I think I said this in class before, but I had completely forgotten all about GCP except for Hulga's character. Fortunately, this time while reading, I remembered everything I thought while I was reading.
That being said, I had completely missed all the foreshadowing the first time reading it. One of the passages I completely missed before, but that is an excellent way of foreshadowing, is the top paragraph on page 267. Mrs. Freeman has a weird fascination with people with deformities! Just like Manley Pointer (excuse me while I laugh about this name...). I never realized it before, but the entire story sets up the ending scene in such a way that it is completely about the ending scene with Pointer and Hulga. I remember the first time reading it, I was so busy concentrating on Mrs. Freeman because I thought the story was going to be about her and Hulga was going to be a side character.
Some other interesting parts I thought were the descriptions of Hulga on page 268 and the narrative structure on page 269-275. Hulga's description kind of foreshadows because it shows her true character. And the narrative structure on the following pages I had missed before and didn't realize that the story of Pointer coming over for dinner was a flashback (at least I think it is a flashback). But there is barely any set up for it and definitely no cues that we are back in "present time." Does anyone have anything to say about this strange temporal ellipses that goes on?
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That "temporal ellipsis" threw me through a loop - particularly on page 272-73. First we have Pointer at dinner and a recount of his whole life (mostly) paraphrased by the narrator. Joy leaves, Manley leaves, they meet in the road and then - bam! "Mrs. Freeman was insisting upon [Mrs. Hopewell's] attention." Suddenly "the girl" is at the stove, and the girl is Hulga, who was in the road only moments (and with no transition) before. Oh, and dinner was last night; now it's breakfast, and the picnic is past-tense today.
I puzzled over this for a while (reading and re-reading) and I think that once the tense shifts on 272, from when Pointer "said" to when Joy "had given" (from past progressive to past perfect?), we are in Mrs. Hopewell's head, until the middle of 273, when Mrs. Freeman starts insisting - in the past progressive again.
The move is unannounced (and is but a period in your larger ellipsis), but in this instance I think it gives Mrs. Hopewell a spark of intelligence beyond her platitudes - the movement from elementary summary to sophisticated analysis has finally begun in her, something we as English majors surely relate to.
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