A Handful of Dates Lesson Plan

What is the ultimate significance of the dates? What do they represent for the narrator and the other characters?

Students will probably have different ideas about what the dates mean. One popular answer might be that the dates represent the natural bounty of the land, which Masood should be entitled to (because he owns the land), but is not because of his debts. Others may see the narrator’s vomiting up of the dates as a symbolic disillusionment with the fairytale-like natural surroundings. Although the village in which the narrator lives is no less bucolic, he has also learned that it hides injustice and unhappiness. Ultimately, however, there is no right answer to this...