Tasks: Auggie Wren's Christmas Story by Paul Auster

It could be argued that one of the morals of this short story is the importance of random acts of kindness.

Talk about the following in groups:

• Have you ever experienced receiving help from a stranger that you didn't expect at a time when you really needed it? Or perhaps you once have been that stranger, helping someone without expecting anything back? Describe the situation.

• Make a list of different acts of kindness that do not require much from you, but would make someone else's day better.

• How can these small acts of kindness, like the ones you have just described, make the world better? For others and for yourself?

1. How does this short story comply with the Christmas story genre? Would you define this as a Christmas story?

2. The story is set in Brooklyn. What can be said about the setting? In which way is the setting typical American? Or is it?

3. An important theme in the story is time. How is this expressed?

4. What is the importance of Auggie Wren's photographs? Would you agree that they can be understood as a work of art? Can they be seen as symbols of anything? If so, what?

5. You find four different characters in the story: Paul, Auggie Wren, Granny Ethel, and Robert Goodwin.
   How would you describe the four characters? Include both inner and outer characterisation and the different characters' relationships to each other.

6. Usually, Christmas stories have a moral, such as we should take care of people around us, we should celebrate love and peace, we should be kind to strangers ... What is the moral of this story?

7. Write down at least three different themes that you believe may be relevant to the story. Explain your choices.

8. Comment on the irony in:

• a Jewish writer (Paul Auster) being asked to write a Christmas story

• an author looking for a story

• a blind woman storing stolen cameras

• Auggie's 'good deed'

• the ending of the story

Paul Auster is well-known for telling so-called frame stories, which are many stories within one story. 'Auggie Wren's Christmas Story' is a frame story and has a so-called Chinese box structure.

1. What is the main story and who is the narrator of this story?

2. What is the story within the story, and who's telling this part of the story?

3. What is the effect of this narrative technique?

4. Try to divide the text into different sections and give each section a headline. Explain your choice of headline.

1. Write your own short story where the message of the story is how small acts of kindness can make the world a better place. Call your short story 'Pay it Forward'.

2. Write a personal story in which you describe a situation where you did a good deed for someone else, or where you were at the receiving end of a random act of kindness.