Literature An Introduction To Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing Part 1 Fiction
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TENTH EDITION
An Introduction to Fiction,
Poetry, Drama, and Writin
x. J.
Dana Gsoia
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Literature : an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing / [compiled by] X. J. Kennedy,
Dana Gioia.10th ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-321-42849-8
1. LiteratureCollections. I. Kennedy, X. J. II. Gioia, Dana.
PN6014.L58 2007
808-dc22
2006020784
Copyright 2007 by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
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ISBN 0-321-42849-8 (Literature)
ISBN 0-321-42850-1 (Literature Interactive)
ISBN 0-13-239939-3 (Schools)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 Q W T 0 9 08 07 06
Contents
,,-...,,.,,-,., ,-,-
__ _
Preface xlvii
To t h e instructor li
About t h e Authors Ixiii
Fable, Parable, and Tale 4
w. Somerset Maugham T H E
A P P O I N T M E N T IN S A M A R R A
A servant tries to gallop away from Death in this brief sardonic fable retold in
memorable form by a popular storyteller.
Aesop T H E W O R T H W I N D A M D T H E S U N
The North Wind and the Sun argue vuho is stronger and decide to try their
powers on an unsuspecting traveler.
Bidpai T H E C A M E L A N D H I S F R I E N D S
With friends like these, you can guess what the camel doesn't need.
Chuang Tzu a I N D E P E N D E N C E
The Prince ofCh'u asks the philosopher Chuang Tzu to become his advisor
and gets a surprising reply in this classic Chinese fable.
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm G O D F A T H E R D E A T H
Neither God nor the Devil came to the christening. In this stark
a young man receives magical powers with a string attached.
folktale,
Plot 11
The Short Story 13
John Updike A & P 14
In walk three girls in nothing but bathing suits, and Sammy finds himself no
longer an aproned checkout clerk but an armored knight.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
WRITING
John Updike W H Y W R I T E ?
20
WRITING ABOUT
PLOT
Paying Attention to Plot
20
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Plot
21
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
ON PLOT
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
22
22
2 Point of View 23
William Faulkner A R O S E F O R E M I L Y
28
Proud, imperious Emily Grierson defied the town from the fortress of her
mansion. Who could have guessed the secret that lay within?
Anne Tyler T E E N A G E W A S T E L A N D
35
With her troubled son, his teachers, and a peculiar tutor all giving her their
own versions of what's going on with him, what's a mother to do?
James Baldwin SONNY'S
BLUES
43
Two brothers in Harlem see life differently. The older brother is the sensible
family man, but Sojm)1 wants to be a jazz musician.
Eudora welty A A W O R N P A T H
64
When the man said to old Phoenix, "you must be a hundred years old, and
scared of nothing," he might have been exaggerating, but not by much.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
WRITING
James Baldwin R A C E A N D T H E A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N W R I T E R
WRITING ABOUT
P O I N T OF
70
VIEW
How Point of view Shapes a Story
71
CHECKLIST
Understanding Point of View
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
71
ON P O I N T OF V I E W
FOR W R I T I N G
72
72
3 Character 73
Katherine Anne Porter T H E J I L T I N G O F G R A N N Y W E A T H E R A L L
76
For sixty years Ellen Weatherall has fought back the memory of that terrible
day, but now once more the priest waits in the house.
Katherine Mansfield FVISSS B R I L L
83
Sundays had long brought joy to solitary Miss Brill, until one fateful day when
she happened to share a bench with two lovers in the park.
Tobias Wolff T H E R I C H B R O T H E R
86
Blood may be thicker than water, but sometimes the tension between brothers
is thicker than blood.
Raymond Carver C A T H E D R A L
98
He had never expected to find himself trying to describe a cathedral to a blind
man. He hadn't even wanted to meet this odd, old friend of his wife.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Raymond
WRITING
Carver a C O M M O N P L A C E B U T P R E C I S E L A N G U A G E
WRITING ABOUT
109
CHARACTER
How Character Creates Action
11 o
CHECKLIST
Writing About Character
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
110
ON CHARACTER
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
110
111
Setting 112
Kate Chopin T H E S T O R M
115
Even with her husband away, Calixta feels happily, securely married. Why
then should she not shelter an old admirer from the rain?
Jack London T O B U I L D A F I R E
119
Seventy-five degrees below zero. Alone except for one mistrustful wolf dog,
a man finds himself battling a relentless force.
T. Coraghessan Boyle G R E A S Y L A K E
130
Murky and strewn with beer cans, the lake appears a wasteland. On its shore
three "dangerous characters" learn a lesson one grim night.
A m y Tan A PAIR OF TICKETS
137
A young woman flies with her father to China to meet two half sisters she
never knew existed.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON WRITING
A m y Tan SETTING THE VOICE
150
WRITING ABOUT
SETTING
The Importance of Setting
151
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Setting
152
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
ON SETTING
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
152
152
5 Tone and Style 153
Ernest Hemingway A C L E A N , W E L L - L I G H T E D P L A C E
156
All by himself each night, the old man lingers in the bright cafe. What does he
need more than brandy1
William Faulkner A B A R N B U R N I N G
160
This time when Ab Snopes wields his blazing torch, his son Sarty faces a
dilemma: whether to obey or defy the vengeful old man.
Irony 172
o. Henry T H E G I F T O F T H E M A G I
174
A young husband and ivife find ingenious ways to buy each other Christmas
presents, in the classic story that defines the word "irony."
H a Jin * S A B O T E U R
178
When the police unfairly arrest Mr. Chiu, he hopes for justice. After
witnessing their brutality, he quietly plans revenge.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Ernest
WRITING
Hemingway T H E D I R E C T S T Y L E
WRITING ABOUT TONE AND
Be Style-Conscious
186
STYLE
186
CHECKLIST
Thinking About Tone and Style
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
187
ON TONE A N D STYLE
M O R E TOPICS FOR W R I T I N G
187
188
Ttierrse is?
Stephen Crane T H E O P E N B O A T
191
In a lifeboat circled by sharks, tantalized by glimpses of land, a reporter
scrutinizes Fate and learns about comradeship.
Alice Munro H O W S M E T M Y H U S B A N D
208
When Edie meets the carnival pilot, her life gets more complicated than she
expects.
Luke 15:11-32 T H E P A R A B L E O F T H E P R O D I G A L SON
220
A father has two sons. One demands his inheritance now and leaves to spend
it with ruinous results.
Kurt vormegut, Jr. H A R R I S O N B E R G E R O W
221
Are you handsome? Off with your eyebrow's! Are you brainy? Let a
transmitter sound thought-shattering beeps inside your ear,
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Kurt
WRITING
vonnegut, Jr. T H E T H E M E S O F S C I E N C E F I C T I O N
WRITING ABOUT
THEME
Stating the Theme
227
226
CHECKLIST
Determining a Story's Theme
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
228
ON THEME
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
228
228
Symbol 229
John Steinbeck T H E C H R Y S A N T H E M U M S
231
Fenced-in Elisa feels emotionally starvedthen her life promises to blossom
with the arrival of the scissors-grinding man.
Shirley Jackson T H E L O T T E R Y
239
Splintered and faded, the sinister black box had worked its annual terror for
longer than anyone in town could remember.
Elizabeth Tallent N O O N E ' S A M Y S T E R Y
245
A two-page story speaks volumes about an open-hearted girl and her married
lover.
Ursula K. Le Guin T H E O N E S W H O W A L K A W A Y F R O M O M E L A S
Omelas is the perfect city. All of its inhabitants are happy. But everyone's
prosperity depends on a hidden evil.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Shirley
WRITING
Jackson B I O G R A P H Y O F A S T O R Y
WRITING ABOUT
Recognizing Symbols
SYMBOLS
255
253
248
x Contents
CHECKLIST
Thinking About Symbols
256
W R I T I N G A S S I G N M E N T ON S Y M B O L S
256
Student Paper A N A N A L Y S I S O F T H E S Y M B O L I S M I N S T E I N B E C K ' S
"THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS"
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
256
258
Evaluating a Story 260
Yiyun Li A T H O U S A N D Y E A R S O F G O O D P R A Y E R S
262
An elderly Chinese man wants to help his Americanized daughter find
happiness, but are there too many secrets standing in the way?
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON W R I T I N G
Yiyun Li W H A T I C O U L D N O T W R I T E A B O U T W A S W H Y I W A S
WRITING
271
WRITING AN
EVALUATION
Judging a Story's Value
272
CHECKLIST
Evaluating a Story
273
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
ON E V A L U A T I N G
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
A STORY
273
274
9 Reading Long Stories and Novels 275
Leo Tolstoy T H E D E A T H O F I V A N I L Y C H
280
The supreme Russian novelist tells how a petty, ambitious judge, near the end
of his wasted life, discovers a harrowing truth.
Franz Kafka H T H E M E T A M O R P H O S I S
317
"When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he
found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect." Kafl<a's
famous opening sentence introduces one of the most chilling stories in
world literature.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON WRITING
Franz Kafka * D I S C U S S I N G THE METAF^ORPHOSIS
WRITING ABOUT LONG STORIES AND
Knowing What to Leave Out
349
NOVELS
348
CHECKLIST
Organizing Your Ideas for a Research Paper
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
student Research Paper
349
FOR A R E S E A R C H P A P E R
KAFKA'S GREATNESS
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
349
356
Critical Casebook: Flannery O'Connor 357
Flannery O'Connor A G O O D M A N IS H A R D T O F I N D
358
Wanted: The Misfit, a cold-blooded killer. An ordinary family vacation
to horrorand one moment of redeeming grace.
Flannery O'Connor R E V E L A T I O N
leads
368
Mrs. Turpin thinks herself Jesus' favorite child, until she meets a troubled
college girl. Soon violence flares in a doctor's waiting room.
Flannery O'Connor A P A R K E R ' S B A C K
382
A tormented man tries to find his way to God and to his wifeby
himself tattooed.
having
Flannery O'Connor ON Writing
F R O M " O N HER O W N W O R K "
396
O N H E R C A T H O L I C F A I T H 398
F R O M "THE GROTESQUE IN SOUTHERN FICTION"
YEARBOOK CARTOONS
401
399
Critics ON Flannery O'Connor
Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr. FLANNERY O'CONNOR AND HER
J.
R E A D E R S 402
O. Tate A G O O D S O U R C E IS N O T S O H A R D T O F I N D : THE R E A L
L I F E M I S F I T 404
M a r y Jane Schenck DECONSTRUCTING "A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO F I N D "
407
Kathleen Feeley T H E M Y S T E R Y O F D I V I N E D I R E C T I O N :
"PARKER'S BACK"
408
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITING ABOUT AN
AUTHOR
How One Story illuminates Another
409
CHECKLIST
Reading an Author in Depth
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
410
ON A N A U T H O R
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
410
410
Critical Casebook: Three Stories in Depth 412
Edgar Allan Poe 412
THE TELL-TALE HEART
413
The smoldering eye at last extinguished, a murderer finds that, despite all his
attempts at a cover-up, his victim will be heard.
Edgar Allan Poe ON Writing
T H E T A L E A N D ITS EFFECT
ON IMAGINATION
418
417
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION
418
Critics ON "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Daniel Hoffman A T H E F A T H E R - F I G U R E IN
TELL-TALE HEART"
419
Scott Peeples A " T H E T E L L - T A L E H E A R T " A S A L O V E S T O R Y
John chua T H E F I G U R E O F T H E D O U B L E I N P O E 422
"THE
421
CharJotte Perkins Oilman 424
THE YELLOW W A L L P A P E R
424
A doctor prescribes a "rest cure" for his wife after the birth of their child. The
new mother tries to settle in to life in the isolated and mysterious country house
they have rented for the summer. The cure proves worse than the disease in
this Gothic classic.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman ON Writing
W H Y I WROTE "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER"
435
W H A T E V E R IS 436
THE NERVOUS B R E A K D O W N OF W O M E N
437
Critics ON "The Yellow wallpaper"
Juliann Fleenor G E N D E R A N D P A T H O L O G Y I N " T H E Y E L L O W
WALLPAPER"
438
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar I M P R I S O N M E N T A N D
ESCAPE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF C O N F I N E M E N T
439
Elizabeth Ammons A B I O G R A P H I C A L E C H O E S I N " T H E Y E L L O W
WALLPAPER"
441
Alice Walker 443
E V E R Y D A Y USE
443
When successful Dee visits from the city, she has changed her name to reflect
her African roots. Her mother and sister notice other things have changed, too.
Alice Walker ON Writing
THE BLACK W O M A N WRITER IN A M E R I C A
REFLECTIONS ON WRITING
451
449
Critics ON "Everyday Use"
Barbara T. Christian " E V E R Y D A Y U S E " A N D T H E B L A C K P O W E R
MOVEMENT
453
Houston A. Baker and Charlotte Pierce-Baker S T Y L I S H V S .
SACRED IN " E V E R Y D A Y USE"
455
Elaine Showalter Q U I L T A S M E T A P H O R I N
"EVERYDAY USE"
WRITING
459
EFFECTIVELY
TOPICS FOR W R I T I N G ON "THE T E L L - T A L E H E A R T "
461
T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G ON " T H E Y E L L O W W A L L P A P E R "
461
TOPICS FOR W R I T I N G ON " E V E R Y D A Y USE"
461
Stories for Further Reading 462
Chinua Achebe * D E A D M E N ' S P A T H
462
The new headmaster of the village school was determined to fight superstition,
but the villagers did not agree.
Anjana Appachana T H E P R O P H E C Y
465
Seventeen years old and pregnant, Amrita doesn't know what to do, but
before she visits the gynecologist, she consults a fortune teller.
Margaret Atwood H A P P Y E N D I N G S
476
John and Mary meet. What happens next? This witty experimental story offers
five different outcomes.
Ambrose Bierce AIM O C C U R R E N C E A T O W L C R E E K B R I D G E
479
At last7 Peyton Farquhars neck is in the noose. Reality mingles with dream in
this classic story of the American Civil War.
Jorge Luis Borges T H E G O S P E L A C C O R D I N G T O M A R K
485
A young man from Buenos Aires is trapped by a flood on an isolated ranch.
To pass the time he reads the Gospel to a family with unforeseen residts.
Willa Gather * P A U L ' S C A S E
489
Pauls teachers cant understand the boy. Then one day} with stolen cash, he
boards a train for New York and the life of his dreams.
John Cheever T H E F I V E - F O R T Y - E I G H T
503
After their brief affair, Blake fired his secretary. He never expected she would
seek revenge.
Anton Chekhov A T H E L A D Y W I T H T H E P E T D O G
512
Lonely and bored at a seaside resort, a couple seeks a merely casual
affair. Hoiv could they know it might deepen and trouble their
separate marriages?
Kate Chopin T H E S T O R Y O F A N H O U R
523
"T here was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.
What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name
Sandra Cisneros T H E H O U S E O N M A N G O S T R E E T
525
Does where we live tell what we are? A little girl dreams of a new house, but
things don't always turn out the way we want them to.
Ralph Ellison a B A T T L E R O Y A L
526
A young black man is invited to deliver his high school graduation speech
to a gathering of a Southern towns leading white citizens. What promises
to be an honor turns into a nightmare of violence, humiliation, and painful
self-discovery.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez T H E H A N D S O M E S T D R O W N E D M A N m
THE WORLD
536
Even in death, a mysterious stranger has a profound effect on all of the people
in the village.
oagoberto Gilb
LOOK O N THE BRIGHT SIDE
540
"You have to look on the bright side' is the motto of this story's narrator, but
that gets harder and harder to do as things just keep on getting worse.
Nathaniel Hawthorne Y O U N G G O O D M A N B R O W N
548
Urged on through deepening woods, a young Puritan seesor dreams he
seesgood villagers hasten toward a diabolic rite.
Zora Neale Hurston * S W E A T
558
Delia's hard work paid for her small house. Now her drunken husband Sykes
has promised it to another woman.
Kazuo ishiguro
A F A M I L Y SUPPER
566
Something very odd lurks beneath the surface of this family supper, and it
might prove fatal.
James Joyce A R A B Y
573
If only he can find her a token, she might love him in return. As night falls,
a Dublin boy hurries to make his dream come true.
Jamaica Kincaid G I R L
578
"Try to walk like a lady, and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming
An old-fashioned mother tells her daughter how to live.
Jhumpa Lahiri * I N T E R P R E T E R O F M A L A D I E S
579
Mr. Kapasi's life had settled into a quiet patternand then Mrs. Das and her
family came into it.
D. H. Lawrence T H E R O C K I N G - H O R S E W I N N E R
593
Wild-eyed "as if something were going to explode in him," the boy predicts
each winning horse, and gamblers rush to bet a thousand pounds.
Bobbie Ann Mason S H I L O H
604
After the accident Leroy could no longer work as a truck driver. He hoped to
make a new life with his wife, but she seemed strangely different.
Joyce Carol Oates W H E R E A R E Y O U GOIIMG, W H E R E H A V E
YOU BEEN?
613
Alone in the house, Connie finds herself helpless before the advances of a
spellbinding imitation teenager, Arnold Friend.
Tim O'Brien T H E T H I N G S T H E Y C A R R I E D
625
What each soldier carried into the combat zone was largely determined by
necessity, but each mans necessities differed.
TiDie Olsen I S T A N D H E R E I R O N I N G
637
Deserted by her husband, forced to send away her child, a woman rem.embers
how both she and her daughter managed to survive.
Octavio Paz MY L I F E W I T H T H E W A V E
642
Meet the oddest couple ever, in this story by a Nobel Prize-winning poet.
Leslie Marmon Silko T H E M A N T O SEND UMH
CLOUDS
646
When old Teofilo dies, his friends give him a tribal burial to ensure that the
rains will come for the pueblo. But can they also convince Father Paul to take
part in the pagan ceremony?
Helena Maria Viramontes T H E M O T H S
649
An angry adolescent performs a final act of love for the grandmother who
made her feel "safe and guarded and not alone/'
POETRY
1 3 Reading a Poem 659
William Butler Yeats T H E L A K E I S L E O F I N N I S F R E E
Lyric Poetry 663
D. H. Lawrence P I A N O 664
Adrienne Rich A U N T J E N N I F E R ' S T I G E R S
Narrative Poetry 665
Anonymous S I R P A T R I C K S P E N C E
Robert Frost " O U T , O U T " 667
665
664
661
Dramatic Poetry 668
Robert Browning M Y L A S T D U C H E S S
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Adrienne Rich
WRITING A
668
WRITING
RECALLING " A U N T JENNIFER'S TIGERS"
671
PARAPHRASE
Can a Poem Be Paraphrased? 671
William Stafford A S K SVIE 6 7 I
William Stafford A P A R A P H R A S E O F " A S K M E "
672
CHECKLIST
Paraphrasing a Poem
673
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
ON P A R A P H R A S I N G
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
673
673
1 4 Listening to a Voice 674
Tone 674
Theodore Roethke MY P A P A ' S W A L T Z 674
countee Cullen F O R A L A D Y I K N O W 675
Anne Bradstreet T H E A U T H O R T O H E R B O O K 676
w a i t w h i t m a n a T O A L O C O M O T I V E I N W I N T E R 677
Emily Dickinson I L I K E T O SEE IT L A P T H E M I L E S 678
Benjamin Alire Saenz T O T H E D E S E R T 679
Weldon Kees F O R M Y D A U G H T E R 679
The Person in the Poem 68o
Natasha Trethewey W H I T E L I E S 680
Edwin Arlington Robinson L U K E H A V E R G A L 682
Ted Hughes H A W K R O O S T I N G 683
Suji Kwock Kim M O N O L O G U E F O R A N O N I O N 684
William Wordsworth I W A N D E R E D L O N E L Y A S A C L O U D
Dorothy Wordsworth J O U R N A L E N T R Y 686
James Stephens A G L A S S O F B E E R 686
Anne Sexton H E R K I N D 687
William Carlos Williams T H E R E D W H E E L B A R R O W 688
Irony 688
Robert Greeley OH NO 688
W. H. Auden T H E U N K N O W N C I T I Z E N 690
Sharon olds R I T E S O F P A S S A G E 691
John Betjeman A I N W E S T M I N S T E R A B B E Y 692
Sarah N. Cleghorn T H E G O L F L I N K S 693
Edna St. Vincent Millay S E C O N D FSG 693
685
Joseph Stroud
Thomas Hardy
MISSING
694
THE W O R K B O X
694
For Review and Further Study
William Blake T H E C H I M N E Y S W E E P E R
David Lehman R E J E C T I O N S L I P 696
William Stafford A T T H E U N - N A T I O N A L
695
M O N U M E N T ALONG THE
C A N A D I A N BORDER
697
H . L. H i x I L O V E T H E W O R L D , A S D O E S A N Y D A N C E R
Richard Lovelace T O L U C A S T A 6 9 8
Wilfred Owen a D U L C E E T D E C O R U M E S T 698
WRITING
WRITERS
EFFECTIVELY
ON
Wilfred Owen
WRITING
697
WRITING
W A R POETRY
ABOUT
Listening to Tone
699
VOICE
700
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Tone
WRITING
student
701
A S S I G N M E N T ON TONE
701
Paper W O R D C H O I C E , T O N E , A N D P O I N T O F V I E W I N
ROETHKE'S " M Y PAPA'S WALTZ"
MORE TOPICS
W O R D S
FOR W R I T I N G
702
705
706
Literal Meaning: What a Poem Says First 706
William Carlos Williams T H I S IS J U S T T O S A Y 7 0 7
Marianne Moore S I L E N C E 708
Robert Graves D O W N , W A N T O N , D O W N S 709
John Donne B A T T E R M Y H E A R T , T H R E E - P E R S Q N E D
FOR Y O U
GOD,
709
The Value of a Dictionary 710
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A F T E R M A T H 711
John Clare M O U S E ' S N E S T 712
J. v. Cunningham F R I E N D , O N T H I S S C A F F O L D T H O M A S
LIES D E A D
Kelly Cherry
Carl Sandburg
713
A D V I C E TO A FRIEND W H O PAINTS
G R A S S 714
MORE
714
Word Choice and Word Order 714
Robert Herrick U P O N J U L I A ' S C L O T H E S
Kay Ryan B L A N D E U R 718
Thomas Hardy T H E R U I N E D M A I D 7 1 9
Richard Eberhart T H E F U R Y O F A E R I A L
716
BOMBARDMENT
720
Wendy Cope L G M E L Y H E A R T S
721
For Review and Further Study
cummings A A N Y O N E L I V E D I N A P R E T T Y H O W T O W N
Billy Collins T H E N A M E S 7 2 3
Anonymous A C A R N A T I O N M I L K 724
Kenneth Rexroth V I T A M I N S A N D R O U G H A G E 725
Gina valdes ^ E N G L I S H C O N S A L S A 725
Lewis Carroll J A B B E R W O C K Y 7 2 6
E. E.
WRITING
722
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Lewis Carroll
WRITING
HUMPTY DUMPTY EXPLICATES "JABBERWOCKY"
WRITING ABOUT
DICTION
Every Word Counts
728
121
CHECKLIST
Thinking About Word Choice
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
729
ON WORD CHOICE
FOR W R I T I N G
729
730
John Masefield C A R G O E S 732
William Blake L O N D O N 7 3 3
Wallace Stevens D I S I L L U S I O N M E N T O F T E N O ' C L O C K
Gwendolyn Brooks S O U T H E A S T C O R N E R 7 3 5
Timothy Steele E P I T A P H 7 3 6
E. E. Cummings N E X T T O O F C O U R S E G O D A M E R I C A I
Robert Frost a F I R E A N D I C E 737
Clare Rossini F I N A L L O V E N O T E 7 3 7
Jennifer Reeser W I N T E R - P R O O F 7 3 8
Alfred, Lord Tennyson T E A R S , I D L E T E A R S 738
Richard Wilbur L O V E C A L L S U S T O T H E T H I N G S O F
THIS WORLD
WRITING
735
736
739
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Richard Wilbur
WRITING
C O N C E R N I N G " L O V E C A L L S US TO THE T H I N G S OF
THIS W O R L D "
WRITING ABOUT
740
DENOTATION
The Ways a Poem Suggests
741
AND
CONNOTATION
CHECKLIST
Analyzing What a Poem Says and Suggests
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
CONNOTATION
742
MORE TOPICS
742
ON D E N O T A T I O N
FOR W R I T I N G
742
AND
Smagery 743
Ezra Pound A I N A S T A T I O N O F T H E M E T R O 7 4 3
Taniguchi Buson T H E P I E R C I N G C H I L L S F E E L 7 4 3
T. S. EliOt T H E W I N T E R E V E N I N G S E T T L E S D O W N 745
Theodore Roethke A R O O T C E L L A R 745
Elizabeth Bishop A T H E FSSH 746
Anne Stevenson T H E V I C T O R Y 748
Charles Simic F O R K 748
Emily Dickinson A A R O U T E O F E V A N E S C E N C E 749
Jean Toomer R E A P E R S 749
Gerard Manley Hopkins
PIED B E A U T Y
750
About Haiku 750
Arakida Moritake T H E F A L L I N G F L O W E R 750
Matsuo Basho H E A T - L I G H T N I N G S T R E A K 751
Matsuo Basho m T H E O L D S T O N E P O O L 751
Taniguchi Buson O N T H E O N E - T O N T E M P L E B E L L
Taniguchi Buson L GO 751
Kobayashi issa O N L Y O N E G U Y 752
Kobayashi Issa C R I C K E T 752
751
Haiku from Japanese Internment Camps 752
Suiko Matsushita R A I N S H O W E R F R O M M O U N T A I N 752
Neiji o z a w a W A R F O R C E D U S F R O M C A L I F O R N I A 752
H a k u r o w a d a E V E N T H E C R O A K I N G O F F R O G S 752
Contemporary Haiku 753
Etheridge Knight, Lee Gurga, Penny Harter, Jennifer Brutschy,
John Ridland, Connie Bensley, Adelle Foley, Garry Gay 754
For Review and Further Study
John Keats B R I G H T S T A R ! W O U L D I W E R E S T E A D F A S T A S
THOU ART
754
Walt w h i t m a n A T H E R U N N E R 7 5 4
T. E. Hulme I M A G E 7 5 4
William Carlos Williams EL H O M B R E 7 5 5
Ghana Bloch T I R E D S E X 7 5 5
Robert Bly D R I V I N G T O T O W N L A T E T O M A I L A L E T T E R
Rita Dove S I L O S 7 5 5
Louise Gluck M O C K O R A N G E 756
Billy Collins E M B R A C E 756
John Haines W I N T E R N E W S 7 5 7
stevie Smith N O T W A V I N G B U T D R O W N I N G 7 5 7
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON W R I T I N G
Ezra Pound T H E I M A G E
758
755
WRITING ABOUT
Analyzing Images
IMAGERY
758
CHECKLIST
Thinking About Imagery
759
WRITING A S S I G N M E N T ON I M A G E R Y
760
student Paper a E L I Z A B E T H B I S H O P ' S U S E O F I M A G E R Y
IN " T H E F I S H "
MORE TOPICS
760
FOR W R I T I N G
765
Figures of Speech 766
Why Speak Figuratively? 766
Alfred, Lord Tennyson T H E E A G L E 767
William Shakespeare S H A L L I C O M P A R E T H E E T O A
SUMMER'S DAY?
767
Howard Moss S H A L L ! C O M P A R E T H E E T O A S U M M E R ' S D A Y ?
