The New Regionalism and the City - Breathitt County Schools · 2019-01-14 · Bettmann/CORBIS 868...

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American Gothic, 1930. Grant Wood. Oil on beaverboard, 29 x 25 in. Art Institute of Chicago.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

—James Baldwin

part 1

The New Regionalism and the City

All rights reserved by the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

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Bettmann/CORBIS

868 UNIT 6 FROM DEPRESSION TO COLD WAR

BEFORE YOU READ

Author Search For more about Author Name, go to www.literature.glencoe.com.

MEET JOHN STEINBECK

On October 25, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, John Steinbeck turned on his television set to see “if the world was

still turning.” He was greeted by a news flash announcing that he had just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Often during his long career, Steinbeck enjoyed both critical acclaim and enormous popularity. His greatest work, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), was among the most widely read novels of the twentieth century.

“The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion, and love.”

—John Steinbeckfrom his Nobel Prize banquet speech

Crusader for Social Justice John Steinbeck was born and raised in Salinas, California, a small town nestled in a sprawling valley of lettuce farms. Bright and popular in high school, Steinbeck was accepted

to Stanford University but yearned for more life experiences. He drifted in and out of college, never earning a degree. Instead he wrote and worked, taking an assortment of

jobs that included ranch hand, fruit picker, factory

worker, salesclerk, freelance newspa-per writer, con-struction worker, and farm laborer.

These life experiences furnished Steinbeck with material for his novels and stories. His fourth work, the novel Tortilla Flat (1935), was his first to receive public acclaim. Set in his familiar Salinas Valley, it vividly and humorously depicted the joys and sorrows of a group of unemployed men. Several literary successes followed it: In Dubious Battle (1936), which included realistic and violent scenes based on labor strikes in California; Of Mice and Men (1937), which described the tragic friendship of two migrant workers; and Travels with Charley (1962), a nonfiction work that recounted the author’s journey across the United States in a pickup truck with his poodle, Charley.

Steinbeck’s fiction offers a strong sense of social jus-tice, a heightened sensitivity to the colors and tex-tures of the U.S. landscape, and compelling plots. His characters often are society’s forgotten people, struggling to survive and to preserve their humanity amid harrowing social and environmental condi-tions. Memorable and authentic, Steinbeck’s char-acters seem to step right off the page.

Literary Distinction Steinbeck wrote his master-piece, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), when the United States was recovering from the Great Depression of the 1930s. This 1940 Pulitzer Prize winner traces a dispossessed Oklahoma family’s migration to California in search of a better life. There the family and others like it suffer tragically from injustice meted out by powerful landowners and corrupt officials. Today The Grapes of Wrath is universally respected for its depiction of the indi-vidual’s quest for justice and dignity.

A little more than two decades after publishing The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Six years after receiving this award, Steinbeck died in New York City. He remains one of the most popular and respected authors of the twentieth century.

John Steinbeck was born in 1902 and died in 1968.

Breakfast

Author Search For more about John Steinbeck, go to www.glencoe.com.

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LITERATURE PREVIEW READING PREVIEW

JOHN STEINBECK 869

Connecting to the StoryThe main character in Tennessee Williams’s famous play A Streetcar Named Desire exclaims: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” In “Breakfast,” the narrator recalls an encounter with strangers and the kindness they show him. As you read this story, think about these questions:

• When have you benefited from the kindness of strangers?

• Why is it important to be kind to people?

Building BackgroundThis story is set in northern California in the 1930s. The idea for this story came to Steinbeck while he was interviewing migrant workers for his novel In Dubious Battle. “Breakfast” was originally published in 1938 in a short-story collection called The Long Valley and later adapted and included as part of a chapter in The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s odd jobs during the early 1920s gave him a firsthand look at the desperate working and living conditions forced upon most farm laborers. These observations helped Steinbeck develop the themes and plots of many of his major works. He wrote about the work-ing person’s quest for dignity and about the stark challenges presented by nature, society, and fate.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Return to Regionalism As you read this story, consider what Steinbeck reveals about the values of ordinary working people.

Literary Element Implied ThemeThe theme of a piece of literature is a dominant idea—often a universal message about life—that the writer communicates to the reader. Authors rarely state a theme outright. Instead they use an implied theme, letting the main idea or message reveal itself through events, dialogue, or descriptions. As you read, look for details that suggest the author’s message about life.

• See Literary Terms Handbook, p. R18.

Reading Strategy Connecting to Personal Experience

Connecting to personal experience means linking what you read to events in your own life or to other selections you’ve read. By connecting events, emotions, and characters to your own life, you create meaning in a selection and recall information and ideas better. To apply this strategy, ask yourself these questions: Do I know someone like this? Have I ever felt this way? What else have I read that is like this selection?

Reading Tip: Noting Familiar Details Use a chart like the one below to record connections between your experiences and details in the story.

Vocabulary

scuffle (skuf��əl) v. to move with a slow, heavy, shuffling gait; p. 870 The losing players lowered their eyes and scuffled down the ramp to the locker room.

dissipate (dis�ə pat ) v. to cause to scatter and gradually vanish; to break up and drive off; p. 870 As the fog slowly dissipated, more and more of the road ahead became visible.

avert (ə vurt�) v. to turn away or aside; p. 871 Terribly upset, the bystander averted her eyes from the car wreck.

My Experiences

Last summer I met other campers at a state park.

Story Details

encounter with a family camping out

Interactive Literary Elements Handbook To review or learn more about the literary elements, go to www.glencoe.com.

In studying this selection, you will focus on the following:

• understanding Regionalism• inferring theme

• connecting personal experiences to literature

OBJECTIVES

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S11-281-01C-635423 U6 T9Mercurius Bold Script Kent


This thing fills me with pleasure. I don’t know why, I can see it in the smallest detail. I find myself recalling it again and again, each time bringing more detail out of a sunken memory, remembering brings the curious warm pleasure.

It was very early in the morning. The eastern mountains were black-blue, but behind them the light stood up faintly colored at the moun-tain rims with a washed red, growing colder, grayer and darker as it went up and overhead until, at a place near the west, it merged with pure night.

And it was cold, not painfully so, but cold enough so that I rubbed my hands and shoved them deep into my pockets, and I hunched my

shoulders up and scuffled my feet on the ground. Down in the valley where I was, the earth was that lavender gray of dawn. I walked along a country road and ahead of me I saw a tent that was only a little lighter gray than the ground. Beside the tent there was a flash of orange fire seeping out of the cracks of an old rusty iron stove. Gray smoke spurted up out of the stubby stovepipe, spurted up a long way before it spread out and dissipated.

I saw a young woman beside the stove, really a girl. She was dressed in a faded cotton skirt

John Steinbeck

scuffle (skufəl) v. to move with a slow, heavy, shuf-fling gaitdissipate (disə pat ) v. to cause to scatter and gradu-ally vanish; to break up and drive off

Vocabulary

Connecting to Personal Experience What pleasant memories can you recall in great detail?

Reading Strategy

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JOHN STEINBECK 871

and waist.1 As I came close I saw that she car-ried a baby in a crooked arm and the baby was nursing, its head under her waist out of the cold. The mother moved about, poking the fire, shifting the rusty lids of the stove to make a greater draft, opening the oven door; and all the time the baby was nurs-ing, but that didn’t interfere with the mother’s work, nor with the light quick grace-fulness of her movements. There was something very precise and practiced in her movements. The orange fire flicked out of the cracks in the stove and threw dancing reflections on the tent.

I was close now and I could smell frying bacon and baking bread, the warmest, pleasantest odors I know. From the east the light grew swiftly. I came near to the stove and stretched my hands out to it and shivered all over when the warmth struck me. Then the tent flap jerked up and a young man came out and an older man followed him. They were dressed in new blue dungarees2 and in new dungaree coats with the brass buttons shining. They were sharp-faced men, and they looked much alike.

The younger had a dark stubble beard and the older had a gray stubble beard. Their heads and faces were wet, their hair dripped with water, and water stood out on their stiff beards and their cheeks shone with water. Together they stood looking quietly at the lightening east; they yawned together and looked at the light on the hill rims. They turned and saw me.

“Morning,” said the older man. His face was neither friendly nor unfriendly.

“Morning, sir,” I said.“Morning,” said the young man.

The water was slowly drying on their faces. They came to the stove and warmed their hands at it.

The girl kept to her work, her face averted and her eyes on what she was doing. Her hair was tied back out of her eyes with a string and it

hung down her back and swayed as she worked. She set tin cups on a big packing box, set tin plates and knives and forks out too. Then she scooped fried bacon out of the deep grease and laid it on a big tin platter, and the bacon cricked3 and rustled as it grew crisp. She opened the rusty oven door and took out a square pan full of high big bis-cuits.

When the smell of that hot bread came out, both of the men inhaled deeply.

The elder man turned to me, “Had your breakfast?”

“No.”“Well, sit down with us, then.”That was the signal. We went to the packing

case and squatted on the ground about it. The young man asked, “Picking cotton?”

“No.”“We had twelve days’ work so far,” the young

man said.The girl spoke from the stove. “They even got

new clothes.”The two men looked down at their new dun-

garees and they both smiled a little.The girl set out the platter of bacon, the

brown high biscuits, a bowl of bacon gravy and a pot of coffee, and then she squatted down by the box too. The baby was still nursing, its head up under her waist out of the cold. I could hear the sucking noises it made.

The orange fire flicked out of the cracks in the stove and

threw dancing reflections on

the tent.

avert (ə vurt) v. to turn away or aside

VocabularyConnecting to Personal Experience

Why do odors leave a lasting impression in one’s memory?

Reading Strategy

3. Here, cricked means “turned or twisted.”

1. Here, a waist is a blouse.2. Dungarees are blue denim pants.

Return to Regionalism What does the young man’s comment reveal about economic conditions for ordi-nary workers during the Great Depression?

Big Idea

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We filled our plates, poured bacon gravy over our biscuits and sugared our coffee. The older man filled his mouth full and he chewed and chewed and swallowed. Then he said, “God Almighty, it’s good,” and he filled his mouth again.

The young man said, “We been eating good for twelve days.”

We all ate quickly, frantically, and refilled our plates and ate quickly again until we were full and warm. The hot bitter coffee scalded our throats. We threw the last little bit with the grounds in it on the earth and refilled our cups.

There was color in the light now, a reddish gleam that made the air seem colder. The two men faced the east and their faces were lighted by the dawn, and I looked up for a moment

and saw the image of the mountain and the light coming over it reflected in the older man’s eyes.

Then the two men threw the grounds from their cups on the earth and they stood up together. “Got to get going,” the older man said.

The younger turned to me. “’Fyou want to pick cotton, we could maybe get you on.”

“No. I got to go along. Thanks for breakfast.”The older man waved his hand in a negative.

“O.K. Glad to have you.” They walked away together. The air was blazing with light at the eastern skyline. And I walked away down the country road.

That’s all. I know, of course, some of the rea-sons why it was pleasant. But there was some ele-ment of great beauty there that makes the rush of warmth when I think of it.

Implied Theme How does this detail provide a clue to the theme of the story?

Literary ElementReturn to Regionalism What can you infer about the family’s experiences until recently?

Big Idea

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JOHN STEINBECK 873

AFTER YOU READ

Literary Element Implied ThemeIn “Breakfast,” the implied theme is built around the narrator’s warm recollection of an encounter with a family of migrant workers.

1. What is the implied theme, or message about life, in this selection?

2. What details and descriptions support this theme?

Review: ToneTone is a reflection of a writer’s or a speaker’s attitude toward the subject matter, as conveyed through ele-ments such as word choice, punctuation, sentence structure, and figures of speech. A writer’s tone might convey a variety of attitudes, such as sympathy, objec-tivity, or humor.

Partner Activity With a partner, examine the word choice and the dialogue in “Breakfast.” Create a chart like the one started below, and fill it in with examples of effective word choice and dialogue. Then answer the following question: What tone is conveyed by the family’s words and actions?

Respond1. How did you react to the characters in this story?

Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)What are the first things the narrator describes?

(b)What do these descriptions tell you about the narrator?

3. (a)What observations does the narrator make about the family of migrant workers? (b)What seems to be important to the family? Explain.

4. (a)What does the narrator say about his memory at the end of the story? (b)What might his attach-ment to this memory suggest about his life? What deeper understanding or awareness of life does he seem to gain?

Analyze and Evaluate5. Steinbeck wrote about migrant workers who lived

in small, supportive communities. In what ways does he portray the narrator as part of such a supportive community?

6. The reader never learns why the narrator is walking on a country road or where he is going. Why do you think Steinbeck chose not to reveal much about the narrator?

7. (a)What are some of your favorite sensory details in this story? (b)How did these sensory details affect your reading of the story?

Connect8. Big Idea Return to Regionalism Which values

of migrant people does Steinbeck highlight in this story?

RESPONDING AND THINKING CRITICALLY

LITERARY ANALYSIS

Word Choice

Tone

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Reading Strategy Connecting to Personal Experience

Connecting to personal experience involves drawing parallels between the people, places, and events in the story and the people, places, and events in your own life. Review the chart you filled in as you read “Breakfast.”

1. To which details in the story did you relate most strongly?

2. What new insights about your experiences did you discover by connecting them to people and events in this story?

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Antonyms Find the antonym for each vocabulary word from “Breakfast” listed in the first column below. Use a dictionary or a thesaurus if you need help.

1. scuffle a. shuffle b. glide

2. dissipate a. unite b. scatter

3. avert a. confront b. avoid

Academic Vocabulary

Here are two words from the vocabulary list on page R86. These words will help you think, write, and talk about the selection.

challenge (chalinj) n. a test of abilities or resources

welfare (welfar ) n. the state of doing well; happiness or well-being

Practice and Apply1. What challenges test the migrant family’s spirit

in “Breakfast”?2. What values does Steinbeck believe promote

human welfare?

Writing About LiteratureRespond to Setting Steinbeck creates vivid pictures of the setting by using concrete nouns and specific adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. Consider the following example: “there was a flash of orange fire seeping out of the cracks of an old rusty iron stove.” The vivid language helps the reader imagine and relive the nar-rator’s experience.

Write a short essay about Steinbeck’s use of vivid language in “Breakfast.” Include examples of descrip-tions that come alive for you and explain why they are effective. Before drafting your essay, list your examples in a chart like the one below.

As you draft, write from start to finish. Begin by stating your purpose. In the body of the essay, present your examples of vivid language and explain why each is effective. Conclude with an assessment of how Steinbeck’s vivid descriptions enhance your under-standing and appreciation of the story.

After you finish your draft, meet with a classmate to evaluate each other’s work and to suggest revisions. Then proofread and edit your draft for errors in spell-ing, grammar, and punctuation.

Literary CriticismGroup Activity According to critic Daniel Aaron, Steinbeck portrays migrant workers as the “preservers of the old American verities, innocent of bourgeois properties, perhaps, but courteous, trusting, friendly, and generous. . . . What preserved them in the end . . . was a recovery of a neighborly interdependence that an acquisitive society had almost destroyed.” Using details from “Breakfast,” discuss Aaron’s position with a small group of classmates.

EvaluationDescription“cold enough so that I rubbed my hands and shoved them deep into my pockets”

READING AND VOCABULARY WRITING AND EXTENDING

Web Activities For eFlashcards, Selection Quick Checks, and other Web activities, go to www.glencoe.com.

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Prefixes Roots Suffixes

geo- Earth

dis- the reverse of

contra- against

in- within, into

graph writing of

place position

dic(t) speak

spir breathe

-ical having the nature of

-ment the condition of being

-tion action or process of

-ed the past tense of a verb

Vocabulary Workshop

Word Parts

Understanding Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes“The girl kept to her work, her face averted and her eyes on what she was doing.”

—John Steinbeck, from “Breakfast”

Connecting to Literature One way to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word is to analyze its parts. The Latin root vert means “turn.” It is a common root, found in the words averse, aversion, reverse, subvert, divert, and others. The prefix a- can mean “in the state or condition of ”; and, of course, the suffix -ed shows past tense. So an averted face is turned away, not directly facing someone.

If you recognize the word root or the base word, you are well on your way to understanding the word’s meaning. Knowing some common Greek and Latin roots can improve your understanding of what you read.

ExerciseFor each item below, refer to the prefixes, roots, and suffixes in the chart to help you select the best answer.

1. During the Great Depression, some authors wrote of particular geographical regions. Geographical regions area. particular b. beside the c. in the d. particular places times. ocean. mountains. on Earth.

2. John Steinbeck writes about the human cost of the Dust Bowl migrants’ displacement from their homes. Displacement meansa. being moved b. being put c. being d. being invited away. in prison. confused. to stay.

3. Flannery O’Connor contradicted Northern critics who called her stories grotesque. O’Connora. agreed with b. disagreed c. ignored d. complimented her critics. with them. them. them.

4. Steinbeck drew inspiration from the migrants who shared their breakfast with him. The migrantsa. gave him b. discouraged c. frightened d. did not impress more spirit. him. him. him.

º Vocabulary Terms

A prefix is a word part that is inserted at the beginning of a word root or base word to create a new meaning. A suffix is a combination of letters or a single letter added at the end of a base word or word part. Prefixes and suffixes together are called affixes.

º Test-Taking Tip

When you are asked for the meaning of a word that appears in a reading pas-sage, check the root, prefix, and suffix of the word. If you recognize the root, you can probably figure out what the word means.

º Reading Handbook

For more about roots, prefixes, and suffixes, see Reading Handbook, p. R20.

eFlashcards For eFlashcards and other vocabulary activities, go to www.glencoe.com.

875

OBJECTIVES

• Learn to recognize common word roots.

• Use word parts to help you understand unfamiliar words.

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Cofield Collection, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi

BEFORE YOU READ


MEET WILLIAM FAULKNER

As a young man, William Faulkner did not seem destined for literary renown. He was both a high school and college dropout.

His neighbors nicknamed him “Count No’count,” and few guessed that this seemingly lazy youth was a literary genius who would one day write fiction that captured the struggles of the human heart and immortalized a region of rural America.

Art Imitates Life Born in Albany, Mississippi, Faulkner was a true “son of the South.” When he was five, his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where his grandfather’s connections secured various positions for Faulkner’s father.

Faulkner himself held various jobs because he did not have the patience to deal with the daily monotonies of steady work. One of his longest employments, almost three years, was as postmas-ter at the university in Oxford.

Although Faulkner read extensively, none of his read-ing concerned the history of the area where he lived. The flavor and settings of his stories were gleaned through word of mouth from the people around him.

Yoknapatawpha As a young man, Faulkner trav-eled abroad for some time and eventually landed in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he became acquainted with Sherwood Anderson and other writers. It was here that he began to write seriously. His first book, a poetry collection entitled The Marble Faun, was less than successful. Anderson advised him to attempt fiction. Faulkner published his first novel, Soldier’s Pay, in 1926, and his second novel, Mosquitoes, the following year.

“I never read any history. I talked to people around who had lived through it, and I would pick it up—I was just saturated with it but never read about it.”

—William Faulkner

With his third novel, Sartoris, Faulkner found the formula that would place him among the greatest of American writers. In this book he created the fic-tional world of Yoknapatawpha County, which was based on the region of northern Mississippi where he lived. Over the next thirty years, he continued to explore the “history” of this county and its fictional inhabitants.

Faulkner’s style often makes his writing difficult to follow. He experimented with repetition, mul-tiple points of view, and stream of consciousness. Because of the difficulty of his writing style, Faulkner was not widely read until The Portable Faulkner was published in 1946 and catapulted him to world fame. Three years later he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Faulkner kept writing until his death.

William Faulkner was born in 1897 and died in 1962.

A Rose for Emily and Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature


Author Search For more about William Faulkner, go to www.glencoe.com.

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WILLIAM FAULKNER 877

Connecting to the StoryMost people harbor two identities. One is the public face that we show to our friends and families, while the other is the private self. As you read, think about the following questions:

• How different can a person’s public identity be from his or her private identity?

• At what point might the secrets that divide a person’s public and private lives cross the line into insanity?

Building BackgroundFaulkner’s writings draw upon his knowledge of gen-teel aristocrats, unsophisticated sharecroppers, and Native Americans, as well as African Americans who had endured first the dehumanization of slavery and then the discrimination of Jim Crow.

The language in Faulkner’s work reflects the vernacular and dialect of the South in his era. Modern readers may be shocked or offended by his use of racial slurs in this selection. Faulkner, like Mark Twain, does not use this language to offend or shock. He uses it merely to reflect the language of the time and place he describes.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Return to RegionalismAs you read, imagine the people and the circum-stances that Faulkner presents. Do they mesh with what you think a small southern town would have been like one hundred years ago?

Literary Element ForeshadowingForeshadowing is the use of clues by the author to pre-pare readers for events that will happen later in the story. In “A Rose for Emily,” for example, the bad smell coming from Miss Emily’s house foreshadows death and decay. As you read, consider which events might foreshadow important plot developments.


Reading Strategy Identifying SequenceFaulkner shifts time frames so often in “A Rose for Emily” that it can be difficult for readers to understand exactly when the events in the story take place. To keep track of what happens, list the events as they occur in the narrative and then number them in the sequence they occur in Emily’s life.

Reading Tip: Making a Sequence Chart Use a sequence chart to help you keep track of events. Order the events as they occur in Emily’s life. Use the list you wrote above to guide you.

Emily’s father dies. ➧

Homer Barron arrives in town.

Emily’s cous-ins come to advise her.➧

Vocabulary

sluggishly (slu�� ish le) adv. slowly; without strength or energy; p. 879 The exhausted hikers crawled sluggishly into their tents.

vindicate (vin� də kat ) v. to justify; to prove correct in light of later circumstances; p. 881Winning the competition vindicated her efforts.

haughty (h�o� te) adj. conceited; arrogant; p. 882 The haughty old woman would never admit a mistake.

circumvent (sur´ kəm vent��) v. to get around or to avoid by clever maneuvering; p. 883 We had to circumvent the usual procedure in order to finish the job quickly.

virulent (vir� yə lənt) adj. extremely poisonous or harmful; p. 883 After World War I, a virulent strain of influenza killed more than 20 million people.

Vocabulary Tip: Connotation and Denotation The connotation of a word is its suggested or implied meaning. The denotation is its literal defi-nition.




• understanding the historical period• analyzing foreshadowing

• identifying sequence

OBJECTIVES

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When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monu-ment, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant—a combined gardener and cook—had seen in at least ten years. It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas1 and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily light-some style of the seventies,2 set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliter-ated even the august3 names of that neighbor-hood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish4 decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused5 cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor—he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron—remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity.6 Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.

When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatis-faction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff ’s office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic7 shape, in a thin, flowing

S11-158-01C-635423 U6T9Florens Flourished David Reed

William Faulkner

Identifying Sequence Which clues reveal that the narrator is moving into a flashback?

Reading StrategyReturn to Regionalism What does the opening

of “A Rose for Emily” tell you about the town and the type of people who live there?

Big Idea

6. [remitted . . . perpetuity] This phrase means that Miss Emily was excused from paying taxes forever after her father’s death.

7. Here, archaic means “old-fashioned.”

1. Cupolas are small, domed structures rising above a roof.2. Lightsome means “light and graceful.” Seventies refers to

the 1870s.3. August (o ust) means “distinguished” or “prominent.”4. Coquettish (ko ket ish) means “flirtatious.”5. Cedar-bemused means “lost among the cedar trees”

(literally, “confused by cedars”).

First Image

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calligraphy8 in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.

They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen.9 A deputation10 waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-paint-ing lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furni-ture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes11 in the single sun-ray. On a tar-nished gilt12 easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily’s father.

They rose when she entered—a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tar-nished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid13 hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.

She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokes-man came to a stumbling halt. Then they could

hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.

Her voice was dry and cold. “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves.”

“But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn’t you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?”

“I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson.”

“But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go by the—”

“See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.”

“But, Miss Emily—”“See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had

been dead almost ten years.) “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared. “Show these gentlemen out.”

IISo she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart—the one we believed would marry her—had deserted her. After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweet-heart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity14 to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man—a young man then—going in and out with a market basket.

“Just as if a man—any man—could keep a kitchen properly,” the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.

Foreshadowing What might the paint-ing foreshadow?

Literary Element

sluggishly (slu ish le) adv. slowly; without strength or energy

Vocabulary

8. Calligraphy is an elegant type of handwriting. 9. The Board of Aldermen is the group formed by members

of a city or town council. 10. A deputation is a “a small group that represents a larger one.” 11. Motes are particles or specks, as of dust. 12. Gilt means “covered with gold.” 13. Pallid means “lacking healthy color” or “pale.”

Foreshadowing What might this state-ment about the “smell” and Emily foreshadow?

Literary Element

Identifying Sequence By the time Emily had “vanquished” the town officials about the “smell,” what significant events had already occurred in Emily’s life? List them in order.

Reading Strategy

14. Temerity (tə mer ə te) is excessive boldness.

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A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.

“But what will you have me do about it, madam?” he said.

“Why, send her word to stop it,” the woman said. “Isn’t there a law?”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Judge Stevens said. “It’s probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I’ll speak to him about it.”

The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident depreca-tion.15 “We really must do something about it, Judge. I’d be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we’ve got to do something.” That night the Board of Aldermen met—three gray-beards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.

“It’s simple enough,” he said. “Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don’t . . .”

“Dammit, sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?”

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the out-buildings.16 As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts17 that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.

15. Diffident deprecation means “timid disapproval.”

Autumn Glory: The Old Mill, 1869. John Atkinson Grimshaw. Oil on canvas, 62.2 x 87.6 cm. Leeds Museums and Galleries, City Art Gallery, U.K.

16. Outbuildings are separate buildings, such as a woodshed or barn, associated with a main building.

17. Locusts are deciduous trees. Several varieties have thorns and fragrant flowers that hang down in clusters.

John Atkinson Grimshaw/Leeds Museums and Galleries, U.K./Bridgeman Art Library

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That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau,18 Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the back-ground, her father a spraddled19 silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper,20 she had become human-ized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

III

She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows—sort of tragic and serene.

The town had just let the contracts for pav-ing the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father’s death they began the work. The con-struction company came with niggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee—a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yel-low-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, “Of course a Grierson would not think seri-ously of a Northerner, a day laborer.” But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige21—without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her.” She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two fami-lies. They had not even been represented at the funeral.

And as soon as the old people said, “Poor Emily,” the whispering began. “Do you sup-pose it’s really so?” they said to one another. “Of course it is. What else could . . .” This

Return to Regionalism What does this pas-sage reveal about the social and economic status of most people in the town as opposed to that of Miss Emily?

Big Idea

vindicate (vin də kat ) v. to justify; to prove correct in light of later circumstances

Vocabulary Return to Regionalism What does this comment suggest about the southern aristocratic attitude toward northerners? What does it imply about Emily’s interest in Homer Barron?

Big Idea

18. A tableau (tab lo) is a striking or artistic grouping of people or objects.

19. Spraddled means “sprawled” or “spread wide apart.” 20. A pauper is a very poor person.

21. The French expression noblesse oblige (no bles o blezh) suggests that those of high birth or rank have a responsibility to act kindly and honorably toward others.

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behind their hands; rus-tling of craned22 silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.”

She carried her head high enough—even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dig-nity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that

touch of earthiness to reaffirm her impervious-ness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say “Poor Emily,” and while the two female cousins were visiting her.

“I want some poison,” she said to the drug-gist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye-sockets as you imagine a lighthousekeep-er’s face ought to look. “I want some poison,” she said.

“Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I’d recom—”

“I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.”

The druggist named several. “They’ll kill any-thing up to an elephant. But what you want is—”

“Arsenic,” Miss Emily said. “Is that a good one?”“Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma’am. But what you

want—”“I want arsenic.”The druggist looked down at her. She

looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. “Why, of course,” the druggist said. “If that’s what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.”

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn’t come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: “For rats.”

IV

So the next day we all said, “She will kill her-self”; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, “She will marry him.” Then we said, “She will persuade him yet,” because Homer himself had remarked— he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club—that he was not a marrying man. Later we said, “Poor Emily” behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.

Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to inter-fere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minis-ter—Miss Emily’s people were Episcopal—to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister’s wife wrote to Miss Emily’s relations in Alabama.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet set23 in silver, with the letters H. B. on

Foreshadowing What might Emily’s purchase at the drugstore foreshadow? What makes her purchase seem particularly suspicious?

Literary Element

22. Craned means “stretched.”

Return to Regionalism What does the town’s involvement in Emily’s affairs suggest about its morals and values? Why is Emily a threat?

