1-What do you think Jennifer Egan’s thesis is in “Reading Lucy”? write your more specific version as a comment to this post. Offer your suggestions to your classmates as well!
Our more-specific collaborative effort:
Reading Lucy Kolkin’s letters exchanged with her husband Al made Jennifer Egan feel that she experienced Lucy’s life herself to the extent that she could compare it with her own.
Some more general attempts:
We can learn a lot about someone’s life philosophy through their writing.
People learn a lot from the people that they meet and the experiences they have.
If history is rich, one can get lost in it, especially if the source is really interesting or vivid.
Having a husband in the Navy can influence one’s life in a variety of ways, including locale.
History can be intimate if one looks at it from someone else’s eyes.
The effects of war on everyday life. . .
One can be doing something, learning about something, and it can open his or her eyes to something else
2-What would you want to write about if asked to write an essay about “Reading Lucy”?
Compare Jennifer Egan’s experience of learning about Lucy Kolkin with Bob Diamond’s learning about abandoned railways and a locomotive.
After reading Lucy’s personal letter to her husband, Jennifer Egan was fascinated with the life of a woman living in the era of World War Two to the extent that she started to reconsider her life.