Setting Questionaires

1. Place: a Northern Village at the border of the thirty-eighth parallel in Korea

2. Time: Korean war (1950-1953)

3. Social environment: Songsam is at police station and Tokchae is at the farm.

Plot Questionaires

1. What is the story about? What are the main events in the story, and how are they related to each other?
Ans: Thestory cranes begins with one of the story's main characters Tokchae, who is the vice-chairman of the Farmers’ Communist League, was forcibly removed from his home and is now a prisoner, and is to be escorted by the police to another police station in Ch’ongdan. One of the officers, Songsam, realizes that Tokchae is his childhood friend, so he volunteers to serve as escort. While escorting Tokchae, Songsam feels a sudden burst of anger and starts asking Tokchae how many men he has killed in the war. Tokchae remains silent. Songsam presses him, but Tokchae will not speak. Songsam asks Tokchae why he did notrun away instead of becoming part of the war. Tokchae then says that he became part of the league because he was a hardworking farmer, and he did not run because he has a wife who is carrying their child, and  that it is not so easy to just run away.Songsam compares this to his own situation, he left behind his family and allthat was important to him to escape and go into hiding. Eventually they come across a field where as children they use to hunt cranes. It is then that Songsam unties Tokchae’s hands and asks Tokchae to help him hunt a crane. At first Tokchae fears that Songsam will shoot him, but then he understands that Songsam is giving him an opportunity to go free.

2. Are the main events of the story arranged chronologically, or are they arranged in another way?
Ans: the main events of the story arranged chronologically.

3. How is the story narrated? Are flashbacks, summaries, stories within the story used?
Ans: This story is a first person story told by SongSam.

4. Is the plot fast-paced or slow-paced?
Ans: fast-paced

5. How do the thoughts, behaviors, and actions of characters move the plot forward?
Ans: the way that Songsam and Tokchae interact with each other isthe thing that develops the most in the story.

6. What are the conflicts in the plot? Are they physical, intellectual, moral or emotional? Are they resolved? How are they resolved? Is the main conflict between good and evil sharply differentiated, or is it more subtle and complex?
Ans: SongSam conflict within himself was more or less trying todecide whether he was going to take his old childhood best friend to his deathor not. They are emotional. Finally, SongSam let Tokchae go free. More subtleand complex

7. What is the climax of the story and at what point in the story does the climax occur? Is the ending of the story happy, unhappy, or indeterminate? Is it fairly achieved?
Ans: the climax of the story is when two best friends go againsteach other. It occurs when Songsam escorts Tokchae to another police station inCh’ongdan. The ending is happy because SongSam let Tokchae escape.

8. Does the plot have unity? Are all the episodes relevant to the total meaning or effect of the story? Does each incident grow logically out of the preceding incident and lead naturally to the next?
Ans: yes

9. What use does the story make of chance and coincidence? Are these occurrences used to initiate, to complicate, or to resolve the story? How improbable are they?
Ans: the coincidence of the story is when the two man meets again as the enemy. They are not improbable, this is because one man was a escaping into the south and the other man was guarding the boarder.

Reading Project: Short Story Analysis Presentation

CRANES

Hwang Sunwon

Magazine Ad

Reflection

After I finished this reading project, I feel so happy because I find out that reading novel is fun. But I only like to read novel in free time. I like the "National Velvet" that I've read. It's very fun, suit with my taste. But the novel is not very famous because it's too old already. This reading project helps me to understand more about this novel because I have to summarize the main idea of each chapter. The novel is long but there are not many main ideas in it because mostly the story tells more about the life of the main characters more than their goals and dreams. My father forces me to read a lot of books but I hate reading. After I did this reading  project, I finds out that reading is fun and I will start reading a lot of books to please my father. I will not forget this story, it's the first novel I've ever read. National Velvet not only inspire me how good books are but it makes me feel better after a long day of school. I can go home and spend my time to read this book rather than play game.

Goals, Dreams and Motives

As I summarized the story, Velvet's dream is to win the Grand National Race with the Piebald. She always pray every night to win the race. Her dream seems impossible to success because her family is poor to provide horse for her and they will not enough money to enter the race. She and Mi has to save their own money, they also borrow Mrs. Brown's money. She also wants to have a lot of horses to ride on. I think she has to find it by herself because buying horses is not cheap for poor people. But her biggest dream is to win the race and it takes her a lot of effort to success her dream because it takes time to train her horse to be professional, the Piebald can jump five foot and Sir Pericles is the fastest.

Her goals are win as much shillings as possible to save in her bank account and make the Piebald famous. She may lost the qualify rounds but she has performed very impressive. She takes care of her horses very neatly, especially the Piebald and Sir Pericles. She uses her money wisely and saves it for the Race. Mi helps her to take care of the horses and train them to be professional. Mi is clever so he knows how to enter the race easily. He borrows Mrs. Brown money and promises that he will return after he wins the race.  She practices the Piebald to jump higher in the race and make it famous after she win the prize.

Her biggest motive is from her family poorness. She wants to win this race to get a lot of shillings to help her family has a better life. She also loves horses and she wants to ride on them one day. Her second motive for her to join the Grand National Race this year is she sees the Piebald is lovely and it jumps very high, higher than the other horses she has. She wants it to be famous and known by many countries. 

Time Line