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SOME TEACHING AIDS FOR MARCH BY GERALDINE BROOKS

Compiled by Dianne Emmick 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction

Character List - Alphabetical

Character List - by Page Number

Some Themes of March

Settings and Timeline

Biographical Information

Interviews With The Author

Vocabulary

Standing Vocabulary Assignment

Discussion Guide

Study Guide

Writing Contest Information  

INTRODUCTION 

March by Geraldine Brooks is the story of Mr. March, the fictional father of Louisa May Alcott’s Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March of Little Women.  Mr. March is absent in much of Little Women, serving as a chaplain for Union troops in the Civil War.  Alcott does not tell us his story.  But Brooks does. 

We learn of March’s experience and education as he serves during the war.  We also learn of the background of his life in Concord, his association with John Brown, his friendship with Thoreau and Emerson.  Brooks weaves these historical elements into the fictional story of March’s life. 

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SOME THEMES OF MARCH 

Abolitionism 

Racial bigotry 

Slavery 

The role of women 

Obligation to morals and beliefs vs. obligation to family 

Fidelity 

Marriage 

Stress of war on a family 

Self-discovery 

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Geraldine Brooks (1955 -   ) 

Geraldine Brooks was born in Australia and completed graduate work in the master’s program in journalism at Columbia University in New York City. 

She married Tony Horowitz in 1984.  They are the parents of two sons.  They presently live in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Sidney, Australia. 

Brooks worked several years for The Wall Street Journal.  Her first novel, Year of Wonders (2001), was a best seller.  It is set in post-Elizabethan England during the Bubonic Plague.  March (2005) won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Her third novel, People of the Book (2008), gives a fictional background to the Sarajevo Haggadah, a Jewish manuscript dating back to 1350.  

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INTERVIEWS WITH BROOKS 

There are several interesting interviews with Geraldine Brooks online.  Below is a list of some of them. 

You might use this list to generate a student project.  For example, give the following assignment to your students: 

Read five interviews with Brooks.  Share your findings with your class, in writing or orally.  What conclusions do you draw about her from these interviews?  What do you find interesting?  Share two or three direct quotes from Brooks.  

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june06/pulitzer_4-18.html 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/01/12/findrelig011209.DTL 

http://www.powells.com/authors/brooks.html  

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/march.html  

http://www.readings.com.au/interview/geraldine-brooks 

http://www.kwls.org/lit/kwls_blog/2008/07/scaffolding_for_the_imaginatio.cfm 

http://noveljourney.blogspot.com/2007/03/interview-with-geraldine-brooks.html 

http://americanfiction.wordpress.com/category/geraldine-brooks/ (Video of Brooks) 

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VOCABULARY 

The vocabulary in March can be daunting at times.  There are a few words that might send even an English teacher to the dictionary.  Here is a list of 10 words that may be especially unfamiliar.   

rigolette, p. 49 

quotidian, p. 115

disapprobation, p. 119 

rufous, p. 120 

opprobrium, p. 126 

harridan, p. 130 

rutilant, p. 15 

corruscating, p. 150 

labile, p. 163 

carapace, p. 176 

Special attention is given to the work “secesh,” first used on p. 9 but used again several times in the novel.  You will not find this word in the dictionary.  It is a slang word used during the Civil War period and refers, in general, to a secessionist.  See more about this word at http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000918  

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STANDING VOCABULARY ASSIGNMENT – MARCH 

As you read, circle words that you don’t know or that you think your classmates will not know.   

Choose four words for each chapter to write down and bring to class.  For each word, write down the page # from which it comes.  Also write some of the context for each word.  You do not have to copy the whole sentence, but copy at least the phrase in which the vocabulary word appears.  Make sure you copy enough of the phrase to give some context to the word use. 

Make a guess as to what you think the word might mean based on its context.  (You don’t have to write this down, but be prepared to give your guess in class). 

Your teacher will then help you and your classmates come up with a definition for the word and you can copy it into your notebook for your class vocabulary list. 

Example: 

Write:  feint, p. 16l.  “it is only a feint to mislead the rebels”   

Guess:  “Feint” must have something to do with “misleading.”  Perhaps it means “trick.” 

After discussion, your teacher will help you come up with a definition:  “a movement or appearance designed to conceal what is really happening.” 

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 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

MARCH by Geraldine Brooks

(some questions adapted from www.peguin.com and www.skokie.lib.il.us).   

1.  Discuss the relationship between March and Marmee.  What motivates each of them in terms of their relationship?  They are not always honest with each other.  Discuss examples of this. 

