Individual Oral Planning Sheet

Developing a plan for an individual oral:

Prompt​: Examine the ways in which a global issue of your choice is presented through the
content and form of work that you have studied.
Global Issue: Valuing honor over more important values such as love

Passage 1: Identify your passage: pg numbers and initial words - closing words.
“She informed my sister… his loveless letters poured out onto the floor” (Marquez 112-113).

Author’s attitude toward the global issue (remember to include how the issue is portrayed in
the passage itself AND how this passage relates to the work as a whole):

Marquez reveals how honor is wrongly assigned more importance by the individuals in the
novel and placed above other values in society such as love and compassion which has terrible
effects on the different characters' lives.

Key strategies used in the passage to develop the author’s point about the global issue: (no
more than 5 bullet points)

● The author utilizes the symbolism of the box of letters to represent how superficial the
relationship between Santiago Nasar and Flora Miguel was with the quote “he dropped
the chest and his loveless letters poured out onto the floor” ( Marquez 113).
● Marquez uses the imagery of Flora “weeping with rage” and going through “a crisis of
humiliation” to express how self centered and selfish the townspeople are. Instead of
grieving or worrying about her fiance being murdered she is focused on how this might
negatively affect her “image”.
● The juxtaposition of her waiting for her lover to “scratch his keys across the window
screens” compared to her now waiting for a man walking into his impending doom
serves to represent how quickly an individual can put aside their love for a person and
focus on their own image.
● The imagery of of Flora Miguel “waiting for him in the parlor, green with rage,
wearing one of the dresses with unfortunate ruffles that she was in the habit of putting
on for memorable occasions” goes to show how even in the time of mourning and
death, Flora still holds much value in her appearance and focuses on her own loss
rather than the loss of a human life.
● Overall, the importance of Flora Miguel reacting with this selfish manner is to portray
the extreme extent that a person’s appearance takes over their life. Not only is she a
friend of Santiago, she is his lover, his fiance who she is supposed to be willing to give
her life for, to protect him at all costs; instead, she cannot see past herself which is
exactly how the rest of the people in the town react.