CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED APPROACHES

CHAPTER 9 AMERICA IN THE MODERN WORLD 1913-1945

SUGGESTED APPROACHES FOR THE CLASSROOM

SUGGESTED APPROACH Theodore Dreiser, A Certain Oil Refinery (pp. 1095-99)

Introductory material for this selection emphasizes Theodore Dreiser’s experience as a journalist and his position as a premiere American naturalist writer. In the Exploring the Text questions that follow the excerpt, question 6 identifies Dreiser as a social Darwinist who applied Darwin’s ideas about evolution to his views on human behavior and interaction, emphasizing survival of the fittest. Given this information, the piece can be viewed as both an illustration of his beliefs and an exposé, but Dreiser refrains from editorializing. He describes the oil refinery and occasionally identifies an issue related to its working conditions; then he simply states that doing anything more for workers than paying them wages “is not thought of” or “has never occurred to any one.” The last paragraph states that “that vast problem, the ethics of employment, is not up for discussion in this instance: only the picture which this industry presents.” Here, it appears that Dreiser wants the “picture” to speak for itself and make an argument. The piece is rich with imagery, emphasizing primarily the visual (darkness and shadow) and the olfactory (rancid, vile odors). There are several possibilities to help guide students in approaching the text. You may wish, for example, to direct students to first examine the works of James McNeil Whistler (lithographs and etchings), Everett Shinn (paintings), and Daniel Vierge (illustrations) before introducing them to the Dreiser text. Ask students to observe these artists’ various styles and to consider their individual approaches to the subject matter. The rhetorical questions at the end of the piece implicitly invite the reader to wrestle with the contrast between the quality of life of the haves and the have-nots by asking whether such conditions are “the foreordained order of life” and if anything can be done to change it. The question that ends the excerpt—“Who is to say?”—challenges the reader to respond. He or she must say something, one way or another. The implications of Dreiser’s claims call for special focus. During a first and second reading, students should examine and consider the author’s choice of words when he states, in reference to workers’ home and saloons in paragraph 4, that “Artists ought to make pictures of them” and “Writers ought to write of them.” What pictures is Dreiser “making” with his language here? What does he mean by “ought to”? From there, students can proceed to explore the effect of such texts on the viewing and reading audiences of both Dreiser’s period and our own. Of course, students can be asked to identify, explore, discuss, and write about labor and employment issues (including issues such as fair pay, unionization, and working conditions) as they apply in contemporary circumstances. Encourage them to draw from their own employment experiences as well as from online resources, a few of which are included here: • McDonald’s financial planning site for its minimum-wage workforce (practicalmoneyskills.com) and Jordan Weissmann’s July 16, 2013, article in The Atlantic titled “McDonald’s Can’t Figure Out How Its Workers Survive on Minimum Wage,” which explores the limits of the site’s practical applications (theatlantic.com) 542 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED APPROACHES

• MIT’s living wage calculator (livingwage.mit.edu) • SPENT, a game that simulates life choices below the poverty line (playspent.org) • Jeremy Ashkenas’s February 8, 2014, interactive opinion piece, “Can You Live on the Minimum Wage?” published in the New York Times (nytimes.com) You might also ask students to focus on the nature of work and labor. In paragraph 5, Dreiser first describes the mind-numbing routine of manufacturing work as well as workers’ living conditions, and then says, “But the interesting thing to me is that men work and toil here in a sickening atmosphere of blackness and shadow, of vile odors, of vile substances, of vile surroundings.” Ask students how they would respond to Dreiser’s questions regarding why people work and toil under such conditions. Various Web sites can help students explore the rise of labor unions in the twentieth century and thus gain familiarity with contemporary labor issues around the world. In order to give students a sense of the continuing issues in either the American or global workplace, it would be worthwhile to spend some time with these topics during a class discussion: • Though only available through HBOGo, Vice magazine’s partnership with the network has yielded some short (30-minute) documentaries that pack a powerful punch. Pertinent episodes include Winners and Losers (Season 1, Episode 5) and Greenland Is Melting (Season 2, Episode 3). A 4- minute clip from the latter episode titled “Debrief: Bonded Labor” is available for viewing without a subscription. • The International Labor Rights Forum (laborrights.org and change.org/organizations/laborrights). • The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (business-humanrights.org). • The International Labour Organization (ilo.org). As students discuss how their findings have influenced their perspective on the Dreiser piece, you may wish to have them revisit the question about why workers accept dangerous, subpar conditions and/or the rhetorical questions Dreiser asks at the end of the reading.

SUGGESTED APPROACH William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure (pp. 1106-07) and Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (pp. 1107-09)

Ekphrasis for all! One of the more efficacious ways to approach “The Great Figure” and “I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold” relates to question 5 in Exploring the Text (p. 1107) and question 3 of the Making Connections section following Demuth’s painting (p. 1109). Before introducing William Carlos Williams’s poem or Charles Demuth’s painting in class, ask students to identify, from their personal experience, a brief scene. It should be a moment that was, while not necessarily weighty or significant, worth remarking upon and remembering. From that memory they should then write an expressive, imagistic account that conveys the remembered experience to a peer in a written form of their choice (whether it be poetry or a short sketch). Ask students to give their texts titles. Next, have students share and exchange and their work with a partner. The partner’s assignment is to represent, visually, something of their experience upon encountering the written work. Finally, have students join larger groups to share their work or, if the class is small enough, have each pair present their efforts before the entire class. Through these assigned activities, students will not only gain experience writing creative non- fiction but also stretch into working with and generating image-based texts that purposefully and personally represent a moment initially experienced and depicted by another author. In effect, they are encountering some of the same dynamic that Williams and Demuth experienced decades ago. Following this opening assignment, students will most certainly empathize with the diverse artistic processes involved in ekphrasis.

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You may want to let students know that both Williams and Demuth were drawn to the photography of Alfred Stieglitz, and that thanks to Stieglitz’s support, a vibrant and important community developed around modernist painters and photographers in New York City. Information on this artistic circle is available online in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Web site (metmuseum.org). The site also contains a particularly illuminating Thematic Essay, “Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and His Circle.” You may wish to have students take a look at the works included in the essay and have them compare and contrast the paintings’ features with the devices evident in written modernist works. William Carlos Williams continued to focus on the visual elements (particularly color and form) in his poetry. He made the relationship between poetry and painting the source of an entire series of poems that pivoted off prominent paintings by sixteenth-century Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The poems can be found in Williams’s final book, Pictures from Brueghel, published posthumously in1962. Images of Brueghel’s paintings that were the subjects of the poetry can easily be found on the Web. Sharing these poems with students will further sharpen their appreciation for the relationship between words and images. As an activity to close out this reading, you may wish to have students distill what they believe is the argument that one of the poems from Pictures from Brueghel makes by defending, challenging, or qualifying that argument with visual evidence from Brueghel’s work.

SUGGESTED APPROACH Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me (pp. 1117-20)

Although irony and sarcasm are Zora Neale Hurston’s sharpest tools in this essay, it is not full satire, and students are likely to find her attitude toward racism somewhat puzzling. Is she really so breezily sure of herself, so astonished that anyone would not enjoy the pleasure of her company, so able to embrace her difference? Or is some of this posturing and false bravado? The essay is controversial, as was Hurston’s attitude toward race and racism; at the same time it is appealing because of its clever construction of a spirited self. We suggest opening the class with a reading of the first five paragraphs of Hurston’s essay. The irony in the first sentence, the assumptions Hurston is arguing against, the celebration of a folk culture, and Hurston’s disarming openness are all clearly manifested. This essay offers an opening for a discussion of the debate within Hurston’s contemporary African American community (and, to a certain extent, within today’s as well) of whether assimilating mainstream values requires the loss of a historical legacy. Hurston’s deep, visceral reaction to the jazz performance typifies what leading intellectuals of her time, including W. E. B. DuBois, called a confirmation of black stereotypes. Hurston’s essay, whether coupled with Their Eyes Were Watching God or simply read alone, can lead students to further explorations of these questions so hotly debated during and beyond the Harlem Renaissance.

SUGGESTED APPROACH Eleanor Roosevelt, What Libraries Mean to the Nation (pp. 1138-41)

You may want to remind students that Eleanor Roosevelt assumed an importance in American life unlike that of any preceding First Lady. In this essay, she expounds on the need for libraries and their role in educating and uniting citizens of the United States. In paragraph 2, she explains the need for expanding access to libraries in pre-World War II America. Students will be interested to know that at the time of this speech in 1936, many parts of America did not have access to electricity and rural Americans were often almost entirely isolated from mainstream information and culture that was more easily accessible in urban areas.

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The Exploring the Text questions that appear after the text will help students perform a close examination and expand their understanding of Roosevelt’s argument. Below are some additional suggestions, which could work as class discussion starters, essay prompts, or homework/journaling exercises: • Defend Eleanor Roosevelt’s argument that access to libraries provides valuable opportunities for meaningful reading and learning experiences, drawing from specific examples and personal experience. (Student answers may include expanding school curricula beyond textbooks, learning to live through the mind, expanding the imagination, seeing movies that then stimulate interest in reading and learning, engaging in book groups within families and communities, sharing common reading experiences, considering how libraries and reading make democracy strong.) • Roosevelt asserts that in a more modern America, people will have more leisure time, a fact that will require more people to have access to the information and entertainment that books provide. Write a letter to Roosevelt that defends, challenges, or qualifies this assertion in light of contemporary technological developments, current events, and/or your personal experience. • Write a one- to one-and-a-half-page description and explanation of a memorable early experience with reading that influenced your attitude toward reading. How does reading stimulate a person’s intellectual growth? (Note: students can complete this activity either prior to or after reading this text.) • Visit a local library and record 30 minutes of observations that describe the place, the people, and the activities. Share your observations with the class; then write a short essay in which you craft an argument that conveys your stance on how valuable libraries are in American life today. Cite evidence from knowledge, experience, and observations.

SUGGESTED APPROACH W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (pp. 1169-70)

Students are bound to appreciate that W. H. Auden is claimed by two nations—both his native England as well as the United States, where he became a citizen in 1946—especially given that “The Unknown Citizen” was first published in 1940, two years after Auden’s departure from the United Kingdom for the United States. Ask students to identify content and other referential features that make the poem somewhat “international” in character. For instance, while both a citizen and a “State” are cited, neither is named. Additionally, familiar elements of Western societies—such as unions, the press, opinion polls, and, of course, teachers—are all referenced and contribute to the poem’s tone. You may also want to ask students to consider what forces might have been so prominent in Auden’s experience of “transitional citizenship” that they led to this particular poem’s creation. One effective approach involves frontloading and focusing on both the questions posed by the speaker in the poem’s penultimate line and the subsequent comments that chillingly punctuate the work. These responses will, of course, vary depending on the different life experiences (and consequently different perspectives) of your students, but students will most likely offer celebratory definitions and illustrations of what it means to be “free” and “happy.” Next, turn their attention to the poem’s close, where the speaker intriguingly notes that any “question” about the character of any citizen’s life is “absurd.” Challenge students to explore and discuss what “absurd” might connote in the context of the poem, and to think about how the word might be read in a contemporary context. While the citizen-subject of the poem lacks a name, his life does not lack for details. “He”—we know this citizen’s gender— apparently is the subject of great attention, as there are plenty of “reports” issuing from such authoritative figures as statisticians, employers, researchers, teachers, and other overseers of multifarious facets of his life. By following the pronouns, students will note not only the relentless focus on the details of the life of this anonymous citizen but will also see that his equally anonymous masters, 545 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED APPROACHES

who blithely contribute to collective watchdog work throughout the poem, have never lost sight of this anonymous man. Why would this person command such attention in the first place? Who or what is “JS/07/M/378” and why has the State erected a “Marble Monument” to him? Where in the poem is he celebrated? What do such celebrations suggest about the values held by “the State”? How do these details about the society in which the subject lived contribute to the poem’s irony? In what way does the speaker’s assertion that questions about this apparently compliant citizen’s freedom and happiness are “absurd” clarify the values of the society he lived in? Do students find these values disturbing at all? Do they resemble American values in any way? Time permitting, it might be fruitful to acquaint students with the vintage and acclaimed television series The Prisoner, created in the mid-1960s by Patrick McGoohan who, although born in the United States, was an ex-pat who went to the UK to act and live. Made at the height of America’s Cold War- inspired spy craze (Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and associated films starring Sean Connery were the rage) and during the global controversy surrounding America’s involvement in Vietnam, The Prisoner features a different kind of anonymous man. The main character resigns from an unspecified but apparently sensitive job (spy?) and is whisked away by unspecified authorities (his own people or the people on the other side?) to a place called only “The Village.” There, each person is known only as a number—in his case, “Number 6.” He refuses this numerical identity and, in defense of his individuality, works to escape and destroy The Village. Unfortunately, the authorities are masters of surveillance and control, so his attempts to escape are futile. The introductory episode, “Arrival,” features The Prisoner’s defiant oath: “I will not make any deals with you. I resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.” Like the subject of “The Unknown Citizen,” the main character in The Prisoner has no name, just a number. He must struggle to forge an identity separate from the mundane details of his existence that are endlessly monitored and catalogued by unseen, seemingly omnipotent forces—whether such a feat is possible under such circumstances is the question at the heart of both the show and Auden’s poem.

SUGGESTED APPROACH Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner (pp. 1180-81)

While this poem is brief, discussion need not be so. A good starting point is to have students reflect on Randall Jarrell’s service in the Army Air Corps. Even if he did not experience wartime combat, the author was in a position to know his subject intimately, and students could speculate on how, given the quality of his personal experience, Jarrell gained enough knowledge to fashion this poem. Second, students need to know that “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” as a lyric poem, is necessarily short and subjective. It expresses an individual’s attitude and perspective rather than providing a sweeping account of soldiers’ wartime experience. The poem’s brevity lends it particular force, as its concentration on a single sensibility—and a single moment in time—generates shock, revulsion, and perhaps sorrow or anger. In light of the Exploring the Text questions, students might also consider whether the poem conveys bitterness on the part of the speaker. The poem simultaneously works with contrasting images associated with both birth and death; its brevity and suddenness emphasize the sensitive interplay between these two inescapably human and apparently opposing states. The gunner, however young he might be, exists in an alien and utterly foreign space: thirty thousand feet above the ground, suspended from a life that is barely underway. He is poised in a position that suggests birth, “hunched” in the “belly” of the aircraft (l. 2)—however, upon waking, he meets his death. Even when brief, life can also be cruel and marked by barbarous consequences. Finally, students can focus on the distinction among subject (war), theme (war’s horrible brutality), and argument (question 5 of the Exploring the Text section following the poem). Set the table for discussion by simply asking them what features might make this an antiwar poem. Some students will

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undoubtedly cite the poem’s final line, which features an action that—in contrast to a posthumous medal ceremony conducted in honor of the gunner’s sacrifice—dehumanizes the airman’s life with a stark, reductive image, offering a brutal requiem for a life cut short by warfare.

SUGGESTED APPROACH Tom Wolfe, from Why They Aren’t Writing the Great American Novel Anymore (pp. 1264-66), and Margaret Atwood, Hello Martians. Let Moby-Dick Explain (pp. 1267-69)

Tom Wolfe’s essay may pose problems for students who may be unaware of the evolution of the novel and the rise of nonfiction narrative as a literary form. It is important for students to work their way carefully through this reading, which initially discusses the development of the novel, expressing Wolfe’s attitude toward fiction, and then informs readers about the lack of fictional writing that portrayed life in the 1960s. Wolfe says, “That was marvelous for journalists—let me tell you that,” and proceeds to describe how New Journalism “filled the gap in American letters.” Wolfe is obviously proud of his involvement in and contributions to the rise of creative nonfiction and its acceptance since the 1960s as a serious artistic form. To begin, ask students to brainstorm a list of great literary works that includes both fiction and nonfiction titles. Follow up with a discussion of the impact of an evolving literary tradition that values accounts drawn from real life. Is that tradition evolving at the expense of traditional, fictional literary forms? Are nonfictional accounts more authentic than the people and events depicted in novels? Urge students to examine the evolution of their own reading choices and to interview others (parents, grandparents, peers, other adults) as they reflect on contemporary literature. Students should engage in close reading and comprehension by doing a Says/Does analysis of each of the seven paragraphs in “Why They Aren’t Writing the Great American Novel Anymore” (see the Suggested Approach for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in Chapter 5, p. 135, of this manual for more information). Students should also take a step back from the details of the passage and ask, “What is Wolfe’s message? What is his purpose?” Encourage students to be mindful of these fundamental questions as they work their way through the text. Have them refer to their Says/Does analyses during whole class discussion on what Wolfe’s argument is, the devices he uses to craft it, and its overall effectiveness. In her essay, Margaret Atwood offers a fanciful narrative in which she wryly characterizes the essence of American culture, making ample references to literary and cultural icons in order to better convey her message. Ask students to note as they read how each phase of her invented “conversation” contributes to that message. What role do humor and irony play in this essay? Atwood—a Canadian—is, after all, more than an accomplished author; she is a knowledgeable and respected outsider, an observer of the United States and its literature. Her “outsider as insider” argument relates to a comment made by American writer Henry James, who said: “America is more like a world than a country.” You may wish to ask students to think about and be prepared to defend, challenge, or qualify this idea in one to two pages of writing and contribute their ideas in a class discussion. In linking these texts, you could refer to the quotation from D. H. Lawrence in question 3 on page 1264 of the text about the spirit of place. What is the spirit of America? Ask students to brainstorm words, phrases, and ideas that convey it. Challenge students to build a descriptive but mindful list, one that moves beyond simple stereotypes to expressing more complex facets of America’s history, society, values, and identity. You may also wish to have students consider how the Wolfe and Atwood essays (and other American writing) express or try to convey the spirit of America. To further explore this concept, students might discuss how America’s spirit impacts its global interactions. This discussion point invites students to bring in their knowledge of history and current world events and could take shape as an occasion for writing or speaking. 547 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED APPROACHES

SUGGESTED APPROACH Julie Otsuka, from When the Emperor Was Divine (pp. 1221-30)

One rewarding approach to this excerpt from author Julie Otsuka’s first novel is to have students read the entirety of When the Emperor Was Divine. However, should circumstances limit work with the text to this excerpt, there are key elements of the novel that are potently realized in “Evacuation Order No. 19,” the novel’s first chapter. The subtle movement through this chapter is compelling. Ask students to note the steady introduction, and subsequent transformation, of familiar objects found in everyday life in Berkeley, California, in 1942. Many objects, initially encountered as ordinary or benign, come into focus through quiet developments and are transformed as they portend unsettling events. Indeed, it becomes clear that the chapter’s first two words—“the sign”—represent an evacuation order. But while the details of its location are precisely set down, the words that comprise the life-altering directive remain unrevealed. Students will immediately discern the prominence of the woman’s perspective. It is the woman’s subsequent actions that substantiate the sign’s bleak message. Have students chronicle her movements and actions and comment on their contribution to the muted but tense development of the chapter’s increasingly threatening tone. Some students might focus on the woman’s shopping journey and note such elements as her ruminations over objects such as a shovel (she realizes she already owns two shovels and will subsequently use one to kill and bury the household’s old, much-loved dog), a duffel bag (she learns that it is now a suddenly unobtainable item in the community), and caramels (she will forget the sweets). Most students will, of course, be struck by the anonymity of woman and “the” (rather than “her”) children, and many will pick up on their continued innocence and growing vulnerability. Have students account for moments in which Otsuka’s precise rendering of common objects lends texture to the fabric of the chapter. For example, the woman selects and packs a particular few items of the boy’s belongings while other, unnamed items are boxed up and “carried into the sunroom.” What do her choices during this ritual reveal about the boy, the woman, and the situation? Subsequent portions of the chapter reveal the woman making more choices relative to the girl, the pets, the plants, the household, and more as time winds forward. The chapter turns decidedly bleaker with the portrait of the woman’s final interaction with White Dog. Begin a discussion that asks students to identify and characterize the revelations that accompany this sequence. Following that discussion, focus on the portrayal of “family time” that spans paragraphs 32-95 by assigning different groups of students particular segments of the passage. You might divide student attention by character (mother, girl, boy) or by particular passage segments as seen by the woman, such as the interaction between her and the girl, the boy’s confusion about the White Dog, and the last supper. Students may note that the woman is absent from final two paragraphs of the passage (94 and 95), and you may wish to discuss the significance of this omission as it relates to the chapter as a whole. Some students will discern that the brief shift in perspective sets up the chapter’s end, an intense representation of the woman and her actions in paragraphs 96-111, which are focused entirely in the present. The progression of events during this final night prior to the largely unspecified journey is compelling, in part because it is nearly silent. Ask students to identify the details that give such shape to the chapter’s end. For instance, in paragraph 96, the woman stands “alone” as she washes her hands; she hears “thunder in the distance”; she remembers her husband planting a tree that will be left behind; she has already packed the dishtowel and cannot finish her routine work. Discussion should focus on the “so what?” as well as the “what” as students analyze how the final details unfold and the chapter concludes. At its very end, the final paragraph shifts attention from the woman, who is now asleep, to the restlessly sleeping boy. Ominously, the final two sentences push ahead in time to moments when “he and the girl and their mother” arrive at what is not only the location for their departure but also the place where they will be, finally, identified—not by names but by “identification numbers”—as they depart for

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“wherever” they “had” to go. Dorothea Lange’s photograph of Otsuka’s family on page 1125 merits attention in connection with the conclusion; many students will note that it captures another facet of the uncertainty that both permeates and punctuates “Evacuation Order No. 19.”

SUGGESTED RESPONSES

EXPLORING THE TEXT Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro (pp. 1074-75)

1. Do you think this poem is happy or sad? Explain your answer. • To call the poem happy or sad might oversimplify the complexity of emotions it evokes. Instead, the juxtaposition of images creates the feeling of having discovered vital moments of joy in the midst of darkness. o The word “apparition” suggests something haunting, while “faces in the crowd” suggest anonymity and a hint of urban alienation one might experience in the packed, rushed underground setting of the Metro. In addition, the blackness of the bough conveys its own obvious sense of darkness. For those reasons, the poem evokes feelings of sadness. o “Petals,” in contrast, stand out against the anonymity and alienation as images of life and beauty. Thus, they offer something happy in contrast to the sadness.

2. What sensory associations do you make when you read this poem? • “The apparition of these faces in the crowd” (l. 1): o The word “apparition” could speak to the suddenness with which the crowd has become visible to the speaker. o “Apparition” also evokes the image of a ghost. The faces in the crowd are disembodied, which bolsters this association. o The word “crowd” calls to mind an urban setting. • “Petals on a wet, black bough” (l. 2). o “Petals” and “wet” point to springtime, a season associated with growth. o “Petals” are usually filled with color, or at least brightness. They are also generally soft to the touch and give off a pleasant scent. o The wetness of the “black bough” evokes strong associations with the slick touch of bark after a spring or summer rain. o However, “black” could call to mind the darkness of a subway tunnel, feelings of alienation or loneliness, or could even be seen as funereal. • Combined, the images create associations with organic growth within the seeming inorganic, mechanized pathways of the Metro.

3. What exactly do you think the speaker is looking at? Explain your answer. • There are three possible things the speaker is looking at: people he passes as he moves through a tunnel, people crowded together on a subway platform as they wait for a train, or faces seen in the darkness of a line of subway cars as they pass by. Exactly what he is looking at is left ambiguous, with the power of the image becoming more important than the literalism of the event. o The word “apparition” suggests that they are appearing suddenly to the speaker, as if he is passing them as they in turn move past him, as if he has come upon

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them as he arrives at the platform, or as if he has only just noticed their presence. o The “black bough” suggests an elongated darkened space, like a tunnel, a platform, or passing subway cars.

4. What is the effect of juxtaposing flowers with a subway station? • On one level, the juxtaposing of flowers defamiliarizes the familiar scene of a metro station in a city, causing the reader to awaken to a new perception of it. • The use of flowers as an image awakens the reader to the vitality and beauty within a setting that one might normally pass through, dulled and unaware, as part of the mechanical routine of everyday life.

5. You may recognize this poem as a form of haiku (or hokku, as Ezra Pound called it). In what ways is it like a traditional haiku and in what ways is it different? Hint: consider the function of the title. • Similarities: o A traditional haiku is three lines long, with the first line serving as the title. If you count Pound’s title as a first line, then it conforms to that structure. o A traditional haiku juxtaposes two images or ideas, and Pound’s poem juxtaposes the scene on the Metro to a scene in nature. o A traditional haiku references the season in some way, and we might argue that “petals” is a reference to the spring. o As in a traditional haiku, Pound’s poem does not portray any individuals or use any personal pronouns. o It could be argued that the poem’s vivid images are symbolic references to deeper, abstract concepts, as is often the case with the imagery used in traditional haiku. • Differences: o A traditional haiku has 17 syllables (5 in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third). This poem, if we count the title as a line, has 27 syllables (8 in the first line, 12 in the second, and 7 in the third). o A traditional haiku has three short lines, and (discounting the title as a line) Pound uses two long lines. o Traditionally, a haiku does not start new lines with a capital letter, as Pound does. o It could be argued that the poem’s vivid images are just that—images intended to capture a moment in time, devoid of symbolism.

6. Pound was an imagist, one of a group of English and American poets who wrote free verse and believed in the simple clarity of an image. “In a Station of the Metro” is considered a prime example of imagism. Looking at this brief poem, consider how Pound uses metaphor to make us see something new in a train station and how it came to be an iconic imagist poem. • The simple directness of the images in the poem immerse the reader in the moment so that he or she experiences the vision with an immediacy that would be lost if those images were surrounded by narrative.

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• This immediacy enables the reader to go through the shift from the commonplace (“a station in the metro” and a “crowd”) to the metaphoric (“apparitions” and “petals on a wet, black bough”) with the same startling suddenness as the speaker. • The result is a transformation of perception—as opposed to a detached description—that enables the reader to see a commonplace train station as an organic part of life that possesses its own beauty and mystery.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Ezra Pound, A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste (pp. 1075-1078)

1. Describe the tone of “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste.” • The essay begins with a tone of authoritative confidence that is open to reasonable differences: “I use the term ‘complex’ rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists…though we might not agree absolutely in our application” (par. 1). • As it progresses, the essay develops an increasingly sarcastic, dismissive tone: o “Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work” (par. 6). o “A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling …” (par. 13). o “Don’t be ‘viewy’—leave that to writers of pretty little philosophic essays” (par. 19). o “Consider the ways of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap” (par. 21). o “[The scientist] does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman class work” (par. 22). • Pound’s use of colloquial diction—“mop up” (par. 13), “chop your stuff” (par. 23), “slush” (par. 32), “mess up” (par. 33)—contributes to this tone of abrupt, sarcastic dismissiveness, especially when placed in contrast to more formal diction and terminology—“an intellectual and emotional complex” (par. 1), “the neophyte” (par. 17), “Vide” (par. 27). • The vast scope and profound brevity of Pound’s aphorisms further contribute to his intellectually authoritative tone: o “It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works” (par. 3). o “Don’t retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose” (par. 9). o “What the expert is tired of today the public will tire of tomorrow” (par. 10).

2. What do you think is the purpose of this essay? • Pound purports to offer the essay as helpful instruction to “neophyte” poets. There is much in the essay that fulfills that purpose: o “Use no superfluous words” (par. 7). o “Go in fear of abstractions” (par. 9). o “Don’t be ‘viewy’” (par. 19). o “In short, behave as a … good musician” (par. 24). • Pound’s deeper purpose, however, is to present a manifesto that: o challenges preexisting critical attitudes about poetry, which have carried over from the previous century. 551 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o promotes and defends “imagist” poetry, which is the kind of poetry Pound himself writes. • To these ends, Pound offers a systematic scientific defense of “imagist” poetry based on a modern understanding of how the mind perceives and works through “intellectual and emotional complex[es],” as discovered by “the newer psychologists, such as Hart” (par 1).

3. We know that Ezra Pound had a long (and controversial) career as a poet, a critic, and an editor. He was only twenty-eight when he wrote this essay. How does he establish ethos? • Pound begins his effort to establish ethos with the use of the French word “Imagiste” in the title, thus associating his criticism with the dominant authorities on poetics at the time (the French). • He continues to establish ethos in multiple ways: o He implies that his knowledge of poetry derives from his experience as one of those “men who have … themselves written a notable work” (par. 6). o He appeals to the authority of experts in psychology, music, and science, and then associates his theory of poetics with those parallel disciplines (pars. 1, 11, 15-17, 21-22, 23-26). o He displays his knowledge of previous revered poets: Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Sappho, Catullus, Villon, Heine, Gautier, and Chaucer (pars. 20, 28-29). o He uses the language of poetics to explain the “minutiae of his craft”—for instance, “assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic” (par. 17). o He quotes prominent French critics in French: “Mais d’abord il faut etre un poete” (par. 34). o Throughout the essay, he sustains a systematic distinction between experts and amateurs—the beginning piano student, “the neophyte” (par. 17), and the “freshmen in poetry” (par. 22)—associating himself with the experts. o He also uses a tone of authoritative self-confidence and dismissive sarcasm to assert intellectual authority.

4. Do you think Pound’s ideas are conservative or revolutionary? Explain your answer. • Students who argue that Pound’s poetics are conservative might argue: o The values Pound esteems in poems are those esteemed throughout European poetic tradition. o Pound himself cites canonical figures to support his views, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Dante, Chaucer, and Catullus. o Pound’s emphasis on extensive training, similar to musical or scientific training, and his focus on the development of craft, has more in common with the “conservative” views of British neoclassical poets like Alexander Pope than with more revolutionary or modernist notions of spontaneous creativity. • Students who believe that Pound’s poetics are revolutionary might argue: o His controversial statements, like “It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works” (par. 3), or his emphasis on modern psychology (pars. 1-2), both propose radical new definitions of what a poem is and what a poet ought to attempt. o Pound’s own poetry, including his single-image, two-line poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” published just a few months before this essay, asserts a

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revolutionary focus on compression and imagery over the rhetorical posturing popular in the poetry of Pound’s day. • Other students might argue that Pound is both conservative and revolutionary—he challenges the prevailing trends of his day with his Imagist poetics, but also reaches into the past to uphold traditional poetic values that have fallen out of fashion.

5. English poet and critic F. S. Flint (par. 5) put forth three rules to write good poetry: (1) to directly treat the “thing,” whether subjectively or objectively; (2) to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; and (3) with regard to rhythm, to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome. What other rules does Pound lay out in this essay? In what ways do they support Flint’s rules and in what ways do they run counter to them? • Pound adds or expands on Flint with the following: o Pound’s advice to “[g]o in fear of abstractions” (par. 9) is somewhat equivalent to Flint’s directive “to directly treat the ‘thing,’” although it makes its case more precisely and emphatically. o Pound’s directive to “[u]se no superfluous words, no adjective, which does not reveal something” (par. 7) repeats Flint’s proscription against using any “word that does not contribute to the presentation,” as does Pound’s later use of Shakespeare to argue against description—“Don’t be descriptive” (par. 19)—as opposed to presentation. o Pound’s rule not to “make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin each line with a heave” (par. 23), his argument to “let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave,” his warning not to “chop your stuff into separate iambs” (par. 23), and his insistence that “[a] rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise” (par. 26) echo Flint’s warning against the predictable music of poetic metronome. o Par. 23 expands on Flint’s injunction to “compose in sequence of the musical phrase, and not in sequence of the metronome.” • Pound seems to extend his rules beyond those of Flint in several ways, though: o His argument that one should “dissociate…vocabulary from…cadence” (par. 15) seems to place an even greater emphasis on the relationship between poetry and music than does Flint. o His emphasis on the importance of training oneself in “all the minutiae of [one’s] craft” (par. 17) and his recommendation that one use translation as training—“Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences… n a foreign language” so as to “dissociate the vocabulary from the cadence” (par. 15); “Translation is…good training” (par. 30)—emphasizes the importance of a prolonged study of poetry, which seems to contradict the brief recipe for success offered by Flint. o Pound’s concluding acknowledgment that “Mais d’abord il faut etre un poete” (par. 35)—that is, one must first be a poet—places the focus on the craft of writing poetry rather than on the critical analysis of poetry as an object of study.

6. In what ways does Pound suggest applying his suggestions and rules to areas other than poetry? What other applications can you think of? How might you apply them to your own writing, for example? • Pound’s ideas as applied to other areas:

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o Pound’s extended comparisons between the study of music and the study of poetry suggest that similar attention to training and mastery of fundamentals would apply to music as well. He also seems to imply that the musician and the painter would learn by what is both similar and different between poetry and these other two arts. o Pound’s comparisons between poetry and science likewise suggest parallels. Since poetry and science are both disciplines in which discovery builds on previous discovery, a good scientist, like a good poet, would attend to the mastery of his “freshman” fundamentals before being able to proceed to his own discoveries. o While Pound distinguishes between poetry and prose, he also distinguishes between good prose and bad prose; . “Good prose will do you no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by trying to write it” (par. 30). Many of the same rules about aspiring to precise word choice (as opposed to being “too lazy to find the exact word” [par. 33]), avoiding abstractions, and even attention to the musical laws that govern the rhythm of a thought could apply to good prose as well, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. • Application in students’ writing: o Some students might argue that Pound’s dictums could be applied to their own creative poetry and fiction as well as to their own academic writing, such as essays on history and literature. o Students might also argue that Pound’s notion that one should privilege formal precision and mastery of craft over merely following what is fashionable or conventional has relevance for all subjects of study. . Such students might even extend Pound’s spirit of disciplined idiosyncrasy to other areas of life, like sports or social relationships. o Students might also find Pound’s focus on compressed, precise imagery to resonate with their online experiences—from how personal imagery is created (i.e., selfies, profile pictures, memes) to how emails and texts are crafted with values like efficiency and immediacy in mind.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Robert Frost, Reluctance (pp. 1078-80)

1. How does Robert Frost use the natural world to make an argument? • Overall, Frost uses the imagery of autumn becoming winter to personify the ending of a failed love affair: o “And lo, it is ended” (l. 6) can apply to the season, in which “The leaves are all dead on the ground” (l. 7) as well as to “the end / of a love” (ll. 23-24). o The desolation of the world he describes evokes his own grief and loneliness: . The oak’s remaining leaves are released with an agonizing slowness, “scraping and creeping / out over the crusted snow” (ll. 10-11), suggesting that Frost’s own grief will endure through winter, keeping him awake and alone “[w]hen others are sleeping” (l. 12). • Throughout most of the poem, Frost uses nature as a consoling example that loss is natural, but in the final sextet, Frosts contrasts the natural “drift of things” toward death (l. 21) with the human need to rebel against this tendency, and he laments his own decision to “yield with a grace to reason” (l. 22).

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o In this way, Frost seems to question, if not reject, the overall metaphor he asserts throughout the poem—leaving him with his human grief, for which the seasonal losses perceived in nature are no consolation.