2.  Are there times when it is best not to tell loved ones the truth? 

3.  Near the end of the book, Brooks switches narrators.  What is your opinion of this change in narrators?  What does it bring to the book? 

4.  Discuss March’s relationship with Grace.  How does this relationship affect him, his marriage, and his beliefs?   

5.  Is March right to support John Brown, both financially and morally? 

6.  What is your opinion of March’s enlisting?  Should he have stayed home with his family?  How should one reconcile moral and political principles and family obligations? 

7.  Discuss the effects of war on the families left behind.  How do they cope, and how do they readjust when their family member returns home?  How do we perceive soldiers today?  How do we treat our returning soldiers?  Have our opinions been altered by the inclusion of women in the military? 

8.  Discuss other relationships in March’s life, including his associations with Daniel Day, August Clement, Ethan Canning, Ptolemy, Zannah, Jimsie, Zeke, Jesse.  What role do these people play in shaping him or revealing his character? 

9.  What are March’s, Marmee’s, Clement’s, Grace’s views on education? 

10.  Some portions of the book are told in letters.   How reliable are letters in portraying what is happening?   

11.  Are there things you learned about the causes, background, workings of the Civil War that you had not known before?   

12.  March comments that the Civil War is a just war, although he has seen injustice in the waging of it.  React to this statement, in terms of both the Civil War and war in general.  Was this war just? Is war ever just?   

13.  Discuss the medical hospital in March.  What do we know about the treatment of returning veterans today? 

14.  What do you imagine the future would hold for the relationship of March and Marmee? 

15.  If you have read Little Women, how do you feel about an author reinventing characters from other works?  How do you feel about an author placing historical figures (Thoreau, Emerson, etc.) into a work of fiction? 

16.  Do you think historical fiction enhances or distorts our view of history? 

17.  Did you like the way Brooks handles the timeline of the story?  How about the way she provides background material (about John Brown, for example)?  What other elements of her style did you find interesting, unusual, or skillful?  Were there elements of her style that you did not like? 

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STUDY GUIDE

Thank you to Christina Mason for permission to use her study guide for March on the CNY Reads website. 

Study Guide for March by Geraldine Brooks

AP Language and Composition

Ms. Mason

East Bridgewater HS

E. Bridgewater, MA  02333

This Study Guide is Available in a Word Document

Directions: 

Answer each question in complete sentences using direct quotations from the book (include page citations).

Background Information: 

Print out the following information and put it into a notebook.

1. Go online and get a plot summary of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
2. Go to Geraldine Brook’s home page.  Read:
   1. “Readers Guide” for March.
   2. “Geraldine Brooks on NPR”
      1. “Summary of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff.”
      2. “Details of the Battle”

Chapter One

1. Who narrates the book?
2. What dual literary techniques are employed in the first chapter?
3. Where is the narrator?
4. Is the narrator truthful as he writes to his family?  Evidence.
5. What is the narrator’s job?
6. What are the massive birds?
7. Describe what happens to the narrator and Silas Stone during the course of the battle.
8. Why does the surgeon disregard the chaplain?
9. As the chaplain returns to camp, he heads for the field hospital which has been established at
   “some old secesh house.” What’s that?
10. As the chaplain approaches the field hospital, what does he realize?
11. Reflect on Chapter 1:  Explain the contrast between the reality of the battle and what the chaplain
    writes to his family.


Chapter Two

12. What literary technique is employed in the beginning of Chapter Two?
13. Describe Mr. March as he appears in Chapter Two:  age, profession, appearance, personality, etc.
14. Do the same for Grace.
15. Who is the master of the house?
16. Of all his possessions, what does the master prize most?
17. What offer of hospitality is extended to Mr. March?
18. What is Mrs. Clement’s condition?
19. Write an explanation of Clement’s philosophy of slavery?
20. Who are the other members of the household?
21. What does Grace ask Mr. March to do, which is against the law?
22. What risky, emotional act does Mr. March do?  Why?
23. Who is Harris and why does he yell at March, ”fine sight to come home to:  What are you? 
    Abolitionist?  Quaker?”
24. What occasions March to write:  “If an anvil had fallen from the sky at that moment and landed upon
    me, I could not have felt more crushed.”?
25. Why does Geraldine Brooks pose March against Augustus Clement?
    

Chapter Three

26. Who does March write would be a “model for our little women” and why?
27. For what purpose does Brooks employ the flashback technique early in Chapter Three?
28. Why are Dr. McKillop’s surgical skills fruitless?
29. How does Grace’s depiction of Mr. Clement’s current condition mirror the devastation of the Confederacy?
30. At the end of this chapter, between which two emotions is March torn?
    

