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    A Study Guide for Stuart Dybek's "Hot Ice"
    A Study Guide for Stuart Dybek's "Hot Ice"
    A Study Guide for Stuart Dybek's "Hot Ice"
    Ebook35 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Stuart Dybek's "Hot Ice"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Stuart Dybek's "Hot Ice," 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 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535824927
    A Study Guide for Stuart Dybek's "Hot Ice"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Stuart Dybek's "Hot Ice" - Gale

      1

      Hot Ice

      Stuart Dybek

      1984

      Introduction

      Stuart Dybek's story Hot Ice takes place in a changing working-class neighborhood of Chicago during the 1970s. As is typical of much of his work, Dybek mixes realism with fantasy to create a specific sense of place. At the center of the story is an urban legend about a girl who was drowned in a lake in the nearby park decades earlier and then frozen in the local ice house and the miracles that people around the neighborhood attribute to her. Her story affects the lives of three young men: Pancho, who is fanatically religious to the point of mental instability; his brother Manny, the cynic; and Eddie, who feels both the weight of tradition and the struggle to live a good life in a harsh environment. As they move through their days, Dybek renders with precise clarity the details of a city in transition, mixing memories of ice delivery and sharpening carts and streetcars and riding boxcars with the oppressive, looming presence of the county jail and the boarded windows of a neighborhood that is slipping away from memory.

      The story was published in Antaeus in 1984, and the following year it was chosen for the O. Henry Award for short fiction. It is one of four Dybek stories that have won O. Henrys, three of them coming from the collection in which Hot Ice appears, The Coast of Chicago. In 2004, The Coast of Chicago was chosen for the city's One Book, One Chicago program, which encouraged not just students but all citizens to participate in a city-wide discussion club about the book.

      Author Biography

      Stuart Dybek was born on April 10, 1942 into a Polish family, in a Chicago neighborhood similar to the one in this story. He attended Catholic grammar and high schools and then enrolled at Loyola University, on the other side of the city where a more urbane culture prevailed. He was the first person in his family to go to college. His original major was pre-medicine, but he switched to English after a year. Still, he did not think of becoming a writer. After earning a bachelor's degree

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