Metaphor and Simile 768
Emily Dickinson M Y L I F E H A D S T O O D - A L O A D E D G U N 770
Alfred, Lord Tennyson F L O W E R I N T H E C R A N N I E D W A L L 771
William Blake T O S E E A W O R L D I N A G R A I N O F S A N D 771
Sylvia Plath M E T A P H O R S 771
N. Scott Momaday S I M I L E 772
Emily Dickinson n D R O P P E D S O L O W - I N M Y R E G A R D 112
Craig Raine A M A R T I A N S E N D S A P O S T C A R D H O M E 773
Other Figures of Speech 775
James Stephens T H E W I N D 775
Margaret Atwood Y O U F I T I N T O M E 778
John Ashbery T H E C A T H E D R A L IS 778
George Herbert T H E P U L L E Y 778
Dana Gioia 5A M O N E Y 779
Charles Simic M Y S H O E S 7 7 9
For Review and Further Study
Robert Frost T H E S I L K E N T E N T 780
April Lindner L O W T I D E 781
Jane Kenyon T H E S U I T O R 7 8 1
Robert Frost T H E S E C R E T S I T S 782
A. R. Ammons C O W A R D 7 8 2
Kay Ryan T U R T L E 7 8 2
Heather McHugh L A N G U A G E L E S S O N , 1 9 7 6 782
Robinson Jeffers H A N D S 783
Robert Burns O H , M Y L O V E IS L I K E A R E D , R E D R O S E
784
768
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS
ON
WRITING
Robert Frost a T H E I M P O R T A N C E O F P O E T I C M E T A P H O R
WRITING ABOUT
784
METAPHORS
How Metaphors Enlarge a Poem's Meaning 785
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Metaphor
785
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
SOIlg
O N F I G U R E S OF S P E E C H
FOR W R I T I N G
785
786
787
Singing and Saying 787
Ben Jonson T O C E L I A 788
Anonymous T H E C R U E L M O T H E R 789
William Shakespeare * O M I S T R E S S M I N E 790
Edwin Arlington Robinson R I C H A R D C O R Y 792
Paul Simon R I C H A R D C O R Y 792
Ballads 793
Anonymous B O N N Y B A R B A R A A L L A N 793
Dudley Randall B A L L A D O F B I R M I N G H A M 796
Blues 797
Bessie Smith with Clarence Williams H J A I L H O U S E B L U E S
W. H. Auden F U N E R A L B L U E S 799
Rap
799
Run D.M.C. FROM
PETER PIPER
800
For Review and Further Study
John Lennon and Paul McCartney E L E A N O R R I G B Y 801
Bob Dylan A T H E T I M E S T H E Y A R E A - C H A N G I N ' 802
Aimee Mann D E A T H L Y 804
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Paul
WRITING
McCartney C R E A T I N G " E L E A N O R R I G B Y "
WRITING ABOUT SONG
LYRICS
Poetry's Close Kinship with Song 806
CHECKLIST
Looking at Lyrics as Poetry
806
805
798
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
ON SONG LYRICS
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
Sound
807
807
808
Sound as Meaning sos
Alexander Pope T R U E E A S E
NOT CHANCE
809
William Butler Yeats W H O G O E S W I T H F E R G U S ? 811
John Updike R E C I T A L 811
William Wordsworth A S L U M B E R D I D M Y S P I R I T S E A L
Emanuel di Pasquale ^ R A I M 812
Aphra Behn W H E N M A I D E N S A R E Y O U N G 812
812
Alliteration and Assonance 812
Housman E I G H T O ' C L O C K 814
James Joyce A L L D A Y I H E A R 814
A . E.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson T H E S P L E N D O R F A L L S O N C A S T L E W A L L S
Rime 815
William Cole O N M Y B O A T O N L A K E C A Y U G A 816
James Reeves R O U G H W E A T H E R 818
Hilaire Belloc T H E H I P P O P O T A M U S 819
Ogden Nash T H E P A N T H E R 819
William Butler Yeats L E D A A N D T H E S W A N 820
Gerard Manley Hopkins G O D ' S G R A N D E U R 820
Fred chappell N A R C I S S U S A N D E C H O 821
Robert Frost D E S E R T P L A C E S 822
Reading and Hearing Poems Aloud 823
Michael stillman I N M E M O R I A M J O H N C O L T R A N E 824
William Shakespeare F U L L F A T H O M F I V E T H Y F A T H E R L I E S
Chryss YOSt a L A I W I T H S O U N D S O F S K I N 825
T. S. Eliot V I R G I N I A 825
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON WRITING
T. S. EliOt T H E M U S I C O F P O E T R Y
WRITING ABOUT
826
SOUND
Listening to the Music
827
CHECKLIST
Writing About a Poem's Sound
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
827
ON SOUND
M O R E T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
828
828
825
815
Rhythm 829
Stresses and Pauses 829
Gwendolyn Brooks W E R E A L C O O L 833
Alfred, Lord Tennyson * B R E A K , B R E A K , B R E A K 834
Ben Jonson S L O W , S L O W , F R E S H F O U N T , K E E P T I M E W I T H IVIY
SALT TEARS
834
Sir Thomas Wyatt W I T H S E R V I N G S T I L L
Dorothy Parker R E S U M E 836
835
Meter 836
Max Beerbohm
O N THE I M P R I N T OF THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION
O F THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM
836
Thomas Campion A R O S E - C H E E K E D L A U R A , C O M E 842
Edna St. Vincent Millay C Q U N T I N G - O U T R H Y M E 843
Jacqueline Osherow
S O N G FOR THE M U S I C IN THE W A R S A W
GHETTO
844
A. E. Housman W H E N I W A S O N E - A N D - T W E N T Y 844
William Carlos Williams S M E L L ! 845
Walt Whitman B E A T ! B E A T ! D R U M S ! 845
David Mason S O N G O F T H E P O W E R S 846
Langston Hughes D R E A M B O O G I E 846
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Gwendolyn
WRITING
Brooks H E A R I N G " W E R E A L C O O L "
WRITING ABOUT
847
RHYTHM
Freeze-Framing the Sound
848
CHECKLIST
Scanning a Poem
848
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
ON R H Y T H M
FOR W R I T I N G
849
849
Closed Form sso
Formal Patterns 851
John Keats T H I S L I V I N G H A N D , N O W W A R M A N D C A P A B L E 851
Robert Graves C O U N T I N G T H E B E A T S 853
John Donne S O N G ( " G O A N D C A T C H A F A L L I N G S T A R " ) 854
Phillis Levin B R I E F B I O 856
The Sonnet 856
William Shakespeare L E T M E W O T T O T H E M A R R I A G E O F
TRUE M I N D S
857
Michael Drayton S I N C E T H E R E ' S N O H E L P , C O M E L E T U S K I S S
A N D PART
858
Edna St. Vincent Millay W H A T L I P S M Y L I P S H A V E K I S S E D , A N D
WHERE, A N D W H Y
858
Robert Frost A C Q U A I N T E D W I T H T H E N I G H T 859
Kim Addonizio F I R S T P O E M F O R Y O U 860
Mark Jarman
UNHOLY SONNET: HANDS FOLDED
860
Timothy Steele S U M M E R 861
A . E. stallings S I N E Q U A N O N
861
R. S. Gwynn S H A K E S P E A R E A N S O N N E T
862
The Epigram 862
Alexander Pope, Sir John Harrington, Robert Herrick, William Blake,
E. E. Cummings, Langston Hughes, J. V. Cunningham, John
Frederick Nims, Stevie Smith, Brad Leithauser, Dick Davis,
Anonymous, Hilaire Belloc, Wendy Cope A S E L E C T I O N
OF E P I G R A M S
863-865
W. H. Auden, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, Cornelius J. Ter Maat
CLERIHEWS
865-866
Other Forms 866
Robert Pinsky ABC 866
Dylan Thomas D O N O T G O G E N T L E I N T O T H A T G O O D N I G H T
Robert Bridges T R I O L E T 867
Elizabeth Bishop S E S T I N A 868
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
WRITING
A. E. Stallings O N F O R M A N D A R T I F I C E
WRITING ABOUT
Turning Points
871
870
FORM
CHECKLIST
Thinking About a Sonnet
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
871
ON A SONNET
FOR W R I T I N G
872
872
2 3 Open Form 873
Denise Levertov A N C I E N T S T A I R W A Y 873
E. E. Cummings B U F F A L O B I L L ' S 877
w. s. Merwin F O R T H E A N N I V E R S A R Y O F M Y D E A T H
William Carlos Williams T H E D A N C E 878
Stephen Crane T H E H E A R T 879
Walt Whitman C A V A L R Y C R O S S I N G A F O R D 8 7 9
877
867
Ezra Pound S A L U T A T I O N 880
Wallace Stevens T H I R T E E N W A Y S O F L O O K I N G A T A
BLACKBIRD
880
Prose Poetry 882
Carolyn Forche T H E C O L O N E L 883
Charles Simic T H E M A G I C S T U D Y O F H A P P I N E S S
883
Visual Poetry 884
George Herbert E A S T E R W I N G S 884
John Hollander a S W A N A N D S H A D O W
Terry Ehret FROM P A P Y R U S 886
Dorthi Charles C O N C R E T E C A T 887
885
Found Poetry 888
Ronald Gross Y I E L D
888
Seeing the Logic of Open Form Verse 889
E. E. Cummings I N J U S T - 889
Carole Satyamurti I S H A L L P A I N T M Y N A I L S R E D
Alice Fulton * F A I L U R E 890
WRITING
890
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
wait whitman
WRITING
THE POETRY OF THE FUTURE
WRITING ABOUT
FREE
Lining Up for Free Verse
891
VERSE
892
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Line Breaks in Free Verse
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
892
ON OPEN FORM
FOR W R I T I N G
893
893
Symbol 894
T. S. Eliot B T H E BOSTON EVENING
TRANSCRIPT
895
Emily Dickinson T H E L I G H T N I N G IS A Y E L L O W F O R K 896
Thomas Hardy N E U T R A L T O N E S 897
M a t t h e w 13:24-30 T H E P A R A B L E O F T H E G O O D S E E D 898
George Herbert T H E W O R L D 899
Edwin Markham O U T W I T T E D 900
John ciardi A B O X C O M E S H O M E 900
Robert Frost T H E R O A D N O T T A K E N 901
Christina Rossetti
UPHILL
902
Christian w i m a n P O S T O L K A 902
For Review and Further Study
William Carlos Williams T H E T E R M 903
Ted Kooser C A R R I E 904
Jane Hirshfield T R E E 904
Jon Stall worthy A N E V E N I N G W A L K 905
Lorine Niedecker P O P C O R N - C A N C O V E R 905
Wallace Stevens A N E C D O T E O F T H E J A R 905
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
WRITING
Yeats P O E T I C S Y M B O L S
William Butler
WRITING ABOUT
Reading a Symbol
906
SYMBOLS
907
CHECKLIST
Analyzing a Symbol
907
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
ON S Y M B O L I S M
FOR W R I T I N G
908
908
Myth and Narrative 909
Robert Frost > N O T H I N G G O L D C A N S T A Y 911
D. H. Lawrence B A V A R I A N G E N T I A N S 911
William Wordsworth T H E W O R L D IS T O O M U C H W I T H U S
H. D. H E L E N
912
913
Archetype 913
Louise Bogan M E D U S A 914
John Keats L A B E L L E D A M E S A N S M E R C I
915
Personal Myth 917
William Butler Yeats T H E S E C O N D C O M I N G 917
Gregory orr T W O L I N E S F R O M T H E B R O T H E R S G R I M M
Diane Thiel MEMENTO
MORI I N M I D D L E S C H O O L
918
Myth and Popular Culture 920
Charles Martin T A K E N U P 921
Andrea Hollander Budy S N O W W H I T E
Anne Sexton C I N D E R E L L A 923
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Anne sexton
WRITING
922
WRITING
TRANSFORMING FAIRYTALES
ABOUT
Demystifying Myth
MYTH
926
CHECKLIST
Thinking About Myth
927
923
918
WRITING A S S I G N M E N T ON MYTH
927
Student Paper T H E B O N D S B E T W E E N L O V E A N D H A T R E D
SN H. D . ' S " H E L E N "
928
M O R E TOPICS FOR W R I T I N G
932
Poetry and Personal Identity 933
Sylvia Plath L A D Y L A Z A R U S 934
Rhina Espaillat B I L I N G U A L / B I L I N G U E
937
Culture, Race, and Ethnicity 938
Claude McKay A A M E R I C A 938
Samuel Menashe T H E S H R I N E W H O S E S H A P E S A M
Francisco x. Alarcon T H E X M M Y N A M E 940
Judith Ortiz Cofer A Q U I N C E A N E R A 940
Amy Uyematsu D E L I B E R A T E 941
Yusef Komunyakaa F A C I N G IT 942
939
Gender 943
Anne Stevenson S O U S - E N T E N D U 943
Emily Grosholz L I S T E N I N G 944
Donald Justice M E N A T F O R T Y 945
Adrienne Rich W O M E N 945
For Review and Further Study
Shirley Geok-lin Lim L E A R N I N G T O L O V E A M E R I C A
Andrew Hudgins A E L E G Y F O R M Y F A T H E R , W H O IS
NOT DEAD
AlastairReid
Philip Larkin
WRITING
WRITERS
946
A SPEAKING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
AUBADE
948
946
947
EFFECTIVELY
ON
Rhina Espaillat
WRITING
BEING A BILINGUAL WRITER
949
W R I T I N G A B O U T THE POETRY OF P E R S O N A L
Poetic Voice and Personal Identity
IDENTITY
951
CHECKLIST
Writing About Voice and Personal Identity
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
951
ON PERSONAL IDENTITY
FOR W R I T I N G
952
Translation 953
Is Poetic Translation Possible? 953
952
World Poetry 953
U PO DRINKING A L O N E B E N E A T H T H E MOON
{Chinese text) 954
Li Po M O O N - B E N E A T H A L O N E D R I N K (literal translation}
Translated by Arthur Waley D R I N K I N G A L O N E B Y
MOONLIGHT 955
955
Comparing Translations 956
Horace C A R P E D I E M O D E (Latin text) 956
Horace S E I Z E T H E D A Y (lateral translation) 956
Translated by Edwin Arlington Robinson H O R A C E T O
LEUCQNOE
957
Translated by James Michie D O N ' T A S K 957
Translated by A. E. Stallings A N E W Y E A R ' S T O A S T 958
Omar Khayyam R U B A I (Persian text) 958
Omar Khayyam R U B A I (literal translation) 958
Translated by Edward FitzGerald A B O O K O F V E R S E S
UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH
959
Translated by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah O U R D A Y ' S
PORTION
959
Translated by Dick Davis I N E E D A B A R E S U F F I C I E N C Y
959
Parody 960
Anonymous W E F O U R L A D S F R O M L I V E R P O O L A R E 9 6 1
Wendy Cope FROM S T R U G N E L L ' S R U B A I Y A T 961
Hugh Kingsmiil a W H A T , S T I L L A L I V E A T T W E N T Y - T W O ? 962
Bruce Bennett T H E L A D Y S P E A K S A G A I N 9 6 2
Gene Fehler IF R I C H A R D L O V E L A C E B E C A M E A F R E E A G E N T
Aaron Abeyta T H I R T E E N W A Y S O F L O O K I N G A T A T O R T I L L A
WRITING
962
963
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON WRITING
Arthur waley T H E M E T H O D O F T R A N S L A T I O N
WRITING A PARODY
Parody Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
CHECKLIST
Writing a Parody
965
966
966
WRITING A S S I G N M E N T ON PARODY
MORE TOPICS FOR WRITING
967
967
2 8 Poetry in Spanish: Literature of Latin America 968
sor Juana A S E G U R A L A C O N F I A N Z A D E Q U E O C U L T U R A D E T O D O
UN SECRET
970
Translated by Diane Thiel S H E P R O M I S E S T O H O L D A S E C R E T I N
CONFIDENCE
970
sor Juana P R E S E N T E E N Q U E EL C A R I N G H A C E R E G A L G L A
LLANEZA
970
Translated by Diane Thiel A S I M P L E G I F T M A D E R I C H B Y
AFFECTION
970
Pablo Neruda A M U C H O S S O M O S 971
Translated by Alastair Reid W E A R E M A N Y 971
Pablo Neruda C I E N S O N E T O S D E A M O R ( V ) 973
Translated by Stephen Tapscott O N E H U N D R E D
L O V E S O N N E T S ( V ) 973
Jorge Luis Borges ^ A M O R O S A A N T I C I P A C I 6 N 974
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald A N T I C I P A T I O N O F L O V E
Jorge Luis Borges L O S E N I G M A S 975
Translated by John Updike T H E E N I G M A S 976
Octavio Paz C O N L O S O J O S C E R R A D O S 977
Translated by Eliot Weinberger W I T H E Y E S C L O S E D 977
Octavio Paz ^ C E R T E Z A 977
Translated by Charles Tomlinson C E R T A I N T Y 977
975
Surrealism in Latin American Poetry 97s
Frida Kahlo T H E T W O F R I D A S 979
Cesar Vallejo L A C O L E R A Q U E Q U I E B R A A L H O M B R E
EN N I N O S
979
Translated by Thomas Merton A A N G E R
980
Contemporary Mexican Poetry 981
Jose Emilio Pacheco A L T A T R A I C I O N 981
Translated by Alastair Reid H I G H T R E A S O N 981
Francisco Hernandez B A J O C E R O 981
Translated by Carolyn Forche B E L O W Z E R O 982
Tedi Lopez Mills C O N V A L E C E N C I A 982
Translated by Tedi Lopez Mills C O N V A L E S C E N C E
WRITERS ON WRITING
Octavio Paz I N S E A R C H O F T H E P R E S E N T
WRITERS ON TRANSLATING
Alastair Reid T R A N S L A T I N G N E R U D A
983
983
WRITING A S S I G N M E N T ON SPANISH POETRY
MORE TOPICS FOR WRITING
982
984
984
Recognizing Excellence 985
Anonymous O M O O N , W H E N I G A Z E O N T H Y B E A U T I F U L F A C E
Grace Treasone L I F E 987
Emily Dickinson A D Y I N G T I G E R - M O A N E D F O R D R I N K 987
Rod McKuen T H O U G H T S O N C A P I T A L P U N I S H M E N T 990
William Stafford T R A V E L I N G T H R O U G H T H E D A R K 991
Wallace McRae R E I N C A R N A T I O N 992
987
Recognizing Excellence 993
William Butler Yeats S A I L I N G T O B Y Z A N T I U M 9 9 4
Arthur Guiterman O N T H E V A N I T Y O F E A R T H L Y G R E A T N E S S
Percy Bysshe Shelley A O Z Y M A N D I A S 996
Robert Hayden A T H E W H I P P I N G 9 9 1
Elizabeth Bishop ONE ART 998
W. H. Auden S S E P T E M B E R 1, 1 9 3 9 999
w a i t Whitman a o C A P T A I N ! M Y C A P T A I N ! 1002
Paul Laurence Dunbar W E W E A R T H E M A S K 1004
Emma Lazarus T H E N E W C O L O S S U S 1005
Edgar Allan Poe A N N A B E L L E E 1006
WRITING
996
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Edgar Allan
WRITING
Poe A L O N G P O E M D O E S N O T E X I S T
WRITING AN
1007
EVALUATION
You Be the Judge
1007
CHECKLIST
Evaluating a Poem
1007
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
ON E V A L U A T I N G
FOR W R I T I N G
A POEM
1008
1008
What is Poetry? 1009
Archibald MacLeish A R S P O E T I C A 1009
Dante, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William
Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy,
T. S. Eliot, w . H. Auden, J. V. Cunningham, Elizabeth Bishop,
Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, William Stafford, Robert Bly s
S O M E DEFINITIONS OF POETRY
H a Jin A M I S S E D T I M E
1012
1010-1011
Two Critical Caseboolcs:
Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes 1013
Em5Sy Dickinson 1013
S U C C E S S IS C O U N T E D S W E E T E S T
1014
I TASTE A LIQUOR NEVER BREWED
1014
WILD NIGHTS - WILD NIGHTS!
1015
I FELT A F U N E R A L , IN M Y B R A I N
1015
I'M NOBODY! W H O ARE YOU?
1016
I DWELL IN POSSIBILITY
1016
THE SOUL SELECTS HER O W N S O C I E T Y
1016
S O M E KEEP THE S A B B A T H GOING TO C H U R C H
1017
AFTER GREAT PAIN, A F O R M A L FEELING C O M E S
1017
THIS iS MY LETTER TO THE WORLD 1017
I HEARD A FLY BUZZ - WHEN I DIED
1018
I STARTED EARLY - TOOK MY DOG 1018
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH 1019
THE BUSTLE IN A HOUSE 1019
TELL ALL THE TRUTH BUT TELL IT SLANT 1019
Emily Dickinson ON Emily Dickinson
RECOGNIZING POETRY 1020
SELF-DESCRIPTION 1021
Critics ON Emily Dickinson
Thomas w e n t w o r t h Higginson M E E T I N G E M I L Y D I C K I N S O N
1023
Thomas H. Johnson T H E D I S C O V E R Y O F E M I L Y D I C K I N S O N ' S
MANUSCRIPTS 1024
Richard Wilbur T H E T H R E E P R I V A T I O N S O F E M I L Y D I C K I N S O N
1025
Cynthia Griffin Wolff D I C K I N S O N A N D D E A T H ( A R E A D I N G O F
"BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH") 1026
Judith Farr A R E A D I N G O F " M Y L I F E H A D S T O O D - A L O A D E D
GUN" 1028
l a n g s t o n Hughes 1030
THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
MOTHER TO SON
1031
DREAM VARIATIONS
1031
I, T O O
1032
1030
THE WEARY BLUES 1032
SONG FOR A DARK GIRL 1033
PRAYER 1033
BALLAD OF THE LANDLORD 1034
KU KLUX 1034
END 1035
THEME FOR ENGLISH B 1035
SUBWAY RUSH HOUR 1036
SLIVER 1036
HARLEM [DREAM DEFERRED] 1037
AS BEFITS A M A N 1037
Langston Hughes ON Langston Hughes
THE NEGRO ARTIST AND THE RACIAL MOUNTAIN
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE 1039
1038
Critics ON Langston Hughes
Arnold Rampersad H U G H E S A S A N E X P E R I M E N T A L I S T 1041
Rita Dove and Marilyn Nelson A L A N G S T O N H U G H E S
AND HARLEM 1042
Darryl Pinckney B L A C K I D E N T I T Y IN L A N G S T O N H U G H E S 1044
Peter Townsend L A N G S T O N H U G H E S A N D J A Z Z 1045
Onwuchekwa Jemie A R E A D I N G O F " D R E A M D E F E R R E D "
T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G A B O U T
T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G A B O U T
1047
EMILY DICKINSON
1048
LANGSTON HUGHES
1048
3 2 Critical Casebook: T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock" 1049
T. S. ESiOt 1049
THE
LOVE
SONG
OF
J.
ALFRED
Publishing "Prufrock"
The Reviewers on Prufrock
PRUFROCK
1051
ioss
Unsigned H R E V I E W F R O M TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
1058
unsigned R E V I E W F R O M LITERARY
WORLD
1058
unsigned R E V I E W F R O M NEW STATESMAN
1058
Conrad Aiken * F R O M " D I V E R S R E A L I S T S , " THE DIAL
1059
Babette Deutsch F R O M " A N O T H E R I M P R E S S I O N I S T , " THE NEW
1059
Marianne Moore F R O M " A N O T E O N T . S. E L I O T ' S B O O K , "
POETRY
1059
May Sinclair F R O M "PRUFROCK
AND OTHER
OBSERVATIONS:
A C R I T I C I S M , " THE LITTLE REVIEW
1060
REPUBLIC
T. S. Eliot ON Writing
POETRY A N D EMOTION
1061
THE OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE
1062
THE DIFFICULTY OF POETRY
1062
Critics ON "Prufrock"
Denis Donoghue O N E O F T H E I R R E F U T A B L E P O E T S 1064
Christopher Ricks W H A T ' S I N A N A M E ? 1065
Philip R. Headings A T H E P R O N O U N S I N T H E P O E M : " O N E , " " Y O U , "
AND "I"
1066
Maud Ellmann W I L L T H E R E B E T I M E ? 1067
Burton Raffel " I N D E T E R M I N A C Y " I N E L I O T ' S P O E T R Y
John Berryman P R U F R O C K ' S D I L E M M A 1069
M . L. Rosenthal A D O L E S C E N T S S I N G I N G 1072
T O P I C S FOR W R I T I N G
1073
3 3 Poems for Further Reading 1074
Anonymous L O R D R A N D A L L 1075
Anonymous T H E T H R E E R A V E N S 1076
1068
Anonymous T H E T W A C O R B I E S 1077
Anonymous L A S T W O R D S O F T H E P R O P H E T 1077
M a t t h e w Arnold D O V E R B E A C H 1078
John Ashbery A A T N O R T H F A R M 1079
Margaret Atwood A S I R E N S O N G 1079
w. H. Auden a A S I W A L K E D O U T O N E E V E N I N G 1081
w. H. Auden M U S E E D E S B E A U X A R T S 1083
Elizabeth Bishop F I L L I N G S T A T I O N 1084
William Blake A T H E T Y G E R 1086
William Blake T H E S I C K R O S E 1087
Eavan Boland A N O R E X I C 1088
Gwendolyn Brooks T H E M O T H E R 1089
Gwendolyn Brooks A T H E P R E A C H E R : R U M I N A T E S B E H I N D
THE S E R M O N
1090
Elizabeth Barrett Browning A H O W D O I L O V E T H E E ? L E T M E C O U N T
THE W A Y S
1091
Robert Browning S O L I L O Q U Y O F T H E S P A N J S H C L O I S T E R 1091
Geoffrey Chaucer M E R C I L E S S B E A U T Y 1093
G. K. Chesterton a T H E D O N K E Y 1094
Lucille Clifton A H O M A G E T O M Y H I P S 1095
Samuel Taylor Coleridge a K U B L A K H A N 1096
Billy Collins C A R E A N D F E E D I N G 1097
Hart Crane M Y G R A N D M O T H E R ' S L O V E L E T T E R S 1098
E. E. cummings S O M E W H E R E I H A V E N E V E R T R A V E L L E D , G L A D L Y
BEYOND
1099
Marisa de los Santos A P E R F E C T D R E S S 1100
John Donne D E A T H B E N O T P R O U D 1101
John Donne T H E F L E A 1102
John Donne A A V A L E D I C T I O N : F O R B I D D I N G M O U R N I N G 1102
John Dryden a T O T H E M E M O R Y O F M R . O L D H A M 1104
T. S. Eliot J O U R N E Y O F T H E M A G I 1104
Louise Erdrich a I N D I A N B O A R D I N G S C H O O L : T H E R U N A W A Y S
B. H. Fairchild A A S T A R L I T N I G H T 1107
Robert Frost a B I R C H E S 1107
Robert Frost M E N D I N G W A L L 1109
Robert Frost A S T O P P I N G B Y W O O D S O N A S N O W Y
1106
EVENING
1110
Allen Ginsberg A S U P E R M A R K E T I N C A L I F O R N I A 1110
Thorn Gunn T H E M A N W I T H N I G H T S W E A T S 1111
Donald Hall N A M E S O F H O R S E S 1112
Thomas Hardy A T H E C O N V E R G E N C E O F T H E T W A I N 1113
Thomas Hardy T H E D A R K L I N G T H R U S H 1115
Thomas Hardy HAP 1116
Robert Hayden a T H O S E W I N T E R S U N D A Y S 1117
Seamus Heaney a D I G G I N G 11 I S
Anthony Hecht a A D A M 1119
George Herbert A L O V E 1121
Robert Herrick A T O T H E V I R G I N S , T O M A K E M U C H O F T I M E
Gerard Manley Hopkins S P R I N G A N D F A L L 1122
Gerard Manley Hopkins A WO W O R S T , T H E R E IS N O N E 1123
1122
Gerard Manley Hopkins A T H E W I N D H O V E R 1123
A. E. Housman A L O V E L I E S T O F T R E E S , T H E C H E R R Y N O W 1124
A. E. Housman T O A N A T H L E T E D Y I N G Y O U N G 1124
Randall Jarrell T H E D E A T H O F T H E B A L L T U R R E T G U N N E R 1125
Robinson Jeffers T O T H E S T O N E - C U T T E R S 1126
Ben Jonson a O N M Y F I R S T S O N 1126
Donald Justice O N T H E D E A T H O F F R I E N D S I N C H I L D H O O D 1127
John Keats O D E O N A G R E C I A N U R N 1127
John Keats W H E N I H A V E F E A R S T H A T I M A Y C E A S E T O BE 1129
John Keats T O A U T U M N 1130
Ted Kooser a A B A N D O N E D F A R M H O U S E 1131
Philip Larkin H O M E IS S O S A D 1132
Philip Larkin P O E T R Y O F D E P A R T U R E S 1133
Irving Layton T H E B U L L C A L F 1134
Denise Levertov A T H E A C H E O F M A R R I A G E 1135
Philip Levine T H E Y F E E D T H E Y L I O N 1136
Shirley Geok-lin Urn A R I D I N G I N T O C A L I F O R N I A 1137
Robert Lowell S K U N K H O U R 1138
Andrew Marvefl T O H I S C O Y M I S T R E S S 1139
Edna St. Vincent Millay R E C U E R D O 1140
John Milton A H O W S O O N H A T H T I M E 1141
John Milton
W H E N I C O N S I D E R H O W M Y L I G H T IS S P E N T
1142
Marianne Moore 3 P O E T R Y 1142
Frederick Morgan A T H E M A S T E R 1143
Marilyn Nelson A S T R A N G E B E A U T I F U L W O M A N 1144
Howard Nemerov THE WAR IN THE AIR 1145
Lorine Niedecker P O E T ' S W O R K 1145
Yone NOgUChl a A S E L E C T I O N O F H O K K U 1146
Sharon Olds T H E O N E G I R L A T T H E B O Y S ' P A R T Y 1147
Wilfred Owen A N T H E M F O R D O O M E D Y O U T H 1148
Linda Pastan E T H I C S 1148
Robert Phillips R U N N I N G O N E M P T Y 1149
Sylvia Plath A D A D D Y 1150
Edgar Allan Poe A D R E A M W I T H I N A D R E A M 1153
Alexander Pope A L I T T L E L E A R N I N G IS A D A N G ' R O U S T H I N G 1153
Ezra Pound T H E R I V E R - M E R C H A N T ' S W I F E : A L E T T E R 1154
Dudley Randall A D I F F E R E N T I M A G E 1155
John Crowe Ransom A P I A Z Z A P I E C E 1155
Henry Reed N A M I N G O F P A R T S 1156
Adrienne Rich a L I V I N G I N S I N 1157
Edwin Arlington Robinson A M I N I V E R C H E E V Y 1158
Theodore Roethke E L E G Y F O R J A N E 1159
Mary Jo Salter W E L C O M E T O H I R O S H I M A 1160
William Shakespeare A W H E N , I N D I S G R A C E W I T H F O R T U N E A N D
'S EYES
1163
William Shakespeare A N O T M A R B L E N O R T H E G I L D E D
MONUMENTS
1162
William Shakespeare A T H A T T I M E O F Y E A R T H O U M A Y S T
ME BEHOLD
1163
William Shakespeare M Y M I S T R E S S ' E Y E S A R E N O T H I N G L I K E
THE SUN
1164
Louis Simpson A M E R I C A N P O E T R Y 1164
David R. Slavitt T I T A N I C H 6 4
Christopher smart F O R I W I L L C O N S I D E R M Y C A T J E O F F R Y 1165
William Jay Smith A M E R I C A N P R I M I T I V E 1167
Cathy song S T A M P C O L L E C T I N G 1168
William Stafford T H E F A R M O N T H E G R E A T P L A I N S 1169
Wallace Stevens T H E E M P E R O R O F I C E - C R E A M 1170
Jonathan Swift A A D E S C R I P T I O N O F T H E M O R N I N G 1171
Larissa Szporluk A V E R T I G O 1172
SaraTeasdale T H E F L I G H T 1173
Alfred, Lord Tennyson D A R K H O U S E , B Y W H I C H O N C E M O R E
I STAND
1173
Alfred, Lord Tennyson U L Y S S E S 1174
Dylan Thomas F E R N H I L L 1176
John Updike E X - B A S K E T B A L L P L A Y E R 1177
Derek Walcott T H E V I R G I N S 1178
Edmund waller SI G O , L O V E L Y R O S E 1179
w a i t whitman * FROM S O N G O F T H E O P E N R O A D nso
w a i t Whitman I H E A R A M E R I C A S I N G I N G 1181
Richard Wilbur T H E W R I T E R 1181
C. K. Williams E L M S 1182
William Carlos Williams S P R I N G A N D A L L 1183
William Carlos Williams T O W A K E N A N O L D L A D Y 1184
William Wordsworth C O M P O S E D U P O N W E S T M I N S T E R B R I D G E 1185
James Wright A B L E S S I N G 1186
James Wright A U T U M N B E G I N S I N M A R T I N S F E R R Y , O H I O 1186
Mary Sidney w r o t h I N T H I S S T R A N G E L A B Y R I N T H 1187
Sir Thomas Wyatt T H E Y F L E E F R O M M E T H A T S O M E T I M E D I D
ME SEKE
1188
William Butler Yeats C R A Z Y J A N E T A L K S W I T H T H E B I S H O P 1189
William Butler Yeats T H E M A G I 1190
William Butler Yeats W H E N Y O U A R E O L D 1190
Bernice Zamora a P E N I T E N T S 1191
Lives of the Poets 1192
...
yl/ft^
PRAIVSA
Reading a Play 1223
A Play in Its Elements 1225
Susan Glaspell T R I F L E S
1225
Was Minnie Wright to blame for the death of her husband? While the menfolk
try to unravel a mystery, two women in the kitchen turn up revealing clues.
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Susan Glaspell
WRITING
C R E A T I N G TRIFLES
WRITING ABOUT
CONFLICT
Conflict Resolution
1242
1241
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Conflict
1243
WRITING A S S I G N M E N T ON C O N F L I C T
Student Paper O U T S I D E TRIFLES
1244
MORE TOPICS
FOR W R I T I N G
1243
1248
Modes of Drama: Tragedy and Comedy 1249
Tragedy 1249
Christopher Marlowe SCENE FROM D O C T O R F A U S T U S
(Act 2, Scene 1) 1251
In this .scene from the classic drama, a brilliant scholar sells his soul to the
devil. How smart is that?
Comedy 1257
David Ives S U R E T H I N G
1259
Bill wants to pick up Betty in a cafe, but he makes every mistake in the book.
Luckily, he not only gets a second chance, but a third and a fourth as well.
Jane Martin B E A U T Y
1269
We've all wanted to be someone else at one time or another. But what would
happen if we got our wish?
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON WRITING
David Ives O N T H E O N E - A C T P L A Y
WRITING ABOUT
COMEDY
Getting Serious About Comedy
CHECKLIST
Writing About a Comedy
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
1274
1275
1276
ON C O M E D Y
FOR W R I T I N G
1276
1276
Critical Casebook: Sophocles 1277
The Theater of Sophocles 1277
Staging 1278
The Civic Role of Greek Drama 1280
Aristotle's Concept of Tragedy 1282
Sophocles 1283
Plays
THE ORIGINS OF OEDIPUS
THE KING
1284
Sophocles O E D I P U S T H E K I N G (Translated by Dudley Fitts and
Robert Fitzgerald)
1285
"Who is the man proclaimed / by Delphi's prophetic rock / as the bloody
handed murderer / the doer of deeds that none dare name ? / . . . Terrribly
close on his heels are the Fates that never miss."
The Background of Antigone
1323
Sophocles A N T I G O N E (Translated by Dudley Fitts and
Robert Fitzgerald)
1324
In one of the great plays of classical Greek drama, a daughter of Oedipus
strives to give the body of her slain brother a proper burial. Soon she finds
herself in conflict with a king.
Critics ON Sophocles
Aristotle D E F I N I N G T R A G E D Y 1353
Sigmund Freud T H E D E S T I N Y O F O E D I P U S 1354
E. R. Dodds O N M I S U N D E R S T A N D I N G OEDIPUS 1355
A. E. Haigh T H E I R O N Y O F S O P H O C L E S 1356
David Wiles T H E C H O R U S A S D E M O C R A T 1358
Patricia M. Lines A N T I G O N E ' S F L A W 1358
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON
Robert
WRITING
Fitzgerald T R A N S L A T I N G S G P H O C L E S I N T O E N G L I S H
WRITING
A B O U T GREEK
TRAGEDY
Some Things Change, Some Things Don't
1362
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Greek Tragedy
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
1362
ON SOPHOCLES
FOR W R I T I N G
1363
1362
1361
Critical Casebook: Shakespeare 1364
The Theater of Shakespeare 1365
William Shakespeare 1366
Plays
A Note on Othello 1367
William Shakespeare O T H E L L O , T H E M O O R O F V E N I C E
1368
Here is a story of jealousy, that "green-eyed monster which doth mock / The
meat it feeds on"of a passionate, suspicious man and his blameless wife, of
a serpent masked as a friend.
The Background of Hamlet
1470
William Shakespeare H A I V I L E T , P R I N C E O F D E N M A R K
1472
In perhaps the most celebrated play in English, a ghost demands that young
Prince Hamlet avenge his father's "most foul and unnatural murder." But
how can Hamlet be sure that the apparition is indeed his father's spirit?
The Background of A Midsummer
Night's Dream
1590
William Shakespeare A M I D S U M M E R N I G H T ' S D R E A M
1592
"The course of true love never did run smooth" is the right motto for this romantic
comedy in which love, magic, and mistaken identity combine for madcap results.
Critics ON Shakespeare
Anthony Burgess A N A S I A N C U L T U R E L O O K S A T
SHAKESPEARE
1658
A. C. Bradley a H A M L E T ' S M E L A N C H O L Y 1659
Rebecca w e s t H A M L E T A N D - O P H E L I A 1660
Jan Kott P R O D U C I N G HAMLET
1662
Joel Wingard R E A D E R - R E S P O N S E I S S U E S I N HAMLET
W. H. Auden * I A G O A S A T R I U M P H A N T V I L L A I N 1664
Maud Bodkin a L U C I F E R I N S H A K E S P E A R E ' S OTHELLO
1663
1665
Virginia Mason Vaughan B L A C K A N D W H I T E I N
1665
Clare Asquith A S H A K E S P E A R E ' S L A N G U A G E A S A H I D D E N
POLITICAL CODE
1666
Germaine Greer A S H A K E S P E A R E ' S " H O N E S T M I R T H " 1667
Linda Bamber F E M A L E P O W E R SN A MIDSUMMER
NIGHT'S
DREAM
1668
OTHELLO
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITERS ON WRITING
Ben Jonson A O N H I S F R I E N D A N D R I V A L W I L L I A M
1669
WRITING ABOUT
SHAKESPEARE
Breaking the Language Barrier
1670
SHAKESPEARE
CHECKLIST
Reading a Shakespearean Play
WRITING
student
1670
A S S I G N M E N T ON T R A G E D Y
1671
Paper OTHELLO: T R A G E D Y O R S O A P O P E R A ?
MORE TOPICS
FOR W R I T I N G
1671
1676
3 9 The M o d e m Theater W7
Realism and Naturalism 1677
Henrik Ibsen A D O L L ' S H O U S E (Translated by James McFarlane) 1679
The founder of modern drama portrays a troubled marriage. Helmer, the bank
manager, regards his wife Nora as a chuckleheaded petnot knowing the
truth may shatter his smug world.
WRITERS
ON
Henrik Ibsen
WRITING
C O R R E S P O N D E N C E O N THE F I N A L SCENE OF
A DOLL'S HOUSE 1735
Tragicomedy and the Absurd 1736
Milcha Sanchez-Scott T H E C U B A N S W I M M E R
1739
Nineteen-year-old Margarita Sudrez wants to win a Southern California
distance swimming race. Is her family behind her? Quite literally!
WRITERS
ON
WRITING
Milcha Sanchez-Scott W R I T I N G THE CUBAN
WRITING
EFFECTIVELY
WRITING ABOUT DRAMATIC
SWIMMER
REALISM
What's so Realistic About Realism?
1753
CHECKLIST
Writing About a Realist Play
1754
WRITING A S S I G N M E N T ON REALISM
Student Essay H E L M E R V S . H E L M E R
MORE TOPICS
40
FOR W R I T I N G
1754
1755
1758
Evaluating a PSay 1759
WRITING AN EVALUATION
Judging a Play
OF A
PLAY
1760
CHECKLIST
Evaluating a Play
1761
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
MORE TOPICS
ON E V A L U A T I O N
FOR W R I T I N G
1761
1761
1752
P l a y s f o r F u r t h e r R e a d i n g 1753
A r t h u r Miller D E A T H O F A S A L E S M A N
1763
Willy Loman has bright dreams for himself and his two sons, but he is an aging
salesman whose only assets are a shoeshine and a smile. A modern classic
about the downfall of an ordinary American.
