So What Are You, Anyway?

What does Carole take with her on her trip to see her grandparents? What symbolic and metaphoric significance do these objects possess? How is Hill using these familiar items to develop Carole’s character?

Henry Norton’s character enters the narrative stage in the second paragraph of the short story. How does his appearance on the page alter the narrative atmosphere? How does his presence impact Carole as a result?

Compare and contrast Henry’s and Betty’s characters. Although they are husband and wife, the characters are not mirror images of one another. What is the significance of their subtle differences? In what ways might the husband or wife be more threatening than the other, and why?

Describe the narrative setting and context. How does Hill convey this information organically on the page? Why is the year in which the short story takes place revealed so late in the narrative? Why might Hill close the story before Carole leaves the primary narrative setting?

Describe the narrative point of view. How does it enact Carole’s internal experience? How is Hill using this technique to capture Carole’s innocence, youth, and burgeoning sense of self?

How is the short story structured, and in what ways is this a formal subversion? How does Hill employ dialogue as a narrative device? In what ways does the dialogue dictate the narrative mood and atmosphere?

Carole is the same age throughout the entirety of the short story. However, Carole’s character changes from the time she boards the flight to the time the story ends. What incidents, conversations, and characters contribute to her internal change? How does Hill convey her subtle evolutions?

When Henry and Betty interrogate Carole about her race, how does Carole respond? What does her confusion indicate about her sense of self, as well as the larger Canadian and American society’s understanding of what constitutes identity in the 1970s?