Ilana Lieberman and Morgan Thompson
1. At the beginning of Riders of the Purple Sage the point of view of Venters and Jane is shown obscurely and the writing connected/seamless. However towards the end of the book, starting around chapter 15/16, the writing splits off into Bess and Venters' story and Jane and Lassiter's story. The writting style also changes from more formal to informal throughout the book.
What do you think this does for the book and how do these changes affect the way the reader reads the novel?
2. Venters discovers that Bess has found a vast amount of gold in the stream. Zane quotes, "He leaned over to her, and put his hand, strong and clenching now, on hers." (165)
Bess learns that Venters had killed her father. Zane quotes, "She looked haggard and sad, all at once stunted; and her hands dropped listlessly; and her head drooped in slow, final acceptance of a hopeless fate." (216)
How do the colors of the hands in Chapter 16, that Lassiter describes for each of the characters, connect to the actions of the hands in the quotations above? Is there a symbolic connection between the characters' grasps on life and their hands?
3. In Chapter 18, Venters encounters Oldring in the bar. Zane describes Oldring with "Broad brow, [his] large black eyes, [his] sweeping beard, ad dark as the wing of the raven, [his] enormous width of shoulder and depth of chest..." (184)
We have discovered that Venters killed Oldring at a time when he didn't know that Bess was his supposed daughter.
If Oldring's body image was different, how do you think this would have changed Venters' actions?
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