WRITERS ON
WRITING
TRAGEDY A N D THE C O M M O N M A N
A r t h u r Miller
Tennessee Williams T H E G L A S S M E N A G E R I E
1833
1836
Painfully shy and retiring, shunning love, Laura dwells in a world as fragile as her
collection of tiny figurinesuntil one memorable night a gentleman comes to call.
WRITERS ON
Tennessee
WRITING
Williams
H O W T O S T A G E THE GLASS
1883
MENAGERIE
New Voices in American Drama 1886
Rita Dove T H E D A R K E R F A C E O F T H E E A R T H
1886
The timelessness of the great myths is displayed as a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
sets the Oedipus story on a South Carolina plantation before the Civil War.
WRITERS ON WRITING
Rita Dove B T H E I N S P I R A T I O N F O R THE DARKER
EARTH
1958
Beth Henley
A M SBLUE
FACE
OF
THE
1959
His friends want to give John Polk a good time for his eighteenth birthday, but
he finds something much more valuable instead.
WRITERS ON
Beth Henley
WRITING
A P L A Y W R I G H T IS B O R N
David Henry H w a n g
a THE
1975
S O U N D OF A VOICE
1976
A strange man arrives at a solitary woman's home in the remote countryside.
As they fall in love, they discover disturbing secrets about one another's past.
WRITERS
ON
David Henry
WRITING
Hwang a MULTICULTURAL THEATER
Terrence McNally
ANDRE'S MOTHER
1991
1992
After Andre's funeral the four people who loved him most walk into Central
Park together. Three of them talk about their grief, but Andre's mother
remains silent about her son, dead of AIDS.
WRITERS
Terrence
ON
WRITING
McNally a H O W T O W R I T E A P L A Y
1995
August Wilson F E N C E S
1996
A proud man's love for his family is choked by his rigidity and
in this powerful drama by a great American
WRITERS ON
August Wilson
self-righteousness,
playwright of our time.
WRITING
A LOOK INTO BLACK AMERICA
2047
WRITING
4 3 Writing About Literature 2051
Reading Actively 2051
Robert Frost a N O T H I N G G O L D C A N S T A Y
2052
Planning Your Essay 2053
Prewriting: Discovering Ideas 2054
Sample student Prewriting Exercises
2054-2057
Developing a Literary Argument 2058
CHECKLIST
Developing a Literary Argument
2060
Writing a Rough Draft 2060
Sample Student Paper a ( R O U G H D R A F T )
2061
Revising 2063
CHECKLIST
Revision Steps
2067
Some Final Advice on Rewriting 2068
Sample Student Paper ( R E V I S E D D R A F T )
2069
Using Critical Sources and Maintaining Academic integrity 2072
The Form of Your Finished Paper 2072
Spell-Check and Grammar-Check Programs 2073
Anonymous (after a poem by Jerrold H. Zar) A L I T T L E P O E M
REGARDING C O M P U T E R SPELL CHECKERS
44
Writing About a Story
Reading Actively 2075
Thinking About a Story 2077
2075
2073
Preparing to Write: Discovering Ideas 2077
Sample Student P r e w r i t i n g Exercises
2077-2080
Writing a First Draft 2080
CHECKLIST
Writing a Rough Draft
2081
Revising 2081
CHECKLIST
Revision 2083
What's Your Purpose? Some Common Approaches to Writing
About Fiction 2083
EXPLICATION 2083
Sample S t u d e n t Paper (EXPLICATION)
A N A L Y S I S 2088
Sample S t u d e n t Paper (ANALYSIS)
THE CARD REPORT 2092
Sample Student Card Report
2085
2089
2093
COMPARISON AND CONTRAST 2095
S a m p l e S t u d e n t Paper (COMPARISON AND CONTRAST)
Topics for Writing 2098
Writing About a Poem 2101
Getting Started 2101
Reading Actively 2101
Robert Frost DESIGN
2102
Thinking About a Poem 2102
preparing to Write: Discovering Ideas 2103
Sample S t u d e n t P r e w r i t i n g Exercises
Writing a First Draft 2106
CHECKLIST
Writing a Rough Draft
Revising 2108
CHECKLIST
Revision 2110
2107
2104-2106
2096
Contents xliii
Some Common Approaches to Writing About Poetry 2110
EXPLICATION 2110
Sample student Paper ( E X P L I C A T I O N )
2111
A CRITIC'S EXPLICATION OF FROST'S " D E S I G N "
A N A L Y S I S 2115
Sample Student Paper ( A N A L Y S I S )
2114
2116
COMPARISON AND CONTRAST 2118
Abbie Huston Evans W I N G - S P R E A D 2118
Sample Student Paper ( C O M P A R I S O N A N D C O N T R A S T )
How to Quote a Poem 2121
Topics for Writing 2123
Robert Frost I N W H I T E
2124
4 6 Writing About a Play 2126
Reading a Play 2126
Common Approaches to Writing About Drama 2127
EXPLICATION
ANALYSIS
2128
2128
COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
CARD REPORT 2128
Sample Student Card Report
2128
2130
A DRAMA REVIEW 2132
Sample Student Drama Review
2133
How to Quote a Play 2134
Topics for Writing 2135
4 7 Writing a Research Paper 2138
Getting Started 2138
Choosing a Topic 2139
Finding Research Sources 2139
FINDING PRINT RESOURCES
USING ONLINE DATABASES
2139
2140
FINDING RELIABLE WEB SOURCES
2140
2119
CHECKLIST
Finding Sources
2141
USING VISUAL
IMAGES
2142
CHECKLIST
Using Visual Images
2143
Evaluating Sources 2143
EVALUATING
EVALUATING
WEB
RESOURCES
RESOURCES
2143
2144
CHECKLIST
Evaluating Sources
2144-2145
Organizing Your Research 2145
Refining Your Thesis 2147
Organizing Your Paper 2148
Writing and Revising 2148
Guarding Academic Integrity 2149
Acknowledging Sources 2149
QUOTING
A SOURCE
2150
C I T I N G I D E A Sources
S
2 1 5 0 Using MLA Style 2151
Documenting
LIST OF S O U R C E S
PARENTHETICAL
2152
REFERENCES
WORKS
CITED
LIST
CITING
PRINT SOURCES
CITING
INTERNET
2152
IN M L A
SOURCES
SAMPLE WORKS
CITED
ENDNOTES
FOOTNOTES
AND
2152
LIST
Concluding Thoughts 2158
STYLE
IN M L A
2153
STYLE
2154
2155
2156
Reference Guide for Citations 2159-2165
Writing as Discovery: Keeping a Journal 2166
The Rewards of Keeping a Journal 2166
Sample Journal Entry 2168
Sample Student Journal 2169
Writing an Essay Exam 2172
CHECKLIST
Exam Preparation 2176
Taking the Exam 2176
Critical Approaches to Literature 2177
Formalist Criticism 2178
Cleanth Brooks T H E F O R M A L I S T C R I T I C 2178
Michael Clark L I G H T A N D D A R K N E S S I N " S O N N Y ' S B L U E S "
Robert Langbaum O N R O B E R T B R O W N I N G ' S " M Y L A S T
DUCHESS"
2179
2180
Biographical Criticism 2182
Virginia Llewellyn Smith C H E K H O V ' S A T T I T U D E T O R O M A N T I C
LOVE
2183
Brett c. Millier O N E L I Z A B E T H B I S H O P ' S " O N E A R T "
Emily Toth T H E S O U R C E F O R A L C E E L A B A L L I E R E I N
"THE STORM"
2185
2186
Historical Criticism 2187
Hugh Kenner I M A G I S M 2187
Joseph Moldenhauer " T O H I S C O Y M I S T R E S S " A N D T H E
RENAISSANCE TRADITION
2189
Kathryn Lee Seidel T H E E C O N O M I C S O F Z G R A N E A L E H U R S T O N ' S
"SWEAT"
2190
Psychological Criticism 2192
Sigmund Freud T H E N A T U R E O F D R E A M S 2193
Gretchen Schulz and R. J. R. Rockwood F A I R Y T A L E M O T I F S I N
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"
Harold Bloom P O E T I C I N F L U E N C E 2195
2194
Mythological Criticism 2196
carl Jung T H E C O L L E C T I V E U N C O N S C I O U S A N D
ARCHETYPES
2197
Northrop Frye M Y T H I C A R C H E T Y P E S 2198
Edmond Volpe M Y T H I N F A U L K N E R ' S " B A R N B U R N I N G "
2198
Sociological Criticism 2200
Georg Lukacs C O N T E N T D E T E R M I N E S F O R M 2201
Daniel P. watkins M O N E Y A N D L A B O R I N " T H E R O C K I N G - H O R S E
WINNER"
2201
Alfred Kazin W A L T W H I T M A N A N D A B R A H A M L I N C O L N
Gender Criticism
2203
2204
Elaine show/alter T O W A R D A F E M I N I S T P O E T I C S 2204
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar T H E F R E E D O M O F
EMILY DICKINSON
2205
Nina Pelikan Straus T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S
THE METAMORPHOSIS
2206
Reader-Response Criticism 2207
Stanley Fish A N E S K I M O " A R O S E F O R E M I L Y " 2208
Robert scholes " H O W D O W E M A K E A P O E M ? " 2209
Michael J. colacurcio T H E E N D O F Y O U N G G O O D M A N B R O W N
2211
Deconstructionist Criticism 2212
Roland Barthes T H E D E A T H O F T H E A U T H O R 2213
Barbara Johnson R I G O R O U S U N R E L I A B I L I T Y 2213
Geoffrey Hartman O N W O R D S W O R T H ' S " A S L U M B E R D I D M Y
SPIRIT S E A L "
2214
Cultural Studies 2216
Vincent B. Leitch P O S T S T R U C T U R A L I S T C U L T U R A L C R I T I Q U E 2217
Mark Bauerlein W H A T IS C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S ? 2218
camille Paglia A R E A D I N G O F W I L L I A M B L A K E ' S " T H E C H I M N E Y
SWEEPER"
2220
Glossary of Literary T e r m s G1
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s A1
Photo A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s A16
Index of M a j o r T h e m e s 11
Index of First Lines of Poetry 18
Index of A u t h o r s a n d Titles 114
Index of Literary T e r m s I34
Preface
Literature, Tenth Editionthe book in your handsis really four interlocking
volumes sharing one cover. Each of the first three sections is devoted to one of the
major literary formsfiction, poetry, and drama. T h e fourth section is a comprehensive introduction to critical writing. All together, the book is an attempt to
provide the college student with a reasonably compact introduction to the study
and appreciation of stories, poems, and playsas well as practical advice on the
sort of writing expected in a college English course.
We assume that appreciation begins in delighted attention to words on a page.
Speed reading has its uses; but at times, as Robert Frost said, the person who reads for
speed "misses the best part of what a good writer puts into it." Close reading, then, is
essential. Still, we do not believe that close reading tells us everything, that it is wrong
to read a literary work by any light except that of the work itself. At times we suggest
different approaches such as referring to the facts of an author's life, looking for myth,
or seeing the conventions that typify a kind of writingnoticing, for instance, that an
old mansion, cobwebbed and creaking, is the setting for a Gothic horror story.
Although we cannot help having a few convictions about the meanings of stories, poems, and plays, we have tried to step back and give you room to make up your
own mind. Here and there, in the wording of a question, our opinions may occasionally stick out. If you should notice any, please feel free to ignore them. Be assured
that no one interpretation, laid down by authority, is the only right one for any work
of literature. Trust your own interpretationprovided that in making it you have
looked clearly and carefully at the evidence.
Reading literature often will provide you with reason to wrrite. At the back of the
book, there are several chapters that give the student writer some practical advice. It
will guide you, step by step, in finding a topic, planning an essay, writing, revising,
and putting your paper into finished form. Further, you will find there specific help in
writing about fiction, poetry, and drama. There are also short features at the end of
every chapter that provide help and perspective on writing about literature. In a few
places we have even offered some suggestions about writing your own stories or
poemsin case reading the selections in this book inspires you to try your hand at
imaginative writing.
A Word About Careers
Most students agree that to read celebrated writers such as William Faulkner, Emily
Dickinson, and W i l l i a m Shakespeare is probably good for the spirit. Most students
even take some pleasure in the experience. But many, not planning to teach English
and impatient to begin some other career, wonder if the study of literature, however
enjoyable, isn't a waste of timeor at least, an annoying obstacle.
This objection may seem reasonable at first glance, but it rests on a shaky assumption. Success in a career does not depend merely on learning the specialized
xlvii
information and skills required to join a profession. In most careers, according to one
senior business executive, people often fail not because they don't understand their
jobs, but because they don't understand their co-workers, their clients, or their customers. They don't ever see the world from another person's point of view. Their
problem is a failure of imagination.
To leap over the wall of self and to look through another's eyes is valuable experience that literature offers. If you are lucky, you may never meet (or have to do business
with) anyone exactly like Mrs. Turpin in the story "Revelation," and yet you will learn
much about the kind of person she is from Flannery O'Connor's fictional portrait of
her. What is it like to be black, a white may wonder? James Baldwin, Gwendolyn
Brooks, Rita Dove, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, August
Wilson, and others have knowledge to impart. What is it like to be a woman? If a
man would learn, let him read (for a start) Sandra Cisneros, Kate Chopin, Susan
Glaspell, Alice Munro, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor,
Tillie Olsen, Adrienne Rich, and Amy Tan, and perhaps, too, Henrik Ibsen's A
Doll's House and John Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums."
Plodding single-mindedly toward careers, some people are like horses wearing
blinders. For many, the goals look fixed and predictable. Competent nurses, accountants, and dental technicians seem always in demand. Others may find that in our
society some careers, like waves in the sea, will rise or fall unexpectedly. Think how
many professions we now take for granted, which a few years ago didn't even exist:
genetic engineering, energy conservation, digital editing, and Web site design.
Others that once looked like lifetime meal tickets have been cut back and nearly
ruined: shoe repairing, commercial fishing, railroading.
In a perpetually changing society, it may be risky to lock yourself on one track to
a career, refusing to consider any other. "We are moving," writes John Naisbitt in
Megatrends, a study of our changing society, "from the specialist, soon obsolete, to
the generalist who can adapt." Perhaps the greatest opportunity in your whole life
lies in a career that has yet to be invented. If you do change your career as you go
along, you will be like most people. According to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
survey conducted in April 2000, the average person holds over nine jobs between the
ages of 18 and 34often completely changing his or her basic occupation. When for
some unforeseen reason you have to make such a change, basic skillsand a knowledge of humanitymay be your most valuable credentials.
Literature has much practical knowledge to offer you. An art of words, it can
help you become more sensitive to languageboth your own and other people's. It
can make you aware of the difference between the word that is exactly right and the
word that is merely good enoughMark Twain calls it "the difference between the
lightning and the lightning-bug." Read a fine work of literature alertly, and some of
its writer's sensitivity to words may grow on you. A Supreme Court Justice, John Paul
Stevens, once remarked that the best preparation for law school is to study poetry.
Why? George D. Gopen, an English professor with a law degree, says it may be because "no other discipline so closely replicates the central question asked in the study
of legal thinking: Here is a text; in how many ways can it have meaning?"
Many careers today, besides law, call for close reading and clear writingas well
as careful listening and thoughtful speech. Lately, college placement directors have
reported more demand for graduates who are good readers and writers. The reason is
evident: employers need people who can handle words. In a survey conducted by
Cornell University, business executives were asked to rank in importance the traits
they look for when hiring. Leadership was first, but skill in writing and speaking came
in fourth, ahead of both managerial and analytical skills. Times change, but to think
cogently and to express yourself well will always be the abilities the world needs.
Key Literary Terms
Every discipline has its own terminology. This book introduces a large range of critical terms that may help you in both your reading and writing. When these important
words and phrases are first defined, they are printed in boldface. If you find a critical
term anywhere in this book you don't know or don't recall (for example, what is a
carpe diem poem or a dramatic question?), just look it up in the "Glossary of Literary
Terms" in the back of the book.
Texts and Dates
Every effort has been made to supply each selection in its most accurate text and
(where necessary) in a lively, faithful translation. For the reader who wishes to know
when a work was written, at the right of each title appears the date of its first publication in book form. Parentheses around a date indicate the work's date of composition
or first magazine publication, given when it was composed much earlier than when it
was first published in book form.
A Possibly Puzzling Asterisk
Throughout the poetry section of Literature, you will often notice an asterisk ( * ) after
a poet's byline. This asterisk indicates that there is a short biography of the author in
Chapter 34, "Lives of the Poets." This special chapter offers 75 biographies of the poets
represented in the anthology by two or more poems. For easy reference we have
tucked them into one place. The only exceptions are the more extensive biographical notes on Sor Juana, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and Octavio Paz, the poets
collected in Chapter 28, "Poetry in Spanish: Literature of Latin America." In addition, biographies of Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes appear in Chapter 31
(with substantial selections of their work), and a biography of T. S. Eliot, along with
extensive critical writing, can be found in Chapter 32, "Critical Casebook: T. S.
Eliot's T h e Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'" (All writers featured in the fiction and
drama sections have individual biographies preceding their stories or plays.)
But enough housekeepinglet's enjoy ourselves and read some unforgettable
stories, poems, and plays.
X.J.K. ANDD.G.
To the Instructor
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The tenth edition of Literature is a book divided into four more or less equal parts
fiction, poetry, drama, and writing. Literature is a book with two major goals. First, it
introduces college students to the appreciation and experience of literature in its major forms. Second, the book tries to develop the student's ability to think critically
and communicate effectively through writing.
Both editors of this volume are writers. W e believe that textbooks should be not
only informative and accurate but also lively, accessible, and engaging. In education,
it never hurts to have a little fun. Our intent has always been to write a book that
students will read eagerly and enjoy.
This new edition of Literature offers a number of compelling features:
Diverse and exciting stories66 short stories, from familiar classics to
contemporary works from around the globe.
Great poems old and new500 poems, mixing traditional favorites with
exciting contemporary work.
A rich array of drama18 plays, from classical tragedies by Sophocles to
contemporary works by Rita Dove, Beth Henley, and August Wilson, plus three
plays by Shakespeare.
88 T h e new "Illustrated Shakespeare"three major Shakespeare plays (Hamlet,
Othello, and A Midsummer Night's Dream) now7 include dozens of attractive production photos to make the works more engaging and accessible to students.
1 Nine extensive casebooksfive author casebooks (Flannery O'Connor, Emily
Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Sophocles, and William Shakespeare), as well as
four masterpiece casebooks on specific selections (Edgar Allan Poe's "The TellTale Heart," Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," Alice Walker's
. "Everyday Use," and T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock").
m Chapter on Latin American poetrya unique feature that invites students to
experience an important world poetry in a different language and in English
translation. Bilingual texts from Sor Juana, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges,
Octavio Paz, and others illuminate different cultural experiences.
m Abundant critical coverage135 critical excerpts, including a comprehensive
survey of ten major schools of literary criticism and theory.
m New writing features in every chaptera comprehensive introduction to
composition and critical thinking, including easy-to-use checklists, exercises,
model papers, and practical advice.
^ Eight newly revised chapters on writing, argument, and critical thinking
extensively revised writing coverage, which includes a step-by-step discussion of the
writing process and developing a literary argument, illustrated by student papers and
writing excerpts. Expanded and updated chapter on writing a research paper.
m New7 chapters on writing an essay exam and writing a journaladded in
response to instructors' requests to meet the needs of classroom assignments.
li
Real student writing18 papers and reports by real students, with annotations,
provide credible examples on how to write about literature.
Thousands of small updates and revisionsreflect the authors' desire to keep
the book fresh and relevant for today's students.
All in all, we have tried to create a book to help readers develop sensitivity to
laiiguage, culture, and identity, to lead them beyond the boundaries of their own
selves, and to see the world through the eyes of others. This book is built on the
assumption that great literature can enrich and enlarge the lives it touches.
Features an This Edition
We have revised this edition of Literature with the simple aim of introducing
useful new features and selections without losing the best-liked material. We have
been guided in this effort by scores of instructors and students who use the book in
their classrooms. Teaching is a kind of conversation between instructor and
student and between reader and text. By revising Literature, we try to help keep
this conversation fresh by mixing the classic with the new and the familiar with
the surprising.
Casebooks on Major Authors and Literary Masterpieces
We have made substantial changes in our casebooks in the new edition. There are now
nine casebooksfour of which are new. We continue to include substantial chapters
on five major authors (Flannery O'Connor, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes,
Sophocles, and William Shakespeare), and we now supplement those author casebooks with four new casebooks on popular works frequently used by students for critical analyses or research papers. Our new literary masterpiece casebooks cover three
works of fiction (Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," and Alice Walker's "Everyday Use") and one
long poem (T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"). These special chapters present a variety of materialbiographies, photographs, critical commentaries,
and statements by the authors. Our aim has been to provide everything a student
might need to begin an in-depth study of each author or work.
Illustrated Shakespeare
Reading Shakespeare can be intimidating to students who have never seen a live production of his plays. (Unfortunately, today most American teenagers have never seen
any live professional production of spoken dramaby Shakespeare or anyone else.)
What is a college instructor to do?
The new edition of Literature presents three plays by ShakespeareOthello,
Hamlet, and A Midsummer Night's Dreamin a new illustrated format featuring
dozens of production photos. We have endeavored to illustrate every major scene in
each play as well as most of the major characters. This new approach helps students
visualize the action of the plays. It also helps break up the long blocks of print to
make each play's text less intimidating.
For today's visually oriented students, Literature's new presentation of three
Shakespeare plays should represent a breakthrough in accessibility.
New WritSng Material
All of the writing material in the tenth edition of Literature is either new or radically
revised. Writing instruction has always been an important focus of this book.
Because today's students need a more concise, visual, and schematic approach than
did the previous generation, we have streamlined every aspect of our extensive
coverage so that students can easily find useful and accessible informationin
outline form wherever possible.
Every thematic chapter of Fiction, Poetry, and Drama includes a new Writing
Effectively section that has four elements: Writers on Writing, which personalizes
the composition process; Writing About
, which discusses the specific topic
of the chapter; a Writing Checklist, which provides a step-by-step approach to
composition and critical thinking; and a Writing Assignment plus More Topics for
Writing, which provide a rich source of ideas for writing a paper. These features are
designed to make the writing process easier, clearer, and less intimidating.
We now have eight full writing chapters at the end of Literature to provide
comprehensive coverage of the composition and research process. Two of these
chapters"Keeping a Journal" and "Writing an Essay Exam"are entirely new.
All of the other chapters have been substantially revised for clarity and accessibility. We strove to simplify the text but not to dumb it down. Clarity and concision
are never out of place in a textbook, but condescension is fatal. One of our chief
aims has been to make the information and structure of the writing chapters more
visual for today's Internet-oriented students. Instructors will note how information
that appeared in prose paragraphs in earlier editions now appears in outline or
checklist form.
We have reprinted and annotated 15 complete student papers to provide models
for critical writing, including a research paper. (There are also two card reports and a
review.) Seven of the papers are found in the final writing chapters, where they illustrate different approaches to critical writingliterary argument, explication, analysis, and comparisonas well as a drama review. Eight papers are found in earlier
chapters on Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Each paper focuses on a work or author in
the book and often provides a close reading of the literary work that emphasizes
specific elements of its structure and meaning.
We also now show many samples of student work-in-progress as a way of illustrating the writing process. We include, for example, a step-by-step presentation of
how students can develop topics, generate ideas, and formulate a strong thesis, and
we show how an early draft is revised into a more precise final version. We include
sample brainstorming notes and other prewriting techniques, among many other
items, to provide students with a more helpful and systematic account of the writing
process. We have also integrated the concept of developing a cogent literary argument (with attention to thesis, purpose, audience, support, and organization)
throughout the writing chapters.
Latin American Poetry Chapter
The innovative bilingual chapter on Latin American poetry introduced in the previous edition proved very popular. Using excellent Spanish-language poems, this chapter
provides students with the opportunity to experience poetry in a different language
(and in translation) and to see how literature represents and illuminates a different
cultural experience. We have revised the chapter slightly in the current edition to
give greater emphasis to Mexican poetry. Students are also introduced to the role of
surrealism in Latin American poetry with an image from Frida Kahlo and words from
Cesar Vallejo. This important and unique chapter will not only broaden most students' knowledge of world poetry but will also recognize the richness of Spanishlanguage poetry in the literature of the Americasa very relevant subject in today's
multicultural classrooms. T h e bilingual selections will also give your Spanishspeaking students a chance to shine in class.
Glossary of Literary Terms
The comprehensive Glossary of Literary Terms at the end of this book includes every
term highlighted in boldface throughout the text as well as other important terms
over 350 entries in allproviding a clear and accurate definition, usually with cross
references to related terms. The purpose of the glossary is to provide students with a
single, accessible reference of all key literary terms.
Mew Stories, Poems, and Plays
There are many new selections in the book. A great deal of help came from both
instructors and students who use the book. Their suggestions helped confirm the new
stories, poems, and plays that work best in the classroom while identifying older
selections that seemed less valuable and could be retired to make room for new work.
Fiction
We have added 11 new stories to the Fiction section, bringing the total selections to
66. (There are also 31 pieces of critical prose.) Our new stories broaden and update
our coverage, and they include both contemporary selections and a few previously
neglected classics. We have deepened our international and multicultural coverage
with new selections such as Octavio Paz's "My Life with the Wave," Helena Maria
Viramontes's "The Moths," Alice Munro's "How I Met My Husband," Dagoberto
Gilb's "Look on the Bright Side," and Yiyun Li's award-winning story, "A Thousand
Years of Good Prayers."
Other additions show contemporary American masters at their peak performance, such as Anne Tyler's "Teenage Wasteland" and Tobias Wolff's "The Rich
Brother." A few familiar classic stories have also been added, including Eudora
Welty's "A Worn Path" and O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi." (O. Henry's classic
story is a great way to teach students about irony.) We have also included Flannery
O'Connor's fascinating last story, "Parker's Back," a strikingly timely tale about both
tattoos and religious fundamentalism.
We've kept Leo Tolstoy's harrowing novella The Death of Ivan Ilychbecause of
the impassioned requests of several instructors. Also retained by popular demand is
Kurt Vonnegut's mordant satire "Harrison Bergeron," a contemporary science-fiction
classic that has become a classroom favorite. Vonnegut's story helps maintain our
coverage of popular fictional genresa long-standing interest of this anthology. The
current edition contains classic examples of the Gothic tale (Gilman, Poe), the
adventure story (London, Crane), science fiction (Vonnegut, Le Guin), as well
as magic realism (Garcia Marquez, Paz, Borges). These selections combine with
traditional realist and modernist stories to demonstrate the full range of the short
story's possibilities.
Poetry ..
Literature proudly provides the most extensive and diverse selection of poems found
in any comparable book in the field, over 500 poems in this new edition. We have
added 58 new poems to the bookto freshen the selections and to update our coverage of contemporary work. We have also updated and streamlined our unique bilingual chapter on Latin American poetry, with added focus on contemporary Mexican
poetry, while continuing to offer the masterworks of Sor Juana, Pablo Neruda, Jorge
Luis Borges, and Octavio Paz.
We have added a fascinating casebook on T. S. Eliot's popular but challenging
poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." It includes interesting critical excerpts
as well as early reviews of the poem, which will demonstrate to students the slowness
and difficulty of building literary reputations.
We have freshened the casebooks on Emily Dickinson and Langston
Hughes with new poems, and we have added a provocative new selection by
Aimee Mann in the chapter on "Song." Many other fine new poems have been
selected from the works of Gwendolyn Brooks, xAndrea Hollander Budy, E. E.
Cummings, Marisa de los Santos, Rita Dove, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Fulton,
Jane Hirshfield, Suji Kwock Kim, Ted Kooser, David Lehman, Shirley Geok-lin
Lim, April Lindner, Heather McHugli, Ogden Nash, Lorine Niedecker, Jacqueline Osherow, Kenneth Rexroth, Charles Simic, Larissa Szporluk, Amy
Uyematsu, Gina Valdes, William Carlos Williams, Christian Wiman, Bcrnice
Zamora, and many others.
We also continue to include comic poems amid the lofty classics. Why? Students
love them, and a little lightness helps make poetry less intimidating.
Drama
The drama section has been substantially and stylishly revised. Our aim has been to
make this section much more accessible and immediate to studentsmany of whom
have little or no personal experience with live theater. Our biggest innovation has
been to create the "Illustrated Shakespeare." You will notice the changes immediately. The major scenes in all three Shakespeare plays are now illustrated with striking production photosdozens of them. Many other new photos have also been
added to the drama section.
We have also brought backby popular demandthe Dudley Fitts and Robert
Fitzgerald translations of Sophocles. These classic plays are now complemented by
the addition of Rita Dove's contemporary version of the Oedipus myth, The Darker
Face of the Earth, which is set on a plantation in the antebellum American South.
We have also added a short but powerful scene from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor
Faustus to the section on tragedy, as well as new critical material on Shakespeare.
There are, in fact, now 19 critical commentaries on the dramatists in the extensive
casebooks on both Sophocles and Shakespeare.
Critical Approaches to Literature
Chapter 50, "Critical Approaches to Literature," has proven to be a popular feature of
the last few editions of Literature. There are three selections for every major critical
school30 selections in all. The critical excerpts have been carefully chosen both to
illustrate the major theoretical approaches and to be accessible to beginning students.
The selections focus on literary7 works found in the present edition. Among the new
critical excerpts are examinations of works by Zora Neale Hurston and Franz Kafka as
well as a piece by Camille Paglia on William Blake. Taken together with the many
commentaries in the casebooks and Writers on Writing, Literature now includes a total of 135 critical excerpts. This expanded coverage gives Literature both more depth
and flexibility for instructors who prefer to incorporate literary theory and criticism
into their introductory courses.
Other Editions Available
Fiction and Poetry Available Separately
Instmctors who wish to use only the fiction section or only the poetry section of this
book are assured that An Introduction to Fiction, Tenth Edition, and An Introduction to
Poetry, Twelfth Edition, contain the full and complete contents of these sections. Each
book has writing chapters applicable to its subject, as well as the chapters "Writing a
Research Paper" and "Critical Approaches to Literature."
Portable Edition
This edition provides all the content of the hardcover text in four lightweight paperback volumesFiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writingpacked in a slipcase.
Compact Edition
There is also the Fifth Compact Edition of Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry,
Drama, and Writing in paperback, for instructors who find the full edition "too much
book." Although this compact version offers a slightly abridged table of contents, it still
covers the complete range of topics presented in the full edition. Both the full text and
the compact edition are available in interactive and noninteractive editions.
Backpack Edition
There is now an even more compact edition of this book, which we have titled
Backpack Literature in honor of the heavy textbook loads many students must bear
from class to class. This much briefer anthology contains only the most essential
selections and writing apparatus, and it is published in a smaller format to create a
more travel-frienclly book.
Interactive Editions
For instructors who want to incorporate media into their class, interactive editions
of both the compact and the full edition of Literature come with access to
MyLiteratureLab.com (as described on the next page).
Resources for Students and instructors
For Students
MyLiteratureLab.
com
MyLiteratureLob.com is a Web-based state-of-the-art interactive learning system designed to accompany Literature and help students in their literature course. It adds a
new dimension to the study of literature with Longman Lecturesevocative, richly
illustrated audio readings along with advice on how to read, interpret, and write
about literary works from our roster of Longman authors (including X. J. Kennedy).
This powerful program also features Diagnostic Tests, Interactive Readings with
clickable prompts, film clips of selections in Literature, sample student papers, Literature Timelines, Avoiding Plagiarism, Research Navigator research tools, and
Exchange, an electronic instructor/peer feedback tool MyLiteratureLab.com can be
delivered within Course Compass, Web CT, or Blackboard course management systems, enabling instructors to administer their entire course online.
Handbook of Literary
Terms
Handbook of Literary Terms by X. J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia, and Mark Bauerlein is a
user-friendly primer of over 350 critical terms brought to life with literary examples,
pronunciation guides, and scholarly yet accessible explanations. Aimed at undergraduates getting their first taste of serious literary study, the volume will help students
engage with the humanities canon and become critical readers and writers ready to
experience the insights and joys of great fiction, poetry, and drama.
Sourcebooks
Shakespeare
This revolutionary book and CD format offers the complete text of a Shakespeare play
with rich illustrations, extensive explanatory and production notes, and a glossary. An
accompanying audio CDnarrated by actor Sir Derek Jacobifeatures recordings
from memorable productions to contrast different interpretations of the play and its
characters.
Responding to Literature: A Writer's Journal
This free journal provides students with their own personal space for writing. Helpful
writing prompts for responding to fiction, poetry, and drama are also included.
Evaluating Plays on Film and Video
This guide walks students through the process of analyzing and writing about plays on
film, whether in a short review or a longer essay. It covers each stage of the process,
from preparing and analyzing material through writing the piece. The four appendixes
include writing and editing tips and a glossary of film terms. The final section of the
guide offers worksheets to help students organize their notes and thoughts before they
begin writing.
Evaluating a Performance
Perfect for the student assigned to review a local production, this free supplement
offers students a convenient place to record their evaluations. Useful tips and
suggestions of things to consider when evaluating a production are included.
Instructor's
Manual
A separate Instructor's Manual is available to instructors. If you have never seen our
Instructors Manual before, don't prejudge it. W e actually write the manual ourselves,
and we work hard to make it as interesting, lively, and informed as is the parent text. It
offers commentary and teaching ideas for every selection in the book. It also contains
additional commentary, debate, qualifications and informationincluding scores of
classroom ideasfrom over 100 teachers and authors. As you will see, our Instructor's
Manual is no ordinary supplement.
Teaching Composition ivith Literature
For instructors who either use Literature in expository writing courses or have a special
emphasis on writing in their literature courses, there is an invaluable supplement,
Teaching Composition with Literature: 101 Writing Assignments from College Instructors.
Edited by Dana Gioia and Patricia Wagner, it collects proven writing assignments and
classroom exercises from scores of instructors across North America. Each assignment
or exercise uses one or more selections in Literature as its departure point. A great
many instructors have enthusiastically shared their best writing assignments for
Teaching Composition with Literature.