Big Idea

23. A toilet set is a set of articles used for personal grooming (hairbrush, comb, etc.).

haughty (ho te) adj. conceited; arrogant

Vocabulary

Visual Vocabulary Jalousies (jalə sez) are overlapping, adjustable slats that cover a door or window.

SuperStock

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each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron—the streets had been finished some time since—was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off,24 but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily’s coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal,25 and we were all Miss Emily’s allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, within three days

Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening.

And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.

virulent (vir yə lənt) adj. extremely poisonous or harmful

Vocabulary

Foreshadowing What might the juxta-position of these two sentences foreshadow about Emily and Homer Barron?

Literary Element

circumvent (sur kəm vent) v. to get around or to avoid by clever maneuvering

Vocabulary

Day After the Funeral, 1925. Edward Hopper. Watercolor on paper. Private collection. James Goodman Gallery, New York.

24. A blowing-off is a celebration. 25. A cabal (kə bal) is a group united in a secret plot.

Edward Hopper/Private Collection, James Goodman Gallery, New York/Bridgeman Art Library

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When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris’ contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. When the town got free postal deliv-ery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fas-ten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows—she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an idol in a niche,26 looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro. He talked to no

one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

VThe Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant27 voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.

The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier28 and the ladies sibilant and macabre;29 and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.

The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall30 as of the tomb seemed to lie

Return to Regionalism How do Emily’s ser-vant’s actions before and after her death reflect the general change in the town and in the South overall during this period?

Big Idea

Identifying Sequence How do you think Faulkner’s nonlinear sequence of events enhances the story about Emily?

Reading Strategy

26. A niche (nich) is a recessed area in a wall, sometimes used for displaying a statue.

27. Sibilant (si bə lənt) means “making a hissing sound.” 28. A bier is a stand for a coffin. 29. Macabre (mə ka brə) means “gruesome” or “suggesting

the horror of death.” 30. An acrid pall is a bitter-smelling covering.

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everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal:31 upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a col-lar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale cres-cent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.

The man himself lay in the bed.For a long while we just stood there, looking

down at the profound and fleshless grin. The

body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded32 him. What was left of him, rot-ted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and bid-ing dust.

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nos-trils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

The Sunny Parlor, c. 1901. Wilhelm Hammershoi. Oil on canvas, 49.7 x 40 cm. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany.

31. Here, bridal means “wedding.” 32. Cuckolded means “betrayed,” in the sense of a husband

deceived by an unfaithful wife.

Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY

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I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate1 with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle2 from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and tra-vail,3 among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it for-ever, leaving no room in his workshop for any-thing but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story

is ephemeral4 and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying eve-ning, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compas-sion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

1. Commensurate (kə men sər it) means “of equal measure.”2. Pinnacle (pin ə kəl) means “highest point” or “peak.”3. Travail (trə val) is exhausting mental or physical work.

Identifying Sequence Why might Faulkner have chosen to place this statement at the end and not the beginning of his speech?

Reading StrategyReturn to Regionalism How might stories such as “A Rose for Emily” reflect Faulkner’s desire to write about “the human heart in conflict with itself”?

Big Idea

4. Ephemeral (i fem ər əl) means “lasting a very brief time” or “short-lived.”

William Faulkner

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Nob

el F

ound

atio

n


AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. Were you surprised by the ending of the story?

Why or why not?

Recall and Interpret2. (a)How did Miss Emily receive the delegation that

came to explain that she must pay taxes? (b)What does her behavior demonstrate about her character?

3. (a)What happens when Miss Emily’s house begins to smell and when her father dies? (b)How does the community interpret her response to these incidents?

4. (a)In Faulkner’s “Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature,” what are modern writers con-cerned with, according to Faulkner? (b)Why is this problematic?

5. In the speech, what does Faulkner say is the only thing worth writing about? Why?

Analyze and Evaluate 6. (a)In “A Rose for Emily,” what was the effect

of Emily’s father on her relationships with men? (b)What clues does Faulkner use to reveal this effect?

7. (a)How would you characterize the narrator of “A Rose for Emily”? (b)What can you infer about the narrator’s attitude toward Miss Emily? Explain.

8. (a)In Faulkner’s speech, what is his view of our future and of the writer’s role in that future? (b)Do you agree with this view? Explain.

Connect 9. (a)How do you think the events of Faulkner’s

time influenced this speech? (b)How are his views still relevant today?

10. Big Idea Return to Regionalism In “A Rose for Emily,” how do the southern traditions and attitudes of her neighbors affect Miss Emily?


William Faulkner has a reputation for prose that is difficult to follow. First,

he does not unfold his plots in a linear fashion. As Dean Morgan Schmitter explains in his essay “The Faulkner Legend”:

7

“Another feature of Faulkner’s style is the manner in which he releases information, sometimes preventing the reader from having full perspective on what is happening. Although the reader accumulates information as he goes along, often he must wait pages to find the facts he needs . . . ”

The second reason that Faulkner’s writing is hard to follow is that his sentences are often long and ram-bling, as though he wants to present entire human experiences within a single written breath. As Conrad Aiken writes,

“And at once, if one considers these queer sentences not simply by themselves, as monsters of grammar or awkwardness, but in their relation to the book as a whole, one sees a functional reason and necessity for their being as they are. They parallel in a curious and perhaps inevitable way, and not without aesthetic justification, the whole elaborate method of deliberately withheld meaning, of progressive and partial and delayed disclosure, which so often gives the characteristic shape of the novels themselves.”

Group Activity Discuss the following questions with your classmates.

1. What examples can you find of confusing sequences of events and rambling sentences in “A Rose for Emily”?

2. (a)Do you find the story difficult to follow? (b)Is it worth the effort? Explain.

WORK OR PLEASURE?

YOU’RE THE CRITIC : Similar Viewpoints

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LITERARY ANALYSIS READING AND VOCABULARY

Literary Element ForeshadowingFaulkner’s style, which pulls his readers back and forth through time to reveal the events in his plots, can make it difficult to recognize foreshadowing. Because there is no single time frame in which a reader can comfortably base his or her perspective, it is important to pay special attention to details to see how they affect future outcomes or how they relate to events that occurred previously. In fact, some details fore-shadow events that occur earlier in Emily’s life, even though they are revealed later in the narration.

1. Which event in the narration is the earliest fore-shadowing of Homer Barron’s fate?

2. What is the next event that foreshadows Barron’s fate?

3. As you read the story, were you able to recognize any examples of foreshadowing even though Faulkner jumbled events in his story? If you did, explain how you recognized them. If you did not, explain why you were fooled.

Review: FlashbackA flashback is an interruption in a plot to portray an incident that happened in the past. Writers use flash-backs to explain why characters behave as they do or how the plot has developed as it has.

Partner Activity Meet with another classmate to dis-cuss Faulkner’s use of flashback in “A Rose for Emily.” Use the five sections as numbered by the author to determine where the flashbacks are and at what point in Emily’s life each one occurs.

Reading Strategy Identifying SequenceAs you have seen, Faulkner does not often take his readers on a chronological journey through his stories. “A Rose for Emily” is no exception.

1. Use the list and the sequence chart that you made as you read the story to write one or two para-graphs describing the important events in Emily’s life. Use sequencing words, such as first, next, then, and finally, and specific times and dates to put the events in proper chronological order.

2. Explain how the convoluted sequence adds to or detracts from the story’s meaning.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Denotation and Connotation For each of the vocabulary words listed below, circle the word in parentheses that is the word’s denota-tion and underline the word that is its connotation.

1. sluggishly (inactively, lazily)

2. circumvent (avoid, evade)

3. virulent (poisonous, harmful)

4. vindicate (avenge, justify)

5. haughty (proud, snobby)

Academic Vocabulary

Here are two words from the vocabulary list on page R86. These words will help you think, write, and talk about the selection.

justify (jəs tə f ) v. to give good reason for a specific action to be taken

prior (prər) adj. occurring before a given time or event

Practice and Apply1. How did Colonel Sartoris justify Miss Emily’s

not having to pay taxes to the town?2. Prior to her relationship with Homer Barron,

what was Miss Emily’s experience with young men?

FlashbackSection

1

2

3

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Writing About LiteratureRespond to Conflict Faulkner once described “A Rose for Emily” as a “manifestation of man’s injustice to man, of the poor tragic human being struggling with its own heart, with others, with its environment, for the simple things which all human beings want.” Write a brief essay in which you explain why one of the four conflicts Faulkner mentions above is central to the story.

The introduction of your essay should state which con-flict you feel is central to the story and why. The conclu-sion should summarize your thoughts and perhaps offer a related insight. Each body paragraph should include a major point and evidence from the story to support your viewpoint. Use a graphic organizer like the one below to organize your body paragraphs:

After you complete your draft, meet with a partner to offer suggestions on how to improve each other’s work. Then edit and proofread your essay for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Learning for LifeWrite a radio or television news story about the discovery of Homer Barron’s body in Miss Emily’s bedroom. Use details from “A Rose for Emily” as the basis for your story. Then choose several characters from the story and invent quotes from each one that reveal that character’s involvement with and impact on Miss Emily’s life.

Faulkner’s Language and StyleChoosing Fresh Adjectives Faulkner is a master of description. He chooses adjectives that are precise and unusual:

“coquettish decay”“cedar-bemused cemetery”“profound and fleshless grin”“Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.”

Imagine how spare these nouns would sound without such colorful adjectives.

When describing people, things, or places in your writ-ing, avoid adjectives that are so overused that they convey little meaning to readers. For example, the adjective bad is so unoriginal that it connotes no spe-cific image for a reader. Words like sinister or hostile suggest menace, while brutal and vicious show a more violent type of evil.

Before you write a description, think carefully about what you are describing. Picture it in your mind and choose adjectives that will stick with your reader. If you have difficulty, consult an indexed thesaurus. A good thesaurus will suggest various nuances and con-notations for the overused adjectives that often crowd more exact and descriptive words from a writer’s mind.

Activity Scan “A Rose for Emily” for other examples of fresh, precise adjectives. Make a list of them to read aloud to the class.

Revising CheckFresh Adjectives Work with a partner to review and revise any overused or imprecise adjectives that you used in your essay on “A Rose for Emily.”

WRITING AND EXTENDING GRAMMAR AND STYLE


Evidence B Evidence CEvidence A

Major Point

Quotation(s) Quotation(s)Quotation(s)

Explain Quotation/Connect to

Thesis


Thesis


Thesis

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images


BEFORE YOU READ

A Worn Path

MEET EUDORA WELTY

Eudora Welty admitted to living a sheltered life. Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, she lived in her family’s house there until

her death at age ninety-two. Welty maintained, though, that “a sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”

Pleasant Childhood Welty’s parents filled their house with books and loved to read on their own and to their children. Once she learned to read herself, Welty read everything she could get her hands on. Her mother, however, put one restriction on her reading. She told the town librarian that Eudora could read anything in the library except the then-popular novel Elsie Dinsmore. When Eudora asked why, her mother explained that the main character fainted and fell off her piano stool after being made to practice for a long time. Her mother told Eudora that she was too impression-able: “You’d read that and the very first thing you’d do, you’d fall off the piano stool.” Thereafter, Welty could never hear the word impressionable without calling up the image of falling off a piano stool.

“Writing a story is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life. This has been the case with me. Connections slowly emerge.”

—Eudora Welty

Work with the WPA Welty’s love of reading and her lively imagination inspired her decision to become a writer for the Works Progress Admin-istration (WPA). This government agency, founded

during the Great Depression, gave people work on pub-lic projects, such as constructing roads and buildings, clear-ing trails in parks, and painting murals. Welty traveled around Mississippi and wrote articles about WPA projects in the state. Welty later said that, through her travels, she gained her first glimpses of the very different ways in which people live. Her musings and imaginings about the people she saw, talked to, and photographed inspired her writing throughout her life.

Successful Writing Career Welty had her first short story published when she was twenty-seven. Five years later, she published A Curtain of Green, a collection of short stories in which “A Worn Path” first appeared. In her thirties, she published her first novels, The Robber Bridegroom (1942) and Delta Wedding (1946). Welty went on to write award-winning fiction for many years, until severe arthri-tis forced her to give up writing at age eighty-five.

Southern Charm At Welty’s funeral, her agent, Timothy Seldes, told a revealing story about Welty’s last words. He said that when her doctor leaned over her bed and asked if there was any-thing he could do for her, she replied, “No, but thank you for inviting me to the party.” This polite response illustrates Welty’s southern charm and gracious warmth—qualities that Welty brought to her writing. Her compassionate portrayals of peo-ple living in the deep South powerfully illuminate their shared values and complicated history.

Eudora Welty was born in 1909 and died in 2001.

Author Search For more about Eudora Welty, go to www.glencoe.com.

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EUDORA WELTY 891

Connecting to the StoryThink about elderly people whom you respect and admire—people you know personally or people you know about. What is it that you admire about them? As you read the story, reflect on the following questions:

• What problems do older people face?

• What qualities of character do elderly people demon-strate as they deal with the difficulties of their lives?

Building Background“A Worn Path” is set near the city of Natchez (nach� iz), Mississippi, around 1930. The Natchez Trace was an old trail that led from the Native American villages along the banks of the lower Mississippi River northeastward six hundred miles to settlements along the Cumberland River, in what is now Tennessee. Travelers who boated down the Mississippi had to walk or ride the Natchez Trace to return to locations upstream. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, the Natchez Trace was one of the most well-traveled trails in the United States. However, new, powerful steamships that could travel against the Mississippi’s strong current were introduced and allowed river travelers to make their way upstream by boat. As a result, the Natchez Trace fell into disuse around 1820.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Return to RegionalismAs you read, think about how the lives of the charac-ters have been shaped by the history and culture of the South.

Literary Element DescriptionDescription is writing that captures the physical sensa-tions of a place or of an experience. As you read, notice the details Welty includes to help readers imag-ine that they can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel what she is describing.



Reading Strategy VisualizingVisualizing is picturing a writer’s ideas or descriptions in the mind’s eye. Visualizing is one of the best ways to help you understand and remember information in a story.

Reading Tip: Sketch On a separate sheet of paper, make quick sketches showing how you visualize each important scene that you read.

Vocabulary

grave (�rav) adj. dignified and gloomy; somber; p. 892 Mark wore a grave look as he delivered the eulogy.

vigorously (vi��ər əs le) adv. with power, energy, and strength; p. 894 Katie vigorously shook the rug to get the dust out.

ceremonial (ser ə mo�ne əl) adj. formal; p. 896 The graduates wore ceremonial robes.

solemn (sol�əm) adj. serious; somber; p. 896 With a solemn expression, the child tended to her sick puppy.

comprehension (kom pri hen�shən) n. the act of grasping mentally; understanding; p. 896 Mia’s comprehension of math is excellent.

Vocabulary Tip: Analogies Comparisons that reveal the relationship between two words or ideas are called analogies. In analogies exercises, you are frequently presented with a pair of words that demonstrates a relationship and then are asked to combine two other words to indicate a similar relationship. To complete such an exercise, decide on the relationship represented by the first two words. Then apply that relationship to the sec-ond set of words.


• relating literature to historical period

• analyzing description

• visualizing scenes and characters

• expanding vocabulary

• reviewing archetypes

• comparing and contrasting characters

OBJECTIVES

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It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and light-ness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird.

She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age.

Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper.

Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, “Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals! . . . Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites1. . . . Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don’t let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way.” Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding things.

grave (rav) adj. dignified and gloomy; somber

VocabularyVisualizing Ask yourself what Phoenix

Jackson looks like. Form a mental image of Phoenix based on the details you have read so far.

Reading Strategy

1. Bob-whites, also called quails or partridges, are birds with mottled brown plumage and white markings.

Day’s End, Jackson, 1930s. Eudora Welty. Photograph. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Eudora Welty Collection.

Eudora Welty

Mississippi Department of Archives and History

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EUDORA WELTY 893

On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the hollow2 was the mourning dove—it was not too late for him.

The path ran up a hill. “Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far,” she said, in the voice of argument old people keep to use with themselves. “Something always take a hold of me on this hill—pleads I should stay.”

After she got to the top she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come. “Up through pines,” she said at length. “Now down through oaks.”

Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. But before she got to the bottom of the hill a bush caught her dress.

Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. “I in the thorny bush,” she said. “Thorns, you doing your appointed3 work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir. Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush.”

Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for her cane.

“Sun so high!” she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. “The time getting all gone here.”

At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek.

“Now comes the trial,” said Phoenix.Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log

and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her, like a festival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.

“I wasn’t as old as I thought,” she said.

But she sat down to rest. She spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands over her knees. Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble- cake on it she spoke to him. “That would be acceptable,” she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air.

So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was.

At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There sat a buzzard.

“Who you watching?”In the furrow4 she made her way along.“Glad this not the season for bulls,” she

said, looking sideways, “and the good Lord made his snakes to curl up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don’t see no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come once. It took a while to get by him, back in the summer.”

She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook and was taller than her head. “Through the maze now,” she said, for there was no path.

Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her.

At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost.

“Ghost,” she said sharply, “who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary5 death close by.”

Description Why does the author include details about the animals in the woods as well as about the silence and sunlight there?

Literary Element

Return to Regionalism From what you have read so far, what do you infer about Phoenix Jackson’s back-ground as well as about her present life?

Big Idea

2. A hollow is a small valley.3. Appointed means “assigned” or “designated.”

Visualizing How do you imagine Phoenix Jackson looks and sounds as she goes through the fence?

Reading Strategy

4. A furrow is a long, narrow channel in the ground made by a plow.

5. Nary means “not one.”

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But there was no answer—only the ragged dancing in the wind.

She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice.

“You scarecrow,” she said. Her face lighted. “I ought to be shut up for good,” she said with laughter. “My senses is gone. I too old. I the old-est people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow,” she said, “while I dancing with you.”

She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawn down, shook her head once or twice in a little strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts.

Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the whispering field.

At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts. The quail were walking around like pullets,6 seem-ing all dainty and unseen.

“Walk pretty,” she said. “This the easy place. This the easy going.”

She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. “I walking in their sleep,” she said, nodding her head vigorously.

In a ravine7 she went where a spring was silently flowing through a hollow log. Old Phoenix bent and drank. “Sweet-gum8 makes the water sweet,” she said, and drank more. “Nobody know who made this well, for it was here when I was born.”

The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from every limb. “Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles.” Then the track went into the road.

Deep, deep the road went down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live-oaks met, and it was as dark as a cave.

A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.9

Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. “Old woman,” she said to herself, “that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you.”

A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a chain.

Description Why does the author include details of the scene such as “old cotton,” “dead corn,” and “ragged dancing in the wind”?

Literary Elementvigorously (vi ər əs le) adv. with power, energy, and strength

Vocabulary

6. Pullets are young hens.7. A ravine is a deep, narrow valley, especially one eroded by

running water.8. The sweet-gum tree discharges a fragrant gum through

cracks and crevices in its trunk.9. The pods of a milkweed plant split open and release seeds

with puffs of white, silky down.

Road Between High Banks, Hinds County, 1940s. Eudora Welty.Photograph. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Eudora Welty Collection. Viewing the Photograph: In what ways is the path in the photograph similar to or different from the path in the story?


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EUDORA WELTY 895

“Well, Granny!” he laughed. “What are you doing there?”

“Lying on my back like a June-bug waiting to be turned over, mister,” she said, reaching up her hand.

He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. “Anything broken, Granny?”

“No sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough,” said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. “I thank you for your trouble.”

“Where do you live, Granny?” he asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other.

“Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can’t even see it from here.”

“On your way home?”“No sir, I going to town.”“Why, that’s too far! That’s as far as I walk

when I come out myself, and I get something for my trouble.” He patted the stuffed bag he car-ried, and there hung down a little closed claw. It was one of the bob-whites, with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was dead. “Now you go on home, Granny!”

“I bound to go to town, mister,” said Phoenix. “The time come around.”

He gave another laugh, filling the whole land-scape. “I know you old colored people! Wouldn’t miss going to town to see Santa Claus!”

But something held old Phoenix very still. The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different radiation.10 Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of the man’s pocket onto the ground.

“How old are you, Granny?” he was saying.“There is no telling, mister,” she said, “no

telling.”Then she gave a little cry and clapped her

hands and said, “Git on away from here, dog! Look! Look at that dog!” She laughed as if in admiration. “He ain’t scared of nobody. He a big black dog.” She whispered, “Sic him!”

“Watch me get rid of that cur,” said the man. “Sic him, Pete! Sic him!”

Phoenix heard the dogs fighting, and heard the man running and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was slowly bending for-ward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was low-ered almost to her knees. The yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen. Then she slowly straightened up, she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. “God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing.”

The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. “Well, I scared him off that time,” he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix.

She stood straight and faced him.“Doesn’t the gun scare you?” he said, still

pointing it.“No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my

day, and for less than what I done,” she said, holding utterly still.

He smiled, and shouldered the gun. “Well, Granny,” he said, “you must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I’d give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you.”

“I bound to go on my way, mister,” said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the red rag. Then they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the hill.

She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. Then she smelled wood-smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps. Dozens of little black children whirled around her. There ahead was Natchez shining. Bells were ringing. She walked on.

In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung and crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the

Visualizing Picture the scene as the man helps Phoenix.

Reading Strategy

Description What does the description of Phoenix suggest about her thoughts as she spies the nickel?

Literary Element

10. Here, radiation means “a pattern of rays or waves.”

Return to Regionalism What does this exchange suggest about the way whites and African Americans in the town behaved toward each other?

Big Idea

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daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her.

She paused quietly on the sidewalk where people were passing by. A lady came along in the crowd, carrying an armful of red-, green- and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her.

“Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?” She held up her foot.

“What do you want, Grandma?”“See my shoe,” said Phoenix. “Do all right for

out in the country, but wouldn’t look right to go in a big building.”

“Stand still then, Grandma,” said the lady. She put her packages down on the sidewalk beside her and laced and tied both shoes tightly.

“Can’t lace ’em with a cane,” said Phoenix. “Thank you, missy. I doesn’t mind asking a nice lady to tie up my shoe, when I gets out on the street.”

Moving slowly and from side to side, she went into the big building, and into a tower of steps, where she walked up and around and around until her feet knew to stop.

She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her head.

“Here I be,” she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body.

“A charity case, I suppose,” said an attendant who sat at the desk before her.

But Phoenix only looked above her head. There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright net.

“Speak up, Grandma,” the woman said. “What’s your name? We must have your history, you know. Have you been here before? What seems to be the trouble with you?”

Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were bothering her.

“Are you deaf?” cried the attendant.But then the nurse came in.

“Oh, that’s just old Aunt Phoenix,” she said. “She doesn’t come for herself—she has a little grandson. She makes these trips just as regular as clockwork. She lives away back off the Old Natchez Trace.” She bent down. “Well, Aunt Phoenix, why don’t you just take a seat? We won’t keep you standing after your long trip.” She pointed.

The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair.

“Now, how is the boy?” asked the nurse.Old Phoenix did not speak.“I said, how is the boy?”But Phoenix only waited and stared straight

ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity.

“Is his throat any better?” asked the nurse. “Aunt Phoenix, don’t you hear me? Is your grandson’s throat any better since the last time you came for the medicine?”

With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if she were in armor.

“You mustn’t take up our time this way, Aunt Phoenix,” the nurse said. “Tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over. He isn’t dead, is he?”

At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke.

“My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip.”

“Forgot?” The nurse frowned. “After you came so far?”

Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. “I never did go to school, I was too old at the Surrender,”11 she said in a soft voice. “I’m an old woman without an education. It was my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming.”

Visualizing Visualize the exchanges between Phoenix, the attendant, and the nurse. What attitudes toward Phoenix do the attendant and the nurse express?

Reading Strategy

ceremonial (ser ə mo ne əl) adj. formal

Vocabulary

11. The Surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865 ended the Civil War.

solemn (sol əm) adj. serious; sombercomprehension (kom pri hen shən) n. the act of grasping mentally; understanding

VocabularyDescription Which details evoke the

contrast between the cabins near the river and the paved city?

Literary Element

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EUDORA WELTY 897

“Throat never heals, does it?” said the nurse, speaking in a loud, sure voice to old Phoenix. By now she had a card with something written on it, a little list. “Yes. Swallowed lye. When was it?—January—two-three years ago—”

Phoenix spoke unasked now. “No, missy, he not dead, he just the same. Every little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not get his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing medicine.”

“All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it,” said the nurse. “But it’s an obstinate case.”

“My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,” Phoenix went on. “We is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don’t seem to put him back at all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wear a little patch quilt and peep out holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remembers so plain now. I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell him from all the others in creation.”

“All right.” The nurse was trying to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of medicine. “Charity,” she said, making a check mark in a book.

Old Phoenix held the bottle close to her eyes, and then carefully put it into her pocket.

“I thank you,” she said.“It’s Christmas time, Grandma,” said the

attendant. “Could I give you a few pennies out of my purse?”

“Five pennies is a nickel,” said Phoenix stiffly.“Here’s a nickel,” said the attendant.Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand.

She received the nickel and then fished the other nickel out of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm closely, with her head on one side.

Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor.“This is what come to me to do,” she said. “I

going to the store and buy my child a little wind-mill they sells, made out of paper. He going to find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world. I’ll march myself back where he waiting, holding it straight up in this hand.”

She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor’s office. Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down.

Visualizing After rereading the details of the grandson’s appearance, picture him in your mind. What impressions do you have of the boy and of Phoenix’s feelings about him?

Reading Strategy

School Children, Jackson, 1930s. Eudora Welty. Photograph. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Eudora Welty Collection. Viewing the Photograph: Do you think Eudora Welty might have had her story “A Worn Path” in mind when she took this photograph? Why or why not?

Return to Regionalism What do you infer about the situation of Phoenix and her grandson?

Big Idea

Description Notice the descriptions of Phoenix Jackson’s manners, bearing, and plans she has for her money. What do these details suggest about her character?

Literary Element


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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What is your favorite incident or image from “A

Worn Path”? What is it about the image or incident that especially appeals to you?

Recall and Interpret2. (a)What does Phoenix Jackson look like? (b)What

does Phoenix Jackson’s appearance tell you about her?

3. (a)Describe in detail the path Phoenix is taking. (b)From its description, what can you infer about the path? Explain what the path may symbolize, or represent. Support your answer.

4. (a)What is Phoenix’s destination and purpose? (b)At what point in the story do you learn this?

5. What does the purpose of Phoenix’s trip tell you about her character?

Analyze and Evaluate6. (a)Do you feel empathy toward Phoenix? (b)Why

or why not? Relate your answer to events in the story as well as to your own experiences.

7. In Greek mythology, the phoenix is a bird that, at the end of its life, burns itself to death; from its ashes, a new phoenix rises. Why may Welty have named her main character Phoenix?

8. (a)An author uses description to create a picture of a person, place, or thing. In your opinion, how effective are Welty’s descriptions in creating a believable portrait of Phoenix Jackson? (b)How effective is Welty’s writing in creating a vivid pic-ture of the “worn path”?

Connect 9. Refer to your response to the Connecting to

the Story activity on page 891. Would you add Phoenix Jackson to your list? Why or why not?

10. Big Idea Return to Regionalism What does “A Worn Path” reveal about the way conditions in the South during the 1930s affected the lives of people there?


Literary Element Description A description is a detailed portrayal of a person, place, or thing. When authors write descriptions, they include vivid and precise adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Authors may use details to describe tangible things, such as the appearance of a character. Or they may use details to describe intangible things, such as a character’s personality traits.

1. Identify details in the story that describe the coun-tryside around the Natchez Trace. Which details do you consider most vivid or striking? Explain.

2. In the city, Phoenix Jackson speaks first to a woman carrying presents and later to an attendant and a nurse. How do the descriptions in these scenes help to suggest that Jackson has a certain amount of pride despite her humble situation?

Review: Archetype An archetype is an image, a character type, or a plot pattern that occurs frequently in literature, mythol-ogy, folklore, and religion. Archetypes call up strong—and sometimes illogical—emotions in the reader.

Group Activity Meet with a small group and discuss Eudora Welty’s use of archetypes in “A Worn Path.” Possible archetypes to discuss include the strong grandmother, the kind stranger, the poor but deter-mined woman, and the sick child. Share your thoughts on Welty’s use of these archetypes with the class.

LITERARY ANALYSIS

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Make a general statement comparing and contrasting the two characters.

Develop the comparison and contrast by elaborating on the points you noted in your chart.

Make a brief summarizing state-ment about the two characters and consider commenting on Welty’s purpose in introducing the hunter to the story.

Body Paragraphs

▲▲

Conclusion

▲

➧

Introduction➧


Reading Strategy Visualizing Read the passage below from page 897. Try to visualize the facial expressions and body language of the two characters.