Chapter Four

31. For what purpose does Brooks begin Chapter Four with March’s 1862 letter to his wife?
32. How does the author make the transition from 1862 to the first encounter between March and Marmee?
33. Although the term feminism did not exist in 1844, Marmee certainly exhibits an enlightened spirit.
    Cite examples of her independent nature.
34. Why does March chastise a young Corporal?
35. The colonel suggests it but March is forced into applying for a transfer to the superintendent of contraband.  Why?
    

Chapter Five

36. When March describes Miss Day as “the woman who had haunted my imagination, noble yet unpretentious,
    serious yet lively,” what two types of grammatical expressions are in the description?
37. In what village does this chapter occur?
38. In what way is history intermingled with literature in this chapter?
39. Why does Marmee get angry with Mr. Emerson?
40. Who were conductors on the Underground Railroad?
41. How soon after their night together are March and Marmee married?
42. Assess March’s personality at this point in the novel.
    

Chapter Six

43. As March disembarks from the Hetty G., he meets his receptor – “a ragged, skinny Negro who could not
    have been more than twelve years old.”  Once again, how does March exhibit his misunderstanding of
    the Southern culture?
44. When March gets to Oak Landing, he’s greeted by Ethan Canning.  What are Canning’s goals for this enterprise?
45. Who is Zeke?  Why was he put into the “hole”?
46. How does March enrage Canning?
47. How is the contrast between reality vs. ideology illustrated in Chapter Six?
    

Chapter Seven

48. Describe the family life that Match and Marmee enjoyed in Concord.
49. Why does Brooks end chapter Six with March writing letters to his wealthy abolitionist friends asking
    for donations to Oak Landing, while beginning Chapter Seven with a tranquil family scene in Concord?
50. What evidence do we have of Marmee’s temper?
51. Why does March invest in Mr. Brown’s Adirondack project?
52. Did March make any profit from his investment?
53. Was Aunt March justified in calling Marmee a “serpent-tongued harridan”?
    

Chapter Eight

54. As March writes to his wife, he observes that “there are other measures” to judge a man’s intelligence. 
    What does he mean by this?
55. Why does one young soldier tell March:  “Chaplain, you sure is an innocent man.”?
56. How does March teach his students?
    

Chapter Nine

57. Was March successful in asking abolitionists to donate goods to the slaves at Oak Landing?
58. Jesse, as the slaves’ spokesperson, tells Canning, “we got something we wants to give you now.” 
    What was it?
    

Chapter Ten

59. Canning is alarmed at March’s fever – he had “contracted river ague – the commonest of the region’s
    summer afflictions.”  What happens?
60. Why is Canning panicked?
61. March realizes he has “saddleback fever.”  What does this mean?
    

Chapter Eleven

62. What happened to John Brown and how was he connected to March and the citizens in Concord?
63. Who was Flora and how does she enter the March family?
64. While March and Marmee attended a luncheon for Nathaniel Hawthorne, how did little Beth save Flora’s life?
    

Chapter Twelve

65. March awakens to the sounds of “the snort of a horse’s breath” and “scrambled into his hiding hole.” 
    What happened after that?
66. Which one of the former slaves had betrayed March and Canning?
67. What was Jesse’s plan?
    

Chapter Thirteen

68. How does March foul up Jesse’s plan?
69. Zannah, the mute young mother of Jimse, cuts March’s bonds, but the fever comes upon him again. 
    At the end of the terrible skirmish, who is alive?
70. March awakens aboard a hospital ship, the Red Rover, with Sister Mary Adela tending to him. 
    Who had saved him?  What is the tragic irony of her message written upon her turquoise scarf?
    

Chapter Fourteen

71. Who narrates this chapter?
72. What has Marmee come to realize about the war?
73. As she watches Grace tending to March in the hospital, what does Marmee realize?
    

Chapter Fifteen

74. Once again, how does Marmee’s temper work against her?
    

Chapter Sixteen

75. The exchange between Marmee and Grace at the Hale household is indeed a study in contrasts. 
    Explain how it works.
76. What can’t Marmee forgive March?
    

Chapter Seventeen

77. Of what does Grace tell Marmee that she must convince March?
78. This chapter is entitled “Reconstruction.”  How do Marmee and March’s conversation reflect the title?
    

Chapter Eighteen

79. Why does Marmee return to Concord?
80. What does Grace tell March about the true nature of Mr. Clement’s son’s death?
81. Grace – the voice of conscience – sets March straight about the issue of slavery on pp. 266 – 269. 
    Write her epistle in your own words.
82. Explain the conclusion of the novel.

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Last updated: October 6, 2009

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