Penguin Discount Novel Program
In cooperation with Penguin Putnam, Inc., one of our sibling companies, Longman is
proud to offer a variety of Penguin paperbacks at a significant discount when packaged
with any Longman title. Excellent additions to any literature course, Penguin titles
give students the opportunity to explore contemporary and classical fiction and
drama. The available titles include works by authors as diverse as Toni Morrison, Julia
Alvarez, Mary Shelley, and Shakespeare. T o review7 the complete list of titles available,
visit the Longman-Penguin-Putnam Web site: http://www.abfongman.com/penguin.
Video Program
For qualified adopters, an impressive selection of videotapes is available to enrich students' experience of literature. The videos include selections from William Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, and Alice Walker. Contact your Allyn and Bacon/
Longman sales representative to see if you qualify.
Teaching Literature Online, Second Edition
Concise and practical, Teaching Literature Online provides instructors with strategies
and advice for incorporating elements of computer technology into the literature
classroom. Offering a range of information and examples, this manual provides ideas
and activities for enhancing literature courses with the help of technology.
The Longman Electronic Testbank for Literature
This electronic test bank features various objective questions on major works of fiction, short fiction, poetry, and drama. With this user-friendly CD-ROM, instructors
simply choose questions from the electronic test bank, then print out the completed
test for distribution.
C o n t a c t Us
For examination copies of any of these books, CDs, videos, and programs, contact
your Allyn &. Bacon/Longman sales representative, or write to Literature Marketing
Manager, Longman Publishers, 1185 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036.
For examination copies only, call (800) 922-0579.
T o order an examination copy via the Internet, go to:
http://www.ablongman.com
or send an e-mail to:
[email protected].
Ttianlcs
The collaboration necessary to create this new edition goes far beyond the partnership of its two editors. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and
Writing has once again been revised, corrected, and shaped by wisdom and advice
from instructors who actually put it to the testand also from a number who, in
teaching literature, preferred other textbooks to it, but who generously criticized this
book anyway and made suggestions for it. (Some responded to the book in part, focusing their comments on the previous editions of An Introduction to Poetry and An
Introduction to Fiction.)
Deep thanks to Alvaro Aleman, University of Florida; Jonathan Alexander,
University of Southern Colorado; Ann P. Allen, Salisbury State University; Brian
Anderson, Central Piedmont Community College; Kimberly Green Angel, Georgia
State University; Carmela A. Arnoldt, Glendale Community College; Herman
Asarnow, University of Portland; Beverly Bailey, Seminole Community College;
Carolyn Baker, San Antonio College; Rosemary Baker, State University of New
York at Morrisville; Lee Barnes, Community College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas;
Sandra Barnhill, South Plains College; Bob Baron, Mesa Community College;
Melinda Barth, El Camino Community College; Robin Barrow, University of Iowa;
Joseph Bathanti, Mitchell Community College; Judith Baumel, Adelphi University;
Anis Bawarski, University of Kansas; Bruce Beckum, Colorado Mountain College;
Elaine Bender, El Camino Community College; Pamela Benson, Tarrant County Junior College; Jennifer Black, McLennan Community College; Brian Blaclcley, North
Carolina State University; Debbie Borchers, Pueblo Community College; Alan
Braden, Tacoma Community College; Glenda Bryant, South Plains College; Paul
Buchanan, Biola University; Andrew Burke, University of Georgia; Jolayne Call,
Utah Valley State College; Stasia Callan, Monroe Community College; Uzzie T.
Cannon, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; A1 Capovilla, Folsom Lake
Community College; Eleanor Carducci, Sussex County Community College;
Thomas Carper, University of Southern Maine; Jean W. Cash, James Madison University; Michael Cass, Mercer University; Patricia Ceaidey, South Plains College;
Fred Chancey, Chemeketa Community College; Kitty Chen, Nassau Community
College; Edwrard M. Cifelli, County College of Morris; Marc Cirigliano, Empire State
College; Bruce Clary, McPherson College; Maria Clayton, Middle Tennessee State
University; Cheryl Clements, Blinn College; Jerry Coats, Tarrant County Community College; Peggy Cole, Arapahoe Community College; Doris Colter, Henry Ford
Community College; Dean Cooledge, University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Patricia Connors, University of Memphis; Steve Cooper, California State University,
Long Beach; Cynthia Cornell, DePauw University; Ruth Corson, Norwalk Community
Technical College, Norwalk; James Finn Cotter, Mount St. Mary College; Dessa
Crawford, Delaware Community College; Janis Adams Crowe, Furman University;
Allison M. Cummings, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Elizabeth Curtin, Salisbury State University; Robert Darling, Keuka College; Denise David, Niagara
County Community College; Alan Davis, Moorhead State University; Kathleen De
Grave, Pittsburg State University; Apryl Denny, Viterbo University; Fred Dings,
University of South Carolina; Leo Doobad, Stetson University; Stephanie Dowdle,
Salt Lake Community College; Dennis Driewald, Laredo Community College; David
Driscoll, Benedictine College; John Drury, University of Cincinnati; Tony D'Souza,
Shasta College; Victoria Duckworth, Santa Rosa Junior College; Ellen DuganBarrette, Brescia University; Dixie Durman, Chapman University; Bill Dynes, University of Indianapolis; Janet Eber, County College of Morris; Terry Ehret, Santa
Rosa Junior College; George Ellenbogen, Bentley College; Peggy Ellsberg, Barnard
College; Toni Empringham, El Camino Community College; Lin Enger, Moorhead
State University; Alexina Fagan, Virginia Commonwealth University; Lynn Fauth,
Oxnard College; Annie Finch, University of Southern Maine; Katie Fischer, Clarke
College; Susan Fitzgerald, University of Memphis; Juliann Fleenor, Harper College;
Richard Flynn, Georgia Southern University; Billy Fontenot, Louisiana State University at Eunice; Deborah Ford, University of Southern Mississippi; Doug Ford,
Manatee Community College; James E. Ford, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Peter
Fortunato, Ithaca College; Ray Foster, Scottsdale Community College; Maryanne
Garbowsky, County College of Morris; John Gery, University of New Orleans; Mary
Frances Gibbons, Richland College; Maggie Gordon, University of Mississippi;
Joseph Green, Lower Columbia College; William E. Gruber, Emory University; Huey
Guagliardo, Louisiana State University; R. S. Gwynn, Lamar University; Steven K.
Hale, DeKalb College; Renee Harlow, Southern Connecticut State University;
David Harper, Chesapeake College; John Harper, Seminole Community College; Iris
Rose Hart, Santa Fe Community College; Karen Hatch, California State University,
Chico; Jim Hauser, William Patterson College; Kevin Hayes, Essex County College;
Jennifer Heller, Johnson County Community College; Hal Hellwig, Idaho State
University; Gillian Hettinger, William Paterson University; Mary Piering Hiltbrand,
University of Southern Colorado; Martha Hixon, Middle Tennessee State University; Jan Hodge, Morningside College; David E. Hoffman, Averett University; Mary
Huffer, Lake-Sumter Community College; Patricia Hymson, Delaware County Community College; Carol Ireland, Joliet Junior College; Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College;
Ann Jagoe, North Central Texas College; Kimberlie Johnson, Seminole Community
College; Peter Johnson, Providence College; Ted E. Johnston, El Paso Community
College; Cris Karmas, Graceland University; Howard Kerner, Polk Community College; Lynn Kerr, Baltimore City Community College; D. S. Koelling, Northwest
College; Dennis Kriewald, Laredo Community College; Paul Lake, Arkansas Technical University; Susan Lang, Southern Illinois University; Greg LaPointe, Elmira College; Tracy Lassiter, Eastern Arizona College; Sherry Little, San Diego State University; Alfred Guy Litton, Texas Woman's University; Heather Lobban-Viravong,
Grinnell College; Karen Locke, Lane Community College; Eric Loring, Scottsdale
Community College; Gerald Luboff, County College of Morris; Susan Popkin Mach,
UCLA; Samuel Maio, California State University, San Jose; Paul Marx, University
of New Haven; David Mason, Colorado College; Mike Matthews, Tarrant County
Junior College; Beth Maxfield, Henderson State University; Janet McCann, Texas
A & M University; Susan McClure, Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Kim
McCollum-Clark, Millersville University; David McCracken, Texas A & M University; Nellie McCrory, Gaston College; William McGee, Jr., Joliet Junior College;
Kerri McKeand, Joliet Junior College; Robert McPhillips, Iona College; Jim
McWilliams, Dickinson State University; Elizabeth Meador, Wayne Community
College; Bruce Meyer, Toronto; Tom Miller, University of Arizona; Joseph Mills,
University of California at Davis; Cindy Milwe, Santa Monica High School;
Dorothy Minor, Tulsa Community College; Mary Alice Morgan, Mercer University;
Samantha Morgan, University of Tennessee; Bernard Morris, Modesto Junior College; Brian T. Murphy, Burlington Community College; Madeleine Mysko, Johns
Hopkins University; Kevin Nebergall, Kirkwood Community College; Eric Nelson,
Georgia Southern University; Jeff Newberry, University of West Florida; Marsha
Nourse, Dean College; Hillary Nunn, University of Akron; James Obertino, Central
Missouri State University; Julia O'Brien, Meredith College; Sally OTriel, John Carroll University; Elizabeth Oness, Viterbo College; Regina B. Oost, Wesleyan College; Mike Osborne, Central Piedmont Community College; Jim Owen, Columbus
State University; Jeannette Palmer, Motlow State Community College; Mark
Palmer, Tacoma Community College; Dianne Peich, Delaware County Community
College; Betty Jo Peters, Morehead State University; Timothy Peters, Boston University; Norm Peterson, County College of Morris; Susan Petit, College of San Mateo; Louis Phillips, School of Visual Arts; Robert Phillips, University of Houston;
Rodney Phillips, New York Public Library; Jason Pickavance, Salt Lake Community
College; Teresa Point, Emory University; Deborah Prickett, Jacksonville State University; William Provost, University of Georgia; Wyatt Prunty, University of the
South, Sewanee; Allen Ramsey, Central Missouri State University; Ron Rash, TriCounty Technical College; Michael W. Raymond, Stetson University; Mary Anne
Reiss, Elizabethtown Community College; Barbara Rhodes, Central Missouri State
University; Diane Richard-Alludya, Lynn University; Gary Richardson, Mercer University; Fred Robbins, Southern Illinois University; Doulgas Robillard Jr., University
of Arkansas at Pine Bluff; Daniel Robinson, Colorado State University; Dawn Rodrigues, University of Texas, Brownsville; Linda C. Rollins, Motlow State Community College; Mark Rollins, Ohio University; Laura Ross, Seminole Community College; Jude Roy, Madisonville Community College; M. Runyon, Saddleback College;
Mark Sanders, College of the Mainland; Kay Satre, Carroll College; Ben Sattersfield,
Mercer University; SueAnn Schatz, University of New Mexico; Roy Scheele, Doane
College; Bill Schmidt, Seminole Community College; Beverly Schneller, Millersville
University; Meg Schoerke, San Francisco State University; Janet Schwarzkopf,
Western Kentucky University; William Scurrah, Pima Community College; Susan
Semrow, Northeastern State University; Tom Sexton, University of Alaska, Anchorage; Chenliang Sheng, Northern Kentucky University; Roger Silver, University
of Maryland-Asian Division; Phillip Skaar, Texas A & M University; Michael
Slaughter, Illinois Central College; Martha K. Smith, University of Southern Indiana; Richard Spiese, California State, Long Beach; Lisa S. Starks, Texas A & M University; John R. Stephenson, Lake Superior State University; Jack Stewart, East
Georgia College; Dabney Stuart, Washington and Lee University; David Sudol, Arizona State University; Stan Sulkes, Raymond Walters College; Gerald Sullivan,
Savio Preparatory School; Henry Taylor, American University; Jean Tobin, University of Wisconsin Center, Sheboygan County; Linda Travers, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Tom Treffinger, Greenville Technical College; Peter Ulisse,
Housatonia Community College; Lee Upton, Lafayette College; Rex Veeder, St.
Cloud University; Deborah Viles, University of Colorado, Boulder; Joyce Walker,
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale; Sue Walker, University of South Alabama; Irene Ward, Kansas State University; Penelope Warren, Laredo Community
College; Barbara Wenner, University of Cincinnati; Mary Wilder, Mercer University; Nicole Williams; Terry Witek, Stetson University; Sallie Wolf, Arapahoe Community College; Beth Rapp Young, University of Alabama; William Zander, Fairleigh Dickinson University; Tom Zaniello, Northern Kentucky University; and
Guanping Zeng, Pensacola Junior College.
Two fine writers helped prepare the material used in this new edition. April
Lindner of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, served as associate editor for the writing section. Using her extensive teaching experience in both
literature and composition, she not only developed materials with the editors for this
book but also tested them in her classroom. Meanwhile, Michael Palma scrupulously
examined and updated every chapter from the previous edition. His deep knowledge
of literature and crisp sense of style kept the new edition fresh, informed, and accessible. Ongoing thanks also go to Diane Thiel of the University of New Mexico, who
originally helped develop the Latin American poetry chapter in the previous edition;
Susan Balee, who contributed to the chapter on writing a research paper; Mark
Bernier of Blinn College in Brenham, Texas, who helped improve the writing material of earlier editions; Joseph Aimone of Santa Clara University, who helped integrate
Web-based materials and research techniques into an earlier edition; and John
Swensson of De Anza College, who provided excellent practical suggestions from the
classroom.
On the publisher's staff, Joseph Terry, Katharine Glynn, and Ann Stypuloski
made many contributions to the development and revision of the new edition.
Savoula Amanatidis and Lois Lombardo directed the complex job of managing the
production of the book from the manuscript to the final printed form. Virginia Creeden
handled the difficult job of permissions. Rona Tuccillo and Linda Sykes supervised the
expansion of photographs and artwork in the new edition. Jenna Egan oversaw work
on the Web site for the book.
Mary Gioia was involved in every stage of planning, editing, and execution. Not
only could the book not have been done without her capable hand and careful eye,
but her expert guidance made every chapter better.
Past debts that will never be repaid are outstanding to hundreds of instructors
named in prefaces past and to Dorothy M. Kennedy.
X.J.KANDD.G
About the Authors
X. J. KENNEDY, after graduation from Seton Hall and
Columbia, became a journalist second class in the Navy
("Actually, I was pretty eighth class"). His poems, some
published in the New Yorker, were first collected in Nude
Descending a Staircase (1961). Since then he has published
seven more collections, including a volume of new and
selected poems in 2007, several widely adopted literature
and writing textbooks, and seventeen books for children,
including two novels. He has taught at Michigan, North
Carolina (Greensboro), California (Irvine), Wellesley, Tufts,
and Leeds. Cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and reprinted in some 200 anthologies, his verse has brought him a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lament Award, a Los
Angeles Times Book Prize, an award from the American Academy and Institute of
Arts and Letters, an Aiken-Taylor prize, and the Award for Poetry for Children from
the National Council of Teachers of English. He now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he and his wife Dorothy have collaborated on five books and five children.
D A N A G I O I A is a poet, critic, and teacher. Born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican ancestry, he attended Stanford
and Harvard before taking a detour into business. ("Not
many poets have a Stanford M.B.A., thank goodness!")
After years of writing and reading late in the evenings after
work, he quit a vice presidency to write and teach. He has
published three collections of poetry, Daily
Horoscope
(1986), The Gods of Winter (1991), and Interrogations at
Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award; an
opera libretto, Nosferatu (2001); and three critical volumes,
including Can Poetry Matter? (1992), an influential study of
poetry's place in contemporary America. Gioia has taught at Johns Hopkins, Sarah
Lawrence, Wesleyan (Connecticut), Mercer, and Colorado College. He is also the
co-founder of the summer poetry conference at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. In 2003 he became Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He
currently lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Mary, their two sons, and an
uncontrollable cat.
(The surname Gioia is pronounced JOY-A. As some of you may have already
guessed, gioia is the Italian word for joy.)
Ixiii
Ernest Hemingway at his desk in Sun Valley, Idaho, c. 1940.
H
ere is a story, one of the shortest ever written and one of the most difficult to
forget:
A woman is sitting in her old, shuttered house. She knows that she is alone
in the whole world; every other thing is dead.
The doorbell rings.
In a brief space this small tale of terror, credited to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, makes
itself memorable. It sets a promising sceneis this a haunted house?introduces a
character, and places her in a strange and intriguing situation. Although in reading a
story that is over so quickly we don't come to know the character well, for a moment
we enter her thoughts and begin to share her feelings. Then something amazing happens. The story leaves us to wonder: who or what rang that bell?
Like many richer, longer, more complicated stories, this one, in its few words,
engages the imagination. Evidently, how much a story contains and suggests doesn't
depend on its size. In the opening chapter of this book, we will look first at other brief
storiesexamples of three ancient kinds of fiction, a fable, a parable, and a tale
then at a contemporary short story. We will consider the elements of fiction one after
another. By seeing a few short stories broken into their parts, you will come to a
keener sense of how a story is put together. Not all stories are short, of course; later in
the book, you will find a chapter on reading long stories and novels.
All in all, here are sixty-six stories. Among them, may you find at least a few
you'll enjoy and care to remember.
Reading a Story
, ...,
M,
.. , . . . . . . , . . . - . . i v . v
- n - i
.,
L.,....
....,
...I . L -,.v.-.v.y m
n i
fjmmj
When I read a good book . . . I wish that life were
three thousand years long.
R A L P H W A L D O EMERSON
After the shipwreck that marooned him on his desert island, Robinson Crusoe, in the
novel by Daniel Defoe, stood gazing over the water where pieces of cargo from his
ship were floating by. Along came "two shoes, not mates." It is the qualification not
mates that makes the detail memorable. We could well believe that a thing so striking and odd must have been seen, and not invented. But in truth Defoe, like other
masters of the art of fiction, had the power to make us believe his imaginings. Borne
along by the art of the storyteller, we trust what we are told, even though the story
may be sheer fantasy.
Fiction (from the Latin fictio, "a shaping, a counterfeiting") is a name for stories
not entirely factual, but at least partially shaped, made up, imagined. It is true that in
some fiction, such as a historical novel, a writer draws on factual information in presenting scenes, events, and characters. But the factual information in a historical
novel, unlike that in a history book, is of secondary importance. Many firsthand accounts of the American Civil War were written by men who had fought in it, but few
eyewitnesses give us so keen a sense of actual life on the battlefront as the author of
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, born after the war was over. In fiction, the
"facts" may or may not be true, and a story is none the worse for their being entirely
imaginary. We expect from fiction a sense of how people act, not an authentic chronicle of how, at some past time, a few people acted.
As children, we used to read (if we were lucky and formed the habit) to steep ourselves in romance, mystery, and adventure. As adults, we still do: at an airport, while
waiting for a flight, we pass the time with some newsstand paperback full of fast action
and brisk dialogue. Certain fiction, of course, calls for closer attention. T o read a novel
by the Russian master Dostoevsky instead of a James Bond thriller is somewhat like
playing chess instead of a game of tic-tac-toe. Not that a great novel does not provide
entertainment. In fact, it may offer more deeply satisfying entertainment than a novel
of violence and soft-core pornography, in which stick figures connive, go to bed, and
kill one another in accord with some market-tested formula. Reading literary fiction
(as distinguished from fiction as a commercial productthe formula kind of spy,
detective, Western, romance, or science fiction story), we are not necessarily led on by
the promise of thrills; we do not keep reading mainly to find out what happens next.
Indeed, a literary story might even disclose in its opening lines everything that
happened, then spend the rest of its length revealing what that happening meant.
Reading literary fiction is no merely passive activity, but one that demands both attention and insight-lending participation. In return, it offers rewards. In some works of
literary fiction, such as Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" and Flannery O'Connor's
"Revelation," we see more deeply into the minds and hearts of the characters than we
ever see into those of our family, our close friends, our loversor even ourselves.
Fable, Parable, and Tale
Modern literary fiction in English has been dominated by two forms: the novel and the
short story. The two have many elements in common (and in this book a further discussion of the novel as a special form will be given in Chapter 9). Perhaps we will be
able to define the short story more meaningfullyfor it has traits more essential than
just a particular lengthif first, for comparison, we consider some related varieties of
fiction: the fable and the tale. Ancient forms whose origins date back to the time of
word-of-mouth storytelling, the fable and the tale are relatively simple in structure; in
them we can plainly see elements also found in the short story7 (and in the novel). To
begin, here is a fable: a brief story that sets forth some pointed statement of truth. The
writer, W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), an English novelist and playwright, is
retelling an Arabian folk story. (Samarra, by the way, is a city sixty miles from Baghdad.)
W. Somerset Maugham
The Appointment in Samarra
1933
Death speaks: There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to
buy provisions and in a little wrhile the servant came back, w7hite and trembling, and
said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the
crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and
made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city
and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant
lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as
fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you
make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was
not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see
him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
This brief story seems practically all skin and bones; that is, it contains little decoration. For in a fable everything leads directly to the moral, or message, sometimes stated
at the end (moral: "Haste makes waste"). In "The Appointment in Samarra" the moral
isn't stated outright, it is merely implied. How would you state it in your own words?
You are probably acquainted with some of the fables credited to the Greek slave
Aesop (about 6 2 0 - 5 6 0 B.C.)> whose stories seem designed to teach lessons about
human life. Such is the fable of "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs," in which the
owner of this marvelous creature slaughters her to get at the great treasure that he
thinks is inside her, but finds nothing (implied moral: "Be content with what you
have"). Another is the fable of "The Tortoise and the Hare" (implied moral: "Slow,
steady plodding wins the race"). The characters in a fable may be talking animals (as in
many of Aesop's fables), inanimate objects, or people and supernatural beings (as in
"The Appointment in Samarra")- Whoever they may be, these characters are merely
sketched, not greatly developed. Evidently, it would not have helped Maugham's fable
to put across its point if he had portrayed the merchant, the servant, and Death in fuller
detail. A more elaborate description of the marketplace would not have improved the
story. Probably, such a description would strike us as unnecessary and distracting. By its
very bareness and simplicity, a fable fixes itselfand its messagein memory.
Illustration for "The North Wind and the Sun" by Arthur
Rackham from Aesop's Fables (1912)
Aesop
The North Wind and the Sun
6th century
B.C.
TRANSLATED BY V. S. VERNON JONES
Very little is known with certainty about the man called Aesop (sixth century B . C . ) , but several accounts and many traditions survive from antiquity. According to the Greek historian
Herodotus, Aesop was a slave on the island of Samos. He gained great fame from his fables,
but he somehow met his death at the hands of the people of Delphi. The later historian
Plutarch claims the Delphians hurled the author to his death from a cliff as a punishment for
sacrilege. According to a less reliable tradition, Aesop was an ugly and misshapen man who
charmed and amused people with his stories. No one knows if Aesop himself wrote down
any of his fables, but they circulated widely in ancient Greece and were praised by Plato,
Aristotle, and numerous other authors. His short and witty tales with their incisive morals
influenced innumerable later writers. For two and a half millennia Aesop's fables have
maintained constant popularity.
A dispute arose between the North Wind and the Sun, each claiming that he
was stronger than the other. At last they agreed to try their powers upon a traveler, to
see which could soonest strip him of his cloak. The North Wind had the first try;
and, gathering up all his force for the attack, he came whirling furiously down upon
the man, and caught up his cloak as though he would wrest it from him by one single
effort: but the harder he blew, the more closely the man wrapped it round himself.
Then came the turn of the Sun. At first he beamed gently upon the traveler, who
soon unclasped his cloak and walked on with it hanging loosely about his shoulders:
then he shone forth in his full strength, and the man, before he had gone many steps,
was glad to throw his cloak right off and complete his journey more lightly clad.
Moral: Persuasion is better than force.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Describe the different personalities of the North Wind and the Sun.
2. What was ineffective about the North Wind's method for attempting to strip the man of
his cloak?
3. Why was the Sun successful in his attempts? What did he do differently than the North
Wind?
4. What purpose does the human serve in this dispute?
5. Explain the closing moral in terms of the fable.
We are so accustomed to the phrase Aesop's fables that we might almost start to
think the two words inseparable, but in fact there have been fabulists (creators or
writers of fables) in virtually every culture throughout recorded history. Here is another fable from many centuries ago, this time from India.
The Camel and His Friends
c. 4th century
R E T O L D IN E N G L I S H BY A R U N D H A T I K H A N W A L K A R
The Panchatantra (Panca-tantra), a collection of beast fables from India, is attributed to its
narrator, a sage named Bidpai, who is a legendary figure about whom almost nothing is
known for certain. The Panchatantra, ivhich means the Five Chapters in Sanskrit, is
based on earlier oral folklore. The collection was composed some time between 100 B.C. and
500 A.D. in a Sanskrit original now lost, and is primarily known through an Arabic version
of the eighth century and a twelfth-century Hebrew translation, which is the source of most
Western versions of the tales. Other translations spread the fables as far as central Europe,
Asia, and Indonesia.
Like many collections of fables, The Panchatantra is a frame tale, with an introduction containing verse and aphorisms spoken by an eighty-year-old Brahmin teacher named
Vishnusharman, who tells the stories over a period of six months for the edification of three
foolish princes named Rich-Power, Fierce-Power, and Endless-Power. The stories are
didactic, teaching niti, the wise conduct of life, and artha, practical wisdom that stresses
cleverness and self-reliance above more altruistic virtues.
Once a merchant was leading a caravan of heavily-laden camels through a jungle
when one of them, overcome by fatigue, collapsed. T h e merchant decided to leave
the camel in the jungle and go on his way. Later, when the camel recovered his
strength, he realized that he was alone in a strange jungle. Fortunately there was
plenty of grass, and he survived.
One day the king of the jungle, a lion, arrived along with his three friendsa
leopard, a fox, and a crow. The king lion wondered what the camel was doing in the
jungle! He came near the camel and asked how he, a creature of the desert, had ended
up in the hostile jungle. The camel tearfully explained what happened. The lion took
pity on him and said, "You have nothing to fear now. Henceforth, you are under my
protection and can stay with us." The camel began to live happily in the jungle.
Then one day the lion was wounded in a fight with an elephant. He retired to his
cave and stayed there for several days. His friends came to offer their sympathy. They
tried to catch prey for the hungry lion but failed. The camel had no problem as he
lived on grass while the others were starving.
T h e fox came up with a plan. He secretly wrent to the lion and suggested that the
camel be sacrificed for the good of the others. The lion got furious, "I can never kill
an animal who is under my protection."
The fox humbly said, "But Lord, you have provided us food all the time. If any
one of us voluntarily offered himself to save your life, 1 hope you won't mind!" T h e
hungry lion did not object to that and agreed to take the offer.
The fox went back to his companions and said, "Friends, our king is dying of
starvation. Let us go and beg him to eat one of us. It is the least we can do for such a
noble soul."
So they went to the king and the crow offered his life. T h e fox interrupted, and
said, "You are a small creature, the master's hunger will hardly be appeased by eating
you. May I humbly offer my life to satisfy my master's hunger."
The leopard stepped forward and said, "You are no bigger than the crow, it is me
whom our master should eat."
The foolish camel thought, "Everyone has offered to lay down their lives for the
king, but he has not hurt any one. It is now my turn to offer myself." So he stepped
forward and said, "Stand aside friend leopard, the king and you have close family ties.
It is me whom the master must eat."
An ominous silence greeted the camel's offer. Then the king gladly said, "I accept
your offer, O noble camel." And in no time he was killed by the three rogues, the
false friends.
Moral: Be careful in choosing your friends.
Another traditional form of storytelling is the parable. Like the fable, a parable
is a brief narrative that teaches a moral, but unlike the fable, its plot is plausibly realistic, and the main characters are human rather than anthropomorphized animals or
natural forces. The other key difference is that parables usually possess a more mysterious and suggestive tone. A fable customarily ends by explicitly stating its moral, but
parables often present their morals implicitly, and their meanings can be open to several interpretations.
In the Western tradition, the literary conventions of the parable are largely based
on the brief stories told by Jesus in his preaching. The forty-three parables recounted
in the four gospels reveal how frequently he used the form to teach. Jesus designed his
parables to have two levels of meaninga literal story that could immediately be
10
understood by the crowds he addressed and a deeper meaning fully comprehended only
by his disciples, an inner circle who understood the nature of his ministry. (You can see
the richness of interpretations suggested by Jesus' parables by reading and analyzing
"The Parable of the Prodigal Son" from St. Luke's gospel, which appears in Chapter 6.)
The parable was also widely used by Eastern philosophers. The Taoist sage Chuang Tzu
often portrayed the principles of Taowhich he called the "Way of Nature"in
witty parables like the following one, traditionally titled "Independence."
ChuamgTzu
Independence
Chou Dynasty (4th century
B.C.)
T R A N S L A T E D BY HERBERT GILES
Chuang Chou, usually known as Chuang Tzu (approximately 3 9 0 - 3 6 5 B . C . ) , was one of
the great philosophers of the Chou period in China. He was born in the Sung feudal state
and received an excellent education. Unlike most educated men, however, Chuang Tzu
did not seek public office or political power. Influenced by Taoist philosophy, he believed
that individuals should transcend their desire for success and wealth, as well as their fear of
failure and poverty. True freedom, he maintained, came from escaping the distractions of
worldly affairs. Chuang Tzus writings have been particularly praised for their combination
of humor and wisdom. His parables and stories are classics of Chinese literature.
Chuang Tzu was one day fishing, when the Prince of Ch'u sent two high officials
to interview him, saying that his Highness would be glad of Chuang Tzu's assistance
in the administration of his government. The latter quietly fished on, and without
looking round, replied, "I have heard that in the State of Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise, which has been dead three thousand years, and which the prince keeps packed
up in a box on the altar in his ancestral shrine. Now do you think that tortoise would
rather be dead and have its remains thus honoured, or be alive and wagging its tail in
the mud?" T h e two officials answered that no doubt it would rather be alive and
wagging its tail in the mud; whereupon Chuang Tzu cried out "Begone! I too elect to
remain wagging my tail in the mud."
QUESTIONS
1. What part of this story is the exposition? How many sentences does Chuang Tzu use to
set up the dramatic situation?
2. Why does the protagonist change the subject and mention the sacred tortoise? Why doesn't
he answer the request directly and immediately? Does it serve any purpose that Chuang
Tzu makes the officials answer a question to which he knows the answer?
.3. What does this story tell us about the protagonist Chuang Tzu's personality?
The name tale (from the Old English talu, "speech") is sometimes applied to
any story, whether short or long, true or fictitious. Tale being a more evocative
name than story, writers sometimes call their stories "tales" as if to imply something
handed down from the past. But defined in a more limited sense, a tale is a story,
usually short, that sets forth strange and wonderful events in more or less bare summary, without detailed character-drawing. "Tale" is pretty much synonymous with
"yarn," for it implies a story in which the goal is revelation of the marvelous rather
than revelation of character. In the English folktale "Jack and the Beanstalk," we
take away a more vivid impression of the miraculous beanstalk and the giant who
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm 9
dwells at its top than of Jack's mind or personality. Because such venerable stories
were told aloud before someone set them down in writing, the storytellers had to
limit themselves to brief descriptions. Probably spoken around a fire or hearth,
such a tale tends to be less complicated and less closely detailed than a story written for the printed page, whose reader can linger over it. Still, such tales can be
complicated. It is not merely greater length that makes a short story different from
a tale or a fable: a mark of a short story is a fully delineated character.
Even modern tales favor supernatural or fantastic events: for instance, the tall
tale, that variety of folk story which recounts the deeds of a superhero (Paul
Bunyan, John Henry, Sally A n n Thunder) or of the storyteller. If the storyteller
is telling about his or her own imaginary experience, the bragging yarn is usually
told with a straight face to listeners who take pleasure in scoffing at it. Although
the fairy tale, set in a world of magic and enchantment, is sometimes the work
of a modern author (notably Hans Christian Andersen), well-known examples
are those German folktales that probably originated in the Middle Ages, collected by the brothers Grimm. T h e label fairy tale is something of an English
misnomer, for in the Grimm stories, though witches and goblins abound, fairies
are a minority.
Godfather Death
1812 (from oral tradition)
TRANSLATED BY DANA GIOIA
Jakob
Grimm
(1785-1863)
and
Wilhelm
Grimm (1786-1859),
brothers and scholars,
were born near Frankfurt am. Main, Germany.
For most of their lives they worked
together
lived together, too, even when in 1825 Wilhelm
married. In 1838, as librarians, they began toiling on their Deutsch Worterbuch, or German
dictionary, a vast project that was to outlive them
by a century. (It was completed only in 1960.)
In 1840 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointed
both brothers to the Royal Academy of Sciences,
and both taught at the University of Berlin for the
rest of their days. Although Jakob had a side career as a diplomat, wrote a great Deutsche
Grammatik, or German grammar
(1819-37),
JAKOB A N D W I L H E L M G R I M M
and propounded Grimm's Law (an explanation
of shifts in consonant sounds, of interest to students of linguistics), the name Grimm is
best known to us for that splendid collection of ancient German folk stories we call
Grimm's Fairy Talesin German, Kinder- und Hausmarchen (C(Childhood and Household Tales," 1812-15).
This classic work spread German children's stories around the
world. Many tales we hear early in life were collected by the Grimms: uHansel and Gretel,"
"Snoic White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Rapunzel," "Tom Thumb," uLittle Red Riding
Hood," "Rumpelstiltskin." Versions of some of these tales had been written down as early as
the sixteenth century, but mainly the brothers relied on the memories of Hessian peasants
who recited the stories aloud for them.
A poor man had twelve children and had to work day and night just to give
them bread. Now when the thirteenth came into the world, he did not know what to.
do, so he ran out onto the main highway intending to ask the first one he met to be
the child's godfather.
The first person he met was the good Lord God, who knew very well what was
weighing on the man's heart. And He said to him, "Poor man, I am sorry for you. I
will hold your child at the baptismal font. I will take care of him and fill his days with
happiness."
The man asked, "Who are you?"
"I am the good Lord."
"Then I don't want you as godfather. You give to the rich and let the poor
starve."
The man spoke thus because he did not know how wisely God portions out
wealth and poverty. So he turned away from the Lord and went on.
Then the Devil came up to him and said, "What are you looking for? If you take
me as your child's sponsor, I will give him gold heaped high and wide and all the joys
of this world."
The man asked, "Who are you?"
"1 am the Devil."
"Then I don't want you as godfather," said the man. "You trick men and lead
them astray."
He went on, and bone-thin Death strode up to him and said, "Choose me as
godfather."
The man asked, "Who are you?"