“Here’s a nickel,” said the attendant.Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. She received the nickel and then fished the other nickel out of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm closely, with her head on one side.

1. Describe the probable facial expression and body language of the attendant.

2. Why do you suppose Phoenix holds her head to one side as she looks at the nickels? Support your answer.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Analogies Choose the word that best completes each analogy.

1. practice : competence :: study : a. books b. comprehension c. mathematics

2. party : festive :: funeral : a. solemn b. sermon c. ceremony

3. serious : trivial :: informal : a. tuxedo b. gathering c. ceremonial

4. weakly : feebly :: forcefully : a. vigorously b. eagerly c. reluctantly

5. lighthearted : cheerful :: somber : a. brokenhearted b. expressionless c. grave

Writing About LiteratureCompare and Contrast Character In “A Worn Path,” Phoenix Jackson encounters several secondary charac-ters on her journey. The character portrayed in most detail is the hunter. Write a brief essay in which you compare Phoenix with the hunter. Include your thoughts about the way in which the social makeup of the South during the 1930s is reflected in these characters. Use evidence from the story to support your points.

Before you write your first draft, complete a chart like the one below to compare Phoenix with the hunter in terms of age, appearance, activities, attitudes, dialect, and any other elements that you think are important.

Then follow the writing path shown here as you write your first draft.

Before writing your final version, meet with a peer reviewer to evaluate each other’s first drafts and to offer suggestions about areas that can be improved. Then proofread and edit your work for errors in spell-ing, grammar, and punctuation.

EUDORA WELTY 899

PhoenixCharacteristics

Hunter


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CORBIS


BEFORE YOU READ

from Black Boy

MEET RICHARD WRIGHT

As a writer, Richard Wright wanted to “wage a war with words,” and he suc-ceeded, becoming one of the first major

African American literary figures. His books are raw and forceful—whether they are portraying life in the urban ghettos of the North or the oppres-sion of African Americans in the South.

Wright’s first book, Uncle Tom’s Children, was praised by critics, and Malcolm Cowley of the New Republic claimed it was “heartening, as evidence of a vigorous new talent, and terrifying as the expres-sion of a racial hatred that has never ceased to grow and gets no chance to die.” However, Wright was dissatisfied with the book, because he felt that it did not adequately portray the reality of racism and violence in the United States. “I had written a book [Uncle Tom’s Children] which even banker’s daughters could read and weep over and feel good. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.” His next work was Native Son—a book that would change U.S. culture for-ever through its portrayal of a man who has suf-fered the injustices of racism, poverty, and despair.

“It’s strong, it’s raw—but it’s life as I see and lived it.”

—Richard Wright

Literature from Life In the opinion of many, Black Boy is Wright’s most important work because it was not only his autobiography but a social doc-umentary of the hardships caused by racism. Ralph Ellison, who was strongly influenced by Wright,

claimed that “In Black Boy Wright has used his own life to probe what qualities of will, imagina-tion, and intellect are required of a Southern Negro in order to possess the meaning of his life in the United States.”

Born in 1908 in Mississippi, Wright experienced fear and oppression early. He first witnessed racial violence at the age of eight when his uncle was lynched by a group of white men. Throughout his life, Wright repeatedly saw members of his race degraded by whites, yet he refused to believe that African Americans were inferior. He began read-ing and educating himself, and at nineteen he left for the North, mistakenly believing that he could live a life without discrimination there.

Outspoken Expatriate Realizing that social con-ditions for African Americans were not changing for the better, Wright moved his family to Paris, France, in 1947. He published no books for seven years but instead wrote articles on politics. While in France, he became friends with the writers Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and André Gide. Their existential views influenced his later work.

Wright’s reputation and literary influence declined during the 1950s, as young African American writers such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison emerged. Amid the Black Arts movement of the 1960s, how-ever, Wright’s work was rediscovered, inspiring and influencing a new generation of African Americans. Unfortunately, Wright died before he could take part in this emerging black unity and pride and the fight for equality that he yearned for.

Richard Wright was born in 1908 and died in 1960. Author Search For more about

Richard Wright, go to www.glencoe.com.

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RICHARD WRIGHT 901

Connecting to the StoryWhat experiences have helped form your values and beliefs? In Black Boy, Wright recalls his childhood and the fear and oppression he lived with every day. His experiences shaped his beliefs and actions for the rest of his life. As you read, think about the following questions:

• What events have influenced your beliefs?

• How do you think your childhood will affect what you do later in life?

Building Background Richard Wright’s father was a sharecropper near Natchez, Mississippi. Although he received a small cabin and some income from the cotton crop, he had a difficult time making ends meet. Eventually Wright’s family was forced to give up sharecropping and moved within the city limits. However, their luck was not much better inside Natchez, and Wright’s father abandoned them when Wright was six. Wright, his mother, and his brother were left with little income and a life marked by hunger and fear. Their struggles and the events that followed their abandonment are detailed in this selec-tion from Black Boy.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Life in the CityAs you read, notice how Wright examines the impact of segregation and racism on his life.

Literary Element Flash-forwardA flash-forward is an interruption in the chronological sequence of a narrative to leap forward in time. A writer may signal a flash-forward with a new para-graph or with a description of a new setting. As you read Black Boy, notice how Wright uses flash-forward to signal events that take place in the future.


Reading Strategy Comparing and Contrasting Characters

When you compare and contrast characters, you note the similarities and differences between them. Comparing and contrasting can help you to better understand who the characters are and why they act in certain ways.

Reading Tip: Venn Diagrams As you read, use Venn diagrams to compare and contrast characters.

Vocabulary

futile (fu�til) adj. serving no practical purpose; useless; worthless; p. 903 Trying to lift the chair was futile because it was nailed to the floor.

hostile (host�əl) adj. feeling or showing hatred; antagonistic; p. 903 The woman became hostile when the salesclerk refused to answer her questions.

vindictive (vin dik�tiv) adj. desiring revenge; p. 903 He was known for displaying vindictive behavior when he felt betrayed.

poised (poizd) adj. having a calm, controlled, and dignified manner; composed; p. 906 Though angry, she remained poised when her boss questioned her about her work.

alien (a�le ən) adj. strange; unfamiliar; foreign; p. 906 The alien surroundings of her new town made her uncomfortable.

Vocabulary Tip: Context Clues When you see an unfamiliar word, pay attention to its context, or the words around it. The context provides clues to the meaning of the word. Interactive Literary Elements

Handbook To review or learn more about the literary elements, go to www.glencoe.com.

1. Physical Appearance

Wright Both Father


• analyzing literary periods• analyzing flash-forward

• comparing and contrasting characters

OBJECTIVES

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S11-163-01C-635423 U6T9loire ital/ sombre a n n e t te

When I awakened one morning my mother told me that we were going to see a judge who would make my father support me and my brother. An hour later all three of us were sitting in a huge crowded room. I was over-whelmed by the many faces and the voices which I could not understand. High above me was a white face which my mother told me was the face of the judge. Across the huge room sat my father, smiling confidently, looking at us. My mother warned me not to be fooled by my father’s friendly manner; she told me that the judge might ask me questions, and if he did I must tell him the truth. I agreed, yet I hoped that the judge would not ask me anything.

For some reason the entire thing struck me as being useless; I felt that if my father were going to feed me, then he would have done so regardless of what a judge said to him. And I did not want my father to feed me; I was hungry, but my thoughts of food did not now center about him. I waited, grow-ing restless, hungry. My mother gave me a dry sand-wich and I munched and stared, longing to go home. Finally I heard my mother’s name called; she rose and began weeping so copiously1 that she could not talk for a few moments; at last she managed to say that her husband had deserted her and her two children, that her children were hungry, that they stayed hungry, that she worked, that she was trying to raise them alone. Then my father was called; he came forward jauntily, smiling. He tried to kiss my mother, but she turned away from him. I only heard one sentence of what he said.

“I’m doing all I can, Your Honor,” he mum-bled, grinning.

It had been painful to sit and watch my mother crying and my father laughing and I was

glad when we were outside in the sunny streets. Back at home my mother wept again and talked complainingly about the unfairness of the judge who had accepted my father’s word. After the court scene, I tried to forget my father; I did not hate him; I simply did not want to think of him. Often when we were hungry my mother would beg me to go to my father’s job and ask him for a dollar, a dime, a nickel . . . But I would never consent to go. I did not want to see him.

My mother fell ill and the problem of food became an acute, daily agony. Hunger was with us always. Sometimes the neighbors would feed us or a dollar bill would come in the mail from my grandmother. It was winter and I would buy a dime’s worth of coal each morning from the corner coalyard and lug it home in paper bags. For a time I remained out of school to wait upon my mother, then Granny came to visit us and I returned to school.

At night there were long, halting discussions about our going to live with Granny, but nothing came of it. Perhaps there was not enough money for railroad fare. Angered by having been hauled into court, my father now spurned us completely. I heard long, angrily whispered conversations between my mother and grand-mother to the effect that “that woman ought to be killed for breaking up a home.” What irked me was the ceaseless talk and no action. If someone had suggested that my father be killed, I would perhaps have become interested; if someone had suggested that his name never be mentioned, I would no doubt have agreed; if someone had suggested that we move to another city, I would have been glad. But there was only endless talk that led nowhere and I began to keep away from home as much as possible,

1. Copiously means “in great quantity.”

Comparing and Contrasting Characters How does Wright react to his parents’ differences in court?

Reading Strategy

Richard Wright

The New Regionalism and the City Why, as a boy, would the narrator have been glad to move to another city?

Big Idea

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RICHARD WRIGHT 903

S11-163-01C-635423 U6T9loire ital/ sombre a n n e t te

preferring the simplicity of the streets to the worried, futile talk at home.

Finally we could no longer pay the rent for our dingy flat;2 the few dollars that Granny had left us before she went home were gone. Half sick and in despair, my mother made the rounds of the chari-table institutions, seeking help. She found an orphan home that agreed to assume the guidance of me and my brother provided my mother worked and made small payments. My mother hated to be separated from us, but she had no choice.

The orphan home was a two-story frame build-ing set amid trees in a wide, green field. My mother ushered me and my brother one morning into the building and into the presence of a tall, gaunt, mulatto3 woman who called herself Miss Simon. At once she took a fancy to me and I was frightened speechless; I was afraid of her the moment I saw her and my fear lasted during my entire stay in the home.

The house was crowded with children and there was always a storm of noise. The daily rou-tine was blurred to me and I never quite grasped it. The most abiding feeling I had each day was hunger and fear. The meals were skimpy and there were only two of them. Just before we went to bed each night we were given a slice of bread smeared with molasses. The children were silent, hostile, vindictive, continuously complaining of hunger. There was an overall atmosphere of nervousness and intrigue, of children telling tales upon others, of children being deprived of food to punish them.

The home did not have the money to check the growth of the wide stretches of grass by having it mown, so it had to be pulled by hand. Each morn-ing after we had eaten a breakfast that seemed like no breakfast at all, an older child would lead a herd of us to the vast lawn and we would get to our

knees and wrench the grass loose from the dirt with our fingers. At intervals Miss Simon would make a tour of inspection, examining the pile of pulled grass beside each child, scolding or praising accord-ing to the size of the pile. Many mornings I was too weak from hunger to pull the grass; I would grow dizzy and my mind would become blank and I would find myself, after an interval of unconscious-ness, upon my hands and knees, my head whirling, my eyes staring in bleak astonishment at the green grass, wondering where I was, feeling that I was emerging from a dream…

During the first days my mother came each night to visit me and my brother, then her visits stopped. I began to wonder if she, too, like my father, had disappeared into the unknown. I was rapidly learn-ing to distrust everything and everybody. When my mother did come, I asked her why had she remained away so long and she told me that Miss Simon had forbidden her to visit us, that Miss Simon had said that she was spoiling us with too much attention. I begged my mother to take me away; she wept and told me to wait, that soon she would take us to Arkansas. She left and my heart sank.

Miss Simon tried to win my confidence; she asked me if I would like to be adopted by her if my mother consented and I said no. She would take me into her apartment and talk to me, but her words had no effect. Dread and distrust had already become a daily part of my being and my memory grew sharp, my senses more impressionable; I began to be aware of myself as a distinct personality striv-ing against others. I held myself in, afraid to act or speak until I was sure of my surroundings, feeling most of the time that I was suspended over a void. My imagination soared; I dreamed of running away. Each morning I vowed that I would leave the next morning, but the next morning always found me afraid.

One day Miss Simon told me that thereafter I was to help her in the office. I ate lunch with her and, strangely, when I sat facing her at the table, my hunger vanished. The woman killed

2. A flat is an apartment.3. Mulatto, a word seldom used today, describes a biracial

person, one of mixed African American and white ancestry.

futile (futil) adj. serving no practical purpose; useless; worthlesshostile (hostəl) adj. feeling or showing hatred; antagonisticvindictive (vin diktiv) adj. desiring revenge

Vocabulary

Comparing and Contrasting Characters How do Wright’s feelings in the house compare with the feelings of the other children there?

Reading Strategy

Life in the City Why might Wright be afraid to run away from the orphan home?

Big Idea

Comparing and Contrasting Characters Why does Wright immediately compare his moth-er’s actions to those of his father?

Reading Strategy

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something in me. Next she called me to her desk where she sat addressing envelopes.

“Step up close to the desk,” she said. “Don’t be afraid.”

I went and stood at her elbow. There was a wart on her chin and I stared at it.

“Now, take a blotter from over there and blot each envelope after I’m through writing on it,” she instructed me, pointing to a blotter that stood about a foot from my hand.

I stared and did not move or answer.“Take the blotter,” she said.I wanted to reach for the blotter and suc-

ceeded only in twitching my arm.“Here,” she said sharply, reaching for the blot-

ter and shoving it into my fingers.She wrote in ink on an envelope and pushed

it toward me. Holding the blotter in my hand, I stared at the envelope and could not move.

“Blot it,” she said.I could not lift my hand. I knew what she had

said; I knew what she wanted me to do; and I had heard her correctly. I wanted to look at her and say something, tell her why I could not move; but my eyes were fixed upon the floor. I could not summon enough courage while she sat there looking at me to reach over the yawning space of twelve inches and blot the wet ink on the envelope.

“Blot it!” she spoke sharply.Still I could not move or answer.“Look at me!”I could not lift my eyes. She reached her hand

to my face and I twisted away.“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.I began to cry and she drove me from the room.

I decided that as soon as night came I would run away. The dinner bell rang and I did not go to the table, but hid in a corner of the hallway. When I heard the dishes rattling at the table, I opened the door and ran down the walk to the street. Dusk was falling. Doubt made me stop. Ought I go back? No; hunger was back there, and fear. I went on, coming to concrete sidewalks. People passed me. Where was I going? I did not know. The farther I walked the more frantic I became. In a confused and vague way I knew that I was doing more running away from than running toward something. I stopped. The streets seemed dangerous. The buildings were massive and dark. The moon shone and the trees loomed frighteningly. No, I could not go on. I would go back. But I had walked so far and had

turned too many corners and had not kept track of the direction. Which way led back to the orphan home? I did not know. I was lost.

I stood in the middle of the sidewalk and cried. A “white” policeman came to me and I wondered if he was going to beat me. He asked me what was the matter and I told him that I was trying to find my mother. His “white” face created a new fear in me. I was remembering the tale of the “white” man who had beaten the “black” boy. A crowd gathered and I was urged to tell where I lived. Curiously, I was too full of fear to cry now. I wanted to tell the “white” face that I had run off from an orphan home and that Miss Simon ran it, but I was afraid. Finally I was taken to the police station where I was fed. I felt better. I sat in a big chair where I was surrounded by “white” policemen, but they seemed to ignore me. Through the window I could see that night had completely fallen and that lights now gleamed in the streets. I grew sleepy and dozed. My shoulder was shaken gently and I opened my eyes and looked into a “white” face of another police-man who was sitting beside me. He asked me ques-tions in a quiet, confidential tone, and quite before I knew it he was not “white” any more. I told him

Life in the City Why might Wright think of this tale when he is lost?

Big Idea

Jim, 1930. William H. Johnson. Oil on canvas, 215/8 x 181/4 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY

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RICHARD WRIGHT 905

that I had run away from an orphan home and that Miss Simon ran it.

It was but a matter of minutes before I was walk-ing alongside a policeman, heading toward the home. The policeman led me to the front gate and I saw Miss Simon waiting for me on the steps. She identified me and I was left in her charge. I begged her not to beat me, but she yanked me upstairs into an empty room and lashed me thoroughly. Sobbing, I slunk off to bed, resolved to run away again. But I was watched closely after that.

My mother was informed upon her next visit that I had tried to run away and she was terribly upset.

“Why did you do it?” she asked.“I don’t want to stay here,” I told her.“But you must,” she said. “How can I work if

I’m to worry about you? You must remember that you have no father. I’m doing all I can.”

“I don’t want to stay here,” I repeated.“Then, if I take you to your father…”“I don’t want to stay with him either,” I said.“But I want you to ask him for enough money

for us to go to my sister’s in Arkansas,” she said.Again I was faced with choices I did not like, but

I finally agreed. After all, my hate for my father was not so great and urgent as my hate for the orphan home. My mother held to her idea and one night a week or so later I found myself standing in a room in a frame house. My father and a strange woman were sitting before a bright fire that blazed in a grate. My mother and I were standing about six feet away, as though we were afraid to approach them any closer.

“It’s not for me,” my mother was saying. “It’s for your children that I’m asking you for money.”

“I ain’t got nothing,” my father said, laughing.“Come here, boy,” the strange woman called

to me.I looked at her and did not move.“Give him a nickel,” the woman said. “He’s cute.”“Come here, Richard,” my father said, stretch-

ing out his hand.I backed away, shaking my head, keeping my

eyes on the fire.“He is a cute child,” the strange woman said.“You ought to be ashamed,” my mother said to

the strange woman. “You’re starving my children.”

“Now, don’t you-all fight,” my father said, laughing.

“I’ll take that poker and hit you!” I blurted at my father.

He looked at my mother and laughed louder.“You told him to say that,” he said.“Don’t say such things, Richard,” my mother said.“You ought to be dead,” I said to the strange

woman.The woman laughed and threw her arms

about my father’s neck. I grew ashamed and wanted to leave.

“How can you starve your children?” my mother asked.

“Let Richard stay with me,” my father said.“Do you want to stay with your father,

Richard?” my mother asked.“No,” I said.“You’ll get plenty to eat,” he said.“I’m hungry now,” I told him. “But I won’t

stay with you.”“Aw, give the boy a nickel,” the woman said.My father ran his hand into his pocket and

pulled out a nickel.“Here, Richard,” he said.“Don’t take it,” my mother said.“Don’t teach him to be a fool,” my father said.

“Here, Richard, take it.”I looked at my mother, at the strange woman,

at my father, then into the fire. I wanted to take the nickel, but I did not want to take it from my father.

“You ought to be ashamed,” my mother said, weeping. “Giving your son a nickel when he’s hungry. If there’s a God, He’ll pay you back.”

“That’s all I got,” my father said, laughing again and returning the nickel to his pocket.

We left. I had the feeling that I had had to do with something unclean. Many times in the years after that the image of my father and the strange woman, their faces lit by the danc-ing flames, would surge up in my imagination so vivid and strong that I felt I could reach out and touch it; I would stare at it, feeling that it possessed some vital meaning which always eluded me.

Comparing and Contrasting Characters How does Wright compare his father’s girlfriend with his mother?

Reading StrategyFlash-forward Why does Wright tell the

reader that he continued to think about his father and that night for years?

Literary Element

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A quarter of a century was to elapse between the time when I saw my father sitting with the strange woman and the time when I was to see him again, standing alone upon the red clay of a Mississippi plantation, a sharecropper, clad in ragged overalls, holding a muddy hoe in his gnarled, veined hands—a quarter of a century dur-ing which my mind and consciousness had become so greatly and violently altered that when I tried to talk to him I realized that, though ties of blood made us kin, though I could see a shadow of my face in his face, though there was an echo of my voice in his voice, we were forever strangers, speaking a different language, living on vastly dis-tant planes of reality. That day a quarter of a cen-tury later when I visited him on the plantation—he was standing against the sky, smil-ing toothlessly, his hair whitened, his body bent, his eyes glazed with dim recollection, his fearsome aspect of twenty-five years ago gone forever from him—I was overwhelmed to realize that he could

never understand me or the scald-ing experiences that had swept me beyond his life and into an area of living that he could never know. I stood before him, poised, my mind aching as it embraced the simple nakedness of his life, feeling how completely his soul was imprisoned by the slow flow of the seasons, by wind and rain and sun, how fas-tened were his memories to a crude and raw past, how chained were his actions and emotions to the direct, animalistic impulses of his wither-ing body . . .

From the white landowners above him there had not been handed to him a chance to learn the meaning of loyalty, of senti-ment, of tradition. Joy was as unknown to him as was despair. As a creature of the earth, he endured,

hearty, whole, seemingly indestructible, with no regrets and no hope. He asked easy, drawling ques-tions about me, his other son, his wife, and he laughed, amused, when I informed him of their des-tinies. I forgave him and pitied him as my eyes looked past him to the unpainted wooden shack. From far beyond the horizons that bound this bleak plantation there had come to me through my living the knowledge that my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life, but who had failed in the city; a black peasant whose life had been hopelessly snarled in the city, and who had at last fled the city—that same city which had lifted me in its burning arms and borne me toward alien and undreamed-of shores of knowing.

Flash-forward Why does Wright describe his father this way?

Literary Element

poised (poizd) adj. having a calm, controlled, and dignified manner; composed

alien (ale ən) adj. strange; unfamiliar; foreign

Vocabulary

Life in the City How did life in the South affect the choices of Wright’s father and Wright’s future?

Big Idea

Negro Cabin, Sedalia, North Carolina (No. 1), 1930. Loïs Mailou Jones. Watercolor on paper, 141/8 x 191/8 in. Collection of the artist. Viewing the Art: Does this painting capture the aspects of the father’s shack that cause Wright to pity him? Explain.

Lois Mailou Jones Pierre-Noel Trust

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Effects on Wright

RICHARD WRIGHT 907

AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What was your reaction to the events of Wright’s

life? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)Why do Wright and his brother go to the orphan

home? (b)How is the orphan home different from and similar to his old home?

3. (a)Why does Wright run away? (b)What do you learn about Wright’s attitudes and perceptions about race from this incident?

4. (a)What deal does Wright’s mother make with him as she takes him out of the orphan home? (b)What do you learn about Wright’s character from his inter-actions with his father just after leaving the home?

5. (a)What ultimately happens to Wright’s father? (b)What does Wright’s visit with his elderly father reveal about Wright and what he values in life? Explain, using details from the selection.

Analyze and Evaluate6. Does Wright’s father become more or less sympa-

thetic as the story progresses? Explain.

7. (a)What is the tone of the selection? (b)How effective is the tone in expressing the author’s main point?

Connect8. (a)How does knowing that this selection is from an

autobiography affect your reaction to it? (b)Would you react differently if it were fiction? Explain.

9. Big Idea Life in the City How are Wright’s atti-tudes and perceptions about race shaped by the time and the place he lives in?


Literary Element Flash-forward Although most stories are told in the order in which the events occur, sometimes writers interrupt the chronological flow. An author can use a technique called a flashback to explain an event that happened before the action in the story. This technique provides essential information about the character or prior events so that the reader can better understand the character’s motivations. An interruption in events to leap forward in time is a flash-forward. Wright uses this device to show how his views had changed since the events in the excerpt had taken place.

1. Where is the flash-forward in this selection?

2. How does Wright signal that he is skipping ahead of the main narrative?

3. (a)What effect does this flash-forward create in Wright’s narrative? (b)Does it strengthen or weaken the narrative? Explain.

Review: AutobiographyAn autobiography is the story of a person’s life written by that person. Unlike a memoir, which tends to focus on specific events or parts of the author’s life, an autobi-ography usually encompasses most of the author’s life.

Activity Complete the chart below by finding descrip-tions from the story about Wright’s life, his parents, and the South during his childhood. Determine how each of these affected him and his choices.

LITERARY ANALYSIS

Description

His life

Mother

Father

The South

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Reading Strategy Comparing and Contrasting Characters

Authors compare and contrast settings and char-acters to help the reader understand them better. Noticing these comparisons will help you understand the characters’ motivations and relationships with one another and with their environments. Use your Venn diagrams to answer the following questions.

1. What does Wright find that he has in common with his father?

2. How has the city affected him and his father differently?

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Context Clues Choose the best meaning for each vocabulary word below. Use the context clues in each sentence to help you.

1. Going to court was futile because my father was never going to help feed us.

a. helpful c. scary b. pointless d. interesting

2. After seeing my father with that woman, I became hostile and threatened to hit him with a poker.

a. aggressive c. annoyed b. friendly d. sad

3. Many of the children in the orphan home were vindictive, and sought revenge against those they didn’t like.

a. sentimental c. friendly b. cooperative d. vengeful

4. I spoke with him in a poised and controlled voice, even though the sight of him fi lled me with anger and hatred.

a. delighted c. reckless b. self-assured d. hateful

5. My alien surroundings scared me, and I wanted to run to the safety of my home.

a. normal c. dirty b. comfortable d. unfamiliar

Writing About LiteratureCompare and Contrast Setting When Wright’s mother drops off him and his brother at the orphan home, Wright is immediately terrified. He describes the unhappiness of the home in a matter-of-fact way. The orphanage was both different from and similar to his home.

Write a brief essay comparing and contrasting the orphan home with the home of Wright’s mother and his feelings about both places. When writing your essay, be sure to use quotations from the story to support your point. It may help you to compare and contrast the actions of Miss Simon and Wright’s mother and the way Wright feels about both women. As you draft your essay, use a graphic organizer like the one below to help you structure your essay.

After completing your draft, meet with a peer reviewer to evaluate each other’s work and to suggest revisions. Then proofread and edit your draft for errors in spell-ing, grammar, and punctuation.

Reading FurtherIf you enjoyed this excerpt from Black Boy, you may enjoy these other works by Richard Wright.

Novel Native Son, by Richard Wright, tells the story of a man who is driven to desperate acts after being sub-jected to a life of racism and poverty.

Short Stories Eight Men: Short Stories, by Richard Wright, includes “The Man Who Lived Underground”—the story of a man on the run after he is accused of a murder he did not commit.

WRITING AND EXTENDINGREADING AND VOCABULARY

Use the introduction to state how you are going to com-pare the two homes.

Use each body paragraph to compare and contrast certain elements. Use descriptions and quotes from the story to support your comparisons.

Conclude with Wright’s feelings about both homes by summa-rizing your comparisons.

Body

▲▲

Conclusion

▲

➧

Introduction➧



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O. Henry Prize WinnerIron Mountain, Tennessee, 1937. Margaret Bourke-White. Silver gelatin print. Time & Life Pictures.

ERSKINE CALDWELL AND MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE 909

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE on Black BoyInformational Text

Building BackgroundPhotojournalist Margaret Bourke-White documented some of the most important events of the twentieth century, including the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the Korean War. In 1937 Bourke-White and her future husband, novelist Erskine Caldwell, collabo-rated on You Have Seen Their Faces. This book power-fully depicts the plight that southern sharecroppers faced.

Set a Purpose for ReadingRead to learn about the sharecropping system.

Reading Strategy

Analyzing the Purpose of Historical Texts and PhotographsAnalyzing the purpose of historical texts and photo-graphs involves examining the ideas and culture pre-sented by texts and images. As you read, use a chart to take notes about the selection and the photographs in order to determine their purpose.

HE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY DELTA and the Black Belt1 of Alabama are two sections of the South that still produce

cotton in abundance. It grows, matures, and yields without fertilizer and without effort. The soil there will be deep, fertile, and productive for a long time to come. Elsewhere the sub-soil, both sand and clay, is being plowed up to be mixed with the little top-soil that remains in an effort to make plants grow. There is no fertility in sub-soil, but when brought to the surface it gives the appearance of fertility and, when mixed with fertilizer, will produce enough cotton, providing that the rains and sun are not extreme, to pay for the fertilizer in normal times. Farming in sand or clay is a back-breaking, spirit-crushing existence.

There are reasons for this impoverishment2 of the soil that go deep into the economic life of the South. The successful cotton-raisers have always been plantation-owners. The plantations were large, generally from five hundred to five

Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White

1. The Black Belt is a strip of land with black, fertile soil across central Alabama and Mississippi.

2. Impoverishment means “the state of being drained of essential nutrients.”

Text Passage and Purpose Photograph and Purpose

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Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

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thousand acres of land in size. The owners for the most part had one main concern, and that was to make as much money as they could as quickly as they could.

