10.5. Science - Language Arts Interdisciplinary Reading RL2.

Here's a short story by the American fiction master Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway is famous for writing very sparely (he uses few and simple words), but his stories nearly always have some sort of subtext (a story going on underneath the original story). In today's story, "A Day's Wait," a father and son deal with the young boy's illness, but they have very different reactions.

The ending is somewhat of a surprise, but there's a pretty definite reason that we're giving this assignment out as a joint venture between Science and English classes, which gives a bit of a hint.

Click on the title to read "A Day's Wait" by Ernest Hemingway.

When you are done, answer the following questions in a Google Drive document. Write a single SEE paragraph for each. In both paragraphs, make sure to cite specific, quoted evidence from the story as proving examples in your paragraph.

1. Why do the boy and the father have such different beliefs about the boy's illness? What has the boy misunderstood?
2. How does Ernest Hemingway use point of view to construct the story to create the surprising revelation at the ending?
3. If the boy and father were still living in France, how would the (French) doctor have described the boy's condition differently? How would that have affected the plot of the story?