"I am Death, who makes all men equal."
Then the man said, "You are the right one. You take the rich and the poor without distinction. You will be the godfather."
Death answered, "I will make your child rich and famous. Whoever has me as a
friend shall lack for nothing."
The man said, "The baptism is next Sunday. Be there on time."
Death appeared just as he had promised and stood there as a proper godfather.
When the boy had grown up, his godfather walked in one day and said to come
along with him. Death led him out into the woods, showed him an herb, and said, "Now
you are going to get your christening present. I am making you a famous doctor. When
you are called to a patient, I will always appear to you. If I stand next to the sick person's
head, you may speak boldly that you will make him healthy again. Give him some of this
herb, and he will recover. But if you see me standing by the sick person's feet, then he is
mine. You must say that nothing can be done and that no doctor in the world can save
him. But beware of using the herb against my will, or it will turn out badly for you."
It was not long before the young man was the most famous doctor in the whole
world. "He needs only to look at the sick person," everyone said, "and then he knows
how things standwhether the patient will get well again or whether he must die." People came from far and wide to bring their sick and gave him so much gold that he
quickly became quite rich.
Now it soon happened that the king grew ill, and the doctor was summoned to say
whether a recovery was possible. But when he came to the bed, Death was standing at
the sick man's feet, and now no herb grown could save him.
"If I cheat Death this one time," thought the doctor, "he will be angry, but since
I am his godson, he will turn a blind eye, so I will risk it." He took up the sick man
and turned him around so that his head was now where Death stood. Then he gave
the king some of the herb. The king recovered and grew healthy again.
But Death then came to the doctor with a dark and angry face and threatened
him with his finger. "You have hoodwinked me this time," he said. "And I will forgive you once because you are my godson. But if you try such a thing again, it will be
your neck, and I will take you away with me."
Not long after, the king's daughter fell into a serious illness. She was his only
child, and he wept day and night until his eyes went blind. He let it be known that
whoever saved her from death would become her husband and inherit the crown.
When the doctor came to the sick girl's bed, he saw7 Death standing at her feet.
He should have remembered his godfather's warning, but the princess's great beauty
and the happy prospect of becoming her husband so infatuated him that he flung all
caution to the wind. He didn't notice that Death stared at him angrily or that he
raised his hand and shook his bony fist. The doctor picked up the sick girl and turned
her around to place her head where her feet had been. He gave her the herb, and
right away her cheeks grew rosy and she stirred again with life.
When Death saw that he had been cheated out of his property a second time, he
strode with long steps up to the doctor and said, "It is all over for you. Now it's your
turn." Death seized him so firmly with his ice-cold hand that the doctor could not resist. He led him into an underground cavem. There the doctor saw thousands and
thousands of candles burning in endless rows. Some were tall, others medium-sized,
and others quite small. Every moment some went out and others lit up, so that the
tiny flames seemed to jump to and fro in perpetual motion.
"Look," said Death, "these are the life lights of mankind. The tall ones belong to
children, the middle-size ones to married people in the prime of life, and the short
ones to the very old. But sometimes even children and young people have only a
short candle."
"Show me my life light," said the doctor, assuming it would be very tall.
Death pointed to a small stub that seemed about to flicker out.
"Oh, dear godfather!" cried the terrified doctor. "Light a new7 candle for me. If
you love me, do it, so that I may enjoy my life, become king, and marry the beautiful
princess."
"That I cannot do," Death replied. "One candle must first go out before a new
one is lighted."
"Then put my old one on top of a new candle that will keep burning when the
old one goes out," begged the doctor.
Death acted as if he were going to grant the wish and picked up a tall new candle. But because he wanted revenge, he deliberately fumbled in placing the new candle, and the stub toppled over and wrent out. The doctor immediately dropped to the
ground and fell into the hands of Death.
Plot
Like a fable, the Grimm brothers' tale seems stark in its lack of detail and in the
swiftness of its telling. Compared with the fully portrayed characters of many modern
stories, the characters of father, son, king, princess, and even Death himself seem
hardly more than stick figures. It may have been that to draw ample characters would
not have contributed to the storytellers' design; that, indeed, to have done so would
25
.30
have been inartistic. Yet "Godfather Death" is a compelling story. By what methods does it arouse and sustain our interest?
From the opening sentence of the tale, we watch the unfolding of a dramatic
situation: a person is involved in some conflict. First, this character is a poor man
with children to feed, in conflict with the world; very soon, we find him in conflict
with God and with the Devil besides. Drama in fiction occurs in any clash of wills,
desires, or powerswhether it be a conflict of character against character, character against society, character against some natural force, or, as in "Godfather
Death," character against some supernatural entity.
Like any shapely tale, "Godfather Death" has a beginning, a middle, and an
end. In fact, it is unusual to find a story so clearly displaying the elements of structure that critics have found in many classic works of fiction and drama. The tale
begins with an exposition: the opening portion that sets the scene (if any), introduces the main characters, tells us what happened before the story opened, and
provides any other background information that we need in order to understand
and care about the events to follow. In "Godfather Death," the exposition is
briefall in the opening paragraph. The middle section of the story begins with
Death's giving the herb to the boy and his warning not to defy him. This moment
introduces a new conflict (a complication), and by this time it is clear that the son
and not the father is to be the central human character of the story. Death's godson
is the principal person who strives: the protagonist (a better term than hero, for it
may apply equally well to a central character who is not especially brave or virtuous).
The suspense, the pleasurable anxiety we feel that heightens our attention to
the story, inheres in our wondering how it will all turn out. Will the doctor triumph over Death? Even though we suspect, early in the story, that the doctor
stands no chance against such a superhuman antagonist, we want to see for ourselves the outcome of his defiance. A storyteller can try to incite our anticipation
by giving us some foreshadowing or indication of events to come. In "Godfather
Death" the foreshadowings are apparent in Death's warnings ("But if you try such
a thing again, it will be your neck"). When the doctor defies his godfather for the
first timewhen he saves the kingwe have a crisis, a moment of high tension.
The tension is momentarily resolved when Death lets him off. Then an even
greater crisisthe turning point in the actionoccurs with the doctor's second
defiance in restoring the princess to life. In the last section of the story, with the
doctor in the underworld, events come to a climax, the moment of greatest tension at which the outcome is to be decided, when the terrified doctor begs for a
new candle. Will Death grant him one? Will he live, become king, and marry the
princess? The outcome or conclusionalso called the resolution or denouement
("the untying of the knot")quickly follows as Death allows the little candle to
go out.
Such a structure of events arising out of a conflict may be called the plot of the
story. Like many terms used in literary discussion, plot is blessed with several meanings. Sometimes it refers simply to the events in a story. In this book, plot will
mean the artistic arrangement of those events. Different arrangements of the same
material are possible. A writer might decide to tell of the events in chronological
order, beginning with the earliest; or he or she might open the story with the last
event, then tell what led up to it. Sometimes a writer chooses to skip rapidly over the
exposition and begin in medias res (Latin, "in the midst of things"), first presenting
some exciting or significant moment, then filling in what happened earlier. This
method is by no means a modern invention: Homer begins the Odyssey with his
hero mysteriously late in returning from war and his son searching for him; John
Milton's Paradise Lost opens with Satan already defeated in his revolt against the
Lord. A device useful to writers for filling in what happened earlier is the flashback
(or retrospect), a scene relived in a character's memory.
To have a plot, a story does not need an intense, sustained conflict such as we
find in "Godfather Death," a tale especially economical in its structure of crisis, climax, and conclusion. Although a highly dramatic story may tend to assume such a
clearly recognizable structure, many contemporary writers avoid it, considering it
too contrived and arbitrary. In commercial fiction, in which exciting conflict is
everything and in wyhich the writer has to manufacture all possible suspense, such a
structure is often obvious. In popular detective, Western, and adventure novels; in
juvenile fiction (the perennial Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books); and in popular series on television (soap operas, police and hospital dramas, mysteries), it is
often easy to recognize crisis, climax, and conclusion. T h e presence of these elements does not necessarily indicate inferior literature (as "Godfather Death"
shows); yet when they are reduced to parts of a formula, the result may seem stale
and contrived. 1
The Short Story
The teller of a tale relies heavily on the method of summary: terse, general narration
as in "Godfather Death" ("It was not long before the young man was the most famous
doctor in the whole world"). But in a short story, a form more realistic than the tale
and of modern origin, the writer usually presents the main events in greater fullness.
Fine writers of short stories, although they may use summary at times (often to give
some portion of a story less emphasis), are skilled in rendering a scene: a vivid or dramatic moment described in enough detail to create the illusion that the reader is
practically there. Avoiding long summary, they try to show rather than simply to tell,
as if following Mark Twain's advice to authors: "Don't say, T h e old lady screamed.'
Bring her on and let her scream."
A short story is more than just a sequence of happenings. A finely wrought
short story has the richness and conciseness of an excellent lyric poem. Spontaneous and natural, as the finished story may seem, the writer has crafted it so artfully that there is meaning in even seemingly casual speeches and apparently trivial
details. If we skim it hastily, skipping the descriptive passages, we miss significant
parts. Some literary short stories, unlike commercial fiction in which the main interest is in physical action or conflict, tell of an epiphany: some moment of insight,
discovery, or revelation by which a character's life, or view of life, is greatly altered. 2 (For such moments in fiction, see the stories in this book by James Joyce,
*In the heyday of the pulp magazines (so called for their cheap wood-pulp paper), some professional writers even relied on a mechanical device called Plotto: a tin arrow-spinner pointed to numbers and the
writer looked them up in a book that listed necessary ingredientstype of hero, type of villain, type of
conflict, crisis, climax, conclusion.
the Greek epiphainein, "to show forth." In Christian tradition, the Feast of the Epiphany commemorates the revelation to the Magi of the birth of Christ.
2From
John Steinbeck, and Joyce Carol Oates.) Other short stories tell of a character initiated into experience or maturity: one such story of initiation is William
Faulkner's "Barn Burning" (Chapter 5), in which a boy finds it necessary to defy his
father and suddenly to grow into manhood. Less obviously dramatic, perhaps, than
"Godfather Death," such a story may be no less powerful.
The fable and the tale are ancient forms; the short story is of more recent origin. In the nineteenth century, writers of fiction were encouraged by a large, literate
audience of middle-class readers who wanted to see their lives reflected in faithful
mirrors. Skillfully representing ordinary life, many writers perfected the art of the
short story: in Russia, Anton Chekhov; in France, Honore de Balzac, Gustave
Flaubert, and Guy de Maupassant; and in America, Nathaniel Hawthorne and
Edgar Allan Poe (although the Americans seem less fond of everyday life than of
dream and fantasy). It would be false to claim that, in passing from the fable and the
tale to the short story, fiction has made a triumphant progress; or to claim that, because short stories are modern, they are superior to fables and tales. Fable, tale, and
short story are distinct forms, each achieving its own effects. (Incidentally, fable and
tale are far from being extinct today: you can find many recent examples.) In the
hands of Jorge Luis Borges, Joyce Carol Oates, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and other
innovative writers, the conventions of the short story underwent great changes in
the second half of the twentieth century; and, at present, stories of epiphany and initiation are not as prevalent as they once were.
But let us begin with a contemporary short story whose protagonist does undergo
an initiation into maturity. T o notice the difference between a short story and a tale,
you may find it helpful to compare John Updike's "A & P" with "Godfather Death."
Although Updike's short story is centuries distant from the Grimm tale in its method
of telling and in its setting, you may be reminded of "Godfather Death" in the main
character's dramatic situation. To defend a young woman, a young man has to defy
his mentorhere, the boss of a supermarket! In so doing, he places himself in jeopardy. Updike has the protagonist tell his own story, amply and with humor. How does
it differ from a tale?
A & P
1961
John Updike, born in Pennsylvania in 1932, received his B.A. from Harvard, then ivent
to Oxford to study drawing and fine art. In the mid-1950s he worked on the staff of the
New Yorker, at tim.es doing errands for the aged James Thurber. Although he left the magazine to become a full-time writer, Updike has continued to supply it with memorable stories, witty light verse, and searching reviews. A famously prolific writer, he has published
more than fifty books. Updike is best knoivn as a hardworking, versatile, highly productive
writer of fiction. For his novel T h e Centaur (1963) he received a National Book Award,
and for Rabbit Is Rich (1982) a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award. The
fourth and last Rabbit Angstrom novel, Rabbit at Rest (1990), won him a second
Pulitzer. Licks of Love (2000), a collection of stories, contains a long footnote to the
tetraology, a novella, called "Rabbit Rememberedin
ivhich Rabbit Angstrom's friends
reminisce about him after his death.
Updike is one of the few Americans ever to be awarded both the National Medal of
Arts (1989) and the National Humanities Medal (2003)the nation's highest honors in
each respective field. His many other novels include The Witches of Eastwick (J984), made
into a successful film starring Jack Nicholson; S. (J988), partly inspired by Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter; Gertrude and Claudius (2000), derived from ShaJiespeare's
Hamlet; and Terrorist (2006), Updike's twenty-second novel. Compilations of his work
include Collected Poems (1993), T h e Complete Henry Bech (2001), The Early Stories, 1953-1975 (2003, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), and Still Looking: Essays on
American Art (2005).
Almost unique among living American writers, Updike has moved back and forth successfully among a variety of literary genres: light verse, serious poetry, drama, criticism,
children's books, novels, and short stories. But it is perhaps in short fiction that he has done
his finest work. Updilce has been quietly innovative in expanding the forms of short fiction,
especially in his volumes of interlocked stories built around recurrent characters, as in the
Maple family stories in Too Far to Go (1979) and his three collections that depict the ups
and downs of fictional writer Henry Bech. Despite Updike's achievements as a novelist,
some critics such as Washington Post writer Jonathan Yardley believe that "It is in his short
stories that we find Updike's most assured work, and no doubt it is upon the best of them
that his reputation ultimately will rest."
In walks three girls in nothing but bathing suits. Pm in the third check-out
slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread.
T h e one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She
was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those
two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of
the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying
to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving
me hell. She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge
on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up.
She'd been watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake before.
By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bagshe gives
me a little snort in passing, if she'd been born at the right time they would have
burned her over in Salemby the time I get her on her way the girls had circled
around the bread and were coming back, without a pushcart, back my way along the
counters, in the aisle between the check-outs and the Special bins. They didn't even
have shoes on. There was this chunky one, with the two-pieceit was bright green
and the seams on the bra were still sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I
guessed she just got it (the suit)there was this one, with one of those chubby berryfaces, the lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with
black hair that hadn't quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across under
the eyes, and a chin that was too longyou know, the kind of girl other girls think is
very "striking" and "attractive" but never quite makes it, as they very well know,
which is why they like her so muchand then the third one, that wasn't quite so
tall. She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and
making their shoulders round. She didn't look around, not this queen, she just
walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima-donna legs. She came down a
little hard on her heels, as if she didn't walk in her bare feet that much, putting down
her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was testing the
floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it. You never know
for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little
buzz like a bee in a glass jar?) but you got the idea she had talked the other two into
coming in here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and
hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of dirty-pinkbeige maybe, I don't know7bathing suit with
a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her
shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the
suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn't been there you wouldn't have known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane
of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal
tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty.
She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun
that was unraveling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with your
straps down, I suppose it's the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so
high her neck, coming up out of those white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but
I didn't mind. The longer her neck was, the more of her there was.
She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder Stokesie
in the second slot watching, but she didn't tip. Not this queen. She kept her eyes
moving across the racks, and stopped, and turned so slow it made my stomach rub
the inside of my apron, and buzzed to the other two, who kind of huddled against
her for relief, and they all three of them went up the cat-and-dog-food-breakfastcereal-macaroni-iice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft-drinks-crackers-andcookies aisle. From the third slot I look straight up this aisle to the meat counter,
and I watched them all the way. T h e fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the
cookies, but on second thought she put the packages back. T h e sheep pushing their
carts down the aislethe girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we
have one-way signs or anything)were pretty hilarious. You could see them, when
Queenie's white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but
their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I bet you could
set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and
checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering "Let me see, there was a third thing,
began with A, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!" or whatever it is they do mutter.
But there was no doubt, this jiggled them. A few7 houseslaves in pin curlers even
looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was
correct.
You know, it's one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach,
where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those
stacked packages, with her feet padding along naked over our checkerboard greenand-cream rubber-tile floor.
"Oh Daddy," Stokesie said beside me. "I feel so faint."
"Darling," I said. "Hold me tight." Stokesie's married, with two babies chalked
up on his fuselage already, but as far as I can tell that's the only difference. He's
twenty-two, and I was nineteen this April.
"Is it done?" he asks, the responsible married man finding his voice. I forgot to
say he thinks he's going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it's
called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something.
What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a big summer
colony out on the Point, but we're right in the middle of town, and the women
generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car into
the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children and varicose
veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care less. As I say,
we're right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see
two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three realestate offices and about twenty-seven old freeloaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It's not as if we're on the Cape; we're north of Boston
and there's people in this town haven't seen the ocean for twenty years. T h e girls
had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon something. He pointed,
they pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a pyramid of Diet Delight
peaches. All that was left for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and
looking after them sizing up their joints. Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them,
they couldn't help it.
Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says it's sad but I
don't think it's sad myself. T h e store's pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon, so
there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait for the girls to
show up again. The whole store was like a pinball machine and I didn't know which
tunnel they'd come out of. After a while they come around out of the far aisle,
around the light bulbs, records at discount of the Caribbean Six or Tonv Martin
Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste the wax on, six-packs of candy bars,
and plastic toys done up in cellophane that fall apart when a kid looks at them anyway. Around they come, Queenie still leading the way, and holding a little gray jar
in her hand. Slots Three through Seven are unmanned and I could see her wondering between Stokes and me, but Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party in
baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four giant cans of pineapple juice (what do
these bums do with all that pineapple juice? I've often asked myself) so the girls
come to me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49^. Now her hands are empty, not
a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money's coming from. Still with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at
the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I
thought that was so cute.
Then everybody's luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a
truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANA G E R behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengel's pretty
dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn't miss that much. He
comes over and says, "Girls, this isn't the beach."
Queenie blushes, though maybe it's just a brush of sunburn I was noticing for
the first time, now that she was so close. "My mother asked me to pick up a jar of
herring snacks." Her voice kind of startled me, the way voices do when you see the
people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet kind of tony, too, the way it ticked over
"pick up" and "snacks." All of a sudden I slid right down her voice into her living
10
room. Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and
bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off
a big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs
of mint in them. When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it's
a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses with "They'll Do It Every Time" cartoons
stencilled on.
"That's all right," Lengel said. "But this isn't the beach." His repeating this
struck me as funny, as if it had just occurred to him, and he had been thinking all
these years the A & P was a great big dune and he was the head lifeguard. He didn't
like my smilingas I say he doesn't miss muchbut he concentrates on giving the
girls that sad Sunday-school-superintendent stare.
Queenie's blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I liked better from the backa really sweet canpipes up, "We weren't doing any shopping.
We just came in for the one thing."
"That makes no difference," Lengel tells her, and I could see from the way his
eyes went that he hadn't noticed she was wearing a two-piece before. "We want you
decently dressed when you come in here."
"We are decent," Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting sore now
that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P
must look pretty crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in her very blue eyes.
"Girls, I don't want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It's our policy." He turns his back. That's policy for you. Policy is what
the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delinquency.
All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but, you
know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a
paper bag as gently as peeling a peach, not wanting to miss a word. I could feel in the
silence everybody getting nervous, most of all Lengel, who asks me, "Sammy, have
you rung up this purchase?"
I thought and said "No" but it wasn't about that I was thinking. I go through the
punches, 4, 9, G R O C , TOTit's more complicated than you think, and after you do
it often enough, it begins to make a little song, that you hear words to, in my case
"Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul (spbt)!"the splat being the drawer
flying out. I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may imagine, it just having come from
between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever know7n were there, and pass a
half and a penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and
twist its neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.
The girls, and who'd blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say "I quit" to
Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. They keep right on going, into the electric eye; the door flies open and
they flicker across the lot to their car, Queenie and Plaid and Big Tall Goony-Goony
(not that as raw material she wyas so bad), leaving me with Lengel and a kink in his
eyebrow.
"Did you say something, Sammy?"
"I said I quit."
"I thought you did."
"You didn't have to embarrass them."
"It was they who were embarrassing us."
I started to say something that came out "Fiddle-de-doo." It's a saying of my
grandmother's, and I know she would have been pleased.
"I don't think you know what you're saying," Lengel said.
"I know you don't," I said. "But I do." I pull the bow at the back of my apron and
start shrugging it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had been heading for my
slot begin to knock against each other, like scared pigs in a chute.
Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He's been a friend
of my parents for years. "Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad,"
he tells me. It's true, I don't. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it. I fold the apron, "Sammy" stitched in red on the
pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie on top of it. The bow tie is
theirs, if you've ever wondered. "You'll feel this for the rest of your life," Lengel says,
and I know that's true, too, but remembering how he made that pretty girl blush
makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the No Sale tab and the machine whirs "peepul" and the drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I
can follow this up with a clean exit, there's no fumbling around getting your coat and
galoshes, I just saunter into the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed
the night before, and the door heaves itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating
around on the asphalt.
I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't anybody
but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't
get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big
windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the
pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through.
His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'd just had an injection of iron, and
my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Notice how artfully Updike arranges details to set the story in a perfectly ordinary supermarket. What details stand out for you as particularly true to life? W h a t does this
close attention to detail contribute to the story?
2. How fully does Updike draw the character of Sammy? What traits (admirable or otherwise) does Sammy show? Is he any less a hero for wanting the girls to notice his heroism? T o what extent is he more thoroughly and fully portrayed than the doctor in
"Godfather Death"?
3. What part of the story seems to be the exposition? (See the definition of exposition in
the discussion of plot earlier in the chapter and in the Glossary.) O f what value to the
story is the carefully detailed portrait of Queenie, the leader of the three girls?
4. As the story develops, do you detect any change in Sammy's feelings toward the girls?
5. Where in " A & P" does the dramatic conflict become apparent? What moment in the
story brings the crisis? What is the climax of the story?
6. Why, exactly, does Sammy quit his job?
7. Does anything lead you to expect Sammy to make some gesture of sympathy for the
three girls? W h a t incident earlier in the story (before Sammy quits) seems a foreshadowing?
8. What do you understand from the conclusion of the story? W h a t does Sammy mean
when he acknowledges "how hard the world was going to be . . . hereafter"?
9. What comment does Updikethrough Sammymake on supermarket society?
30
MtKtM
^ writing effective
WRITERS
ut, o I T , M n
ON
C e t c r ti WE i v
WRITING
John U p d i k e
Why Write?
1975
Most people sensibly assume that writing is
propaganda. Of course, they admit, there is
bad propaganda, like the boy-meets-tractor
novels of socialist realism, and old-fashioned
propaganda, like Christian melodrama and
the capitalist success stories of Horatio Alger
or Samuel Smiles. But that some message is
intended, wrapped in the story like a piece of
crystal carefully mailed in cardboard and excelsior, is not doubted. Scarcely a day passes
in my native land that 1 don't receive some
letter from a student or teacher asking me
JOHN UPDIKE
what I meant to say in such a book, asking me
to elaborate more fully on some sentence I deliberately whittled into minimal shape,
or inviting me to speak on some topic, usually theological or sexual, on which it is
pleasantly assumed 1 am an expert. The writer as hero, as Hemingway or Saint-Exupery or D'Annunzio, a tradition of which Camus was perhaps the last example, has
been replaced in America by the writer as educationist. Most writers teach, a great
many teach writing; writing is furiously taught in the colleges even as the death knell
of the book and the written word is monotonously tolled; any writer, it is assumed,
can give a lecture, and the purer products of his academic mind, the "writings" themselves, are sifted and, if found of sufficient quality, installed in their places on the assembly belt of study, as objects of educational contemplation.
How dare one confess, to the politely but firmly inquiring letter-writer who takes
for granted that as a remote but functioning element of his education you are dutybound to provide the information and elucidating essay that will enable him to complete his term paper, or his Ph.D. thesis, or his critical opushow dare one confess
that the absence of a swiftly expressible message is, often, the message; that reticence
is as important a tool to the writer as expression; that the hasty filling out of a questionnaire is not merely irrelevant but inimical to the writer's proper activity; that this
activity is rather curiously private and finicking, a matter of exorcism and manufacture rather than of toplofty proclamation; that what he makes is ideally as ambiguous
and opaque as life itself.
From "Why Write?"
WRITING
ABOUT
PLOT
Paying A t t e n t i o n t o Plot
A day without conflict is pleasant, but a story without conflict is boring. The plot of
every short story, novel, or movie gets its energy from conflict. A character desperately
wants something he or she can't have, or is frantic to avoid an unpleasant (or deadly)
event. In most stories, conflict is established and tension builds, leading to a crisis and, finally, a resolution of some sort.
The things that happen within a storythe story's plotall relate somehow to the
central conflict. How they relate is a key question we ponder when we write about plot.
When analyzing a story, be sure to remember:
In most short stories, plot depends less on large external events than on small
occurrences that set off large internal changes in the main character.
Stories often show how the main character comes to a personal turning point,
or how his or her character is tested or revealed by events.
Good stories are a lot like life: the true nature of a character is usually revealed
not just by what the character says but also by what he or she does.
Plot is more than just a sequence of events ("First A happens, and then B, and
then C . . . "). Plot is about cause and effect. The actions, events, and situations
described in most stories are related to each other by more than just accident
("First A happens, which causes B to happen, which makes C all the more surprising, or inevitable, or ironic . . . " ) .
If a friend asks you, "What was the story you just read about?" you will probably reply by summarizing the plot. The plot of a short story is the element most readers notice
first and remember longest. Plotting is such an obvious aspect of fiction that, in analyzing a short story, it is easy to overlook its importance.
Although plot might seem like the most obvious and superficial part of a story, it is
an important expressive device. Plot combines with the other elements of fictionimagery, style and symbolism, for exampleto create an emotional response in the reader:
suspense, humor, sadness, excitement, terror.
When you write about a short story, be sure to address its surface narrative.
You may make importanteven profounddiscoveries by paying attention to
plot.
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Plot
S What is the story's central conflict?
S Who is the protagonist? What does he or she want?
S What is at stake for the protagonist in the conflict?
S What stands in the way of the protagonist's easily achieving his or her goal?
S What are the main events that take place in the story? How does each event
relate to the protagonist's struggle?
S Where do you find the story's climax, or crisis?
S How is the conflict resolved?
S Does the protagonist succeed in obtaining his or her goals?
S What is the impact of success, failure, or a surprising outcome on the
protagonist?
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
PLOT
Choose and read a story from this collection, and write a brief description of its plot and main
characters. Then write at length about how the protagonist is changed or tested by the story's
events. What do the main character's actions reveal about his or her personality? Some possible story choices are " A & P," "Everyday Use," " How I Met My Husband," and "Greasy Lake."
M O R E "TO P I C S F O R W R I T I N cT
1. Briefly list the events described in " A
P." Now write several paragraphs about the ways
in which the story adds up to more than the sum of its events. Why should the reader care
about Sammy's thoughts and decisions?
2. How do Sammy's actions in " A & P" reveal his character? In what ways are his thoughts
and actions at odds with each other?
3. Write a brief fable modeled on either "The Appointment in Samarra," "The North Wind
and the Sun," or " T h e Camel and His Friends." Begin with a familiar proverb " A penny
saved is a penny earned" or "Too many cooks spoil the broth"and invent a story to
make the moral convincing.
4. With "Godfather Death" in mind, write a fairy tale set in the present, in a town or city
much like your own. After you've completed your fairy tale, write a paragraph explaining
what aspects of the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm you hoped to capture in your story.
5. The Brothers Grimm collected and wrote down many of our best-known fairy tales
"Cinderella," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and "Little Red Riding Hood," for example. If you have strong childhood recollections of one of these storiesperhaps based on
picture books or on the animated Disney versionsfind and read the Brothers Grimm version. Are you surprised by the difference? Write a brief essay contrasting the original with
your remembered version. What does the original offer that the adaptation does not?
Point of View
::. m .. .
:;::
...,. ..
..
An author in his book must be like God in his universe,
present everywhere and visible nowhere.
G U S T A V E FLAUBERT
In the opening lines of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain takes care to
separate himself from the leading character, who is to tell his own story:
You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by
Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.
Twain wrote the novel, but the narrator or speaker is Huck Finn, the one from
whose perspective the story is told. Obviously, in Huckleberry Finn, the narrator of
the story is not the same person as the "real-life" author, the one given the byline. In
employing Huck as his narrator, Twain selects a special angle of vision: not his own,
exactly, but that of a resourceful boy moving through the thick of events, with a
mind at times shrewd, at other times innocent. Through Huck's eyes, Twain takes in
certain scenes, actions, and characters andas only Huck's angle of vision could
have enabled Twain to do so wellrecords them memorably.
Not every narrator in fiction is, like Huck Finn, a main character, one in the
thick of events. Some narrators play only minor parts in the stories they tell; others
take no active part at all. In the tale of "Godfather Death," we have a narrator who
does not participate in the events he recounts. He is not a character in the story but
is someone not even named, who stands at some distance from the action recording
what the main characters say and do; recording also, at times, what they think, feel,
or desire. He seems to have unlimited knowledge: he even knows the mind of
Death, who "because he wanted revenge" let the doctor's candle go out. More humanly restricted in their knowledge, other narrators can see into the mind of only
one character. They may be less willing to express opinions than the narrator of
"Godfather Death" ("He ought to have remembered his godfather's warning"). A
story may even be told by a narrator who seems so impartial and aloof that he limits
himself to reporting only overheard conversation and to describing, without comment or opinion, the appearances of things. Evidently, narrators greatly differ in
kind; however, because stories usually are told by someone, almost every story has
some kind of narrator.1 It is rare in modern fiction for the "real-life" author to try to
step out from behind the typewriter and tell the story. Real persons can tell stories,
but when such a story is written, the result is usually nonfiction: a memoir, an account of travels, an autobiography.2
T o identify the narrator of a story, describing any part he or she plays in the
events and any limits placed on his or her knowledge, is to identify the story's point
of view. In a short story, it is usual for the writer to maintain one point of view from
beginning to end, but there is nothing to stop him or her from introducing other
points of view as well. In his long, panoramic novel War and Peace, encompassing the
vast drama of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Leo Tolstoy freely shifts the point of
view in and out of the minds of many characters, among them Napoleon himself.
Theoretically, a great many points of view are possible. A narrator who says "I"
might conceivably be involved in events to a much greater or a much lesser degree:
as the protagonist, as some other major character, as some minor character, as a mere
passive spectator, or even as a character who arrives late upon the scene and then
tries to piece together what happened. Evidently, too, a narrator's knowledge might
vary in gradations from total omniscience to almost total ignorance. But in reading
fiction, again and again we encounter familiar and recognizable points of view. Here
is a list of themadmittedly just a rough abstractionthat may provide a few terms
with which to discuss the stories that you read and to describe their points of view:
Narrator a Participant (Writing in the First Person):
1. a major character
2. a minor character
Narrator a Nonparticipant (Writing in the Third Person) :
3. all-knowing (seeing into any of the characters)
4. seeing into one major character
5. seeing into one minor character
6. objective (not seeing into any characters)
When the narrator is cast as a participant in the events of the story, he or she is
a dramatized character who says "I." Such a narrator may be the protagonist (Huck
Finn) or may be an observer, a minor character standing a little to one side, watching a story unfold that mainly involves someone else.
A narrator who remains a nonparticipant does not appear in the story as a character. Viewing the characters, perhaps seeing into the minds of one or more of them, such
a narrator refers to them as "he," "she," or "they." When all-knowing (or omniscient),
the narrator sees into the minds of all (or some) characters, moving when necessary
from one to another. This is the point of view in "Godfather Death," in which the narrator knows the feelings and motives of the father, of the doctor, and even of Death
himself. In that he adds an occasional comment or opinion, this narrator may be said
1 Some
theorists reserve the term narrator for a character who tells a story in the first person. We use it in a
wider sense: to mean a recording consciousness that an author creates, who may or may not be a participant in
the events of the story. In the view of Wayne C. Booth, the term narrator can be dispensed with in dealing
with a rigorously impersonal "fly-on-the-wall" story, containing no editorializing and confined to the presentation of surfaces: "In Hemingway's The Killers,' for example, there is no narrator other than the implicit second self that Hemingway creates as he writes" (The Rhetoric of Fiction [Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961] 151).
"Another relationship between the author and the story will be discussed in Chapter 5, "Tone and Style."
also to show editorial omniscience (as we can tell from his disapproving remark that
the doctor "ought to have remembered" and his observation that the father did not understand "how wisely God shares out wealth and poverty"). A narrator who shows
impartial omniscience presents the thoughts and actions of the characters, but does
not judge them or comment on them.
When a nonparticipating narrator sees events through the eyes of a single character, whether a major character or a minor one, the resulting point of view is sometimes called limited omniscience or selective omniscience. The author, of course, selects which character to see through; the omniscience is his and not the narrator's. In
William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" (Chapter 5), the narrator is almost entirely confined to knowing the thoughts and perceptions of a boy, the central character. Here
is another example. Early in his novel Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert tells of the
first time a young country doctor, Charles Bovary, meets Emma, the woman later to
become his wife. The doctor has been summoned late at night to set the broken leg
of a farmer, Emma's father.
A young woman wearing a blue merino dress with three flounces came to
the door of the house to greet Monsieur Bovary, and she ushered him into
the kitchen, where a big open fire was blazing. Around its edges the farm
hands' breakfast was bubbling in small pots of assorted sizes. Damp clothes
were drying inside the vast chimney-opening. The fire shovel, the tongs,
and the nose of the bellows, all of colossal proportions, shone like polished
steel; and along the walls hung a lavish array of kitchen utensils, glimmering
in the bright light of the fire and in the first rays of the sun that were now
beginning to come in through the window-panes.
Charles went upstairs to see the patient. He found him in bed, sweating
under blankets, his nightcap lying where he had flung it. He was a stocky little man of fifty, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, bald in front and wearing earrings.
On a chair beside him was a big decanter of brandy: he had been pouring
himself drinks to keep up his courage. But as soon as he saw the doctor he
dropped his bluster, and instead of cursing as he had been doing for the past
twelve hours he began to groan weakly.
