“I would still like to know things. Never mind facts. Never mind theories, either,” the narrator states in Alice Munro’s short story “The Turkey Season.” The comment refers to a mysteriously heated altercation between coworkers that occurred decades ago, when the narrator was fourteen and spent the holiday season working as a turkey gutter. Although the details of the dramatic fight remain unknown and continue to haunt her, the bulk of the story rests on descriptions of mundane recollections: learning how to clean turkeys; coworkers’ personal lives and habits; issues surrounding labor and class as well as gender and sexual dynamics; and the expression of each person in a photograph of the work crew. Take inspiration from Munro’s story and write a short story with an ambiguity at its core and a narrator who looks back on a period of time during a holiday season. Use this larger theme of puzzling over something unresolved to explore the nuances of an uncertain time in adolescence when personal value systems are tentatively being formed.
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