[BG-2025-26] ENG3U ...

Read below the short, short story of 243 words titled The Man in Bogota by the American author Amy Hempel. (also located in Unit 3 - Resource Folder)

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The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge – though not, she threatens, for long.

I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.

I tell the woman about a man in Bogota. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.

Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.

When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then – that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.                                                                                                       

Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.                                                                                                

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Answer the following questions based on the story

1. Who is narrating the story?
   
2. Where are they?
   
3. What is the situation presented at the beginning?
   
4. Summarise the story within the story 
   
5. Why does the narrator tell the story of the man in Bogota?
   
6. To whom is he telling the story?
   
7. By the end of the story, what happens to the woman on the ledge?
   
8. Why do you think the story ends this way?
   
9. Have you ever experienced something that seemed bad at first but turned out to be beneficial later?
   
10. Do you agree with the idea that we can’t always know whether what happens to us is good or bad? Why or why not?
    
11. This is a very SHORT story. Do you think it would be better if it were longer and included more details? Why / why not?