The fracture was a simple one, without complications of any kind.
Charles couldn't have wished for anything easier. Then he recalled his
teachers' bedside manner in accident cases, and proceeded to cheer up his
patient with all kinds of facetious remarksa truly surgical attention, like
the oiling of a scalpel. For splints, they sent someone to bring a bundle of
laths from the carriage shed. Charles selected one, cut it into lengths and
smoothed it down with a piece of broken window glass, while the maidservant tore sheets for bandages and Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some
pads. She was a long time finding her workbox, and her father showed his
impatience. She made no reply; but as she sewed she kept pricking her fingers
and raising them to her mouth to suck.
Charles was surprised by the whiteness of her fingernails. They were
almond-shaped, tapering, as polished and shining as Dieppe ivories. Her
hands, however, were not. prettynot pale enough, perhaps, a little rough
at the knuckles; and they were too long, without softness of line. The finest
thing about her was her eyes. They were brown, but seemed black under the
long eyelashes; and she had an open gaze that met yours with fearless
candor. 3
In this famous scene, Charles Bo vary is beholding people and objects in a natural sequence. On first meeting Emma, he notices only her dress, as though less interested
in the woman who opens the door than in passing through to the warm fire. Needing
pads for his patient's splint, the doctor observes just the hands of the woman sewing
them. Obliged to wait for the splints, he then has the leisure to notice her face, her
remarkable eyes. (By the way, notice the effect of the word yours in the last sentence
of the passage. It is as if the reader, seeing through the doctor's eyes, suddenly became
one with him.) Who is the narrator? Not Charles Bovary, nor Gustave Flaubert, but
someone able to enter the minds of othershere limited to knowing the thoughts
and perceptions of one character.
In the objective point of view, the narrator does not enter the mind of any character but describes events from the outside. Telling us what people say and how their
faces look, he or she leaves us to infer their thoughts and feelings. So inconspicuous is
the narrator that this point of view has been called "the fly on the wall." This
metaphor assumes the existence of a fly with a highly discriminating gaze, who knows
which details to look for to communicate the deepest meaning. Some critics would
say that in the objective point of view, the narrator disappears altogether. Consider
this passage by a writer famous for remaining objective, Dashiell Hammett, in his
mystery novel The Maltese Falcon, describing his private detective Sam Spade:
Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measured
quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the flakes so that
they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs
rolling the paper's inner edge down and up under the outer edge as forefingers
pressed it over, thumb and fingers sliding to the paper cylinder's ends to hold
it even while tongue licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinching their
ends while right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their end and lifting the other to Spade's mouth. 4
In Hammett's novel, this sentence comes at a moment of crisis: just after Spade has
been roused from bed in the middle of the night by a phone call telling him that his
partner has been murdered. Even in times of stress (we infer) Spade is deliberate,
cool, efficient, and painstaking. Hammett refrains from applying all those adjectives
to Spade; to do so would be to exercise editorial omniscience and to destroy the objective point of view.
Besides the common points of view just listed, uncommon points of view are
possible. In Flush, a fictional biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia
Woolf employs an unusual observer as narrator: the poet's pet cocker spaniel. In "The
Circular Valley," a short story by Paul Bowles, a man and a woman are watched by a
sinister spirit trying to take possession of them, and we see the human characters
through the spirit's vague consciousness.
Also possible, but unusual, is a story written in the second person, you. This
point of view results in an attention-getting directness, as in Jay Mclnemey's novel
Bright Lights, Big City (1985), which begins:
3Madame
Bovary, translated by Francis Steegmuller (New York: Random, 1957) 16-17.
^Chapter 2, "Death in the Fog," The Maltese Falcon (New York: Knopf, 1929).
You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of
the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head.
This arresting way to tell a story is effective, too, in a novel by Carlos Fuentes, Aura
(1962), and in some startling stories by Lorrie Moore in Self-Help (1985).
The attitudes and opinions of a narrator aren't necessarily those of the author; in
fact, we may notice a lively conflict between what we are told and what, apparently, we
are meant to believe. A story may be told by an innocent narrator or a naive narrator,
a character who fails to understand all the implications of the story. One such innocent,
narrator (despite his sometimes shrewd perceptions) is Huckleberry Finn. Because
Huck accepts without question the morality and lawfulness of slavery, he feels guilty
about helping Jim, a runaway slave. But, far from condemning Huck for his defiance of
the law"All right, then, I'll go to hell," Huck tells himself, deciding against returning
Jim to captivitythe author, and the reader along with him, silently applaud. Naive in
the extreme is the narcator of one part of William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the
Fury, the idiot Benjy, a grown man with the intellect of a child. In a story told by an
unreliable narrator, the point of view is that of a person who, we perceive, is deceptive,
self-deceptive, deluded, or deranged. As though seeking ways to be faithful to uncertainty, contemporary writers have been particularly fond of unreliable narrators.
Virginia Woolf compared life to "a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope
surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." 5 T o capture such a
reality, modern writers of fiction have employed many strategies. One is the method of
writing called stream of consciousness, from a phrase coined by psychologist William
James to describe the procession of thoughts passing through the mind. In fiction, the
stream of consciousness is a kind of selective omniscience: the presentation of
thoughts and sense impressions in a lifelike fashionnot in a sequence arranged by
logic, but mingled randomly. When in his novel Ulysses James Joyce takes us into the
mind of Leopold Bloom, an ordinary Dublin mind well-stocked with trivia and fragments of odd learning, the reader may have an impression not of a smoothly flowing
stream but of an ocean of miscellaneous things, all crowded and jostling.
As he set foot on O'Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from the
parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours it, I heard.
Be interesting some day to get a pass through Hancock to see the brewery.
Regular world in itself. Vats of porter, wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink
themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. 6
Perceptionssuch as the smoke from the brewery bargetrigger Bloom's reflections.
A moment later, as he casts a crumpled paper ball off the bridge, he recalls a bit of science he learned in school, the rate of speed of a falling body: "thirty-two feet per sec."
Stream-of-consciousness writing usually occurs in relatively short passages, but
in t/lysses Joyce employs it extensively. Similar in method, an interior monologue is
an extended presentation of a character's thoughts, not in the seemingly helterskelter order of a stream of consciousness, but in an arrangement as if the character
were speaking out loud to himself, for us to overhear. A famous interior monologue
^"Modern Fiction," Collected Essays (New York: Harcourt, 1967).
6Ulysses
(New York: Random, 19.34) 150.
comes at the end of Losses when Joyce gives us the rambling memories and reflections of earth-mother Molly Bloom.
Every point of view has limitations. Even total omniscience, a knowledge of the
minds of all the characters, has its disadvantages. Such a point of view requires high
skill to manage, without the storyteller's losing his way in a multitude of perspectives.
In fact, there are evident advantages in having a narrator not know7 everything. We
are accustomed to seeing the world through one pair of eyes, to having truths gradually occur to us. Henry James, whose theory and practice of fiction have been influential, held that an excellent way to tell a story was through the fine but bewildered
mind of an observer. "It seems probable," James wrote, "that if we were never bewildered there would never be a story to tell about us; we should partake of the superior
nature of the all-knowing immortals whose annals are dreadfully dull so long as flurried humans are not, for the positive relief of bored Olympians, mixed up with them." 7
By using a particular point of view, an author may artfully withhold information,
if need be, rather than immediately present it to us. If, for instance, the suspense in a
story depends on our not knowing until the end that the protagonist is a spy, the author would be ill advised to tell the story from the protagonist's point of view. If a
character acts as the narrator, the author must make sure that the character possesses
(or can obtain) enough information to tell the story adequately. Clearly, the author
makes a fundamental decision in selecting, from many possibilities, a story's point of
view. What we readers admire, if the story is effective, is not only skill in execution,
but also judicious choice.
Here is a short story memorable for many reasons, among them its point of view.
William Faulkner
A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
spent most of
his days in Oxford, Mississippi, where he attended the University of Mississippi and where
he served as postmaster until angry townspeople
ejected him. because they had failed to receive
mail. During World War I he served with the
Royal Canadian Air Force and afterward
worked as a feature writer for the New Orleans
Times-Picayune. Faulkner's private life was a
long struggle to stay solvent: even after fame
came to him, he had to write Hollywood scripts
and teach at the University of Virginia to support
himself. His violent comic novel Sanctuary
(1931) caused a stir and turned a profit, but
critics tend most to admire The Sound and the
Fury (1929), a tale partially told through the
W I L L I A M FAULKNER
'Preface, The Princess Casamassima, reprinted in The Art of die Novel, ed. R. P. Blackmur (New York:
Scribner's, 1934).
eyes of an idiot; As I Lay Dying (1930); Light in August (1932); Absalom, Absalom
(1936); and The Hamlet (1940). Beginning with Sartoris (1929), Faulkner in his fiction
imagines a Mississippi county named Yoknapatawpha and traces the fortunes of several of its
families, including the aristocratic Compsons and Sartorises and the white-trash, dollargrabbing Snopeses, from the Civil War to modern times. His influence on his fellow Southern writers (and others) has been profound. In 1950 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although we think of Faulkner primarily as a novelist, he wrote nearly a hundred short
stories. Forty-two of the best are available in his Collected Stories (1950; 1995).
i
When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men
through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of
curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservanta
combined gardener and cookhad seen in at least ten years.
It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with
cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins
had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only
Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumpsan eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss
Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in
the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and
Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary
obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the
mayorhe who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the
streets without an apronremitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death
of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity.
Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had
loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this
way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have
invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.
When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year
they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her
a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriffs office at her convenience. A week
later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in
faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.
They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited
upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased
giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the
old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It
smelled of dust and disusea close, dank smell. T h e Negro led them into the parlor.
It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the
blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat
down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the
single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of
Miss Emily's father.
They rose when she entereda small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold
chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane
with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why
what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked
bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her
eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed
into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated
their errand.
She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until
the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch
ticking at the end of the gold chain.
Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy
yourselves."
"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice
from the sheriff, signed by him.7"
"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the
sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go by the"
"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But, Miss Emily"
"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I
have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."
II
So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers
thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her father's death and a
short time after her sweetheartthe one we believed would marry herhad deserted
her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away,
people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not
received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro mana young man
thengoing in and out with a market basket.
"Just as if a manany mancould keep a kitchen properly," the ladies said; so
they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the
gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.
A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.
"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.
"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law?"
"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake
or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."
The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in
diffident deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last
one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That night
the Board of Aldermen metthree graybeards and one younger man, a member of
the rising generation.
"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give
her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. . ."
"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling
bad?"
So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk
about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the
cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand
out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled
lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that
had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into
the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went
away.
That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town,
remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last,
believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really
were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We
had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the
background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and
clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when
she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated;
even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if
they had really materialized.
When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and
in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a
pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the
old despair of a penny more or less.
The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual
and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead.
She did that for three days, with the ministers calling 011 her, and the doctors, trying
to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to
law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.
W e did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing
left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.
25
in
She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short,
making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored
church windowssort of tragic and serene.
T h e town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came
with niggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a
Yankeea big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face.
The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers
singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town.
Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron
would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily
on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team
of bays from the livery stable.
30
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies
all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day la- borer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not
cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige0without calling it noblesse oblige. They just
said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her." She had some kin in Alabama;
but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt,
the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families. They
had not even been represented at the funeral.
And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began. "Do you
suppose it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ."
This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed
upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched
team passed: "Poor Emily."
She carried her head high enougheven when we believed that she was fallen.
It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last
Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness.
Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had
begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her.
"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a
slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the
flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye-sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said.
"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom"
"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."
The daiggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what
you want is"
"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"
"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want"
"I want arsenic."
The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a
strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the
law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."
Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for
eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro
delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she
opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones:
"For rats."
IV
So the next day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best
thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will
marry him." Then we said, "She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had
remarkedhe liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in
the Elks' Clubthat he was not a marrying man. Later we said, "Poor Emily," behind
the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily
noblesse oblige: the obligation of a member of the nobility to behave with honor and dignity.
with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth,
reins and whip in a yellow glove.
Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad
example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the
ladies forced the Baptist ministerMiss Emily's people were Episcopalto call upon
her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to
go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following
day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations in Alabama.
So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then wre were sure that they were to be married.
We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set
in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had
bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said,
"They are married." We were really glad. We were glad because the two female
cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.
So we were not surprised when Homer Barronthe streets had been finished
some time sincewas gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public
blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming,
or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we
were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, within three days
Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the
kitchen door at dusk one evening.
And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some
time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment., as the
men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did
not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that
quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been
too virulent and too furious to die.
When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray.
During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepperand-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four
it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.
From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven
years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting.
She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and
granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same
regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twentyfive-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.
Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and
the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with
boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines. The
front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. When the town
got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.
Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice,
45
50
which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then
we would see her in one of the downstairs windowsshe had evidently shut up the
top floor of the houselike the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation
dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a
doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had
long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro. He talked to no
one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from
disuse.
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain,
her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.
v
The Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their
hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He
walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day,
with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with
the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant
and macabre; and the very old mensome in their brushed Confederate uniforms
on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary
of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing
time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a
diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches,
divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.
Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no
one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until
Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.
The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading
dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room
decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color,
upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that
the monogram was obscured. Among them lay collar and tie, as if they had just been
removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair
hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded
socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless
grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the
long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded
him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt., had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow
beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of
us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and
acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
QUESTIONS
1. What is meaningful in the final detail that the strand of hair on the second pillow is iron-
gray7.
2. W h o is the unnamed narrator? For whom does he profess to be speaking?
3. Why does " A Rose for Emily" seem better told from his point of view than if it were told
(like John Updike's " A & P") from the point of view of the main character?
4. What foreshadowings of the discovery of the body of Homer Barron are we given earlier
in the story? Share your experience in reading " A Rose for Emily": did the foreshadowings
give away the ending for you? Did they heighten your interest?
5. What contrasts does the narrator draw between changing reality and Emily's refusal or inability to recognize change?
6. How do the character and background of Emily Grierson differ from those of Homer Barron? What general observations about the society that Faulkner depicts can be made from
his portraits of these two characters and from his account of life in this one Mississippi
town?
7. Does the story seem to you totally grim, or do you find any humor in it?
8. What do you infer to be the author s attitude toward Emily Grierson? Is she simply a murderous madwoman? Why do you suppose Faulkner calls his story "A Rose . . ."?
Anne Tyler
Teenage Wasteland
1983
Anne Tyler was born in 1941 in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, and was raised in North Carolina.
Her parents, a chemist and a social worker,
were Quakers who home-schooled Tyler and
her three younger brothers until she was eleven,
at which time they entered the public school sys^^^^^^
tem. She earned a bachelor s degree in Russian
fll
.
from Duke University when she was nineteen.
t
In 1963, she married Taghi Modarressi, an
jS?.;
. M^W
Iranian physician. The couple had two daugh\
ters, one of whom has provided the illustrations
[
if
for Tyler s two children s books. Her husband
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died in 1997. Beginning with If Morning Ever
< "
Comes in 1964, Tyler has published seventeen
1
well-written, solidly crafted novels that explore
HHHHKLA.
.
.
themes of loneliness, alienation, the desperate
A N N E TYLER
search for love and acceptance, and the difficult
adjustments of marriage and other family relationships. Although she deals unflinchingly with
the pain and loss that can dominate and often overwhelm our lives, her work presents a
gallery of vivid, strong-willed personalities ivhose affirmative approach suggests possibilities of
hope and renewal. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) is perhaps her most highly
regarded work, and her personal favorite among her books. Its successor, The Accidental
Tourist (1985), won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was made into a film
.starring William Hurt and Geena Davis, who won an Academy Award for her performance.
Her next novel, Breathing Lessons (1988), won the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novels are The Amateur Marriage (2004) and Digging to America (2006). She has pub- *
lished several stories in magazines ("Teenage Wasteland" appeared in Seventeen in 1983)
but has not yet collected her short fiction into a book. Tyler avoids the lecture circuit and the
other trappings of literary celebrity, preferring to concentrate on her writing. She lives in
Baltimore.
He used to have very blond hairalmost whitecut shorter than other children's
so that on his crown a little cowlick always stood up to catch the light. But this was
when he was small. As he grew older, his hair grew darker, and he wore it longer
past his collar even. It hung in lank, taffy-colored ropes around his face, which was
still an endearing face, fine-featured, the eyes an unusual aqua blue. But his cheeks, of
course, were no longer round, and a sharp new Adam's apple jogged in his throat
when he talked.
In October, they called from the private school he attended to request a conference with his parents. Daisy went alone; her husband was at work. Clutching her
purse, she sat on the principal's couch and learned that Donny was noisy, lazy, and
disruptive; always fooling around with his friends, and he wouldn't respond in class.
In the past, before her children were born, Daisy had been a fourth-grade
teacher. It shamed her now to sit before this principal as a parent., a delinquent parent, a parent who struck Mr. Lanham, no doubt, as unseeing or uncaring. "It isn't
that we're not concerned," she said. "Both of us are. And we've done what we
could, whatever we could think of. We don't let him watch T V on school nights.
We don't let him talk on the phone till he's finished his homework. But he tells us
he doesn't have any homework or he did it all in study hall. How are we to know
what to believe?"
From early October through November, at Mr. Lanham's suggestion, Daisy
checked Donny's assignments every day. She sat next to him as he worked, trying to
be encouraging, sagging inwardly as she saw the poor quality of everything he did
the sloppy mistakes in math, the illogical leaps in his English themes, the history
questions left blank if they required any research.
Daisy was often late starting supper, and she couldn't give as much attention to
Donny's younger sister. "You'll never guess what happened at . . ." Amanda would
begin, and Daisy would have to tell her, "Not now, honey."
By the time her husband, Matt, came home, she'd be snappish. She would recite
the day's hardshipsthe fuzzy instructions in English, the botched history map, the
morass of unsolvable algebra equations. Matt would look surprised and confused, and
Daisy would gradually wind down. There was no way, really, to convey how exhausting all this was.
In December, the school called again. This time, they wanted Matt to come as
well. She and Matt had to sit on Mr. Lanham's couch like two bad children and listen to the news: Donny had improved only slightly, raising a D in history to a C, and
a C in algebra to a B-minus. What was worse, he had developed new problems. He
had cut classes on at least three occasions. Smoked in the furnace room. Helped
Sonny Barnett break into a freshman's locker. And last week, during athletics, he
and three friends had been seen off the school grounds; when they returned, the
coach had smelled beer on their breath.
Daisy and Matt sat silent, shocked. Matt rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. Imagine, Daisy thought, how they must look to Mr. Lanham: an overweight
housewife in a cotton dress and a too-tall, too-thin insurance agent in a baggy,
frayed suit. Failures, both of themthe kind of people who are always hurrying to
catch up, missing the point of things that everyone else grasps at once. She wished
she'd worn nylons instead of knee socks.
It was arranged that Donny would visit a psychologist for testing. Mr. Lanham
knew just the person. He would set this boy straight, he said.
When they stood to leave, Daisy held her stomach in and gave Mr. Lanham a
firm, responsible handshake.
Donny said the psychologist was a jackass and the tests were really dumb; but he
kept all three of his appointments, and when it was time for the follow-up conference
with the psychologist and both parents, Donny combed his hair and seemed unusually sober and subdued. The psychologist said Donny had no serious emotional problems. He was merely going through a difficult period in his life. He required some
academic help and a better sense of self-worth. For this reason, he was suggesting a
man named Calvin Beadle, a tutor with considerable psychological training.
In the car going home, Donny said he'd be damned if he'd let them drag him to
some stupid fairy tutor. His father told him to watch his language in front of his
mother.
That night, Daisy lay awake pondering the term "self-worth." She had always
been free with her praise. She had always told Donny he had talent, was smart, was
good with his hands. She had made a big to-do over every little gift he gave her. In
fact, maybe she had gone too far, although, Lord knows, she had meant every word.
Was that his trouble?
She remembered when Amanda was born. Donny had acted lost and bewildered.
Daisy had been alert to that, of course, but still, a new baby keeps you so busy. Had
she really done all she could have? She longedshe achedfor a time machine.
Given one more chance, she'd do it perfectlyhug him more, praise him more, or
perhaps praise him less. Oh, who can say . . .
The tutor told Donny to call him Cal. All his kids did, he said. Daisy thought for
second that he meant his own children, then realized her mistake. He seemed too
young, anyhow, to be a family man. He wore a heavy brown handlebar mustache. His
hair was as long and stringy as Donny's, and his jeans as faded. Wire-rimmed spectacles slid down his nose. He lounged in a canvas director's chair with his fingers laced
across his chest, and he casually, amiably questioned Donny, who sat upright and
glaring in an armchair.
"So they're getting on your back at school," said Cal. "Making a big deal about
anything you do wrong."
"Right," said Donny.
"Any idea why that would be?"
"Oh, well, you know, stuff like homework and all," Donny said.
"You don't do your homework?"
"Oh, well, I might do it sometimes but not just exactly like they want it." Donny
sat forward and said, "It's like a prison there, you know? You've got to go to every
class, you can never step off the school grounds."
"You cut classes sometimes?"
"Sometimes," Donny said, with a glance at his parents.
Cal didn't seem perturbed. "Well," he said, "I'll tell you what. Let's you and me
try working together three nights a week. Think you can handle that? We'll see if we
can show that school of yours a thing or two. Give it a month; then if you don't like
10
15
20
it, we'll stop. If I don't like it, we'll stop. I mean, sometimes people just don't get
along, right? What do you say to that?"
"Okay," Donny said. He seemed pleased.
"Make it seven o'clock till eight, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday," Cal told
Matt and Daisy. They nodded. Cal shambled to his feet, gave them a little salute, and
showed them to the door.
This was where he lived as well as worked, evidently. T h e interview had
taken place in the dining room, which had been transformed into a kind of office.
Passing the living room, Daisy winced at the rock music she had been hearing,
without registering it, ever since she had entered the house. She looked in and
saw a boy about Donny's age lying on a sofa with a book. Another boy and a girl
were playing Ping-Pong in front of the fireplace. "You have several here together?" Daisy asked Cal.
"Oh, sometimes they stay on after their sessions, just to rap. They're a pretty sociable group, all in all. Plenty of goof-offs like young Donny here."
He cuffed Donny's shoulder playfully. Donny flushed and grinned.
Climbing into the car, Daisy asked Donny, "Well? What do you think?"
But Donny had returned to his old evasive self. He jerked his chin toward the
garage. "Look," he said. "He's got a basketball net."
Now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they had supper earlythe instant
Matt came home. Sometimes, they had to leave before they were really finished.
Amanda would still be eating her dessert. "Bye, honey. Sorry," Daisy would tell her.
Cal's first bill sent a flutter of panic through Daisy's chest, but it was worth it, of
course. Just look at Donny's face when they picked him up: alight and full of interest.
The principal telephoned Daisy to tell her how Donny had improved. "Of course, it
hasn't shown up in his grades yet, but several of the teachers have noticed how his attitude's changed. Yes, sir, I think we're onto something here."
At home, Donny didn't act much different. He still seemed to have a low opinion of his parents. But Daisy supposed that was unavoidablepart of being fifteen.
He said his parents were too "controlling"a word that made Daisy give him a sudden look. He said they acted like wardens. On weekends, they enforced a curfew.
And any time he went to a party, they always telephoned first to see if adults would
be supervising. "For God's sake!" he said. "Don't you trust me?"
"It isn't a matter of trust, honey . . .? But there was no explaining to him.
His tutor called one afternoon. "I get the sense," he said, "that this kid's feeling . . .
underestimated, you know? Like you folks expect the worst of him. I'm thinking we
ought to give him more rope."
"But see, he's still so suggestible," Daisy said. "When his friends suggest some
mischiefsmoking or drinking or suchwhy, he just finds it hard not to go along
with them."
"Mrs. Coble," the tutor said, "I think this kid is hurting. You know? Here's a serious, sensitive kid, telling you he'd like to take on some grown-up challenges, and
you're giving him the message that he can't be trusted. Don't you understand how
that hurts?"
"Oh," said Daisy.
"It undermines his self-esteemdon't you realize that?"
"Well, I guess you're right," said Daisy. She saw Donny suddenly from a whole
new angle: his pathetically poor posture, that slouch so forlorn that his shoulders
seemed about to meet his chin . . . oh, wasn't it awful being young? She'd had a
miserable adolescence herself and had always sworn no child of hers would ever be
that unhappy.
They let Donny stay out later, they didn't call ahead to see if the parties were supervised, and they were careful not to grill him about his evening. The tutor had set
down so many rules! They were not allowed any questions at all about any aspect of
school, nor were they to speak with his teachers. If a teacher had some complaint,
she should phone Cal. Only one teacher disobeyedthe history teacher, Miss Evans.
She called one morning in February. "I'm a little concerned about Donny, Mrs.
Coble."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Evans, but Donny's tutor handles these things now . .
"I always deal directly with the parents. You are the parent," Miss Evans said,
speaking very slowly and distinctly. "Now, here is the problem. Back when you were
helping Donny with his homework, his grades rose from to D to a C, but now they've
slipped back, and they're closer to an F."
"They are?"
"I think you should start overseeing his homework again."
"But Donny's tutor says. . ."
"It's nice that Donny has a tutor, but you should still be in charge of his homework. With you, he learned it. Then he passed his tests. With the tutor, well, it seems
the tutor is more of a crutch. 'Donny,' I say, 'a quiz is coming up on Friday. Hadn't
you better be listening instead of talking?' That's okay, Miss Evans,' he says. 'I have a
tutor now.' Like a talisman! I really think you ought to take over, Mrs. Coble."
"I see," said Daisy. "Well, I'll think about that. Thank you for calling."
Hanging up, she felt a rush of anger at Donny. A talisman! For a talisman, she'd
given up all luxuries, all that time with her daughter, her evenings at home!
She dialed Cal's number. He sounded muzzy. "I'm sorry if I woke you," she told
him, "but Donny's history teacher just called. She says he isn't doing well."
"She should have dealt with me."
"She wants me to start supervising his homework again. His grades are slipping."
"Yes," said the tutor, "but you and I both know there's more to it than mere
grades, don't we? I care about the whole childhis happiness, his self-esteem. The
grades will come. Just give them time."
When she hung up, it was Miss Evans she was angry at. What a narrow woman!
It was Cal this, Cal that, Cal says this, Cal and I did that. Cal lent Donny an album by The Who. He took Donny and two other pupils to a rock concert. In March,
when Donny began to talk endlessly on the phone with a girl named Miriam, Cal
even let Miriam come to one of the tutoring sessions. Daisy was touched that Cal
would grow so involved in Donny's life, but she was also a little hurt, because she had
offered to have Miriam to dinner and Donny had refused. Now he asked them to
drive her to Cal's house without a qualm.
This Miriam was an unappealing girl with blurry lipstick and masses of rough red
hair. She wore a short, bulky jacket that would not have been out of place on a motorcycle. During the trip to Cal's she was silent, but coming back, she was more talkative. "What a neat guy, and what a house! All those kids hanging out, like a club.
And the stereo playing rock . . . gosh, he's not like a grown-up at all! Married and divorced and everything, but you'd think he was our own age."
"Mr. Beadle was married?" Daisy asked.
"Yeah, to this really controlling lady. She didn't understand him a bit."
45
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55
"No, I guess not," Daisy said.
Spring came, and the students who hung around at Cal's drifted out to the basketball net above the garage. Sometimes, when Daisy and Matt arrived to pick up
Donny, they'd find him there with the othersspiky and excited, jittering on his
toes beneath the backboard. It was staying light much longer now, and the neighboring fence cast narrow bars across the bright grass. Loud music would be spilling from
Cal's windows. Once it was The Who, which Daisy recognized from the time that
Donny had borrowed the album. "Teenage Wastelandshe
said aloud, identifying
the song, and Matt gave a short, dry laugh. "It certainly is," he said. He'd misunderstood; he thought she was commenting on the scene spread before them. In fact, she
might have been. The players looked like hoodlums, even her son. Why, one of Cal's
students had recently been knifed in a tavern. One had been shipped off to boarding
school in midterm; two had been withdrawn by their parents. On the other hand,
Donny had mentioned someone who'd been studying with Cal for five years. "Five
years!" said Daisy. "Doesn't anyone ever stop needing him?"
Donny looked at her. Lately, whatever she said about Cal was read as criticism.
"You're just feeling competitive," he said. "And controlling."
She bit her lip and said no more.
In April, the principal called to tell her that Donny had been expelled. There
had been a locker check, and in Donny's locker they found five cans of beer and half
a pack of cigarettes. With Donny's previous record, his offense meant expulsion.
Daisy gripped the receiver tightly and said, "Well, where is he now?"
"We've sent him home," said Mr. Lanham. "He's packed up all his belongings,
and he's coming home on foot."
Daisy wondered what she would say to him. She felt him looming closer and
closer, bringing this brand-new situation that no one had prepared her to handle.
What other place would take him? Could they enter him in public school? What
were the rules? She stood at the living room window, waiting for him to show up.
Gradually, she realized that he was taking too long. She checked the clock. She
stared up the street again.
When an hour had passed, she phoned the school. Mr. Lanham's secretary answered and told her in a grave, sympathetic voice that yes, Donny Coble had most
definitely gone home. Daisy called her husband. He was out of the office. She went
back to the window and thought awhile, and then she called Donny's tutor.
"Donny's been expelled from school," she. said, "and now I don't know where
he's gone. I wonder if you've heard from him?"
There was a long silence. "Donny's with me, Mrs. Coble," he finally said.
"With you? How'd he get there?"
"He hailed a cab, and I paid the driver."
"Could I speak to him, please?"
There was another silence. "Maybe it'd be better if we had a conference," Cal
said.
"1 don't want a conference. I've been standing at the window picturing him dead
or kidnapped or something, and now you tell me you want a "
"Teenage Wastelandthe
song is actually titled "Baba O'Riley," by Pete Townshend, from The
Who's album Who's Next (1971); it is also the theme song of the television series CSI: NY.
"Donny is very, very upset. Understandably so," said Cal. "Believe me, Mrs.
Coble, this is not what it seems. Have you asked Donny's side of the story?"
"Well, of course not, how could I? He went running off to you instead."
"Because he didn't feel he'd be listened to."
"But I haven't even"
"Why don't you come out and talk? The three of us," said Cal, "will try to get
this thing in perspective."
"Well, all right," Daisy said. But she wasn't as reluctant as she sounded. Already,
she felt soothed by the calm way Cal was taking this.
Cal answered the doorbell at once. He said, "Hi, there," and led her into the dining room. Donny sat slumped in a chair, chewing the knuckle of one thumb. "Hello,
Donny," Daisy said. He flicked his eyes in her direction.
"Sit here, Mrs. Coble," said Cal, placing her opposite Donny. He himself remained standing, restlessly pacing. "So," he said.
Daisy stole a look at Donny. His lips were swollen, as if he'd been crying.
"You know," Cal told Daisy, "I kind of expected something like this. That's a
very punitive school you've got him inyou realize that. And any half-decent lawyer
will tell you they've violated his civil rights. Locker checks! Where's their search
warrant?"
"But if the rule is" Daisy said.
"Well, anyhow, let him tell you his side."
She looked at Donny. He said, "It wasn't my fault. I promise."
"They said your locker was full of beer."
"It was a put-up job! See, there's this guy that doesn't like me. He put all these
beers in my locker and started a rumor going, so Mr. Lanham ordered a locker
check."
"What was the boy's name?" Daisy asked.
"Huh?"
"Mrs. Coble, take my word, the situation is not so unusual," Cal said. "You can't
imagine how vindictive kids can be sometimes."
"What was the boy's name," said Daisy, "so that I can ask Mr. Lanham if that's
who suggested he run a locker check."
"You don't believe me," Donny said.
"And how'd this boy get your combination in the first place?"
"Frankly," said Cal, "1 wouldn't be surprised to learn the school was in on it. Any
kid that marches to a different drummer, why, they'd just love an excuse to get rid of
him. The school is where I lay the blame."
"Doesn't Donny ever get blamed?"
"Now, Mrs. Coble, you heard what he"
"Forget it," Donny told Cal. "You can see she doesn't trust me."
Daisy drew in a breath to say that of course she trusted hima reflex. But she
knew that bold-faced, wide-eyed look of Donny's. He had worn that look when he
was small, denying some petty misdeed with the evidence plain as day all around
him. Still, il was hard for her to accuse him outright. She temporized and said, "The
only thing I'm sure of is that they've kicked you out of school, and now I don't know
what we're going to do."
"We'll fight it," said Cal.
"We can't. Even you must see we can't."
"I could apply to Brantly," Donny said.
Cal stopped his pacing to beam down at him. "Brantly! Yes. They're really onto
where a kid is coming from, at Brantly. Why, I could get you into Brantly. I work
with a lot of their students."
Daisy had never heard of Brantly, but already she didn't like it. And she didn't
like Cal's smile, which struck her now as feverish and avida smile of hunger.
On the fifteenth of April, they entered Donny in a public school, and they
stopped his tutoring sessions. Donny fought both decisions bitterly. Cal, surprisingly
enough, did not object. He admitted he'd made no headway with Donny and said it
was because Donny was emotionally disturbed.
Donny went to his new school every morning, plodding off alone with his
head down. He did his assignments, and he earned average grades, but he gathered
no friends, joined no clubs. There was something exhausted and defeated about
him..
The first week in June, during final exams, Donny vanished. He simply didn't
come home one afternoon, and no one at school remembered seeing him. The police
were reassuring, and for the first few days, they worked hard. They combed Donny's
sad, messy room for clues; they visited Miriam and Cal. But then they started talking
about the number of kids who ran away every year. Hundreds, just in this city. "He'll
show up if he wants to," they said. "If he doesn't, he won't."
Evidently, Donny didn't want to.
It's been three months now and still no word. Matt and Daisy still look for him
in every crowd of awkward, heartbreaking teenage boys. Every time the phone rings,
they imagine it might be Donny. Both parents have aged. Donny's sister seems to be
staying away from home as much as possible.
