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Lesson 1 (from Part One: "Bridge Music," Pages 1-40 (Roy, Celestial) )

Objective

This lesson introduces students to Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage and explores the narrative style of the novel. For this lesson, students should have been assigned to read Part One: “Bridge Music,” Pages 1-40. An American Marriage is related from the first-person perspectives of three main characters in the story: Roy, Celestial, and Andre. This multiplicity of perspectives is an essential element in the novel, which thematically looks at the different motivations, feelings, desires, and regrets that impact not only us—but the people that we interact with as well.

Lesson

Class Discussion: As a class, define and discuss the following terms: narrative point of view, omniscient versus limited narrators, reliable versus unreliable narrators, and narrative tense. Are the narrators of this novel involved in the action of the story? How does the author indicate who is narrating each section? What are the benefits of...

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