2. What do you make of the play on words with “wither” (l. 16) and “whither” (l. 18)? What do you think is the answer to the question of “Whither,” which means “where”? • The doubled sound connects the idea of withering and the question of where the speaker should turn next: like the witch hazel flowers, the speaker’s purpose in life has dried up. • The question “Whither?” seems, in this stanza, not to have an answer: as a result of his loss, there is no place for the speaker to go, though his heart is “still aching to seek” (l. 17). • However, the final stanza implies that the speaker may not be able to “accept the end” (l. 23) of his love and the season that personifies it. In this case, the answer to “Whither?” could be an attempt to reconcile with the beloved, as opposed to reconcile with the loss of love.

3. Frost is considered a modernist poet, which means, among other things, that his work has an economy and a directness to it. On the other hand, he used many of the traditional tools of the nineteenth-century poets—this poem rhymes, for example. Does “Reluctance” seem to be a contemporary, or modern, poem or does it feel old-fashioned to you? Explain. • Some students might argue that “Reluctance” feels old-fashioned, citing: o Frost’s old-fashioned diction, like “wended” (l. 2), “And lo” (l. 6), and “hither and thither” (l. 14), which could seem more decorative than economical. o Frost’s inversion of syntax in the service of rhyme, such as “And over the walls I have wended” (l. 2) or “I have come by the highway home” (l. 5), which again feels more decorative than direct. • Other students might argue that “Reluctance” feels modern, citing: o The sparseness and simplicity of the diction and syntax in lines like “Out over the crusted snow / When others are sleeping” (ll. 11-12), which is significantly less adorned than traditional nineteenth century verse. o The understated, bleaker, and ambiguous epiphany Frost offers, which evokes a distinctly modernist disillusionment with spectacular romantic flourishes in poetry. • Other students might argue that in “Reluctance” Frost straddles a fence between traditional “poetic” language and a more colloquial, modern phrasing, citing the ideas and examples above.

4. What is the tone of “Reluctance”? Does the tone jibe with the poem’s subject or is there a bit of a disconnect? Explain your answer. • By observing the death of nature as autumn slips into winter, and by relating that seasonal death to the speaker’s human loss with diction that is both archaic as well as somber, the speaker establishes a tone of sorrowful resignation: o “And lo, it is ended” (l. 6). o “The leaves are all dead on the ground” (l. 7). o “The last lone aster is gone” (l. 15). o “The flowers of the witch hazel whither” (l. 16). • Some students might argue that the tone of sorrowful resignation jibes perfectly with the poem’s subject, citing the intuitively apt comparison of human loss and natural change.

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• Other students, however, might argue that a disconnect between the somber tone and the subject is implied by the final stanza, which implies that the speaker may not be as resigned as he seems, and that the inevitability of decay in nature may not apply in the context of human emotion and action: o The speaker knows that to “bow and accept the end” (l. 23) would be “a treason” (l. 20) to his heart. Whether he will act on that knowledge isn’t clear in the poem, but the moment of rebellion against despair does exist.

5. Poet and critic William Stafford said of Frost’s poetry that “the bland voice quietly carrying readers across chasms cannot prevent terrible glimpses. The poems often veil and, at the same time, hint at elements too abrupt, too full of hurt, for direct presentation.” Does this description apply to “Reluctance”? Explain why or why not. • Some students might argue that the speaker’s voice in “Reluctance” is both quiet and “bland,” citing his presentation of the dying autumn through subtle, unspectacular imagery and lyricism that is equally muted. Such students might also cite the ambiguity of the epiphany in the final stanza, as Frost leaves it unclear whether the speaker will fight against this loss or continue to dwell on it evokes Stafford’s “quiet carriage of readers across chasms. • Students might also argue that Stafford’s “terrible glimpses” are also present: o There is a horror in the image of oak leaves, unraveled one at a time and sent “scraping and creeping / Out over the crusted snow” (ll. 10-11) while the speaker is alone in wakefulness. The violence and intention attributed to death by “scraping and creeping” could be read as one of the “chasms” Stafford mentions. o Frost’s use of emotional “treason” jars with the notion of going “with the drift of things / [t]o yield with a grace to reason” (ll. 20-23), suggesting a chasm between resignation and enormous pain. • Other students might consider Stafford’s description of Frost as over-reaching, critiquing Frost for being subtle to the point of tedium. o Such students might argue that the question asked by the speaker at the end of “Reluctance,” for instance, is such a passive epiphany that it fails to stir emotions. o Students might also argue that elsewhere in the poem, unless viewed through a very generous metaphorical lens, the “glimpses” offered by lines like “the dead leaves lie huddled and still” (l. 13) are more dull than “terrible.”

EXPLORING THE TEXT Robert Frost, Mending Wall (pp. 1080-81)

1. Is there a conflict in the poem? Explain. • The conflict most visible in the poem is between the outlook of the speaker’s neighbor and that of the speaker himself: o The neighbor, a country traditionalist, keeps up the wall because he believes it is important for relations between land-owning people: . “Good fences make good neighbors” (l. 27), as he points out twice. . Despite the fact that “There where it is we do not need the wall” (l.23), the neighbor is unwilling to move beyond “his father’s saying” (l. 43). o The speaker is more fanciful and able to imagine a friendlier or unconventional social order. He points out that “My apple trees will never get across / And eat

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the cones under his pines” (ll. 25-26), only to be met with his neighbor’s patient, ancient saying. . The speaker is attuned to the force that “doesn’t love a wall” (l. 1), the chaotic nature that unmakes human boundaries. • The poem also illustrates the conflict between the human effort for order and natural unruliness: o The anti-wall force “sends the frozen ground-swell under it, / And spills the upper boulders in the sun” (ll. 2-3). o Even hunters, the representatives of human wildness, work against the principle of wall-building, leaving “not one stone on a stone” (l. 7). o The speaker considers attributing the mystery of nature’s fluid borders to “Elves,” but then reconsiders, saying, “it’s not elves exactly” (l. 37). o However, the speaker and his neighbor continue to complete and re-complete the wall—which the speaker dismisses as “just another kind of outdoor game” (l. 21), but it remains more symbolically significant for the stolid neighbor.

2. Read lines 12–15 carefully. How could the different meanings of the word “between,” which is repeated twice, change the meaning of the poem? • The first meaning of “between” signifies division. The neighbors “set the wall between [them] once again” (l. 14), making a physical boundary that highlights their separateness. • The second meaning of “between,” however, signifies shared possession: “We keep the wall between us as we go” (l. 15) can be read as a joint effort, especially because “keep” can mean to maintain or tend. • These two readings are not mutually exclusive; the poem can be read to imply that both the speaker and his neighbor are keeping up a physical boundary that also, through shared work, makes them closer. This reading lends support to the neighbor’s argument.

3. Why do you think Robert Frost allows the neighbor to offer the proverb “Good fences make good neighbors” twice? Do you think the speaker agrees with this adage? Why do you think the neighbor gets the last word? • By letting the neighbor repeat himself, Frost implies the long history of the words: this is a proverb that, having been repeated for hundreds of years, means not only something practical but something emotional and even symbolic about the relations between humans. There is a self-satisfaction to the repetition, too: “he likes having thought of it so well / He says again” (l. 45). • The speaker seems opposed to the adage. He is drawn to the mystery of the wall’s unmaking, and questions the human intention that puts it back up again and again, yet he does seem to see the neighbor as another powerful and important force: o The speaker questions the wall’s intention, saying, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out / And to whom I was like to give offense” (ll. 32-34), implying that he holds the unknown, chaotic nature of social interaction in higher regard than his neighbor’s tradition. o However, in the next few lines, the speaker sees his neighbor as “an old-stone savage armed” (l. 40), moving “in darkness…. Not of woods only and the shade of trees” (ll. 41-42). This image transforms the neighbor into a force almost as ancient and mysterious as the natural chaos that fights against the wall. o This might be why Frost allows the neighbor the last word: though the speaker mistrusts the wall, and wonders what “offense” it might give to nonhuman

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presences, he does continue the work of wall-mending. In this sense Frost could be seen as being on the neighbor's side.

4. “Mending Wall” questions whether a wall that has no function in the modern world still fulfills a ritualistic need. When Frost was asked about the poem’s meaning, he said his poems are “all set to trip the reader’s head foremost into the boundless.” In what way does trying to answer the poem’s question trip you “into the boundless”? Which of the poem’s two characters trips “into the boundless”? • The poem’s narration of its central question trips the reader into a realm of rural mystery: o In establishing a conflict between two points of view, Frost seems to be begging the reader to ask which point of view of nature or human relations is “right,” but analysis of the poem reveals a continual unfolding of synthesis between the two points of view—a synthesis of which the two characters themselves may be unaware: . By building the wall and even arguing about it, they are drawn closer together perhaps even than they would have been had they agreed on the nature of the wall. The paradoxical balance between order and disorder suggests boundlessness. o “The gaps I mean,” the speaker says, “No one has seen them made or heard them made” (ll. 9-10), implying that the commonplace forces that damage the wall are nonetheless beyond human perception. o The neighbor’s transformation into a mythic, savage figure is a kind of trip into the boundless. However, the one who seems to most experience the trip is the wondering speaker—and, through him, the reader.

5. When President Kennedy visited the Berlin Wall, he quoted the first line of “Mending Wall.” His audience knew what he meant, of course. Later, when Frost visited Russia, he found that the Russian translation of the poem left off the first line. He said he could have done better for them by saying: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / Something there is that does.” Does that potential change alter the meaning of the poem for you? Explain. • Some students might argue that by unveiling the poem's central question so early, and weighing each potential answer so evenly, the alteration would significantly alter the poem’s meaning, implying much more strongly that boundaries between humans might be necessary. Such students might also add that Frost, as an American poet interacting with Russians during the Cold War, could be acknowledging the potential validity of the Russian point of view. • Other students might argue that the alteration could be read with some measure of ironic intent, suggesting that Frost is using the additional line to chastise draconian policies. Such students could argue that this would also change the poem’s meaning by vilifying the pro-wall point of view and making the poem’s ultimate answer less ambiguous. • Other students might argue that the alteration would not change the poem’s meaning at all, only make its central question more overt. Such students could cite the open-ended nature of a purely literal interpretation of Frost’s alteration to suggest Frost himself remains unsettled on the subject.

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EXPLORING THE TEXT Robert Frost, Fire and Ice (pp. 1081-82)

1. What do you think “fire” and “ice” represent in this poem? • “Fire” and “ice” could be read literally, as the potential forces that “the world will end in” (l. 1)—that is, a nuclear winter or a massive blizzard for ice, or a nuclear war or apocalyptic brimstone for fire. • Alternatively, the words could be used to represent more human attributes: for example, passion and hatred. • Frost uses what he has “tasted of desire” (l. 3) to relate to the proposed ending of the world in fire, suggesting a more personal than literal interpretation of ice and fire. • Frost’s pairing of “hate” with “ice” is more ambiguous. He says that he thinks he knows “enough of hate / To say that for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice” (ll. 6- 9). This could imply that “ice” represents hatred, or it could imply that “ice,” or human indifference, is opposed to hatred.

2. What is the effect of the repetition “Some say” in the first two lines? • The repetition sets up the balance of Frost’s argument: o He will go on to weigh the two opinions—neither of them definitive, both simply word-of-mouth theories—emphasizing the ambiguity of the answer to the question he poses (how the world will end). • The repetition evokes the presence of an ongoing philosophical discourse, as if Frost is succinctly summarizing a familiar debate that has been held throughout human history. • The repetition emphasizes Frost’s blithe, casual tone, which is juxtaposed against the poem’s apocalyptic scope and extremely short length, both of which contribute to the enigmatic tone of the work.

3. Do you think “Fire and Ice” is about the end of the world or about something else altogether? Explain your answer. • Some students might argue that the poem is about the end of the world, citing the poem’s double meanings for ice and fire: o Ice and fire could be literal references to global cooling or an ice age versus nuclear holocaust or the incineration of an asteroid strike—however, these interpretations are the least likely, given the poem offers little other evidence for them. o Ice and fire could also refer to the human traits that might cause a human- engineered apocalypse: cold indifference to the plight of others versus fierce and unrelenting competition between nations for power. • Other students might argue that while it can be read as a clever piece about the end of the world, as the poem is also a meditation on the ways people could and might destroy one another: o The speaker “hold[s] with those who favor fire” (l. 4) because of his personal experience with desire, suggesting political and interpersonal possibilities for the poem’s meaning: . “Fire” here might refer to, for example, a war between nations over precious resources or a love affair that ruins a marriage or ends a friendship.

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o The speaker believes that “for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice” (ll. 7-9), implying that although the speaker believes the power of passion to be greater, he also acknowledges the destructive properties of indifference: . On a large scale, these could reference a catastrophic abandonment of diplomacy. . On a personal scale, this could reference the spurning of another’s need in a variety of contexts—between lovers or among friends or family.

4. Characterize the speaker of “Fire and Ice.” Try reading the poem aloud a few different ways, changing your intonation to put stress on different parts of each line. What effect does that have on your perception of the speaker? • The speaker of the poem is calm and wry in his summary of ultimate crisis. The poem is simple and direct, but also carefully formal: it comes off almost as a well-made aphorism, particularly in the clipped, deceptively casual nature of the last two lines. • Depending on stress, the speaker might be interpreted as playful, even mocking: o “Some say the world will end in fire” (l. 1) makes amusing gossip out of catastrophe. “Some say” could precede any petty social chatter, but instead it references the end of the world. o “But if it had to perish twice” (l. 5) has the similar effect of drawing us into apparently casual speculation, while highlighting how removed the speaker is from the actual crisis. • Some might argue the casual tone suggests the speaker’s own comfort with iciness or indifference, which complicates his earlier assertion that he “hold[s] with those who favor fire” (l. 4). • Others might argue that his assertion of the power of desire combined with his cool, detached tone implies that the speaker is one whose desire has itself been extinguished by the destruction of a relationship.

5. Frost scholar Tom Hansen refutes the claim of Harlow Shapley, an American astronomer and teacher, that his conversation with Robert Frost about the possible ways the world might end inspired “Fire and Ice.” Hansen instead believes that the poem is “an astute diagnosis of the chronic malfunction of the human heart.” What do you think? Which interpretation resonates more with you? • Some students might argue that Shapley is correct, citing the simplicity of the poem’s language and the lack of elaboration on the speaker’s part as evidence for a more scientific interpretation. Such students could also cite Shapley himself, as well as the general likelihood of the role an intense increase in heat or cold would play in virtually any worldwide extinction. • Other students might argue Hansen is correct, citing the personal references of the speaker throughout the poem, which indicate that fire and ice represent emotional states of being. • Perceptive students might argue that the two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. Frost’s conversation with Shapley could easily have given him a vehicle for discussing a “chronic malfunction of the human heart,” and the poem seems to work well as a double text: o While the poem does not give a serious answer to the question of how the world will end, it does utilize the idea of apocalypse.

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o This is important for the speaker’s argument that passion and indifference both have potential for destroying the relationships between people: it puts the discussion on a level of crisis that Frost seems to think appropriate.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Marsden Hartley, Portrait of a German Officer (pp. 1082-84)

1. Look first at the painting’s lines, shapes, colors, and composition (where and how the objects are placed on the canvas). What is your first impression? Then look at the iconography (the recognizable objects). Do they change your first impression? • The variety of geometrical shapes (triangles, circles, cubes), the mix of straight, curved and wavy lines, and the bursts of primary colors at first suggest a festive chaos of activity. • Specific images of flags, pennants, the German iron cross, and the numbers and initials, with the iron cross the most dominant identifiable image, bring a more disturbing element of nationalism into the initial sense of festive exuberance. • The overall shape of a body wrapped in the paraphernalia of patriotism darkens the tone of the painting.

2. Portrait of a German Officer is one of a series of abstract portraits of German officers. What evidence of war do you see in the painting? What do you think Marsden Hartley’s opinion was of the military and the war culture he saw in Berlin during those years? • Pennants, banners, flags, the iron cross, and insignias that seem to come from a uniform all work together to create a mosaic with a military motif. • The chaotic, asymmetrical, and seemingly haphazard wrapping of the military regalia around the impressionistic shape of a human torso and partial head imply that Hartley believed militarism to be distortive, if not destructive, of the human spirit.

3. What do you think this painting says about Karl von Freyburg? About Hartley’s relationship with him? • By placing von Freyburg’s identifying initials and his age of death at the bottom of the composition, centering of von Freyburg’s regiment number in the middle of the image, and positioning the nationalistic iron cross where a heart might be, Hartley suggests that von Freyburg’s individual identity was sacrificed to the dehumanizing forces of nationalism and militarism. • The painting leaves the viewer with an ambiguous sense of Hartley’s relationship to von Freyburg. We don’t know from the painting itself if Hartley was saddened by von Freyburg’s embrace of nationalism or embittered by the way nationalism took over his identity and destroyed him.

4. How did Hartley communicate emotion in this painting? • The energy of the vivid, clashing colors and of the composition’s many intersecting lines and patterns evokes an explosive festivity that first catches the viewer’s eye. • Once the viewer’s attention is drawn into the work, the patriotic iconography stands out in sharper relief. • As the eye drops down from the nationalistic iron cross to the number four of the regiment and then to the almost marginalized symbols of the individual (initials and

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young age), the viewer is left with a subtle sense of sadness and bitter irony at the sacrifice of a young life to militaristic fervor. • The composition of the painting in the impressionistic shape of a human body intensifies the sense of loss. • In this way, initial emotions of celebration and frenetic nationalism give way to ironic gravity and sadness the more viewer reflects on the painting.

5. This painting is inspired by both cubism (visual fragments composed as if in a collage) and German expressionism (coarse brushwork and bright colors contrasted with black). What is the effect of this combination of techniques? Consider both the physical and psychological effects of the work. • The collage-like assemblage of fragments of geometrical shapes gives the effect of a world that is broken, ajar, and in conflict with itself. • The bold strokes of garish primary colors intensify that effect and add a sense of threatening energy to the nationalistic and militaristic iconography. • The painting leaves the viewer emotionally unsettled and potentially conflicted between the nationalistic festivity so brightly articulated and the more subtle and sobering implications of the erasure of individual identity (such as the subject’s initials, age, and regiment number) as it is reflected in various icons. • The impressionistic portrayal of a human body subtly evokes the psychologically disturbing shape of a corpse.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (pp. 1084-1087)

1. Each of the thirteen stanzas of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” might be a complete poem. What, besides the blackbird, connects them? • There are various references to nature: o “Among twenty snowy mountains” (l. 1). o “Like a tree” (l. 5). o “The blackbird whistled in the autumn winds” (l. 7). o “The river is moving” (l. 48). • There are also references to man’s relationship with nature, alternately portrayed as: o Keeping his distance from it: . “He rode over Connecticut / In a glass coach” (ll. 42-43). In these lines, the use of a glass coach allows the man to view the natural world without having to touch or be touched by it. o Reverential: . “At the sight of blackbirds / Flying in a green light, / Even the bawds of euphony / Would cry out sharply” (ll. 38-41). Since a bawd is the woman in charge of a brothel, and euphony is the quality of being pleasing to the ear, Stevens may be saying that this sight moves even the basest of us, or he might be arguing that this sight would move even those with rich and not necessarily pleasant life experiences. o Longing for the world to be something other than what is present: . “Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird / Walks around the feet / Of the women about you?” (ll. 26-29). In these lines Stevens asks the “thin men of Haddam” (l. 25) why it is that they 562 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

prefer an imagined or idealized version of nature (“golden birds”(l. 26)) to the one right in front of them (“blackbirds” (l. 27) at “the feet / Of the women about you?” (ll. 28-29)). • The style of the poem uses very austere language and abstract imagery, which helps unify the tone and style of the stanzas: o “I was of three minds, / Like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds” (ll. 4- 6). o “A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one” (ll. 9-12). o “It marked the edge / Of one of many circles” (ll. 36-37). • The poem treats the passage of time and the course of human life as cyclical rather than strictly linear throughout: o The poem begins “among twenty snowy mountains” (l. 1), and at its end the speaker says “It was snowing / And it was going to snow” (ll. 51-52). o There are several signposts of seasonal change throughout, including the “autumn winds” (l. 7), the “icicles” (l. 18) that connote winter, and the “river…moving” (l. 48) that suggests spring after the thaw. o The poem mentions “lucid, inescapable rhythms” (l. 31), evoking the sense that the course of one’s life is a cyclical process. o “When the blackbird flew out of sight, / It marked the edge / Of one of many circles” (ll. 35-37) also implies that time and life experience are cyclical in nature.

2. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” has a cinematic quality that is introduced in the first stanza, when the eye of the speaker moves from a long establishing shot of snowy mountains to a close-up of the eye of a blackbird. What other film techniques do you find as you work through the poem? Consider the use of framing, close-ups, even sound. • Framing: o The first stanza takes place within the vast frame of the “twenty snowy mountains” (l. 1), then quickly zooms in on the single, comparatively miniscule “eye of the blackbird” (l. 3). o The sixth stanza opens with the image of icicles filling a “long window / with barbaric glass” (ll. 18-19), then “the shadow of the blackbird” (l. 20) moves into and out of the shot repeatedly when it crosses the window “to and fro” (l. 21). • Close-ups: o “The only moving thing/ Was the eye of the blackbird” (l. 2-3). o “The shadow of his equipage” (46). o “The river is moving” (48). o “The blackbird sat / In the cedar limbs” (53-54). • Sound: o “The blackbird whistled in the autumn winds” (l. 7). o “The blackbird whistling” (l. 16). o “I know noble accents, / And lucid, inescapable rhythms” (ll. 30-31) evokes various intonations and cadences of human speech.

3. Haddam, a town in Connecticut, is mentioned in stanzas VII and XI. What are some possible explanations for the Connecticut references? What comment might Stevens be making by contrasting Connecticut life to blackbirds?

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• Explanation for the Connecticut references: o Stevens was a resident of Connecticut. o Connecticut, being part of New England and one of the original colonies, anchors the poem in a historically American landscape. o Connecticut has enough rural scenery for Stevens to portray its landscape as representative of man’s relationship to nature. • Comments Stevens might be making by contrasting Connecticut life to blackbirds: o Nature is a force outside of human control, and thus should be regarded with awe and fear: . “Once, a fear pierced him / In that he mistook / The shadow of his equipage / For blackbirds” (1l. 44-47). . “He rode over Connecticut / In a glass coach” (ll. 42-43) suggests man’s fascination with nature as well as the simultaneous wish to keep it at bay—the inherent fragility of the glass coach also illustrates how powerless humans are to actually do so. . Man’s inability to escape nature is evoked in the lines “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.” (1l. 30-34) and “A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one.” (ll. 9-12). o Humanity plays a role in the natural order, and the whole of human experience is encompassed in nature’s cycles: . “A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one” (ll. 9-12). . “But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know” (ll. 32-34).

4. Is there logic to the order of the stanzas? Try reshuffling them to see if the meaning changes. • Logic: o Some students might argue that there is an intuitive, circular logic at work in the poem, as it represents time as cyclical and ends with essentially the same image with which it opened: a snowy landscape. The poem also includes many recurring images or actions, such as the blackbirds flying, the act of whistling, and people looking through windows at nature. o Some students might argue that the poems follows a more linear, intellectual logic, with each stanza picking up where the previous one left off: . The first stanza opens with a vast landscape, then centers on a single blackbird. The second stanza then takes that blackbird and uses it to represent the mind of the speaker, three-fold. The next stanza uses the blackbird as a pantomime for the act of life, which is a thought constructed by a mind, as referenced in the previous stanza. The fourth stanza then begins to imply that a man and a woman are the same thing, and that a blackbird is, in fact, the same thing as a man and a woman, which would all be another small part of the pantomime, which is a thought generated by the mind. o Some students may believe that there is no logic to the order of the stanzas, as they represent multiple reference points for the same subject. Such students may argue that the point was to present multiple viewpoints from multiple

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perspectives and that giving more weight to one perspective would be trying to narrow the purpose of the poem. • Reshuffling: o Some students may argue that the circuitousness of the poem’s narrative allows the poem to retain its essential meaning no matter the order of the stanzas: . By reversing the order of the stanzas, the poem still begins and ends with an image of a winter landscape, and then a close-up of a blackbird. Furthermore, the frequent reoccurrence of images lends itself easily to restructuring, as the same images and ideas will continue to crop up in different ways, providing imagery and symbols to follow throughout the poem. . If the poem opens with stanza IV, it is better able to get at the blackbird-as-metaphor idea that is so prevalent throughout the poem. Additionally, it frees the ending up, allowing the poem to be bookended not by images, but by the ideas that permeate throughout it. While it is less direct to do so, the poem could be bookended by stanza II, which has the blackbird standing in as a metaphor for the speaker’s thoughts (“I was of three minds, / Like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds”). This emphasizes the blackbird-as-metaphor theme that runs throughout as well as brings the poem back to the speaker’s interior processes, which propel the work. . Opening with stanza V and closing with stanza III, bookending the poem with the whistling of the blackbird, allows for the circuitousness of the narrative to continue to be physically represented by the structure of the poem. Additionally, this allows the poem’s more ambiguous nature to come forward. By stating that the author “[does] not know which to prefer” (1. 13), the poem avoids prescribing a direct meaning, giving the reader free reign to interpret the austere imagery and multiple viewpoints. o Some students may argue that each stanza provides context for understanding the next, and that re-ordering them disrupts the meaning of the work: . Although reversing the order of the stanzas means the poem still begins and ends with an image of a winter landscape followed by a close-up of a blackbird, the second and twelfth stanzas become very different. With the current second stanza, we go from one blackbird to three, and the blackbirds are immediately used as a stand-in for thoughts populating human minds, which in turn brings up both the blackbird-as-metaphor and the notion of multiples (“three blackbirds” [1. 6]). A student may argue that all of these elements, in this order, are essential to the poem. . Opening with stanza IV could be read as changing the poem’s entire frame of reference. The poem would become much more abstract and intellectual: instead of giving us a clear framing image (“Among twenty snowy mountains / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird” [ll. 1-3]), everything becomes about the fluidity of identity (“A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one” [ll. 9-12]). Although this is an essential part of the poem, it is only one aspect of it—bringing it to the forefront as the first stanza therefore reduces the expansive nature of the work as a whole. 565 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

. If the poem opens with stanza V, it begins not with an expansive image, but with a speaker musing on their indecision of which they like better, “the beauty of inflections” (1. 14), “the beauty of innuendoes” (1. 15), the “blackbird whistling” (1. 16), or the sound that comes “just after” (1. 17). It could be argued that this severely limits the reading of the poem, as it buries the theme of inevitability, in which the season of winter could be interpreted as representative of death.

5. Wallace Stevens said that this group of poems was “not meant to be a collection of epigrams or of ideas, but of sensations.” What sensations does the poem produce in you as you read it? How does Stevens achieve his purpose of creating sensations? • Some sensations the poems produce in a reader: o Dread: . Stevens describes the glass in the window as “barbaric” (l. 19). . The blackbird often appears as a bad omen, overshadowing daily life: • “Do you not see how the blackbird / Walks around the feet / Of the women about you?” (ll. 27-29). • “Once, a fear pierced him, / In that he mistook / The shadow of his equipage / For blackbirds” (ll. 44-47). o Inevitability (and, perhaps implicitly, mortality): . “A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one” (ll. 9-12). . “I know…/…inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know” (ll. 30-34). . “It was evening all afternoon. / It was snowing / And it was going to snow” (ll. 50-52). o Uncertainty: . “I was of three minds” (l. 4). . “I do not know which to prefer, / The beauty of inflections / Or the beauty of innuendoes, / The blackbird whistling, / Or just after” (ll. 13- 17). . “The mood / Traced in the shadow / An indecipherable cause” (ll. 22- 24) o Cold: . “Among twenty snowy mountains” (l. 1). . “Icicles filled the long window / With barbaric glass” (ll. 18-19). o Loneliness: . “The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird” (ll. 2-3). o Flight: . “The shadow of the blackbird / Crossed it, to and fro” (ll. 20-21). . “When the blackbird flew out of sight” (l. 35) . “At the sight of blackbirds / Flying in a green light”(ll. 38-39). • Stevens achieves his purpose of creating sensations via: o Vivid imagery: . The motif of the blackbird, either at rest or in flight, appears throughout. . Stevens makes several references to the snowy, cold landscape

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o Juxtaposing the man’s attempt to impose order on his surroundings against the indifference and omnipotence of the natural world: . “I was of three minds, / like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds.” (ll. 4-7) . In stanza XI, the speaker describes a man riding “over Connecticut / In a glass coach” (ll. 42-43) who “mistook / The shadow of his equipage / For blackbirds” (ll. 45-47) and is then “pierced” by fear (l. 44). Though he is asserting control over himself and his surroundings by traveling over the state (as opposed to across it or through it), his mode of transport is fragile, and the shadow of his own carriage is enough to make him fear the power of nature.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Aaron A. Abeyta, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tortilla (pp. 1087-90)

1. Why do you think Aaron A. Abeyta chose the tortilla as his subject for a “Thirteen Ways” poem? • Some students might argue that Abeyta chose the tortilla because it represents great personal and cultural meaning for him: o He writes, “i was of three cultures / like a tortilla / for which there are three bolios” (ll. 4-6), comparing his multicultural identity to desire for the iconic Latino staple. o Abeyta later writes, “i know too / that the tortilla / has taught me what i know” (ll. 32-34), alluding to the personal significance of the cultural icon. • Other students might argue that Abeyta chose the tortilla because of its ironic relationship to the iconic Stevens blackbird. o Whereas Stevens’s blackbird is ineffable and illustrates the mysterious significance of nature, Abeyta’s tortilla is familiar and shows the mysterious significance of culture, specifically Latino culture where the tortilla is a staple.

2. How does he introduce the tortilla? What do the “twenty different tortillas” in the first verse suggest to you? How is the image extended with the open mouth of the niño (child)? How does it set up one of the themes of the poem? • Abeyta introduces the tortilla by: o titling the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tortilla,” thus immediately positioning the tortilla as an object ironically opposed to Stevens’s blackbird. o including “tortilla” in the same location as “mountains” in the first line Stevens poem, suggesting the ubiquity of the food staple as well as emphasizing its familiarity. • Abeyta’s “twenty different tortillas” (l. 1) suggests a bounty meant to undermine the poetic uniqueness of his commonplace subject. This helps reveal the poetic value of an otherwise everyday object by first establishing its banality. • The child’s open mouth takes the position of “the eye of the blackbird” (l. 3) in Stevens’s poem: o That the poem uses tortillas as a framing device rather than the central image in the first stanza implies that the actual subject of the poem might be childhood, specifically the author’s. That the second stanza begins “i was of three cultures ” (l. 4) supports this autobiographical interpretation. 567 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o By closing on the image of the child, Abeyta establishes the motif of childhood present throughout the rest of the poem.

3. Identify some of the poem’s images. How does Abeyta create them? What senses do the images appeal to? • In the opening stanza, Abeyta paints a straightforward image of a child eating tortillas, which appeals to sight, smell, and taste. • By juxtaposing the “twenty different tortillas” (l. 1) against Stevens’s famous “snowy mountains” (l. 1), Abeyta interposes a surreal equation of tortillas to mountains and the child’s mouth to the eye of the blackbird, which humorously destabilizes the reader’s sense of sight, taste, and smell. • By writing that “the tortilla grew on the wooden table / it was part of the earth” (ll. 7-8), Abeyta compares the food to a plant and compares the table to the earth, appealing surreally to sight, taste, and smell. • By writing “o thin viejos of chimayo / why do you imagine biscuits” (ll. 25-26), Abeyta paints the image of thin old men dreaming of biscuits, advancing the motifs of hunger, age, and a cultural relationship to food. The image also appeals to sight, smell, and taste. • By describing “tortillas / browning on a black comal” that “cry out sharply” (ll. 38-41), Abeyta personifies the sound of tortillas cooking in a skillet, appealing to senses of sight, sound, taste, and smell, and further establishing the connection between food and human identity.

4. Abeyta made the decision not to translate some Spanish expressions into English. How does that affect your reading of the poem? Try translating them and see how that changes the poem’s meaning and form. • By not translating some expressions into English, Abeyta evokes the authenticity and validity of the language and culture he grew up with, which better conveys the experience of Spanish-speaking Americans to readers. o His Spanish expressions both subvert readers’ assumptions about the uniformity of English-speaking peoples and establish the importance of Abeyta’s specific cultural heritage. • Sometimes Abeyta’s Spanish refers to something specifically Latino and therefore untranslatable: o Abeyta’s use of Spanish words for particular Latino food items—like “bolios” (l. 6), “sopapillas” (l. 31), and “frijolito” (l. 54),for which there are no exact equivalents in English—suggests that cultural experiences are unique, untranslatable, and therefore invaluable. o Similarly, “Maclovia” (l. 20) refers to an iconic image of Latino cinema, “chimayo” (l. 25) and “española” (l. 40) are villages in New Mexico, and “pachucos” (l. 40) is a Latino subculture rooted in flamboyant nightlife. • Elsewhere, Abeyta uses Spanish to evoke specifically Latino meanings for ideas that do translate into English to highlight the distinct differences between Latino and white culture that Abeyta illustrates as integral to his identity: o Abeyta writes that “among twenty different tortillas / the only thing moving / was the mouth of the niño” (ll. 1-3). . Using “niño” instead of “child” in the last word of an otherwise English line emphasizes the importance of Latino culture to Abeyta. . That the word “child” is expressed in Spanish evokes the innocence of

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Abeyta’s Latino upbringing. o Abeyta’s use of “abeulitas” (l. 48) to mean “grandmothers” emphasizes the Latino aspect of one’s familial relations, suggesting that they differ from their English counterparts in more than just language.

TALKBACK: MAKING CONNECTIONS

1. Aside from the subject matter, what do you think is the biggest difference between “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (p. 1084) and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tortilla” (p. 1087)? • Tone: o By riffing on a preexisting canonical work, Abeyta’s poem seems inherently playful. Each line resonates with the irony of its comparison to the Stevens poem. This gives Abeyta’s poem a humorous tone, especially when compared to Stevens’s more implacable and serious one. • Content: o Stevens uses blackbirds and abstract, austere natural imagery of the East Coast to meditate on nature, perception, consciousness, and the landscape of the northeast. o Abeyta, however, uses tortillas, slight nods to magical realism—“the tortilla grew on the wooden table / it was a small part of the earth” (ll. 7-8)—and the imagery of the Southwest to meditate on the experience of growing up in a multilingual culture.

2. Is Aaron A. Abeyta’s purpose to honor the Wallace Stevens poem or to satirize it? Or is it a combination of the two? Explain you answer. • Some students will argue Abeyta’s purpose is to honor the Stevens poem, citing how each stanza is constructed identically to the Stevens’s. Such students might also argue that by using the framework of the canonical poem to explore a different childhood and culture, Abeyta illustrates the cross-cultural and cross-generational power of Stevens’s form. • Other students might argue that Abeyta’s purpose is to satirize Stevens, interpreting his mimicry of the poem’s form as Abeyta poking fun at Stevens. Such students might also argue that Abeyta’s working-class imagery constitutes a critique of the economic privilege underlying Stevens’s middle-class imagery. • Other students might argue that Abeyta’s purpose is both to honor and satirize Stevens’s poem, suggesting that Abeyta’s mimicry creates a dialog with Stevens. Such students might also argue that by using Stevens’s framework, Abeyta is able to imbue his images with the meaning implied by Stevens’s work while simultaneously overlaying that meaning with Abeyta’s own, creating a doubly powerful work that unites the two voices as much as it separates them.