At night, Daisy lies awake and goes over Donny's life. She is trying to figure out
what went wrong, where they made their first mistake. Often, she finds herself blaming Cal, although she knows he didn't begin it. Then at other times she excuses him,
for without him, Donny might have left earlier. Who really knows? In the end, she
can only sigh and search for a cooler spot on the pillow. As she falls asleep, she occasionally glimpses something in the corner of her vision. It's something fleet and
round, a balla basketball. It flies up, it sinks through the hoop, descends, lands in a
yard littered with last year's leaves and striped with bars of sunlight as white as bones,
bleached and parched and cleanly picked.
QUESTBOSMS
1. From whose point of view is the story told? How would you characterize the method
employedomniscient, limited omniscient, or objective?
2. What is the significance of the opening paragraph of the story?
3. Daisy is extremely self-conscious and concerned about how others view her. Find instances of this trait in the text. How does it affect her approach to raising her children?
4. Daisy's attitude toward Cal undergoes frequent and at times rapid changes. Find examples
in the text. What does she seem to think of him by the end of the story?
5. How does the portrayal of Donny's sister, Amanda, help to clarify the larger concerns of
the story?
6. Would you describe Tyler's presentation of Daisy as satirical or sympathetic? Can it be
both at once? Explain.
James Baldwin
Sonny's Blues
1957
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
was born in Harlem, in New York City. His father was a
Pentecostal minister, and the young Baldwin initially planned to become a clergyman. While
still in high school, he preached sermons in a storefront church. At seventeen, however,
Baldwin ie/t home to iive in Greenwich Village, where he worked at menial jobs and began
publishing articles in Commentary and the Nation. Later he embarked on a series of travels that eventually brought him to France. Baldwin soon regarded France as a second home,
a country in which he could avoid the racial discrimination he felt in America. Baldwin s
first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), which described a single day in the lives
of the members of a Harlem church, immediately earned him a position as a leading African
American writer. His next two novels, Giovanni's Room (1956) and Another Country
(1962), dealt with homosexual themes and drew criticism from, some of his early champions.
His collection of essays Notes of a Native Son (1955) remains one of the key books of the
civil rights movement. His short stories were not collected until Going to Meet the Man
was published in 1965. Although he spent nearly forty years in France, Baldwin still considered himself an American. He was not an expatriate, he claimed, but a "commuter." He
died in St. Paul de Vence, France, but was buried in Ardsley, New York.
I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I
couldn't believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the
newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging
lights of the subway car, 'and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own
face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.
It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that, as I walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same time I couldn't doubt it. I was scared,
scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in mv
belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It
was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down
my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I
felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream.
This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing
Sonny had once said or done.
When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and
open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he'd had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and
great gentleness and privacy. I wondered wrhat he looked like now. He had been
picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and
using heroin.
I couldn't believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn't find any room for
it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time. I hadn't wanted to
know. I had had suspicions, but I didn't name them, I kept putting them away. I told
myself that Sonny was wild, but he wasn't crazy. And he'd always been a good boy, he
hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick,
especially in Harlem. I didn't want to believe that I'd ever see my brother going
down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I'd already seen so many others. Yet it had happened and here I was, talking about algebra
to a lot of boys who might, every one of them for all I knew, be popping off needles
every time they went to the head. Maybe it did more for them than algebra could.
I was sure that the first time Sonny had ever had horse, 0 he couldn't have been
much older than these boys were now. These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against
the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really
knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on
them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they
were at any other time, and more alone.
When the last bell rang, the last class ended, I let out my breath. It seemed I'd
been holding it for all that time. My clothes were wetI may have looked as though
Pd been sitting in a steam bath, all dressed up, all afternoon. I sat alone in the classroom a long time. I listened to the boys outside, downstairs, shouting and cursing and
laughing. Their laughter struck me for perhaps the first time. It was not the joyous
laughter whichGod knows whyone associates with children. It was mocking and
insular, its intent to denigrate. It was disenchanted, and in this, also, lay the authority of their curses. Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my
brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself.
One boy was whistling a tune, at once very complicated and very simple, it
seemed to be pouring out of him as though he were a bird, and it sounded very cool
and moving through all that harsh, bright air, only just holding its own through all
those other sounds.
I stood up and walked over to the window and looked down into the courtyard.
It was the beginning of the spring and the sap was rising in the boys. A teacher passed
through them every now and again, quickly, as though he or she couldn't wait to get
out of that courtyard, to get those boys out of their sight and off their minds. I started
collecting my stuff. I thought I'd better get home and talk to Isabel.
The courtyard was almost deserted by the time I got downstairs. I saw this boy
standing in the shadow of a doorway, looking just like Sonny. I almost called his
name. Then I saw that it wasn't Sonny, but somebody we used to know, a boy from
around our block. He'd been Sonny's friend. He'd never been mine, having been too
young for me, and, anyway, I'd never liked him. And now, even though he was a
grown-up man, he still hung around that block, still spent hours on the street corners, was always high and raggy. I used to run into him from time to time and he'd often work around to asking me for a quarter or fifty cents. He always had some real
good excuse, too, and I always gave it to him, I don't know why.
But now, abruptly, I hated him. I couldn't stand the way he looked at me, partly
like a dog, partly like a cunning child. I wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing in the school courtyard.
He sort of shuffled over to me, and he said, "I see you got the papers. So you already know about it."
"You mean about Sonny? Yes, I already know about it. How come they didn't get
you?"
He grinned. It made him repulsive and it also brought to mind what he'd looked
like as a kid. "I wasn't there. I stay away from them people."
horse: heroin.
"Good for you." I offered him a cigarette and I watched him through the smoke.
"You come all the way down here just to tell me about Sonny?"
"That's right." He was sort of shaking his head and his eyes looked strange, as
though they were about to cross. The bright sun deadened his damp dark brown skin
and it made his eyes look yellow and showed up the dirt in his kinked hair. He
smelled funky. I moved a little away from him and I said, "Well, thanks. But I already
know about it and I got to get home."
"I'll walk you a little ways," he said. We started walking. There were a couple of
kids still loitering in the courtyard and one of them said goodnight to me and looked
strangely at the boy beside me.
"What're you going to do?" he asked me. "I mean, about Sonny?"
"Look. I haven't seen Sonny for over a year. I'm not sure I'm going to do anything. Anyway, what the hell can I do?"
"That's right," he said quickly, "ain't nothing you can do. Can't much help old
Sonny no more, I guess."
It was wrhat I was thinking and so it seemed to me he had no right to say it.
"I'm surprised at Sonny, though," he went onhe had a funny way of talking, he
looked straight ahead as though he were talking to himself"I thought Sonny was a
smart boy, I thought he was too smart to get hung."
"I guess he thought so too," I said sharply, "and that's how he got hung. And how
about you? You're pretty goddamn smart, I bet."
Then he looked directly at me, just for a minute. "I ain't smart," he said. "If I was
smart, I'd have reached for a pistol a long time ago."
"Look. Don't tell me your sad story, if it was up to me, I'd give you one." Then I
felt guiltyguilty, probably, for never having supposed that the poor bastard had a
story of his own, much less a sad one, and I asked, quickly, "What's going to happen
to him now?"
He didn't answer this. He was off by himself some place. "Funny thing," he said,
and from his tone we might have been discussing the quickest way to get to Brooklyn, "when I saw the papers this morning, the first thing I asked myself was if I had
anything to do with it. I felt sort of responsible."
I began to listen more carefully. The subway station was on the corner, just before us, and I stopped. He stopped, too. We were in front of a bar and he ducked
slightly, peering in, but whoever he was looking for didn't seem to be there. The
juke box was blasting away with something black and bouncy and I half watched
the barmaid as she danced her way from the juke box to her place behind the bar.
And I watched her face as she laughingly responded to something someone said to
her, still keeping time to the music. When she smiled one saw the little girl, one
sensed the doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semiwhore.
"I never give Sonny nothing," the boy said finally, "but a long time ago I come to
school high and Sonny asked me how it felt." He paused, I couldn't bear to watch
him, I watched the barmaid, and I listened to the music which seemed to be causing
the pavement to shake. "I told him it felt great." The music stopped, the barmaid
paused and watched the juke box until the music began again. "It did."
All this was carrying me some place I didn't want to go. I certainly didn't want to
know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark,
quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality.
"What's going to happen to him now?" I asked again.
"They'll send him away some place and they'll try to cure him." He shook his
head. "Maybe he'll even think he's kicked the habit. Then they'll let him loose"he
gestured, throwing his cigarette into the gutter. "That's all."
"What do you mean, that's all?"
But I knew what he meant.
"I mean, that's all." He turned his head and looked at me, pulling down the corners of his mouth. "Don't you know what I mean?" he asked, softly.
"How the hell would I know what you mean?" I almost whispered it, I don't know
why.
"That's right," he said to the air, "how would he know what I mean?" He turned toward me again, patient and calm, and yet I somehow felt him shaking, shaking as though
he were going to fall apart. I felt that ice in my guts again, the dread I'd felt all afternoon;
and again I watched the barmaid, moving about the bar, washing glasses, and singing.
"Listen. They'll let him out and then it'll just start all over again. That's what I mean."
"You meanthey'll let him out. And then he'll just start working his way back
in again. You mean he'll never kick the habit. Is that what you mean?"
"That's right," he said, cheerfully. "You see what I mean."
"Tell me," 1 said at last, "why does he want to die? He must want to die, he's
killing himself, why does he want to die?"
He looked at me in surprise. He licked his lips. "He don't want to die. He wants
to live. Don't nobody want to die, ever."
Then I wanted to ask himtoo many things. He could not have answered, or if
he had, I could not have borne the answers. I started walking. "Well, I guess it's none
of my business."
"It's going to be rough on old Sonny," he said. We reached the subway station.
"This is your station?" he asked. I nodded. I took one step down. "Damn!" he said,
suddenly. I looked up at him. He grinned again. "Damn it if I didn't leave all my
money home. You ain't got a dollar on you, have you? Just for a couple of days, is all."
All at once something inside gave and threatened to come pouring out of me. I
didn't hate him any more. I felt that in another moment I'd start crying like a child.
"Sure," I said. "Don't sweat." I looked in my wallet and didn't have a dollar, I
only had a five. "Here," I said. "That hold you?"
He didn't look at ithe didn't want to look at it. A terrible closed look came
over his face, as though he were keeping the number on the bill a secret from him
and me. "Thanks," he said, and now he was dying to see me go. "Don't worry about
Sonny. Maybe I'll write him or something."
"Sure," I said. "You do that. So long."
"Be seeing you," he said. I went on down the steps.
And I didn't wrrite Sonny or send him anything for a long time. When I finally
did, it was just after my little girl died, he wrote me back a letter which made me feel
like a bastard.
Here's what he said:
Dear brother,
You don't know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write
you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't
write. But now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb up out of some
deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got
to get outside.
I can't tell you much about how I got here. 1 mean I don't know how to
tell you. I guess I was afraid of something or I was trying to escape from
something and you know I have never been very strong in the head (smile).
I'm glad Mama and Daddy are dead and can't see what's happened to their
son and I swear if I'd known what I was doing I would never have hurt you
so, you and a lot of other fine people who were nice to me and who believed
in me.
I don't want you to think it had anything to do with me being a musician. It's more than that. Or maybe less than that. I can't get anything
straight in my head down here and I try not to think about what's going to
happen to me when I get outside again. Sometime I think I'm going to flip
and never get outside and sometime I think I'll come straight back. I tell you
one thing, though, I'd rather blow my brains out than go through this again.
But that's what they all say, so they tell me. If I tell you when I'm coming to
New York and if you could meet me, I sure would appreciate it. Give my
love to Isabel and the kids and I was sure sorry to hear about little Gracie. I
wish I could be like Mama and say the Lord's will be done, but I don't know
it seems to me that trouble is the one thing that never does get stopped and
1 don't know what good it does to blame it on the Lord. But maybe it does
some good if you believe it.
Your brother,
Sonny
Then 1 kept in constant touch with him and I sent him whatever I could and I
went to meet him when he came back to New York. When I saw him many things I
thought I had forgotten came flooding back to me. This was because I had begun, finally, to wonder about Sonny, about the life that Sonny lived inside. This life, whatever it was, had made him older and thinner and it had deepened the distant stillness
in which he had always moved. He looked very unlike my baby brother. Yet, when
he smiled, when we shook hands, the baby brother I'd never known looked out from
the depths of his private life, like an animal waiting to be coaxed into the light.
"How you been keeping?" he asked me.
"All right. And you?"
"Just fine." He was smiling all over his face. "It's good to see you again."
"It's good to see you."
The seven years' difference in our ages lay between us like a chasm: I wondered if
these years would ever operate between us as a bridge. I was remembering, and it
made it hard to catch my breath, that I had been there when he was born; and I had
heard the first words he had ever spoken. When he started to walk, he walked from
our mother straight to me. I caught him just before he fell when he took the first steps
he ever took in this world.
"How's Isabel?"
"Just fine. She's dying to see you."
"And the boys?"
"They're fine, too. They're anxious to see their uncle."
"Oh, come on. You know they don't remember me."
"Are you kidding? Of course they remember you."
He grinned again. We got into a taxi. We had a lot to say to each other, far too
much to know how to begin.
As the taxi began to move, I asked, "You still want to go to India?"
50
55
60
He laughed. "You still remember that. Hell, no. This place is Indian enough for
me."
"It used to belong to them," I said.
And he laughed again. "They damn sure knew what they were doing when they
got rid of it."
Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked, in all kinds of
weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away
from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that.
"Do you mind," he asked, "if we have the driver drive alongside the park? On the
west side1 haven't seen the city in so long."
"Of course not," I said. I was afraid that I might sound as though I were humoring him, but I hoped he wouldn't take it that way.
So we drove along, between the green of the park and the stony, lifeless elegance
of hotels and apartment buildings, toward the vivid, killing streets of our childhood.
These streets hadn't changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now
like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea. Most of the houses in which we had grown
up had vanished, as had the stores from which we had stolen, the basements in which
we had first tried sex, the rooftops from which we had hurled tin cans and bricks. But
houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly
like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came
down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster.
Some escaped the trap, most didn't. Those who got out always left something of
themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap. It might
be said, perhaps, that I had escaped, after all, I was a school teacher; or that Sonny
had, he hadn't lived in Harlem for years. Yet, as the cab moved uptown through
streets which seemed, with a rush, to darken with dark people, and as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate
cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind. It's always at the
hour of trouble and confrontation that the missing member aches.
We hit 110th Street and started rolling up Lenox Avenue. And I'd known this
avenue all my life, but it seemed to me again, as it had seemed on the day I'd first
heard about Sonny's trouble, filled with a hidden menace which was its very breath
of life.
"We almost there," said Sonny.
"Almost." W e were both too nervous to say anything more.
We live in a housing project. It hasn't been up long. A few days after it was up it
seemed uninhabitably new, now, of course, it's already rundown. It looks like a parody of the good, clean, faceless lifeGod knows the people who live in it do their
best to make it a parody. The beat-looking grass lying around isn't enough to make
their lives green, the hedges will never hold out the streets, and they know it. T h e
big windows fool no one, they aren't big enough to make space out of no space.
They don't bother with the windows, they watch the T V screen instead. The playground is most popular with the children who don't play at jacks, or skip rope, or
roller skate, or swing, and they can be found in it after dark. We moved in partly because it's not too far from where I teach, and partly for the kids; but it's really just
like the houses in which Sonny and I grew up. T h e same things happen, they'll have
the same things to remember. T h e moment Sonny and I started into the house I had
the feeling that I was simply bringing him back into the danger he had almost died
trying to escape.
Sonny has never been talkative. So I don't know why I was sure he'd be dying to
talk to me when supper was over the first night. Everything went fine, the oldest boy
remembered him, and the youngest boy liked him, and Sonny had remembered to
bring something for each of them; and Isabel, who is really much nicer than I am,
more open and giving, had gone to a lot of trouble about dinner and was genuinely
glad to see him. And she's always been able to tease Sonny in a way that I haven't. It
was nice to see her face so vivid again and to hear her laugh and watch her make
Sonny laugh. She wasn't, or, anyway, she didn't seem to be, at all uneasy or embarrassed. She chatted as though there were no subject which had to be avoided and she
got Sonny past his first, faint stiffness. And thank God she was there, for I was filled
with that icy dread again. Everything I did seemed awkward to me, and everything I
said sounded freighted with hidden meaning. I was trying to remember everything I'd
heard about dope addiction and I couldn't help watching Sonny for signs. I wasn't
doing it out of malice. I was trying to find out something about my brother. I was dying to hear him tell me he was safe.
"Safe!" my father grunted, whenever Mama suggested trying to move to a neighborhood which might be safer for children. "Safe, hell! Ain't no place safe for kids,
nor nobody."
He always went on like this, but he wasn't, ever, really as bad as he sounded, not
even on weekends, when he got drunk. As a matter of fact, he was always on the
lookout for "something a little better," but he died before he found it. He died suddenly, during a drunken weekend in the middle of the war, when Sonny was fifteen.
He and Sonny hadn't ever got on too well. And this was partly because Sonny was
the apple of his father's eye. It was because he loved Sonny so much and was frightened for him, that he was always fighting with him. It doesn't do any good to fight
with Sonny. Sonny just moves back, inside himself, where he can't be reached. But
the principal reason that they never hit it off is that they were so much alike. Daddy
was big and rough and loud-talking, just the opposite of Sonny, but they both had
that same privacy.
Mama tried to tell me something about this, just after Daddy died. I was home
on leave from the army.
This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. Just the same, this picture gets
all mixed up in my mind with pictures I had of her when she was younger. The way I
always see her is the way she used to be on a Sunday afternoon, say, when the old folks
were talking after the big Sunday dinner. I always see her wearing pale blue. She'd be
sitting on the sofa. And my father would be sitting in the easy chair, not far from her.
And the living room would be full of church folks and relatives. There they sit, in
chairs all around the living room, and the night is creeping up outside, but nobody
knows it yet. You can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear
the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine
from one of the churches close by, but it's real quiet in the room. For a moment nobody's talking, but every face looks darkening, like the sky outside. And my mother
rocks a little from the waist, and my father's eyes are closed. Everyone is looking at
something a child can't see. For a minute they've forgotten the children. Maybe a kid
is lying on the rug, half asleep. Maybe somebody's got a kid in his lap and is absentmindedly stroking the kid's head. Maybe there's a kid, quiet and big-eyed, curled up in
a big chair in the corner. The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the
75
faces frightens the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead
will never stopwill never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the
old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come
from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk.
But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is
already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light. Then the old
folks will remember the children and they won't talk any more that day. And when
light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that everytime this
happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. T h e darkness outside
is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what
they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too
much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's
going to happen to him.
The last time I talked to my mother, I remember I was restless. I wanted to get
out and see Isabel. We weren't married then and we had a lot to straighten out between us.
There Mama sat, in black, by the window. She was humming an old church
song, Lord, you brought me from a long ways o f f . Sonny was out somewhere. Mama
kept watching the streets.
"I don't know," she said, "if I'll ever see you again, after you go off from here. But
I hope you'll remember the things I tried to teach you."
"Don't talk like that," I said, and smiled. "You'll be here a long time yet."
She smiled, too, but she said nothing. She was quiet for a long time. And I said,
"Mama, don't you worry about nothing. I'll be writing all the time, and you be getting the checks . . . "
"I want to talk to you about your brother," she said, suddenly. "If anything happens to me he ain't going to have nobody to look out for him."
"Mama," I said, "ain't nothing going to happen to you or Sonny. Sonny's all
right. He's a good boy and he's got good sense."
"It ain't a question of his being a good boy," Mama said, "nor of his having good
sense. It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under." She
stopped, looking at me. "Your Daddy once had a brother," she said, and she smiled in
a way that made me feel she was in pain. "You didn't never know that, did you?"
"No," I said, "I never knew that," and I watched her face.
"Oh, yes," she said, "your Daddy had a brother." She looked out of the window
again. "I know you never saw your Daddy cry. But I didmany a time, through all
these years."
I asked her, "What happened to his brother? How come nobody's ever talked
about him?"
This wras the first time I ever saw my mother look old.
"His brother got killed," she said, "when he was just a little younger than you are
now. I knew him. He was a fine boy. He was maybe a little full of the devil, but he
didn't mean nobody 110 harm."
Then she stopped and the room was silent, exactly as it had sometimes been on
those Sunday afternoons. Mama kept looking out into the streets.
"He used to have a job in the mill," she said, "and, like all young folks, he just
liked to perform on Saturday nights. Saturday nights, him and your father would drift
around to different places, go to dances and things like that, or just sit around with
people they knew, and your father's brother would sing, he had a fine voice, and play
along with himself on his guitar. Well, this particular Saturday night, him and your
father was coming home from some place, and they were both a little drunk and
there was a moon that night, it was bright like day. Your father's brother was feeling
kind of good, and he was whistling to himself, and he had his guitar slung over his
shoulder. They was coming down a hill and beneath them was a road that turned off
from the highway. Well, your father's brother, being always kind of frisky, decided to
run down this hill, and he did, with that guitar banging and clanging behind him,
and he ran across the road, and he was making water behind a tree. And your father
was sort of amused at him and he was still coming down the hill, kind of slow. Then
he heard a car motor and that same minute his brother stepped from behind the tree,
into the road, in the moonlight. And he started to cross the road. And your father
started to run down the hill, he says he don't know why. This car w7as full of white
men. They was all drunk, and w7hen they seen your father's brother they let out a
great whoop and holler and they aimed the car straight at him. They was having fun,
they just wanted to scare him, the way they do sometimes, you know. But they was
drunk. And I guess the boy, being drunk, too, and scared, kind of lost his head. By
the time he jumped it wras too late. Your father says he heard his brother scream
when the car rolled over him, and he heard the wood of that guitar when it give, and
he heard them strings go flying, and he heard them white men shouting, and the car
kept on a-going and it ain't stopped till this day. And, time your father got down the
hill, his brother weren't nothing but blood and pulp."
Tears were gleaming on my mother's face. There wasn't anything I could say.
95
"He never mentioned it," she said, "because I never let him mention it before
you children. Your Daddy was like a crazy man that night and for many a night thereafter. He says he never in his life seen anything as dark as that road after the lights of
that car had gone away.-Weren't nothing, weren't nobody on that road, just your
Daddy and his brother and that busted guitar. Oh, yes. Your Daddy never did really
get right again. Till the day he died he weren't sure but that every white man he saw
was the man that killed his brother."
She stopped and took out her handkerchief and dried her eyes and looked at me.
"I ain't telling you all this," she said, "to make you scared or bitter or to make you
hate nobody. I'm telling you this because you got a brother. And the world ain't
changed."
I guess I didn't want to believe this. I guess she saw this in my face. She turned
away from me, toward the window again, searching those streets.
"But I praise my Redeemer," she said at last, "that He called your Daddy home 100
before me. I ain't saying it to throw no flowers at myself, but, I declare, it keeps me
from feeling too cast down to know I helped your father get safely through this world.
Your father always acted like he was the roughest, strongest man on earth. And
everybody took him to be like that. But if he hadn't had me thereto see his tears!"
She was crying again. Still, I couldn't move. I said, "Lord, Lord, Mama, I didn't
know it was like that."
"Oh, honey," she said, "there's a lot that you don't know. But you are going to
find it out." She stood up from the window and camc over to me. "You got to hold on
to your brother," she said, "and don't let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you gets with him. You going to be evil with
him many a time. But don't you forget wyhat I told you, you hear?"
"I won't forget," I said. "Don't you worry, I won't forget. I won't let nothing happen to Sonny."
My mother smiled as though she were amused at something she saw in my face.
Then, "You may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him
know you's there.1'
Two days later I was married, and then I was gone. And I had a lot of things on
my mind and I pretty well forgot my promise to Mama until I got shipped home on a
special furlough for her funeral.
And, after the funeral, with just Sonny and me alone in the empty kitchen, 1
tried to find out something about him.
"What do you want to do?" I asked him.
T m going to be a musician," he said.
For he had graduated, in the time I had been away, from dancing to the juke box
to finding out who was playing what, and what they were doing with it, and he had
bought himself a set of drums.
"You mean, you want to be a drummer?" I somehow had the feeling that being a
drummer might be all right for other people but not for my brother Sonny.
"I don't think," he said, looking at me very gravely, "that Til ever be a good
drummer. But 1 think I can play a piano."
I frowned. I'd never played the role of the older brother quite so seriously before,
had scarcely ever, in fact, asked Sonny a damn thing. I sensed myself in the presence
of something I didn't really know how7 to handle, didn't understand. So I made my
frown a little deeper as I asked: "What kind of musician do you want to be?"
He grinned. "How many kinds do you think there are?"
"Be serious," I said.
He laughed, throwing his head back, and then looked at me. "I am serious."
"Well, then, for Christ's sake, stop kidding around and answer a serious question.
I mean, do you want to be a concert pianist, you want to play classical music and all
that, oror what?" Long before I finished he was laughing again. "For Christ's sakey
Sonny!"
He sobered, but with difficulty. "I'm sorry. But you sound soscared!" and he
wras off again.
"Well, you may think it's funny now, baby, but it's not going to be so funny
when you have to make your living at it, let me tell you that.1' I was furious because I
knew he was laughing at me and I didn't know why.
"No," he said, very sober now, and afraid, perhaps, that he'd hurt me, "I don't
want to be a classical pianist. That isn't what interests me. I mean"he paused,
looking hard at me, as though his eyes would help me to understand, and then gestured helplessly, as though perhaps his hand would help"I mean, I'll have a lot of
studying to do, and I'll have to study everything, but, I mean, I want to play withjazz
musicians." He stopped. "I want to play jazz," he said.
Well, the word had never before sounded as heavy, as real, as it sounded that afternoon in Sonny's mouth. I just looked at him and I was probably frowning a real
frown by this time. I simply couldn't see why on earth he'd want to spend his time
hanging around nightclubs, clowning around on bandstands, while people pushed
each other around a dance floor. It seemedbeneath him, somehow. I had never
thought about it before, had never been forced to, but I suppose I had always put jazz
musicians in a class with what Daddy called "goodtime people."
"Are you serious?"
"Hell, yes} I'm serious."
105
no
i i5
120
He looked more helpless than ever, and annoyed, and deeply hurt.
I suggested, helpfully: "You meanlike Louis Armstrong?"0
His face closed as though I'd struck him. "No. I'm not talking about none of that
old-time, down home crap."
"Well, look, Sonny, I'm sorry, don't get mad. I just don't altogether get it, that's
all. Name somebodyyou know, a jazz musician you admire."
"Bird."
"Who?"
"Bird! Charlie Parker! 0 Don't they teach you nothing in the goddamn army?"
I lit a cigarette. I was surprised and then a little amused to discover that 1 was
trembling. "I've been out of touch," I said. "You'll have to be patient with me. Now.
Who's this Parker character?"
"He's just one of the greatest jazz musicians alive," said Sonny, sullenly, his
hands in his pockets, his back to me. "Maybe the greatest," he added, bitterly, "that's
probably why you never heard of him."
"All right," I said, "I'm ignorant. I'm sorry. I'll go out and buy all the cat's records
right away, all right?"
"It don't," said Sonny, with dignity, "make any difference to me. I don't care
what you listen to. Don't do me no favors."
I was beginning to realize that I'd never seen him so upset before. With another
part of my mind I was thinking that this would probably turn out to be one of those
things kids go through and that 1 shouldn't make it seem important by pushing it too
hard. Still, I didn't think it would do any harm to ask: "Doesn't all this take a lot of
time? Can you make a living at it?"
He turned back to me and half leaned, half sat, on the kitchen table. "Everything takes time," he said, "andwell, yes, sure, I can make a living at it. But what I
don't seem to be able to make you understand is that it's the only thing I want to do."
"Well, Sonny," I said, gently, "you know people can't always do exactly what
they want to do"
"No, I don't know that," said Sonny, surprising me. "I think people ought to do
what they want to do, what else are they alive for?"
"You getting to be a big boy," I said desperately, "it's time you started thinking
about your future."
"I'm thinking about my future," said Sonny, grimly. "I think about it all the time."
I gave up. I decided, if he didn't change his mind, that we could always talk
about it later. "In the meantime," I said, "you got to finish school." We had already
decided that he'd have to move in with Isabel and her folks. I knew this wasn't the
ideal arrangement because Isabel's folks are inclined to be dicty and they hadn't especially wrant.ed Isabel to marry me. But I didn't know what else to do. "And we have to
get you fixed up at Isabel's."
There was a long silence. He moved from the kitchen table to the window.
"That's a terrible idea. You know it yourself."
"Do you have a better idea?"
Louis Armstrong: jazz trumpeter and vocalist (1900-1971) born in New Orleans. In the 1950s his
music would have been considered conservative by progressive jazz fans. Charlie Parker: a jazz
saxophonist (1920-1955) who helped create the progressive jazz style callcd bebop. Parker was a
-heroin addict who died at an early age.
He just walked up and down the kitchen for a minute. He was as tall as I was. He
had started to shave. I suddenly had the feeling that I didn't know him at allHe stopped at the kitchen table and picked up my cigarettes. Looking at me with
a kind of mocking, amused defiance, he put one between his lips. "You mind?"
"You smoking already?"
He lit the cigarette and nodded, watching me through the smoke. "I just wanted
to see if I'd have the courage to smoke in front of you." He grinned and blew a great
cloud of smoke to the ceiling. "It was easy." He looked at my face. "Come on, now. I
bet you was smoking at my age, tell the truth."
I didn't say anything but the truth was on my face, and he laughed. But now
there was something very strained in his laugh. "Sure. And I bet that ain't all you was
doing."
He was frightening me a little. "Cut the crap," I said. "We already decided that
you was going to go and live at Isabel's. Now what's got into you all of a sudden?"
"You decided it," he pointed out. "I didn't decide nothing." He stopped in front
of me, leaning against the stove, arms loosely folded. "Look, brother. I don't want to
stay in Harlem no more, I really don't." He was very earnest. He looked at me, then
over toward the kitchen window. There was something in his eyes I'd never seen before, some thoughtfulness, some worry all his own. He rubbed the muscle of one arm.
"It's time I was getting out of here."
"Where do you want to go, Sonny?"
"I want to join the army. Or the navy, I don't care. If I say I'm old enough, they'll
believe me."
Then I got mad. It was because I was so scared. "You must be crazy. You goddamn fool, what the hell do you want to go and join the army for?"
"I just told you. To get out of Harlem."
"Sonny, you haven't even finished school And if you really want to be a musician, how do you expect to study if you're in the army?"
He looked at me, trapped, and in anguish. "There's ways. I might be able to work
out some kind of deal. Anyway, I'll have the G.I. Bill when I come out."
"1/ you come out." We stared at each other. "Sonny, please. Be reasonable. I
know the setup is far from perfect. But we got to do the best we can."
"I ain't learning nothing in school," he said. "Even when I go." He turned away
from me and opened the window and threw his cigarette out into the narrow alley. I
watched his back. "At least, I ain't learning nothing you'd want me to learn." He
slammed the window so hard I thought the glass would fly out, and turned back to
me. "And I'm sick of the stink of these garbage cans!"
"Sonny," I said, "I know how you feel. But if you don't finish school now, you're
going to be sorry later that you didn't." I grabbed him by the shoulders. "And you
only got another year. It ain't so bad. And I'll come back and I swear I'll help you do
whatever you want to do. Just try to put up with it till I come back. Will you please do
that? For me?"
He didn't answer and he wouldn't look at me.
"Sonnv. You hear me?"
He pulled away. "I hear you. But you never hear anything I say."
I didn't know what to say to that. He looked out of the window and then back at
me. "OK," he said, and sighed. "I'll try."
Then I said, trying to cheer him up a little, "They got a piano at Isabel's. You can
practice on it."
i
And as a matter of fact, it did cheer him up for a minute. "That's right," he said
to himself. "I forgot that." His face relaxed a little. But the worry, the thoughtfulness,
played on it still, the way shadows play on a face which is staring into the fire.
But I thought I'd never hear the end of that piano. At first, Isabel would write
me, saying how nice it was that Sonny was so serious about his music and how, as
soon as he came in from school, or wherever he had been when he was supposed to
be at school, he went straight to that piano and stayed there until suppertime. And,
after supper, he went back to that piano and stayed there until everybody went to
bed. He was at the piano all day Saturday and all day Sunday. Then he bought a
record player and started playing records. He'd play one record over and over again,
all day long sometimes, and he'd improvise along with it on the piano. Or he'd play
one section of the record, one chord, one change, one progression, then he'd do it on
the piano. Then back to the record. Then back to the piano.
Well, I really don't know how they stood it. Isabel finally confessed that it wasn't
like living with a person at all, it was like living with sound. And the sound didn't
make any sense to her, didn't make any sense to any of themnaturally. They began,
in a way, to be afflicted by this presence that was living in their home. It was as
though Sonny were some sort of god, or monster. He moved in an atmosphere which
wasn't like theirs at all. They fed him and he ate, he washed himself, he walked in
and out of their door; he certainly wasn't nasty or unpleasant or rude, Sonny isn't any
of those things; but it was as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire,
some vision all his own; and there wasn't any way to reach him.
At the same time, he wasn't really a man yet, he was still a child, and they had to
watch out for him in all kinds of ways. They certainly couldn't throw him out. Neither did they dare to make a great scene about that piano because even they dimly
sensed, as I sensed, from so many thousands of miles away, that Sonny was at that
piano playing for his life.
But he hadn't been going to school. One day a letter came from the school
board and Isabel's mother got itthere had, apparently, been other letters but
Sonny had torn them up. This day, when Sonny came in, Isabel's mother showed
him the letter and asked where he'd been spending his time. And she finally got it
out of him that he'd been down in Greenwich Village, with musicians and other
characters, in a white girl's apartment. And this scared her and she started to scream
at him and what came up, once she beganthough she denies it to this daywas
what sacrifices they were making to give Sonny a decent home and how little he appreciated it.
Sonny didn't play the piano that day. By evening, Isabel's mother had calmed
down but then there was the old man to deal with, and Isabel herself. Isabel says she
did her best to be calm but she broke down and started crying. She says she just
watched Sonny's face. She could tell, by watching him, what was happening with
him. And what was happening was that they penetrated his cloud, they had reached
him. Even if their fingers had been a thousand times more gentle than human fingers
ever are, he could hardly help feeling that they had stripped him naked and were
spitting on that nakedness. For he also had to see that his presence, that music,
which was life or death to him, had been torture for them and that they had endured
it, not at all for his sake, but only for mine. And Sonny couldn't take that. He can
take it a little better today than he could then but he's still not very good at it and,
frankly, I don't know anybody who is.
