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    A Study Guide for Andre Dubus's "Killings"
    A Study Guide for Andre Dubus's "Killings"
    A Study Guide for Andre Dubus's "Killings"
    Ebook36 pages25 minutes

    A Study Guide for Andre Dubus's "Killings"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Andre Dubus's "Killings," 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
    ISBN9781535826846
    A Study Guide for Andre Dubus's "Killings"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Andre Dubus's "Killings" - Gale

      12

      Killings

      Andre Dubus

      1979

      Introduction

      Andre Dubus's short story Killings tells the painful story of a man who cannot rest until he has taken the life of his son's murderer but finds his grief unassuaged and himself indelibly marred by the act. Killings is a typical story for Dubus (pronounced duh-BYOOSE), as it explores relationships between men and women and draws out questions of morality from the actions of everyday individuals. Dubus's success as a writer defied twentieth-century trends toward postmodern minimalism in literature and secularism in general. Dubus preferred to write novellas, a type of long-form short story, and he was a devout Catholic whose work often delved into spiritual reflection. Dubus stands out as a fine talent of twentieth-century American literature and has even been termed a writer's writer by John B. Breslin in an obituary for Commonweal in 1999.

      Killings was first published in the Sewanee Review in 1979. It later appeared in Dubus's 1980 collection Finding a Girl in America and was adapted into a 2001 film, In the Bedroom. Killings is also included in Dubus's widely available Selected Stories, published in 1988 by David Godine and re-released by Vintage in 1995. In his thirty-six-year career, Dubus never tired of exploring the fragile humanity of working-class and middle-class families. His stories show the characters' faults with sympathy, as well as their moments of transcendence.

      Author Biography

      Novelist, short-story writer, and essayist Dubus was born August 11, 1936, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He grew up in Louisiana in a devoutly Catholic household, and his faith remained an important part of his identity as a writer when he was older. Dubus graduated from a local college in 1958 with a degree in English and then entered the Marine Corps. His first story, The Intruder, was published in the Sewanee Review in 1963. Dubus resigned his military commission the following year to enter the graduate fiction writing program at the University of Iowa. He graduated with his master of fine arts degree in 1966 and later that year began working as an instructor at Bradford College in Massachusetts, where

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