3. Stevens locates at least a part of his poem in Connecticut; Abeyta places his in Chimayo, a small village near Santa Fe, New Mexico. How are these two setting different? Are there similarities? How do they add layers of meaning to the two poems? How do they separate the two poems? • Differences: o Stevens’s Connecticut setting evokes the coldness and austerity of the 569 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

northeastern winter, whereas Abeyta’s setting evokes the dry desert heat of the Southwest. o Stevens’s use of terms like “thin men of Haddam” (l. 25) and “noble accents” (l. 30) suggest economic comfort and emotional distance, whereas Abeyta’s “small kitchen” (l. 18) and “low rider” (l. 43) evoke emotional warmth and economic austerity. • Similarities: o Both settings represent home to each speaker, and both places are the home to the subject of the individual poems—the blackbirds in New England and tortillas in the Southwest. • The layers of meaning the locations add: o The Connecticut setting brings wintry forest imagery such as “snow” (l. 52) and “cedar limbs” (l. 54) to the foreground, making the poem overall feel cooler, more meditative, and more lonesome. o The setting of New Mexico’s brighter color palette and Abeyta’s imagery portraying its heat—like “baking” (l. 49) and “warmer” (l. 52)—as well as his focus on the people of New Mexico, infuses the poem with the sensation of bustle, warmth, and community. • The ways the locations separate the two poems: o Stevens’s poem is set in middle- to upper-middle class areas of Connecticut, where he worked as an insurance executive, and such privilege is suggested by the imagery of the “glass coach” (l. 42). o Abeyta’s poem, however, set in working-class New Mexico, where he grew up and where working-class people bake tortillas and drive across the desert in “low rider[s]” (l. 42). o Thus, in addition to the literal geographic separation, the two poems’ geographies also evoke economic separation.

4. Using these poems as a model, write your own version that looks at a familiar object thirteen ways. • Good student poems will contain thirteen sections with the appropriate number of lines per section, just as Abeyta mimics Stevens. Students should attempt to: o place a single subject or image into a variety of contexts. o include imagery that appeals to the senses. o juxtapose familiar contexts like home, work, school, or nature with the central subject. • Some students might create a more solemn, serious tribute to Stevens’s intellectualism. • Other students might take on a satire of Stevens’s seriousness by selecting a more mundane subject, mirroring Abeyta’s poem. • Other students might explicitly riff on Abeyta’s cultural and personal poem, selecting a subject through which they describe their upbringing or specific cultural identity. • It is possible to write a “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a...” poem that does not have thirteen sections, so long as the poem holds true to the intention or spirit of either of the two poems in the book.

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EXPLORING THE TEXT Edna St. Vincent Millay, First Fig (pp. 1090-91)

1. What is the effect of the poem’s rhyme? Do you think it contradicts the poem’s meaning or supports it? Explain your answer. • Rhyme connotes a slow writing process and an attention to form that does seem to contradict the speed and energy the speaker relishes. The speaker’s candle “will not last the night” (l. 2), yet the poet takes time to make the poem formal. • However, the effect of rhyme is often to provide a ring to the poem and give it a tightness that makes the verse feel true. The choice to rhyme “night” (l. 2) with “light” (l. 4) puts an emphasis on the last word, giving power to the speaker’s quickly burning candle. In this way, the poem’s meaning is strengthened by its rhyming.

2. The phrase “burn the candle at both ends” used to be a reference to waste: candles were expensive and valuable — not to be used carelessly. It has since come to refer to a life lived frantically, in which one enjoys oneself late into the night only to begin again the next morning. How do both of these meanings work in this short poem? • The speaker’s awareness of her wastefulness is apparent: she knows the candle “will not last the night” (l. 2). • Her dismissal of thrift is explained by the second meaning of the proverb: she lives frantically, passionately, with more regard for aesthetics—“it gives a lovely light” (l. 4)—rather than for the consequences of running out of light before dawn.

3. Why do you think Edna St. Vincent Millay used “ah” to address her foes and “oh” to address her friends? • “Ah” can be read to imply a gentle reproach or as a word coming from someone who holds a position of greater authority and possesses more wisdom than his or her audience. • “Oh” reads as friendlier and can be interpreted as a frank expression of emotion.

4. Millay wrote the following poem, called “Second Fig”: Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand. What does it have in common with “First Fig”? Why do you think she called it “Second Fig”? What connections do you make with figs? Why do you think Millay used fig twice in her titles? • The poems are linked by their embrace of beauty and excitement in defiance of practicality. o “Second Fig” reads as a kind of sequel that amplifies the disregard for conventional prudence seen in “First Fig.” The consequences of building a “shining palace on the sand” (l. 2)—a home that will inevitably be destroyed by the natural forces of the wind or ocean—are greater than those attendant to wasting a candle’s light by letting it burn at both ends. o Here, the contrast between convention and artistic expression is more pronounced: the houses built “Safe upon the solid rock” are overtly “ugly” (l. 1) in their pragmatism. • The figs of the titles may refer to the expression “[not to] give a fig,” which makes them appropriate representatives for a speaker who wants to proclaim her refusal to care about convention and practicality. 571 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

• Figs, as small fruits, also seem well-chosen to title such small poems.

5. Critic Carl Van Doren wrote that since the ancient Greek poet Sappho few women had “written as outspokenly as Millay.” Why might this poem have been considered outspoken? Could “Second Fig,” found in question 4, also be considered outspoken? How do you think these poems hold up to that characterization today? • The poems might have been considered outspoken because: o The blatant snub of prudence and of the housewifely value of thrift in “First Fig” does seem outspoken—particularly for a woman writer of Millay’s time. Some students may note that the poem was published two years before women were given the right to vote. o “Second Fig” makes the defiance of “First Fig” even larger. This speaker will not care for the safety of her home (supposedly the first priority of a woman, who is ideally a wife and mother before all). She values artistic beauty, even to the exclusion of permanence or safety. • Students may argue that there is still a voice in today’s society that encourages women writers to be practical, reasonable, and rational at the expense of true invention. Millay’s poems, in their bright boldness, are an important reminder to any artist that convention may be challenged. • Students who don’t believe the poems hold up today may argue that women are no longer explicitly expected to uphold “feminine virtues” of home-making, and that the rebellion of the poems is therefore less relevant.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Marianne Moore, Poetry (pp. 1091-93)

1. What argument does Marianne Moore make about poetry in this poem? • Moore argues that although trying to care about poetry can be tedious—“I too, dislike it” (l. 1)—and although many things are more important than poetry—“there are things that are important / beyond all this fiddle” (ll. 1-2)—poetry still possesses great significance for those who value both “rawness” (l. 38) and what is “genuine” (l. 40) in culture. • Moore also argues for the importance of the search for meaning in ambiguous poetry, comparing it to more familiar examples of the ineffable in everything from nature to sports to statistics to criticism to business. Moore states summarily that “[a]ll these phenomena are important” (l. 25), implying poetry is no different than other areas of life we do not question. • She also dismisses what she views as bad poetry “dragged into prominence by half poets” (l. 27), implying that one’s dislike for poetry may be because one has been presented with poetry that possesses no “rawness” (l. 38) and is not “genuine” (l. 40).

2. Read “Poetry” grammatically. That is, read it in complete sentences without paying attention to line breaks. What changes? What stays the same? Why do you think Moore broke the lines as she did? • Without line breaks: o The poem sounds more conversational and, therefore, more intimate, as if Moore is confiding in the reader an idea that she is still thinking through. o Moore’s argument remains the same, and is even clearer, since line breaks draw attention away from her argument and toward the particular lines, phrases, and ending words of each line. 572 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

• Purpose of line breaks: o Sometimes the line breaks serve to replace punctuation marks, whereas the prose version would require punctuation. For example, the line break after “rise” (l. 7) replaces the comma that following the rules of grammar would require. o The most important function of Moore’s line breaks, however, are to draw attention the her language in a conventionally poetic manner: . Moore writes that “the base- / ball fan, the statistician—case after case / could be cited did / one wish it; nor it is valid” (ll. 20-23), suggesting with two successive rhymed couplets the inherent musicality of thought and argument, no matter how conversational it may seem. . In this sense, she both enacts the “fiddle” she “dislike[s]” (ll. 1-2) and also embraces the “rawness” (l. 38) she champions.

3. In lines 30–31, Moore paraphrases William Butler Yeats, who described the poet William Blake as a “literalist of the imagination.” The other places she uses quotations marks, such as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” (l. 32), are from her imagination. What do you think is the effect of this combination? How might it suit Moore’s purpose? • Quoting Yeats allows Moore to suggest that her opinion on poetry exists in conversation with the ongoing dialogue of literary history. • Adding her own quotation asserts even more strongly that her poetry is as valid or canonical as the more established reference points of Yeats and Blake. • Most importantly, by including quotes around her own line as well as another famous poet’s, Moore establishes a critical distance between her voice in this poem and that of all other poets, herself included. This critical distance enables Moore to speak as both critic and poet, as well as both outsider and insider of poetry—to readers who are skeptical of poetry, this tactic could make her critique and defense of poetry more credible.

4. “[T]he vastness of the particular” is how poet William Carlos Williams described Moore’s signature mode. “So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events,” he added. How does “Poetry” illustrate Williams’s observation? • Williams’s description of Moore’s poetics can be felt in her lists: o Moore describes the physiological effect of a reader’s exposure to “the genuine” (l. 5): . “Hands that can grasp, eyes / that can dilate, hair that can rise / if it must” (ll. 6-8). . By expressing the impact of such a vast notion as genuine poetry in terms of small bodily reactions, Moore connects the “great” to the “small.” o Moore describes the quest for meaning in a series of natural and social images that climaxes with “the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a / horse that feels a flea” (ll. 19-20). . By comparing the experience of that which is difficult to understand with the tiny image of a flea, which is itself in turn a metaphor for a critic’s twinge of discomfort, Moore again connects the vast to the physically miniscule. • Williams’s description of Moore’s poetics can also be found in her attention to language: o By breaking lines and isolating specific words and phrases to accentuate the poetry of ordinary speech, Moore suggests, too, that the great aims of poetry—

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meaning, truth, genuineness—are found in small choices and in the specific arrangement of unassuming language.

5. Moore was well known for being a baseball fan. How does her allusion to baseball in lines 20–21 help her develop her ideas about what poetry is and isn’t? • Moore’s goal is to show that poetry exists in the world independent of poems and that poems ought to incorporate the materials of the world. By alluding to baseball as a source of mysterious meaning as well as an example of “unintelligible” (l. 12) obscurity, Moore connects the inherent ineffability of poetry to a familiar and generally loved pastime. o Such a comparison parallels her other comparisons of poetry to animals, critics, and statistics, offering readers potentially skeptical of poetry’s relevance to the world a variety of contexts through which to understand its value.

6. This version of the poem was published in 1919. In 1967, Moore revised it, reducing the poem to just three lines: I, too, dislike it. Reading it, however with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine. How do the two versions “annotate, challenge, and criticize one another,” as poet Robert Pinsky suggests? • The revised version generally implies that poetry can be reduced to its ideas, and it specifically implies that everything Moore took forty lines to say in the original could have been reduced to this three-line poem. • In some ways, Moore’s revision implies her suspicion of the images and arguments developed in the original. That she cut off everything in the poem after “genuine” (l. 3), implies that the excess is, in Moore’s mind, arguments and rhetoric designed to sway the skeptical reader, instead of simply the distilled idea. • That the original poem focuses so much on “rawness” as a virtue of poetry, however, seems to critique the latter, presumably less raw version. One could argue that by being more heavily revised, Moore’s point is more obscure and difficult to ascertain in the latter version, and therefore the original is more “genuine.”

EXPLORING THE TEXT Claude McKay, If We Must Die (pp. 1093-95)

1. Identify the form of “If We Must Die.” Why do you think Claude McKay chose that form for his message? How does the rhyme scheme add a level of meaning to the poem? • The form of the poem is a Shakespearean sonnet. • McKay could have chosen the form for a variety of reasons: o The Shakespearean sonnet, known for its rousing “turn,” allows McKay to transition from a description of his kinsmen’s peril to the solution, which is to “meet the common foe!” (l. 9). o The sonnet also allows McKay to contextualize the potentially controversial notion of violent revolt in a socially accepted poetic form. In some ways, the strictures of the sonnet anchor the passion of the content. • Rhyme: o McKay’s strict adherence to the rhyme scheme gives rhetorical discipline to his passionate rant, bolstering his ethos as a clever poet (instead of a mere revolutionary fanatic). 574 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o The rhymes also make the poem easier to memorize, which might have been useful to those reciting it to lift their spirits. o The rhymes evoke the feeling of a song or battle cry, which make the political content of the poem feel more immediate and populist than a more modernist intellectual meditation might.

2. Who do you think is the speaker of “If We Must Die”? What is his persona? • McKay’s speaker is one of the persecuted in the conflict he describes; he attempts to rally his “kinsmen” against their “common foe” (l. 9). • However, the speaker is also separate from his comrades; his passionate argument implies that he is the sole voice of resistance among the persecuted. In this way, the speaker takes on the persona of motivator or inspirer.

3. What argument does McKay make by beginning “If We Must Die” with images of animals and starting the penultimate line with “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack” (l. 13)? • McKay’s animals are counterexamples; the speaker does not want himself or his people to be killed like animals or to go down without a fight. • McKay also compares his enemies to animals when he says, “While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs” (l. 3). • Thus, overall McKay believes his enemies have lost their humanity by being cruel, and he and his comrades stand to lose their humanity by not fighting back. o The last two lines of the poem indicate that if they overcome their foes, their foes will remain animals, but they will be men: “Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, / Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” (ll. 13-14).

4. McKay wrote this poem in response to a series of antiblack riots and lynchings in the summer of 1919. How do you think the poem was received by whites? By blacks? • The poem is designed to encourage and inspire resistance to oppression, even if such resistance is futile. • Black reception: o Some students might argue that the poem would have been received well by blacks, who probably would have found the message of resistance stirring and inspiring, especially in light of the lynchings and riots. o Other students might argue that the although the poem is likely to have created hope among blacks, some may have felt discouraged by the fate that is outlined in the poem: “dying, but fighting back!” (l. 14). • White reception: o Some students might argue that racist whites would have been incensed by the poem’s message of black resistance, citing the context of racial tension in which the poem was written. o Other students might argue that because the poem makes no mention of race, and because the sonnet form situates the poem firmly in the context of a European literary tradition, the poem’s inspiring message of resistance against all odds is actually relatable to all readers regardless of race or historical context. Such students might argue that whites could have appreciated the poem without ever tying it to the racial politics of the day.

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5. Do you think “If We Must Die” is a plea for martyrdom? How else might it be explained? • Some students might argue that the poem is a plea for martyrdom, citing the line “even the monsters we defy / Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!” (ll. 7-8), which suggests that by fighting and losing, one gains a moral high ground that even one’s persecutors are likely to recognize. • Other students might argue that McKay intended the poem to be merely an encouragement and inspiration in times of great tribulation. Such students might cite McKay’s animal metaphors and sonnet form as examples of his intention to make the poem relatable to more than just the struggle for racial equality. In such a case, the poem becomes a general rallying cry to fight when victory seems impossible, an act that may indeed secure victory after all.

6. Critic William Maxwell notes that though “If We Must Die” is considered the “inaugural address of the Harlem Renaissance,” McKay unveiled it first to the black employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad, where McKay was a waiter. Why do you think he chose them as his first audience? • It is likely that McKay unveiled his poem to give a voice to the feelings of his fellow workers, who were likely treated poorly by the Pennsylvania Railroad and who did not have the ability to speak up against the indignities they suffered without encountering grave consequences. • McKay might also have chosen to unveil the poem in a context of racial struggle in order to connect the general themes of resistance in his poem to the specific and immediate political crises of his day.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Theodore Dreiser, A Certain Oil Refinery (pp. 1095-99)

1. What do you think is Theodore Dreiser’s purpose in this piece? • Dreiser uses the oil refinery to present a “picture of that which is known as manufacture” (par. 2) juxtaposed against “the solemn life situation” (par. 4) of laborers who make industry possible.

2. Do you consider “A Certain Oil Refinery” a sketch or an exposé? Explain your answer, keeping Dreiser’s purpose in mind. • Although he claims that his intent is a sketch (“However, that vast problem, the ethics of employment, is not up for discussion in this instance: only the picture which this industry presents” [par. 11]), Dreiser’s vivid imagery and matter-of-fact delivery exposes the workers’ unappealing, unfulfilling, and unfortunate situation. His appeals to pathos create empathy for the workers’ plight: o “A casual visitor, if he is of a sensitive turn, shudders or turns away with a sense of depression haunting him” (par. 3). o “Looking at the homes and the saloons hereabout, it would seem to you as though any grade of intelligence ought to do better than this, as if an all-wise, directing intelligence, which we once assumed nature to possess, could not allow such homely, claptrap things to come into being. Yet here they are” (par. 4).

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o “You could not enter this yard, nor glance into one of these buildings, nor look at these men tramping by, without feeling that they were working in shadow and amid foul odors and gases, which decidedly are not conducive to either health or the highest order of intelligence” (par. 6). • Also, Dreiser ends his piece with rhetorical questions that express his desire for the situation to change: “Can it be changed? Will it ever be, permanently? Who is to say?” (par. 11). These rhetorical questions, while not an explicit call to action, challenge readers to consider the need for change and underscore the gravity of the situation.

3. Examine the way Dreiser uses contrasts in “A Certain Oil Refinery.” What is the effect of the contrasts? • Creativity versus drudgery: o While the landscape is visually stunning—“A painter could here find a thousand contrasts in black and gray and red and blue, which would give him ample labor for his pen and brush” (par. 3)—and “Artists ought to make pictures of them” (par. 5), it is the result of “a routine, a process, lacking from one year’s end to another any trace of anything creative” (par. 6). Though the sight of industry might inspire an artist, the factory laborers themselves must “work at some thing in which there is nothing creative” (par. 8). • Wealth versus poverty; business owners versus laborers: o “On the one hand, masters of great force and wealth, penurious to a degree, on the other the victims of this same penuriousness and indifference, dumbly accepting it…” (par. 11). o “For those at the top, the brilliancy of the mansions of Fifth Avenue, the gorgeousness of the resorts of Newport and Palm Beach, the delights of intelligence and freedom; for those beneath, the dark chamber, the hanging smoke, pallor, foul odors, wretched homes” (par. 11). • The contrasts highlight the limitations of the gloomy industrial world of the refinery, implicitly challenging readers to assess the dramatic gap between the haves and the have- nots and to see that the luxury of one comes at the expense of the other.

4. What do you make of the aesthetic considerations in this piece? Why do you think Dreiser suggests that artists, such as James McNeill Whistler, Everett Shinn, and Daniel Vierge, might have been inspired by the setting to create works of art? Do you think those suggestions are appropriate to the purpose of the piece? Explain why or why not. • As a naturalist, Dreiser found artistic inspiration in the world’s coarse realities. His claim that artists, painters, writers and musicians should find the world of the refinery inspiring follows suit: “They [the workers] are of the darker moods of nature, its meanest inspiration” (par. 5). • While Whistler was an “art for art’s sake” aesthete, Shinn and Vierge were realists and illustrators. Dreiser himself paints a vivid picture of the world of the refinery, especially in the first three paragraphs. By claiming that this world deserves artistic consideration, Dreiser also subtly suggests his compassion for the workers who inhabit it, showing that their humanity merits attention, from artists as well as those, presumably of the non- laboring class, who would consume the art. • Given that Dreiser confronts readers with the harsh realities of the oil refinery and its workers, one could question the appropriateness of the aesthetic considerations:

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o On the one hand, students may argue that Dreiser’s claims about the artists validate his own aesthetic interest in the world of the refinery and reinforce his desire to confront the realities of the workers’ lives. o On the other, students may believe that such suggestions distract readers from empathizing with the workers by objectifying them and implying that their condition is merely fodder for a leisurely pursuit.

5. What picture does Dreiser paint of the refinery workers? Where does he place them on the social scale? What suggestions or hope for improving their conditions does Dreiser offer? • Paragraphs 4, 8, and 10 depict the workers directly. They are “not very bright intellectually” and “not very attractive physically” and live in “tumbledown shacks” (par. 4). He depicts them as “trudging” to and from work, and they return to “somber, gray places which they call home” (par. 8). They are “grimy men” with little opportunity to cleanse themselves (par. 10). • Dreiser places them at the bottom of the social scale: “At the bottom nothing but darkness and thickness of wit, and dullness of feeling, let us say” (par. 10). • Dreiser implies several changes that would benefit the workers: When Dreiser states, “Doing anything more for them than paying them wages is not thought of” (par. 9), he notes their neglect and implies the need for change. o Higher wages: “Wages are not high” (par. 4). o Jobs that are not solely monotonous: “for it is a routine, a process, lacking from one year’s end to another any trace of anything creative” (par. 6). o Improved working conditions: . “But the interesting thing to me is that men work and toil here in a sickening atmosphere of blackness and shadow, of vile odors, of vile substances, of vile surroundings” (par. 6). . “The idea of furnishing a clean dining-room in which to eat or a place to hang coats has never occurred to any one” (par. 10). • But Dreiser seems to have little hope for change, given the rhetorical questions that end the piece: “Yet who shall say that this is not the foreordained order of life? Can it be changed? Will it ever be, permanently? Who is to say?” (par. 11).

6. Dreiser was what we might call a social Darwinist, someone who applied Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution to human behavior and interaction. What evidence do you see in this piece of Dreiser’s ideas about the “survival of the fittest”? • Dreiser makes several comments about the relationship between the worker’s lack of intelligence and their condition: o “Looking at the homes and the saloons hereabout, it would seem to you as though any grade of intelligence ought to do better than this, as if an all-wise, directing intelligence, which we once assumed nature to possess, could not allow such homely, claptrap things to come into being. And yet here they are” (par. 4). o “…the home life they return to is what it is, whether this be due to low intelligence or low wages, or both. The one complements the other, of course” (par. 9). • Dreiser calls the workers “victims of Mother Nature” and says their condition may be “the foreordained order of life” (par. 11).

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• His empathy for the workers and his hope for a change is tempered by the perspective that the less “fit” may suffer and that they may accept their condition: “Indubitably these men do not feel as keenly about these things as some of the more exalted intellectual types in life…” (par. 9).

EXPLORING THE TEXT E. E. Cummings, in Just- (pp. 1099-1100)

1. Characterize the speaker of “in Just-.” Try to describe him or her in as much detail as possible. • The song-like rhythm of the poem, along with the speaker’s references to children and their games, suggest a childlike speaker. • Made-up diction like “mud- / luscious” (ll. 2-3) and “puddle-wonderful” (l. 10) suggests an imaginative and inventive speaker. • The speaker’s descriptions of the “little / lame balloonman” (ll. 4-5) and later the “queer / old balloonman” (ll. 11-12) suggest the speaker’s naive or innocent point of view.

2. What games does this poem play with rhythm? Look especially at the spacing, or lack of spacing, between words. What is the effect of the rhythmic changes? • Like a child’s song or a child’s breathless storytelling, the rhythm speeds up, slows down, and erratically bounces along: o The extra spacing in line 5 slows the pace, emphasizing the casual nature of the balloonman’s whistling. o The lack of spacing in “eddieandbill” speeds up line 6 to emphasize the pace of the boys’ running. o The dactyls in line 15 reinforce the bouncy qualities of the games. • Overall, the poem’s dynamic rhythm deepens the characterization of both the speaker and the characters in the poem, and accentuates the impact of each image. • By bending and subverting the strict rhythmic conventions of more formal poetry, the poem generates a playful tone that evokes childhood innocence.

3. E. E. Cummings is known for his unconventional punctuation and typography. Identify the ways that the arrangement of the words functions as punctuation. • Cummings’s line breaks can function as commas—“little / lame balloonman”(ll. 3-4)— suggesting with technically incorrect punctuation the grammar of a child’s speech or thought. • Cummings’s line breaks also add emphasis, functioning much as exclamation points do— “it’s / spring” (ll. 8-9). • Cummings caesurae extends the pauses between words—“whistles far and wee” (ll. 12-13)—suggesting with atypical spacing the leaps in cognition made by a mind at play. o Unorthodox spacing also emphasizes individual words, which suggests multiple meanings. For example “wee” implies small size, the sound of a child at play, and the pun on “wide” implied by “far and…” (l. 5). • The last few stanzas of the poem, which cascade away from the left margin—“it’s / spring / and / / the // goat-footed // balloonMan whistles / far / and / wee” (ll. 16-24) mimic spatially and rhythmically “hop-scotch and jump-rope” (l. 15) introduced just before this formal shift.

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4. According to critic Albert C. Labriola, “in Just-“ is grouped with poems called “Chansons Innocentes,” an allusion to William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and its partner Songs of Experience. What aspects of the poem do you consider innocent? What parts are more about experience? • The playful rhythm, diction, tone, and imagery—balloons, marbles, children, dancing, spring—all contribute to the motif of innocence. • References, however, to the balloonman subtly insinuate a more experienced, adult dimension to the otherwise innocent world created by the poem: o The balloonman is described throughout the poem as “lame” (l. 4), “queer” (l. 10), “old” (l. 11), and “goat-footed” (l. 20), subtly alluding to injury, social alienation, age, and animality or monstrosity. o That the balloonman is called “balloonMan” (l. 21) near the end of the poem suggests experience and adulthood with capitalization. The new capitalization implies a new awareness on behalf of the children of the balloonman’s difference from the otherwise innocent world of the poem.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers (pp. 1100-02)

1. Who do you think is the “I” of the poem? • Hughes uses his personal voice as a metonym, or representation, for his race as a whole. The “I” becomes the embodiment of African American identity as it has manifested itself in different forms over the course of history.

2. What is the central metaphor of this poem? Are there secondary metaphors? Describe them. • Rivers are integral to the poem’s central metaphor, representing the richness and depth of African American history, culture, and experience: o These rivers are “ancient as the world and older than the / flow of human blood in human veins” (ll. 2-3). Here, the speaker is emphasizing their permanence; they both predate and persist in the face of Western civilization (and, by extension, the systems it has created to oppress African Americans). o The speaker’s soul “has grown deep like the rivers” (ll. 4 and 13)—his thoughts, beliefs, and experiences have roots in rich cultural traditions. He does not rely on contemporary paradigms (shaped by racism and perpetuated by white Americans) to frame his understanding of the world he lives in or nourish his spiritual growth. o Rivers also serve as maternal figures in the poem: . The Congo “lulled” the speaker “to sleep” (l. 6). . The speaker describes Mississippi river’s “muddy / bosom” (ll. 9-10).

3. What do three of the four rivers Hughes mentions have in common? Why is the fourth one different? What does this tell us about Hughes’s purpose in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”? • The Euphrates, Congo, and Nile are all from the old world of Africa and the Middle East. They would all have served a purpose—whether geographical, economic, or cultural—in African life before the institution of slavery in America.

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• The fourth river, the Mississippi, is American and is intimately related to the experience of slavery in America. It flows from the “free” northern states to New Orleans, in the Deep South and the site of slave auctions. • Hughes’s use of all four rivers suggests the range of historical forces that have formed African American identity and implies that the trauma it has endured has not broken its spirit but instead deepened its soul.

4. Characterize the diction of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” • The diction is, in places, straightforward and simple. Note, for example, the participles “known” (ll. 1-2, 11) and “grown” (ll. 4, 13), and the sequence of verbs—“bathed” (l. 5), “built” (l. 6), “looked” (l. 7), and “heard” (l. 8), which describe human activity that attributes fundamental agency to the poem’s speaker. • The combination of its almost matter-of-fact simplicity with the repetition of simple declarative sentences gives the poem a sense of somber dignity. This lends gravity to what the speaker is saying and thus conveys ethos. At the same time, the historical background of the brutality of slavery, evoked by the references to Abe Lincoln (l. 8) and New Orleans (l. 9), enables that somber dignity, in the face of history’s injustices, to evoke pathos and empathy in the reader. • Juxtaposed against this simple diction are words like “blood” (l. 3), “lulled” (l. 6), “singing” (l. 8), and “bosom” (l. 10), which are evocative of human emotional connection and thus intensify the pathos.

5. Abraham Lincoln is said to have formed his antislavery views after boat trips down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where he saw the slave trade firsthand. How does Hughes characterize that connection in lines 8-9? • Hughes’s use of the verb “singing” (l. 8) to characterize the Mississippi during Lincoln’s trip, followed by the adjective “golden” (l. 10), provides a stark contrast to the reality that awaits slaves who will be sold into a life of hard labor at the end of the voyage. • This diction anticipates Lincoln’s own awakening (and that of the nation under his leadership) to the gross injustice of slavery.

6. What argument does “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” make about the African American experience in the United States? How does the structure of the poem help Hughes develop them? • Argument: o Hughes makes the argument that African American culture is vibrant and that its identity has been formed through experiences that both predate slavery and have risen above and beyond slavery numerous times throughout history. . Hughes’s speaker cites a monumental cultural contribution made by slaves when he says that he “raised the pyramids” (l. 7). This line speaks to stoic persistence in the face of injustice and, in identifying with those laborers, underscores the humanity of the oppressed. o He challenges the idea that African American culture has been defined solely by the Western social and economic systems that have oppressed it for generations by emphasizing the range and depth of black historical experience—three of the four rivers he names in the poem span continents, and their “ancient” (ll. 2 and 12) histories predate Western civilization. • Structure: 581 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o The poem begins with the simple declarative statements that “I’ve known rivers” (l. 1) and “My soul has grown deep like rivers” (l. 4), then expands outward to list the wide range of those rivers that are inseparable from the African American identity (ll. 5-10), and finally circles back to repeat those opening statements in its conclusion (ll. 11-13). In the process, the poem both expands its central simile that compares the African American soul to those rivers and takes the reader through a journey that expands his or her own understanding of the depth and complexity of African American identity and its contributions to history. o Repetition of syntactical structures through the center of the poem also contributes to his argument: “I bathed …” (l. 5), “I built …” (l. 6), “I looked … (l. 7), “I heard … (l. 7), and “I’ve seen … (l. 8). These repetitions provide a sense of almost stoical persistence that has shaped African American identity, so that when the reader returns to the final repetition in the poem, “My soul has grown deep like rivers” (l. 13), now preceded by the adjectives “ancient” and “dusky” (l. 12), the line conveys the depth of wisdom unique to African American identity.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (pp. 1102-06)

1. Langston Hughes opens his essay by introducing a quote from a “promising … young Negro” poet who said that he wanted to “be a poet — not a Negro poet.” Why do you think Hughes begins his argument with this young man’s declaration? How does he carry that thread through the piece? Do you agree with Hughes’s take on the quote from the young poet? How might the quote be interpreted differently? • The use of the young poet’s declaration is an effective way for Hughes to begin his argument: o The poet’s declaration provides a clear example of the damaging efforts of African Americans to distance themselves from their own racial identity. o The declaration sounds at first like a reasonable demand from an artist who would rather be known by his art than his ethnic identity, but instead it illustrates how an unconscious rejection of one’s own race can lie beneath a seemingly reasonable statement. o Since Hughes is himself a poet and will go on in the essay to assert that his “own poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know” (par. 11), the use of this example at the beginning of the essay establishes the basis for a contrast between Hughes’s aesthetic values and those of poets and artists who try to run away from their own racial identity. • Hughes carries the thread of this example throughout his essay in both explicit and implicit ways: o He explicitly uses the “young poet” as a springboard for speculation on the poet’s family origins and values as “fairly typical…of the colored middle class” home in which the poet is never taught to see “the beauty of his own people” (par. 2). o Hughes explicitly returns to the young poet as he concludes his essay with the outright rejection of the values the poet has espoused when he says, “So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, ‘I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,’ as

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though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world” (par. 13), thus bringing his essay full circle. o Implicitly, Hughes’s discussion and examples throughout the essay evoke the young poet’s declaration in the beginning, either as a parallel mode of thought or as a contrasting example: . Direct parallels to or extensions of the young poet’s declaration are found in the “self-styled ‘high-class’ Negro” in whom “there will perhaps be more aping of things white” (par. 3) and the “prominent Negro clubwoman in Philadelphia” (par. 6) who “does not want a true picture of herself from anybody” (par. 12). . Hughes strings a long list of African American artists in various fields throughout the essay to provide a string of contrasting options the young poet has rejected: Clara Smith (par. 6), Charles Chestnutt and Paul Dunbar (par. 7), Jean Toomer (par. 9), Winold Reiss (par. 12), and Hughes himself (par. 11). • Interpretation of the quote: o One could interpret the young poet’s statement as an expression of his desire to elevate art above race and politics. o One could read it as a legitimate desire to be valued for his talent itself and to be free to explore themes and styles that are not restrained by the politics of race. However, given the social and historical realities of slavery and post-slavery racism in America, that yearning might be viewed at best as naive and at worst as what Hughes says it is: the declaration that the artist “would like to be white” (par. 1). o Furthermore, the case can be made, as Hughes does later, that the best art is “derived from [writing about] the life I know” (par. 11). One could look to white artists like Willa Cather and William Faulkner, whose strength comes from writing about the life they knew, and argue that African American art is strongest when it does the same.

2. What is the “mountain” that Hughes refers to in the title of his essay? How does he sustain that metaphor throughout the essay? • Hughes defines the “mountain” explicitly in the opening paragraph as “this urge within the [Negro] race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible” (par. 1). • He continues to describe the slopes and size of that mountain as he describes the ways in which African Americans have internalized the desire to be white by seeking “Nordic manners, Nordic face, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any), and an Episcopal heaven,” keeping the metaphor in focus by concluding that this is “A very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and his people” (par. 3). • After describing the energy and authenticity of “the low-down folks, the so-called common element” who “hold their own in the face of American standardization” (par. 4), he takes the reader back to his metaphor when he says, “But let us look again at the mountain” (par. 5). • The following paragraph introduces us to a stalwart pillar of the respectable African American community, the “prominent [upper-class] Negro clubwoman in Philadelphia” (par. 6) who embodies all the rejection of Negro identity he attributes to the young poet.

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• Hughes sustains the “mountain” metaphor in the next paragraph when he speaks of the lack of encouragement for writers like Chestnutt and Dunbar, whose works either go out of print or are viewed as the efforts of a “sideshow freak…or a clown” (par. 7). • At the conclusion of the essay, however, Hughes reverses his use of the metaphor to make its top a place from which, once climbed, true African American artists can “stand … free within ourselves” and “Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith … penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectuals” (par. 14).

