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    A Study Guide for Alice Hoffman 's "Saint Helene"
    A Study Guide for Alice Hoffman 's "Saint Helene"
    A Study Guide for Alice Hoffman 's "Saint Helene"
    Ebook37 pages27 minutes

    A Study Guide for Alice Hoffman 's "Saint Helene"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Alice Hoffman 's "Saint Helene," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535832526
    A Study Guide for Alice Hoffman 's "Saint Helene"

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      A Study Guide for Alice Hoffman 's "Saint Helene" - Gale

      13

      Saint Helene

      Alice Hoffman

      2005

      Introduction

      Alice Hoffman's Saint Helene is a moving portrayal of a young woman gripped by guilt and depression. Shelby was the driver in an accident that rendered her best friend, Helene, comatose five years earlier. Helene has since become a figure of mythic significance to Middleborough, the town where she and Shelby reside. She is known to accomplish miracles, and people from around the country pilgrimage to touch her hand. Shelby, meanwhile, has become a recluse, unable to come to terms with the tragedy.

      With her characteristic use of mythology and mysticism, Hoffman explores the weight of the past, the effects of alienation, the power of human connection, and the role of myth in everyday life—all through the story of this struggling young woman. As these qualities run throughout Hoffman's vast body of work, Saint Helene offers a fine introduction to her style. Originally published in the winter 2005–2006 edition of Ploughshares, the story can be found in the seventh edition of Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing, by Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell, published in 2009. Readers should be advised that mellow drug use features prominently in Saint Helene.

      Author Biography

      Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952, and grew up in Valley Stream, on Long Island. Her parents divorced when she was eight, and she took solace from an unhappy home life in books, among them the Grimms' fairy tales and the works of Ray Bradbury. Reading was a complete salvation for me, Hoffman told Elfrieda Abbe in an interview for the Writer. I just felt like it was a window to alternative universes and ones I'd rather be in than the one I was experiencing, she added; I felt like I had parallel lives. I had the life I was living, and I had the life I was reading. I preferred the life I was reading.

      At age seventeen, she landed her first job at the Doubleday factory in Garden City; discovering quickly that she had no taste for the daily grind, she quit by lunchtime on her first day. She attended Adelphi University, where she received a BA in English and anthropology in 1973. Her short stories earned her an Edith Mirrielees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative

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