Nothing made money like cotton. Nothing else grew like cotton. Cotton was king.

Now the day of the plantation is over, except in the Delta country and in the Black Belt, and cotton is not king any longer.

The plantation system pauperized3 the soil to such a great degree that raising cotton became a means of making a living rather than a method of making a fortune. The plantation-owner, when he became aware of what had happened to the soil, withdrew to the nearest city to live the remainder of his life on his accumulated wealth.

What he left behind was eroded, depleted, unprofitable land. His tenants still had to work for a living, even if he did not, and out of their desper-ation grew a new system. The owner became an absentee-landlord. The plantation was divided into one-man farms and rented to the tenants. The rent was paid either in half of the cotton produced or in an agreed upon number of bales, or on a basis com-bining the two methods. The plantation system was traded for the sharecropping system, and the South to its sorrow was the victim of the deal.

Before he knew it, the landlord had a new source of income that was larger than his previous one had been. And, besides, in the old days he had had to take his own chances with his crop of cot-ton, losing money when it rained too much or too little, dipping into profits from preceding years when expenditures were larger than income. In the new era he had a source of income and profit that was as certain and secure as the seasons themselves.

Rent was paid to him for the use of the land on a sharing basis, and he saw to it that the tenant raised a maximum number of bales. When a hun-dred tenants produced six bales each, the landlord received three hundred bales, the individual ten-ant three bales. Cotton was not king any longer, but the institution of sharecropping was making a few men richer than kings, and much better enthroned.4 They did not have to concern them-selves about the welfare of their subjects.

The tenant who set out to farm his portion of the plantation discovered that the land required fertilizer. Without fertilizer he could not grow enough cotton to provide himself with a living, and to pay rent. The rent came first. The landlord generally saw to it that the tenant paid his three or four bales for rent before the sharing began. If there was nothing left to share after the rent had been paid, there was nothing the tenant could do about it. He could only look forward to the coming year, hoping he would be able to make more than the minimum number of bales the rent required. If the following year was a good one for him, he paid off the chattel mortgage5 he had given in payment for fertilizer he had bought in an effort to produce the rent-cotton.

It is difficult to find a good word to say about such an agricultural system. The sharecropping system was born of the plantation system, and the new was anything but an improvement over the old. The old produced numerous families of wealth who developed a culture that was ques-tionable. The new has concentrated wealth in the hands of a few families who are determined that no culture shall exist.

Much can be said about the detrimental effects of such an agricultural system, more espe-cially when there are ten million persons now living under its yoke.6 They live in this cotton country on tenant farms which, in many cases, are little more than sand dunes and clay stacks. They are either already worn out physically and spiritually, or are in the act of wearing them-selves out. They are grouped in families of man and wife and from one to sixteen children. They are farming, for the most part, soil that has been yielding diminishing returns for fifty and a hun-dred years. No matter if they get up an hour ear-lier to work by lantern light, no matter if half a dozen more children are begotten7 to supply additional hands in the field, they will continue to fall steadily behind as long as they live on land that produces less and less each time a new crop of cotton is planted.

3. Pauperized means “depleted or drained.”4. Enthroned means “installed as king” and implies that the

landlords were distanced from the sharecroppers just as a king might be removed from his subjects.

5. A chattel mortgage is a mortgage on personal property that is used as a guarantee for a debt.

6. Here, yoke refers to “something that causes servitude or bondage.”

7. Begotten means “conceived.”

Informational Text

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ERSKINE CALDWELL AND MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE 911

This is nothing new. It is not a situation that has suddenly come about overnight. But it is a cir-cumstance that becomes more acute day by day as the exhaus-tion and erosion of cotton land progresses. Fertilizer will increase the yield of cotton, but fertilizer costs money and requires credit that the tenant farmer does not have. A larger farm will produce more cotton, but there is a physi-cal limit to the number of acres a man and his family can cultivate.

The sharecropping system has in recent years branched out into sev-eral forms, none of them any more economically sound than the source from which they sprang, and most of them working greater hardships on human lives than the plantation system ever did. Sharecropping has deprived millions of persons of what the rest of America considers the necessities of life.

It deprives children of adequate education because many of them have to work either part of the school year or all of it on their fathers’ farms so that enough cot-ton can be raised to pay rent and buy fertilizer and to get food and clothing. It forces families to live in buildings that are detrimental to health, and it forces them to exist on food that is insufficient. Worse still, it continues in operation year after year, wringing dry the bodies and souls of men, women, and children; dragging down to its own level from higher economic planes new numbers to take the places of those crushed and thrown aside; breeding families of eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, and more, in order to furnish an ever-increasing number of persons necessary to supply the rent-cotton for the landlord.

It is foolish to ask a tenant farmer why he remains where he is. He does move from farm to farm from time to time, but only rarely can he improve his status. Such a question is usually asked with the purpose of covering up an inabil-ity to suggest what the farmer could do to lift

himself from the hole he stands in. There is cotton to be raised, and he has trained himself to raise it. That is his specialty. It is his life and, if share-cropping continues as an institution, it will become his death.

The tenant farmer in the South is trying to hold onto a spinning world until by some means he is enabled to get a grip on a better way of life. He knows he cannot buy land of his own from the profits of sharecropping. He knows just as well that he cannot save until he earns, and that he cannot earn much more than a bare living from sterile, barren land. He does well, under the circumstances, to hold on at all.

Child of sharecropper family, Louisiana, 1936. Margaret Bourke-White. Silver gelatin print. Time & Life Pictures.

Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

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Respond1. In your opinion, do the photographs or the text bet-

ter convey the hardships experienced by sharecrop-pers? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)According to Caldwell and Bourke-White, what

caused the soil’s impoverishment? (b)What does this suggest to you about the rise of the sharecrop-ping system?

3. (a)What effect did sharecropping have on the size of families? Of what did sharecropping deprive children? (b)What might be the outcome of these two effects?

Analyze and Evaluate4. (a)In a short paragraph, describe how the images

add to your understanding of sharecropping. (b)Which image most enhances your understand-ing of the institution? Explain.

5. (a)What is the main idea of this selection? (b)Do you think that Caldwell and Bourke-White are suc-cessful in conveying this idea? Why or why not?

Connect6. Based on this selection and its images, in what

ways has your opinion of Richard Wright’s father—as he is depicted in Black Boy—changed? Explain.

Now that his condition has sunk to depths that stop just short of peonage,8 there has appeared the first sign of hope. What there is in store for him in the future remains to be seen, but now for the first time there is hope. There has been talk, from one end of the South to the other, of joining with other tenant farmers to take collective action against the institution of sharecropping. The day when it was a sacred bull has passed. The sign of its passing was when the landlords began putting into force other forms of farm tenancy. Farms were leased to tenants, but sharing of the cotton continued; tenants were paid to work by the day, but their pay was received in a share of the cotton. No one was fooled, least of all tenant farmers themselves.

The farmer has little, if anything, to show for his years of labor in the past. But the hard-ships he has experienced will stand him in

good stead when the time comes for him to begin thinking about taking over the job of raising cotton—the job in which the landlord failed to treat him fairly and squarely. �

Informational Text

8. Peonage is the use of workers who are forced to labor for someone to work off a debt.

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OBJECTIVES

• Read to enhance understanding of history and U.S. culture.

• Analyze relationships, ideas, and cultures as represented in various media.

• Distinguish the purposes of various media forms.

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Flannery O’Connor Collection, Ina Dillard Russell Library, Georgia College & State University

BEFORE YOU READ

MEET FLANNERY O’CONNOR

Award-winning author Flannery O’Connor often delighted in telling friends and interviewers that the highlight of her life

occurred when, as a five-year-old, she taught a chicken to walk backwards. It was on such odd yet ordinary experiences that O’Connor later based her work.

“Highly Unladylike” Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia. Soon after, her family moved to Milledgeville, a small city in cen-tral Georgia. After graduating from college in 1945, she attended the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, earning an MFA degree. While at Iowa, O’Connor had her first short story, “The Geranium,” published in the summer of 1946.

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

—Flannery O’Connor

More short stories followed, including “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” (1953), “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1955), and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (published posthu-mously in 1965). In these stories and in her first novel, Wise Blood (1952), O’Connor often drew upon her experiences as a devout Roman Catholic to explore harsh and disturbing reali-ties: hard luck, hypocrisy, and failed expecta-tions. Her work was widely read by the public and highly praised by critics. A review appearing in Time magazine hailed O’Connor as “highly unladylike [with] a brutal irony, a slam-bang humor, and a style of writing as balefully direct as a death sentence.”

Along with William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Tennessee Williams, O’Connor is sometimes classified as a Southern Gothic writer because of her detailed renderings of small town Southern life and her flair for creating eccentric—even grotesque—characters. Commenting on these characters, Alice Walker, an African American writer, observed, “O’Connor’s characters—whose humanity if not their sanity is taken for granted, and who are miserable, ugly, narrow-minded, . . . with not a graceful, pretty one anywhere who is not, at the same time, a joke—shocked and delighted me.”

Return to Georgia In 1952, at the age of 27, O’Connor was stricken with a near fatal attack of lupus, the incurable disease from which her father had died. She was forced to move back to her mother’s dairy farm outside Milledgeville, where she remained for the rest of her life. Despite her illness, she managed to correspond with friends, lecture on writing, raise her prized peacocks—and continue to write.

Although O’Connor died from lupus at the age of 39, her fiction has inspired generations of writers. She is a major literary voice of the American South.

Flannery O’Connor was born in 1925 and died in 1964.

Author Search For more about Flannery O’Connor, go to www.glencoe.com.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

FLANNERY O’CONNOR 913

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Connecting to the Story Have you ever judged someone on the basis of your first impressions? In “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” two characters, an old woman and a tramp, do exactly that. As you read the story, think about the following questions:

• What do you look for when you meet someone for the first time?

• Are your first impressions usually accurate or off the mark?

Building Background Widespread unemployment during the Great Depression brought hard times to many. Unemployed men, and occasionally women, often became wanderers, referred to as “tramps” or “hoboes.” They went from city to city and house to house, particularly in rural areas, seeking odd jobs in return for food, clothes, or shelter. When World War II began, many regularly employed workers joined the armed forces. As a result, the previously unemployed, and men wounded and sent home from the war, frequently filled in at temporary jobs.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Return to RegionalismAs you read, consider how this story reflects life in the rural South during the later years of the Great Depression.

Literary Element DialogueDialogue is the conversation between characters in a literary work. Through dialogue, an author reveals the feelings, thoughts, and intentions of characters; devel-ops conflicts; and moves the plot forward. As you read, notice what the dialogue reveals about the characters in this story.


Reading Strategy Applying Background Knowledge Background knowledge refers to what you already know about the setting, characters, and situations in a literary work. You can add to your background knowl-edge by reading carefully the information included under the Building Background section preceding the selections in this book. By relating what you know to what you are reading, you create meaning and enrich your understanding of the text.

Reading Tip: Using a Preview Chart Skim the story for information about the setting, characters, and possi-ble conflicts in the story. Use a preview chart like the one below to record details from the story and from your background knowledge.


What I Knowfewer people, less technologypeople needed money and work

Detailsrural setting

Great Depression

Vocabulary

gaunt (��ont) adj. thin, bony, and hollow-eyed, as from hunger or illness; p. 915 Her face looked long and gaunt, as though she suffered from poor health.

ravenous (rav�ə nəs) adj. extremely hungry; p. 918 After fasting for a long time, the prisoner was ravenous for food.

stately (stat�le) adj. noble; dignified; majestic; p. 919 The mansion, elegant and stately, seemed like a palace for a king or queen.

morose (mə ros�) adj. bad-tempered, gloomy, and withdrawn; p. 920 His morose disposition led him to keep to himself and brood over his troubles.

rue (r¯¯¯oo) v. to regret; to be sorry for; p. 922 When the car did not start, I rued the day I had bought it.


• analyzing literary periods

• evaluating dialogue

• applying background knowledgeOBJECTIVES

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S11-174-01C-635423 Old Claude David Reed ARM


The old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when Mr. Shiftlet came up their road for the first time. The old woman slid to the edge of her chair and leaned forward, shading her eyes from the piercing sunset with her hand. The daughter could not see far in front of her and con-tinued to play with her fingers. Although the old woman lived in this desolate1 spot with only her daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of.

His left coat sleeve was folded up to show there was only half an arm in it and his gaunt figure

listed slightly to the side as if the breeze were push-ing him. He had on a black town suit and a brown felt hat that was turned up in the front and down in the back and he carried a tin tool box by a han-dle. He came on, at an amble, up her road, his face turned toward the sun which appeared to be bal-ancing itself on the peak of a small mountain.

The old woman didn’t change her position until he was almost into her yard; then she rose with one hand fisted on her hip. The daughter, a large girl in a short blue organdy dress, saw him all at once and jumped up and began to stamp and point and make excited speechless sounds.

Mr. Shiftlet stopped just inside the yard and set his box on the ground and tipped his hat at her as if she were not in the least afflicted; then he turned toward the old woman and swung the hat all the way off. He had long black slick hair that hung flat from a part in the middle to beyond the tips of his ears on either side. His face descended in forehead for more than half its length and ended suddenly with his features just balanced over a jutting steel-trap jaw. He seemed to be a

Flannery O’Connor

gaunt (ont) adj. thin, bony, and hollow-eyed, as from hunger or illness

Vocabulary

1. A desolate spot is miserable, lonely, and cheerless.

Applying Background Knowledge Why is the old woman relieved when she realizes that the stranger is a tramp?

Reading Strategy

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young man but he had a look of composed dissat-isfaction as if he understood life thoroughly.

“Good evening,” the old woman said. She was about the size of a cedar fence post and she had a man’s gray hat pulled down low over her head.

The tramp stood looking at her and didn’t answer. He turned his back and faced the sunset. He swung both his whole and his short arm up slowly so that they indicated an expanse of sky and his figure formed a crooked cross. The old woman watched him with her arms folded across her chest as if she were the owner of the sun, and the daughter watched, her head thrust for-ward and her fat helpless hands hanging at the wrists. She had long pink-gold hair and eyes as blue as a peacock’s neck.

He held the pose for almost fifty seconds and then he picked up his box and came on to the porch and dropped down on the bottom step. “Lady,” he said in a firm nasal voice, “I’d give a fortune to live where I could see me a sun do that every evening.”

“Does it every evening,” the old woman said and sat back down. The daughter sat down too and watched him with a cautious sly look as if he were a bird that had come up very close. He leaned to one side, rooting in his pants pocket, and in a sec-ond he brought out a package of chewing gum and offered her a piece. She took it and unpeeled it and began to chew without taking her eyes off him. He offered the old woman a piece but she only raised her upper lip to indicate she had no teeth.

Mr. Shiftlet’s pale sharp glance had already passed over everything in the yard—the pump near the corner of the house and the big fig tree that three or four chickens were preparing to roost in—and had moved to a shed where he saw the square rusted back of an automobile. “You ladies drive?” he asked.

“That car ain’t run in fifteen year,” the old woman said. “The day my husband died, it quit running.”

“Nothing is like it used to be, lady,” he said. “The world is almost rotten.”

“That’s right,” the old woman said. “You from around here?”

“Name Tom T. Shiftlet,” he murmured, looking at the tires.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” the old woman said. “Name Lucynell Crater and daughter Lucynell Crater. What you doing around here, Mr. Shiftlet?”

He judged the car to be about a 1928 or ’29 Ford. “Lady,” he said, and turned and gave her his full atten-tion, “lemme tell you something. There’s one of these doctors in Atlanta that’s taken a knife and cut the human heart—the human heart,” he repeated, lean-ing forward, “out of a man’s chest and held it in his hand,” and he held his hand out, palm up, as if it were slightly weighted with the human heart, “and studied it like it was a day-old chicken, and lady,” he said, allowing a long significant pause in which his head slid forward and his clay-colored eyes brightened, “he don’t know no more about it than you or me.”

“That’s right,” the old woman said.“Why, if he was to take that knife and cut into

every corner of it, he still wouldn’t know no more than you or me. What you want to bet?”

“Nothing,” the old woman said wisely. “Where you come from, Mr. Shiftlet?”

He didn’t answer. He reached into his pocket and brought out a sack of tobacco and a package of cigarette papers and rolled himself a cigarette, expertly with one hand, and attached it in a hang-ing position to his upper lip. Then he took a box of wooden matches from his pocket and struck one on his shoe. He held the burning match as if he were studying the mystery of flame while it traveled dan-gerously toward his skin. The daughter began to make loud noises and to point to his hand and shake her finger at him, but when the flame was just before touching him, he leaned down with his hand cupped over it as if he were going to set fire to his nose and lit the cigarette.

He flipped away the dead match and blew a stream of gray into the evening. A sly look came over his face. “Lady,” he said, “nowadays, people’ll do anything anyways. I can tell you my name is Tom T. Shiftlet and I came from Tarwater, Tennessee, but you never have seen me before: how you know I ain’t lying? How you know my name ain’t Aaron Sparks, lady, and I come from

Dialogue How does this statement make you feel about Mr. Shiftlet?

Literary Element

Applying Background Knowledge Why does Mr. Shiftlet focus his attention on the automobile?

Reading Strategy

Dialogue What does this exchange reveal about Mr. Shiftlet?

Literary Element

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Singleberry, Georgia, or how you know it’s not George Speeds and I come from Lucy, Alabama, or how you know I ain’t Thompson Bright from Toolafalls, Mississippi?”

“I don’t know nothing about you,” the old woman muttered, irked.2

“Lady,” he said, “people don’t care how they lie. Maybe the best I can tell you is, I’m a man; but listen lady,” he said and paused and made his tone more ominous3 still, “what is a man?”

The old woman began to gum a seed. “What you carry in that tin box, Mr. Shiftlet?” she asked.

“Tools,” he said, put back. “I’m a carpenter.”“Well, if you come out here to work, I’ll be

able to feed you and give you a place to sleep but I can’t pay. I’ll tell you that before you begin,” she said.

There was no answer at once and no partic-ular expression on his face. He leaned back against the two-by-four that helped support the porch roof. “Lady,” he said slowly, “there’s some men that some things mean more to them than money.” The old woman rocked without comment and the daughter watched the trigger that moved up and down in his

neck. He told the old woman then that all most people were interested in was money, but he asked what a man was made for. He asked her if a man was made for money, or what. He asked her what she thought she was made for but she didn’t answer, she only sat rocking and wondered if a one-armed man could put a new roof on her garden house. He asked a lot of questions that she didn’t answer. He told her that he was twenty-eight years old and had lived a varied life. He had been a gospel singer, a foreman on the railroad, an assistant in an

undertaking parlor, and he had come over the radio for three months with Uncle Roy and his Red Creek Wranglers. He said he had fought and bled in the Arm Service of his country and visited every foreign land and that every-where he had seen people that didn’t care if they did a thing one way or another. He said he hadn’t been raised thataway.

A fat yellow moon appeared in the branches of the fig tree as if it were going to roost there with the chickens. He said that a man had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that he wished he lived in a desolate place like this where he could see the sun go down every evening like God made it to do.

“Are you married or are you single?” the old woman asked.

There was a long silence. “Lady,” he asked finally, “where would you find you an innocent woman today? I wouldn’t have any of this trash I could just pick up.”

The daughter was leaning very far down, hanging her head almost between her knees, watching him through a triangular door she had made in her over-turned hair; and she suddenly fell in a heap on the floor and began to whimper. Mr. Shiftlet straight-ened her out and helped her get back in the chair.

Applying Background Knowledge Should the old woman trust Mr. Shiftlet or not? Explain.

Reading Strategy

2. To be irked is to be annoyed or bothered.3. Something ominous is, or seems to be, threatening.

Return to Regionalism Why does the author include these details?

Big Idea

G. Kalt/zefa/CORBIS

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“Is she your baby girl?” he asked.“My only,” the old woman said, “and she’s

the sweetest girl in the world. I wouldn’t give her up for nothing on earth. She’s smart too. She can sweep the floor, cook, wash, feed the chickens, and hoe. I wouldn’t give her up for a casket of jewels.”

“No,” he said kindly, “don’t ever let any man take her away from you.”

“Any man come after her,” the old woman said, “ ’ll have to stay around the place.”

Mr. Shiftlet’s eye in the darkness was focused on a part of the automobile bumper that glittered in the distance. “Lady,” he said, jerking his short arm up as if he could point with it to her house and yard and pump, “there ain’t a broken thing on this plantation that I couldn’t fix for you, one-arm jackleg4 or not. I’m a man,” he said with a sullen dignity, “even if I ain’t a whole one. I got,” he said, tapping his knuckles on the floor to emphasize the immensity of what he was going to say, “a moral intelligence!” and his face pierced out of the darkness into a shaft of doorlight and he stared at her as if he were astonished himself at this impossible truth.

The old woman was not impressed with the phrase. “I told you you could hang around and work for food,” she said, “if you don’t mind sleep-ing in that car yonder.”

“Why listen, Lady,” he said with a grin of delight, “the monks of old slept in their coffins!”

“They wasn’t as advanced as we are,” the old woman said.

The next morning he began on the roof of the garden house while Lucynell, the daugh-ter, sat on a rock and watched him work. He had not been around a week before the change he had made in the place was apparent. He had patched the front and back steps, built a new hog pen, restored a fence, and taught Lucynell, who was completely deaf and had never said a word in her life, to say the word “bird.” The big rosy-faced girl followed him

everywhere, saying “Burrttddt ddbirrrttdt,” and clapping her hands. The old woman watched from a distance, secretly pleased. She was ravenous for a son-in-law.

Mr. Shiftlet slept on the hard narrow back seat of the car with his feet out the side window. He had his razor and a can of water on a crate that served him as a bedside table and he put up a piece of mirror against the back glass and kept his coat neatly on a hanger that he hung over one of the windows.

In the evenings he sat on the steps and talked while the old woman and Lucynell rocked vio-lently in their chairs on either side of him. The old woman’s three mountains were black against the dark blue sky and were visited off and on by vari-ous planets and by the moon after it had left the chickens. Mr. Shiftlet pointed out that the reason he had improved this plantation was because he had taken a personal interest in it. He said he was even going to make the automobile run.

He had raised the hood and studied the mech-anism and he said he could tell that the car had been built in the days when cars were really built. You take now, he said, one man puts in one bolt and another man puts in another bolt and another man puts in another bolt so that it’s a man for a bolt. That’s why you have to pay so much for a car: you’re paying all those men. Now if you didn’t have to pay but one man, you could get you a cheaper car and one that had had a personal interest taken in it, and it would be a better car. The old woman agreed with him that this was so.

Mr. Shiftlet said that the trouble with the world was that nobody cared, or stopped and took any trouble. He said he never would have been able to teach Lucynell to say a word if he hadn’t cared and stopped long enough.

“Teach her to say something else,” the old woman said.

“What you want her to say next?” Mr. Shiftlet asked.

The old woman’s smile was broad and tooth-less and suggestive. “Teach her to say ‘sugarpie,’” she said.

4. A jackleg, like a jack-of-all-trades, can do many different kinds of work for which he or she has not been trained.

ravenous (ravə nəs) adj. extremely hungry

VocabularyDialogue Why might Mrs. Crater say this to Mr. Shiftlet?

Literary Element

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Mr. Shiftlet already knew what was on her mind.The next day he began to tinker with the auto-

mobile and that evening he told her that if she would buy a fan belt, he would be able to make the car run.

The old woman said she would give him the money. “You see that girl yonder?” she asked, point-ing to Lucynell who was sitting on the floor a foot away, watching him, her eyes blue even in the dark. “If it was ever a man wanted to take her away, I would say, ‘No man on earth is going to take that sweet girl of mine away from me!’ but if he was to say, ‘Lady, I don’t want to take her away, I want her right here,’ I would say, ‘Mister, I don’t blame you none. I wouldn’t pass up a chance to live in a per-manent place and get the sweetest girl in the world myself. You ain’t no fool,’ I would say.”

“How old is she?” Mr. Shiftlet asked casually.“Fifteen, sixteen,” the old woman said. The girl

was nearly thirty but because of her innocence it was impossible to guess.

“It would be a good idea to paint it too,” Mr. Shiftlet remarked. “You don’t want it to rust out.”

“We’ll see about that later,” the old woman said.The next day he walked into town and returned

with the parts he needed and a can of gasoline. Late in the afternoon, terrible noises issued from the shed and the old woman rushed out of the house, thinking Lucynell was somewhere having a fit. Lucynell was sitting on a chicken crate, stamp-ing her feet and screaming, “Burrddttt! bddurrd-dtttt!” but her fuss was drowned out by the car. With a volley of blasts it emerged from the shed, moving in a fierce and stately way. Mr. Shiftlet was in the driver’s seat, sitting very erect. He had an expression of serious modesty on his face as if he had just raised the dead.

That night, rocking on the porch, the old woman began her business at once. “You want you an innocent woman, don’t you?” she asked sympa-thetically. “You don’t want none of this trash.”

“No’m, I don’t,” Mr. Shiftlet said.

stately (statle) adj. noble; dignified; majestic

VocabularyDialogue Do you think Mrs. Crater’s tender feelings for her daughter are genuine? Explain.

Literary Element

Martyn Goddard/CORBIS

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“One that can’t talk,” she continued, “can’t sass you back or use foul language. That’s the kind for you to have. Right there,” and she pointed to Lucynell sitting cross-legged in her chair, holding both feet in her hands.

“That’s right,” he admitted. “She wouldn’t give me any trouble.”

“Saturday,” the old woman said, “you and her and me can drive into town and get married.”

Mr. Shiftlet eased his position on the steps.“I can’t get married right now,” he said.

“Everything you want to do takes money and I ain’t got any.”

“What you need with money?” she asked.“It takes money,” he said. “Some people’ll do

anything anyhow these days, but the way I think, I wouldn’t marry no woman that I couldn’t take on a trip like she was somebody. I mean take her to a hotel and treat her. I wouldn’t marry the Duchesser Windsor,”5 he said firmly, “unless I could take her to a hotel and give her something good to eat.

“I was raised thataway and there ain’t a thing I can do about it. My old mother taught me how to do.”

“Lucynell don’t even know what a hotel is,” the old woman muttered. “Listen here, Mr. Shiftlet,” she said, sliding forward in her chair, “you’d be getting a permanent house and a deep well and the most innocent girl in the world. You don’t need no money. Lemme tell you some-thing: there ain’t any place in the world for a poor disabled friendless drifting man.”

The ugly words settled in Mr. Shiftlet’s head like a group of buzzards in the top of a tree. He didn’t answer at once. He rolled himself a cigarette and lit it and then he said in an even voice, “Lady, a man is divided into two parts, body and spirit.”

The old woman clamped her gums together.“A body and a spirit,” he repeated. “The

body, lady, is like a house: it don’t go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile: always on the move, always . . .”

“Listen, Mr. Shiftlet,” she said, “my well never goes dry and my house is always warm in the winter

and there’s no mortgage on a thing about this place. You can go to the courthouse and see for yourself. And yonder under that shed is a fine automobile.” She laid the bait carefully. “You can have it painted by Saturday. I’ll pay for the paint.”

In the darkness, Mr. Shiftlet’s smile stretched like a weary snake waking up by a fire. After a second he recalled himself and said, “I’m only saying a man’s spirit means more to him than any-thing else. I would have to take my wife off for the weekend without no regards at all for cost. I got to follow where my spirit say to go.”

“I’ll give you fifteen dollars for a weekend trip,” the old woman said in a crabbed voice. “That’s the best I can do.”

“That wouldn’t hardly pay for more than the gas and the hotel,” he said. “It wouldn’t feed her.”

“Seventeen-fifty,” the old woman said. “That’s all I got so it isn’t any use you trying to milk me. You can take a lunch.”

Mr. Shiftlet was deeply hurt by the word “milk.” He didn’t doubt that she had more money sewed up in her mattress but he had already told her he was not interested in her money. “I’ll make that do,” he said and rose and walked off without treating6 with her further.

On Saturday the three of them drove into town in the car that the paint had barely dried on and Mr. Shiftlet and Lucynell were married in the Ordinary’s7 office while the old woman witnessed. As they came out of the courthouse, Mr. Shiftlet began twisting his neck in his collar. He looked morose and bitter as if he had been insulted while someone held him. “That didn’t satisfy me none,” he said. “That was just something a woman in an office did, nothing but paper work and blood tests. What do they know about my blood? If they was to take my heart and cut it out,” he said, “they wouldn’t know a thing about me. It didn’t satisfy me at all.”

“It satisfied the law,” the old woman said sharply.

Applying Background Knowledge Why does the author compare Mr. Shiftlet’s smile to a snake?

