about seeing a spider or a deer crossing the road. I'm talking about seeing something monumental, something important that it took you a while to understand.

Discussion
1. Let's look at Micheline as she appears throughout the novel. In what ways does the discovery of Micheline make Max rethink his past?
2. On p. 220, Daniel says, "Let us never speak of this again." What does Daniel want to forget? Thin literally and figuratively.
3. p. 225: "And so my father's picture joined the other images in the lost museum of my mind."
4. p. 227: "The will told me Rose was most likely in Paris, and I felt a vague unpleasant anger toward the dead. How often had my father been in contact with her during my decades of faithful silence? With what knowledge had he died."
5. p. 231: "Did this mean that a son's love and grief for his father triumphed over all? Or that, in a moment of reckoning, I had seen and remembered nothing? I understood then that Rose had begun to bid only once I had stopped. She had been sent to Drouot's, or went of her own accord, in case I had forgotten what I would see there."
6. p. 231: "The shimmering of the city was also part of the canvas: Matisse's lemons seemed to float above the table and the white plate on which they might have rested, if they had been given rest. It was a still life that had not been granted stillness. I thought of the dimensions of the painting, of its flat and hovering planes, and that somewhere, in between the two, lingered those whom I had lost."

PAEE: 176-203

Quiz

Max has a sister! What?! Where can we see Micheline in the text? Break up into groups and find her.

C block:

PAEE: 113-175

Quiz

Free write: "Her every belonging, Madam van Seyveld said, has been replaced by something that resembled its predecessor but was fundamentally different" (123). This same sentiment was shared by many people after the war. We can even see this happening to Max as he is trying to replace Rose/their relationship and his father's paintings.

Option 1: Think about your character for the scrapbook project and write about something that was replaced in their lives with a similar yet "fundamentally different" item.

Option 2: Think about your own life and write about how something was replaced with something similar but "fundamentally different."

More art & history of Paris

Jacques Jaujard and more

Discussion
1. In what ways is Chaim's refusal to have his passport stamped "Deporté" a sign of his struggle with identity? struggle with insider/outsider dynamics?
2. What does Sara contrast Chaim and Max's war time experiences on p. 131?
3. In what ways has Max receded from the foreground of the action?
4. Exactly what did Rose do during the water and what is she trying to do now?

PAEE: 81-112

Free write: What kind of city has Paris become for Max? Reference the specific descriptions used by the author.

Chalk talk of city descriptions

PAAE: 56-80

Free write: The Old Castle

Discussion
1. "You love to learn, Max, you love to desire" (58) Is this a true assessment of Max as we, the reader, know him?
2. What role does Bertrand serve as this point in the novel?
3. Tone of the start of Chapter 6
4. Part 3: the homecoming. Let's read the chapter out loud. How would you describe the tone and mood of the chapter?

PAAE: 24-56

Free write: How does absence register in our awareness? When we miss something or someone, how do we know that?

When Max notices his curiosity about Rose, it comes through the hot water he misses in his shower, from the outline of light cast from her window at night, from the empty chair at meals.

For your writing today, you have two choices. If you want, target this to your character for the scrapbook project. Imagine a journal entry in which your character is missing someone or something. By what means does your character measure what is not there? How is that someone or something known in its absence?

If you can’t imagine (at least right now) what or who your character would be missing, think about the phrase “the room was empty” and think of what an empty room contains that makes us know it as “empty”. Use all your senses. If you closed your eyes, for example, what would tell you about a room and it’s being empty?

Perhaps the room exercise will lead you later to something about your character.

More art: Matisse, Manet, & Degas

Pictures at an Exhibition Promenade, Gnome, The Old Castle

Discussion:
1. p. 41 — "When we stepped out into the light I became a man again, and we both let go." What has changed in the relationship between Max and his father? What did they both let go of?

2. p. 43 — "Or rather, that language for her was a necessity but not her preferred means of communication ... As an adolescent, this same kind of wish had led me to study Polish, secretly, for a few months in hopes that one day I would speak to my mother in a proud declarative sentence and she would answer me with joy and clarity." Max implies that there is some form of miscommunication going on between him and his mother. In what ways is the idea of miscommunication expressed in the novel thus far between Max/Daniel, Max/Rose, Rose/Daniel, Max/Eva, Eva/Daniel.