Questions

1. What is it about The Virginian that appealed to a young, twenty-first-century reader? Why does the book make Benjamin Percy “ridiculously happy” (par. 4)?

   Question

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   Questions: - What is it about The Virginian that appealed to a young, twenty-first-century reader? Why does the book make Benjamin Percy “ridiculously happy” (par. 4)?
2. Percy says the novel made him “re-examine what it meant to be a man” (par. 10). What is his conclusion about what it does mean, and how does the character of the Virginian, “[t]he mythical cowboy figure” (par. 5), guide him to this understanding?

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   Questions: - Percy says the novel made him “re-examine what it meant to be a man” (par. 10). What is his conclusion about what it does mean, and how does the character of the Virginian, “[t]he mythical cowboy figure” (par. 5), guide him to this understanding?
3. Do you find any of these descriptions hyperbolic: “Reading The Virginian helps me better appreciate honor and nature and life and testosterone, in the same way the Bible helps so many better appreciate God” (par. 11); Owen Wister was “like some great and terrible Moses draped in leather and carrying a buffalo gun” (par. 10); “In our world of hydrogenated soybean oil and sport utility vehicles and Pottery Barn and grubless lawns, the novel is a welcome shot to the arm, a much needed antidote to all the plastic and phoniness” (par. 10)? Why do you think these are or are not exaggerations? In what ways are they effective?

   Question

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   Questions: - Do you find any of these descriptions hyperbolic: “Reading The Virginian helps me better appreciate honor and nature and life and testosterone, in the same way the Bible helps so many better appreciate God” (par. 11); Owen Wister was “like some great and terrible Moses draped in leather and carrying a buffalo gun” (par. 10); “In our world of hydrogenated soybean oil and sport utility vehicles and Pottery Barn and grubless lawns, the novel is a welcome shot to the arm, a much needed antidote to all the plastic and phoniness” (par. 10)? Why do you think these are or are not exaggerations? In what ways are they effective?
4. Based on Percy’s response and the excerpts you read from The Virginian (p. 1036), why do you agree or disagree that the novel offers insights on what manhood means in the twenty-first century?

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   Questions: - Based on Percy’s response and the excerpts you read from The Virginian (p. 1036), why do you agree or disagree that the novel offers insights on what manhood means in the twenty-first century?