Reading Strategy

6. Here, treating means “negotiating or discussing terms.”7. An Ordinary is a local judge who, in many states, is called

the “justice of the peace.”

morose (mə ros) adj. bad-tempered, gloomy, and withdrawn

Vocabulary

5. Shiftlet is referring to the American woman for whom Britain’s King Edward VIII gave up the throne in 1936. The new king gave them the titles Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Dialogue Why does Mrs. Crater insult Mr. Shiftlet?

Literary Element

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“The law,” Mr. Shiftlet said and spit. “It’s the law that don’t satisfy me.”

He had painted the car dark green with a yellow band around it just under the windows. The three of them climbed in the front seat and the old woman said, “Don’t Lucynell look pretty? Looks like a baby doll.” Lucynell was dressed up in a white dress that her mother had uprooted from a trunk and there was a Panama hat on her head with a bunch of red wooden cherries on the brim. Every now and then her placid8 expression was changed by a sly isolated little thought like a shoot of green in the desert. “You got a prize!” the old woman said.

Mr. Shiftlet didn’t even look at her.They drove back to the house to let the old

woman off and pick up the lunch. When they were ready to leave, she stood staring in the window of the car, with her fingers clenched around the glass. Tears began to seep sideways out of her eyes and run along the dirty creases in her face. “I ain’t ever been parted with her for two days before,” she said.

Mr. Shiftlet started the motor.“And I wouldn’t let no man have her but you

because I seen you would do right. Good-bye, Sugarbaby,” she said, clutching at the sleeve of the white dress. Lucynell looked straight at her and didn’t seem to see her there at all. Mr. Shiftlet eased the car forward so that she had to move her hands.

The early afternoon was clear and open and sur-rounded by pale blue sky. Although the car would go only thirty miles an hour, Mr. Shiftlet imagined a terrific climb and dip and swerve that went entirely to his head so that he forgot his morning bitterness. He had always wanted an automobile but he had never been able to afford one before. He drove very fast because he wanted to make Mobile9 by nightfall.

Occasionally he stopped his thoughts long enough to look at Lucynell in the seat beside him. She had eaten the lunch as soon as they were out of the yard and now she was pulling the cherries off the hat one by one and throwing them out the window. He became depressed in spite of the car. He had driven about a hundred miles when he decided that she must be hungry again and at the next small town they came to, he stopped in front of an aluminum-painted eating place called The Hot Spot and took her in and ordered her a plate of ham and grits. The ride had made her sleepy and as soon as she got up on the stool, she rested her head on the counter and shut her eyes. There was no one in The Hot Spot but Mr. Shiftlet and the boy behind the counter, a pale youth with a greasy rag hung over his shoulder. Before he could dish up the food, she was snoring gently.

“Give it to her when she wakes up,” Mr. Shiftlet said. “I’ll pay for it now.”

8. Placid means “calm” or “peaceful.”

Dialogue Why does Mrs. Crater think Mr. Shiftlet will “do right” by her daughter?

Literary Element

9. Mobile (mobel) is a port city in southwestern Alabama.

Return to Regionalism How do these details contribute to the setting?

Big Idea

Dan Holmberg/CORBIS

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The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up and stared at Mr. Shiftlet. “She looks like an angel of Gawd,” he murmured.

“Hitchhiker,” Mr. Shiftlet explained. “I can’t wait. I got to make Tuscaloosa.”10

The boy bent over again and very carefully touched his finger to a strand of the golden hair and Mr. Shiftlet left.

He was more depressed than ever as he drove on by himself. The late afternoon had grown hot and sultry and the country had flattened out. Deep in the sky a storm was preparing very slowly and without thunder as if it meant to drain every drop of air from the earth before it broke. There were times when Mr. Shiftlet preferred not to be alone. He felt too that a man with a car had a responsibility to oth-ers and he kept his eye out for a hitchhiker. Occasionally he saw a sign that warned: “Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own.”

The narrow road dropped off on either side into dry fields and here and there a shack or a filling station stood in a clearing. The sun began to set directly in front of the automobile. It was a reddening ball that through his windshield was slightly flat on the bottom and top. He saw a boy in overalls and a gray hat standing on the edge of the road and he slowed the car down and stopped in front of him. The boy didn’t have his hand raised to thumb the ride, he was only standing there, but he had a small cardboard suitcase and his hat was set on his head in a way to indicate that he had left somewhere for good. “Son,” Mr. Shiftlet said, “I see you want a ride.”

The boy didn’t say he did or he didn’t but he opened the door of the car and got in, and Mr. Shiftlet started driving again. The child held the suitcase on his lap and folded his arms on top of it. He turned his head and looked out the win-dow away from Mr. Shiftlet. Mr. Shiftlet felt oppressed.11 “Son,” he said after a minute, “I got

the best old mother in the world so I reckon you only got the second best.”

The boy gave him a quick dark glance and then turned his face back out the window.

“It’s nothing so sweet,” Mr. Shiftlet continued, “as a boy’s mother. She taught him his first prayers at her knee, she give him love when no other would, she told him what was right and what wasn’t, and she seen that he done the right thing. Son,” he said, “I never rued a day in my life like the one I rued when I left that old mother of mine.”

The boy shifted in his seat but he didn’t look at Mr. Shiftlet. He unfolded his arms and put one hand on the door handle.

“My mother was an angel of Gawd,” Mr. Shiftlet said in a very strained voice. “He took her from heaven and giver to me and I left her.” His eyes were instantly clouded over with a mist of tears. The car was barely moving.

The boy turned angrily in the seat. “You go to the devil!” he cried. “My old woman is a flea bag and yours is a stinking pole cat!” and with that he flung the door open and jumped out with his suitcase into the ditch.

Mr. Shiftlet was so shocked that for about a hundred feet he drove along slowly with the door still open. A cloud, the exact color of the boy’s hat and shaped like a turnip, had descended over the sun, and another, worse looking, crouched behind the car. Mr. Shiftlet felt that the rotten-ness of the world was about to engulf him. He raised his arm and let it fall again to his breast. “Oh Lord!” he prayed. “Break forth and wash the slime from this earth!”

The turnip continued slowly to descend. After a few minutes there was a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic raindrops, like tin-can tops, crashed over the rear of Mr. Shiftlet’s car. Very quickly he stepped on the gas and with his stump stick-ing out the window he raced the galloping shower into Mobile.

Dialogue What is ironic about Mr. Shiftlet’s prayer?

Literary Element

Applying Background Knowledge What does the road sign mean to motorists?

Reading Strategyrue (r¯ ¯oo) v. to regret; to be sorry for

Vocabulary

10. Tuscaloosa, in west central Alabama, is nearly 200 miles north of Mobile.

Dialogue Why does Mr. Shiftlet lie to the boy behind the counter?

Literary Element

11. Here, oppressed means “distressed” or “burdened.”

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What was your reaction to the outcome of the

story? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)How does Mr. Shiftlet present himself to Mrs.

Crater? (b)What clues to his true character does she fail to notice?

3. (a)What does Mr. Shiftlet accomplish during his week on the Crater farm? (b)What does Mr. Shiftlet want from Mrs. Crater, and how do you know?

4. (a)What is Lucynell’s disability, and how does it affect her? (b)Why does Mrs. Crater consider Mr. Shiftlet a good match for her daughter?

5. (a)What two agreements do Mr. Shiftlet and Mrs. Crater make? (b)What factors might motivate Mr. Shiftlet to make each agreement?

Analyze and Evaluate 6. Whom do you think O’Connor intended to be the

protagonist of the story? Support your interpretation.

7. (a)What happens to each of the characters at the end of the story? (b)Whose life—if anyone’s—do you think may have been saved at the end of the story?

8. (a)Situational irony occurs when the outcome of a situation is different from the expectations of a character or the reader. Explain the situational irony in this story. (b)Why do you think O’Connor uses this technique?

Connect 9. Big Idea Return to Regionalism How would

this story have been different if it were set in a modern-day city instead of on a rural plantation in the South in the 1940s?


A story map is a visual diagram of the events in a story. This graphic organizer can help you identify and relate key details in the story. Fill in a story map similar to the one shown with details from “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”

Group Activity Discuss the following questions with a small group of classmates. Refer to the story map you created and cite other details from “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” to support your answers.

1. What might Mrs. Crater have done to bring about a different outcome?

2. How might the conflict or resolution have changed if other characters were involved in the story, such as Mrs. Crater’s husband or other children besides Lucynell?

Characters

Conflict

Setting

Resolution

Major Event 2Major Event 1

Creating a Story Map

VISUAL LITERACY: Graphic Organizers

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Literary Element DialogueIn this story O’Connor uses dialogue not only to pro-vide local color but also to reveal characters’ personali-ties and traits. Dialogue brings characters to life by showing what they are thinking and feeling as they react to other characters. Think about the dialogue in “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” as you answer the questions below.

1. How does the dialogue between Mrs. Crater and Mr. Shiftlet reveal their true characters? Give specific examples.

2. What impact does Lucynell’s lack of dialogue have on the story?

Review: ForeshadowingForeshadowing, as you learned in examining “A Rose for Emily,” is the use of clues by the author to prepare readers for later events in a story.

Group Activity Meet with a small group to discuss O’Connor’s use of foreshadowing in “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” Use a chart like the one below to record examples of foreshadowing through-out the story.

Reading Strategy Applying Background KnowledgeTo understand the interactions between Mrs. Crater and Mr. Shiflet, you must apply what you know about the Great Depression and the rural South. Review the preview chart you created on page 914, and then answer the following questions.

1. Why does Mr. Shiftlet agree to work for Mrs. Crater?

2. How important is money to both Mr. Shiftlet and Mrs. Crater?

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Synonyms Think about the mean-ings of the underlined words in the sentences below. Then, from the vocabulary words, choose a synonym that better fits the context.

1. Too sick from the fl u to eat, he appeared quite thin.

2. Liza’s gloomy attitude made it diffi cult for her to make friends.

3. I did regret not buying the dress, as it sold out quickly.

4. The castle belonging to the royal family had a splendid appearance.

5. Having eaten neither breakfast nor lunch, I was hungry by dinnertime.

Academic Vocabulary

Here are two words from the vocabulary list on page R86.

orient (or e ent ) v. to acquaint with the exist-ing situation or environment

generation (jen ə ra shən) n. a group of people born around the same time period

Practice and Apply1. How does O’Connor orient the reader in the

story’s setting? 2. What does Mr. Shiftlet think about the values of

the younger generation?

ForeshadowingEventMr. Shiftlet steals Mrs. Crater’s car.

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Dialect “I wouldn’t give her up for nothing on earth.”

Standard English “I wouldn’t give her up for anything on earth.”

Standard English “I would give her up for nothing on earth.”


WRITING AND EXTENDING GRAMMAR AND STYLE

Writing About Literature Evaluate Title The title, or name, of a work of litera-ture is sometimes linked to the work’s central theme or to the traits of a major character. The link may be sub-tle or obvious. Is the title of this story effective or not? Write a brief essay explaining your position and sup-porting it with evidence from the story.

As you draft, use the following writing plan to organize your essay.

Introduce your topic and then state your position or thesis.

Present one or more reasons and support them with evidence from the story.

Restate your position and give the reader a parting thought about O’Connor’s title.

Middle

▲▲

Conclusion

▲

➧

START

F INISH

Introduction➧After you complete your draft, meet with a peer reviewer to evaluate each other’s work and to suggest revisions. Then proofread and edit your draft for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Interdisciplinary Activity: TheaterImagine that you are to stage a production of “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” With a partner or a small group, write a proposal stating your plans. Create a proposal portfolio that contains the following:

• a statement about the story and why you think it could be successfully adapted into a drama

• a cast list, including a brief description of each char-acter in the play

• a scene-by-scene description of the settings, with a list of the materials and props you will need (includ-ing sketches of each set)

• a description of the costumes needed for each cast member (including sketches if possible)

O’Connor’s Language and StyleAvoiding Double Negatives In “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” O’Connor’s characters speak in a regional dialect that includes the use of the double negative—that is, two or more negative words in the same clause to express the same idea.

“I don’t know nothing about you . . . ” “And I wouldn’t let no man have her but you . . . ”

Notice that O’Connor also uses Standard English—only one negative word in a clause—to express a negative idea.

Mr. Shiflet said that the trouble with the world was that nobody cared.“Nothing is like it used to be, lady.”

Double negatives are effective for O’Connor’s pur-pose, but they should be avoided in standard writing and speech because one negative word “cancels out” another.

Activity Find three other examples of double nega-tives in “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” Revise them to change each into Standard English.

Revising CheckAvoiding Double Negatives In most cases, writers use Standard English in their work, except in direct quotations that provide local color. With a partner, review your essay on “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” to identify any double negatives that you may have overlooked earlier. Revise your draft to correct these errors in one of the two ways provided in the examples above.


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Grammar Workshop

Using Introductory Phrases and Clauses“As they came out of the courthouse, Mr. Shiftlet began twisting his neck in his collar.”

—Flannery O’Connor, from “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”

Connecting to Literature Introductory phrases and clauses add information about the main clause. As they came out of the courthouse is an introductory clause—a dependent clause that begins a sentence. Like other dependent clauses, an introductory clause has a subject and predicate, but it does not express a complete thought. Use a comma after an introductory clause.

“In the darkness, Mr. Shiftlet’s smile stretched like a weary snake waking up by a fire.”

In the darkness is an introductory phrase that tells where the action happens. Like other phrases, an introductory phrase lacks a subject and predicate. You must use a comma after an introductory phrase if it contains a verb form (partici-ple, gerund, or infinitive). In addition, use a comma after a long introductory prepositional phrase or a series of prepositional phrases. A comma after a short introductory prepositional phrase is usually not necessary.

Examples

To fix the car, Mr. Shiftlet raised the hood and studied the engine.To fix the car is an introductory infinitive phrase that tells why Mr. Shiftlet raised the hood. Because it is an infinitive phrase, it needs a comma after it.

In the evenings Mr. Shiftlet sat on the porch steps and talked.The introductory prepositional phrase in the evenings is short, so it needs no comma.

In the afternoon of the next day, Mr. Shiftlet got the car to start.A comma is necessary after the two introductory prepositional phrases.

“If you come out here to work, I’ll be able to feed you and give you a place to sleep.”If you come out here to work is an introductory clause, so it needs a comma after it.

Sentence Structure

ExerciseCombine each pair of sentences by changing one of them into an intro-ductory phrase or clause.

1. O’Connor was disabled by lupus in 1952. She spent the remainder of her life on her mother’s farm.

2. Mr. Shiftlet came up the road for the first time. The old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch.

3. Eudora Welty was raised in the South. Much of her work was inspired by Southern settings.

º Vocabulary Terms

An introductory phrase or an introductory clause begins a sentence and provides additional infor-mation about the main clause.

º Test-Taking Tip

To decide whether an introductory phrase needs a comma, decide whether the sentence makes sense without the phrase. If so, the introductory phrase probably needs a comma after it.

º Reading Handbook

For more about phrases and clauses, see Reading Handbook, p. R20.

eWorkbooks To link to the Grammar and Language eWorkbook, go to www.glencoe.com.

926 UN IT 6

OBJECTIVES

• Understand introductory phrases and clauses.

• Recognize and correct errors in grammar.

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images

E. B. WHITE 927

BEFORE YOU READ


The Second Tree from the Corner

MEET E . B. WHITE

Although the beloved children’s classics Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little remain two of Elwyn Brooks (E. B.) White’s best-

known works, he is also highly acclaimed for his essays and short stories. In fact, it was while working for The New Yorker magazine in his late twenties that White first captivated the American public. There, he worked with other legendary writers such as James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, and Robert Benchley to create a sophisticated and clever “New York” voice for the new magazine.

The Road to The New Yorker The youngest child in a large, affectionate family, White was born in rural Mount Vernon, a suburb of New York City. In 1921 he graduated from Cornell University. At Cornell he received the nickname Andy, by which he was known for the rest of his life. (All Cornell students named White were dubbed “Andy,” after the university’s co-founder, Andrew Dickson White.)

After college, Andy White traveled and worked at a series of miscellaneous jobs for about five years. Returning to New York, he worked in an ad agency and began sending manuscripts to The New Yorker. The editor of the magazine, Harold Ross, recognized talent when he saw it, and he soon hired White as a staff writer. White married Katherine Sergeant Angell, the magazine’s liter-ary editor, in 1929. According to Brendan Gill, a fellow New Yorker staff member, Andy and Katherine worked so closely together over the years that most people thought of them as one person, referred to as “the Whites.”

On the Farm In 1938 the Whites decided to leave the city and return to a simple rural life, this time in North Brooklin, Maine. Andy kept animals on their farm there, some of which made their way into his stories and books. He remained on the staff of The New Yorker, continuing to produce essays and his unsigned column “Notes and Comments.”

He also contrib-uted to Harper’s Magazine from 1938 to 1943, writing the col-umn “One Man’s Meat.”

On the farm, he penned his famed children’s stories. The first one, Stuart Little, features an adventurous mouse-child, born into a human family. The second, Charlotte’s Web, is about the friendship between Wilbur, a young pig, and Charlotte, a spider who saves his life through her clever web weavings. The third, The Trumpet of the Swan, tells the story of a mute swan who becomes a celebrity after learning to trumpet. The themes of friendship, tolerance, loyalty, and rural living are common threads in these books.

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

—E. B. White

White was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association in 1970. In 1973 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

E. B. White was born in 1899 and died in 1985.

Author Search For more about E. B. White, go to www.glencoe.com.

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Trexler felt the time passing.

He had already used up pretty nearly four seconds.➧ ➧



Connecting to the StoryImagine that someone asks you, “What do you want out of life?” How would you answer? What are your goals and desires? As you read, think about these questions:

• What is most important in life?

• What do your dreams and goals reveal about you?

Building Background“The Second Tree from the Corner” takes place in Manhattan, a part of New York City, probably in the late 1940s. One clue to the story’s time frame comes from a reference to Ethel Merman, a popular Broadway singer and actress of the time. Other refer-ences to famous New York institutions and places appear in the story as well. The narrator mentions the Times, which is The New York Times newspaper; the “Park,” which is Central Park; the “East Seventies,” a section of Manhattan known for its wealthy resi-dents; and Madison Avenue, a famous luxury shop-ping district.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Life in the CityAs you read, notice how White weaves in references to city life, transportation, scenery, and culture in “The Second Tree from the Corner.” Ask yourself which of these scenes, situations, and attitudes could happen only in a city and not in the country.

Literary Element PlotA plot is the sequence of events that constitutes a narrative, usually involving characters in conflict. A plot includes rising action (development of the conflict), climax (sometimes called the crisis or turning point), and falling action (sometimes called the resolution of the conflict). As you read the story, be aware of how White develops these elements of the plot.


Reading Strategy Analyzing Text Structure Analyzing text structure means taking a close look at the organizational pattern of a piece of writing. A writer might use chronological order (order of time), compar-ison and contrast, cause and effect, or order of impor-tance as a frame on which to hang the text. Most fiction, including this story, is organized primarily in chronological order.

Reading Tip: Finding Time References Use a graphic organizer like the one below to keep track of the time references in the story.

Vocabulary

amorphous (ə m�or� fəs) adj. without definite form; p. 929 Amorphous clouds filled the sky.

retractable (ri trak� tə bəl) adj. capable of being drawn back or in; p. 930 Cats have retractable claws.

hemorrhage (he� mə rij) n. a severe discharge of blood; p. 930 The doctor was able to stop the hemorrhage.

inquisitor (in kwi� zə tər) n. one who asks ques-tions; p. 931 Jennifer refused to answer the rude inquisitor.

intimation (in tə ma� shən) n. a hint; a sugges-tion; p. 932 Mike’s reputation was hurt by the intimation of scandal.

Vocabulary Tip: Word Parts Root words can be combined with prefixes and suffixes to form new words. The word unattainable, for example, is formed from the root word attain (meaning “to get”), the prefix un- (meaning “not”), and the suffix -able (meaning “capable of”).



• relating literature to the historical period• understanding plot

• analyzing text structure

OBJECTIVES

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E. B. WHITE 929

“Ever have any bizarre thoughts?” asked the doctor.Mr. Trexler failed to catch the word. “What

kind?” he said.“Bizarre,” repeated the doctor, his voice steady.

He watched his patient for any slight change of expression, any wince. It seemed to Trexler that the doctor was not only watching him closely but was creeping slowly toward him, like a lizard toward a bug. Trexler shoved his chair back an inch and gathered himself for a reply. He was about to say “Yes” when he realized that if he said yes the next question would be unanswerable. Bizarre thoughts, bizarre thoughts? Ever have any bizarre thoughts? What kind of thoughts except bizarre had he had since the age of two?

Trexler felt the time passing, the necessity for an answer. These psychiatrists were busy men, overloaded, not to be kept waiting. The next patient was probably already perched out there in the waiting room, lonely, worried, shifting around on the sofa, his mind stuffed with bizarre

thoughts and amorphous fears. Poor fellow, thought Trexler. Out there all alone in that mis-shapen antechamber,1 staring at the filing cabi-net and wondering whether to tell the doctor about that day on the Madison Avenue bus.

Let’s see, bizarre thoughts. Trexler dodged back along the dreadful corridor of the years to see what he could find. He felt the doctor’s eyes upon him and knew that time was running out. Don’t be so conscientious, he said to himself. If a bizarre thought is indicated here, just reach into the bag and pick anything at all. A man as well supplied with bizarre thoughts as you are should have no difficulty producing one for the record. Trexler darted into the bag, hung for a moment before one of his thoughts, as a hummingbird pauses in the delphinium. No, he said, not that one. He darted to another (the one about the rhesus mon-key), paused, considered. No, he said, not that.

Plot How would you describe Mr. Trexler’s internal conflict at this point?

Literary Element

1. An antechamber, or waiting room, is a smaller room serving as an entrance to a larger or main room.

amorphous (ə mor fəs) adj. without definite form

Vocabulary

E. B. White

The Frick Gallery, 1997. Julian Barrow. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Private Collection.

Julian Barrow/Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library

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Trexler knew he must hurry. He had already used up pretty nearly four seconds since the question had been put. But it was an impossible situation—just one more lousy, impossible situation such as he was always getting himself into. When, he asked him-self, are you going to quit maneuvering yourself into a pocket? He made one more effort. This time he stopped at the asylum, only the bars were lucite2—fluted, retractable. Not here, he said. Not this one.

He looked straight at the doctor. “No,” he said quietly. “I never have any bizarre thoughts.”

The doctor sucked in on his pipe, blew a plume of smoke toward the rows of medical books. Trexler’s gaze followed the smoke. He managed to make out one of the titles, The Genito-Urinary System. A bright wave of fear swept cleanly over him and he winced under the first pain of kidney stones.3 He remembered when he was a child, the first time he ever entered a doctor’s office, sneaking a look at the titles of the books—and the flush of fear, the shirt wet under the arms, the book on t.b.,4 the sudden knowledge that he was in the advanced stages of consumption,5 the quick vision of the hemorrhage. Trexler sighed wearily. Forty years, he thought, and I still get thrown by the title of a medical book. Forty years and I still can’t stay on life’s little bucky horse. No wonder I’m sitting here in this dreary joint at the end of this woebegone6 afternoon, lying about my bizarre thoughts to a doctor who looks, come to think of it, rather tired.

The session dragged on. After about twenty minutes, the doctor rose and knocked his pipe

out. Trexler got up, knocked the ashes out of his brain, and waited. The doctor smiled warmly and stuck out his hand. “There’s nothing the matter with you—you’re just scared. Want to know how I know you’re scared?”

“How?” asked Trexler.“Look at the chair you’ve been sitting in! See

how it has moved back away from my desk? You kept inching away from me while I asked you questions. That means you’re scared.”

“Does it?” said Trexler, faking a grin. “Yeah, I suppose it does.”

They finished shaking hands. Trexler turned and walked out uncertainly along the passage, then into the waiting room and out past the next patient, a ruddy pin-striped man who was seated on the sofa twirling his hat nervously and staring straight ahead at the files. Poor, frightened guy, thought Trexler, he’s probably read in the Times that one American male out of every two is going to die of heart disease by twelve o’clock next Thursday. It says that in the paper almost every morning. And he’s also probably thinking about that day on the Madison Avenue bus.

A week later, Trexler was back in the patient’s chair. And for several weeks thereafter he con-tinued to visit the doctor, always toward the end of the afternoon, when the vapors hung thick above the pool of the mind and darkened the whole region of the East Seventies.7 He felt no better as time went on, and he found it impossi-ble to work. He discovered that the visits were becoming routine and that although the routine was one to which he certainly did not look for-ward, at least he could accept it with cool resig-nation, as once, years ago, he had accepted a long spell with a dentist who had settled down to a steady fooling with a couple of dead teeth. The visits, moreover, were now assuming a pattern recognizable to the patient.

Each session would begin with a resumé of symp-toms—the dizziness in the streets, the constricting

Plot In what way is Mr. Trexler trying to resolve his internal conflict?

Literary Element

Analyzing Text Structure How do you know the author is using chronological order to organize the story?

Reading Strategy

2. Lucite is the trademark name of a transparent plastic.3. Kidney stones are small, hard calcium deposits that

sometimes form in the kidneys and cause pain.4. Tuberculosis, a disease that often affects the lungs, is

sometimes referred to as t.b.5. Consumption is another name for tuberculosis.6. Woebegone means “sorrowful” or “filled with grief”; it can

also suggest “dreary and miserable.”

Analyzing Text Structure About how much time has passed since the opening scene of the story? How do you know?

Reading Strategy

7. Most of the streets that run east to west in Manhattan are identified by numbers rather than names. East Seventies refers to the section of streets from 70–79 that are on the east side of Manhattan.

retractable (ri trak tə bəl) adj. capable of being drawn back or inhemorrhage (he mə rij) n. a severe discharge of blood

Vocabulary

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E. B. WHITE 931

pain in the back of the neck, the apprehensions, the tightness of the scalp, the inability to concentrate, the despondency8 and the melancholy times, the feeling of pressure and tension, the anger at not being able to work, the anxiety over work not done, the gas on the stomach. Dullest set of neurotic symp-toms in the world, Trexler would think, as he obediently trudged back over them for the doctor’s benefit.

As he became familiar with the pattern Trexler found that he increasingly tended to iden-tify himself with the doctor, transferring himself into the doctor’s seat—probably (he thought) some rather slick form of escapism. At any rate, it was nothing new for Trexler to identify himself with other people. Whenever he got into a cab, he instantly became the driver, saw every-thing from the hackman’s angle (and the reaching over with the right hand, the nudging of the flag, the pushing it down, all the way down along the side of the meter), saw everything—traffic, fare, everything—through the eyes of Anthony Rocco, or Isidore Freedman, or Matthew Scott. In a bar-bershop, Trexler was the barber, his fingers curled around the comb, his hand on the tonic. Perfectly natural, then, that Trexler should soon be occupy-ing the doctor’s chair, asking the questions, wait-ing for the answers. He got quite interested in the doctor, in this way. He liked him, and he found him a not too difficult patient.

It was on the fifth visit, about halfway through, that the doctor turned to Trexler and said, suddenly, “What do you want?” He gave the word “want” special emphasis.

“I d’know,” replied Trexler uneasily. “I guess nobody knows the answer to that one.”

“Sure they do,” replied the doctor.“Do you know what you want?” asked Trexler

narrowly.“Certainly,” said the doctor. Trexler noticed

that at this point the doctor’s chair slid slightly backward, away from him. Trexler sti-fled a small, internal smile. Scared as a rabbit, he said to himself. Look at him scoot!

“What do you want?” continued Trexler, press-ing his advantage, pressing it hard.

The doctor glided back another inch away from his inquisitor. “I want a wing on the small house I own in Westport.9 I want more money, and more leisure to do the things I want to do.”

Trexler was just about to say, “And what are those things you want to do, Doctor?” when he caught himself. Better not go too far, he mused.

Gridlock NYC, 1998. Bill Jacklin. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 cm. Private collection.

Life in the City How does this paragraph give the reader an idea of what it would be like to live in a big city such as New York?

Big Idea

8. Despondency means “hopelessness” or “depression.”

Plot In what way does the doctor’s origi-nal question help Mr. Trexler begin to solve his own problems?

Literary Element

inquisitor (in kwi zə tər) n. one who asks questions

Vocabulary

9. Westport is a residential community and summer resort on the coast of Connecticut.

Bill Jacklin/Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library

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Better not lose possession of the ball. And besides, he thought, what the hell goes on here, anyway—me paying fifteen bucks a throw for these séances10 and then doing the work myself, asking the questions, weighing the answers. So he wants a new wing! There’s a fine piece of the-atrical gauze for you! A new wing.

