Chapter 1, Historical Fiction, and Setting

In class today, we talked about historical fiction because Red Midnight fits this genre.  We looked at examples from the book that showed us what good readers do with historical fiction:

1)  Good readers look at conflicts in stories and figure out what those conflicts reveal.

* So, we look at the conflicts going on in historical fiction stories.  When we examine them closely, we should notice many things.  For example, today we noticed that the soldiers who were attacking the village and killing people were heartless and ruthless.  We saw death and destruction on a massive scale.  This reveals that there were major problems in Guatemala in 1981.

2)  Good readers see how setting builds the story and moves it along.  

* Setting is very important in historical fiction.  In fact, setting makes historical fiction!  We talked about the scene from Chapter 1 where the forest lights up and the soldiers see Santiago.  They fire away at him, missing him and Angelina by mere inches.  This helps to push the story along because they need to escape, and they need to escape fast!  The setting here gives them all the more reason to get out, but also leads them ahead with great fear and danger.