Dialogue in Pietro Di Donato's Christ In Concrete

We will mainly take a thematic approach to this novel.

However, the novel has mainly been noted for the author's skillful depiction of working-class Italian immigrant life, culture, and consciousness in New York City in the early 20th century. Di Donato has been viewed as one of the first and most important Italian-American novelists.

In one sense this is appropriate, for Di Donato worked very hard to portray his immigrant working-class Italian community accurately. In another sense it is a narrow and one-sided way to view the novel, which has more universal, especially class-conscious, aspects to it that are often neglected by those interested mainly in his depiction of Italian culture.

In this assignment you should pay close attention to how Di Donato uses language. How does he portray the Italian immigrant workers

• talking to each other;
• talking to English speakers?
• How does Di Donato use Italian words in the novel, and why does he use them sometimes.

One author identifies "six distinct modes of dialogue" in Christ in Concrete;

1. "the characters speak English, and di Donato writes their dialogue in English;
2. the characters speak Italian, but di Donato writes their dialogue in English;
3. the characters speak Italian, and di Donato writes their dialogue in English, with the exception of certain Italian words, which di Donato leaves in Italian because he deems them figuratively untranslatable;
4. the Italian immigrant laborers speak broken English;
5. the Italian immigrant laborers speak English which is literally translated from their native Italian;
6. desperation dialogue, indicated by the speaking character's intense religiosity, the frequent occurrence of dialogue separators, and di Donato's third dialogue."

Your assignment is to fine at least one example of each of these six modes of dialogue in the novel. Make sure to draw your examples from all five sections of the novel (see the Table of Contents, just before the Preface, for the five parts of the novel).

You may ddentify the passages by page number and the first 3-4 words of each passage. Or, you may type out the whole passage (but you do not have to go to all that trouble), and then identify it by page number.

Whichever you do, you must write 300 words of your own writing. The quotations you cite do not count as part of the 300 words.

Type the number of words in your HW assignment at the top of your HW assignment, before the assignment itself. I'll check!

Remember to use the subject line, inclding date of class. Remember that the assignment is actually due, at the latest, the day before class. But it's the date of the class that should be on your subject line.

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