Paradise Lesson Plan

The novel begins with "They shoot the white girl first." Why do you think Morrison opens with this sentence? What does it tell us about where we are, and what is happening?

This opening sentence creates a great deal of suspense as it plunges the reader straight into the action. We know that an attack is happening, and someone has already died. We don't know who, which leads us to feel suspenseful for the whole rest of the novel, until we discover who it is. It also tells us, by highlighting her race, that the rest of the people are not white. If she is 'the' white girl, it stands to reason that everyone else is non-white. This helps to set up the fact that the setting for...