Wing’s Chips (Short Story)
1. List five characteristics of a town “like many others in the St. Lawrence Valley.”
There were rows of temporary-looking frame and stucco houses, a post office in
somebody’s living room, a Chinese fish-and-chip store, and, on the lawn of the imposing
Catholic Church, a statue of Jesus, arms extended, crowned with a wreath of electric
lights.
2. Describe the living arrangements of the narrator.
The girls who clustered giggling on shore and watched them wore pastel stockings, lacy
summer hats, and voile dresses that dipped down in back and were decorated low on one
hip with sprays of artificial lilac. For additional Sunday divertissement, there was the
cinema, in an old barn near the railway station. They had no sound track; airs from “My
Mary-occasional toot of the suburban train from Montreal while on the screen ladies with
untidy hair and men in riding boots engaged in agitated, soundless conversation, opening
and closing their mouths like fish.
3. What kind of work did men do in this area? How was the narrator’s father different?
Men in that area deliver milk, farm, own rival hardware stores, and they drew up one
another’s wills. The narrator’s father is different because he did not fulfill the roles of a
conventional father. Instead, he was more connected to his art and decided to make that
his occupation.
4. Why doesn’t he seem to fit into the local society?
The narrator’s father doesn’t fit into the local society because he was a painter. He didn’t
work a labor job like everyone else. Because of this, no one took his painting seriously as
a daily round of work.
5. Why does the father insist that his daughter take music lessons? What is her response?
The father insisted that his daughter should take music lessons because music was her
favorite thing to do. When she was four years old, she started having music lessons but
they didn’t last long.
6. Describe the Wing family and the interior of their store. How are they different from
others in the village?
The interior of their store smelled wonderfully of frying grease and vinegar, and the walls
were a mosaic of brightly painted tin signs advertising player’s mild, orange crush, sweet
marie chocolate bars, and ginger ale.
7. What does Jimmy Wing ask the narrator’s father to do?
Jimmy Wing went to the narrator’s father and told him that the kids talk about him a lot
and that they were saying he is a painter and that they wanted him to make a new sign.
8. Why is the narrator “hysterically proud” of the sign and of her father?
The narrator was hysterically proud because everyone stopped before the shop and
examined the sign. The French Canadians admitted that it was pas mal, pas mal du tout,
while the English adults said approvingly that he must have been paid a fine penny for it.
1. List five characteristics of a town “like many others in the St. Lawrence Valley.”
There were rows of temporary-looking frame and stucco houses, a post office in
somebody’s living room, a Chinese fish-and-chip store, and, on the lawn of the imposing
Catholic Church, a statue of Jesus, arms extended, crowned with a wreath of electric
lights.
2. Describe the living arrangements of the narrator.
The girls who clustered giggling on shore and watched them wore pastel stockings, lacy
summer hats, and voile dresses that dipped down in back and were decorated low on one
hip with sprays of artificial lilac. For additional Sunday divertissement, there was the
cinema, in an old barn near the railway station. They had no sound track; airs from “My
Mary-occasional toot of the suburban train from Montreal while on the screen ladies with
untidy hair and men in riding boots engaged in agitated, soundless conversation, opening
and closing their mouths like fish.
3. What kind of work did men do in this area? How was the narrator’s father different?
Men in that area deliver milk, farm, own rival hardware stores, and they drew up one
another’s wills. The narrator’s father is different because he did not fulfill the roles of a
conventional father. Instead, he was more connected to his art and decided to make that
his occupation.
4. Why doesn’t he seem to fit into the local society?
The narrator’s father doesn’t fit into the local society because he was a painter. He didn’t
work a labor job like everyone else. Because of this, no one took his painting seriously as
a daily round of work.
5. Why does the father insist that his daughter take music lessons? What is her response?
The father insisted that his daughter should take music lessons because music was her
favorite thing to do. When she was four years old, she started having music lessons but
they didn’t last long.
6. Describe the Wing family and the interior of their store. How are they different from
others in the village?
The interior of their store smelled wonderfully of frying grease and vinegar, and the walls
were a mosaic of brightly painted tin signs advertising player’s mild, orange crush, sweet
marie chocolate bars, and ginger ale.
7. What does Jimmy Wing ask the narrator’s father to do?
Jimmy Wing went to the narrator’s father and told him that the kids talk about him a lot
and that they were saying he is a painter and that they wanted him to make a new sign.
8. Why is the narrator “hysterically proud” of the sign and of her father?
The narrator was hysterically proud because everyone stopped before the shop and
examined the sign. The French Canadians admitted that it was pas mal, pas mal du tout,
while the English adults said approvingly that he must have been paid a fine penny for it.