3. What two types of African Americans does Hughes compare and contrast? Which one does he believe has more influence on the arts? Why. • Hughes distinguishes between African Americans who want to deny their racial identity in an effort to “be white” (par. 1) and those who embrace that identity. o He locates the first of these, the ones who would reject their ethnicity, primarily among “the Negro middle class … smug, contented, respectable folk, members of the Baptist church” (par. 2), and the “self-styled ‘high-class’ Negro” who “will perhaps be [even] more aping of things white” (par. 3). o The second category, those who unapologetically embrace their ethnicity, can be found among the “low-down folks, the so-called common element” who are the majority and whose “joy runs, bang! Into ecstasy” (par. 4). • The African American artist must choose between these two for both the support and the source of his or her art. o The first, the middle upper classes, comprise the mountain and thus have a negative influence on African American art. The difficulties that authors like Chestnutt have in keeping their works in print (par. 7) suggests that they also have an economic influence. o The second, though, the “low-down folks,” have the greatest spiritual and aesthetic influence on what Hughes would consider legitimate art and “serious” artists (par. 7). They provide the joy, the ecstasy, the spirituals, the jazz, and the individuality (par. 4) from which true African American artists, like Hughes, “derive” their art (par. 11).

4. What or who is the “clubwoman in Philadelphia” in paragraph 6 meant to represent? What purpose does she serve in Hughes’s argument? • The clubwoman is an important symbol of all that is held to be proper and respectable in the African American community that Hughes is criticizing. o She is wealthy and educated enough to support the arts, but the art she supports is white art, such as the Spanish singer of “Andalusian popular songs,” rather than a singer of “Negro folksongs” like Clara Smith (par. 6). o She is a member of an “upper-class Negro church,” but she prefers the “drab melodies in white folks’ hymnbooks” to the authentic African American tradition of spirituals (par. 6). o She emerges in paragraph 12 through the reiteration of the pronoun “she” as the epitome of self-denial who “does not want a true picture of herself” but instead “wants the arts to flatter her” as “white in soul” (par. 12). • As a prominent pillar of the African American community, she is a potent symbol of the mountain that stands in the way of the African American artist who wants to give an honest artistic representation of his or her own race, experience, and perspective.

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5. What part does Hughes suggest that jazz plays in the way he describes his art and the art of African Americans he admires? • References to jazz begin in paragraph 4, when Hughes refers to the “child” of the “common people.” The energy of that paragraph is elevated by a change in sentence structure that suggests the energies of the common people who express themselves in music, whether it be jazz, spirituals, or blues: o “… may the Lord be praised!” o “Their joy runs, bang! Into ecstasy.” o “Play awhile. Sing awhile. O, let’s dance!” • By equating jazz with the energy, emotions, and experience of the common people, Hughes leads the reader to look to both to “give to the world its truly great Negro artist” (par. 4). • Hughes’s statement in paragraph 11 that “in many [of his poems] I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz” and his repetition of the so-called respectable African American man’s question, “What makes you do so many jazz poems?” leads to the statement in paragraph 12 that “jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul.” • Equating jazz with that tom-tom beat allows Hughes to develop the idea throughout the conclusion of his essay that the pulse of African American culture is captured and expressed through its authentic art, and that such art is in turn vital to African American culture. His argument builds like a jazz rhythm in the final paragraph (14) from the “blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith” to “The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs” as it beats from the mountain top the artist has scaled.

6. What do you think? Should artists base their choice of genre and subject matter on their race? Is race an effective way to classify art? What do you think defines African American art and culture? Is it a matter of subject, or is it more a matter of style, as cultural critic Cornel West has suggested? • In a dominant culture, such as white European-based culture in America, art is often automatically and invisibly based on the ethnic traditions of the dominant culture. So even when the claim is made that the artist is not basing his or her choice of genre and subject matter on race, it is likely that he or she is actually doing so unconsciously. For an African American artist to find his or her own authentic voice requires some stepping outside of the dominant white culture in order to see his or her relationship to it. That may mean actively and explicitly embracing genre and subject matter that Hughes would define as “Negro,” or it may mean bringing an approach to “white” genres and subject matters that reflect the African American relationship to them. • Race is one of many ways to classify art, although it is not the only way. o Within African American music there are differences that range from spirituals to hip-hop; among dramatists differences that range from Lorraine Hansberry to August Wilson; and among novelists differences that range from Zora Neale Hurston to Toni Morrison to John Edgar Wideman. o These may suggest other legitimate classifications that overlap with similar ways of classifying non-African American art. Still, because of the uniqueness of the African American experience and the art forms that have grown out of it, race may be a more compelling way to define it than other classifications that might obscure that uniqueness.

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• While it would be a mistake to limit the subject matter of African American art and culture to slavery and racial discrimination, those are central formative features of it. o Several artistic forms that Hughes describes seem to have grown out of those experiences, particularly in the music of spirituals, blues, and jazz, as well as in poetry, with verse that echoes those musical forms. o Other forces have contributed to define it as well—among them, the preaching styles of African American churches and the dialects of rural and urban African American communities. o Hip-hop and spoken word poetry might be seen as more recent versions of the energy Hughes sees in the “joy,” “bang!” and “ecstasy” of the “common people” (par. 4), as well as the “blare” and “bellowing” he asks to “penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectuals” (par. 14). o Underlying many of those forms is a voice of self-assertion in the face of racial oppression. That would suggest that a defining feature of African American art is a freedom of emotional release, including a vibrant challenge to both the restrained forms of some “white” art and the forces that have restrained African American social, economic, and political freedom. In that respect, it would be hard to separate subject matter from style, as Cornel West seems to do.

EXPLORING THE TEXT William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure (pp. 1106-07)

1. What is the central image of the poem? What are the secondary images? How did William Carlos Williams create the imagery in this very short poem? • The central image is the “figure 5” (l. 3). • Secondary images are those that lead up to it—“rain” (l. 1) and “lights” (l. 2)—and those that follow it—“red / firetruck” (ll. 5-6), “gong clangs” (l. 10), “siren howls” (l. 11), “wheels rumbling” (l. 12), and the somewhat less precise “dark city” (l. 13). • The “figure 5” is set off in three ways to give it prominence. o Unlike the rest of the images, it is introduced directly by the active first person voice of the speaker: “I saw …” (l. 3). o It stands out as the only arabic numeral (“5”) in the poem. o It is followed by the adjective “gold,” converted into a prepositional phrase, ”in gold,” that stands alone in the next line (l. 4), elevating and intensifying the “figure 5” both by letting it stand alone at the end of its own line and by conferring a color that is associated with value, beauty, and even a possible sense of religious iconography on it. • The secondary images flow out of the “figure 5,” as part of a sparse narrative that takes its meaning from the sudden dramatic appearance of “5” itself. They provide a sense of motion that both imbues the figure with energy and describes its emergence out of and progression through the “dark city” (l. 13).

2. Do you consider “The Great Figure” literal or figurative—or a little bit of both? Explain your answer by describing which aspects of the poem are figurative and which are literal. • “The Great Figure” as a title transforms the literal into the figurative even before the reader encounters the literal topic.

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o The use of the word “Great” leads the reader to project a heightened, potentially mythic significance onto the yet unspecified subject matter from the very beginning. o The word “Figure” announces in advance that the yet to be specified “5” should be viewed as a “figure” in the poetic sense of one thing standing for another. The lack of specificity in the title, combined with the adjective “great,” prompts anticipatory associations with a heroic or godlike being. o The poem proceeds to attribute other figurative qualities to the scene as a whole. . The fire truck is personified as “tense” (l. 8). . The siren “howls” like a living creature (l. 11). • Despite its figurative elements, the poem often provides clear observation of literal fact. o The setting is described in clear literal terms: “Among the rain / and lights” (ll. 1-2). o Except for the adjective “tense,” the “red / firetruck / moving” describes a straightforward literal action (ll. 5-7), as does the clanging “gong” (l. 10). o The poem concludes with a fairly literal description of “wheels rumbling / through the dark city” (ll. 12-13), although the action of “rumbling” could be read with the figurative associations carried forward from “tense” (l. 8) and “howls” (l. 11). • The figurative transformations in the poem are used sparingly so as not to overwhelm the event in and of itself. The “figure 5” on the “red firetruck” is in its own right presented as a mythic phenomenon that might be diminished if its literal power and presence were to be wrapped in too much poetic metaphor. In this way, the poem is a mixture of the literal and figurative.

3. What expectations does the poem’s title, “The Great Figure,” create? In what ways are those expectations met in the poem? In what way are they defied? • The image of a “Great Figure” leads the reader to anticipate someone or something of heroic, mythic, or even godlike stature. • The dramatic suddenness and energy with which the “figure 5” appears out of the “rain / and lights” (ll. 1-3) reinforces that sense of the larger-than-life and mythic. • Setting off the descriptive prepositional phrase “in gold” (l. 4) continues to elevate this sudden vision with additional associations: value, beauty, nobility, and/or religious icons. • The personification of the “red / firetruck” as “tense” (ll. 5-8) and the “siren” as “howling” (ll. 10-11) also help to satisfy the expectations raised in the title. • Limiting traditional poetic features in the poem, such as metaphor, to just a few instances serves to refocus the reader on the literal reality of the event following the expectations raised by the title. This enables literal fact itself to take on value in its own right, thus defying the expectations raised by the title. In place of a more traditionally poetic transformation of a concrete image into something other, the mythic quality of reality itself is magnified by the economy of the poem.

4. Compare this poem to Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (p. 1074). Both examine “found” moments. How are the poems the same? How are they different? • Similarities: o Both poems focus on concrete images found in everyday life.

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. Pound looks at something as simple as “faces in the crowd” (l. 1) in a setting that is normally thought of as functional, impersonal, and anonymous: an urban train station. . Williams looks at a fire engine, also an object normally thought of as merely functional, in a setting that also suggests the impersonal and the anonymous: a city street. o Both poems use an economy of language that accentuates the images themselves. . Pound compresses his poem into two essential images: “faces” against the backdrop of a crowd (l. 1) and “petals” against the backdrop of a “wet, black bough” (l. 2). . Williams has a wider range of images, but he also compresses the poem into several specific images while letting one emerge as dominant against its backdrop: “the figure 5” (l. 3). o Both poems use those images to find the extraordinary within the ordinary and use the subjective perception of the poet to transform everyday things into something marvelous. • Differences: o Pound’s poem contains no narrative structure. The images themselves capture a moment of perception expressed in a form similar to a haiku. Williams’s poem, by contrast, has a faint trace of narrative structure embodied in the use of the first person (“I saw” [l. 3]) and the description of the “firetruck / moving” (ll. 6- 7) with its “wheels rumbling / through the dark city” (ll. 12-13). o Pound’s poem uses metaphor more overtly in its equation of “faces” to “petals,” while Williams’s poem relies less on overt metaphor and more on personification of the firetruck as “tense” (l. 8) and its siren as howling (l. 11). Williams’s title, “The Great Figure,” also implies a personification of the “figure 5” (l. 3). o Pound’s description of the “petals on a wet, black bough” (l. 2) transforms an impersonal urban moment into something natural and organic, experienced in a quietly private way, while Williams’s description of the “figure 5,” although also experienced in a personal, subjective way, elevates its subject matter to a dramatic and monumental level.

5. According to Williams’s autobiography, he was on his way to visit the painter Marsden Hartley when he “heard a great clatter of bells and the roar of a fire engine passing the end of the street down Ninth Avenue. [He] turned just in time to see a golden figure 5 on a red background flash by. The impression was so sudden and forceful that [he] took a piece of paper out of [his] pocket and wrote a short poem about it.” Do you see any evidence of a connection in style between Williams and Hartley, whose work is on page 1082? Consider also the work by Charles Demuth featured in the following TalkBack (p. 1107). • In all three works, strong central images dominate to create an emotional impact that takes precedence. o In Williams’s poem, narrative and expository elements are all but eliminated in favor of a pared down succession of visual and aural images. The “composition” of the work is dominated by the primary image of the “figure 5 / in gold” (ll. 3-4). o Similarly, Hartley’s painting is dominated by the image of an iron cross, surrounded by a circle that is in turn encased in a triangle, located where a 588 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

human heart might be if the painting is viewed as forming the impressionistic shape of a human torso. Other secondary images of pennants and flags complete the composition. Thus, like Williams, Hartley lets strong images convey his emotional and political meaning rather than using the kind of representational portraiture or landscape that would provide the equivalent of narrative or exposition in visual form. o Demuth’s painting builds stylistically on Williams’s poem, again allowing the gold figure 5 to take prominence at the center of his composition, with secondary images conveying impressionistic meanings. Here again, representation and narrative, or its equivalent in visual form, have given way to a style grounded in the modernist emphasis on the emotional immediacy of the image itself.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (pp. 1107-09)

1. What aspects of I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold make it a portrait? What aspects make it abstract? • The painting uses abstract forms (such as the block of red in the center and the tilted slabs of bluish gray) in addition to realistic representation (the figure 5) to communicate the emotional experience of the event. • Portrait: o The literal precision of the figure 5 and the way it fills the whole space of the painting create the feeling that the viewer is looking at a portrait. o This sense of a face staring directly out from the canvas is enhanced by the placement of two round lights as if they are eyes staring out from that face. o If the viewer is familiar with the William Carlos Williams poem on which the painting is based, the personification used in that poem will further contribute to the sense of portraiture in the painting. • Abstract: o The fragmentation of the image into angular lines and blocks of color breaks down the literal image of the fire truck and surrounding city street, yield an abstract expression of energy and movement.

2. Charles Demuth was part of a group of artists called the precisionists, who were interested in the precision of industrialization and the modernization of the American landscape. How is this painting both a landscape and a meditation on industrialization? • The painting presents a dynamic, somewhat off-kilter scene of a city avenue. Grayish blue slabs of buildings with black empty windows and the bright white light of street lamps convey a partly representational, partly abstract urban landscape. • The scene lacks any images of organic growth, animal life, or human forms to soften the harsh angular glare of its sharp lines. The environment it presents is composed of stone and steel, and it is seemingly lit by artificial means. • As a meditation on industrialism, it seems to focus on the paradoxical combination of vibrant energy and stark sterility in this newly emergent modern urban world.

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3. What is the effect of the geometric shapes? How does Demuth use them to re-create the motion of the fire engine from William Carlos Williams’s poem, “The Great Figure” (p. 1106)? • The receding curves of the bright gold figure “5,” framed by fragments of a larger circle, create the sense of motion as it expands rapidly toward the viewer, emerging from the background and threatening to explode out of the frame. • The angled lines and slabs of the avenue’s buildings and pavement create a sense of dynamism that also suggests motion. Their tilt toward the top right of the canvas is a compositional means of intensifying that sense of dynamic motion. • The layered blocks of red that represent the firetruck also extend the viewer’s vision into the distance to suggest movement forward toward the viewer.

4. I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold is considered a precursor to pop art, a twentieth-century genre that challenged traditions of fine art by using imagery from popular culture—such as is seen in Andy Warhol’s painting of Campbell soup cans. How does Demuth’s painting challenge the traditions of fine art? • The abstract, geometrical shapes used to portray the urban landscape might challenge stylistic traditions of realism and representation in that carried over from nineteenth- century art. • The focus on a simple number (5) that is then magnified and given the importance usually given to a human form in portraiture or to a natural form in landscape painting redefines the parameters for what constitutes appropriate subject matter of art in a way that might challenge traditional expectations. • The almost garish exuberance of the primary colors (red and yellow against a bluish gray background) may challenge traditional ideas about natural color composition.

TALKBACK: MAKING CONNECTIONS

1. In what ways is Demuth’s I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (p. 1108) an illustration of Williams’s “The Great Figure”? In what ways does it depart from the poem? • Ways in which Demuth’s painting illustrates Williams’s poem : o It gives visual prominence to the image that dominates the poem, the figure “5,” making it the first image that captures the eye as it jumps from the background. o Its strong color imagery (gold and red against the bluish gray background of the avenue) repeats the color imagery of Williams’s poem: “”figure 5 / in gold” (ll. 3-4), “red / firetruck” (ll. 5-6), and “Among the rain / and lights” (ll. 1-2). o It creates the sense of motion Williams described in his poem by layering its dominant images (the gold 5 and the rectangular red firetruck) and by converting the background into radiating angular lines so that they appear to explode out of the canvas and toward the viewer. • Ways in which the painting departs from the poem: o It replaces sound imagery (“gong clangs” (l. 10), “siren howls” (l. 11), and “wheels rumbling,” (l. 12)) with vibrant, or “loud” visual imagery and color. The lower half of each figure 5 uses an image slightly suggestive of a musical clef, perhaps to suggest sound subtly. o It removes the first-person speaker from the poem (“I saw” [l. 3]) and instead immerses the viewer in the immediacy of the event.

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o It replaces the faint thread of narrative that moves through a temporal sequence of images in the poem with the simultaneity of images organized around concentric circles rather than in a linear progression.

2. What stylistic choices did Demuth make to illustrate Williams’s poem? Consider Demuth’s use of color, shape, line, perspective, and light. • Color: o Demuth chooses the strong primary colors of red and yellow against a bluish gray background to capture the dramatic energy of the event. • Shape: o He uses a combination of geometric shapes to give both unity and energy to his illustration: . The circular shape of the figure “5” is accentuated both by its repetition and because it is framed by a larger circle. . The shape of the fire truck is suggested by the rectangular blocks of red that give weight to the center of the composition. • Line: o He uses angular lines that radiate outward from the center to create a sense of explosive energy coming off the canvas, similar to the experience of a firetruck charging past a person through the street. • Perspective: o The receding images of the figure “5,” the receding repetition of balanced double white circles on either side of the receding “5’s,” and the outward radiation of the angular lines create perspective in the painting that extends the viewer’s eye into its depths, suggesting either something receding into the distance or something emerging into the foreground. • Light: o The two globe-like circles of white at the top corners of the painting and the additional two globes of white a third of the way down from the top stand out as strong points of light. They could suggest both the headlights of a fire engine and, in the lower pair, human eyes. o The use of lighter and darker shades of gold for segments of the figure “5” create a sense of light radiating outward from a central source, giving both a generally circular composition to the painting as a whole and suggesting an outward explosion of energy.

3. Ekphrasis is a term used to describe a piece of writing that comments on another art form— for example, a poem about a piece of artwork or a novel about a film. In the case of these two works, the writing came first. How precisely does the painting comment on the poem? • The painting faithfully captures the sudden dramatic appearance of the firetruck and the energy that inspired the poem. • It is faithful to the way the human eye focuses on a prominent element of a thing or event and lets it stand for the larger whole of which it is a part, as in synecdoche and metonymy. In both the poem and the painting, the “figure 5” serves that function by attracting the viewer’s attention and then becoming representative of something larger: the firetruck and the emotional experience associated with its sudden appearance. • The painting comments further, though, by stripping away the self-reference of the poem’s speaker and the narrative structure that leads up to and follows the image of the

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“figure 5” in Williams’s poem. Instead, it seems to magnify the figure even more prominently, perhaps as a synecdoche for the energy and dynamism of the city as a whole.

4. Why do you think Demuth painted the number 5 three times? What part of Williams’s poem does that particular element illustrate? • The repetition of the figure 5, each within the other in increasingly diminishing sizes, creates perspective as well as a sense of motion. It allows the figure to either explode outward or recede into the distance, depending on one’s interpretation. • The repeated circularity of the figure’s curve also contributes to the compositional unity of the painting. • The primacy given to the figure 5 in Demuth’s painting gives emphasis to the first four lines of Williams’s poem: the moment of apprehension with all of its sudden dramatic energy. The rest of the narrative description in the poem, including the description of the fire engine and the sounds it emits, are either subordinated to the figure 5 or eliminated completely.

5. According to Peter Halter in The Revolution in the Visual Arts and the Poetry of William Carlos Williams, when Demuth sent I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold to the photographer and promoter of modern art Alfred Stieglitz, Demuth said, “I hope you like it. It looks almost American.” What do you think he meant? Why do you think it was important to Demuth that his work look American? • The subject matter of the painting, and of the poem, is a commonplace thing—a fire engine charging down a city street—that is representative of the everyday experience of the common man in America’s largest city at the time. • The modernist style of the painting, like the modernist style of the poem, suggests a dynamic American aesthetic that was challenging the fine art traditions of Europe. Its composition suggests an explosion of energy within the everyday urban experience, and its elevation of simple accessible forms (in this case, a number) to iconic levels is revolutionary. • As a modernist American painter interested in capturing “the modernization and industrialization of the American landscape” (see question 2 in Exploring the Text for Demuth), Demuth might have wanted his painting to reflect the clear lines of the machines he associated with that dynamic new urban American landscape. It may have conveyed for him a democratic energy that, through industry and art, could challenge the hierarchical structure of society and art in Europe.

EXPLORING THE TEXT William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say (pp. 1109-11)

1. How would you describe the tone of “This Is Just to Say?” • There is a wide variety of acceptable responses, but students should give examples from the poem to back up their interpretations of the tone, which is ambiguous and open to interpretation—this is underscored by the lack of punctuation throughout. • Depending on the reader’s perspective, the tone could be considered flippant, insincere, apologetic, loving, regretful, intimate, or playful. o Flippant or playful: . The poem’s brevity lends to the tone of flippancy. 592 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

. The brevity of each individual line also lends a playful tone, as no line contains more than three words. This keeps the reader’s eyes moving quickly and gives the poem a playful momentum that would not exist with longer lines or in prose. . The word “just” in the title adds some playfulness to the poem. o Insincere: . The speaker opens with a confession (ll. 1-2) and asks for forgiveness (l. 9), but immediately follows with a self-centered excuse (ll. 10-12). . The great pleasure the speaker admits to having experienced by eating the plums is in contrast with the supposed apology, thus lending the poem an insincere tone. This pleasure is highlighted by the word “so” before “sweet” (l. 11) and the word “so” before “cold” (l. 12). The speaker could have simply described the plums as “sweet and cold” rather than adding that extra emphasis. . The speaker could have chosen not to mention the pleasure at all, or not to apologize at all. It is the blending of the two that gives the poem a tone of insincerity. o Apologetic or regretful: . The speaker apologizes overtly and asks the reader to “forgive” him (l. 9). . The speaker also expresses an understanding of the specific reason why the choice to eat the plums was a wrong one (ll. 5-8). o Loving or intimate: . The poem could be interpreted as a note left on the kitchen counter, which makes it a casual but intimate gesture between two people sharing a household and a life together. . The word “probably” (l. 6) shows that the speaker has intimate knowledge of the audience, which enables the speaker to guess the audience’s intentions.

2. This poem is notable for its complete lack of punctuation. What effect does that have on the tone of “This Is Just to Say”? • Because the speaker is not following formal grammatical conventions, his lack of punctuation gives the poem a casual tone. • At the same time, this lack of punctuation leaves the tone open for interpretation. This ambiguity allows the reader to imagine where punctuation—such as a period or an exclamation mark—should occur.

3. “This Is Just to Say” is considered a “found” poem. It takes the form of a note left on a kitchen table. Its very informal nature leaves the theme wide open. What do you think is its message? • Temptation could be considered an important theme in the poem: o The message could be a reminder to the reader that giving in to temptation leads to regret and apology. o The feeling of temptation is highlighted in the third stanza by the speaker’s description of the plums as “delicious” (l. 2), “sweet” (l. 3), and “cold” (l. 4).

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o The fact that this vivid description immediately follows the speaker’s apology (“Forgive me” [l. 9]) makes the description sound like an excuse, which underscores the temptation involved. o The temptation may be interpreted to have a sexual undertone. • The poem could be an exploration of forgiveness between a husband and wife: o It could be argued that the speaker does not explain why he ate the plums because he knows that his wife will understand. This reflects the closeness and intimacy of a longstanding partnership. o The description of the plums as “delicious” (l. 2), “sweet” (l. 3), and “cold” (l. 4) may also apply to the loving nature of the relationship between the speaker and his audience (his wife). • The poem could also be viewed as an interpretation of or allusion to the Garden of Eden narrative: o The plums represent the forbidden fruit (l. 2), the icebox represents the tree of knowledge (l. 4), and the speaker could be Eve confessing her sin to Adam, or Adam confessing his sin to God. • Another interpretation is that the poem is about nothing or lacks a deeper meaning. This makes it a self-referential commentary on poetry itself, particularly found poetry.

4. What effect does the poem’s typography (the way it looks on the page) have? • The typography firmly plants the piece in the genre of poetry. In other words, although the piece is comprised entirely of complete sentences that could be punctuated and appear as prose in paragraph form, the line breaks and stanza breaks make it “look” like a poem. • The line and stanza breaks serve as punctuation, which is otherwise absent, and bring rhythm to the poetry, which has no regular meter or rhyme scheme.

5. William Carlos Williams is considered an imagist, a poet who writes in free verse and believes first and foremost in the simple clarity of an image. How does this poem fit that definition? How does it compare to Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (p. 1074)? • How Williams’s poem fits the definition: o The language is clear, crisp, and simple—most of the words have one or two syllables. o A single image—that of the plums—is isolated, unpacked, and described in vivid language. • Similarities: o The economy of language. o The clear, precise imagery emphasizes the imagists’ focus on the vivid clarity of an image: . Pound’s fourteen-word, two-line, single-stanza poem portrays only two images—that of the “faces in the crowd” (l. 1) and that of the petals (l. 2). . Williams’s poem centers around a single image of plums. o Both poems are written in free verse and represent an experimentation with nontraditional verse form. o Both invite reader participation: . The reader makes the connection between the two images being portrayed in Pound’s poem. . The reader assigns the speaker’s emotions in Williams’s poem.

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• Differences: o Rhyme scheme: . Williams’s poem has no rhyme scheme. . Pound creates assonance with “crowd” (l. 1) and “bough” (l. 2). o Clarity of imagery: . While Williams’s poem is an example of the imagist principle of isolating an image and describing it clearly and vividly, in Pound’s poem that principle is even more crystalline: • The stark contrast between the environment of an underground train station mentioned in the title and the image of an outdoor flowering tree in the body of the poem brings to life the emotional experience the speaker had in seeing these faces. It encapsulates a moment in time. o Tone: . The tone of Williams’s poem is somewhat ambiguous (see question 1 for further discussion). . Tone is more definite in Pound’s poem, which could be considered melancholy, ponderous, ominous, dark, reflective, morbid, or full of longing. • The word “apparition” (l. 1) is key to the tone, as are the feeling of recent rain indicated by the “wet, black bough” (l. 2), and the mortality of the petals that have fallen from their flowers (l. 2). o The speaker’s relationship to the audience: . The speaker in Pound’s poem is not overtly addressing a specific audience. . Williams’s found poem reads as a confession to a specific individual and is therefore more deeply personal. The word “you” (l. 6) places the reader in the role of voyeur peeking into a private moment between speaker and audience.

6. Love notes between husbands and wives are often the subject or even the form of poetry. Could “This Is Just to Say” be considered a love note? Explain your answer. • Yes: o The word “you” (l. 6) reveals the poem to be a note from one person to another and lends it an intimate feel. o The fact that the speaker is moved to say “Forgive me” (l. 9), or to write a note at all, indicates that the speaker cares about the audience’s feelings. o The word “probably” (l. 6) indicates that the speaker knows the audience well enough to presume the audience’s intentions. o The choice of words, “the icebox” (l. 4) as opposed to “your icebox,” implies that the speaker and audience cohabitate. o The theme of temptation and the words “delicious” (l. 10) and “sweet” (l. 11) can be interpreted as giving the poem a sexual undertone. • No: o Although the speaker is confessing, eating the audience’s breakfast is not a loving act.

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o The fact that the apology is delayed until the final stanza and immediately followed by an excuse indicates a lack of true love and contrition. o Further, it could be interpreted as having an undertone of self-congratulation or passive aggression. If the speaker was contrite, he would likely not point out that the plums were “delicious” (l. 10). o The speaker could be interpreted as an adult child writing to a parent.

7. Williams’s wife, Florence, wrote the following reply to “This Is Just to Say”:

Reply

(crumped on her desk)

Dear Bill: I’ve made a couple of sandwiches for you. In the ice-box you’ll find blue-berries—a cup of grapefruit a glass of cold coffee.

On the stove is the tea-pot with enough tea leaves for you to make tea if you prefer—Just light the gas— boil the water and put it in the tea

Plenty of bread in the bread-box and butter and eggs— I didn’t know just what to make for you. Several people called up about office hours—

See you later. Love. Floss

Please switch off the telephone.

Compare and contrast Florence’s note with “This Is Just to Say.” Can you make a case that Florence’s note is also a poem? Explain your answer. • Similarities: o Imagism is present in both pieces. o Both are of the genre of found poetry. o Both overtly address their audiences. o Intertextuality: . “This Is Just to Say” and Florence’s note can be considered linked poems that each stand alone but are mutually enriched by being read in succession. . The reader fills in the space and makes the connections between the two poems, becoming a participant in both, which creates a new narrative.

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. The vivid closing lines in “This Is Just to Say,” which describe the plums as “so sweet / and so cold” (ll. 11-12), also describe the spousal relationship between the speakers of the two poems. • Differences: o Punctuation: . Florence’s note is correctly punctuated, while “This Is Just to Say” conspicuously lacks punctuation. o Tone: . The tone of “This Is Just to Say” is somewhat ambiguous (see question 1 for further discussion);though the tone of Florence’s note is more distinct, it could be interpreted in multiple ways: • Frustrated: o The image of Florence crumpling up the note in her hands (from the title) evokes the idea of frustration or irritation. o Florence’s listing of numerous examples of food that Bill could have eaten in lieu of her plums also conveys her irritation. • Loving: o The last line, “Please switch off the telephone,” could be interpreted as loving and supportive, as she is encouraging him to guard his time and attention. Presumably, his time is precious and limited, given that “several people / called up” (ll. 14-15), as well as the fact that Williams himself was a busy physician who wrote creatively in his spare time. • Uncertain: o In the first stanza, Florence details the food and drink she has prepared for Bill. In the second and third stanzas, she details items Bill could choose if he would prefer them over what she prepared for him. She admits, “I didn’t know just what to / make for you” (ll. 13-14). o This tone of uncertainty is furthered by the fact that Florence has presumably decided not to leave the note for Bill after all, but has crumpled it up. • Condescending: o Florence provides step-by-step instructions for the simple task of preparing tea (ll. 9-10). o Content: . While “This Is Just to Say” depicts the speaker wronging the audience, Florence’s note details several things that she did to serve Bill. • Whether Florence’s note can also be read as a poem: o The piece reads as a note written by Florence and found by Williams, and there is an important distinction between Florence’s crumpled note and Williams’s published poem titled, “Reply (Crumpled on Her Desk).” The question is whether Florence’s note was a poem when it was found, or Williams transformed it into a poem.

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o The case can be made that Florence, recognizing “This Is Just to Say” as a poem, cleverly decided to pen her reply in the same genre, and even title it. o The dual authorship of “Reply (Crumped on Her Desk),” along with the form it takes (that of a note), clearly fit the genre of found poetry. o The piece’s typography could indicate whether it is a poem: . The typography gives the piece the distinct look of a poem. . The rhythm created by the line and stanza breaks gives the piece the feel of a poem, but whether those breaks are the work of Florence or William Carlos Williams is unclear.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Kenneth Koch, Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams (pp. 1111-12)

1. What is the tone of “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams”? • Playful, absurd, humorous, satirical: o The speaker’s actions are so outrageous that together they lend a tone of absurdity and playfulness. o The speaker is extremely witty. • Malicious, diabolical, aggressive: o After “[laughing] at the hollyhocks together” (l. 4), the speaker confesses that he “sprayed them with lye” (l. 5). o “I broke your leg” (l. 10). o “I wanted you here in the wards” shows premeditation (l. 12). • Sarcastic: o He says, “Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing” (l. 6) after describing matter-of-factly the actions he took that would cause grief for the person he is addressing. o He says “I was clumsy” (l. 10) after breaking the leg of the person he is addressing. • Flippant, mocking: o As an excuse for destroying the home of the person he is addressing, the speaker claims that he “had nothing to do” (l. 2)

2. The expression “variations on a theme” comes from music, where it means that material is repeated in an altered form. Why do you think Kenneth Koch called his parody of the William Carlos Williams poem a variation on a theme? • Each stanza of Koch’s poem re-creates the structure of the content of Williams’s poem: a confession, followed by an apology, and then finally an excuse. • Key words and phrases from Williams’s poem are repeated in altered contexts in Koch’s poem. o “Forgive me” is in both Koch’s work (ll. 6, 11) and Williams’s (l. 9). o The descriptions of the beams in the Koch poem as “so inviting” (l. 3) and the wind as “so juicy and cold” ( l. 9) harken back to Williams’s description of the plums as “so sweet / and so cold” (ll. 11-12). The fact that “juicy” is an unusual way to describe the wind also highlights the reference to plums, which can certainly be described as “juicy.”

3. Do you consider this poem a love note? Explain your reasons. 598 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

• Students who consider this poem a love note may argue: o Though the speaker’s love is deranged and obsessive, it could still be considered love. The speaker seeks to control his object of affection by robbing her of her livelihood—namely her house (stanza 1) and her money (stanza 3). o References to romantic encounters are included in the poem, such as when they “[Laugh] at the hollyhocks together” (l. 4) and go dancing (l. 10). o The speaker is willing to go to the extreme of breaking her leg in order to have her by his side (stanza 4). o The speaker shows intimate knowledge of the audience—he knows her future plans to have a “house…to live in next summer” (l. 1), and he has access to her possessions, such as her money (l. 7). This could be indicative of a close romantic relationship, however tumultuous. o The woman he is addressing seems to be at the center of the speaker’s universe. • Students who don’t consider this poem a love note may argue: o The numerous harmful acts portrayed in the poem preclude this from being a love note. o The speaker’s obsession cannot be considered true love.

4. Williams was a doctor. How does knowing that change the meaning of the last line of Koch’s poem? • It places Williams in the role of speaker of Koch’s poem, “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams.” • It also assumes Williams is the speaker in his own poem, “This Is Just to Say.” • It directs the satire not just at the imagist movement or at the poem, “This Is Just to Say,” but at Williams himself.

5. What is the effect of the undertone of violence in this poem? • The violence takes the minor offense of the stolen plums portrayed in Williams’s poem to extremes in order to poke fun at it. • The more overt violence in Koch’s poem calls attention to the covert, latent violence and passive aggression portrayed in Williams’s poem. • By comparing the minor theft portrayed in Williams’s poem with the greater violence portrayed in “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams,” Koch is pointing out the latent or underlying violence and aggression involved in simple, everyday human interactions. • The undertone of violence implies that the speaker is a man and the overt audience is a woman, as men are typically more violent than, and toward, women.

TALKBACK: MAKING CONNECTIONS

1. The Koch poem (p. 1111) is punctuated quite conventionally, while Williams’s poem (p. 1109) has no punctuation at all. Compare and contrast the effects of the punctuation choices. How do those choices affect each poem’s tone? • The effects of the punctuation choices: o Koch: . Koch uses both punctuation and strategic line breaks to create rhythm.

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. The punctuation in Koch’s poem provides more information to the reader about the speaker’s emotional state, making the tone better defined. o Williams: . The lack of punctuation in Williams’s poem allows the line breaks to do much of the rhythmic work. • How those choices affect each poem’s tone: o Koch: . The conventional punctuation gives Koch’s poem a more formal tone. . The exclamation mark that ends the poem is a great example of how punctuation can add clarity and emphasis. o Williams: . The absence of punctuation gives the poem a more casual tone. . At the same time, it furthers the tonal ambiguity by leaving it up to the reader to decide if a sentence should end in a period or an exclamation mark.