Trexler settled down again and resumed the role of patient for the rest of the visit. It ended on a kindly, friendly note. The doctor reassured him that his fears were the cause of his sickness, and that his fears were unsubstantial. They shook hands, smiling.

Trexler walked dizzily through the empty wait-ing room and the doctor followed along to let him out. It was late; the secretary had shut up shop and gone home. Another day over the dam. “Goodbye,” said Trexler. He stepped into the street, turned west toward Madison, and thought of the doctor all alone there, after hours, in that desolate hole—a man who worked longer hours than his secretary. Poor, scared, over-worked guy, thought Trexler. And that new wing!

It was an evening of clearing weather, the Park showing green and desirable in the distance, the last daylight applying a high lacquer to the brick and

brownstone walls and giving the street scene a luminous and intoxicating splendor. Trexler meditated, as he walked, on what he wanted. “What do you want?” he heard again. Trexler knew what he wanted, and what, in general, all men wanted; and he was glad in a way, that it was both inexpressible and unattainable, and that it

wasn’t a wing. He was satisfied to remember that it was deep, formless, enduring, and impossible of ful-fillment, and that it made men sick, and that when you sauntered along Third Avenue and looked through the doorways into the dim saloons, you

could sometimes pick out from the unregenerate ranks the ones who had not forgotten, gazing steadily into the bottoms of the glasses on the long chance that they could get another little peek at it. Trexler found himself renewed by the remembrance that what he wanted was at once great and micro-scopic, and that although it borrowed from the nature of large deeds and of youthful love and of old songs and early intimations, it was not any one of these things, and that it had not been isolated or pinned down, and that a man who attempted to define it in the privacy of a doctor’s office would fall flat on his face.

Trexler felt invigorated. Suddenly his sickness seemed health, his dizziness stability. A small tree, rising between him and the light, stood there satu-rated with the evening, each gilt-edged leaf per-fectly drunk with excellence and delicacy. Trexler’s spine registered an ever so slight tremor as it picked up this natural disturbance in the lovely scene. “I want the second tree from the corner, just as it stands,” he said, answering an imaginary question from an imaginary physician. And he felt a slow pride in realizing that what he wanted none could bestow, and that what he had none could take away. He felt content to be sick, unembarrassed at being afraid; and in the jungle of his fear he glimpsed (as he had so often glimpsed them before) the flashy tail feathers of the bird courage.

Then he thought once again of the doctor, and of his being left there all alone, tired, frightened. (The poor, scared guy, thought Trexler.) Trexler began humming “Moonshine Lullaby,” his spirit reacting instantly to the hypodermic of Merman’s11 healthy voice. He crossed Madison, boarded a downtown bus, and rode all the way to Fifty-second Street before he had a thought that could rightly have been called bizarre.

11. Ethel Merman (1909–1984) was an American actress and singer known for her powerful voice.

10. A séance is a meeting in which people attempt to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Here, Trexler is questioning the scientific validity of his psychiatric sessions.

Plot How has Mr. Trexler resolved his internal conflict?

Literary Element

intimation (in tə ma shən) n. a hint; a suggestion

VocabularyLife in the City What elements in this paragraph

are unique to the city and would not be found in the country?

Big Idea

Visual Vocabulary Brownstone is the name of a reddish-brown sandstone as well as a type of house made with it.

Jeff Greenberg/Photo Researchers

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E. B. WHITE 933

AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What questions would you like to ask Mr. Trexler?

Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)What question does the doctor ask Mr. Trexler

at the beginning of the story? What is Trexler’s answer? (b)In your opinion, what does Trexler’s reaction to the doctor’s first question reveal about Trexler’s state of mind?

3. (a)What, according to the doctor, is wrong with Trexler? (b)Do you agree with the doctor’s early diagnosis of Trexler? Explain.

4. (a)How does Trexler respond to the question “What do you want?” (b)What does the question make him think about after his visit to the doctor? (c)In your opinion, what does Trexler want?

Analyze and Evaluate5. Is Trexler’s reaction to his discovery of what he

wants in life realistic? Why or why not?

6. (a)Why do you think Trexler pities others? (b)Do you think his observations are accurate? Explain.

7. (a)What personality traits—both positive and nega-tive—does Trexler exhibit? (b)On the basis of these traits, do you find Trexler to be a sympathetic char-acter? Explain.

Connect8. Do you think “the second tree from the corner” is

an effective symbol, or representation, of what Trexler wants from life? Explain.

9. Big Idea Life in the City What does “The Second Tree from the Corner” reveal about city life? Explain using details from the story.


Literary Element PlotAt the center of a story’s plot, there is usually a strug-gle, or conflict, between two opposing forces. The conflict might be external—between the main charac-ter and another person or an outside force—or it may be internal—between opposing thoughts or desires within the character’s mind.

1. Identify and discuss Trexler’s internal conflicts after the psychiatrist asks him if he has ever had any bizarre thoughts.

2. Consider Trexler’s comment that his identification with other people is “some rather slick form of escapism.” Is it possible that Trexler’s ability to look through others’ eyes leads to a resolution of his conflict? Explain.

3. Discuss how the psychiatrist’s question “What do you want?” helps Trexler to resolve his inner conflict.

Review: IronyAs you learned on page 568, irony is a contrast or discrepancy between appearance and reality. Verbal irony occurs when someone says one thing but means another. Situational irony exists when the outcome of a situation is the opposite of someone’s expectations.

Group Activity Meet with a small group to discuss E. B. White’s use of irony in “The Second Tree from the Corner.” Together, create a web diagram like the one below, filling in the circles with examples of irony in the story.

LITERARY ANALYSIS

Trexler starts analyzing the

psychiatrist.

irony

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Reading Strategy Analyzing Text Structure Authors often embed several organizational methods within the same text. For example, a story might pro-ceed mainly in chronological order but show cause-and-effect relationships or comparison and contrast at the same time.

1. (a)Identify an instance in which White uses cause and effect as an organizational method. (b)In what way does this example advance the plot?

2. (a)Find an example of comparison and contrast in the story. (b)What does this example reveal about Trexler’s character?

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Word Parts Identify the meaning of the underlined part of each vocabulary word below. Consult a dictionary if you need help.

1. amorphous a. without b. form

2. retractable a. back b. capable of

3. hemorrhage a. blood b. severe

4. inquisitor a. question b. one who

5. intimation a. the act of b. suggest

Academic Vocabulary

Here are two words from the vocabulary list on page R86.

evident (e və dənt) adj. clear; apparent

normal (nor məl) adj. conforming to a set pat-tern or standard

Practice and Apply1. Is Trexler’s conflict immediately evident to the

doctor? Explain.2. Would you describe Trexler’s thoughts as normal

or bizarre? Explain.

Writing About LiteratureEvaluate Author’s Craft E. B. White uses many visual images to describe Trexler’s thoughts and feelings. For example, Trexler thinks the doctor “was creeping slowly toward him, like a lizard toward a bug.” Write a brief essay in which you address the following questions. Support your answers with evidence from the story.

• How would you describe the images used in the beginning of the story? What do these images sug-gest about Trexler?

• In what way do the images toward the end of the story differ from the earlier ones? What does this difference suggest about the changes that have occurred in Trexler?

Before you begin your first draft, complete a chart like the one below, listing visual images in the story. Comment on how each image helps the reader gain a better understanding of Trexler’s character.

After you complete your first draft, meet with a peer reviewer to evaluate each other’s work and to suggest ways to improve it. Then proofread and edit your draft for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

WRITING AND EXTENDINGREADING AND VOCABULARY


What It Reveals About Trexler

Trexler views himself as small and vulnerable.

Image

“The doctor was not only watching him

closely but was creeping slowly

toward him, like a lizard toward a bug.”

“Trexler dodged back along the

dreadful corridor of the years.”


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Bettmann/CORBIS

GWENDOLYN BROOKS 935

BEFORE YOU READ


To Don at Salaam andThe Bean Eaters

MEET GWENDOLYN BROOKS

The sounds, sights, and rhythm of urban life pour out of the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks. As Brooks once said, “I wanted to

write poems that I could take into the streets.” With an ear for the beat of the city and the hum of everyday life, Brooks re-created the lives of African Americans in the city and elsewhere.

Although she was born in Topeka, Kansas, Brooks grew up in Chicago. A shy girl, Gwendolyn Brooks spent much of her childhood alone reading books and writing poetry. “My mother says I began rhyming at seven. . . . Of course I would be a poet! Was a poet! Didn’t I write a poem every day? Sometimes two poems?” Her mother’s belief in her talent gave her the confidence she needed to keep writing, and Brooks published her first poem, “Eventide,” when she was thirteen. By the late 1930s, she had published seventy-five poems in the Chicago Defender.

“I want to write poems that will be meaningful . . . things that will touch [readers].”

—Gwendolyn Brooks

Literary Influences Brooks’s mother took her to see poets read whenever they came to Chicago. Two of these poets—James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes—became important influences on her career and writing. Johnson played the role of advisor, urging her to read modern poets such as T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings—poets whose styles would be reflected in her later work. When Brooks was sixteen, she went to see Langston Hughes read. After the reading, she gave him some of her poems, which he read immediately. He encouraged her to continue writing and would later become her close friend and inspiration. As a poet, Brooks shared Hughes’s ability to respond to the

struggles of the black community and express the black experience in a time of rapid change.

Poetic Transformation In 1945 Brooks’s first book, A Street in Bronzeville, was published to rave reviews. In her early work, Brooks wrote poetic narratives, using traditional verse forms—such as the sonnet and ballad. In the 1960s, however, her voice and style changed, and she brought a new consciousness of her racial identity to her work. Inspired by black activism, Brooks began to overtly address political issues, especially the need for racial unity. As she became more involved with the Black Arts movement in Chicago, Brooks moved from major publishing houses to smaller ones run by African Americans. Although her commitment to racial unity was evident and her verse powerful, her poetry was never bitter.

Role of the Poet Success and recognition didn’t change Brooks’s outlook. In fact, it made her more committed to art and to helping young artists. With the publication of her second book, Annie Allen, she became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize. She would later be named Poet Laureate of Illinois, poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Most important to Brooks were her visits to local schools and the classes and contests she spon-sored to help urban children “see” the poetry in the world around them. Today, Brooks remains one of America’s most beloved and inspirational poets.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in 1917 and died in 2000.

Author Search For more about Gwendolyn Brooks, go to www.glencoe.com.

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Connecting to the PoemsGwendolyn Brooks was a keen observer of people, writing in particular about the lives and struggles of the people in her Chicago neighborhood. What are the people in your neighborhood like? As you read “The Bean Eaters” and “To Don at Salaam,” think about the following questions:

• What is unique about your neighborhood and the people who live there?

• What have you learned about life from the people in your community?

Building Background Many of Brooks’s characters, such as the old couple in “The Bean Eaters,” were inspired by people who lived in her neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Through such characters, Brooks chronicled the dreams and disappointments of the African American urban poor. Other characters, like the man in “To Don at Salaam,” were inspired by the young black artists and activists of the 1960s and onward, who possessed what Brooks called “a general energy, an electricity, in look, walk, speech, [and] gesture. . . .” Through such characters, Brooks expresses a “black is beautiful” theme.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Life in the CityAs you read “The Bean Eaters,” notice how the charac-ters are influenced by their urban setting.

Literary Element Rhyme SchemeRhyme scheme is the pattern that end rhymes form in a stanza or a poem. Rhyme schemes are desig-nated by assigning a different letter of the alphabet to each new rhyme. For example, the rhyme scheme of a poem that repeats the same rhyme in every other line is abab. Notice how Brooks uses rhyme scheme in “The Bean Eaters” and the effect it creates.

• See Literary Terms Handbook, p. R1

Reading Strategy Evaluating LanguageAn important element of a writer’s voice and style is word choice, or diction. As you read these poems, note how Brooks’s individual word choices help create the tone and convey meaning.

Reading Tip: Taking Notes Use a chart like the one below to write down important words and their effect on each poem’s meaning.

Vocabulary

impudent (im� pyə dənt) adj. cocky, bold; p. 937 In the army, Sean stopped his impudent behavior only after being punished by an officer.

tribute (tri� byu�t) n. something given to show affection, gratitude, or respect; p. 937 Marco gave a speech in tribute to his son on his wed-ding day.

consolidation (kən sa� lə da� shən) n. the process of uniting or merging; p. 937 The consolidation of the two companies led to greater efficiency but fewer jobs.

twinge (twinj) n. a sudden, sharp physical or emotional pain; p. 938 She felt a twinge of sadness at the sight of her dead grandmother’s photograph.

Vocabulary Tip: Connotation Connotation refers to the suggested or implied meanings associated with a word beyond its dictionary definition. A word can have a positive or negative connotation.

Effect on Meaningsuggest ordinariness or poverty

Word or Wordsbeans


In studying these selections, you will focus on the following:

• analyzing literary periods• understanding rhyme scheme

• evaluating language

OBJECTIVES

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I like to see you lean back in your chair so far you have to fall but do not— your arms back, your fine hands in your print pockets.

5 Beautiful. Impudent. Ready for life. A tied storm.

I like to see you wearing your boy smile whose tribute is for two of us or three.

10 Sometimes in life things seem to be moving and they are not and they are not there. 15 You are there.

Your voice is the listened-for music. Your act is the consolidation.

I like to see you living in the world.

impudent (im� pyə dənt) adj. cocky, boldtribute (tri� by�ut) n. something given to show affection, gratitude, or respectconsolidation (kən s�a lə da� shən) n. the process of uniting or merging

Vocabulary

Evaluating Language Why do you think Brooks uses the word impudent to describe the man?

Reading Strategy

Gwendolyn Brooks

Salaam is an Arabic word that means “peace.”

Hombre ante el infinito (Man before the infinite). Rufino Tamayo. Musée d’Art Moderne, Brussels, Belgium.

Art Resource, NY

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They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware.

5 Two who are Mostly Good. Two who have lived their day, But keep on putting on their clothes And putting things away.

And remembering . . . 10 Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,

As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

City Life What is city life like for the bean eaters?Big Idea

twinge (twinj) n. a sudden, sharp physical or emotional pain

Vocabulary

Gwendolyn Brooks

Onion Tears, 1929. Cagnaccio di San Pietro. Camera di Lavoro, Trieste, Italy.

Cameraphoto Arte, Venice/Art Resource, NY

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. Would you like to meet the man described in “To

Don at Salaam”? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)What is the setting in “The Bean Eaters”?

(b)What do the details of the setting show?

3. (a)How does Brooks describe the characters in “The Bean Eaters”? (b)What do the couple’s actions suggest about them?

4. (a)In “To Don at Salaam,” what adjectives or adjec-tive phrases does the speaker use to describe the man? (b)What do these modifiers suggest about the man? (c)What do they suggest about the speaker?

Analyze and Evaluate5. A word’s connotation is its suggested or implied

meanings. (a)Name four or more words in “The Bean Eaters” that have meanings beyond their dic-tionary definitions. (b)Explain how the connotations of the word yellow help to describe the couple.

6. (a)How would you describe the tone of “The Bean Eaters”? (b)How does the tone help you under-stand the meaning of the poem?

7. (a)How does Brooks use imagery to describe the man in “To Don at Salaam”? (b)How well do these images tell you what the speaker sees in the man?

Connect8. Big Idea Life in the City What aspects of life

in a big city does “The Bean Eaters” show?


Literary Element Rhyme Scheme Rhyme schemes are often predictable, which often reinforces meaning and aids the reader by providing a flowing, logical structure. In contrast, some poets employ rhyme without using a rigid rhyme scheme.

1. (a)What is the rhyme scheme of “The Bean Eaters”? (b)Is the rhyme scheme predictable? Explain.

2. Explain how the rhyme scheme affects the poem’s tone and meaning.

Internet ConnectionPoet Laureates are given the responsibility of raising the status of poetry and helping individuals see poetry in their everyday lives. Brooks was named Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968. Use the Internet to research Brooks’s role as Poet Laureate and what she accomplished during that time. Use your research to write a short essay about Brooks as a Poet Laureate, and share your findings with the class.

Reading Strategy Evaluating LanguageBecause poems are so compact, each word can carry a great deal of meaning. Look at the chart you created to evaluate the language of the poems. It may help you answer the following questions.

1. In “The Bean Eaters,” what does Brooks mean by “twinklings and twinges”? How do these words communicate both meaning and attitude?

2. In “To Don at Salaam,” the speaker says, “Your act is the consolidation.” What does the speaker mean? Why does the poet choose the word consolidation?

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Connotation Decide whether each vocabulary word and its synonym below has a positive or negative connotation. Use a dictionary or thesaurus if necessary.

1. twinge pang2. tribute repayment3. impudent bold4. consolidation merger



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David Lee/CORBIS


BEFORE YOU READ


The Magic Barrel

BEFORE YOU READBEFORE YOU READ

MEET BERNARD MALAMUD

Bernard Malamud was born to Russian Jewish immigrants who worked sixteen hours a day in their small grocery store on

New York City’s Lower East Side. Reflecting on his childhood, he would recall that there were no books in his home, no records or musical instruments, and no pictures on the walls. He would, however, recall the generosity of his father, who bought him the twenty-volume Book of Knowledge in 1923, when he was a nine-year-old recovering from pneumonia.

Inspired by his father’s stories of life in czarist Russia, Malamud began creating stories of his own for his boyhood friends. He graduated from City College of New York and Columbia University, and while teaching evening classes he wrote short stories that appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines. His first novel, written in 1952 when he was in his late thirties, was The Natural, the story of the rise and fall of a baseball player. The novel was later made into a popular movie starring Robert Redford. His second novel, The Assistant, written in 1957, brought him fame as a major Jewish American writer. His novel of injustice in czarist Russia, The Fixer (1966), won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

“People say I write so much about misery, but you write about what you know best.”

—Bernard Malamud

Master of Characterization Though most of the characters in his stories and novels are Jewish, Malamud thought of Jewishness as a spiri-tual condition rather than as a cultural heritage or

religious creed. To be Jewish, he felt, was to struggle with life’s limitations and responsibili-ties. Malamud said that he wrote about Jews “because they set my imagination going. I know something about their history, the quality of experience and belief, and of their literature, though not as much as I would like.”

He saw himself as a storyteller whose fictions were about “simple people struggling to make their lives better in a world of bad luck.” His characters are often pursued by a sense of injus-tice, burdened with grief, and strengthened by their own persistence. They are intensely aware of the past as they try to make a life for them-selves in the modern world. The mixture of vic-tory and defeat in their lives endows Malamud’s work with a tragicomic character.

Malamud won highest acclaim as a writer of short stories, and “The Magic Barrel” is considered one of his best. His stories contain a robust humor, striking contrasts, a strong sense of compassion, and a complete understanding of his characters and their way of life.

Bernard Malamud was born in 1914 and died in 1986.

Author Search For more about Bernard Malamud, go to www.glencoe.com.

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BERNARD MALAMUD 941

Connecting to the StoryIn Malamud’s short story, a young rabbinical student decides it is time to get married and sets out to find a suitable spouse. If you were in a similar situation, what steps would you take to choose a spouse? As you read the story, think about the following questions:

• Would you list the qualities you wanted in a spouse, or would you simply rely on your gut feelings?

• Would you ask someone to help you meet the right person?

Building Background“The Magic Barrel” takes place in New York City, proba-bly during the 1950s. Between 1880 and 1914, about two million Jews from Eastern Europe immigrated to the United States. The largest concentration of Jewish immigrants settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They brought with them their culture and traditions, which included the use of matchmakers—people paid to bring young men and women together for the pur-pose of marriage.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Life in the CityMalamud mentions various locations, newspapers, customs, and sights that are unique to New York City. As you read, ask yourself what the story reveals about life in that city.

Literary Element DialectDialect is a way of speaking and writing that is charac-teristic of a particular group, often within a particular region and time. Dialects may differ from the standard form of a language in vocabulary, pronunciation, or grammatical form. As you read, notice how Malamud uses dialect in the story.


Reading Strategy Analyzing Characterization

Analyzing characterization means examining the methods an author uses to reveal a character’s person-ality. In direct characterization the writer makes explicit statements about a character. In indirect characterization the writer reveals a character through the character’s thoughts, words, actions, or appearance or through what other characters think and say about that character. The reader must then use these details to make inferences about the character.

Reading Tip: Taking Notes on Characters There are two main characters in “The Magic Barrel”: Leo Finkle and Pinye Salzman. For each character, list the details that the writer provides and the inferences you make from them.

Vocabulary

meager (me��ər) adj. deficient in quantity or completeness; p. 943 The orphans were fed a meager breakfast of oatmeal and water.

amiable (a�me ə bəl) adj. friendly; p. 943 Marla’s amiable smile put her guests at ease.

animated (an�ə ma´tid) adj. full of life; active; lively; p. 943 The zoo visitors enjoyed the mon-keys’ animated antics.

enamored (en am�ərd) adj. inspired with love; charmed; captivated; p. 949 Ben was completely enamored with Julie.

abjectly (ab�jekt le) adv. in a humiliating, mean, or degrading manner; p. 950 Disappointed with his performance, Carl abjectly accepted his third-place medal.

CharacterPinyeSalzman

Detailsdresses shabbily

Inferencesnot wealthy



• relating literature to historical period• understanding dialect

• analyzing characterization

OBJECTIVES

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Bernard Malamud


Intensive study, 1910. Unknown. Oil on canvas, 321/4 x 29 in. Judaica Coll. Max Berger, Vienna, Austria.

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

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BERNARD MALAMUD 943

Not long ago there lived in uptown New York in a small, almost meager room, though crowded with books, Leo Finkle, a rabbinical student in the Yeshivah University.1 Finkle, after six years of study, was to be ordained in June and had been advised by an acquaintance that he might find it easier to win himself a congregation if he were married. Since he had no present prospects of marriage, after two tormented days of turning it over in his mind, he called in Pinye Salzman, a marriage broker whose two-line advertisement he had read in the Forward.2

The matchmaker appeared one night out of the dark fourth-floor hallway of the graystone rooming house where Finkle lived, grasping a black, strapped portfolio that had been worn thin with use. Salzman, who had been long in the business, was of slight but dignified build, wearing an old hat, and an overcoat too short and tight for him. He smelled frankly of fish, which he loved to eat, and although he was missing a few teeth, his presence was not dis-pleasing, because of an amiable manner curi-ously contrasted with mournful eyes. His voice, his lips, his wisp of beard, his bony fin-gers were animated, but give him a moment of repose and his mild blue eyes revealed a depth of sadness, a characteristic that put Leo a lit-tle at ease although the situation, for him, was inherently tense.

He at once informed Salzman why he had asked him to come, explaining that his home was in Cleveland, and that but for his parents, who had married comparatively late in life, he was alone in the world. He had for six years devoted himself almost entirely to his studies, as a result of which, understandably, he had found himself without time for a social life and the com-pany of young women. Therefore he thought it the better part of trial and error—of embarrassing fumbling—to call in an experienced person to advise him on these matters. He remarked in pass-ing that the function of the marriage broker was ancient and honorable, highly approved in the Jewish community, because it made practical the necessary without hindering joy. Moreover, his own parents had been brought together by a matchmaker. They had made, if not a financially profitable marriage—since neither had possessed any worldly goods to speak of—at least a success-ful one in the sense of their everlasting devotion to each other. Salzman listened in embarrassed surprise, sensing a sort of apology. Later, however, he experienced a glow of pride in his work, an emotion that had left him years ago, and he heart-ily approved of Finkle.

The two went to their business. Leo had led Salzman to the only clear place in the room, a table near a window that overlooked the lamp-lit city. He seated himself at the match-maker’s side but facing him, attempting by an act of will to suppress the unpleasant tickle in his throat. Salzman eagerly unstrapped his portfolio and removed a loose rubber band from a thin packet of much-handled cards. As he flipped through them, a gesture and sound that physically hurt Leo, the student pretended not to see and gazed steadfastly out the win-dow. Although it was still February, winter was on its last legs, signs of which he had for the first time in years begun to notice. He now observed the round white moon, moving high in the sky through a cloud menagerie,3 and watched with half-open mouth as it penetrated a huge hen, and dropped out of her like an egg laying itself. Salzman, though pretending meager (me ər) adj. deficient in quantity or

completenessamiable (a me ə bəl) adj. friendlyanimated (an ə ma tid) adj. full of life; active; lively

Vocabulary

Life in the City Which details in the first paragraph tell you something about Jewish life in New York City?

Big Idea

1. Yeshivah (yə she və) University in New York City, originally a seminary for rabbis, today offers both theological and secular courses.

2. The Yiddish-language newspaper the Jewish Daily Forward was published daily in New York.

3. A menagerie (mi naj ər e) is a collection of wild or unusual animals.

Analyzing Characterization Why does the author include these details about Salzman?

Reading Strategy

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Torah Binder, 1848. Shimshon Kurzman. Ink and watercolor on cotton. The Jewish Museum, New York.

4. Here, ascetic means “severe” or “stern.”5. A curriculum vitae (kə ri kyə ləm ve t) is a summary of a

person’s education and work experience, usually given to a prospective employer. Finkle has provided Salzman with a summary of the “highlights” of his life.

Analyzing Characterization What do these details reveal about Finkle and Salzman?

Reading Strategy Life in the City What information about New York City can you infer from this passage?

Big Idea

6. A dowry is money or property a woman brings to her husband at the time of marriage.

through eyeglasses he had just slipped on, to be engaged in scanning the writing on the cards, stole occasional glances at the young man’s distinguished face, noting with pleasure the long, severe scholar’s nose, brown eyes heavy with learning, sensitive yet ascetic4 lips, and a certain, almost hollow quality of the dark cheeks. He gazed around at shelves upon shelves of books and let out a soft, contented sigh.

When Leo’s eyes fell upon the cards, he counted six spread out in Salzman’s hand.

“So few?” he asked in disappointment.“You wouldn’t believe me how much cards I

got in my office,” Salzman replied. “The drawers are already filled to the top, so I keep them now in a barrel, but is every girl good for a new rabbi?”

Leo blushed at this, regretting all he had revealed of himself in a curriculum vitae5 he had sent to Salzman. He had thought it best to acquaint him with his strict standards and specifications, but in having done so,

felt he had told the marriage broker more than was absolutely necessary.

He hesitantly inquired, “Do you keep photo-graphs of your clients on file?”

“First comes family, amount of dowry,6 also what kind promises,” Salzman replied, unbuttoning his tight coat and settling himself in the chair. “After comes pictures, rabbi.”

“Call me Mr. Finkle. I’m not yet a rabbi.”Salzman said he would, but instead called him

doctor, which he changed to rabbi when Leo was not listening too attentively.

Salzman adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles, gently cleared his throat and read in an eager voice the contents of the top card:

“Sophie P. Twenty-four years. Widow one year. No children. Educated high school and two years college. Father promises eight thou-sand dollars. Has wonderful wholesale busi-ness. Also real estate. On the mother’s side comes teachers, also one actor. Well known on Second Avenue.”

Leo gazed up in surprise. “Did you say a widow?”

The Jewish Museum of New York/Art Resource, NY

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BERNARD MALAMUD 945

“A widow don’t mean spoiled, rabbi. She lived with her husband maybe four months. He was a sick boy she made a mistake to marry him.”

“Marrying a widow has never entered my mind.”“This is because you have no experience. A

widow, especially if she is young and healthy like this girl, is a wonderful person to marry. She will be thankful to you the rest of her life. Believe me, if I was looking now for a bride, I would marry a widow.”

Leo reflected, then shook his head.Salzman hunched his shoulders in an almost

imperceptible gesture of disappointment. He placed the card down on the wooden table and began to read another:

“Lily H. High school teacher. Regular. Not a substitute. Has savings and new Dodge car. Lived in Paris one year. Father is successful dentist thirty-five years. Interested in professional man. Well Americanized family. Wonderful opportunity.”

“I knew her person-ally,” said Salzman. “I wish you could see this girl. She is a doll. Also very intelligent. All day you could talk to her about books and theyater7 and what not. She also knows current events.”

“I don’t believe you mentioned her age?”“Her age?” Salzman said, raising his brows. “Her

age is thirty-two years.”Leo said after a while, “I’m afraid that seems a

little too old.”Salzman let out a laugh. “So how old are you,

rabbi?”“Twenty-seven.”

“So what is the difference, tell me, between twenty-seven and thirty-two? My own wife is seven years older than me. So what did I suf-fer?—Nothing. If Rothschild’s8 a daughter wants to marry you, would you say on account her age, no?”

