I. Warming up

(1) What is the article mainly about? 

It’s a fictional story about a working dinner on Christmas Eve between two important people at a famous restaurant in New York.

(2) How would you describe this restaurant? Who do you think might eat there? 

It looks like a high-quality, expensive restaurant. People can afford it, probably rich or maybe famous people, or those who work in business. 

(3) What sort of things do you think they might talk about? What sort of things do you think can go wrong in such a restaurant?

They would probably talk about business or social events. Perhaps there would be an unexpected mistake with the service or food. 

II. Text analysis

1. Theme

What happened in Joanne’s? Why did they go to Joanne’s? what kind of characters do they have?

2. Structure

3. Writing Features

Describing people’s characters

Character directly, e..g. using adjectives

Tell us what the characters are thinking, e.g. reporting what they say; reveling their thoughts to readers

Give the reader insights into the character by describing external appearances and actions. 

4. Detailed Analysis

(1) Why does the writer highlight the fact that Joanne’ s is a restaurant where many famous people have dinners in Para 4? What if the restaurant had been nearly empty when Josh arrived?

The writer describes Joanne’s as a fancy restaurant with many famous people, which foreshadows how the head waiter will treat Josh, a nobody as well as a black. If the restaurant had been nearly empty, the story would have lost the drama of the head waiter not wanting to serve Josh. In an empty restaurant, there would be no problem to find a table or to be served.

(2) What rhetoric device does the writer use in Paragraph 18? What does the writer try to tell the readers in this Paragraph?

Personification. First, the writer tells the readers how uncomfortable the seat offered by the head waiter is: close to the bathroom, right by a half-opened window so that Josh should bear the icy breeze. Moreover, the writer may imply that Josh feels cold not only due to the icy breeze, but also because of the cold treatment of the head waiter.

(3) Why does the writer describe the weather both at the beginning and the end?

At the beginning of the story, “it was snowing heavily”, implying that something unpleasant would happen. But at the end of the story, “it had stopped snowing”, implying that the unpleasant thing had passed and the problem had been resolved. The writer describes the snow both at the beginning and the end so that the ending can be correlated with the beginning.

III. Reinforcement:

Discussion

(1)  Is it desirable to overcome racial prejudice, or should we accept it as simply a feature of society?

(2) What forms of prejudice are you aware of in society?

(3) Which do you think are the most harmful, and why?

(4) What can be done to overcome them?