2. Compare the speakers of the two poems. As you compare, consider whether the speakers are men or women. What other qualities are revealed about them? • Gender of the speaker: o Koch: . The undertone of violence, particularly the allusion to domestic violence in the breaking of the leg (l. 10), is stereotypically more masculine. . The fact that the speaker is a doctor (l. 12) makes him more likely to be male because the overwhelming majority of doctors in 1962, when the poem was written, were male. • Other qualities revealed about the speaker: o Koch: . The speaker is unreliable. The excuse, “I was clumsy” (l. 11), implies that the breaking of the leg was an accident. This directly contradicts the next line, “I wanted you here in the wards” (l. 12), which implies that the injury was intentional. Clearly, neither the reader nor the injured party can trust the speaker. . The speaker is malicious. Each stanza portrays a different cruel act, and the intentional infliction of pain on the person the speaker is addressing gives the poem has a malicious tone. o Williams: . The speaker is the kind of person who gives into temptation, as indicated by the theft of the plums. . The speaker has a guilty conscience, as evidenced by the fact that he wrote a note of apology.

3. The Williams poem’s title is also its first line—“This is just to say” being a way we sometimes start notes or e-mails—while the Koch poem forgoes that nicety. How does that difference affect the meaning of the two poems? • The title of Williams’s poem sets it up as a written note and places it in the genre of found poetry. This is lacking in Koch’s poem; it is not an example of found poetry.

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• While Williams’s poem brings to mind a person (the speaker) by himself, leaving a note for the absent audience to find later, Koch’s poem brings to mind a person speaking aloud in the presence of the injured party.

4. Do you think the Koch poem is more than just a parody? How do you think the speaker feels about Williams? • Whether Koch’s poem is more than just a parody: o It can also be viewed as a tribute to Williams. Students may argue that Koch is not disparaging Williams but honoring him by using his poem as a springboard for further creativity. o Koch could be poking fun at the perceived pretentiousness of “This Is Just to Say,” of Williams, of the imagist movement, or of poetry in general. This makes “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams” self-referential, as Koch is therefore also poking fun at himself. o The Koch quote, “I don’t intend for my poetry to be mainly funny or satiric, but it seems to me that high spirits and sort of a comic view are part of being serious” (p. 1111) indicates that there is a deeper meaning beyond the playfulness of the poem. • How the speaker feels about Williams: o Some students may argue that Koch had respect for Williams’s influence on poetry, and that through the act of parodying “This Is Just to Say,” Koch is celebrating Williams. o Students will be tempted to say that the speaker of Koch’s poem and Koch himself dislike Williams and are mocking him. The argument can be made that while Kenneth Koch himself respects Williams, the speaker of Koch’s poem does not.

5. Compose a couple of your own versions of “This Is Just to Say.” Make one a straightforward “love note”; make another a parody. • Straightforward love note: o Responses will vary widely, but should reflect some imagist principles, such as simple, crisp, clear imagery; economy of language; free verse or nontraditional verse form; or the found poetry genre. • Parody: o Responses will vary widely, but should include a reinterpretation of some aspect of “This Is Just to Say.” • It is notable that “This Is Just to Say” spoofs have become a phenomenon on Twitter in recent years—students may want to start there for some inspiration.

EXPLORING THE TEXT T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (pp. 1113-17)

1. How would you describe the mood or atmosphere of “The Hollow Men”? • The title of the poem immediately establishes a grim and pessimistic mood; “hollow” suggests a ghostly absence of humanity or consciousness. • The first couplet, “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men” (ll. 1-2) adds to the pessimistic tone by suggesting the men are lacking in some important aspect of humanity with “hollow” and simultaneously suggesting they are filled with something artificial with “stuffed.” 601 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

• Eliot’s grim diction continues throughout the first section to characterize the men, describing their “dried voices” (l. 5) as “quiet and meaningless” (ll. 6-7). • His grim diction continues throughout the poem as well, establishing an overtly moribund atmosphere: o “broken” (l. 23). o “solemn” (l. 27). o “In death’s dream kingdom” (l. 30). o “This is the dead land” (l. 39). o “In this valley of dying stars” (l. 54). o “This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms” (l. 56).

2. What image patterns do you notice in “The Hollow Men”? Consider how often each one is repeated. How do the images—and their repetition—add to the deeper meaning of the poem? • Some of the many image patterns: o Dryness, deserts (ll. 5, 8, 10, 39-40, 68-70): . This image pattern insinuates an absence of life and vigor, and it emphasizes the austerity of a world for whom life and meaning are all but extinguished. o Shadows, darkness, twilight (ll. 11, 28, 38, 44, 54, 65, 76, 82, 90): . The overall pattern of encroaching darkness evokes hopelessness and asserts the preeminent power of death and decay to overtake the world. o Eyes, sight, blindness (ll. 13-14, 19-23, 52-55, 61-62): . The motif of fading vision complements the motif of fading light, evoking a failure of the body from within (in addition to the idea of failing light in the world). o Scarecrows, straw (the Guy Fawkes epigraph; ll. 1-5, 17-18, 31-36): . The comparison of men to stuffed or masked figures who are not actually men suggests the illusory nature of consciousness and the emptiness of human experience. o Whispers, voices (ll. 6-7, 25-26, 59): . The motif of whispers and voices contributes to the creepy, ghostly mood by offering the close intimacy of hushed communication without the comforting presence of a physical body. • Overall, Eliot’s image patterns work together to insist that culture is dead or dying and that people lack the hope and the capability to change or rejuvenate themselves. o This idea is made plain by the periodic attempts of the speaker to begin the prayer “For Thine is the Kingdom” (l. 77), which eventually becomes “For Thine is / Life is / For Thine is the” (ll. 92-94). o By allowing imagery patterns that show decay, degradation, and emptiness to develop throughout the poem, but denying the hopeful, religious language of prayer the chance to even finish its phrase, Eliot implies the inability of religion specifically, or hope generally, to counteract the flood of meaninglessness drowning the world.

3. “The Hollow Men” has two epigraphs. How do you think these are connected to the rest of the poem? • Conrad:

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o The Conrad allusion reinforces the idea of a hopeless quest for meaning (as was Kurtz’s and Marlowe’s quest in Heart of Darkness). o It also contextualizes Eliot’s poem as a text in conversation with previous canonical works that dealt with the emptiness of human morality and existence. • Guy Fawkes: o The Guy Fawkes epigraph suggests the notion of a failed attempt to change a government, which echoes the motif of hopelessness present in Eliot’s poem. o That Guy Fawkes celebrations involves masks and the burning of straw effigies imbues the scarecrow imagery throughout Eliot’s poem with the notion of political failure and violent devastation.

4. “The Hollow Men” borrows from several genres. What “sampling” can you pick out? In what ways does this technique help T. S. Eliot develop his ideas? • Section V juxtaposes a child’s nursery rhyme with the Anglican Lord’s Prayer, which both critiques religion by equating it to a nursery rhyme and suggests hope in a religious salvation is remote and futile. • Eliot also infuses his poem with imagery drawn from gothic narratives—“rats’ feet over broken glass / In our dry cellar” (ll. 9-10), “the wind’s singing / More distant and more solemn / Than a fading star.” (ll. 26-29)—which suggests that it is a fallen romanticism or a lost idealism that plagues humanity. o Eliot’s use of gothic imagery also contributes to the pleasure of the poem, since its images are imaginative, mythical, and broadly recognizable.

5. How does the last section of “The Hollow Men” differ from the first four sections? Why do you think “prickly pear” (a kind of cactus) replaces “mulberry bush” in his rewording of the nursery rhyme? • The last section relies more on direct statements, albeit of abstract ideas, than imagery; it broadens the themes which have previously only been alluded to in imagery into an overt thesis: o Eliot writes that “Between the conception / And the creation / Between the emotion / And the response / Falls the Shadow” (ll. 78-82), asserting that meaninglessness invades all attempts at meaning making, as if sifting into meaning “between” the cracks. • Substituting “prickly pear” for “mulberry bush” (ll. 68-70) in the nursery rhyme develops the desert motif, evoking lifelessness and extinction. o Eliot’s rewording of the nursery rhyme mocks the false comfort of the original nursery rhyme as well as the pointless circularity of human endeavors—that is, at the end of the world one would be singing the same tune one sung in the nursery, suggesting the pointlessness of human effort to grow or change.

6. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot writes, “To proceed to a more intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past: he can neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one preferred period. The first course is inadmissible, the second is an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and highly desirable supplement.” How does “The Hollow Men” illustrate this idea? • By collaging a multitude of reference points—Conrad, English political history, Gothic imagery, nursery rhyme, Christianity—Eliot demonstrates that he is neither treating the

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past as a uniform “lump” nor privileging one formative poetic voice or period over another. His blend of historical and literary references shows appreciation for the diversity of the past and reflects a broad spectrum of influences.

7. Some critics consider “The Hollow Men” a response to World War I, while others see it as a reflection of Eliot’s failing marriage and personal religious crisis. What are your thoughts about those two possibilities? Could the poem be both? Explain your answer. • Students who believe the poem is a response to World War I may argue: o The poem’s depiction of a world without moral or cultural value is a reaction to the incalculable cost of the nationalism and industrialization that caused such a devastating war. o Eliot’s use of first-person plural asserts a socio-historical perspective in many of the poem’s sections. o That the poem heavily references the European literary canon in its diagnosis of modern meaninglessness also suggests Eliot’s view is that the cultural bulwarks of Western civilization have crumbled. • Students who believe the poem is a reflection of Eliot’s marital crisis may argue: o Many lines evoke personal, relational loss, such as “Waking alone” (l. 47) and “We grope together / And avoid speech” (ll. 58-59). • Students who believe the poem is about Eliot’s religious crisis might argue: o Many lines in the poem echo a feeling of isolation from God, like “No nearer / Not that final meeting / In the twilight kingdom” (ll. 36-38) and “For thine is the / This is how the world ends” (ll. 94-95). • Perceptive students might argue that Eliot is reflecting on both social and personal crises in the poem, and that its ultimate potential subjects are not mutually exclusive. Such students might further argue that Eliot’s predilection for striking but ambiguous images and reference points suggests that he wants readers to see a variety of possible meanings in his work.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me (pp. 1117-1120)

1. What is the function of the first paragraph of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in setting the tone of the essay? What is its effect on you, the reader? • The short, terse paragraph is laced with irony. • It immediately challenges the assumption that to be colored is an inferior state that requires apology. • It humorously exposes common myths used by African Americans themselves to minimize their African-ness, such as the claim that some part of their ancestry is Native American. • It introduces the reader to the self-affirming confident voice of the narrator in a way that is both surprising and engaging.

2. What arguments does Zora Neale Hurston counter in this essay? • In the opening paragraph, she challenges the assumption that to be “colored” is cause for regret or apology.

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• In paragraphs 3 and 4, she challenges the argument that she as a “colored” girl should be inconspicuous and shy away from presenting her “joyful tendencies” to the white people who passed by her front porch. • In paragraph 6, she challenges the argument that being “colored” is tragic and a cause for “great sorrow.” • In paragraph 7, she challenges the argument that as an African American, her identity and potential are bound to or restricted by the historical burden of slavery. • In paragraph 9 (“I do not always feel colored”) and paragraphs 14, 15, and 17, she challenges the argument that one is defined exclusively by one’s race: o “At certain times I have no race. I am me” (par. 14). o “I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries” (par. 15). o “But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company of other bags, white, red, and yellow” (par. 17).

3. What is the effect of Hurston’s metaphor describing the end of slavery in paragraph 7? • Hurston’s first metaphor of a patient recovering from an operation has the effect of placing the trauma of slavery in the past. She even conveys a dismissive tone in her statement, “the patient is doing well, thank you.” • Hurston then uses the metaphor of a race to describe the movement from slavery to the present and on toward the future. The effect of her emphasis on looking toward to the completion of the race rather than “halt in the stretch to look behind and weep” is to create a sense of purposeful engagement in the positive things of life. It communicates the narrator’s own sense of excitement at stepping out onto the “stage” of life with “a world to be won and nothing to be lost.”

4. How would you characterize the language Hurston uses in paragraph 11 to describe her reaction to the music in the New World Cabaret? • The language moves from what one might call the “circumlocutions” of polite conversation to a more energized, descriptive, and emotive language in response to the music and then back again to the polite language Hurston associates with “the veneer we call civilization.” • The polite, civilized language that brackets the plunge into something deeper and more “primitive” is represented at the start of the paragraph with the description, “We enter chattering about any little nothing that we have in common,” which then is epitomized in the contained response of her companion: “‘Good music they have here,’ he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips” (par. 12). • The emotive language that cuts beneath the “veneer of civilization” builds in intensity. o Hurston uses animalistic language to describe the “orchestra [that] grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through the jungle beyond.” o She evokes human savagery and war and/or hunting when describing her response, presented through the description of throwing a spear, which she identifies with the African word “assegai,” a linguistic break with the language of “civilized” English. o Ultimately, the language gives expression to short savage utterances of some primal desire lying beneath the veneer of civilization that the music has evoked:

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“My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something—give pain, give death to what, I do not know.”

5. Hurston divides her essay into four sections. What is the purpose of these divisions? • The four-part division of the essay allows Hurston to demonstrate four possible ways to experience race in the United States. Each type of experience roughly corresponds with a stage of Hurston’s maturation. o The first part describes the transition from a stage of pre-racial consciousness to racial self-awareness. Existence in an exclusively African American community gave Hurston no basis for comparing herself to non-African Americans beyond the fact that “white people…rode through town and never lived there” (par.4). o The second part enables Hurston to affirm the uniqueness of her individual identity apart from historical circumstances (slavery) while finding strength in her awareness of her race. . She concludes that because of slavery, “No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory” (par. 7). . She evokes the guilt and insecurity of her “white neighbor” afflicted with the “brown specter” and “dark ghost” that condemns that neighbor to worrying about “keeping what [he] has” (par. 8). . She recalls times when, as at Barnard College, she was a “dark rock” among “the thousand white persons.” She concludes that “When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again” (par. 10). o The third part takes her further into the exploration of her African origins through her interaction with jazz at the New World Cabaret. Here the distinction between what she feels as her “primitive” origins and the “veneer we call civilization” is accentuated by the contrast between her response to the music and that of her white companion. . “I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeoww!” (par. 11). . Her companion comments on the “good music” while “sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly” and “drumming the table with his fingertips” (pars. 11-12). o The fourth part asserts an identity beyond race: “At certain times I have no race. I am me” (par. 14). This return to her original sense of self as an individual apart from racial awareness is no longer the naiveté of childhood. Interactions with people of other races and honest self-evaluation have made possible a sophisticated awareness of her membership in a larger human community: “A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place—who knows?” (par. 17).

6. Who do you think is Hurston’s audience for this essay? • Without knowing anything about the publication in which this essay appeared—The World Tomorrow was a pacifist socialist publication with a largely white Christian readership—one can determine that Hurston’s audience is composed of sympathetic northerners, most of whom were likely white. o Hurston uses New York City references: “When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library, for instance” (par. 14). 606 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o At a time when segregation was prevalent in the North and the South, an audience willing to read anything by a black woman was likely to be receptive to Hurston’s message. o Part of her purpose seems to be to educate her audience about the complexity of African American identity: a lesson other African Americans wouldn’t need. • At the same time, Hurston’s essay would have a special poignancy for African American readers who were struggling to balance their group racial identity and history with their identities as individuals. For that audience, Hurston’s message would be a freeing affirmation of both the vitality of their group identity as African Americans (see the outburst of African energy in paragraph 11) and their value and aspirations as individual human beings.

7. The term colored was considered somewhat pejorative even during Hurston’s time. Why does Hurston use it in her title and throughout the essay? Note other words and descriptions of skin color. What might Hurston be suggesting by the range of terms she uses? • By using the term colored in the title as a modifier to the pronoun “me” Hurston sets up a distinction between the totality of the narrator’s identity and the dimension of that identity that is perceived as and limited to being “colored.” The distinction would not receive the same emphasis were the title “How It Feels to Be Colored.” This distinction becomes the dominant theme developed through the essay. • The significance of colored shifts as Hurston uses it in different contexts throughout the essay. o In the opening paragraph, Hurston uses irony to reflect comically on the pejorative stigma that usually accompanied the term colored: “I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances.…” o In the second paragraph, she jolts the reader with the odd statement, “I remember the very day that I became colored.” This pulls the term out of its normal meaning as a description of a fixed element of racial identity and instead turns it into a description of a subjective act of perception and, especially, of self-perception. o The contrast between colored and white over the next two paragraphs (3 and 4) emphasizes both the innocence of racial consciousness in the young girl and the superficial distinctions between the two races as they are perceived by her. The white people “rode through town and never lived there,” while “the colored people gave no dimes” (par. 4). o In paragraph 5, Hurston both announces how her individual identity as “Zora” gave way to the generic racial identity of “a little colored girl,” a sudden intrusion of racial self-consciousness. However, the reference to the “mirror” implies a new act of self-perception rooted in an awareness of her racial difference, and her description of herself as “fast brown” reveals perhaps another movement toward self-acceptance and individuality, since it involves actual self-examination and a specificity of description that counters the more reductive and generic term colored. o This self-affirmation and assertion of an identity apart from the reductive term colored is developed further in the next two paragraphs, where she states that she is “not tragically colored” (par. 6) and continues to define her relationship to slavery not as a burden but as a strength (par. 7).

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o The affirmation of the strength that lies within her colored identity continues in the next several paragraphs: first when she evokes the “brown specter” and “dark ghost” that disturb her “white neighbor” with the threat they pose to his or her “keeping what one has” (par. 8) and then when she describes herself as a “dark rock surged upon” by “the thousand white persons” at Barnard, and through it all remaining herself (par. 10). o The term colored gives way to even more vibrant colors in her description of her response to the jazz music at the New World Cabaret in paragraphs 11 through 13. Here the energy of the music takes her beneath the bland veneer of “what we call civilization” to the primitive core of her racial identity as her “face is painted red and yellow and [her] body is painted blue” (par. 11). The music releases “great blobs of purple and red emotion” that accentuate the contrast with her companion who is “pale with his whiteness,” whereas she finds the rich depths of being “so colored” (par. 13). o In the last part of her essay, Hurston uses the metaphor of bags filled with “a jumble of small things priceless and worthless” to return to the idea that on a universal scale, color doesn’t determine one’s fundamental identity. While hers is “a brown bag,” other “bags, white, red, and yellow” are filled with similar items. The reduction of separate racial groups to variously colored bags filled by “the Great Stuffer of Bags” (par.17) returns the essay to the kind of ironic voice with which it opened, thus causing the reader to reconsider the use of reductive terms like colored in the first place.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (pp. 1121-25)

1. Describe the setting of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” • Generally, the story takes place “late” at night in a “café” (par. 1). o That specific setting details are withheld until later in the story suggest that Hemingway intends, at first, to comment on the universal human condition, rather than one specific place or culture. • Near the end of the story, we learn that “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” takes place in a Spanish-speaking country during wartime or just before wartime: o The brief appearance of the “soldier” in the street (par. 9) suggests that the country is either currently at war or preparing for war, which adds an element of political and mortal tension to the story’s atmosphere. o Hemingway weaves Spanish words and phrases like “hombre” (par. 73) and “nada” (par. 76) into the older waiter’s thoughts, suggesting that Spanish is the native language of these characters.

2. Describe the story’s six characters. What do they have in common? What differentiates them? • The “old man” is “deaf” (par. 1) and depressed, although not alone: o The waiters’ dialogue reveals that he is an alcoholic and recently tried to commit suicide (par. 2), which implies that he is depressed, but known well enough in his community to be the subject of gossip, and that he must have family and friends that care about his actions. • The “soldier” (par. 9) is young and proud: 608 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o That the “the street light shone” on the “brass number” on his uniform’s collar (par. 9) evokes the sense that he is optimistic and proud of his occupation. • The “girl” (par. 9) is naive and deferential to the soldier: o The fact that she wears “no head covering” (par. 9) and is thus inappropriately dressed for the cold weather implies her naiveté, and the way that she hurries “beside” (par. 9) the soldier implies that she is, in some ways, subservient to him. • The “younger waiter” (par. 13) is selfish and impatient: o He is so desperate to return home to his wife (par. 36) that he insists on closing the café before the “usual hour” (par. 60), implying that he prioritizes his own pleasure above the needs of others. • The “older waiter” is sensitive and lonely: o He displays empathy for the old man after observing that he is “clean” and dignified (par. 43). That he specifies the type of “well lighted” and “clean” place in which he finds comfort implies that he is sensitive to others and his surroundings. That he goes home to “his room” (par. 85) at the end of the story implies that he has no wife or family, perhaps not by choice. • The “barman” is a brusque night owl: o The presence of the “coffee machine” (par. 76) in the bar implies that he stays up late, and his reluctance to engage in conversation with the older waiter (par. 83) implies that he prefers the solitude of the late night. • Similarities: o That the nameless characters are referred to only by their occupations or societal roles suggests they are archetypes and, at the same time, introduces a sense of anguish regarding the idea that people’s personalities are often constricted or smothered by such labels—even after the older waiter has left his place of employment, he is still referred to as “the waiter” (par. 80). • Differences: o A different motivation defines each character: . The old man has alcohol, the younger waiter has his wife, the older waiter has the café, the soldier has his country, the girl has the soldier, and the barman has the solitude of the late night. o The amount of attention they receive, proportionally, in the narrative: . The soldier is only mentioned in one paragraph and then disappears from the story, whereas the older waiter is present from the beginning to the end—suggesting that the older waiter is essentially the protagonist. His perspective carries the story and is meant to resonate with the reader at the story’s end.

3. Look carefully at the story’s mentions of light and dark. What patterns emerge? How do those patterns develop the deeper meanings of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”? • Overall patterns of light and dark strengthen motifs of life and loss throughout the story, and provide more insight into each character: o Because the story takes place at night, all lights mentioned are “electric” (par. 1), or artificial, which suggests that “light”—or, metaphorically, happiness—is a temporary façade that masks the truly “dark” nature of the world. • The “light” symbolizes life and the “dark” symbolizes death:

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o While “the old man sat in the shadow” (par. 1), “the street light shone on the brass number on [the soldier’s] collar” (par. 9). . Here, the “light” that illuminates the soldier in a manner akin to a spotlight symbolizes the significance and importance of the soldier’s life and mission. By contrast, the old man sits in the “shadow,” implying that because the light no longer illuminates him, he is no longer in the prime of his life and blends into the background because he is closer to death. • Darkness is associated with fear and loneliness, and light counteracts those forces: o The older waiter says he is one of “those who need a light for the night” (par. 70), and he attempts to stave off darkness altogether, even at night, suggesting that for him, darkness represents fear and loneliness and “light” provides relief from those troubles.

4. Why do you think the older waiter inserts the word “nada” (nothing, in Spanish) in the Lord’s Prayer and at the beginning of the Hail Mary? What words has he replaced with “nada”? Read the two prayers in their original form and compare them to the versions here. • The older waiter replaces the following words from these prayers with “nada” or “nothing” (par. 76): o Lord’s Prayer: “Father,” “heaven,” “hallowed,” “come,” “done,” “Earth,” “heaven,” “day,” “bread,” “forgive,” “trespasses,” “forgive,” “trespass,” “lead,” “temptation,” “evil.” o Hail Mary: “Mary,” “grace,” “the Lord.” • Because “nada” translates to “nothing” in English, so that he is literally praying to nothing (par. 76), which suggests that he is disillusioned with religion and its promises of spiritual salvation. • By equating “heaven” and “evil” and replacing them both with “nothing” (par. 76), he suggests complete neutrality that transcends the traditional moral dichotomy of good versus evil. • Hemingway could be suggesting, through the older waiter’s disposition, that the problems and stresses of war, or of aging, strip the faithful of their faith.

5. What do you think the old man’s deafness represents in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place?” • Some students might argue that the old man’s deafness represents isolation from society, citing the way that it prevents him from having a conversation with the waiters. o Such students might point out that though the old man cannot hear, he can speak in order to order more “brandy” (par. 15), and suggest that his speech functions as a relic from a past in which he was younger and healthier. • Other students may go further and suggest that his deafness dually represents isolation from society and protection against the negative aspects of society, citing the passage where the deaf man (fortunately) does not hear the younger waiter say, cruelly, “‘You should have killed yourself last week’” (par. 19).

6. Compare and contrast the two waiters based on the dialogue between them. How are their needs different? What does each one represent? • The waiters’ distinct needs reflect differences between their home lives—that the younger waiter has a family makes him more callous, and that the older waiter is alone makes him show sympathy toward others in the café, especially the old man:

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o The younger waiter says of the old man, “He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me,” to which the older waiter replies, “He had a wife once too” (pars. 36-37). o As they are closing the shutters, the younger waiter says, “I want to go home to bed,” to which the older waiter, in order to avoid going home to his lonely room, replies, “what is an hour?” (pars. 53-54). o The older waiter says, pitifully, “I have never had confidence and I am not young,” to which the younger waiter snaps, “Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up” (pars. 68-69).

7. This story takes place in a café in Europe. In what ways are its themes American? In what ways might you consider them European? • American themes: o The notion of good and evil being associated with light and dark, respectively, resonates with American moral and religious traditions. o The preoccupation with authenticity versus artificiality is a motif that resonates with American culture: . That the older water chases an electric “light” and prefers a “clean, well-lighted café” to “bars and bodegas” (par. 85) suggests a desire for material comfort, even if it is artificially derived. That his philosophical viewpoint carries the story to its end, however, suggests that his disillusionment itself is the ultimate source of authenticity in the story. • European themes: o Students with a basic knowledge of European culture may mention the significance of cafés and suggest that this story explores the lives of people associated with one such common gathering place. o Students with some knowledge of European literature may mention the aftermath of World War I and suggest that the anguish produced by the horrors of trench warfare is similar to the hopelessness that some of Hemingway’s characters display. . Such students may have read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the memoir of a German veteran who fought in World War I, which ends with the protagonist declaring his disillusionment with patriotism. o Students with a more in-depth knowledge of European literature and philosophy might bring up existentialism: . Although this story predates some of the most famous existentialist writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre—who coined the term after World War II—Hemingway touches on existentialist themes like atheism, suicide, and the idea that humans are defined by their actions in the world rather than the presumed quality of their soul.

8. James Joyce is said to have considered “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” one of the best short stories ever written. He said that Ernest Hemingway “reduced the veil between literature and life.” Do you agree with Joyce? Explain your answer. • Some students might agree with Joyce, arguing that Hemingway’s simple language and minimalist description broadens the story’s (and literature’s) audience without sacrificing rich symbolism and universal themes.

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o Such students will likely understand that Joyce’s remark about the “veil” refers to the idea that literature should attempt to capture life and that language is simultaneously a tool and a barrier (or a see-through “veil”) that always prevents literature from mimicking life exactly. • Other students might disagree with Joyce, arguing that their own lives are very different from the lives described by Hemingway: o Such students may find the shortage of female characters alienating. o Students who see no difference between technology and the authentic might view the novelty with which Hemingway treats technology as unrelatable.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Yiyun Li, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (pp. 1125-27)

1. How does the first paragraph set up expectations for the rest of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”? Does the essay fulfill those expectations or defy them? Explain your answer. • The first paragraph establishes the notion that, against all odds, life in America might really be better than life in China: o Li contrasts the “faded” Chinese moon with the “bigger and brighter” American moon in Iowa (par. 1). This also sets up the motif that more light, which Li associates with America, is better than less. • Some students might argue that the essay completely fulfills those expectations, citing the way that Li notices that Americans always encourage her to “have fun” (par. 2), which is a positive difference from the way life was in China. Such students might see their own sunny values gratifyingly reflected in those Li endorses in the beginning of her essay. • More perceptive students pick up on Li’s critique of American values, building an argument that an unhealthy or unnatural oversaturation of America’s “bigger and brighter” (par. 1)or “astonishing” (par. 2) qualities has a negative impact.

2. What meaning does “American lighting” (par. 2) have for Yiyun Li? • To Li, American lighting is constant, on “from morning til night” (par. 2), which would have been considered wasteful in China where people are “conscious of saving every penny” (par. 2). • Li mentions that even in China, she preferred “a stealthy, unnoticeable passing in the dark” (par. 2), which suggests that American lighting represents to her the more unnecessary or invasive aspects of American values, such as American excess and the relentless social pressure to have fun.

3. What do the phrases Li remembers from her “four-cassette course in American English” (par. 3) have in common with the very American expectation to have fun that she encounters everywhere? Why do you think that connection is significant to her? • The idiomatic phrases are imperatives masked in playful language: o “Be there or be square” (par. 3) is a rhyming phrase that, on the surface, seems fun and silly but actually commands one’s presence and punctuality as if they were requirements of social status. o “Stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off” (par. 3) evokes an image of slapstick violence but ultimately commands organization and control.

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o “Have fun” (par. 4), at face-value, seems like a light-hearted phrase of well- wishers; however, it is also a directive for how one’s feelings should manifest in response to a given situation. • For Li, the phrases epitomize the notion of an American surface that is “bigger and brighter” but masks something overbearing and constricting. She describes her confusion about how to answer the question of whether she had fun by stating that “it was not memories of fun that would stay with me but what I saw” (par. 4).

4. Do you think Li answers the question she asks in paragraph 3: “How does one live in such a well-lighted country?” Explain your answer. • Some students might argue that Li does answer the question, albeit ironically, by showing that the “fun” in America masks a heavily controlled society: o Such students might cite the suspicious shopper, the security guard, and the police as examples of how Americans live: as drug users who break rules for recreation, as game players who are reckless, or as enforcers of rules who are vigilant. . In her summation of a Walmart incident, Li refers to the “harsh, hard- edged light” of the store, developing the motif of light as an invasive part of a security-focused cultural landscape. • Other students might argue that Li does not answer the question, perhaps because she doesn’t understand the “fun” Americans do have. Such students might quibble with Li’s assumption that if fun masks a desire to control, it must not be real fun. Such students might also argue that Li largely supports sports fandom, movie-going, musicianship, and other forms of recreation familiar to many Americans as forms of fun. • Other students may feel that Li purposely leaves that question open-ended, citing the fact that although she describes her observations of other Americans living their lives, she does not answer how she herself has learned to live.

5. Edward Hopper is known for his paintings of landscapes and people that highlight their isolation. Nighthawks, his painting of a coffee shop late at night, in which four people seem to be in their own worlds, is especially famous. How does Li’s allusion to Hopper help her comment on what she finds strange about life in America? • Li contrasts the people in Hopper’s paintings, who are lonely but at least possess the privacy of silence, with Americans, who are just as lonely but must continually inquire about and perform their happiness for others. • By comparing contemporary American life to the imagery of a well-known American painter, Li bolsters the credibility of her perspective as a critic of American culture. Her American reference point preemptively undermines the potential criticism that Li’s point of view is unfair because she doesn’t see Americans in their own context.

TALKBACK: MAKING CONNECTIONS

1. Why do you think Yiyun Li titled her essay “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”? • Some students might argue that Li alludes to Hemingway’s short story because both pieces describe characters that take refuge from darkness and loneliness in well-lit places. Such students may draw a connection between the loneliness of the Americans in Li’s essay and of Hemingway’s old man and older waiter.

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• More perceptive students may argue that Li’s Hemingway reference is intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Such students may go further and describe how the essay’s point is that American culture is a place where light is overwhelming, oversaturated, invasive, and demanding. These students might also argue that by appropriating the iconic American writer’s title, Li is announcing her intentions to reexamine an American paradigm.

2. Both Ernest Hemingway’s story (p. 1121) and Li’s essay (p. 1125) make assumptions about the values of others. How are those assumptions similar? How are they different? • Similarities: o Both works suggest that people have difficulties confronting loneliness and isolation and, as a result, seek temporary, artificial distractions. o Both works subtly imply that merely seeking pleasure ends in meaninglessness. Hemingway suggests this via the character of the older waiter, and Li suggests that because people say “have fun” so often, it is rendered meaningless. • Differences: o Hemingway attempts to comment on the human condition in general, as evidenced by the final sentence, where the older waiter thinks about his insomnia and postulates, “Many must have it” (par. 85). Li, however, is commenting specifically on American culture. “What a strange country,” she muses, “where fun, like good lighting, seemed mandatory” (par. 10). o Hemingway seems to offer the reader a variety of perspectives, but by the end of the story, it is clear that we and the narrator are most aligned inside the older waiter’s perspective—implying that disillusionment and resignation is the most authentic perspective in the world. Li, however, offers the reader only her perspective, from which she critiques a small number of carefully observed Americans, but only those that seem to demonstrate her point of view.

3. Do you think the well-lighted Walmart in Li’s piece has anything to do with the well-lit café in Hemingway’s story? Explain your answer. • Some students may argue that the two locations have significant overlap in meaning, despite their distance in time, space, authorship, and that one is fiction and one is non- fiction. o Such students could argue that both places are the temporary homes of characters who are not wanted, such as the man whose arrest for buying cough syrup Li observes and the old man kicked out of Hemingway’s café. o Students could also argue that in both cases, the well-lit places offer the façade of sanctuary for a revolving door of lonely people. • Other students might argue that the two have little to do with each other. o Such students could argue that Hemingway’s café is fictional, and is therefore only Hemingway’s own, very controlled symbol which may or may not have any bearing on reality—whereas Li’s Walmart is an observed fact. Therefore the underlying message of one place does not necessarily parallel the other. o Such students could also argue that the “cleanness and order” (par. 76) that the older waiter idealizes in his café exists in contrast to the squalor and meaninglessness for which he spurns “bars and bodegas” (par. 85), but Li’s well-lighted Walmart is the reverse: a place characterized by too much order and only the pantomime of happiness and meaning.

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EXPLORING THE TEXT Edith Wharton, Roman Fever (pp. 1127-37)

1. How does the setting of “Roman Fever” provide both a literal and a figurative backdrop for the story’s conflicts? • At first, Rome and the Coliseum exude a golden beauty: o the “outspread glories of the Palatine and the Forum” (par. 1). o the “most beautiful view in the world” (par. 8). o the “golden slope of the Palace of the Caesars,” (par. 25). o the “golden flank” of the Coliseum (par. 43). • This initially reflects a degree of warmth between the two friends: “a sort of diffused serenity which might have been borrowed from the spring effulgence of the Roman skies” (par. 7). • As the light and warmth fade from the setting, however, the women’s interaction grows colder, as underlying conflicts surface: o Wharton describes the beauty of the landscape as a “vast Memento Mori” (par. 25), suggesting a morbidity concealed in history lies beneath the beauty of the setting. o The golden light gives way to “the deep clangor of bells which periodically covers Rome with a roof of silver” (par. 26), signaling the approach of evening. o The “most beautiful view in the world” (par. 8) becomes, in Grace’s eyes, “the great accumulated wreckage of passion and splendor at her feet” (par. 37), which foreshadows the wreckage of her friendship with Alida. o The setting sun elicits Alida’s solicitous question, “You’re not afraid, my dear…of Roman fever or pneumonia?” which also foreshadows the jealous “dreadfully wicked aunt” who sent her sister “to gather night-blooming flowers” in the Coliseum, where she “caught the fever and died” (par. 52). • By the end of the story, the literal and figurative significance of the setting merge as the “dusky secret mass of the Coliseum” (par. 115) is revealed to be the site of Alida’s youthful act paralleling that of the wicked aunt. Thus, the golden warmth of Rome has given way to dark memories of the “wreckage of [the women’s]…passion” (par. 37).