“Yes,” Leo said dryly.Salzman shook off the no in the yes. “Five

years don’t mean a thing. I give you my word that when you will live with her for one week you will forget her age. What does it mean five years—that she lived more and knows more than somebody who is younger? On this girl, God bless her, years are not wasted. Each one

that it comes makes better the bargain.”

“What subject does she teach in high school?”

“Languages. If you heard the way she speaks French, you will think it is music. I am in the business twenty-five years, and I recommend her with my whole heart. Believe me, I know what I’m talking, rabbi.”

“What’s on the next card?” Leo said abruptly.

Salzman reluctantly turned up the third card:

“Ruth K. Nineteen years. Honor student. Father offers thirteen thousand cash to the right bridegroom. He is a medical doctor. Stomach specialist with marvelous practice. Brother-in-law owns own garment business. Particular people.”

Salzman looked as if he had read his trump card.“Did you say nineteen?” Leo asked with

interest.“On the dot.”“Is she attractive?” He blushed. “Pretty?”Salzman kissed his finger tips. “A little doll. On

this I give you my word. Let me call the father tonight and you will see what means pretty.”

But Leo was troubled. “You’re sure she’s that young?”

“This I am positive. The father will show you the birth certificate.”

Analyzing Characterization What qualities does Salzman consider important in a wife?

Reading Strategy

Dialect How does the use of dialect in this passage contribute to the characterization of Salzman?

Literary Element

“If you heard the way she speaks

French, you will think

it is music.”

7. Theyater is the way Salzman is pronouncing the word theater.

8. The Rothschilds were a prominent, wealthy Jewish family.

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“Are you positive there isn’t something wrong with her?” Leo insisted.

“Who says there is wrong?”“I don’t understand why an American girl

her age should go to a marriage broker.”A smile spread over Salzman’s face.“So for the same reason you went, she comes.”Leo flushed. “I am pressed for time.”Salzman, realizing he had been tactless,

quickly explained. “The father came, not her. He wants she should have the best, so he looks around himself. When we will locate the right boy he will introduce him and encourage. This makes a better marriage than if a young girl without experience takes for herself. I don’t have to tell you this.”

“But don’t you think this young girl believes in love?” Leo spoke uneasily.

Salzman was about to guffaw but caught him-self and said soberly, “Love comes with the right person, not before.”

Leo parted dry lips but did not speak. Noticing that Salzman had snatched a glance at the next card, he cleverly asked, “How is her health?”

“Perfect,” Salzman said, breathing with diffi-culty. “Of course, she is a little lame on her right foot from an auto accident that it happened to her when she was twelve years, but nobody notices on account she is so brilliant and also beautiful.”

Leo got up heavily and went to the window. He felt curiously bitter and upbraided himself for having called in the marriage broker. Finally, he shook his head.

“Why not?” Salzman persisted, the pitch of his voice rising.

“Because I detest stomach specialists.”“So what do you care what is his business?

After you marry her do you need him? Who says he must come every Friday night in your house?”

Ashamed of the way the talk was going, Leo dismissed Salzman, who went home with heavy, melancholy eyes.

Though he had felt only relief at the marriage broker’s departure, Leo was in low spirits the next day. He explained it as arising from Salzman’s failure to produce a suitable bride for him. He did not care for his type of clientele. But when

Leo found himself hesitating whether to seek out another matchmaker, one more polished than Pinye, he wondered if it could be—his protesta-tions to the contrary, and although he honored his father and mother—that he did not, in essence, care for the match making institution? This thought he quickly put out of mind yet found him-self still upset. All day he ran around in the woods9—missed an important appointment, forgot to give out his laundry, walked out of a Broadway cafeteria without paying and had to run back with the ticket in his hand; had even not recognized his landlady in the street when she passed with a friend and courteously called out, “A good evening to you, Doctor Finkle.” By nightfall, however, he had regained sufficient calm to sink his nose into a book and there found peace from his thoughts.

Almost at once there came a knock on the door. Before Leo could say enter, Salzman, com-mercial cupid, was standing in the room. His face was gray and meager, his expression hungry, and he looked as if he would expire on his feet. Yet the marriage broker managed, by some trick of the muscles, to display a broad smile.

“So good evening. I am invited?”Leo nodded, disturbed to see him again, yet

unwilling to ask the man to leave.Beaming still, Salzman laid his portfolio on the

table. “Rabbi, I got for you tonight good news.”“I’ve asked you not to call me rabbi. I’m still a

student.”“Your worries are finished. I have for you a

first-class bride.”“Leave me in peace concerning this subject.”

Leo pretended lack of interest.“The world will dance at your wedding.”“Please, Mr. Salzman, no more.”“But first must come back my strength,”

Salzman said weakly. He fumbled with the portfolio straps and took out of the leather case an oily paper bag, from which he extracted a hard,

Analyzing Characterization How does this description of Salzman differ from the description of him when he first entered Finkle’s home?

Reading Strategy

Dialect What inversion does Salzman make?

Literary ElementDialect How would this passage be written in Standard English?

Literary Element

9. [ran . . . woods] Here, this phrase means that Finkle was nervous and distracted.

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BERNARD MALAMUD 947

seeded roll and a small, smoked white fish. With a quick motion of his hand he stripped the fish out of its skin and began raven-ously to chew. “All day in a rush,” he muttered.

Leo watched him eat.“A sliced tomato you have

maybe?” Salzman hesitantly inquired.

“No.”The marriage broker shut his

eyes and ate. When he had fin-ished he carefully cleaned up the crumbs and rolled up the remains of the fish, in the paper bag. His spectacled eyes roamed the room until he discovered, amid some piles of books, a one-burner gas stove. Lifting his hat he humbly asked, “A glass tea you got, rabbi?”

Conscience-stricken, Leo rose and brewed the tea. He served it with a chunk of lemon and two cubes of lump sugar, delighting Salzman.

After he had drunk his tea, Salzman’s strength and good spir-its were restored.

“So tell me, rabbi,” he said amiably, “you considered some more the three clients I mentioned yesterday?”

“There was no need to consider.”“Why not?”“None of them suits me.”“What then suits you?”Leo let it pass because he could give only a

confused answer.Without waiting for a reply, Salzman asked,

“You remember this girl I talked to you—the high school teacher?”

“Age thirty-two?”But, surprisingly, Salzman’s face lit in a smile.

“Age twenty-nine.”Leo shot him a look. “Reduced from thirty-two?”“A mistake,” Salzman avowed. “I talked

today with the dentist. He took me to his safety deposit box and showed me the birth certificate. She was twenty-nine years last August. They made her a party in the moun-

tains where she went for her vacation. When her father spoke to me the first time I forgot to write the age and I told you thirty-two, but now I remember this was a different client, a widow.”

“The same one you told me about? I thought she was twenty-four?”

“A different. Am I responsible that the world is filled with widows?”

“No, but I’m not interested in them, nor for that matter, in school teachers.”

Salzman pulled his clasped hands to his breast. Looking at the ceiling he devoutly exclaimed, “Yiddishe kinder,10 what can I say

Portrait of Miss Stryker (Portrait of an Aristocrat). Ella Condie Lamb. Pastels on paper, 261/2 x 225/8 in. Collection of The Newark Museum, NJ.

10. Yiddishe kinder (yid ish ə kint ər) means “Jewish children” or “Jewish young people.”

The Newark Museum/Art Resource, NY

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to somebody that he is not interested in high school teachers? So what then you are interested?”

Leo flushed but controlled himself.“In what else will you be interested,” Salzman

went on, “if you not interested in this fine girl that she speaks four languages and has person-ally in the bank ten thousand dollars? Also her father guarantees further twelve thousand. Also she has new car, wonderful clothes, talks on all subjects, and she will give you a first-class home and children. How near do we come in our life to paradise?”

“If she’s so wonderful, why wasn’t she married ten years ago?”

“Why?” said Salzman with a heavy laugh. “—Why? Because she is partikiler.11 This is why. She wants the best.”

Leo went silent, amused at how he had entan-gled himself. But Salzman had aroused his interest in Lily H., and he began seriously to consider call-ing on her. When the marriage broker observed how intently Leo’s mind was at work on the facts he had supplied, he felt certain they would soon come to an agreement.

Late Saturday afternoon, conscious of Salzman, Leo Finkle walked with Lily Hirschorn along Riverside Drive.12 He walked briskly and erectly, wearing with distinction the black fedora13 he had that morning taken with trepidation out of the dusty hat box on his closet shelf, and the heavy black Saturday coat he had thoroughly whisked clean. Leo also owned a walking stick, a present from a distant relative, but quickly put temptation aside and did not use it. Lily, petite and not unpretty, had on something signifying the approach of spring. She was au courant14 animatedly, with all sorts of subjects, and he weighed her words and found her surprisingly

sound—score another for Salzman, who he uneasily sensed to be somewhere around, hiding perhaps high in a tree along the street, flashing the lady signals with a pocket mirror; or perhaps a cloven-hoofed Pan, piping nuptial ditties as he danced his invisible way before them, strewing wild buds on the walk and purple grapes in their path, symbolizing fruit of a union, though there was of course still none.

Lily startled Leo by remarking, “I was thinking of Mr. Salzman, a curious figure, wouldn’t you say?”

Not certain what to answer, he nodded.

She bravely went on, blushing, “I for one am grateful for his introducing us. Aren’t you?”

He courteously replied, “I am.”

“I mean,” she said with a little laugh—and it was all in good taste, or at least gave the effect of being not in bad—“do you mind that we came together so?”

He was not displeased with her honesty, rec-ognizing that she meant to set the relationship aright, and understanding that it took a cer-tain amount of experience in life, and courage, to want to do it quite that way. One had to have some sort of past to make that kind of beginning.

He said that he did not mind. Salzman’s function was traditional and honorable—valuable for what it might achieve, which, he pointed out, was frequently nothing.

Lily agreed with a sigh. They walked on for a while and she said after a long silence, again with a nervous laugh, “Would you mind if I asked you something a little bit personal? Frankly, I find the subject fascinating.” Although Leo shrugged, she went on half embarrassedly, “How was it that you came to your calling? I mean was it a sudden passionate inspiration?”

Life in the City Which details depict a stroll in New York City rather than in the country?

Big Idea Analyzing Characterization What does this passage reveal about Finkle’s state of mind?

Reading Strategy

11. Partikiler is the way Salzman is pronouncing the word particular.

12. Riverside Drive, a major road on the west side of Manhattan, runs beside the Hudson River.

13. A fedora (fi dor ə) is a soft felt hat with a curved brim and a lengthwise crease in the crown.

14. The French words au courant (o k¯¯¯oo ran) literally mean “in the current” but are most often used to mean “fully informed” or “up-to-date.”

North Wind Picture Archives

Visual Vocabulary In Greek mythol-ogy, Pan was a god of pastures, flocks, and shepherds who was believed to foster reproduction and growth. He was traditionally depicted as a musi-cian who was part man and part goat.

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BERNARD MALAMUD 949

Leo, after a time, slowly replied, “I was always interested in the Law.”

“You saw revealed in it the presence of the Highest?”

He nodded and changed the subject. “I understand that you spent a little time in Paris, Miss Hirschorn?”

“Oh, did Mr. Salzman tell you, Rabbi Finkle?” Leo winced but she went on, “It was ages ago and almost forgotten. I remember I had to return for my sister’s wedding.”

And Lily would not be put off. “When,” she asked in a trembly voice, “did you become enamored of God?”

He stared at her. Then it came to him that she was talking not about Leo Finkle, but of a total stranger, some mystical figure, perhaps even passionate prophet that Salzman had dreamed up for her—no relation to the living or dead. Leo trembled with rage and weakness. The trickster had obviously sold her a bill of goods, just as he had him, who’d expected to become acquainted with a young lady of twenty-nine, only to behold, the moment he laid eyes upon her strained and anxious face, a woman past thirty-five and aging rapidly. Only his self control had kept him this long in her presence.

“I am not,” he said gravely, “a talented religious person,” and in seeking words to go on, found him-self possessed by shame and fear. “I think,” he said in a strained manner, “that I came to God not because I loved Him, but because I did not.”

This confession he spoke harshly because its unexpectedness shook him.

Lily wilted. Leo saw a profusion of loaves of bread go flying like ducks high over his head, not unlike the winged loaves by which he had counted himself to sleep last night. Mercifully, then, it snowed, which he would not put past Salzman’s machinations.

He was infuriated with the marriage broker and swore he would throw him out of the room the minute he reappeared. But Salzman did not come that night, and when Leo’s anger had subsided,15 an unaccountable despair grew in its place. At first he thought this was caused by his disappointment in Lily, but before long it became evident that he had involved himself with Salzman without a true knowledge of his own intent. He gradually real-ized—with an emptiness that seized him with six hands—that he had called in the broker to find him a bride because he was incapable of doing it himself. This terrifying insight he had derived as a result of his meeting and conversation with Lily Hirschorn. Her probing questions had somehow irritated him into revealing—to himself more than her—the true nature of his relationship to God, and from that it had come upon him, with shocking force, that apart from his parents, he had never loved anyone. Or perhaps it went the other way, that he did not love God so well as he might, because he had not loved man. It seemed to Leo that his whole life stood starkly revealed and he saw himself for the first time as he truly was—unloved and loveless. This bitter but somehow not fully unexpected rev-elation brought him to a point of panic, controlled only by extraordinary effort. He covered his face with his hands and cried.

The week that followed was the worst of his life. He did not eat and lost weight. His beard darkened and grew ragged. He stopped attending seminars and almost never opened a book. He seriously con-sidered leaving the Yeshivah, although he was deeply troubled at the thought of the loss of all his years of study—saw them like pages torn from a book, strewn over the city—and at the devastating effect of this decision upon his parents. But he had lived without knowledge of himself, and never in the Five Books and all the Commentaries16—mea culpa17—had the truth been revealed to him. He did not know where to turn, and in all this desolating loneliness there was no to whom, although he often thought of Lily but not once could bring himself to go downstairs

Analyzing Characterization What does this confession reveal about Finkle?

Reading Strategy

enamored (en am ərd) adj. inspired with love; charmed; captivated

Vocabulary

Dialect How could you rephrase this sentence using a standard grammatical form?

Literary Element

15. Subsided means “decreased in intensity.” 16. The Pentateuch (pen tə took´), or first Five Books of the

Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), are known collectively in Judaism as the Torah, or the Law. Commentaries provide explanatory and scholarly information about the biblical texts.

17. Mea culpa (ma ə kool pə) means “my own fault” in Latin.

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and make the call. He became touchy and irritable, especially with his landlady, who asked him all manner of personal questions; on the other hand, sensing his own disagree-ableness, he waylaid her on the stairs and apologized abjectly, until mortified, she ran from him. Out of this, however, he drew the consolation that he was a Jew and that a Jew suffered. But gradually, as the long and terrible week drew to a close, he regained his compo-sure and some idea of pur-pose in life: to go on as planned. Although he was imperfect, the ideal was not. As for his quest of a bride, the thought of continuing afflicted him with anxiety and heartburn, yet perhaps with this new knowledge of himself he would be more successful than in the past. Perhaps love would now come to him and a bride to that love. And for this sanctified seeking who needed a Salzman?

The marriage broker, a skeleton with haunted eyes, returned that very night. He looked, withal, the picture of frustrated expec-tancy—as if he had steadfastly waited the week at Miss Lily Hirschorn’s side for a telephone call that never came.

Casually coughing, Salzman came immediately to the point: “So how did you like her?”

Leo’s anger rose and he could not refrain from chiding the matchmaker: “Why did you lie to me, Salzman?”

Salzman’s pale face went dead white, the world had snowed on him.

“Did you not state that she was twenty-nine?” Leo insisted.

“I give you my word—”“She was thirty-five, if a day. At least thirty-

five.”

“Of this don’t be too sure. Her father told me—”“Never mind. The worst of it was that you lied

to her.”“How did I lie to her, tell me?”“You told her things about me that weren’t

true. You made me out to be more, conse-quently less than I am. She had in mind a totally different person, a sort of semi-mystical Wonder Rabbi.”

“All I said, you was a religious man.”“I can imagine.”Salzman sighed. “This is

my weakness that I have,” he confessed. “My wife says to me I shouldn’t be a sales-man, but when I have two fine people that they would be wonderful to be married, I am so happy that I talk too much.” He smiled wanly.18 “This is why Salzman is a poor man.”

Leo’s anger left him. “Well, Salzman, I’m afraid that’s all.”

The marriage broker fastened hungry eyes on him.

“You don’t want any more a bride?”“I do,” said Leo, “but I have decided to seek her

in a different way. I am no longer interested in an arranged marriage. To be frank, I now admit the necessity of premarital love. That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry.”

“Love?” said Salzman, astounded. After a moment he remarked, “For us, our love is our life, not for the ladies. In the ghetto they—”

“I know, I know,” said Leo. “I’ve thought of it often. Love, I have said to myself, should be a by-product of living and worship rather than its own end. Yet for myself I find it necessary to establish the level of my need and fulfill it.”

Salzman shrugged but answered, “Listen, rabbi, if you want love, this I can find for you also. I have such beautiful clients that you will love them the minute your eyes will see them.”

Leo smiled unhappily. “I’m afraid you don’t understand.”Analyzing Characterization What

does this third description of Salzman suggest about him?

Reading Strategy

Analyzing Characterization Why does Finkle reach this conclusion?

Reading Strategy

18. Here, wanly means “sadly” or “in a dejected way.”

abjectly (ab jekt le) adv. in a humiliating, mean, or degrading manner

Vocabulary

Perhaps love would now come to him and a bride to that love.

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BERNARD MALAMUD 951

But Salzman hastily unstrapped his portfolio and withdrew a manila packet from it.

“Pictures,” he said, quickly laying the envelope on the table.

Leo called after him to take the pictures away, but as if on the wings of the wind, Salzman had disappeared.

March came. Leo had returned to his regular routine. Although he felt not quite himself yet—lacked energy—he was mak-ing plans for a more active social life. Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no cor-ners left he would make cir-cles rounder. All the while Salzman’s pictures had lain on the table, gathering dust. Occasionally as Leo sat studying, or enjoying a cup of tea, his eyes fell on the manila envelope, but he never opened it.

The days went by and no social life to speak of developed with a member of the opposite sex—it was difficult, given the circumstances of his situa-tion. One morning Leo toiled up the stairs to his room and stared out the window at the city. Although the day was bright his view of it was dark. For some time he watched the people in the street below hurrying along and then turned with a heavy heart to his little room. On the table was the packet. With a sudden relentless gesture he tore it open. For a half-hour he stood by the table in a state of excitement, examining the photographs of the ladies Salzman had included. Finally, with a deep sigh he put them down. There were six, of varying degrees of attractiveness, but look at them long enough and they all became Lily Hirschorn: all past their prime, all starved behind bright smiles, not a true personality in the lot. Life, despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by; they were pictures in a brief case that stank of fish. After a while, however, as Leo attempted to return the photographs into the envelope, he found in it another, a snapshot of the type taken by a

machine for a quarter. He gazed at it a moment and let out a cry.

Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth—spring flowers, yet age—a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange. He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as he might he could not place her although he could almost recall her name, as if

he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this couldn’t be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty—no, though her face was attractive enough; it was that something about her moved him. Feature for fea-ture, even some of the ladies of the photographs could do bet-ter; but she leaped forth to his heart—had lived, or wanted

to—more than just wanted, perhaps regretted how she had lived—had somehow deeply suffered: it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired. His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had finished drinking, again with excitement he exam-ined the face and found it good: good for Leo Finkle. Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking. She might, per-haps, love him. How she had happened to be among the discards in Salzman’s barrel he could never guess, but he knew he must urgently go find her.

Leo rushed downstairs, grabbed up the Bronx19 telephone book, and searched for Salzman’s home

Life in the City How do the descriptions of city life here enhance the tone?

Big Idea Analyzing Characterization Why is Finkle experiencing fear here?

Reading Strategy

19. The Bronx is one of five boroughs, or divisions, that make up New York City. Manhattan is another.

Her face deeply moved him.

Why, he could at first not say.

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address. He was not listed, nor was his office. Neither was he in the Manhattan book. But Leo remembered having written down the address on a slip of paper after he had read Salzman’s advertisement in the “personals” column of the Forward. He ran up to his room and tore through his papers, without luck. It was exasper-ating. Just when he needed the matchmaker he

was nowhere to be found. Fortunately Leo remembered to look in his wallet. There on a card he found his name written and a Bronx address. No phone number was listed, the reason—Leo now recalled—he had originally communicated with Salzman by letter. He got on his coat, put a hat on over his skullcap and hurried to the subway station. All the way to the far end of the Bronx he sat on the edge of his seat. He was more than once tempted to

take out the picture and see if the girl’s face was as he remembered it, but he refrained, allowing the snapshot to remain in his inside coat pocket, content to have her so close. When the train pulled into the station he was waiting at the door and bolted out. He quickly located the street Salzman had advertised.

The building he sought was less than a block from the subway, but it was not an office building, nor even a loft, nor a store in which one could rent office space. It was a very old tenement20 house. Leo found Salzman’s name in pencil on a soiled tag under the bell and climbed three dark flights to his apartment. When he knocked, the door was opened by a thin, asthmatic, gray-haired woman in felt slippers.

“Yes?” she said, expecting nothing. She listened without listening. He could have sworn he had seen her, too, before but knew it was an illusion.

“Salzman—does he live here? Pinye Salzman,” he said, “the matchmaker?”

She stared at him a long minute. “Of course.”He felt embarrassed. “Is he in?”“No.” Her mouth, though left open, offered

nothing more.“The matter is urgent. Can you tell me where

his office is?”“In the air.” She pointed upward.“You mean he has no office?” Leo asked.“In his socks.”He peered into the apartment. It was sun-

less and dingy, one large room divided by a half-open curtain, beyond which he could see a sagging metal bed. The near side of a room was crowded with rickety chairs, old bureaus, a three-legged table, racks of cooking utensils, and all the apparatus of a kitchen. But there was no sign of Salzman or his magic barrel, probably also a figment of the imagination. An odor of frying fish made Leo weak to the knees.

“Where is he?” he insisted. “I’ve got to see your husband.”

At length she answered, “So who knows where he is? Every time he thinks a new thought he runs to a different place. Go home, he will find you.”

“Tell him Leo Finkle.”She gave no sign she had heard.He walked downstairs, depressed.But Salzman, breathless, stood waiting at

his door.Leo was astounded and overjoyed. “How did

you get here before me?”“I rushed.”“Come inside.”They entered. Leo fixed tea, and a sardine

sandwich for Salzman. As they were drinking he reached behind him for the packet of pic-tures and handed them to the marriage broker.

Salzman put down his glass and said expectantly, “You found somebody you like?”

“Not among these.”The marriage broker turned away.“Here is the one I want.” Leo held forth the

snapshot.Salzman slipped on his glasses and took the

picture into his trembling hand. He turned ghastly and let out a groan.

“What’s the matter?” cried Leo.“Excuse me. Was an accident this picture.

She isn’t for you.”

Visual Vocabulary A skullcap, or yarmulke (ya mə kə), is a brimless cap worn by many Jewish men and boys, especially during religious services.

20. A tenement is an apartment building or rooming house that is built or maintained poorly and is often overcrowded.

Life in the City What details set the scene in New York City?

Big Idea

Christopher Morris/Black Star Publishing/PictureQuest

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BERNARD MALAMUD 953

Salzman frantically shoved the manila packet into his portfolio. He thrust the snap-shot into his pocket and fled down the stairs.

Leo, after momentary paraly-sis, gave chase and cornered the marriage broker in the ves-tibule.21 The landlady made hysterical outcries but neither of them listened.

“Give me back the picture, Salzman.”

“No.” The pain in his eyes was terrible.

“Tell me who she is then.”“This I can’t tell you.

Excuse me.”He made to depart, but Leo,

forgetting himself, seized the matchmaker by his tight coat and shook him frenziedly.

“Please,” sighed Salzman. “Please.”

Leo ashamedly let him go. “Tell me who she is,” he begged. “It’s very important for me to know.”

“She is not for you. She is a wild one—wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi.”

“What do you mean wild?”“Like an animal. Like a dog.

For her to be poor was a sin. This is why to me she is dead now.”

“In God’s name, what do you mean?”

“Her I can’t introduce to you,” Salzman cried.

“Why are you so excited?”“Why, he asks,” Salzman said,

bursting into tears. “This is my baby, my Stella, she should burn in hell.” Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers

he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded

The Lover of Books, 1934. Moses Soyer. Oil on canvas, 42 x 231/2 in. The Jewish Museum, New York.

21. A vestibule (ves tə bul ) is an entrance hall or lobby.

Analyzing Characterization Why does his daughter’s wildness cause Salzman to reject her?

Reading Strategy

The Jewish Museum of New York/Art Resource, NY

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to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and exalted him.

He perhaps did not know that he had come to a final decision until he encountered Salzman in a Broadway cafeteria. He was sitting alone at a rear table, sucking the bony remains of a fish. The marriage broker appeared haggard, and transparent to the point of vanishing.

Salzman looked up at first without recognizing him. Leo had grown a pointed beard and his eyes were weighted with wisdom.

“Salzman,” he said, “love has at last come to my heart.”

“Who can love from a picture?” mocked the marriage broker.

“It is not impossible.”“If you can love her, then you can love any-

body. Let me show you some new clients that they just sent me their photographs. One is a little doll.”

“Just her I want,” Leo murmured.“Don’t be a fool, doctor. Don’t bother with her.”“Put me in touch with her, Salzman,” Leo said

humbly. “Perhaps I can be of service.”Salzman had stopped eating and Leo under-

stood with emotion that it was now arranged.

Leaving the cafeteria, he was, however, afflicted by a tormenting suspicion that Salzman had planned it all to happen this way.

Leo was informed by letter that she would meet him on a certain corner, and she was there one spring night, waiting under a street lamp. He appeared, carrying a small bouquet of violets and rosebuds. Stella stood by the lamp post, smoking. She wore white with red shoes, which fitted his expectations, although in a troubled moment he had imagined the dress red, and only the shoes white. She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes—clearly her father’s—were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers outthrust.

Around the corner, Salzman, leaning against a wall, chanted prayers for the dead.

Analyzing Characterization How is Finkle’s date with Stella different from his previous date with Lily Hirschorn?

Reading Strategy

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BERNARD MALAMUD 955

AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. Were you surprised by the outcome of the story?

Explain why or why not.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)Why does Leo Finkle decide to consult a mar-

riage broker, or matchmaker? (b)What do you think consulting a marriage broker represents for Finkle?

3. (a)Who are the first three women Salzman describes? (b)How does Finkle react to the description of each? (c)What does Finkle’s attitude toward the women reveal about his personality?

4. (a)How does Finkle feel about Salzman at the end of the story? (b)Do you think Finkle’s suspicion about Salzman at the end of the story is correct? Support your answer with evidence from the story.

Analyze and Evaluate5. Why might Finkle have responded so strongly to

the snapshot of Stella?

6. How does the setting of Salzman’s apartment add to the author’s characterization of the matchmaker? Explain with details from the selection.

7. Imagine that you are buying something and the salesperson uses methods like Salzman’s. How would you respond? Explain your answer.

8. How does Malamud use suspense to draw the reader into the story? Support your response.

Connect9. Big Idea Life in the City In what ways does the

city environment shape and infl uence Finkle’s life?


Literary Element DialectIn “The Magic Barrel,” Salzman speaks in a dialect of English influenced by Yiddish grammar and syntax. For example, he says “She lived with her husband maybe four months. He was a sick boy she made a mistake to marry him.” In Standard English, this passage might read, “She lived with her husband for perhaps four months. He was a sick boy; it was a mistake for her to marry him.”

1. Find three more examples of dialect in Salzman’s speech in the story.

2. Notice that Salzman speaks in dialect but Finkle does not. What do these differences in speech tell you about these characters?

Review: MotivationMotivation is the reason or cause for a character’s actions. The cause may be internal (for example, a character’s ambition, fear, or love) or external (for example, societal pressure or danger). Most characters are motivated by both internal and external factors.

Group Activity Meet with a small group to discuss the motivations of Leo Finkle in “The Magic Barrel.” Create a chart like the one shown, and fill it in by identifying the motivation for each action listed.

LITERARY ANALYSIS

LEO F INKLE

Motivation Actions

1. calls in Salzman

2. rejects Salzman’s three candidates

3. agrees to meet Lily Hirschorn

4. stops eating and attending seminars

5. falls in love with Stella’s snapshot

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Reading Strategy Analyzing Characterization

In “The Magic Barrel,” Malamud primarily uses indirect characterization to reveal the personalities of his two main characters. Indirect characterization requires readers to interpret details and events—to reach conclusions on the basis of the clues provided by the author.

