“Your first assignment is to write a poem about corn.”
The small amount of effort he puts into his students and workplace allows me to believe that either he simply doesn't care, or hes gone through something in his life that changed him to be that way.
Stevens scowls and shakes his head, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and mutters something under his breath about the “catastrophe of modernism” before turning toward the chalkboard.
Steven called dana an overachiever, so why is he unhappy about the fact that she is participating in his class? The author is portraying Mr.Stephen as a grumpy-oldman sort of type.
Plastering on a smile,
This sentence makes me relive that the main character seems to be unhappy due to the way that he is acting in the classroom. He seems to have a pessimistic outlook on life.
The students are already seated, and he surveys the assembly. In the back row a girl scribbles furiously in a fancy journal. Against the far wall a young man in sweat pants and a Minnesota Twins hat snores quietly—his desk empty, except for his head. In the front row Stevens spots Dana, the notorious overachiever, pretending to read Finnegans Wake.
The author uses many unneeded negative words ;in this paragraph to add to the tone. An example of this is "furiously," which could easily be replaced with a nuetral or positive connotation but isn't to add to the story.
Fridays he breakfasts at Burger King before heading out to the lake, where he smokes cigarettes on the shore and ignores his wife’s phone calls.
The way the the author calls to the fact that he is ignoring his wife's calls allows the reader to come to the conclusion that the tone of this paragraph is lonesome. Another factor I would like to call out, is the fact that professor Stevens seems like a strong realist, due to his inability to have an imagination.