2. How does Edith Wharton develop the characters of Alida Slade and Grace Ansley? Are there hints at the beginning of the story about how things will turn out? Were you surprised by the ending? Explain your answer. • Initially, the women are presented as more or less equivalent representatives of their mutual age, gender, nationality, and social class—“two American ladies of ripe but well- cared-for middle age” (par. 1)—who share a bemused view of their daughters’ attitudes toward them: o “The two ladies looked at each other again, this time with a tinge of smiling embarrassment.… That’s what our daughters think of us!” (par. 5). o Both appreciate Rome’s beauty and reflect nostalgically that time has moved on since their youthful experience of Rome and given way to a new generation’s experience. • Distinctions between the two begin to emerge early, however: o Alida Shade is described as more physically and mentally dominant: . She is “fuller, and higher in color, with a small determined nose supported by vigorous black eyebrows” (par. 5).

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. When the head-waiter questions their lingering on the terrace, she asserts control by saying “I’ll cure him of wondering” and by giving him a “gratuity” (par. 12). o Wharton locates the reader in Alida’s perspective for most of the story. From there our view of Grace is filtered through Alida's sense of superiority and her sarcastic deprecation of Grace: . “Grace Ansley was always old-fashioned” (par. 10). . It is difficult for Alida to understand how Grace and her husband, Horace, “two nullities as parents” could have produced a daughter as striking and with as much “edge” as Barbara (par. 19). . “The idea of seeing Grace raided was so amusing that…she launched it at a women’s lunch” (par. 19). o Wharton implies that Grace doesn’t quite belong in Alida’s social class and that Alida believes this makes her worthy of mockery: . “Those were the days when respectability was at a discount, and it did the irreproachable no harm to laugh at them a little” (par. 19). o Alida also reveals her own vanity when she recalls the figure she cut in her youth: . “What, that handsome woman with the good clothes and the eyes is Mrs. Slade—the Slade’s wife? Really? Generally the wives of celebrities are such frumps” (par. 21). o Alida’s frequent laughter at what she perceives to be Grace’s foibles and deficiencies conveys a smug, mocking superiority throughout the story. o At the same time, Alida expresses an undertone of discontent at her “drop from being the wife of Delphin Slade to the “dullish business” of “being his widow” (par. 21). That discontent extends to her envy of Grace for having a more “brilliant” daughter than her own (par. 22). • Grace Ansley, in contrast to Alida, is quietly self-deprecating: o In the encounter with the head-waiter, she is “far less sure … of herself and of her rights in the world” (par. 11). o She frequently murmurs and turns quietly to her knitting. o In response to Alida’s exclamation, “Moonlight—moonlight!” she “[gives] a shy glance” (par. 15). o When the narrator leaves Alida’s perspective to describe Grace’s thoughts directly, the reader sees that she is “much less articulate than her friend, and her mental portrait of Mrs. Slade [is] slighter and drawn with fainter touches” (par. 23). Yet her slighter sketch of Alida captures some fundamental truths: . “Alida’s awfully brilliant; but not as brilliant as she thinks” (par. 23). . “Sometimes Mrs. Ansley thought Alida Slade was disappointed; on the whole she had had a sad life. Full of failures and mistakes; Mrs. Ansley had always been rather sorry for her …” (par. 23). • Foreshadowing and the surprise ending: o The repeated questions about where Barbara Ansley had gotten her “dynamic” qualities (par. 36) foreshadows the conclusion of the story to the reader. o Alida’s observation of the slight stress on “me” when agreeing that the view of the Palatine “will always be [the most beautiful view in the world] to me” (par. 9) also foreshadows the later revelation of why the view is so significant to her. o The story of Grace’s “dreadfully wicked great-aunt” (par. 49), offers another foreshadowing, especially as the reader feels an increasing uneasiness with 616 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

Alida’s jealousies and petty characterizations of her friend, which hint at similarities between her and the great-aunt. o Thus, while the conclusion comes as an ironic reversal, in retrospect, one can see the hints that make it not so surprising after all.

3. In what ways do each of the women visualize the other “through the wrong end of her little telescope” (par. 24)? Is either Alida or Grace correct in her view? • Alida’s perspective: o Alida views Grace through the contradictory lenses of her assumed social and intellectual superiority as well as feelings of inferiority rooted in the brilliance of Grace’s daughter, Grace’s attraction to Delphin, and the smug awareness of the trick Alida played on Grace in their youth. o This perspective enables Alida to refer to “poor Grace” (par. 21), to express a condescending solicitousness over her health as the sun sets and to attack Grace with the revelation of the joke. o All of these belie a misreading of what the reader discovers to be Grace’s actual composure and secure knowledge that Delphin returned her desire and left her with Barbara as her daughter. • Grace’s perspective: o Grace views Alida through the lens of her hidden knowledge of her tryst with Delphin and the true fatherhood of her daughter. o Her perception of Alida as “not as brilliant as she thinks” and her recognition that Alida “was disappointed” and “had had a sad life” (par. 23) is fundamentally more true than Alida’s view of her, but she remains blind by pity to Alida’s depth of disdain and “wrath” (par. 88) toward her. • Overall, though neither woman sees the other completely correctly, Grace’s view of Alida seems to be more perceptive and humane.

4. What are the differences between Alida’s and Grace’s daughters, Jenny and Barbara? How do we learn of their differences? Is there evidence in the story to support those observations? • The reader glimpses Jenny and Barbara briefly but directly at the start of the story: o Their exchange suggests equal youthful energies: Barbara’s voice “echoed up gaily” and Jenny’s “as fresh [voice] laughed back” (par. 2). o Barbara appears to be more dominant, telling Jenny, “Well, come along then,” while Jenny appears to follow (par. 2). o Barbara demonstrates a more ironical mind when she says, “let’s leave the young things to their knitting." (par. 2). Barbara then responds to Jenny’s literal- mindedness by saying, “Oh. look here, Babs, not actually knitting” (par. 2). o Barbara’s conclusion that “After all, we haven’t left our poor parents much else to do” (par. 2) conveys a gentle dismissiveness of the older generation as settled and irrelevant to the girls’ more interesting activities. • During the rest of the story, we see the girls only through the distorted lenses of their mothers’ own historical and emotional baggage. o Alida’s perception of Barbara as more brilliant and dynamic than her daughter, Jenny, is perhaps confirmed in the opening vignette, and Barbara’s romantic adventurousness is implied in Grace’s comment about the “young aviators” who will probably “fly [them] back by moonlight” (par. 14).

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o Alida is the one who describes Barbara as having “rainbow wings,” while lamenting that Jenny is merely a well behaved “angel” better suited to tending a “chronic invalid” than having the brilliance to “catch that young aviator” (par. 34). o Thus, our evidence of the daughters’ different personalities actually reflects Alida’s own discontent and anxiety about Grace’s attraction to Delphin.

5. Alida Slade remarks on the “different things Rome stands for to each generation of travelers. To our grandmothers, Roman fever; to our mothers, sentimental danger—how we used to be guarded!—to our daughters, no more dangers than the middle of Main Street. They don’t know it—but how much they’re missing!” (par. 29). What does she think the daughters are missing? What comment might Wharton be making about the limitations women faced in her world? • Alida romanticizes memories of her youthful deception while at the same time clinging to her envy of Grace, which is what occasioned it. o The flirtation with forbidden sex, the dangers of the Coliseum at night, and the titillating tale of the “dreadfully wicked Great-aunt” (par. 49) who sends her younger sister to her death have a hold on Alida’s imagination that infuse the Roman setting with mystery and intrigue, which she suggests her daughters are missing out on. o Ironically, in contrast to their mothers, the daughters seem liberated—free to fly off with dashing aviators without parental restrictions and free to return by moonlight. This new freedom seems to heighten the sense of the limitations under which women of Alida’s and Grace’s generation lived. • Such a contrast invites readers to speculate that the jealousies and betrayals within female friendships of earlier generations may have arisen from the social limitations imposed upon women. At the same time, however, the opening dialogue between Jenny and Barbara gives no assurance that as privileged youth following their own impulses, they won’t repeat the errors of previous generations.

6. How can “Roman Fever” be considered social commentary? How might it move beyond social commentary into the realm of morality? • Wharton establishes early that Alida and Grace are privileged women of a respectable social class: o They are “two American ladies of ripe but well-cared-for middle age” (par. 1). o They have travelled to Rome frequently enough to be “familiar with [the view] for a good many years” (par. 10). o Alida “cures” the head-waiter of interrupting them by giving him a gratuity (par. 12). o Alida makes clear in her own reflections that she was the “wife of [a] famous corporation lawyer” (par. 21). o Their daughters meet Roman nobility at the Embassy and proceed to socialize with them. • At the same time, Alida is extremely conscious that her social class has been elevated above Grace’s by Delphin’s “big coup in Wall Street” (par. 19). This seems to give her the right to take an attitude of disdain and condescension toward Grace: o “No doubt, … she felt her unemployment more than poor Grace” (par. 21). o “She can knit—in the face of this! How like her” (par. 33). 618 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

• Embedded in the class structure seems to be a competitiveness for status and dominance. This insecurity and competition can be seen as the driving motivation behind the original “joke” Alida plays on Grace—a joke that, given her knowledge of the story of the great- aunt, could, for all she knew, have been fatal. • Thus, Wharton’s commentary on the destructive competitiveness of the class structure converges with her commentary on the moral bankruptcy inherent in that competition.

7. What do you think is the greatest irony in this story fraught with irony? • Some students might argue that the greatest irony is that the brilliance and “rainbow wings” (par. 40) Alida sees in Barbara have come from Grace, whom Alida denigrates throughout the story; since Delphin is father to both girls, whatever genetic difference exists between them must have derived from their mothers. • Other students might argue that the greater irony is that in attempting to protect herself from the threat of Grace’s beauty, Alida engineers the very thing she is trying to prevent: the connection between her fiancé and her beautiful friend, a connection that has Barbara as its result. • Other students might argue that the greatest irony is that Alida, by permitting her petty competition with Grace to fester, has become a version of the “dreadfully wicked great- aunt” (par. 49) worthy of being thought of as “a monster” (par. 92).

8. To your mind, which woman has the upper hand? Explain your answer. • Despite Grace’s superficial appearance of passive submission to the more dominant Alida (as seen in Grace’s murmuring, her shy glance, and her apparent turning inward to her knitting), the reader realizes in retrospect that this behavior signals a quiet confidence in her knowledge of what she has done—betrayed her friend by sleeping with her fiancé— and what she has gained from it: her brilliant daughter, Barbara. • Alida’s knowledge that she wrote the original letter gives her a belief in her own dominance and control over Grace, but the nastiness with which she pushes the intended painful revelation gives Grace no choice but to defend herself with the deeper, more ironic revelation about Barbara’s father. • This leaves Grace with both the upper hand in the little power struggle Alida has provoked and leaves the reader with a sense of poetic justice that favors Grace.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Eleanor Roosevelt, What Libraries Mean to the Nation (p. 1138-41)

1. Describe the tone of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarks. How does the tone show awareness and consideration of her audience? • Roosevelt’s conversational diction establishes a tone of friendly familiarity while her repetition of key ideas and deliberate syntax emphasize her urgency and authority: o “One of the things that I have been particularly grateful for in the years of the depression — and, of course, I think, sad as it has been, we have some things to be grateful for — is that we have discovered so many things that we had not known before” (par. 3). o “It is the library, and people who live in the libraries and work in the libraries, who are going to lead the way” (par. 9). o “But you do have to learn to love books, you do have to learn how to read them, you do have to learn that a book is a companion” (par. 12). 619 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

• Roosevelt also acknowledges her audience’s love of books and romanticizes reading, deepening her tone of friendly familiarity with her librarian audience: o She states that “it is the library, and people who live in the libraries and work in the libraries, who are going to lead the way” (par. 9). o She calls reading “the oldest and most interesting recreation there is” (par. 11). o She refers to herself and her audience as “we who deal with books and who love books” (par. 14).

2. How does Roosevelt establish credibility beyond the fact that she is First Lady of the United States? • Roosevelt’s personal anecdotes involving literacy issues far from the centers of power bolster her ethos as a down-to-earth reformer: o She states, “I long to take people and let them see some of the back country districts that I know, in New York State… They are using school books which have been passed down from one child to another” (par. 4). o She quotes a man who wrote to her about his own love of leaning to read, and who describes his neighbor who “is 81 and he learned to read last winter, and it has just made life over for us” (par. 6). • Roosevelt’s interactions with citizens show that she has “thought about the problem” (par. 11) extensively, bolstering her ethos as knowledgeable and passionate— independent of her office.

3. What assumptions does Roosevelt make about her audience? Find sentences in the speech in which those assumptions are most obvious. • Roosevelt assumes that her audience already values libraries: “What the libraries mean to the nation is fairly obvious to all of us, especially to those who are here this evening” (par. 2). • She assumes her audience is urban and less aware of the needs of rural communities than she is: “Now, I think here in the city of Washington, and in nearly all big cities, the problem is a different one from the one I know so well in the country districts” (par. 10).

4. What kind of evidence does Roosevelt provide to support her claim that the country needs more libraries? Classify them as claims of fact, value, and policy. Does one type dominate? • Roosevelt uses facts sparingly: o “I do not think many people know how many states do not spend more than ten cents per capita for library books a year, and how many states have large areas, particularly rural areas, where one cannot get books” (par. 2). o Her anecdotes might also be considered facts: . She states, “I long to take people and let them see some of the back country districts that I know, in New York State…. They are using school books which have been passed down from one child to another” (par. 4). . She quotes a man who wrote to her about his own love of learning to read, and who describes his neighbor who “is 81 and he learned to read last winter, and it has just made life over for us” (par. 6). • Roosevelt uses the majority of her speech to tout the values of increased literacy and intellectual development that libraries would provide:

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o “We had a big area that needed books and needed libraries to help these schools in the education of the children, and, even more, to help the whole community live through their minds” (par. 4). o “We have got to think in exactly the same way about helping them live mentally and to attain better standards…” (par. 5). o “There is a great need for imagination in the ways used to stir the interest of old and young to use what library facilities they have, and to insist that they shall have more and to make them willing to pay for more, because, in the end, they will get something that they want out of it” (par. 10). o “We have the chance to make our democracy that will be a real democracy” (par. 14). • Roosevelt refers to the increase in libraries as a matter of policy sparingly: o “Without libraries…we cannot have an educated people who will carry successfully on our form of government” (par. 2). o “We have got to make our libraries the center of a new life in the mind” (par. 7).

5. What do you think of Roosevelt’s argument that rural areas need more libraries and that libraries need to stock multiple copies of popular books? Do those arguments stand up today? • Some students might argue that Roosevelt’s argument would have been more valid in the past when rural America experienced lower literacy levels and were more culturally isolated from centers of culture. o Increased literacy in rural areas would likely have offered some hedge against national fragmentation—as wealthier and urban communities became more immersed in modern notions promulgated in part by libraries, rural communities would not have evolved as quickly. o Stocking multiple copies of popular books might generate conversations around such books, as more than one person could be reading each book at once, encouraging cultural cohesion. • Other students might argue that although the need for libraries was urgent in Roosevelt’s time, it is unnecessary now, citing the rise of the Internet and other forms of media technology that have connected people in rural communities to information, media content, and other people around the globe. o Such students could argue that although there are some modern rural communities that would probably benefit from libraries, cheaper methods of bolstering intellectual development exist, from using laptops, tablets, and mobile devices to improving Internet access. o Such students could point to the infinite replication of “books” on digital platforms as another advantage of digital literacy. • Other students might argue that Roosevelt’s ideas are still relevant, citing the different reading experience of physical books, from a deeper immersion in the text to the physical connection to ancient ways of reading and absorbing stories. o Such students might also argue that rural libraries are critical centers of community organization, outreach, activism, and free Internet access for many rural citizens.

6. In this digital age, what do you think is the primary answer to the question of what libraries mean to the nation?

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• Some students might argue that due to the plummeting cost of storing and transferring information and media content, libraries are no longer necessary to the intellectual development of the nation. o Such students might cite that an increasing number of books and other forms of media are available free or at low cost online. o Such students might argue that funds earmarked for libraries could be more efficiently spent in efforts to expand digital access or increase digital literacy. • Other students might argue that libraries are still important, but the definition of libraries is changing. o Such students might consider the archival, research, and informational functions of many online agencies to be the modern equivalents of libraries. • Other student might argue that even in the digital age, libraries still “have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democracy” (par. 14). o Such students might argue that physical books have intrinsic value, since they demand a more patient, committed reader, which in turn offers greater absorption into a text than an online document which must compete with ads, apps, and other tasks. o Such students might also argue that continued support of libraries can still “stimulate an interest in books” (par. 11), many readers still prefer reading print books, libraries provide access to digital books as well as print, and/or that libraries provide free Internet access, thus further democratizing knowledge. o Another argument takes into account the critical modern-day services provided by public libraries, such as free Internet access, e-books, DVDs and streaming videos, instructional materials, educational workshops, ESL and other tutoring services—all of which are tailored to the specific needs of the people living in the community a library serves.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Works Progress Administration, Bookmobile, Louisiana (pp. 1141-42)

1. What strikes you first about the photograph? Explain why you find it striking. • The women in the shallow boat are standing. This is risky because it could tip over. • The men and the little boy are sitting, which could indicate that the women are more excited at the prospect of the bookmobile. • The adults all face the same direction—at the shore and the bookmobile—but the little boy is sitting and looking the other way. • There are indications of poverty in the photograph: o The trees are bare, which indicates the season is probably fall or winter, but nobody is wearing a coat, and one of the women doesn’t have anything to cover her head. o The woman in the center has a torn shirt. o The landing dock looks old and worn. o That the people are taking a rowboat to the bookmobile suggests they cannot afford a car. • The library truck is from Louisiana; presumably the people in the boat are, too. • The scene looks rural—that people would need to use a boat to get to the bookmobile suggests the possibility that there are few roads.

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2. What emotions does the photo capture? How are those emotions expressed? • Anticipation: o The women are standing, as if they can’t wait to get ashore—indeed, the sole person propelling the boat forward is the woman at its bow. • Solemnity: o The women are standing, as if out of respect. They are also holding the books to their chests, clinging to them as though they are valuable. They are not talking to each other; rather, their focus is on the shore, the book truck, and the promise of a new title to read. • Isolation and despondence: o All of the trees are bare, and what the viewer can see of the sky is cloudless. o All but one of the people in the photograph have their backs turned on the photographer—the posture is exclusionary and perhaps even dejected, as if these people are isolated even from each other. o The only person whose face is visible is the little boy, whose features are knotted—he could be frowning or simply squinting against the sun, but the effect is one that underscores the despondence of the picture overall. • Resilience: o The woman closest to the camera has her arms crossed, as if in determination. o The people in the boat are impoverished, but they are headed toward something (the bookmobile) that will hopefully help them improve their circumstances.

3. What is the effect of the diagonal line created by the boat moving from the bottom left toward the upper right in the photo? • It gives the viewer the ability to see both the people in the photo and what they are moving toward: o If the photo were taken from directly behind, the figures would obscure one another; the number of people in the boat, what they are wearing, and what they are doing would be less clear. o If the photo were taken from directly in front, only some of the faces would be visible. While the viewer would get to see some of the facial expressions, the perspective of what the people are looking at would be missing. From this diagonal perspective, the viewer gets to see both what the people in the boat see, as well as the people in the boat themselves. • The diagonal line also draws the eye from the boat to the bookmobile, creating the sense of forward motion and structuring a narrative for the photograph: the impoverished people in the boat are going to the bookmobile, which will provide them with access to culture and education that they would not have otherwise.

4. What does this photograph remind you of? Are there literary or mythological connections to be made? • Mythological connections: o There are five rivers from classical mythology that this image evokes: the River Styx (hate), the River Akheron (sorrow), the River Kokytos (lamentation), the River Phlegethon (fire), and the River Lethe (forgetfulness). . The first four signify the kinds emotions contained within the books these people are headed toward. Additionally, these emotions could all be associated with the Great Depression’s effect on Americans.

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. The last, Lethe, could be viewed as the opposite, as the people in the photograph will be learning and remembering, not forgetting. Another interpretation through this lens is that they will be forgetting their troubles for a while as they absorb themselves in a book. • Literary connections: o Literary rivers often signify journeys to freedom: Huckleberry Finn is one example. o Literary rivers can also represent a crossing from ignorance to enlightenment, as in Hesse’s Siddhartha, O’Brien’s “On the Rainy River,” and Vonnegut’s Hudson River, to name a few. • Biblical connections: o The setting (Louisiana in 1938) suggests that these people are probably Christian. The River Jordan represents crossing over to the Promised Land. For example, a nineteenth-century hymn, “O Good Shepherd,” contains the lyrics “If you want to go to heaven / over on the other shore.”

5. What do you think the bookmobile meant to the people in the photo? What can you tell from their body language and placement in the picture? • The bookmobile probably represented both opportunity and a relief from the harsh realities of life in Depression-era America to the people in the photograph. • They are standing, as if at attention or at a church service, which indicates they have respect or even reverence for this experience. • That they took a boat means they had to go out of their way to access the bookmobile, which suggests they believed the opportunity was worth traveling for. • The anticipation is palpable; all but one of the people in the boat is facing the bookmobile, and all of the women are standing—they look ready to disembark before they even reach the shore.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address: One-Third of a Nation (pp. 1142-46)

1. Whom do you think President Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaks for in this address? • On the occasion of his second inaugural speech, President Roosevelt addresses all Americans, calling them “We of the Republic” (pars. 1 and 3) in an effort to justify his plans to enact policies that will help the one-third of all Americans who still suffer. He speaks on behalf of those who will most directly benefit from his policies. • Each member of his audience fits into one of three categories: o The “private autocratic powers” (par. 9) who caused the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. o The “men of good will, science and democracy” (par. 15) who are trying to improve the standard of living. o The “tens of millions of citizens…who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life” (par. 23) and who still need help. These comprise the “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished” (par. 28) to whom he refers in his title and for whom he hopes to improve conditions.

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2. Do you consider this speech optimistic or pessimistic? Using support from the selection, explain your answer. • Despite the disheartening examples Roosevelt highlights, he is overwhelmingly optimistic for the future of the nation. o Examples of discouraging facts: . America had been controlled by “blind economic forces and blindly selfish men” (par. 2). . He lists many ills that still plague the nation is paragraphs 23-29, including the poverty that casts a “pall of family disaster” over millions of people “day by day” (par. 24), creates “conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago” (par. 25), and denies them access to “education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children” (par. 26). o Examples of hope for the future: . “After centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master the epidemics of disease” (par. 3). . “Our progress out of the depression is obvious” (par. 10). . “By using the new materials of social justice, we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations” (par. 10). . There has been a “change in the moral climate of America” (par. 14). . “It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope” (par. 29). . During his second term, Roosevelt pledges to “assume the solemn obligation of leading the American people forward along the road over which they have chosen to advance” (par. 36).

3. Do you think Roosevelt depends most on claims of fact, of value, or of policy? Try to find examples of each, and then consider why he might have depended on one type of claim over the others. • Interestingly, Roosevelt makes many claims of value, but he states them as he would a claim of fact. For instance, in paragraph 2 he says that “[i]nstinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization.” o The claim of fact is that everyone did indeed recognize this need. o The implied claim of value is that “we” needed this and that these problems need to be solved. o The implied claim of policy is that the New Deal programs will ameliorate the situation. • He states almost all of his many claims of value (that the situation was bad; that it’s getting better; that moral men will have more power than greedy men) and his several claims of policy (that the New Deal is the way to go) as though they’re claims of fact, perhaps to reinforce that they are, indeed, true. • As he makes these claims, he appeals to many values: pride (par. 2), cooperation (par. 3), patriotism (par. 5), liberty (par. 6), democracy (par. 9), morality (par. 11), decency (par. 12), moral climate (par. 14). • Paragraph 15 includes an allusion to an argument of policy (to improve our economic order). 625 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

• There are implied claims of value with “courage and confidence” (par. 18) and “persistence” (par. 20), citizenship (par. 23), and compassion in the context of citizenship (par. 24-28). • Paragraph 29 contains another argument of policy: ”We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful, law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous.” • Then he again addresses courage and dedication (par. 31), justice and fairness (par. 33), democracy (par. 34), and duty (37).

4. What contrasts does Roosevelt set up in this speech? What do you think their purpose is? • Roosevelt sets up several contrasts to reinforce his New Deal policies: o He paints those who support his effort as wise and conscientious, while depicting people who do not support him as stupid and selfish. . He contrasts “men of good will, science and democracy” (par. 15) who support his efforts to improve the morality of business with the “private autocratic powers” (par. 9) and the “blindly selfish men” (par. 2) who led the country to economic ruin. He suggests that good men support his policies and people who disagree do so out of “heedless self- interest” (par. 11). . He suggests that people who do not support his policies “sit in darkness” and that his proponents are recipients of “Divine guidance” who will “give light” and “guide our feet into the way of peace” (par. 37). o He contrasts the time period of the founding fathers with the present—the old with the new—to suggest that his New Deal policies are similar to the legislation created and enacted by his respected predecessors: . The “strong government with powers of unified action” that helped the forefathers surmount “the chaos which followed the Revolutionary War” is like the government that he leads now: a central, unified administration working to “promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to the American people” (par. 5). . “By using the new materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations” (par. 10). . “The Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent” (par. 8) and neither will the “goal of our vision on that fourth day of March, 1933” (par. 21). o He contrasts the selfishness of the individual with the idea of civic duty in service the nation as a whole: . The “dulled conscience, irresponsibility, and ruthless self-interest” that Roosevelt terms “symptoms of prosperity” are in reality “portents of disaster” (par. 20). . “In our personal ambitions we are individuals. But in our seeking economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people” (par. 34).

5. How does Roosevelt answer the question he asks in paragraph 21: “Have we found our happy valley?” • He begins by acknowledging ways in which the nation is prospering: 626 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o He sees “a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a wealth of natural resources,” pointing out that its population is a “good neighbor among the nations” and is “spreading volume of human comforts” (par. 22). • He continues by qualifying those optimistic statements, listing the ways in which the nation is ailing: o There is a “challenge” that tens of millions of Americans face: they lack “the necessities of life” (par. 23). o He expands on these challenges in all of the “I see” statements (pars. 24-28). • He answers this question with another metaphor: he does not “paint you that picture” of desolation “in despair”; rather, he intends to “paint it for you in hope” because he is “determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern” (par. 29) so that everyone will reach the happy valley that some have already entered.

6. Roosevelt uses figurative language sparingly but effectively in this speech. Find examples and explain why he might have chosen to speak figuratively rather than literally at those moments. • Religious metaphor: o The “temple of our ancient faith” has been “profaned” (par. 1), by which he means that the tenets of democracy established by our forefathers have been irreverently violated. . By comparing our country’s foundations to a “temple” and declaring that we have made a “covenant with ourselves” to repair what has been “profaned” (par. 1) by the “selfish men” (par. 2) who triggered the Depression, he adds gravitas to his assertions and appeals to Americans’ moral values. . He returns to this concept when he concludes that the advent of his second term constitutes a “[re-consecration] of our country” (par. 34) and pledges to seek “Divine guidance to help us” (par.37) in this endeavor. • Nature metaphor: o By contrasting “the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster”—storms over which humans have no control—with “the problems of our common welfare” (par. 4), he asserts that the Great Depression presents solvable problems that can be overcome. • Construction metaphor: o “By using the materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations” (par. 10). He compares the country to a building and suggests a sense of shelter and protection for Americans that will result from his policies. . The “foundations” that the forefathers set in stone will remain the same. . The new building will more comfortably protect and accommodate the new needs of a changing country with a growing population. • Personification: o “Comfort says” and “Opportunism says” and “Timidity asks” (par. 17). . He turns these emotions into people, presumably the kind of people his audience would not want to emulate or obey.

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. To create a sense of unified American voices distinctive from these flawed ones, he later says “we will not listen to Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity. We will carry on” (par. 30).

EXPLORING THE TEXT John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums (pp. 1147-55)

1. Describe the relationship Elisa has with her husband. Explain why you came to the conclusion you did. • On one level Elisa’s relationship with Henry appears to be caring and comfortably companionable. o They appear to have balanced spheres of activity: she, her flower garden; he, the crops and cattle. o Henry compliments her on her gardening and she accepts his complement with a “little smugness” (par. 11). o He offers up a night out to a dinner and a movie, and she responds with seeming enthusiasm: “Oh, yes. That will be good” (par. 19). o Henry seems to feel comfortable enough in their relationship to joke about taking her to the fights instead of a movie (par. 20). o The early exchange about going into town for a dinner and a movie concludes with a seemingly balanced decision to spend the rest of the afternoon tending to their separate chores: he says he’ll “go get a couple of horses” to round up the steers he just sold, and she says, “I’ll have plenty of time to transplant some of these sets, I guess” (pars. 24-25). • Beneath the surface, however, we see intimations of discontent that grow through the story, building to the concluding description of Elisa crying silently to herself with her coat collar “turned up…so [Henry] could not see” (par. 122). o Her response to seeing the “men by the tractor” is to intensify “her work with the scissors” in a manner that is “overeager, overpowerful” (par. 6), suggesting some undefined inner agitation. o She “started at the sound of her husband’s voice” as if it is an intrusion, somewhat parallel to the “cattle and dogs and chickens” from which her “flower garden” needs to be “protected” by a “wire fence” (par. 9). o Henry’s statement that “I wish you’d work out in the orchard and raise some apples that big” seems to be felt as a challenge that causes her eyes to sharpen and leads her to assert that “Maybe I could do it, too” (par. 13). This begins the underlying suggestion that she may find her sphere of “women’s work” (tending to flowers, cooking, and heating the bathwater) less substantive than the sphere claimed by Henry, and men in general, and that she may want to show her ability on a more meaningful level—a desire that Henry doesn’t seem to get. o Her interaction with the tinker develops into a moment of intimacy that borders on the sexual when the discussion of “planting hands” (par. 69) progresses to his reference to “Sometimes in the night in the wagon there,” then to her statement that “it’s like that. Hot and sharp and—lovely,” and finally her hand reaching out until “[h]er hesitant fingers almost touched the cloth” of his pant leg. Since the reader never sees this intensity of emotion between Elisa and Henry, the implication is that their relationship doesn’t provide an outlet for the passion Elisa expresses here.

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o After the encounter with the tinker, an even deeper discontent and a sharper edge emerge in the interaction between Elisa and Henry. . When Henry comes “banging out the door,” she “stiffened and her face grew tight” (par. 99), as if he is intruding on some private space or thoughts. . When Henry compliments her appearance, she challenges him with a sharp combativeness: “What do you mean by ‘nice’?” (par. 100) and “What do you mean ‘strong’?” (par. 102). . Her discovery of the discarded chrysanthemums along the road, and the resultant destruction of whatever hopes or feelings the tinker had spurred, is another intimate moment that she doesn’t share with her husband. This failure to share her inner self, just as she failed to share the story about the tinker’s visit in the first place, suggests that Elisa and Henry’s relationship is divided by a gulf of things unshared.

2. What do you think the chrysanthemums that Elisa grows represent in the story? How do the different characters’ reactions to them help develop those characters? • They are evidence of Elisa’s competence and a cause for pride: o She says that “they’ll be strong this coming year” with a tone and appearance of “a little smugness” (par. 11). o When the wagon man asks “what’s them plants, ma’am?” the “irritation and resistance melted from her face,” and she explains with pride that “I raise them every year, bigger than anybody around here” (par. 51). • They also represent some deeper core of her self along with the protective barrier she has built around it. o She has a “wire fence that protected her flower garden” (par. 9). o The tinker’s inquiry about them leads to her softening toward him (“resistance melted from Elisa’s face”), and in response to his asking if “they’re nice ones” she becomes effusive: “‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Oh, beautiful.’ Her eyes shone. She tore off the battered hat and shook out her dark pretty hair” (par. 63). In effect, she begins to reveal her own deeper feminine sexuality. o Her sending out the shoots into the wider world to which the tinker has access could be read as Elisa’s symbolic attempt to send some core of herself out into the world to which she, as a woman, does not have access. • Finally, they represent the insufficiency of the work and identity to which she has been relegated as a woman. o The “chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her energy” (par. 6). Her overexuberance with the chrysanthemums suggests that they are her sole outlet for energy that would be better spent on more “masculine” work, a more satisfying relationship with Henry, or children. o Henry’s praise of her skill with growing flowers leads her to assert her ability to grow real crops, but then quickly change the topic to ask “Who were those men, you were talking to?” (par. 15). o Her discovery of the “dark speck” on the road (par. 108), forces a confrontation with the reality that the feminine identity represented by the discarded chrysanthemums has little value in the world of men’s work, thus leading the reader to reassess the seeming balance between her flower garden and the productive labor in which Henry and the men engage at the start of the story.

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3. What do you think is the main conflict in this story? How does John Steinbeck set it up? • The main conflict is between Elisa’s desire for a sense of self-worth and the limits forced upon her by a society that values men’s work as productive, yet restricts her from that work, and thus allows only men the chance for truly independent exploration of the world. o She is proud of her talent and of her femininity: . She references inheriting her mother’s gift : “She could stick anything in the ground and make it grow” (par. 13). . She boasts that her chrysanthemums are “bigger than [anybody’s] around here” (par. 51). . She responds to the tinker’s manipulative appeal to her pride by shaking out her “pretty dark hair” (par. 63). o At the same time, the story is filled with moments in which Elisa compares her work and potential to that of the men, suggesting a pervasive sense that she is undervalued. As these build through the story, the reader’s understanding of Elisa’s conflict grows to its culmination in her concluding acceptance of defeat. . As she works in her “little square sandy bed kept for rooting the chrysanthemums,” she watches the more substantial and economically valuable work of the “men [as they] ride up the pale yellow hillside in search of the steers” (par. 26). . She takes Henry’s joking suggestion that she “work out in the orchard and raise some apples,” a reference to a crop that is of economic value to the farm, as a challenge to her pride that causes her eyes to “sharpen” and leads her to assert that “Maybe I could do it, too,” followed by her expression of pride in the “planters’ hands” she inherited from her mother (par. 13). . She expresses her wish that “women could do such things” as live on their own like the tinker, and when he counters that “It ain’t the right kind of life for a woman,” she echoes her earlier response to Henry about growing apples: “Her upper lip raised a little, showing her teeth. ‘How do you know? How can you tell?’” (par. 84). . In response to Henry’s jest about her being “strong enough to break a calf over [her] knee,” she boasts “’I’m strong…I never knew before how strong’” (par. 104), referring to a new inner sense of possibility that her interaction with the tinker opened up: “That’s a bright direction. There’s a glowing there” (par. 92). . After seeing the discarded chrysanthemums, Elisa’s sense of possibility collapses and she surrenders to her enforced limitations, asking Henry if “any women ever go to the fights” (par. 120), only to “relax limply in the seat,” accept that “it will be enough if we can have wine” as her socially acceptable divergence from her normal woman’s routine, and cry “weakly—like an old woman” (par. 122).