1. Find three instances in which Malamud portrays Salzman’s character.

2. Identify the method used to reveal character in each instance: for example, through the character’s thoughts, words, actions, or appearance or through what other characters think and say about that character.

3. Write a brief sketch of Salzman’s character based on these passages.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Word Origins You know that Latin roots form the basis of many English words and that the meaning of an English word is related to the meaning of its root. Study the meanings of these Latin roots:

ami(c)—”friend” anim—”mind; soul” amat or amor—”to love”

Now notice how the roots affect the meanings of three vocabulary words from the selection:

amiable—”friendly”

animated—”full of life, or soul”

enamored—”filled with love”

Write each word below and underline its Latin root. Then tell how the root contributes to the meaning of the word.

1. amateur2. amicable3. amity4. magnanimous5. amorous

Writing About LiteratureAnalyze Cultural Context “The Magic Barrel” is set primarily in a Jewish community in New York City. Write a brief essay analyzing this cultural context. Discuss the following questions and use evidence from the story to support your ideas.

1. What is the general attitude of the Jewish population toward rabbis? What does this suggest about the importance of religion in the lives of the people?

2. Marriage brokers play an important role in the social life of the community. What does this tell you about the community’s attitude toward marriage and the family?

3. What qualities does Salzman esteem in a wife? What does this suggest about the community’s values?

Before you begin your first draft, complete a chart like the one started below. List the qualities valued by Finkle and Salzman, the representatives of the culture.

Rabbis and Religion

Marriage and Family

Qualities Desirable in a Wife

Finkle’s Attitude

wants to be a rabbi but has conflicted feelings about God

Salzman’s Attitude

respects rabbis

After you complete your first draft, get together with a classmate to evaluate each other’s work and to sug-gest revisions. Then proofread and edit your draft for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Learning for Life Group Activity For many people who are busy or shy, or who have trouble meeting romantic partners for other reasons, dating services have taken the place of match-makers. Imagine yourself as the owner of a dating service. Write the text for a brochure to persuade people like Leo Finkle and Lily Hirschorn to use your service. Keep in mind that such a brochure would be a form of persuasive writing.



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Bettmann/CORBIS

BEFORE YOU READ

The Rockpile

MEET JAMES BALDWIN

James Baldwin wrote constantly about contro-versial topics, such as race, politics, love, and religion. In the course of his career, Baldwin

produced a formidable body of work, which holds a place of honor in American literature. To achieve that eminence, he had to overcome many obstacles.

The grandson of slaves, Baldwin grew up in a large, impoverished family in the Harlem neigh-borhood of New York during the economic hard times of the Great Depression. He once said that he wanted to be rich and famous simply so no one could evict his family again. Alhough he wrote plays, short stories, and novels, Baldwin is perhaps most highly regarded as an essayist. Among his most famous essay collections are Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time. In both his fiction and his nonfiction, he examined issues of African American identity and the sources of racial bigotry in the twentieth-century United States.

“I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

—James Baldwin

Confronting the Past Baldwin’s work first became known to a wide audience when he pub-lished his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain in 1953, a work that reflects the author’s search for his roots. Baldwin had struggled with the novel for ten years, noting that, “In a sense, I wrote to redeem my father. I had to understand the forces, the experi-ence, the life that shaped him before I could grow up myself, before I could become a writer.” Baldwin’s ability to accept and use the pain of the past—while

not being consumed by it—became the basis for much of his work, both fiction and nonfiction.

Changing Perspectives Baldwin’s later work focused primarily on protesting racial inequality. He said, “It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one can-not deny the humanity of another without diminish-ing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees himself.” Besides achieving fame as a writer, Baldwin was also a popular speaker during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His uncompro-mising honesty and realism, his ear for language, and his early experience as a minister combined to make him a powerful force at the podium.

In 1969 Baldwin moved to France, where he lived for the majority of the rest of his life. In the United States, Baldwin had never won a major literary prize. In France, he was honored with one of the literary world’s most prestigious awards: Commander of the Legion of Honor. When James Baldwin died, his body was sent back to Harlem and buried only a few blocks from the house where he was born. More than 5,000 mourners gathered to pay their respects to the man who once said, “An artist is here not to give you answers, but to ask you questions.”

James Baldwin was born in 1924 and died in 1987.

Author Search For more about James Baldwin, go to www.glencoe.com.

JAMES BALDWIN 957

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Connecting to the StoryHave you ever known someone who chose to side with a brother, sister, or friend even though it meant breaking the rules? In “The Rockpile,” a boy gives his word to his brother and honors it even though he could end up hurting them both. As you read the story, think about the following questions:

• When is it justified to break the rules?

• What would you risk to keep your word to someone?

Building BackgroundThis story is set in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. Although no precise time is given, it appears to be the 1930s—the time of Baldwin’s youth. “The Rockpile” may well be set near the first home Baldwin remembered living in, at Park Avenue and 131st Street. Like John in the story, Baldwin was the oldest child in a large family. His mother married David Baldwin three years after James’s birth, so, like John, young Baldwin was a stepson. Like the father in the story, David Baldwin was a Protestant minister and a stern man who did not like his children playing in the streets. In fact, he believed that going outside, except to go to church or to the store, was certain to lead to sin.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea Life in the CityAs you read the story, look for details about the setting and characters that provide information about urban life in the Depression-era United States.

Literary Element FoilA foil is a minor character whose contrast with a main character highlights particular traits of that main charac-ter. As you read “The Rockpile,” examine how your understanding of the main character is expanded as a result of the presence of the foil.


Reading Strategy Making Generalizations About Characters

A generalization is a broad conclusion drawn from specific details. As you read, use details to make generalizations about the family members in “The Rockpile.”

Reading Tip: Taking Notes In a chart, record details and generalizations about the main characters.


GeneralizationsRoy and John have different personalities.

DetailsRoy gazed at the street, wishing he had wings; John was afraid of the rockpile.

Vocabulary

grapple (�rap�əl) v. to struggle in hand-to-hand combat; to wrestle; p. 959 The man grappled with his attacker.

loiter (loi�tər) v. to stand or linger idly or aim-lessly about a place; p. 960 We thought it best not to loiter in the empty street.

intimidated (in tim�ə dat əd) adj. made timid or fearful; frightened into submission or inaction; p. 960 When the large man pushed me, I was so intimidated that I was speechless.

engrossed (en �rost�) adj. fully attentive to; completely engaged in; absorbed; p. 961 I spoke to my mother, but she was engrossed in the news-paper and did not look up.

jubilant (j¯¯oo�bə lənt) adj. extremely happy; tri-umphantly joyful; p. 961 The people were jubi-lant when they heard that the war had ended.

Vocabulary Tip: Analogies An analogy is a com-parison that shows similarities between two things that are otherwise dissimilar.


• analyzing literary periods

• recognizing a character foil

• making generalizations about characters

• writing an evaluative essay

• understanding analogies

OBJECTIVES

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JAMES BALDWIN 959

cross the street from their house, in an empty lot between two houses, stood the rock-pile. It was a strange place to find a mass of natu-ral rock jutting out of the ground; and someone, probably Aunt Florence, had once told them that the rock was there and could not be taken away because without it the subway cars under-ground would fly apart, killing all the people. This, touching on some natural mystery concern-ing the surface and the center of the earth, was far too intriguing an explanation to be chal-lenged, and it invested the rockpile, moreover, with such mysterious importance that Roy felt it to be his right, not to say his duty, to play there.

Other boys were to be seen there each after-noon after school and all day Saturday and Sunday. They fought on the rockpile. Surefooted,

dangerous, and reckless, they rushed each other and grappled on the heights, sometimes disap-pearing down the other side in a confusion of dust and screams and upended, flying feet. “It’s a wonder they don’t kill themselves,” their mother said, watching sometimes from the fire escape. “You children stay away from there, you hear me?” Though she said “children,” she was look-ing at Roy, where he sat beside John on the fire escape. “The good Lord knows,” she continued, “I don’t want you to come home bleeding like a hog every day the Lord sends.” Roy shifted impa-tiently, and continued to stare at the street, as though in this gazing he might somehow acquire wings. John said nothing. He had not really been spoken to: he was afraid of the rockpile and of the boys who played there.

Life in the City What does this superstition reveal about how the residents view their neighborhood?

Big Idea Foil What does this detail suggest about the difference between the two brothers?

Literary Element

Making Generalizations About Characters From this detail, what generalizations might you make about Roy?

Reading Strategygrapple (rapəl) v. to struggle in hand-to-hand com-bat; to wrestle

Vocabulary

A

Harlem, 1942. Jacob Lawrence. Gouache on composition board, 213/4 x 293/4 in. Private collection. The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, New York.

The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY

James Baldwin

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Each Saturday morning John and Roy sat on the fire escape and watched the forbidden street below. Sometimes their mother sat in the room behind them, sewing, or dressing their younger sister, or nursing the baby, Paul. The sun fell across them and across the fire escape with a high, benevolent indifference; below them, men and women, and boys and girls, sinners all, loitered; sometimes one of the church-members passed and saw them and waved. Then, for the moment that they waved decorously back, they were intimidated. They watched the saint, man or woman, until he or she had disappeared from sight. The passage of one of the redeemed made them consider, however vacantly, the wickedness of the street, their own latent wickedness in sitting where they sat; and made them think of their father, who came home early on Saturdays and who would soon be turning this corner and entering the dark hall below them.

But until he came to end their freedom, they sat, watching and longing above the street. At the end of the street nearest their house was the bridge which spanned the Harlem River1 and led to a city called the Bronx;2 which was where Aunt Florence lived. Nevertheless, when they saw her coming, she did not come from the bridge, but from the opposite end of the street. This, weakly, to their minds, she explained by saying that she had taken the subway, not wishing to walk, and that, besides, she did not live in that sec-tion of the Bronx. Knowing that the Bronx was across the river, they did not believe this story ever, but, adopting toward her their

father’s attitude, assumed that she had just left some sinful place which she dared not name, as, for example, a movie palace.

In the summertime boys swam in the river, diving off the wooden dock, or wading in from the garbage-heavy bank. Once a boy, whose name was Richard, drowned in the river. His mother had not known where he was; she had even come to their house, to ask if he was there. Then, in the evening, at six o’clock, they had heard from the street a woman screaming and wailing; and they ran to the windows and looked out. Down the street came the woman, Richard’s mother, scream-ing, her face raised to the sky and tears run-ning down her face. A woman walked beside her, trying to make her quiet and trying to hold her up. Behind them walked a man, Richard’s father, with Richard’s body in his arms. There were two white policemen walk-ing in the gutter, who did not seem to know what should be done. Richard’s father and Richard were wet, and Richard’s body lay across his father’s arms like a cotton baby. The woman’s screaming filled all the street; cars slowed down and the people in the cars stared; people opened their windows and looked out and came rushing out of doors to stand in the gutter, watching. Then the small procession disappeared within the house which stood beside the rockpile. Then, “Lord, Lord, Lord!” cried Elizabeth, their mother, and slammed the window down.

One Saturday, an hour before his father would be coming home, Roy was wounded on the rockpile and brought screaming upstairs. He and John had been sitting on the fire escape and their mother had gone into the kitchen to sip tea with Sister McCandless. By and by Roy became bored and sat beside John in restless silence; and John began drawing into his schoolbook a newspaper advertise-ment which featured a new electric locomo-tive. Some friends of Roy passed beneath the fire escape and called him. Roy began to fidget, yelling down to them through the bars. Then a silence fell. John looked up. Roy stood looking at him.

“I’m going downstairs,” he said.“You better stay where you is, boy. You know

Mama don’t want you going downstairs.”

1. The Harlem River separates the Bronx and Manhattan, two boroughs of New York City.

2. The Bronx is actually one of five boroughs, or divisions, that make up New York City. It is not a separate city.

Making Generalizations About Characters From this detail, what generalizations might you make about how the brothers view their father?

Reading Strategy

loiter (loitər) v. to stand or linger idly or aimlessly about a placeintimidated (in timə dat əd) adj. made timid or fearful; frightened into submission or inaction

Vocabulary


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“I be right back. She won’t even know I’m gone, less you run and tell her.”

“I ain’t got to tell her. What’s going to stop her from coming in here and looking out the window?”

“She’s talking,” Roy said. He started into the house.

“But Daddy’s going to be home soon!”“I be back before that. What you all the

time got to be so scared for?” He was already in the house and he now turned, leaning on the windowsill, to swear impatiently, “I be back in five minutes.”

John watched him sourly as he carefully unlocked the door and disappeared. In a moment he saw him on the sidewalk with his friends. He did not dare to go and tell his

mother that Roy had left the fire escape because he had practically promised not to. He started to shout, Remember, you said five minutes! but one of Roy’s friends was looking up at the fire escape. John looked down at his schoolbook: he became engrossed again in the problem of the locomotive.

When he looked up again he did not know how much time had passed, but now there was a gang fight on the rockpile. Dozens of boys fought each other in the harsh sun: clamber-ing up the rocks and battling hand to hand, scuffed shoes sliding on the slippery rock; fill-ing the bright air with curses and jubilant cries. They filled the air, too, with flying weapons: stones, sticks, tin cans, garbage, whatever could be picked up and thrown. John watched in a kind of absent amaze-ment—until he remembered that Roy was still downstairs, and that he was one of the boys on the rockpile. Then he was afraid; he could not see his brother among the figures in the sun; and he stood up, leaning over the fire-escape railing. Then Roy appeared from the other side of the rocks; John saw that his shirt was torn; he was laughing. He moved until he stood at the very top of the rockpile. Then, something, an empty tin can, flew out of the air and hit him on the forehead, just above the eye. Immediately, one side of Roy’s face ran with blood, he fell and rolled on his face down the rocks. Then for a moment there was no movement at all, no sound, the sun, arrested, lay on the street and the sidewalk and the arrested boys. Then someone screamed or shouted; boys began to run away, down the street, toward the bridge. The figure on the ground, having caught its breath and felt its own blood, began to shout. John cried, “Mama! Mama!” and ran inside.

“Don’t fret, don’t fret,” panted Sister McCandless as they rushed down the dark, narrow, swaying stairs, “don’t fret. Ain’t a boy been born don’t get his knocks every now and again.

Woman in Calico, 1944. William H. Johnson. Oil on paperboard, 261/2 x 201/2 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of the Harmon Foundation.

engrossed (en rost) adj. fully attentive to; completely engaged in; absorbedjubilant (j¯¯¯oobə lənt) adj. extremely happy; trium-phantly joyful

VocabularyFoil What does Roy’s statement to his

brother suggest about the nature of their relationship?

Literary Element

JAMES BALDWIN 961

Making Generalizations About Characters From this detail, what generalizations can you make about John?

Reading Strategy


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Lord!” They hurried into the sun. A man had picked Roy up and now walked slowly toward them. One or two boys sat silent on their stoops; at either end of the street there was a group of boys

watching. “He ain’t hurt bad,” the man said, “Wouldn’t be making this kind of noise if he was hurt real bad.”

Elizabeth, trembling, reached out to take Roy, but Sister McCandless, bigger, calmer, took him from the man and threw him over her shoulder as she once might have handled a sack of cotton. “God bless you,” she said to the man, “God bless you, son.” Roy was still scream-ing. Elizabeth stood behind Sister McCandless to stare at his bloody face.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” the man kept saying, “just broke the skin, that’s all.” They were moving across the sidewalk, toward the house. John, not now afraid of the staring boys, looked toward the corner to see if his father was yet in sight.

Upstairs, they hushed Roy’s crying. They bathed the blood away, to find, just above the left eyebrow, the jagged, superficial scar. “Lord, have mercy,” murmured Elizabeth, “another inch and it would’ve been his eye.” And she looked with apprehension toward the clock. “Ain’t it the truth,” said Sister McCandless, busy with bandages and iodine.

“When did he go downstairs?” his mother asked at last.

Sister McCandless now sat fanning herself in the easy chair, at the head of the sofa where Roy lay, bound and silent. She paused for a moment to look sharply at John. John stood near the window, holding the newspaper advertisement and the drawing he had done.

“We was sitting on the fire escape,” he said. “Some boys he knew called him.”

“When?”“He said he’d be back in five minutes.”“Why didn’t you tell me he was downstairs?”He looked at his hands, clasping his notebook,

and did not answer.“Boy,” said Sister McCandless, “you hear your

mother a-talking to you?”He looked at his mother. He repeated:“He said he’d be back in five minutes.”“He said he’d be back in five minutes,” said

Sister McCandless with scorn, “don’t look to me like that’s no right answer. You’s the man of the house, you supposed to look after your baby brothers and sisters—you ain’t supposed to let them run off and get half-killed. But I expect,” she added, rising from the chair, dropping the cardboard fan, “your Daddy’ll make you tell the truth. Your Ma’s way too soft with you.”

He did not look at her, but at the fan where it lay in the dark red, depressed seat where she had been. The fan advertised a pomade3 for the hair and showed a brown woman and her baby, both with glistening hair, smiling happily at each other.

“Honey,” said Sister McCandless, “I got to be moving along. Maybe I drop in later tonight. I don’t reckon you going to be at Tarry Service tonight?”

Tarry Service was the prayer meeting held every Saturday night at church to strengthen believers and prepare the church for the coming of the Holy Ghost on Sunday.

“I don’t reckon,” said Elizabeth. She stood up; she and Sister McCandless kissed each other on the cheek. “But you be sure to remember me in your prayers.”

“I surely will do that.” She paused, with her hand on the door knob, and looked down at Roy and laughed. “Poor little man,” she said, “reckon he’ll be content to sit on the fire escape now.”

Elizabeth laughed with her. “It sure ought to be a lesson to him. You don’t reckon,” she asked nervously, still smiling, “he going to keep that scar, do you?”

3. Pomade is a perfumed ointment, especially one used as a hair dressing.

Making Generalizations About Characters From this detail, what generalizations can you make about Sister McCandless’s attitude toward John?

Reading Strategy

Foil What do these words tell you about Sister McCandless’s different attitudes toward the two brothers?

Literary Element

Life in the City What does the man’s action convey about the community that the characters live in?

Big Idea


Visual Vocabulary A stoop is a structure at the entrance of a building or house, consisting of stairs and a raised platform.

E.C. Stangler/Uniphoto

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“Lord, no,” said Sister McCandless, “ain’t nothing but a scratch. I declare, Sister Grimes, you worse than a child. Another couple of weeks and you won’t be able to see no scar. No, you go on about your housework, honey, and thank the Lord it weren’t no worse.” She opened the door; they heard the sound of feet on the stairs. “I expect that’s the Reverend,” said Sister McCandless, placidly, “I bet he going to raise cain.”4

“Maybe it’s Florence,” Elizabeth said. “Sometimes she get here about this time.” They stood in the doorway, staring, while the steps reached the landing below and began again climbing to their floor. “No,” said Elizabeth then, “that ain’t her walk. That’s Gabriel.”

“Well, I’ll just go on,” said Sister McCandless, “and kind of prepare his mind.” She pressed Elizabeth’s hand as she spoke and started into the hall, leaving the door behind her slightly ajar. Elizabeth turned slowly back into the room. Roy did not open his eyes, or move; but she knew that he was not sleeping; he wished to delay until the last possible moment any contact with his father. John put his newspaper and his notebook on the table and stood, leaning on the table, staring at her.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “I couldn’t stop him from going downstairs.”

“No,” she said, “you ain’t got nothing to worry about. You just tell your Daddy the truth.”

He looked directly at her, and she turned to the window, staring into the street. What was Sister McCandless saying? Then from her bedroom she heard Delilah’s thin wail and she turned, frowning, looking toward the bedroom and toward the still open door. She knew that John was watching her. Delilah continued to wail, she thought, angrily, Now that girl’s getting too big for that, but she feared

that Delilah would awaken Paul and she hurried into the bedroom. She tried to soothe Delilah back to sleep. Then she heard the front door open and close—too loud, Delilah raised her voice, with an exasperated sigh Elizabeth picked the child up. Her child and Gabriel’s, her children and Gabriel’s: Roy, Delilah, Paul. Only John was nameless and a stranger, living, unalterable testimony to his moth-er’s days in sin.

“What happened?” Gabriel demanded. He stood, enormous, in the center of the room, his black lunchbox dangling from his hand, staring at the sofa

Making Generalizations About Characters From these details, what generalizations can you make about John’s status in the family?

Reading StrategyMaking Generalizations About Characters What generalizations can you make about Sister McCandless from this comment?

Reading Strategy

4. To raise cain is an idiom meaning “to make a great disturbance” or “to lose one’s temper.”

JAMES BALDWIN 963

Funky Soho, 2002. Patti Mollica. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

Patti Mollica/CORBIS

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where Roy lay. John stood just before him, it seemed to her astonished vision just below him, beneath his fist, his heavy shoe. The child stared at the man in fascination and terror—when a girl down home she had seen rabbits stand so paralyzed before the bark-ing dog. She hurried past Gabriel to the sofa, feeling the weight of Delilah in her arms like the weight of a shield, and stood over Roy, saying:

“Now, ain’t a thing to get upset about, Gabriel. This boy sneaked downstairs while I had my back turned and got hisself hurt a little. He’s alright now.”

Roy, as though in confirmation, now opened his eyes and looked gravely at his father. Gabriel

dropped his lunchbox with a clatter and knelt by the sofa.

“How you feel, son? Tell your Daddy what happened?”

Roy opened his mouth to speak and then, relapsing into panic, began to cry. His father held him by the shoulder.

“You don’t want to cry. You’s Daddy’s little man. Tell your Daddy what happened.”

“He went downstairs,” said Elizabeth, “where he didn’t have no business to be, and got to fighting with them bad boys playing on that rockpile. That’s what happened and it’s a mercy it weren’t nothing worse.”

He looked up at her. “Can’t you let this boy answer me for hisself?”

Ignoring this, she went on, more gently: “He got cut on the forehead, but it ain’t nothing to worry about.”

“You call a doctor? How you know it ain’t nothing to worry about?”

“Is you got money to be throwing away on doctors? No, I ain’t called no doctor. Ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes that I can’t tell whether he’s hurt bad or not. He got a fright more’n anything else, and you ought to pray God it teaches him a lesson.”

“You got a lot to say now,” he said, “but I’ll have me something to say in a minute. I’ll be wanting to know when all this happened, what you

was doing with your eyes then.” He turned back to Roy, who had lain quietly sobbing eyes wide open and body held rigid: and who now, at his father’s touch, remembered the height, the sharp, sliding rock beneath his feet, the sun, the explo-sion of the sun, his plunge into darkness and his salty blood; and recoiled, beginning to scream, as his father touched his forehead. “Hold still, hold still,” crooned his father, shaking, “hold still. Don’t cry. Daddy ain’t going to hurt you, he just wants to see this bandage, see what they’ve done to his little man.” But Roy continued to scream and would not be still and Gabriel dared not lift the bandage for fear of hurting him more. And he looked at Elizabeth in fury: “Can’t you put that child down and help me with this boy?

Church on Lenox Avenue, 1939–1940. William H. Johnson. Tempera on paper, 24 x 181/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of the Harmon Foundation. Viewing the Art: What connections can you find between this image and the story?


Foil How might Elizabeth be said to act as Gabriel’s foil at this point in the story?

Literary Element


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John, take your baby sister from your mother—don’t look like neither of you got good sense.”

John took Delilah and sat down with her in the easy chair. His mother bent over Roy, and held him still, while his father, carefully—but still Roy screamed—lifted the bandage and stared at the wound. Roy’s sobs began to lessen. Gabriel re-adjusted the bandage. “You see,” said Elizabeth, finally, “he ain’t nowhere near dead.”

“It sure ain’t your fault that he ain’t dead.” He and Elizabeth considered each other for a moment in silence. “He came mightly close to losing an eye. Course, his eyes ain’t as big as your’n, so I reckon you don’t think it matters so much.” At this her face hardened; he smiled. “Lord, have mercy,” he said, “you think you ever going to learn to do right? Where was you when all this happened? Who let him go downstairs?”

“Ain’t nobody let him go downstairs, he just went. He got a head just like his father, it got to be broken before it’ll bow. I was in the kitchen.”

“Where was Johnnie?”“He was in here?”“Where?”“He was on the fire escape.”“Didn’t he know Roy was downstairs?”“I reckon.”“What you mean, you reckon? He ain’t got

your big eyes for nothing, does he?” He looked over at John. “Boy, you see your brother go downstairs?”

“Gabriel, ain’t no sense in trying to blame Johnnie. You know right well if you have trouble making Roy behave, he ain’t going to listen to his brother. He don’t hardly listen to me.”

“How come you didn’t tell your mother Roy was downstairs?”

John said nothing, staring at the blanket which covered Delilah.

“Boy, you hear me? You want me to take a strap to you?”

“No, you ain’t,” she said. “You ain’t going to take no strap to this boy, not today you ain’t. Ain’t a soul to blame for Roy’s lying up there now but you—you because you done spoiled him so that he thinks he can do just anything and get away with it. I’m here to tell you that ain’t no way to raise no child. You don’t pray to the Lord to help you do better than you been doing, you going to live to shed bitter tears that the Lord didn’t take his soul today.” And she was trembling. She moved, unsee-ing, toward John and took Delilah from his arms. She looked back at Gabriel, who had risen, who stood near the sofa, staring at her. And she found in his face not fury alone, which would not have surprised her; but hatred so deep as to become insupportable in its lack of personality. His eyes were struck alive, unmoving, blind with malevo-lence—she felt, like the pull of the earth at her feet, his longing to witness her perdition.5 Again, as though it might be propitiation,6 she moved the child in her arms. And at this his eyes changed, he looked at Elizabeth, the mother of his children, the helpmeet given by the Lord. Then her eyes clouded; she moved to leave the room; her foot struck the lunchbox lying on the floor.

“John,” she said, “pick up your father’s lunch-box like a good boy.”

She heard, behind her, his scrambling move-ment as he left the easy chair, the scrape and jangle of the lunchbox as he picked it up, bend-ing his dark head near the toe of his father’s heavy shoe.

JAMES BALDWIN 965

5. Perdition (pər dish ən) means “the loss of one’s soul and of heavenly salvation” or “eternal damnation.”

6. Propitiation is a pleasing act intended to soothe, pacify, or win favor.

Making Generalizations About Characters From this detail, what generalizations can you make about Gabriel’s character?

Reading Strategy

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Respond1. Describe your emotional response to this story.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)Why is the rockpile so tempting for Roy? (b)Why

do you think that John is not tempted by it?

3. (a)How do the adults in the story see themselves as different from other people in the neighborhood? (b)How is their self-image reflected in their actions?

4. (a)What important fact is revealed about Gabriel just before he arrives home? (b)How does this fact explain Gabriel’s attitude toward his two sons?

Analyze and Evaluate5. Using foreshadowing, a writer provides hints to events

that will occur later in the story. (a)What event or events are foreshadowed in “The Rockpile”? (b)What effect does this foreshadowing have on the story?

6. (a)What do you think the rockpile symbolizes? (b)Do you find this symbol effective? Explain.

7. (a)What is the main source of conflict between Gabriel and Elizabeth in the story? (b)Is this conflict resolved at the end of the story? Explain.

Connect 8. Big Idea Life in the City How important is the

setting to this story? What picture of city life does the author create with this setting?


Literary Element FoilThe purpose of a foil is to highlight a particular quality of the main character in the story. Although “The Rockpile” may appear to be about Roy, it actually tells just as much or more about John. The reader gets a clearer understanding of both John and Roy through the many contrasts presented between them.

1. How do John and Roy differ in terms of their status within the family?

2. Who else might be a foil in this story? Support your response with evidence from the selection.

Writing About LiteratureEvaluate Author’s Craft In “The Rockpile,” James Baldwin uses a number of symbols, or things that stand for something beyond themselves. Write a brief essay in which you evaluate Baldwin’s use of symbol-ism throughout the story and how it contributes to the story’s meaning. After you complete your draft, meet with a partner to revise each other’s work.

Reading Strategy Making Generalizations About Characters

Use the notes you made in your chart and other details from the story to make generalizations about the characters in “The Rockpile.”

1. What generalizations can you make about the effect of the setting on the characters?

2. What generalization can you make about the atti-tudes of Roy and John toward Gabriel?


Vocabulary PracticePractice with Analogies Choose the word that best completes the analogy.

1. engrossed : fascinated :: expedient : a. convenient c. fortuitous b. coincidental

2. loiter : stand :: search : a. fi nd c. seek b. collect

3. jubilant : pleased :: terrifi ed : a. anxious c. sorrowful b. frozen

AFTER YOU READ



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The New Regionalism and the City - Breathitt County Schools · 2019-01-14 · Bettmann/CORBIS 868...

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