The Common Pursuit: Collaborative Teamwork on Lawrence's Stories

Each team is responsible for a twenty-minute presentation and fifteen minutes of class discussion based on questions the team decides on. 60 I single out the following for team presentation: “Odour of Chrysanthemums,” “Tickets, Please,” “The Blind Man,” “You Touched Me,” “The Horse-Dealer's Daughter,” and “Sun” (in the past these have all been available in one volume, the Viking Complete Short Stories, Vol. 2). [...]most students have some knowledge of Lawrence's growing impatience with the conventions of “realistic” prose fiction and of his experimentation with form to probe deeper levels of the psyche. [...]within the limited scope of the short story, students frequently discover their own voices in speaking about Lawrence. The dynamic whereby one team builds on another, singling out whatever works and gaining confidence that they can do as well or better, is the dynamic that teams learn to trust. [...]the team presenting “The Blind Man” will almost inevitably explore Lawrence's preoccupation with touching as both knowledge and violation, so that the teams working with “You Touched Me” and “Sun” will pick up on this theme, trace its meanings in their story, and implicitly grasp its centrality in Lawrence's fiction.