4. How does the backdrop of the natural world help Steinbeck develop the themes in this story? Consider especially what the setting means for each character and the interactions with each other.

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• The natural setting intensifies the sense of isolation from the outside world: “the high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world” (par. 1). • The description of the setting also conveys a sense of time having been suspended, along with the suspension of vitality and growth: o “On every side [the fog] sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot” (par. 1). o “…there was no sunshine in the valley now in December” (par. 1). o “…farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain…but fog and rain do not go together” (par. 1). • For Elisa, this setting is a stifling entrapment, symbolic of her role as a woman. o This discontent with her situation is not apparent at first, since at the start of the story she seems to be using her own energy to cultivate her own protected growth of plant life, her flower garden (pars. 4-8). o Her discontent becomes evident after her encounter with the tinker. She imaginatively projects her sight along the road and river that lead out of the valley: “That’s a bright direction. There’s a glowing there” (par. 92). The contrast between the “grey-flannel fog” of the valley itself and the “glowing” she associates with escape from the valley is symbolic of her feelings of inertia within her current circumstances and the fullness of life for which she yearns. • For Henry, the stillness in the valley is only a temporary lull in a work cycle that productively follows the cycle of the seasons. Therefore, his response to the natural setting is more functional than emotional. o Having finished his hard work for the year—“the hay was cut and stored and the orchards were plowed up to receive the rain deeply when it should come” (par. 3)—he still has livestock to tend, and he can celebrate the stillness with a night out in town (par. 18). o While the winter seems to have suspended time in the valley (par. 2), Henry still has free use of space, moving between Elisa’s garden, the distant “pale yellow hillside” (par. 26), and the town. o The difference between Henry and Elisa’s responses to nature’s stasis—he changes his activities, she reacts emotionally—underlines the difference in their emotional needs and in their gender roles to suggest a significant but largely unarticulated conflict in their relationship. • For the tinker, the natural setting of the valley represents a momentary digression from his “general road” (par. 34), presumably in search of a possible shortcut to his destination and of possible new clients. o His “prairie schooner” wagon (par. 28) seems a self-contained environment that he leisurely directs at will “to follow nice weather” (par. 40). o His draft animals are things to be used, rather than life to be cared for, “droop[ing] like unwatered flowers” (par. 31). o Less affected by the natural setting than by his economic self-interest, his itinerant lifestyle enables him to step momentarily into the setting in which Elisa feels trapped, then turn his wagon around and crawl “out the entrance road and back the way it had come, along the river” (par. 91). o Ironically, his focus on commerce and his apparent lack of emotional response to the natural setting enables him to manipulate Elisa’s pride and discontent to make his sale.

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5. In what ways does Elisa change when she is with the tinker? What do you think those changes represent? • Elisa’s initial response to the tinker is good-hearted laughter, a response the reader hasn’t seen before between her and Henry (par. 31). • She proceeds to engage him in light-hearted banter about his beasts pulling through the sand “when they get started?” (par. 37), again, a new spontaneity of expression the reader hasn’t seen previously. • Although “her eyes hardened with resistance” when he first tries to get a sale from her, the “resistance melted in Elisa’s face” when he asks about her chrysanthemums (par. 51). She proceeds to talk in an enthusiastic and detailed manner we haven’t seen with Henry. • Eventually, she literally lets down “her dark pretty hair” (par. 63), removing the “man’s black hat” and the “heavy leather gloves” (par. 5), displaying her femininity and removing some of the protective layers between herself and the world—and more significantly, between herself and the stranger. • Ultimately, she gives voice to her own deep, intimate feelings when she imagines the darkness of the night and the “hot sharp and—lovely” sensation of “every pointed star driven into [her] body” (par. 74). This leads to a possibly sexual desire to touch the tinker’s leg (par. 75). • Then she pulls herself back, standing up very straight and showing shame in her face (par. 77). • These changes seem to represent Elisa’s opening up to a core of desire that she has suppressed beneath the very heavy masculine clothing at the beginning of the story, and which seems not to be fed by her relationship with Henry. It is not merely a sexual awakening, though. The encounter with the tinker and the changes it evokes lead to a yearning for new possibilities as she watches him leave the valley that entraps her to follow an independent path that society has determined “ain’t the right kind of life for a woman” (par. 83).

6. Critics have considered this story an early example of a woman trying to gain equality in a man’s world. Charles A. Sweet Jr., writing in 1974 in Modern Fiction Studies, says Elisa is “the representative of the feminine ideal of equality and its inevitable defeat.” Do you consider that a viable reading of the story? How might we read it differently in the twenty- first century? Or would we? • Some students may argue that the conclusion of the story seems to support Sweet’s argument: o The conclusion grows from an earlier emphasis on the division of labor between economically meaningful men’s work (cutting and storing hay, plowing the orchards, growing apples, and raising steers, [pars. 3-16]) and the confined, noneconomical work done by women (growing flowers), which implies an inequality that drives Elisa’s discontent and need to affirm her value throughout the story. o Elisa’s attempt to send a part of herself, in the form of the chrysanthemum shoots, out into the wider world represented by the tinker meets with failure when she finds them discarded on the road. o Her questions about the violence of the fights and whether “women ever go to the fights” (par. 120) seems to emphasize a difference between the world of

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women and the world of men that she feels she can’t enter, even though Henry is willing to take her (par. 121). o Her concluding statement that “it will be enough if we can have wine,” followed by her “crying weakly—like an old woman” (par. 122), suggests a defeatist acceptance of a lesser, more female-appropriate form of escape from her routine, but one that is insufficient for the deeper yearnings she feels. • Some students may find fault with Sweet’s reading: o If they prefer to read “The Chrysanthemums” as a character sketch or one woman’s story, it could be argued that the specific setting (par. 1) and Elisa’s idiosyncratic interest in chrysanthemums are too particular to apply to gender relations on a broad scale. o They may see the story as having resonance for anyone dissatisfied with their lot in life, regardless of gender. The tinker self-consciously identifies with Elisa’s longing for the contentment she feels when lost in planting (pars. 71-73). o They may reject the idea that a character invented by a male writer can represent the “feminine ideal of equality,” or that it’s fair for a male critic to call such a character’s defeat “inevitable.” Elisa’s beauty may be entirely incidental in a woman’s “feminine ideal of equality.” Similarly, an unmarried woman might have a better chance at achieving independence and equality. o They may also read the story in more personal terms as being about Elisa’s attempt to give expression to a physical and emotional self that is covered up by her protective masculine shell at the beginning. • Some students may argue that we read this story differently in the twenty-first century: o It could be read as a meditation on, or indictment of, the norms of the time. We’ve learned to recognize that most work is distributed by gender arbitrarily— there have always been women somewhere in the world doing the “hard work” of farming. Additionally, we’re more aware that ideals of femininity and masculinity vary by society and change over time. o After the recession of 2009, many people of all genders can identify with Elisa’s regret that she doesn’t have access to fulfilling work. • Other students may argue that a twenty-first-century reading of this story would not change: o Readers would merely take the temporal context in mind: Elisa represented the feminine ideal of equality in 1937, and the inevitable defeat of that ideal. o Although granted equality under the law, social expectations for women still limit their success in achieving equality. Elisa’s frustration over being limited to women’s work, and then having that work diminished would resonate with women who are encouraged to enter fields like nursing, teaching, fashion, and hospitality, and then have the difficulty or importance of their work disparaged openly or implicitly with lower salaries.

EXPLORING THE TEXT William Faulkner, Barn Burning (pp. 1155-68)

1. Describe the techniques William Faulkner uses to set the scene in the first paragraph. • Limited third-person point of view: o The narrator progresses through sensual description of smell, imagery, and sounds from the back of the makeshift courtroom to the front where the action is taking place. The perspective is that of a young boy, Sarty, who is unable to

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directly see the scene, and using his other senses to interpret what’s happening with his father. . “The boy, crouched…at the back of the crowded room” (par. 1). . “from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves” (par. 1). . “He could not see the table…but he could hear them” (par. 1). . Smells: “smelled of cheese” and “hermetic meat” (par. 1). . Visual cues, “tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from lettering which meant nothing to his mind” (par. 1), signal the boy’s illiteracy and hunger due to poverty. • The pathos of Sarty’s thoughts: o (“our enemy he thought in that despair; ourn! mine and hisn both! He’s my father!)” (par. 1), contrasts with the neutral description of the scene, and sets a tone of righteousness, defense of, and fear for his father. • Figurative language: o “The other constant one, the smell and sense just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief, the old fierce pull of blood” (par. 1) uses both metaphor (“smell and sense…of fear” and metonymy (where “blood” represents family loyalty).

2. What are some of the recurring images in “Barn Burning”? How do they connect to the story’s theme? • From the title “Barn Burning” to the scorched marks on the de Spain’s rug, fire is a symbol of Abner’s rage and retaliation against the world, the preservation of his integrity: o “a small fire, neat, niggard almost, a shrewd fire” (par. 26). o “the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father’s being” (par. 26). o “saw from the corner of his eye his father raise from the ground a flattish fragment of field stone and examine it” (par. 53) and “water-cloudy scoriations” (par. 54). o “‘Burnt?’ the Justice said. ‘Do I understand this rug was burned too?’” (par. 72). • Sarty’s conflict with his father and growing independence is highlighted through a contrasting depiction of his older siblings as complacent and unthinking as cows: o “The two sisters got down, big, bovine” (par. 34). o “...the older brother who leaned against the table, chewing with that steady, curious side-wise motion of cows” (par. 90). o “…wearing only an expression of bovine interest” (par. 100). • Blood is the bond that ties Sarty to his father, and the central theme of the story is how Sarty separates himself from his father’s violence: o “the old fierce pull of blood” (par. 1). o “the old grief of blood” (par. 11). o “You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you” (par. 28). o “The old blood which he had not been permitted to choose himself” (par. 88).

3. How does Faulkner develop the characters of Sarty and his father, Abner? How does the character development differ? How is it the same? • Sarty Snopes:

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o Faulkner’s narration follows Sarty, depicting his thoughts and internal state. He’s motivated by the conflict between his sense of morality and his family loyalty. o Sarty identifies with his father strongly “our enemy…ourn! mine and hisn both! He’s my father!” (par. 1), but even in the first scene Sarty is afflicted with “frantic grief and despair” (par. 7) when he realizes his father wants him to lie on his behalf. In contrast to his siblings, Sarty develops his own questioning stance towards his father, which culminates in his turning against Abner and escaping from the family. o The reflection of an older Sarty explains the futility of questioning his father’s authority or sense of rightness: “Later, twenty years later, he was to tell himself, ‘If I had said they only wanted truth, justice, he would have hit me again’” (par. 28). o An example of the “fierce pull of blood” (par. 1) is Sarty’s outburst of loyalty for his father in which he “came and stood against his father and cried at the Justice: ‘He ain’t done it! He ain’t burnt . . .’” (par. 70). o Faulkner develops Sarty’s thoughts on the nature of choice and choosing one’s family: “this the old habit, the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which had run for so long (and who knew where, battening on what of outrage and savagery and lust) before it came to him” (par. 88). o Sarty is shown to be determined: . “He would be stronger in the end, he knew that” (par. 97). . “He did not look back” (par. 108). • Abner Snopes: o In all of Abner’s actions, a steely, iron-like composure masks a deep sense of unrest and ferocious rage. o Abner associates fire with self-preservation: “the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father’s being…as the one weapon for the preservation of integrity” (par. 26). o Abner’s actions are measured and deliberate: “his voice cold and harsh, level without emphasis” (par. 13); “absolutely undeviating course” (par. 40). o Abner’s personality is a mixture of stubborn independence and fierce conviction in his own righteousness, and he is prone to jealous rage: . “his wolflike independence and even courage when the advantage was at least neutral which impressed strangers, as if they got from his latent ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest lay with his” (par. 25). . “that ravening and jealous rage” (par. 40). o Abner’s personal history working as a “professional horse-trader” (par. 82) and the image of him “gazing rapt and quiet at the scarlet horses” (par. 82) later manifests as “formal and burlesque…ceremonial violence” (par. 84) in burning Major de Spain’s barn. • Differences: o At Major de Spain’s house, Sarty feels a “surge of a peace and joy” (par. 40),while his father reacts with “ravening and jealous rage” (par. 40).

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o Abner’s fatalistic and “absolutely undeviating course” (par. 40) contrasts with Sarty’s decision to turn against Abner, against “the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself” (par. 88). • Similarities: o They share physical similarities, as Sarty is “small for his age, small and wiry like his father” (par. 7). o Both Sarty and Abner also share a strong sense of loyalty (which Sarty struggles against and will eventually turn away from).

4. Why do you think Abner Snopes feels he can walk into Major de Spain’s house even though de Spain’s servant and wife have told him not to (pars. 41-44)? What does that attitude tell us about his background? • By stepping on the rug with “machinelike deliberation” (par. 42), Abner is sending a message to his new employer that he is owned by no man. His attitude is a show of defiance and an exhibition of his “wolflike independence” (par. 25). • It’s possible to assume that Abner’s contempt for his employer and employer’s wealth stems from a lifetime of hardship, poverty, and violence. As a method of surviving and a reaction to being ostracized by society, Abner developed a fierce independence and willingness to use violent methods to maintain his sense of integrity.

5. What is the central conflict in “Barn Burning”? What are the secondary conflicts? • The central conflict is between Sarty and his father. As Sarty grows into his own independence and discovers what it means to be a man with integrity, he comes into conflict with the loyalty his father expects of him. • Secondary conflicts: o Abner and Mr. Harris: “‘Wood and hay kin burn.’ That night my barn burned. I got the stock out but I lost the barn” (par. 3). o Abner and Major de Spain: “‘I reckon I’ll have a word with the man that aims to begin tomorrow owning me body and soul for the next eight months’” (par. 38); “‘You must realize you have ruined that rug…. It cost a hundred dollars. But you never had a hundred dollars. You never will’” (par. 62). o Abner and society: “‘I don’t figure to stay in a country among people who…’ he said something unprintable and vile, addressed to no one” (par. 13); “as he passed a voice hissed: ‘Barn burner!’” (pars. 15-16). o Abner and his wife: “[H]e saw his mother come to the door once and look toward them with an expression not anxious now but very like despair...and this time his mother actually spoke: ‘Abner. Abner. Please don’t. Please, Abner’” (par. 53).

6. In what ways can “Barn Burning” be considered a coming-of-age story? • The story marks the passage from childhood to adulthood: o “Barn Burning” tracks Sarty’s initial loyalty to, conflict with, and eventual separation from his family, particularly his father. o In the first scene Sarty sees his father’s enemy as his own—“ourn! mine and hisn both! He’s my father!” (par. 1)—but by the time Sarty escapes from his family and warns de Spain about the barn, Sarty has matured enough to develop his own sense of what is right and wrong as separate from his father's.

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7. Why do you think Faulkner made the decision not to identify the victims of the gunshots at the end of the story? Who do you think is shot? • Why the victims are not identified: o The climax of the story is not the conflict between de Spain and Abner Snopes, or even the actual burning of the barn, but rather Sarty’s escape and his decision to warn de Spain about his father’s intent. o In the limited third-person point of view, the narrator shares what Sarty sees, hears, smells and thinks. Because the scene is written from Sarty’s point of view, the narration is focused on what Sarty can know: “running again, knowing it was too late yet still running even after he heard the shot and, an instant later, two shots, pausing now without knowing he had ceased to run, crying ‘Pap! Pap!’, running again before he knew he had begun to run” (par. 104). • Who is shot: o Either Abner Snopes, or Major de Spain, or both. It’s also possible that de Spain shot some of his horses if they were fatally wounded in the fire.

8. Both Abner Snopes and Sarty’s older brothers show up in later works by Faulkner, while Sarty does not. Does knowing that change your view of “Barn Burning”? Why do you think Faulkner might not have wanted to reprise young Sarty? • Some students may be surprised by Sarty’s absence in later works, comparing him to a TV character that gets written out of a show unexpectedly. • Reasons for not reprising Sarty could be that Faulkner tired of the character or at least felt that he had taken Sarty as far as he was willing to go. • An argument could also be made that by limiting Sarty’s appearance to one story, Faulkner made Sarty more memorable. • It’s possible to interpret Sarty’s disappearance as his liberation from his father’s influence. Students familiar with other Faulkner stories or novels may remember them as bleak, and feel that Sarty’s escape from that world gives an unexpected cause for optimism. • Other students may make the argument that Sarty’s absence in later works is coincidental, bearing no meaning on the significance of “Barn Burning.”

9. Why is the burning of a barn so fraught with meaning? What do you think it means to Abner Snopes? To his neighbors and family? • In the rural, agriculture-based economy of Yoknapatawpha County, the barn is a symbol of security and livelihood, and an important resource for a farming family. When a barn burns, livestock, feed, and equipment are endangered. • For Abner, burning someone’s barn is a way of showing power or domination when he feels threatened. Fire, specifically barn burning, which he knows can damage a family’s well-being, becomes Abner’s method of expressing his rage against society. • The packed courthouse scenes and the bystander hissing,“‘Barn burner!’” (par. 16) show how frowned upon burning someone’s barn is. Given the economic dependence on farming, the neighbors most likely feel threatened by the presence of someone as unhinged as Abner. • Abner’s obsession with burning his enemies’ barns creates tense relations within the Snopes family. On the one hand, they don’t want to challenge Abner, but know that his actions affect them all in profound ways, causing them to live an itinerant, impoverished life. 637 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

EXPLORING THE TEXT W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (pp. 1169-70)

1. What does the title remind you of? How is it allusive? How is it a play on words? Explain whether or not it has personal meaning for you. What might it have meant in W. H. Auden’s time? • The title is an allusion to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and may remind students of monuments like it or of war veterans in general. • The “Unknown Citizen” plays with the irony of a bureaucratic state that knows a great deal about the cold facts of an individual’s life and nothing of his personal history, personality, or even his name. • If students have personal experiences with veterans or come from a military background, this poem may have significant personal meaning for them. Challenge students who do not come from such a background to imagine what it might feel like to be identified only as a number with no personal identity. • Many students will be able to identify with the experience of being judged based solely on an official record. Conversations with guidance counselors who are only familiar with academic records can be frustrating. Students who have experience with public assistance, like Medicaid or S.N.A.P., or with applying for student loans, may have noted a disconnect between what official data says about them and their families and what they know to be true. • In the late 1930s, on the cusp of a second world war, this poem would have tapped into an anxiety for mass warfare and disillusionment with the American dream.

2. What is the effect of the rhyme in “The Unknown Citizen”? • The end rhyme in the poem creates a mocking irony that undercuts the formal, imperious tone of the speaker’s municipal reporting. o “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: / Had anything been wrong we should certainly have heard” (ll. 28-29).

3. Note the list of possessions in line 21: “A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.” What would that list consist of if the poem were written today? • These are consumer goods that have come to seem “necessary,” but students will recognize that they are not essential to survival. Many of today’s electronics are similarly “necessary to the “Modern Man” (l. 20): o Electronics such as smartphones, computers, tablets or laptops, or video game consoles. o The Internet, social media, and email. • An argument could also be made that some of the items in the poem—such as a car, radio, and refrigerator—still apply today.

4. What do you think Auden means in line 27: “And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education”? • Students could interpret this line a number of ways. It could mean that: o The citizen never asked questions in class. o The citizen never questioned the authority of his teachers while he was in school. o As a parent, the citizen did not help his children with their lessons or homework. 638 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

o The citizen in the education system, as in all other aspects of his life, conformed to the norms and trusted in the State. • The crucial phrase is “never interfered,” which has a negative connotation and implies passive nonaction with regard to one’s education. Auden thus implies that action, questioning, participation, and criticism are healthy for an education system, but are also disruptive in a system designed to pacify and control.

5. What argument does “The Unknown Citizen” make on the subject of citizenship? How does Auden support his claim? • As a recent immigrant to the United States, Auden would have been keenly aware of the different kinds of citizenship that exist. In this poem he argues against the kind of citizenship that unquestioningly conforms and blindly follows state policy with regard to war, labor, education, consumption, and public opinion. o “no official complaint, / And all the reports on his conduct agree / That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint” (ll. 2-4). o “he bought a paper every day / And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way” (ll. 14-15). o “he held the proper opinions for the time of year; / When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went” (ll. 23-24).

6. This poem is considered satirical. What are the targets of the satire? • Auden is satirizing state bureaucracies, conformists, even the idea of the “Modern Man” (l. 20). • The speaker of the poem is from an imaginary bureaucratic office that relates the reports on the citizen from various departments within the organization. o Auden uses capitalization to underscore the purported self-importance of each facet of the organization, such as the “Producers Research and High-Grade Living” (l. 18) and the “Greater Community” (l. 5).

EXPLORING THE TEXT Richard Wright, The Man Who Was Almost a Man (pp. 1170-80)

1. What do you think Richard Wright’s purpose is in this story? • Wright’s purpose might be to examine the misconceptions young African American men might have regarding what constitutes manliness and being a man: o Dave equates being a man with physical empowerment, pride, and the ability to demand respect from others. • Wright’s purpose may also be to dramatize the insecurities experienced by adolescent African American males that contribute to an exaggerated need to prove their worth through a flawed definition of manhood: o Dave lives in a culture where white men control access to money and power. Their response to Dave’s attempts to express his emerging manhood is mockery or suspicion: . Dave has to plead with Joe to loan him the Sears catalog, and Joe’s possession of a gun to sell identifies him as a source of power and control. After Dave expresses pride that his mother allows him to control his own money, Wright writes that Joe “laughed and wiped his greasy white face with a red bandana” (par. 11). 639 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

. When Dave arrives at the Hawkins plantation early, Wright writes that “Jim Hawkins stood eyeing him suspiciously” (par. 119). o Dave’s own parents attempt to keep him in a condition of dependence. One might attribute this to their own knowledge of the economic power structure on which they are also dependent. o Dave doesn’t control his own labor and compensation—his mother receives his wages herself and controls his use of them, and Jim Hawkins owns the mule, the plow, and the land that Dave works—a situation that Wright, as a member of the Communist Party, might see in Marxist terms as a source of alienation.

2. What is the point of view in “The Man Who Was Almost a Man”? How does it help Wright achieve his purpose? • Wright keeps the reader tightly within Dave’s point of view throughout the tale, enabling the reader to identify with Dave’s yearnings and frustrations: o “One of these days he was going to get a gun and practice shooting, then they couldn’t talk to him as though he was a little boy” (par. 1). o “His eyes glowed at the blue-and-black revolvers. He glanced up, feeling sudden guilt. His father was watching him” (par. 61). • Our location in Dave’s perspective increases suspense as the reader sees Dave’s thoughts move toward increasingly problematic decisions: o “Lawd, ef Ah had just one mo bullet Ah’d taka shot at tha house. Ah’d like t scare ol man Hawkins jusa little . . . ” (par. 219). • Immersion in Dave’s point of view also emphasizes the irony of Dave’s perception of his failure to become a man. As his behavior becomes increasingly dominated by the dictates of others, Dave’s repeated assertion that he is “almost a man” (pars. 1, 10, 98, 209, 211) become darkly ironic. • There are moments when Wright’s narrative jumps into a limited third-person perspective: o At the end of the story Wright writes, “Ahead the long rails were glinting in the moonlight, stretching away, away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man . . .” (par. 211). By suggesting Dave’s quest to become a man is ongoing from the more distant perspective of the narrator, Wright could be implying several tragic possibilities: . That Dave will never become a man, because of his race or economic class. . That Dave can only become a man by leaving behind everything he knows. . That Dave will become a man, but only after doing something violent with his gun, at which point his life will certainly change for the worse. . That Dave has already become a man—perhaps by not using violence against Hawkins—but doesn't realize it.

3. Why do you think Wright chose to use dialect for Dave’s inner monologue and for the story’s dialogue? What are the effects of that choice? • Wright’s dialect enables the reader to enter Dave’s mind more authentically by showing Dave’s thoughts in the language in which he thinks them: o Wright uses dialect to emphasize Dave's juvenile mindset—“Mebbe Ma will lemme buy one when she gits mah pay from ol man Hawkins…. Ahma beg her

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to gimme some money…. Ahm ol enough to hava gun…. Ahm seventeen… .Almost a man” (par. 1)—accentuating his quest for manhood. o We see the same parallel between his childlike dependence on his mother and his simplistic expression of his desire for manhood in the dialogue between he and his mother: . “Lawd, chil, whut’s wrong wid yuh?” his mother asks. In response, Dave says, “Ain’ nothing wrong, Ma. Ahm almos a man now. Ah wans a gun” (pars. 97-99). • Dialect also enables Wright to distinguish between the voices of African Americans who are dependent on whites for their livelihoods and their empowerment, and the voices of the whites who can provide or withhold that livelihood and empowerment. o The reader first encounters this illustration of power inequality in Dave’s exchange with Joe, present in both an African American dialect and a rural version of Standard English. o Differing dialects evoke an authentic sense of time and place while reflecting different levels of economic power in the exchange between Dave and Jim Hawkins after Dave shoots the mule.

4. The gun, of course, has a literal meaning in “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” but it also carries symbolic weight. What are some of the gun’s symbolic meanings? • The gun’s most important symbolic meaning is as a representation of male potency. While it is never developed explicitly as a phallic symbol, its connection with Dave’s emergence as an empowered man is central to its use throughout the story. o Dave identifies the gun with masculine empowerment in the first paragraph: “One of these days he was going to get a gun and practice shooting, then they couldn’t talk to him as though he were a little boy” (par. 1). o The gun’s association with adult masculinity is emphasized again when Dave’s mother decides that his father may need a gun but Dave doesn’t: “'Lawd knows yuh don need no gun. But yer pa does’” (par. 109). • When Dave acquires the gun, he ends his childlike dependence on his mother and enters, however ironically presented, into the world of adulthood. o At the end of the story, the fact that Dave equates his ability to fire the gun successfully to manliness is shown by his decision to leave his parents’ home in search of “somewhere where he could be a man” (par. 211). • The gun also plays a symbolic role in the power relationship between the two races: o In the exchange in Joe’s store, Joe’s ownership of a gun and his offer to sell it to Dave emphasizes Joe’s power and Dave’s impotence. o Later, Dave sees the gun as a kind of racial equalizer in this power relationship: “Could kill a man with a gun like this. Kill anybody, black or white. And if he were holding his gun in his hand, nobody could run over him. They would have to respect him” (par. 114). o Finally, once Dave teaches himself to fire the gun, he speculates on how the gun would change the power relationship between he and Jim Hawkins: “Lawd, ef Ah had just one mo bullet An’d taka shot at tha house. Ah’d like t scare ol man Hawkins jusa little.… Jusa enough t let im know Dave Saunders is a man” (par. 209).

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5. Look carefully at the paragraphs in which Dave is trying to get his mother to give him money to buy the gun (pars. 76-113). What qualities does he use to convince her? How does that scene develop or extend his characterization? • Dave’s effort to convince his mother to give him the money for the gun progresses through several levels: o First, he notes the low cost of the gun he plans to by: “Ah kin buy one fer two dollahs” (par. 82). o Then he appeals to her sense of justice by reminding her of an earlier promise. o Next he argues the practicality of having a gun in the house for the purpose of self-defense, which is when Ma begins to waiver in her resistance. When he says “‘We needa gun in the house. Yuh kin never tell whut might happen,’” she responds, “‘Ef we did hava gun, yuh wouldn’t have it!’” (pars. 88-89). o Dave then appeals to his mother’s love, telling her “Ah loves yuh, Ma” (par. 93), an argument that further weakens Ma’s resistance: “When she spoke her voice came soft and low” (par. 94). o Once her sees that his mother has all but succumbed to his entreaties, which act almost as a form of seduction, he lies to her by promising that he will bring the gun straight back to her to give to his father (pars. 104-107). • The quasi-sexual nature of this seduction is suggested first by his association of the gun with manhood, and second, by the fact that Ma “raised the hem of her dress, rolled down the top of her stocking, and came up with a slender wad of bills” (par. 109). o Through this process, Dave reveals a pleading childlike plaintiveness in his relationship with his mother along with a cunning knowledge of how to manipulate her emotions.

6. What is the effect on Dave when, near the end of the story, he fires the gun successfully? • Successfully firing the gun gives Dave a new feeling of empowerment, as seen in his fantasy about firing a bullet at Hawkins’ house “Jusa enough t let im know Dave Saunders is a man” (par. 209). • That sense of potency borders on the sexual with his near ecstasy at firing the gun until it was empty: “With effort he held his eyes open; then he squeezed. Blooooom! He was stiff, not breathing. The gun was in his hand. Dammit, he’d done it! He fired again. Blooooom! He smiled. Blooooom! Blooooom! Click, click. There! It was empty” (par. 208). • He also achieves a break with his dependence on his parents and the economic control that they and the white establishment have over him, as seen in his decision to hop a box car rather than let his father “t beat me tha way no mo” (par. 205) or work off his debt for shooting Hawkins’ mule.

7. What does it mean to Dave to be a man? What does it mean to you? Are there similarities? • To Dave, being a man means not being subject to the control or ridicule of others. Wright emphasizes this in several places: o In the opening paragraph, Dave asserts that he “ain scareda [the other workers in the field] even ef they are biggern me!” (par. 1). o His turning of the gun into a symbol of masculine power is captured in his keeping it under his pillow, from which he withdraws it to hold “loosely, feeling a sense of power” (par. 114).

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o His need to persuade his mother to give him the money for the gun and efforts “to avoid surrendering the pistol” to his father (par. 116) indicate that manhood for him involves the development of an identity separate from the control of his parents. o His sense of manhood is threatened by the crowd’s laughter: “Something hot seemed to turn over inside him each time he remembered how they had laughed,” as well as by his anticipation of his father’s beating: “They treat me like a mule, n then they beat me” (par. 205). o Dave’s version of manhood ultimately means leaving home to strike out on his own, as Wright observes in the final line: “Ahead the rails were glinting in the moonlight, stretching away, away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man . . .” (par. 211). • Some students might argue that some aspects of Dave’s definition of manhood apply to all young men on the verge of the transition from adolescence to adulthood, citing the importance of acquiring one’s own sense of self and empowerment, separate from dependence on one’s parents and the cultural institutions one is subject to as a youth. o Such students might also argue that Dave’s ultimate definition of manhood is the ability to move forward into the world independently and that this notion is relevant to all young men. • Some students might even argue that although Dave is a boy seeking manhood, this aspect of his experience would resonate among men and women as a definition of adulthood. • Other students might argue, however, that Dave defines his manhood very narrowly—in terms that involve physical power rather than emotional and intellectual development, or social and economic responsibility. Such students might argue that he has not yet learned to take responsibility for his own actions, which is a fundamental part of being a man.

8. Did you find this story funny? Explain you answer. • Some students might argue that the story is funny, citing scenes in which Wright allows the crowd to laugh at Dave’s misunderstandings: o Wright writes that “Somebody in the crowd laughed” (par. 178) after Dave explains how he accidentally shot the mule. o As Jim Hawkins drives home the irony that Dave has “done bought a dead mule,” his and the crowd’s laughter invite the reader to share their comic view of Dave’s folly (par. 179). • Other students will find the story deeply ironic, but not necessarily funny, citing Dave’s potential as a comic character lessened by the long, brutal history of racism and poverty to which he is subject, and which make his misunderstandings more tragic than comic. o Such students might also cite how the comedy of the story becomes more tragic as Dave moves from the accidental shooting the mule to a more purposeful pursuit of the power to kill that combines with his rage against those he sees as having kept him down: . His fantasy about shooting at “Jim Hawkins’ big white house” (par. 209), his resentment at his father’s beatings, and his “hot” anger” at how the crowd had laughed at him (par. 205) leave the reader with a sense of foreboding about Dave’s future. . The animalistic description of his digging up of the buried gun (“Like a hungry dog scratching for a bone, he pawed it up” [par. 208]) shows

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how his obsession with the empowerment offered by the gun has turned him into something subhuman and dangerous in a way that is anything but comic. . That Dave clings to the gun as the symbol of manhood as he hops the train in the last paragraph, headed “away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man” (par. 211) creates an ominous irony regarding how far Dave is from a responsible definition of manhood.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner (pp. 1180-81)

1. Who is the speaker in this poem? Describe him as well as you can. • The speaker in the poem is a dead soldier, a ball turret gunner, telling the story of his death in battle. • We are given little physical detail about him except Jarrell’s note that he would be “a short small man,” and the speaker’s own description of himself as “hunched” (l. 2). • The words “wet fur” (l. 2) imply that the speaker sees himself as more animal than human during the course of the poem.

2. Trace the verbs in “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” What kind of pattern do you see? Who is creating the action in each verb? How is the pattern related to the meaning of the poem? • The verbs in the poem are “fell” (l. 1), “hunched” (l. 2), “froze” (l. 2), “woke” (l. 4), “died” (l. 5), and “washed” (l. 5). These verbs carry the story of the poem. The pattern of verbs goes from the oblivion of sleep to waking and then very quickly to death, another kind of oblivion. • The speaker is creating the action in all but the last verb, but the actions are helpless, often passive ones: we don’t see him running, say, or fighting. We see him falling, hunched, in reaction to outside forces inflicted upon him. In the last line, after death has deprived him entirely of agency and further dehumanized his body, he has to be “washed…out of the turret with a hose” (l. 5). • The poem is about war rendering humans inhuman and helpless to violence. The pattern of the verbs shows, particularly, the speaker’s lack of agency within “the State” (l. 1).

3. What associations do you make with the word “State” (l. 1)? • One strong association with “State,” particularly when capitalized, is with the governing power of a country. o This association makes sense with the speaker’s description of falling “from my mother’s sleep…into the State” (l. 1). He has fallen from human intimacy into the power of a government that puts him in danger and eventually allows him to be killed. o The speaker portrays himself as in the “belly” (l. 2) of the State. The State is personified here as its own instrument of wartime destruction. • Another association with “State” is the idea of lying in state, a tradition in which the deceased is displayed in his or her coffin for viewing by friends and family. o As the poem is about his death and the unceremonious erasure of the physical evidence of his life (his body is “washed…out of the turret with a hose” [l. 5]),

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this association could either bring a level of irony to the work or be read as a measure of respect for the men who died gruesomely, far from home, in WWII.

4. How do the sounds of the words “black flak” (l. 4) function as onomatopoeia—the use of a word that refers to a sound and whose pronunciation mimics that sound? What is their effect? • “Flak” refers to anti-aircraft fire. The sound of the phrase “black flak” mimics the hard, sharp sounds of gunfire against metal. • The effect is to bring the reader closer to the speaker’s experience of danger and violence.

5. What argument does Randall Jarrell make in “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”? How does he support his claim? • Jarrell argues that the experience of war is dehumanizing in its violence. o Jarrell makes use of animal metaphors to make his point. The speaker falls from the loving, human intimacy of his “mother’s sleep” and becomes an inhabitant of “the State” (l. 1). The pain of this renders him animal: suddenly he has “wet fur” (l. 2) that freezes as he lies “hunched” (l. 2). o His distance from earth is emphasized: “Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life” (l. 3), he is alienated from the human experience. o The speaker’s body is helpless against the violence he encounters. In death, he must be “washed…out of the turret with a hose” (l. 5), a disturbing image of a body liquefied and unrecognizable as human. It is treated with an impersonal lack of dignity by an unnamed “they,” the washers.

