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A Study Guide for Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases"
A Study Guide for Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases"
A Study Guide for Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases"
Ebook33 pages23 minutes

A Study Guide for Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases," 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
Release dateJul 15, 2016
ISBN9781535824231
A Study Guide for Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases"

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    A Study Guide for Lars Gustafsson's "Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases" - Gale

    1

    Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases

    Lars Gustafsson

    1981

    Introduction

    Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases by Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson, was first published in Sweden in 1981. Translated into English in 1986, it appeared in Stories of Happy People (Norton, 1986; in print). It can also be found in You've Got to Read This: Contemporary Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe, edited by Ron Hansen (New York, 1994).

    Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases is the story of a severely mentally retarded boy who is sent to an institution for the retarded, where he grows to manhood. The story covers a period from the 1930s to the late 1970s. Although set in Europe (possibly in Sweden, the country of Gustafsson's birth, although no specific country is identified), the story might equally well have been set in the United States. In a few short pages, it reveals a great deal about the inner life of a mentally retarded person and also much about the attitudes taken by society to the mentally retarded. On one level, it is a story of loneliness, isolation, and neglect, but on another level, it affirms the uniqueness and the dignity of the mentally retarded man, who against all odds creates an imaginative life for himself that allows him to feel in harmony with the larger forces at work in nature and the universe.

    Author Biography

    Novelist, poet, and essayist Lars Gustafsson was born in Västerås, Sweden, on May 17, 1936. He recalls in his notebooks that he felt isolated in his early school years, since he was already thinking about the serious issues in human life and society. He wanted to be a poet from the age of fourteen. Leaving Västerås in 1955, he studied philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, and literature at the University of Uppsala, and in 1957, he received a scholarship to study at Magdalene College of Oxford University. This was also the year in which his

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