The Turning

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The bush, and the taming of wilderness through infrastructure and suburban development, is an undercurrent in many of these stories. How do you think the concept of the wilderness functions in literature? Why is it a powerful symbol in our lives?

Teaching Suggestion: The bush in The Turning is presented as an implacable, dangerous place that it might be folly to tame (and in stories like “Aquifer,” humanity’s taming of the wilderness involves writing over old traumas with what’s presented as a false suburban ideal). However, it’s also the place Bob Lang goes to escape from society and conquer his alcoholism. Priming students to think about wilderness as an inherently meaningful concept will help them see the thematic subtext at work in these stories and leads into discussions of The Sins of the Father and The Influence of Class and Race (particularly the exploitation of Aborigine people).

• American Wilderness Philosophy – This Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry unpacks the broad history of modern concepts of wilderness in America and presents some dominant ideas about our modern relationship with wild spaces.
• What is Wilderness and What is it Doing in Poetry by Sina Queyras – This Poetry Foundation article unpacks the artists’ impulse to write toward the wilderness, asking interesting questions about what it means in a literary context.

2. The Turning is a linked short story collection (sometimes called a story cycle); characters recur and have an impact on each other’s lives in subtle and powerful ways, though each story stands on its own. Where else have you seen this kind of storytelling? What do you expect from this genre?

Teaching Suggestion: One of the biggest challenges, and one of the most rewarding aspects, of a story cycle is tracing the throughlines that inform and deepen individual stories. Students are probably more familiar with this type of narrative than they think (especially thanks to franchise storytelling like the Marvel Cinematic Universe), so priming them to look at the book as a whole made up of parts may ease the process for them.

• The 10 Best Interlinked Short Story Collections – This Publishers Weekly survey has some of the most famous examples of this genre in literature, which will serve as a good primer/reminder for teachers and students.
• Why the Multiverse is the Future of Shared Universe Storytelling – This Escapist article would be good for teachers looking to take a pop-culture approach to the prompt, as it explores the trend of shared universes throughout Hollywood filmmaking.