EXPLORING THE TEXT Harry S Truman, Statement by the President of the United States (pp. 1181-84)

1. There were several audiences for this speech. Identify them and explain how Harry S Truman appeals to each of them in different sections of the speech. • He attempts to justify his actions to an audience of American people, the world— particularly Britain and the rest of Europe—and Japan. • All groups: o To all groups, Truman appeals to their sense of justice by establishing that the United States is not an aggressor: . “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor” (par. 2). . “Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war” (par. 9). . “we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world” (par. 4). • America: o To Americans, Truman appeals to their pride in American industry, emphasizing the grand scale of the achievement that the atomic bomb represents, as well as to their pride in American ingenuity: . “the growing power of our armed forces” (par. 2). . “harnessing the basic power of the universe” (par. 3).

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. “The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project” (par. 7). . “We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power…we have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history—and won” (par. 8). . “But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science…what has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history” (par. 8). . “The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man’s understanding of nature’s forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water” (par. 13). • Britain: o He appeals to Britain by acknowledging its role in the success of the atomic bomb and portraying it as integral: . “Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement” (par. 7). . “With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans” (par. 7). o He also appeals to logos to explain why the work of creating the bomb was done in the United States instead of in Britain: . “In the United States the laboratory work…would be out of the reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion” (par. 7). • Japan: o He appeals to Japan’s sense of self-preservation, simultaneously laying blame for the bomb at the feet of a few Japanese leaders: . “It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of fire from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” (par. 10)

2. How would you describe the style of Truman’s statement? • Truman begins by firmly and unambiguously announcing that “an American airplane dropped one bomb on [Hiroshima]” and identifies this as an “atomic bomb” (pars. 1, 3). • By frankly and polemically delineating the reasons for this decision, he justifies his choice. • He ends with a cautious tone, explaining that “under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction” (par. 15) to emphasize that he did not make this decision lightly.

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3. Truman’s speech focuses on several different subjects. Trace the path of his focus and analyze why you think he might have chosen the order he used. • He begins by announcing what happened, describing the bomb as the “largest…ever yet used in the history of warfare” (par. 1). • He continues by claiming that targeting Japan this way is defensible because they “began the war” (par. 2). o This is an appeal to logos because retribution is reasonable and because damaging the Hiroshima army base will “destroy its usefulness to the enemy” (par. 1) and therefore Japan has no real advantage in continuing to participate in the war. o This is also an appeal to pathos because many will remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor mournfully. • Next, he refers to the scientists (both American and British) who have worked unremittingly to surpass the German scientists who “were working feverishly to find a way” to do the same (par. 4); he also highlights the collaboration of Britain and America to reinforce the spirit of cooperation and to emphasize that the United Stated is not exclusively responsible for this weapon and, therefore, its production and use. o This is an appeal to logos because collaboration to outwit the Germans makes sense. o This is an appeal to pathos because people will be scared of what would have happened if Germany had “add[ed] atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world” (par. 4). • He goes on to praise the ingenuity and perseverance of the American scientists who made this possible (par. 9). o This appeal to pathos instills pride in American ingenuity for his American audience. • He clarifies his intentions for the future by explaining that “we are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have” (par. 9), but he also points out that he did offer an “ultimatum” that “their leaders promptly rejected” (par. 10). o He appeals to logos by highlighting the Japanese aggression that triggered threats of American retaliation. o He appeals to pathos by describing the kind of destruction that is to come: “they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth” (par. 10). o His mention of the ultimatum that would have spared Japan is also an appeal to pathos, as it establishes his consideration for the Japanese people. This is ostensibly more consideration for Japanese citizens than Japan’s own government has, since it allowed the first bomb to drop by rejecting the ultimatum and thereby inciting American attacks. • After voicing concern for the Japanese civilians, he returns to the topic of American civilians, pointing out his concern for those who have worked in factories building these weapons (par. 12). o This, too, appeals to logos and to pathos: it’s logical to keep your workforce safe to continue working, and thoughts of workplace injury or fatality would doubtless elicit an emotional response from his audience.

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• He concludes by expanding to a discussion of the safety of all Americans, indeed of all citizens of the world, promising that he will not allow this information to be disseminated indiscriminately despite its potential as a “future supplement” to “the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water” (par. 13). Instead, he pledges to work with Congress to determine “how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace” (par. 16). o By ending with a reference to peace, Truman primarily concludes with an appeal to pathos, but determining a way to use this power for good, in the context of both energy and weaponry, is also an appeal to logos. • As U.S. president, Truman’s entire speech rests on his own ethos as a leader who is capable of making these kinds of decisions. He also invokes Great Britain, Winston Churchill, and Congress to bolster this position.

4. What type of sentence dominates Truman’s statement? What is its effect? • Most of Truman’s sentences are declarative sentences. These help to eliminate any room for doubt. For example: o “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on [Hiroshima] and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy” (par. 1). • Many of these declarative sentences are cumulative sentences, in which an independent clause is followed by a series of dependent clauses. Because this delivers the important information first, then offers details, exposition, context, or conditions second, Truman implicitly suggests his actions are primary and his reasons are subordinate.

5. Look carefully at the adjectives Truman uses. What do they have in common? Why might they have been chosen? • Of the approximately 70 adjectives Truman uses, fewer than 15 are evaluative adjectives, or adjectives in which he inserts his opinion or judgment. Some examples: o “priceless helps” (par. 6); “tremendous industrial” (par. 7); “amazingly short time” (par. 9). • The bulk of his adjectives (approximately 80 percent) are descriptive adjectives, those that depict an incontrovertible attribute of that noun. Some examples: o “one bomb” (par. 1); “atomic bomb” (par. 3); “limited quantities” (par. 4); “financial resources” (par. 7); “physical shape” (par. 9); “military applications” (par. 15). • By relying more on objective than subjective adjectives, Truman bolsters his decision to drop the atomic bomb.

6. Do you think the speech inspires confidence? How might a speech on a similar topic be different today? Or would it? • Some students may argue that yes, the speech inspires confidence: o Truman has worked closely with American and British scientists; he has consulted with Winston Churchill; the Japanese began the war; he intends to keep workers safe; he plans to keep this dangerous information secret. • Others may argue that the speech does not inspire confidence: o The terrible power of the atomic bomb could bring about nuclear annihilation if it falls into the wrong hands, the very hands he alludes to when he talks about Germany, Japan, and other countries, which might in the future create the need

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for “protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction” (par. 15). • Student answers will vary regarding how a speech on a similar topic might be different today. Encourage them to research recent speeches from more modern presidents (George W. Bush or Barack Obama, for instance) that contain justifications for American action and retaliation based on the aggressive and destructive actions of others.

7. There has always been tremendous debate about the use of the atomic bomb to bring World War II to an end, but Truman defended it and claimed to have no regrets about the decision, for which he took full responsibility. What qualities in this statement show his resolve? Do you sense any second-guessing or defensiveness? Explain your answer. • Qualities that show Truman’s resolve: o His strong adjectives, his many attempts to justify his actions, his pointed scientific collaboration with Britain, and his emphasis of German and Japanese aggression all point to Truman’s firm resolve in his decision to drop the bomb. • Qualities that show second-guessing: o At the speech’s conclusion, he highlights the destructive nature of this new technology, admitting that it could cause the “sudden destruction” of the world (par. 15), so he is indisputably aware of the potential Pandora’s box he may have opened—he admits as much when he explains that he does not intend to release this information even though “it has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this Government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge” (par. 14).

EXPLORING THE TEXT Jonathan Schell, from The Fate of the Earth (pp. 1184-87)

1. How does Jonathan Schell maintain a measured and reasonable tone when the subject is the possibility of the destruction of life on earth? Why do you think he does this? • Despite the potential for an emotional response to the thought of a nuclear holocaust, Schell speaks rather objectively, employing Aristotelian logic in his deductive argument with a series of premises and inferences, which are followed by his conclusion: that “all the complexity [of the world] will give way to the utmost simplicity—the simplicity of nothingness. We—the human race—shall cease to exist” (par. 2). • He does this to appeal to logos rather than to pathos, both to suggest that his well- reasoned argument is one that we should take seriously and to prevent the reader’s emotional response to the prospect of extinction from interfering with comprehending the argument.

2. How does Schell appeal to logos in this excerpt? • Schell crafts his argument by including logical components such as premises, and inferences. o One of his premises is the assumption that atomic bombs are catastrophically dangerous: . “we know that a holocaust may not occur at all” (par. 1). . “we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust” (par. 1). . “it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every 649 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction” (par. 1 ). . “We are in deep ignorance” (par. 1). o An inference is a process of reasoning in which a new belief is created based on proof supposedly provided by other beliefs. One inference Schell makes is that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused massive destruction (belief #1), so in the wrong hands, atomic power could obliterate humanity (belief #2)— therefore, we must keep atomic power out of the wrong hands (inference). Other examples of inferences include: . Example: • Belief #1: “These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be extinguished in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is unlikely” (par. 1). • Belief #2: “yet at the same time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust” (par. 1). • Inference: “we are left with uncertainty, and are forced to make our decisions in a state of uncertainty” (par. 1). . Example: • Belief #1: “To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite” (par. 1). • Belief #2: “and a fraction of infinity is still infinity” (par. 1). • Inference: “In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble” (par. 1).

3. Who do you think is the audience for this piece? How can you tell? • Schell attempts to persuade all people—particularly those who think that nuclear power in responsible hands is not a threat—that, over an infinite period of time, even a small chance that we may face nuclear annihilation becomes a very great chance that we will. He wants to persuade the world that “we—the human race—shall cease to be” (par. 2) unless we “act without delay to withdraw the threat we now pose to the earth and to ourselves” (par. 2). • In particular, he wants to convince people who think that we have a very small chance of annihilation—those for whom such reasoning will “calm our fear and reduce our sense of urgency” (par. 1)—as well as those who do admit that there “may be a holocaust” and that it “may be severe,” of the fact the consequences are certain and grave: “that the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished” (par. 1). By emphasizing the word “may,” he appeals to those who are not yet as certain as he is that nuclear programs must be unequivocally disbanded and their weapons dismantled.

4. Consider the way Schell uses “we” and “I.” Do you see a pattern? Why might he have switched from one to the other? • Schell uses “we” throughout almost all of his essay to include himself and everyone else in the category of those who are aware of nuclear power, those who are threatened by it, and those who should do something about it. • He uses “I” in the second paragraph to emphasize that as an individual man, he has written this argument to “describe the possible consequences of a nuclear holocaust” to 650 CHAPTER 9 SUGGESTED RESPONSES

his audience to explain the “limitless complexity of its effects on human society and on the ecosphere” and the resulting extinction if these weapons are not eliminated. • His use of “we” emphasizes that all of humanity, himself included, will be subject to the consequences of failure to heed his argument against nuclear weapons: extinction—this is an appeal to pathos that both makes Schell more relatable and allows readers to imagine a nuclear holocaust with more immediacy than they otherwise might had Schell used “I” throughout. • Schell’s use of “I” often comes in at times when he needs to distinguish himself from his audience in order to establish his ethos as an expert on the subject of nuclear power and the threat it poses to humanity.

5. Analyze the sentence that ends the first paragraph of this excerpt. How does it deliver its impact? Do you find it convincing? Explain your answer. • He uses a conditional argument in this sentence. It is a variant on syllogism. Schell’s argument is that if one thing is true, then the next thing must be true, and that if that is true, then the next thing must be true as well, and so on. If all of the premises in this sentence are true, then he concludes that we should “withdraw the threat we now pose to the earth and to ourselves” (par. 1). • It sounds convincing, but really there are no reasons for one premise to prove the next. It is a series of conditional statements, each of which does not necessarily cause the next one in the list, though he implies that they do. This is a form of slippery slope logic: a conclusion is reached based on the premise that if one thing happens, then ultimately through a succession of other steps, all of the other premises will happen as well, implying that the first premise leads to the conclusion.

TALKBACK: MAKING CONNECTIONS

1. Compare and contrast the ways that Harry S. Truman (p. 1181) and Jonathan Schell (p. 1184) design their arguments. Are any common to both writers? What are the differences? How do the differences serve the purpose of each document? • Similarities: o Both Truman and Schell conclude with the warning that nuclear weapons are dangerous and should not fall into the wrong hands. Schell goes a step further and posits that they will eventually fall into the wrong hands: . Truman: “It has never been the policy…to withhold from the world scientific knowledge” (par. 14), but he will not release information about the “technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction” (par. 15). . Schell: These weapons may “lead to human extinction” and all people will “cease to be” (par. 2). o Both Truman and Schell invoke incontrovertible facts about nuclear power to emphasize the scale of destruction it could cause: . Truman: the “bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T.” (par. 1). . Schell: “It is clear that at present” there are “some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive in existence” (par. 1).

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• Differences: o Truman and Schell each have a different focus in their arguments. While Truman focuses on a specific atomic bomb and the circumstances that led to its creation and deployment, Schell focuses on the destructive potential of nuclear power in general. o Each is appealing to a different audience. While Truman appeals to specific groups of people—the Americans, the British, Europeans in general, and the Japanese people in particular—Schell is appealing to all of humanity. o The style of each man’s argument is different. While Truman describes specific events and people, Schell is more general and writes about hypothetical scenarios. o The context of each argument is different. . Truman gives the context for using an atomic bomb and then tries to justify American actions by claiming that the Japanese started the war (par. 2), that dropping the bomb helped destroy Japan’s ability to fight (pars. 1, 9), and that the Germans were close to making one(and had they been successful, they would have “enslaved the world” [par. 4]). . Schell gives neither context nor justification; instead, he simply depicts the annihilation of the human species that will occur in the wake of nuclear war (pars. 1, 2). o The two arguments also rely primarily on different appeals. While Truman appeals to both logos and pathos, Schell appeals primarily to logos. • How the differences serve the authors’ purposes: o Truman attempts to defend his decision to release a bomb on Japan and justify his plans to drop a second one in the near future. He attempts to make his cause seem right. o Schell, on the other hand, sees no justification for nuclear weapons of any kind, calling for a universal disbanding of nuclear capabilities. He sees the right cause only as one that abandons this kind of weapon, not as the side that only uses them when they are truly warranted.

2. Schell continues to be an ardent campaigner against nuclear weapons. He is a columnist and teacher and mentions Truman in nearly everything he writes, both for Truman’s role in the dropping of atomic bombs to end World War II and for his role in trying to ban nuclear weapons worldwide. Imagine a conversation between the two men. On what grounds might they agree? On what issues would they differ? • Both men know nuclear weapons are dangerous and would agree that they have the potential to destroy life on earth. o Truman understands that if the Germans (or any other unscrupulous party) were to have nuclear capabilities, they could use it to destroy the world: . “We knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world…we may be grateful to Providence that…they did not get the atomic bomb at all” (par. 4). o Schell believes that there is no way to make sure that this technology does not fall into the wrong hands; indeed all hands are the wrong hands: . “To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite,

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and a fraction of infinity is still infinity…once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance” (par. 1). • The two men differ regarding their perception of whose job it is to protect humanity from nuclear danger. o Truman trusts himself, Congress, and the scientists as keepers of this knowledge; even the workers don’t know what they’re making. Presumably, at the time of this speech Truman thinks that as long as atomic energy does not fall into the wrong hands, it’s ok: . He acknowledges the need to safeguard “us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction” (par. 15) and decides to “withhold from the world scientific knowledge” of how to manufacture atomic weapons (par. 14). o Schell, however, does not trust anyone to keep this knowledge safe for eternity: . “At just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand…is not precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction” (par. 1).

3. During the Korean War, a war that was, according to Schell, “long, wearying, poorly understood, and publicly disliked,” Harry S Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, who had proposed using nuclear weapons. MacArthur had announced, “There can be no substitute for victory.” How does this action square with the Truman who released the statement regarding having used an atomic weapon on Japan? Do you think this theme of what Schell calls “thwarted U.S. greatness” still resonates? Explain your answer. • In his speech about Hiroshima, Truman seems to agree with MacArthur: victory is paramount, particularly in terms of stopping Japan and creating these weapons before Germany does. • Truman may have resisted using nuclear weapons later, in Korea, because: o He did not view it as the same kind of direct threat to the United States that Japan was, or he may not have feared its scientists the way he feared the capabilities of those in Germany. o More likely, however, is that after seeing the destruction on the two cities and their human and environmental fallout, as well as witnessing the inception of what would become the Cold War and a nuclear arms race, he changed his mind. Perhaps by this time Truman was not as ready to detonate a weapon of this kind. He may, like Schell, have come to believe that “in the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would probably occur” and did not want the “end to our species” that Schell predicts will eventually happen (Schell, par. 1).

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CONVERSATIONS

CONVERSATION THE INFLUENCE OF JAZZ When we first considered possible topics for Conversations, we knew that we would have something music related. We thought about the blues, about rock and roll, even about American folk music. In the end, though, it was jazz—arguably the most important musical movement in American history. Because its history is so rich and its effect on our culture so ubiquitous, we spent some time narrowing the focus of this particular cluster of texts so that it would be manageable in a classroom. We thought about jazz and race, women in jazz, jazz and the blues—all worthwhile subjects with a vast array of sources to draw from. Finally, we settled on the influence of jazz on other artistic and literary movements—including fiction, poetry, and fine art. We suggest, therefore, that as you use this Conversation, you consider other possibilities for studying America’s musical tradition; the pieces here stand on their own as a synthesis cluster, but they can also inspire you to move toward the other aspects of jazz mentioned here as well as to the legacies of other American musical genres. First and foremost, however, listen to the music—this vital experience will bring these texts to life for your students. We offer a “recommended listening” list that’s a great start. You may very well have students who are talented and dedicated jazz musicians themselves—you may want to ask them for their suggestions. You could also reach out to local professional musicians. Another good idea, if you’re in or near a big city, is to find out about the jazz education programs offered by your city’s jazz bands. Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, for example, has a wonderful outreach program that sends combos into schools to play and talk about jazz. Another suggestion is to challenge your students to find jazz—in movie scores, in restaurants, in television commercials—and report on how it is used and to what effect. As interesting as it will be to see how your students feel about the music, asking them to interview their parents, grandparents, and/or extended family about their personal experience of jazz will yield even better results. If students need some guidance with where to begin, they can start by finding out if jazz was something their parents grew up with as part of their cultural backdrop, or whether their grandparents approved of it, danced to it, or were forbidden to listen to it. You could follow up this interview with a short writing assignment, either in-class or as homework, in which students describe their interviewee’s attitude toward jazz and support that description with evidence from the interview. You could also have your students discuss their own attitudes toward jazz—see if they consider it old-fashioned (and if so, why) or if they are rediscovering it as they expand and refine their musical tastes, and consider it cool enough to withstand the test of time. You will notice that this Conversation is not strictly chronological. We begin with Gerald Early’s piece to provide students a basic historical and cultural framework, and then offer Robert O’Meally’s analysis of jazz’s three definitive aspects: rhythm, improvisation, and call and response. These two pieces provide context for the works that follow—including fine art, poetry, short fiction, and an excerpt from a novel. This structure offers a good opportunity for practicing for the synthesis essay on the AP exam. Students can write about how jazz influences fiction and art, for instance, or they can write about how jazz has influenced American culture—and vice versa. They may be interested in exploring whether, as poet Kevin Young suggests, jazz reflects the anxiety of modernism. They can certainly take the writing further, examining jazz as it compares to hip hop and rap, or the ways it mirrors America’s issues of race. Writing about music is, as we know, very difficult, but students are often willing to try, especially if they are fans of a particular musician or genre or if they play themselves. This might be a good time to introduce them to the writing of contemporary music critics such as Sasha Frere-Jones, Kelefa Sanneh, David Hajdu, Nate Chinen, Caryn Ganz, and Jace Clayton, as well as some of the older music critics such as Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, Harold C. Schonberg, Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, and Lester Bangs. Lee Frank’s March 17, 2010, article on Flavorwire titled “The Followables” (flavorwire.com) suggests ten contemporary music critics you can follow on Twitter. Ted Gioia’s March 18, 2014, piece in The Daily 654 CHAPTER 9 CONVERSATIONS

Beast titled “Music Criticism Has Degenerated into Lifestyle Reporting” provides an interesting take on the state of music criticism today. Once again, though, we stress that it’s important to start with the music. Make your students an old-fashioned mix tape or get them to do it. Online services such as Grooveshark and Spotify make this process easy and fast. Put together a playlist and take the time to listen, analyze, and—most important— enjoy!

CONVERSATION JAPANESE INTERNMENT AND REPARATIONS: MAKING IT RIGHT? This Conversation can go in any number of directions, with detours along the way. Starting with the opening chapter of Julie Otsuka’s award-winning novel When the Emperor Was Divine brings students right into the emotional reality of Japanese internment. The heart-wrenching scene where the woman kills the family dog, while certainly disturbing, dramatizes the desperation of a mother who has only a brief time to pack up her son and daughter and the few belongings she is allowed and then board a train to who- knows-where and for who-knows-how-long. The accompanying texts—including President Roosevelt’s Executive Order No. 9066, the official Evacuation Order, Dorothea Lang’s photograph, and the Letter of Apology issued by President George H. W. Bush—provide context for students who are unfamiliar with the historical events reflected in Otsuka’s novel. From there, the Conversation shifts, beginning with the law review article by Eric K. Yamamoto discussing monetary reparations, which lays the groundwork for students to analyze the multiple perspectives on reparations for the descendants of slaves that close out this cluster of texts. Some resources you may wish to bring into your discussion of Otsuka’s first chapter include the PBS documentary Children of the Camps, which offers even more detail about Japanese internment; the accompanying Webs site has a number of additional resources (pbs.org/childofcamp). On October 15, 2012, Newsweek published an article by Julie Otsuka titled “My Family’s Wartime Years in the Utah Internment Camp” that explains the personal experience she drew on to write When the Emperor Was Divine. On August 21, 2011, The Atlantic (theatlantic.com) published an extensive series of photographs titled “World War II: The Internment of Japanese Americans” that are intriguing both as visual images and historical artifacts. Additionally, densho.org is an excellent and important resource to explore, because it represents the Japanese American perspective. According to the site, “Densho” means “to pass on to the next generation” or to leave a legacy, and it raises a host of still-controversial issues, including the very term “internment”: The commonly used term “internment” is misleading when describing the concentration camps that held 120,000 people of Japanese descent during the war. “Internment” refers to the legally permissible detention of enemy aliens in time of war. It is problematic when applied to American citizens; yet two-thirds of the Japanese Americans incarcerated were U.S. citizens. Although “internment” is a recognized and generally used term, Densho prefers “incarceration” as more accurate…. Densho, a nonprofit organization begun in 1996, states the hope that their resources will “stimulate critical thinking,” help readers “develop ethical decision-making skills,” and “help ensure that democratic principles are upheld now and in the future.” The modifier “now and in the future” may explain, to some degree, the enormous popularity of When the Emperor Was Divine as both a community and campus read during the last decade, especially given the rise of racial profiling of Arab Americans post- September 11. Don’t be surprised if students reading this novel or studying the period ask, “Could this ever happen again?”—quite a teachable moment! In 2004, conservative political commentator Michelle Malkin published In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror where, in the very first chapter, she makes the case that the title suggests:

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This book defends both the evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast (the so-called ‘Japanese American internment’), as well as the internment of enemy aliens, Japanese and non-Japanese alike, during World War II.… My aim is to provoke a debate on a sacrosanct subject that has remained undebatable for far too long. Malkin argues spiritedly that establishing the internment camps during a time of war was morally and politically sound and, further, that doing the same again (with another ethnic or religious group) if the need arises would be equally so. We did not include her work in this Conversation because scholars have questioned the credibility of both her research methods and her conclusions, yet her ideas are certainly provocative. Entering into debate with her position gives students the opportunity to learn more, consider the ethical implications of the responsibility to preserve a democratic state, etc. Many historians have criticized her work, including Eric Muller, whose September 7, 2004, rebuttal on the George Mason University History Network (hnn.us), “So Let Me Get This Straight: Michelle Malkin Claims to Have Rewritten the History of Japanese Internment in Just 16 Months?” provides a terse counterargument. Another perspective, also contrary to Malkin’s, is a November 5, 2002, article by Angela Davis, a law professor at the American University Washington College of Law, available at the Brennan Center for Justice site (brennancenter.org). In it, Davis argues that “focusing on Arab Americans and/or Muslims is not the most effective way to fight terrorism.” Analyzing several different viewpoints that are related to or derived from Japanese internment puts students right into the fray, giving them the opportunity for both academic and personal growth. The law review article by Eric K. Yamamoto in this Conversation provides a transition to a larger discussion of monetary reparations, which is essentially an argument by analogy. Beginning on p. 1231, he explains the background to the issue and explores both sides of the argument—that is, reparations as dangerous as well as “transformative” (par. 13). He then considers reparations’ potential to change the systemic injustice within social institutions that have historically contributed to the oppression of minorities, such as education or housing. Although Yamamoto’s legal discourse, high-level vocabulary, and plethora of footnotes may make this a difficult read for students, the argument is rich enough to reward the effort. His article sets the stage for the multiple perspectives of African Americans Brent Staples, Charles Ogletree, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the subject of reparations. One piece you may wish to bring into your discussion of African American reparations is “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which appeared on May 21, 2014, in The Atlantic (theatlantic.com). Though the piece is long, it is rewarding, and reading even one of its ten discrete sections would make a significant contribution to class discussion of the issue. Coates also has an article titled “The Case for Reparations: An Intellectual Autopsy,” published in The Atlantic on May 22, 2014, in which he discusses how, over the course of four years, he went from opposing reparations to being one of its champions. Finally, Coates published a narrative bibliography about “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic on June 23, 2013, titled “How Racism Invented Race in America”—it provides valuable insight into the research and thinking that led him to write about African American reparations. To take this issue globally, students might also explore reparations for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their families after World War II or, more recently, the link between reparations and reconciliation in South Africa—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Web site is a good place to start (www.justice.gov.za/trc). In any case, this Conversation challenges students to consider the larger philosophical issue of whether, and to what extent, it is ever possible to right the wrongs of the past. We hope that these texts will help students engage in that discussion on a national and, potentially, a global scale.

CONVERSATION WHAT IS AMERICAN LITERATURE? “What is American Literature?” is one of the most challenging Conversations in Conversations in American Literature. Its texts are difficult, and its success in your classroom depends somewhat on how

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much American fiction and poetry your students have read. On the other hand, the challenge it poses also provides a taste of the discourse students may find in college-level English courses—including the ongoing dialogue about the features of good writing as well as discussions about how America first separated its literary tradition from that of the British while still keeping the same language and cultural forebears. We suggest a couple of ways to approach this Conversation. First, its pre- and early twentieth- century essays offer great practice in reading dense text. The works by Walt Whitman, Emma Lazarus, John Macy, Sherwood Anderson, Amy Lowell, Bliss Perry, D. H. Lawrence, Tom Wolfe, and Margaret Atwood require concentration and tenacity. These are skills that our students need practice in, not just for the exam (though this type of text always appears at least once in the multiple-choice section and often in the free response), but because they’ve likely had little interaction with such dense writing in this age of the 140 character limit. We recommend taking some class time to work through these complex pieces together. Have students work in pairs, perhaps reading aloud and paraphrasing. Ask them to outline the piece’s main argument and provide examples of the evidence the writer uses. These are not pieces that can be rushed through, which is not a bad thing. Whether you require students to read all of the pieces or let them choose three or four to really delve into is your choice and will depend on how much time you have and how much interest your students can sustain on the subject. It may be best to give them a chance to connect with these writers on their own terms and through their own experience. If your students have read Whitman, they will feel the rhythm of his poetry in the prose piece included in this Conversation. If they come from another country and have read American literature in translation, give them a chance to react to Macy’s assertion that literature is determined by language, not nationality. Let them respond to Anderson’s idea that American literature must stay crude with examples of contemporary lyrics—are they too crude, or is crudeness an important aspect of our collective American aesthetic? Let them debate the question raised by Perry that there’s a difference between reading and book loving, or Lawrence’s warning never to trust the artist but rather to trust the tale. Another approach, of course, is to use this Conversation as a lens through which to look at the evolution, chronology, and impact of American literature. And if your students are taking AP U.S. History, so much the better. As they read through the pieces in this Conversation, they should focus on the evidence they are familiar with. The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, and the poetry of Whitman, Longfellow, and Whittier all figure in the earlier pieces—as well as in Atwood’s very contemporary one. Encourage your students to update the definition of American literature with examples they are familiar with. This is an ongoing debate, of course. In an essay in The New Yorker of April 21, 2014, entitled “Go Giants; A New Survey of the Great American Novel” (newyorker.com), Adam Gopnick reviews Dream of the Great American Novel by Lawrence Buell. He notes: One lesson of Lawrence Buell’s new survey of our literature, “The Dream of the Great American Novel” (Harvard), is that the “American” in that famous phrase was one of the first instances of the kind—more ironic than solemn, and always touched with an undercurrent of self-mockery, even when people were pursuing it more openly than they do these days. When the now forgotten novelist John W. De Forest spread the phrase, in 1868, in an essay in The Nation, he meant it as a more or less straight ambition. But in Buell’s introduction one learns that Henry James, fastidious to a fault, gave De Forest’s ideal the jolly nickname of “the G.A.N.,” while William Dean Howells placed it in the same category as other quested-for chimeras, announcing that “the great American novel, if true, must be incredible.” Kept in quotation marks from the beginning, it survived more as a dream than as a goal. By the time Philip Roth, in the nineteen-seventies, got around to actually writing a novel called “The Great American Novel,” the only way to treat it was as a joke. Obviously, we are still trying to figure out what the “Great American Novel” (G.A.N.) really means, or if it even exists.

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A nice addition to a discussion of what constitutes American literature is a look at how our literary tradition is viewed outside the United States. Two lovely pieces from The Guardian (theguardian.com) look at aspects of American literature in a new light, and you may wish to incorporate them into your class discussion: • “Why Are American Writers So Good at Coming-of-Age Novels?” by Imogen Russell-Williams (August 17, 2010) • “Author, Author: The Status of American Literature” by Pankaj Mishra (February 20, 2009) Finally, the Web site created and maintained by Dr. Donna Campbell of the Washington State University offers biographical information on a host of American writers as well as detailed timelines of historical and literary events, discussions of literary movements, and links to American literature sites (including quizzes and crossword puzzles): public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/aufram.html. It could provide useful background and context for your students and give them a jumping-off point for further research into the evolution of our rich literary tradition.

GRAMMAR AS RHETORIC AND STYLE Direct, Precise, and Active Verbs

EXERCISE 1 (p. 1274)

Improve the following sentences by replacing one or more verbs in each with a more effective one — that is, a more vivid, precise, and active verb. 1. I will always remember my first college visit. 2. Many technological advances make our lives easier. 3. Sirens screamed in the middle of the night. 4. She regretted buying the expensive handbag almost immediately. 5. Today’s modern dancers dismiss the Graham technique. 6. The college advisor said she could not suggest colleges until she knew his SAT scores. 7. The team captain schedules practices and communicates with team members. 8. The arbitration panel decided. 9. The local sheriff warned the students not to walk around with open containers. 10. The chief of surgery thanked the volunteers. 11. Are your children afraid of going away to camp? 12. Antigone protected Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonus.

EXERCISE 2 (pp. 1274-75)

Identify the verbs in the following passages. Discuss how these verbs affect the tone of the passages. To my room, which is on a street near the loop in the city of Chicago, come men who write. They talk and I talk. We are fools. We talk of writers of the Old World and the beauty and subtlety of the work they do. Below us the roaring city lies like a great animal on the prairies, but we do not run out to the prairies. We stay in our rooms and talk. And so, having listened to talk and having myself talked overmuch, I grow weary of talk and walk in the streets. As I walk alone, an old truth comes home to me and I know that we shall never have an American literature until we return to faith in ourselves and to the facing of our own limitations. We must, in some way, become in ourselves more like our fellows, more simple and real. — Sherwood Anderson, An Apology for Crudity

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In this passage Anderson depicts an atmosphere of stasis and develops his weary tone chiefly through his verb choices. Notice the weak force exerted by the linking verbs is, are, grow, and must become. Even the one that comes nearest to action, grow, takes as its complement the adjective weary. But more important than the influence of these state-of-being, or linking, verbs is the weakness of the action verbs. There are sixteen of them, all suggesting the motionlessness of the situation Anderson presents—a stagnation from going around in circles, as it were. It’s also worth noting that the verb with the potential for the most action, run, is modified by the adverb not.

It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. — Harry S Truman, Statement by the President of the United States

Here President Truman’s linking verbs and passive voice make the statement a claim of fact. This is what it is, he says. The passive construction has been loosed suggests inevitability, as it avoids the active voice, which would name who had loosed it. The verb draws illustrates the immense power of the atom bomb, and the other action verb, brought, suggests justice—as if the enemy has brought this horror upon themselves.

EXERCISE 3 (pp. 1275-76)

Analyze the verbs in the first two paragraphs (p. 1143) of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Second Inaugural Address: One-Third of a Nation. How would you describe the verbs FDR uses? How do they set the tone for the subject of his address? Do the verbs he uses provide a hint that his address has a message that goes beyond the usual inauguration speech? Cite specific examples to support your view. When four years ago we met to inaugurate a president, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first. Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need — the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.

In this passage President Roosevelt makes a series of definitive assertions. To give those assertions strength he uses forceful action verbs throughout: met, stood, dedicated, pledged, did not stop, recognized, and knew—all past tense. Roosevelt looks back not with regret but with recognition of accomplishment, as if to suggest that the promise of his First Inaugural Address has been fulfilled, and that the next four years contain even more potential. The speech marks a celebration of the previous term as much as an inauguration of the next.

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EXERCISE 4 (p. 1276)

Count the verbs in one of the passages in Exercise 2 or 3. Then categorize them as linking verbs or more vivid action verbs, and calculate the ratio of one to the other. Do the same for several paragraphs of your own writing. Are you relying more on linking verbs, or are most of your verbs direct and precise action verbs?

Sherwood Anderson, An Apology for Crudity • Linking verbs: is, are, grow, must become • Action verbs: come, talk, talk, talk, do, lies, do not run, stay, talk, walk, walk, comes, know, shall never have, return (participles: having listened, having talked) • Ratio: 4:16 (or 4:18 if one counts the participles as verbs)

Harry S Truman, Statement by the President of the United States • Linking verbs: is, is, has been loosened • Action verbs: draws, brought • Ratio: 3:2

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address: One-Third of a Nation • Linking verbs: would be, had been, are • Action verbs: met, stood, dedicated, pledged, had profaned, did, did not stop, recognized, had left, knew, must find (infinitives: to inaugurate, to speed, to drive, to end, to find, to solve, to create, to make, to do) • Ratio: 3:11 (or 3:20 if one counts the infinitives as verbs)

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