The silence of the next few days must have been louder than the sound of all the
music ever played since time began. One morning, before she went to work, Isabel
was in his room for something and she suddenly realized that all of his records were
gone. And she knew for certain that he was gone. And he was. He went as far as the
navy would carry him. He finally sent me a postcard from some place in Greece and
that was the first I knew that Sonny was still alive. I didn't see him any more until we
were both back in New York and the war had long been over.
He was a man by then, of course, but I wasn't willing to see it. He came by the
house from time to time, but we fought almost every time we met. I didn't like the
way he carried himself, loose and dreamlike all the time, and I didn't like his friends,
and his music seemed to be merely an excuse for the life he led. It sounded just that
weird and disordered.
Then we had a fight, a pretty awful fight, and I didn't see him for months. By and
by I looked him up, where he was living, in a furnished room in the Village, and I
tried to make it up. But there were lots of people in the room and Sonny just lay on
his bed, and he wouldn't come downstairs with me, and he treated these other people
as though they were his family and I weren't. So I got mad and then he got mad, and
then I told him that he might just as well be dead as live the way he was living. Then
he stood up and he told me not to worry about him any more in life, that he was dead
as far as I was concerned. Then he pushed me to the door and the other people
looked on as though nothing were happening, and he slammed the door behind me. I
stood in the hallway, staring at the door. I heard somebody laugh in the room and
then the tears came to my eyes. I started down the steps, whistling to keep from crying, I kept whistling to myself, You going to need me, baby, one of these cold, rainy days.
I read about Sonny's trouble in the spring. Little Grace died in the fall. She was
a beautiful little girl. But she only lived a little over two years. She died of polio and
she suffered. She had a slight fever for a couple of days, but it didn't seem like anything and we just kept her in bed. And we would certainly have called the doctor,
but the fever dropped, she seemed to be all right. So we thought it had just been a
cold. Then, one day, she was up, playing, Isabel was in the kitchen fixing lunch for
the two boys when they'd come in from school, and she heard Grace fall down in the
living room. When you have a lot of children you don't always start running when
one of them falls, unless they start screaming or something. And, this time, Grace
was quiet. Yet, Isabel says that when she heard that thump and then that silence,
something happened in her to make her afraid. And she ran to the living room and
there was little Grace on the floor, all twisted up, and the reason she hadn't screamed
was that she couldn't get her breath. And when she did scream, it was the worst
sound, Isabel says, that she'd ever heard in all her life, and she still hears it sometimes
in her dreams. Isabel will sometimes wake me up with a low, moaning, strangled
sound and I have to be quick to awaken her and hold her to me and where Isabel is
weeping against me seems a mortal wound.
I think I may have written Sonny the very day that little Grace was buried. I was
sitting in the living room in the dark, by myself, and I suddenly thought of Sonny,
My trouble made his real.
One Saturday afternoon, when Sonny had been living with us, or, anyway, been
in our house, for nearly two weeks, I found myself wandering aimlessly about the living room, drinking from a can of beer, and trying to work up the courage to search
Sonny's room. He was out, he was usually out whenever I was home, and Isabel had
taken the children to see their grandparents. Suddenly 1 was standing still in front of
the living room window, watching Seventh Avenue. The idea of searching Sonny's
room made me still. I scarcely dared to admit to myself what I'd be searching for. I
didn't know what I'd do if I found it. Or if I didn't.
On the sidewalk across from me, near the entrance to a barbecue joint, some
people were holding an old-fashioned revival meeting. The barbecue cook, wearing a
dirty white apron, his conked hair reddish and metallic in the pale sun, and a cigarette between his lips, stood in the doorway, watching them. Kids and older people
paused in their errands and stood there, along with some older men and a couple of
very tough-looking women who watched everything that happened on the avenue,
as though they owned it, or were maybe owned by it. Well, they were watching this,
too. The revival was being carried on by three sisters in black, and a brother. All they
had w7ere their voices and their Bibles and a tambourine. The brother was testifying
and while he testified two of the sisters stood together, seeming to say, amen, and the
third sister walked around with the tambourine outstretched and a couple of people
dropped coins into it. Then the brother's testimony ended and the sister who had
been taking up the collection dumped the coins into her palm and transferred them
to the pocket of her long black robe. Then she raised both hands, striking the tambourine against the air, and then against one hand, and she started to sing. And the
two other sisters and the brother joined in.
It was strange, suddenly, to watch, though I had been seeing these street meetings all my life. So, of course, had everybody else down there. Yet, they paused and
watched and listened and I stood still at the window. "Tis the old ship ofZion," they
sang, and the sister w7ith the tambourine kept a steady, jangling beat, uit has rescued
many a thousand!" Not a soul under the sound of their voices was hearing this song for
the first time, not one of them had been rescued. Nor had they seen much in the way
of rescue work being done around them. Neither did they especially believe in the
holiness of the three sisters and the brother, they knew too much about them, knew
where they lived, and how. T h e woman with the tambourine, whose voice dominated the air, whose face was bright with joy, was divided by very little from the
woman who stood watching her, a cigarette between her heavy, chapped lips, her
hair a cuckoo's nest, her face scarred and swollen from many beatings, and her black
eyes glittering like coal. Perhaps they both knew this, which was why, when, as
rarely, they addressed each other, they addressed each other as Sister. As the singing
filled the air the watching, listening faces underwent a change, the eyes focusing on
something within; the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them; and time
seemed, nearly, to fail away from the sullen, belligerent, battered faces, as though
they were fleeing back to their first condition, while dreaming of their last. The barbecue cook half shook his head and smiled, and dropped his cigarette and disappeared into his joint. A man fumbled in his pockets for change and stood holding it
in his hand impatiently, as though he had just remembered a pressing appointment
further up the avenue. He looked furious. Then I saw Sonny, standing on the edge of
the crowd. He w7as carrying a wide, flat notebook with a green cover, and it made him
look, from where I was standing, almost like a schoolboy. The coppery sun brought out
the copper in his skin, he was very faintly smiling, standing very still. Then the
singing stopped, the tambourine turned into a collection plate again. The furious man
dropped in his coins and vanished, so did a couple of the women, and Sonny dropped
some change in the plate, looking directly at the woman with a little smile. He started
across the avenue, toward the house. He has a slow, loping walk, something like the
way Harlem hipsters walk, only he's imposed on this his own half-beat. I had never
really noticed it before.
I stayed at the window, both relieved and apprehensive. As Sonny disappeared
from my sight, they began singing again. And they were still singing when his key
turned in the lock.
"Hey," he said,
"Hey, yourself. You want some beer?"
"No. Well, maybe." But he came up to the window and stood beside me, looking
out. "What a warm voice," he said.
They were singing If J could only hear my mother pray again!
"Yes," I said, "and she can sure beat that tambourine."
"But what a terrible song," he said, and laughed. He dropped his notebook on
the sofa and disappeared into the kitchen. "Where's Isabel and the kids?"
"I think they went to see their grandparents. You hungry?"
"No." He came back into the living room with his can of beer. "You want to
come some place with me tonight?"
I sensed, I don't know how, that I couldn't possibly say no. "Sure. Where?"
He sat down on the sofa and picked up his notebook and started leafing through
it. "I'm going to sit in with some fellows in a joint in the Village."
"You mean, you're going to play, tonight?"
"That's right." He took a swallow of his beer and moved back to the window. He
gave me a sidelong look. "If you can stand it."
"I'll try," I said.
He smiled to himself and we both watched as the meeting across the way broke
up. The three sisters and the brother, heads bowed, were singing God be with you till
we meet again. The faces around them were very quiet. Then the song ended. The
small crowd dispersed. We watched the three women and the lone man walk slowly
up the avenue.
"When she was singing before," said Sonny, abruptly, "her voice reminded me
for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimeswhen it's in your veins. It makes
you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And distant. Andand sure." He
sipped his beer, very deliberately not looking at me. I watched his face. "It makes you
feelin control. Sometimes you've got to have that feeling."
"Do you?" I sat down slowly in the easy chair.
"Sometimes." He went to the sofa and picked up his notebook again. "Some
people do."
"In order," I asked, "to play?" And my voice was very ugly, full of contempt and
anger.
"Well"he looked at me with great, troubled eyes, as though, in fact, he hoped
his eyes would tell me things he could never otherwise say"they think so. And if
they think so!"
"And what do you think?" I asked.
He sat on the sofa and put his can of beer on the floor. "I don't know," he said,
and I couldn't be sure if he were answering my question or pursuing his thoughts. His
face didn't tell me. "It's not so much to play. It's to stand it, to be able to make it at
all. On any level." He frowned and smiled: "In order to keep from shaking to pieces."
"But these friends of yours," I said, "they seem to shake themselves to pieces
pretty goddamn fast."
"Maybe." He played with the notebook. And something told me that I should
curb my tongue, that Sonny was doing his best to talk, that I should listen. "But of
course you only know the ones that've gone to pieces. Some don'tor at least they
haven't yet and that's just about all any of us can say." He paused. "And then there
are some who just live, really, in hell, and they know it and they see what's happening and they go right on. I don't know." He sighed, dropped the notebook, folded his
arms. "Some guys, you can tell from the way they play, they on something all the
time. And you can see that, well, it makes something real for them. But of course," he
picked up his beer from the floor and sipped it and put the can down again, "they
want to, too, you've got to see that. Even some of them that say they don'tsome,
not all."
"And what about you?" I askedI couldn't help it. "What about you? Do you
want to?"
He stood up and walked to the window and remained silent for a long time.
Then he sighed. "Me," he said. Then: "While I was downstairs before, on my way
here, listening to that woman sing, it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering
she must have had to go throughto sing like that. It's repulsive to think you have to
suffer that much."
I said: "But there's no way not to sufferis there, Sonny?"
"I believe not," he said and smiled, "but that's never stopped anyone from trying." He looked at me. "Has it?" I realized, with this mocking look, that there stood
between us, forever, beyond the power of time or forgiveness, the fact that I had held
silenceso long!when he had needed human speech to help him. He turned back
to the window. "No, there's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep
from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seemwell, like you. Like
you did something, all right, and now you're suffering for it. You know?" 1 said nothing. "Well you know," he said, impatiently, "why do people suffer? Maybe it's better
to do something to give it a reason, any reason."
"But we just agreed," I said "that there's no way not to suffer. Isn't it better, then,
just totake it?"
"But nobody just takes it," Sonny cried, "that's what I'm telling you! Everybody
tries not to. You're just hung up on the way some people tryit's not your way!"
The hair on my face began to itch, my face felt wet. "That's not true," I said,
"that's not true. I don't give a damn what other people do, I don't even care how they
suffer. I just care how you suffer." And he looked at me. "Please believe me," I said, "I
don't want to see youdietrying not to suffer."
"I won't," he said, flatly, "die trying not to suffer. At least, not any faster than
anybody else."
"But there's no need," I said, trying to laugh, "is there? in killing yourself."
I wanted to say more, but I couldn't. I wanted to talk about will power and how
life could bewell, beautiful. I wanted to say that it was all within; but was it? or,
rather, wasn't that exactly the trouble? And I wanted to promise that I wxuild never
fail him again. But it would all have soundedempty words and lies.
So I made the promise to myself and prayed that I would keep it.
"It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk
these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to,
and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it outthat storm inside.
You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with
it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a
way to listen."
And then he walked away from the window and sat on the sofa again, as though
all the wind had suddenly been knocked out of him. "Sometimes you'll do anything to
play, even cut your mother's throat." He laughed and looked at me. "Or your
brother's." Then he sobered. "Or your own." Then: "Don't worry. I'm all right now
and I think I'll be all right. But I can't forgetwhere I've been. I don't mean just the
physical place I've been, I mean where I've been. And what I've been."
"What have you been, Sonny?" I asked.
He smiledbut sat sideways on the sofa, his elbow resting on the back, his fingers playing with his mouth and chin, not looking at me. "I've been something I didn't recognize, didn't know I could be. Didn't know anybody could be." He stopped,
looking inward, looking helplessly young, looking old. "I'm not talking about it now
because I feel guilty or anything like thatmaybe it would be better if I did, I don't
know. Anyway, I can't really talk about it. Not to you, not to anybody," and now he
turned and faced me. "Sometimes, you know, and it was actually when I was most out
of the world, I felt that I was in it, that I was ivith it, really, and I could play or I didn't really have to play, it just came out of me, it was there. And I don't know how I
played, thinking about it now, but I know I did awful things, those times, sometimes,
to people. Or it wasn't that I did anything to themit was that they weren't real." He
picked up the beer can; it was empty; he rolled it between his palms: "And other
timeswell, I needed a fix, I needed to find a place to lean, I needed to clear a space
to listenand I couldn't find it, and Iwent crazy, I did terrible things to me, I was
terrible for me." He began pressing the beer can between his hands, I watched the
metal begin to give. It glittered, as he played with it, like a knife, and I was afraid he
would cut himself, but I said nothing. "Oh well. I can never tell you. I was all by myself at the bottom of something, stinking and sweating and crying and shaking, and I
smelled it, you know? my stink, and I thought I'd die if I couldn't get away from it and
yet, all the same, I knew that everything I was doing was just locking me in with it.
And I didn't know," he paused, still flattening the beer can, "I didn't know, I still
don't know, something kept telling me that maybe it was good to smell your own
stink, but I didn't think that that was what I'd been trying to doandwho can
stand it?" and he abruptly dropped the ruined beer can, looking at me with a small,
still smile, and then rose, walking to the window as though it were the lodestone
rock. I watched his face, he watched the avenue. "I couldn't tell you when Mama
diedbut the reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs.
And then, when I ran away, that's what I was running fromreally. When I came
back, nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was justolder." And he stopped,
drumming with his fingers on the windowpane. The sun had vanished, soon darkness
would fall. I watched his face. "It can come again," he said, almost as though speaking
to himself. Then he turned to me. "It can come again," he repeated. "1 just want you
to know that."
"All right," I said, at last. "So it can come again. All right."
He smiled, but the smile was sorrowful. "I had to try to tell you," he said,
"Yes," I said. "I understand that."
"You're my brother," he said, looking straight at me, and not smiling at all.
"Yes," I repeated, "yes. I understand that."
He turned back to the window, looking out. "All that hatred down there," he said,
"all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart."
We went to the only nightclub on a short, dark street, downtown. We squeezed
through the narrow, chattering, jam-packed bar to the entrance of the big room,
where the bandstand was. And we stood there for a moment, for the lights were very
dim in this room and we couldn't see. Then, "Hello, boy," said a voice and an enormous black man, much older than Sonny or myself, erupted out of all that atmospheric lighting and put an arm around Sonny's shoulder. "I been sitting right here,"
he said, "waiting for you."
He had a big voice, too, and heads in the darkness turned toward us.
Sonny grinned and pulled a little away, and said, "Creole, this is my brother. I 225
told you about him."
Creole shook my hand. "I'm glad to meet you, son," he said, and it was clear that
he was glad to meet me there, for Sonny's sake. And he smiled, "You got a real musician in your family," and he took his arm from Sonny's shoulder and slapped him,
lightly, affectionately, with the back of his hand.
"Well. Now I've heard it all," said a voice behind us. This was another musician, and a friend of Sonny's, a coal-black, cheerful-looking man, built close to the
ground. He immediately began confiding to me, at the top of his lungs, the most terrible things about Sonny, his teeth gleaming like a lighthouse and his laugh coming
up out of him like the beginning of an earthquake. And it turned out that everyone
at the bar knew Sonny, or almost everyone; some were musicians, working there, or
nearby, or not working, some were simply hangers-on, and some were there to hear
Sonny play. I was introduced to all of them and they were all very polite to me. Yet,
it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny's brother. Here, I was in Sonny's world.
Or, rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal
blood.
They were going to play soon and Creole installed me, by myself, at a table in a
dark corner. Then I watched them, Creole, and the little black man, and Sonny, and
the others, while they horsed around, standing just below the bandstand. The light
from the bandstand spilled just a little short of them and, wyatching them laughing
and gesturing and moving about, I had the feeling that they, nevertheless, were being
most careful not to step into that circle of light too suddenly: that if they moved into
the light too suddenly, without thinking, they would perish in flame. Then, while I
watched, one of them, the small, black man, moved into the light and crossed the
bandstand and started fooling around with his drums. Thenbeing funny and being,
also, extremely ceremoniousCreole took Sonny by the arm and led him to the piano. A woman's voice called Sonny's name and a few hands started clapping. And
Sonny, also being funny and being ceremonious, and so touched, I think, that he
could have cried, but neither hiding it nor showing it, riding it like a man, grinned,
and put both hands to his heart and bowed from the waist.
Creole then went to the bass fiddle and a lean, very bright-skinned brown man
jumped up on the bandstand and picked up his horn. So there they were, and the atmosphere on the bandstand and in the room began to change and tighten. Someone
stepped up to the microphone and announced them. Then there were all kinds of
murmurs. Some people at the bar shushed others. The waitress ran around, frantically
getting in the last orders, guys and chicks got closer to each other, and the lights on
the bandstand, on the quartet, turned to a kind of indigo. Then they all looked different there. Creole looked about him for the last time, as though he were making
certain that all his chickens were in the coop, and then hejumped and struck the
fiddle. And there they were.
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, 230
on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we
mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the
man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising
from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is
of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that
same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. I just watched Sonny's face.
His face was troubled, he wTas working hard, but he wasn't with it. And I had the feeling
that, in a way, everyone on the bandstand was waiting for him, both waiting for him
and pushing him along. But as I began to watch Creole, I realized that it was Creole
who held them all back. He had them on a short rein. Up there, keeping the beat with
his whole body, wailing on the fiddle, with his eyes half closed, he was listening to
everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He
wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny's
witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thinghe had been there,
and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the
things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water.
And, while Creole listened, Sonny moved, deep within, exactly like someone in
torment. I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between
the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of
life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano.
It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory.
While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try;
to try and make it do everything.
And Sonny hadn't, been near a piano for over a year. And he wasn't on much
better terms with his life, not the life that stretched before him now. He and the piano stammered, started one way, got scared, stopped; started another way, panicked,
marked time, started again; then seemed to have found a direction, panicked again,
got stuck. And the face I saw on Sonny I'd never seen before. Everything had been
burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in,
by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there.
Yet, watching Creole's face as they neared the end of the first set, I had the feeling that something had happened, something I hadn't heard. Then they finished,
there was scattered applause, and then, without an instant's warning, Creole started
into something else, it was almost sardonic, it was Am I Blue. And, as though he
commanded, Sonny began to play. Something began to happen. And Creole let out
the reins. T h e dry, low, black man said something awful on the drums, Creole answered, and the drums talked back. Then the horn insisted, sweet and high, slightly
detached perhaps, and Creole listened, commenting now and then, dry, and driving,
beautiful and calm and old. Then they all came together again, and Sonny was part
of the family again. I could tell this from his face. He seemed to have found, right
there beneath his fingers, a damn brand-new piano. It seemed that he r.ouldn'r get
over it. Then, for awhile, just being happy with Sonny, they seemed to be agreeing
with him that brand-new pianos certainly were a gas.
Then Creole stepped forward to remind them that what they were playing was
the blues. He hit something in all of them, he hit something in me, myself, and the
music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. Creole began to
tell us what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and
his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and
death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always mustbe heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this
darkness.
And this tale, according to that face, that body, those strong hands on those
strings, has another aspect in every country, and a new depth in every generation.
Listen, Creole seemed to be saying, listen. Now these are Sonny's blues. He made the
little black man on the drums know it, and the bright, brown man on the horn. Creole
wasn't trying any longer to get Sonny in the water. He was wishing him Godspeed.0
Then he stepped back, very slowly, filling the air with the immense suggestion that
Sonny speak for himself.
Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again
one of them seemed to say, amen. Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life. But
that life contained so many others. And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began
to make it his. It was very beautiful because it wasn't hurried and it was no longer a
lament. I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning
we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us
and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he
would never be free until we did. Yet, there was no battle in his face now. I heard
what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest
in earth. He had made it his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and
Daddy. And he was giving it back, as everything must be given back, so that, passing
through death, it can live forever. I saw my mother's face again, and felt, for the first
time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw
the moon-lit road where my father's brother died. And it brought something else
back to me, and carried me past it. I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel's tears
again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise. And 1 was yet aware that this was only a
moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble
stretched above us, longer than the sky.
Then it was over. Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet, and
grinning. There was a lot of applause and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl
came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand. There was a long pause,
while they talked up there in the indigo light and after awhile I saw the girl put a
Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn't seem to notice it, but just
before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play
again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling.
QUESTIONS
L From whose point of view is "Sonny's Blues'' told? How do the narrator's values and experiences affect his view of the story?
2. What is the older brother's profession? Does it suggest anything about his personality?
3. How would this story change if it were told by Sonny?
4. What event prompts the narrator to write his brother?
wishing him Godspeed: to wish success.
5. What does the narrator's mother ask him to do for Sonny? Does the older brother keep
his promise?
6. T h e major characters in this story are called Mama, Daddy, and Sonny (the older brother
is never named or even nicknamed). How do these names affect our sense of the story?
7. Reread the last four paragraphs and explain the significance of the statement "Now these
are Sonny's blues." How has Sonny made this music his own?
Eudora Welty
A Worn Path
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson,
Mississippi, daughter of an insurance company
president. Like William Faulkner, another Mississippi writer, she stayed close to her roots for
practically all her life, except for short sojourns
at the University of Wisconsin, where she took
her B.A., and in New York City, where she
studied advertising. She lived most of her life in
her childhood home in Jackson, within a stone s
throw of the state capitol. Although Welty was a
novelist distinguished for The Robber Bridegroom (1942), Delta Wedding (1946), The
Ponder Heart (1954), Losing Battles (1970),
and The Optimist's Daughter (1972), many
critics think her finest work was in the short-story
form. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
1941
EUDORA WELTY
(1980) gathers the work of more than forty
years. Welty's other books include a memoir, One Writers Beginnings (1984), and The
Eye of the Story (1977), a book of sympathetic criticism on the fiction of other writers, including Willa Gather, Virginia Woolf> Katherine Anne Porter, and Isak Dinesen. One
Time, One Place, a book of photographs of everyday life that Welty took in Mississippi during the Depression, was republished in a revised edition in 1996.
It was Decembera bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a
path through the pinewoods. Her name was Phoenix Jackson, She was very old and
small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to
side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she
kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise
in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird.
She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally
long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every
time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her
unlaced shoes. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a
pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree
stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two
knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the
red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with
an odor like copper.
Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, "Out of
my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals! . . . Keep
out from under these feet, little bob-whites. . . . Keep the big wild hogs out of my
path. Don't let none of those come running my direction. 1 got a long way." Under
her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the
brush as if to rouse up any hiding things.
On she went. T h e woods were deep and still. T h e sun made the pine needles
almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. T h e cones dropped as light
as feathers. Down in the hollow was the mourning doveit was not too late for
him.
The path ran up a hill. "Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this
far," she said, in the voice of argument old people keep to use with themselves.
"Something always take a hold of me on this hillpleads I should stay."
After she got to the top she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where
she had come. "Up through pines," she said at length. "Now down through oaks."
Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. But before she got to
the bottom of the hill a bush caught her dress.
Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before
she could pull them free in one place they were caught in another. It was not possible
to allow the dress to tear. "I in the thorny bush," she said. "Thorns, you doing your
appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir. Old eyes thought you was a
pretty little green bush."
Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for
her cane.
"Sun so high!" she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went
over her eyes. "The time getting all gone here."
At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek.
"Now comes the trial," said Phoenix.
Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her
skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her, like a festival figure in some parade, she
began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.
"I wasn't as old as I thought," she said.
But she sat down to rest. She spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded
her hands over her knees. Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She
did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of
marble-cake on it she spoke to him. "That would be acceptable," she said. But when
she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air.
So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had
to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying
to climb the steps. But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn
now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off
if she got caught fast where she was.
At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead
trees, like black men with one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered
cotton field. There sat a buzzard.
"Who you watching?"
10
15
In the furrow she made her way along.
"Glad this not the season for bulls," she said, looking sideways, "and the good
Lord made his snakes to curl up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don't see no
two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come once. It took a while to
get by him, back in the summer."
She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook and was taller than her head. "Through the maze now," she said, for
there was no path.
Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her.
At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But
she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost.
"Ghost," she said sharply, "who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary
death close by."
But there was no answeronly the ragged dancing in the wind.
She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat
and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice.
"You scarecrow," she said. Her face lighted. "I ought to be shut up for good," she
said with laughter. "My senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know.
Dance, old scarecrow," she said, "while I dancing with you."
She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawrn down, shook her
head once or twice in a little strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in
streamers about her skirts.
Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the
whispering field. At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass
blew between the red ruts. The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all
dainty and unseen.
"Walk pretty," she said. "This the easy place. This the easy going."
She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little
strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the
doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. "I
walking in their sleep," she said, nodding her head vigorously.
In a ravine she went where a spring wras silently flowing through a hollow7 log.
Old Phoenix bent and drank. "Sweet-gum makes the water sweet," she said, and
drank more. "Nobody know who made this well, for it was here when I wras born."
The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from
every limb. "Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles." Then the track went into
the road.
Deep, deep the road w7ent down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live-oaks met, and it was as dark as a cave.
A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She
was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little
with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.
Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her
hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently
went to talking. "Old woman," she said to herself, "that black dog come up out of the
weeds to stall you off, and now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you."
A white man finally came along and found hera hunter, a young man, with his
dog on a chain.
"Well, Granny!" he laughed. "What are you doing there?"
Eudora welty 6:
"Lying on my back like a June-bug waiting to be turned over, mister," she said,
reaching up her hand.
He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. "Anything broken,
Granny?"
"No sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough," said Phoenix, when she had got
her breath. "I thank you for your trouble."
"Where do you live, Granny?" he asked, while the two dogs were growling at
each other.
"Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can't even see it from here."
"On your way home?"
"No sir, I going to town."
"Why, that's too far! That's as far as I walk when I come out myself, and I get
something for my trouble." He patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung
down a little closed claw. It was one of the bob-whites, with its beak hooked bitterly
to show it was dead. "Now you go on home, Granny!"
"I bound to go to town, mister," said Phoenix. "The time come around."
He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. "I know you old colored
people! Wouldn't miss going to town to see Santa Glaus!"
But something held old Phoenix very still. The deep lines in her face went into a
fierce and different radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a
flashing nickel fall out of the man's pocket onto the ground.
"How old are you, Granny?" he was saying.
"There is no telling, mister," she said, "no telling."
T h e n she gave a little cry and clapped her hands and said, "Git on away from
here, dog! Look! Look at that dog!" She laughed as if in admiration. "He ain't scared
of nobody. He a big black dog." She whispered, "Sic him!"
"Watch me get rid of that cur," said the man. "Sic him, Pete! Sic him!"
Phoenix heard the dogs fighting, and heard the man running and throwing
sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was slowly bending forward by that time,
further and further forward, the lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. T h e yellow palm of
her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the
ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting
an egg from under a setting hen. T h e n she slowly straightened up, she stood erect,
and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. "God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing."
T h e man came back, and his own dog panted about them. "Well, I scared him
off that time," he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at
Phoenix.
She stood straight and faced him.
"Doesn't the gun scare you?" he said, still pointing it.
"No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done,"
she said, holding utterly still.
He smiled, and shouldered the gun. "Well, Granny," he said, "you must be a
hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with
me. But you take my advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you."
"I bound to go on my way, mister," said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the
red rag. Then they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting
"again and again over the hill.
She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains.
Then she smelled wood-smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the.
cabins on their steep steps. Dozens of little black children whirled around her. There
ahead was Natchez shining. Bells were ringing. She walked on.
In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights
strung and crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix
would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet
to know where to take her.
She paused quietly on the sidewalk where people were passing by. A lady came
along in the crowd, carrying an armful of red-, green- and silver-wrapped presents;
she gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her.
"Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?" She held up her foot.
"What do you want, Grandma?"
"See my shoe," said Phoenix. "Do all right for out in the country, but wouldn't
look right to go in a big building."
"Stand still then, Grandma," said the lady. She put her packages down on the
sidewalk beside her and laced and tied both shoes tightly.
"Can't lace 'em with a cane," said Phoenix, "Thank you, missy. I doesn't mind
asking a nice lady to tie up my shoe, when I gets out on the street."
Moving slowly and from side to side, she went into the big building, and into a
tower of steps, where she walked up and around and around until her feet knew to
stop.
She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that
had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched
the dream that was hung up in her head.
"Here I be," she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body.
"A charity case, I suppose," said an attendant who sat at the desk before her.
But Phoenix only looked above her head. There was sweat on her face, the
wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright net.
"Speak up, Grandma," the woman said. "What's your name? We must have your
history, you know. Have you been here before? What seems to be the trouble with
you?"
Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were bothering her.
"Are you deaf?" cried the attendant.
But then the nurse came in.
"Oh, that's just old Aunt Phoenix," she said. "She doesn't come for himselfshe
has a little grandson. She makes these trips just as regular as clockwork. She lives
away back off the Old Natchez Trace." She bent down. "Well, Aunt Phoenix, why
don't you just take a seat? We won't keep you standing after your long trip." She
pointed.
The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair.
"Now, how is the boy?" asked the nurse.
Old Phoenix did not speak.
"I said, how is the boy?"
But Phoenix only waited and stared straight ahead, her face very solemn and
withdrawn into rigidity.
"Is his throat any better?" asked the nurse. "Aunt Phoenix, don't you hear me? Is
your grandson's throat any better since the last time you came for the medicine?"
With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motion- 85
less, just as if she were in armor.
"You mustn't take up our time this way, Aunt Phoenix," the nurse said, "Tell us
quickly about your grandson, and get it over. He isn't dead, is he?"
At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face,
and she spoke.
"My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made
my long trip."
"Forgot?" The nurse frowned. "After you came so far?"
Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgiveness for wak- 90
ing up frightened in the night. "I never did go to school, I was too old at the Surrender," she said in a soft voice. "I'm an old woman without an education. It was
my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the
coming."
"Throat never heals, does it?" said the nurse, speaking in a loud, sure voice to old
Phoenix. By now she had a card with something written on it, a little list. "Yes.
Swallowed lye. When was it?Januarytwo-three years ago"
Phoenix spoke unasked now. "No, missy, he not. dead, he just the same. Every
little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not get
his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another
trip for the soothing medicine."
"All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it," said
the nurse. "But it's an obstinate case."
"My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself," Phoenix went on. "We is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don't
seem to put him back at all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wear a little
patch quilt and peep out holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remembers so
plain now. I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell
him from all the others in creation."
"All right." The nurse was trying to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of 95
medicine. "Charity," she said, making a check mark in a book.
Old Phoenix held the bottle close to her eyes, and then carefully put it into her
pocket.
"I thank you," she said.
"It's Christmas time, Grandma," said the attendant. "Could I give you a few pennies out of my purse?"
"Five pennies is a nickel," said Phoenix stiffly.
"Here's a nickel," said the attendant.
100
Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. She received the nickel and then
fished the other nickel out of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at
her palm closely, with her head on one side.
Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor.
"This is what come to me to do," she said. "I going to the store and buy my child
a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. He going to find it hard to believe
there such a thing in the world. I'll march myself back where he waiting, holding it
straight up in this hand."
She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the
doctor's office. Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down.
QUESTIONS
1. What point of view is used in this story? Explain your answer.
2. What is the significance of the old woman being named Phoenix?
3. Welty presents Phoenix's dreams and hallucinations as if they were as real as everything
else she encounters. What does this technique contribute to the story's effect?
4. How would you characterize the way Phoenix is viewed and treated by the white people
she meets ? Does their behavior toward her give you any indication of where the story is
set and when it takes place?
5. In paragraph 52, Phoenix laughs at the black dog "as if in admiration." What does she admire about him, and what does this attitude tell us about her?
6. "With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as
if she were in armor" (paragraph 85). Is the comparison at the end of this sentence just a
striking visual image, or does it have a larger relevance?
W R I T I NG E F F E C T I V E L Y
WRITERS
ON
WRITING
James Baldwin
Race and the African American Writer
1955
I know, in any case, that the most crucial time in
my own development came when I was forced to
recognize that I was a kind of bastard of the West;
when I followed the line of my past I did not find
myself in Europe but in Africa. And this meant
that in some subtle way, in a really profound way,
I brought to Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, to
the stones of Paris, to the cathedral at Chartres,
and to the Empire State Building, a special attitude. These were not really my creations, they did
not contain my history; I might search in them in
vain forever for any reflection of myself. I was an
interloper; this was not my heritage. At the same
time I had no other heritage which I could possibly hope to useI had certainly been unfitted for
JAMES B A L D W I N
the jungle or the tribe. I would have to appropriate these white centuries, I would have to make them mineI would have to accept
my special attitude, my special place in this schemeotherwise I would have no
place in any scheme. What was the most difficult wras the fact that
I was forced to admit something I had always hidden from myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as the price of his public progress; that I
hated and feared the world. And this meant, not only that I thus gave the world
an altogether murderous power over me, but also that in such a self-destroying limbo
I could never hope to write.
One writes out of one thing onlyone's own experience. Everything depends on
how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can
possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder
of life that order which is art. The difficulty then, for me, of being a Negro writer was
the fact that I was, in effect, prohibited from examining my own experience too
closely by the tremendous demands and the very real dangers of my social situation.
I don't think the dilemma outlined above is uncommon. I do think, since writers
work in the disastrously explicit medium of language, that it goes a little way towards
explaining why, out of the enormous resources of Negro speech and life, and despite
the example of Negro music, prose written by Negroes has been generally speaking so
pallid and so harsh. I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I
expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock
before I could hope to write about anything else.
From "Autobiographical Notes"
WRITING
ABOUT
POINT
OF
VIEW
How Point of View Shapes a Story
When we hear an outlandish piece of news, something that doesn't quite add up,
we're well advised, as the saying goes, to consider the source. The same is true when
we read a narrative. Who is telling us the story? And why is he or she telling it?
A story's point of view determines how much confidence a reader should have in
the events related. A story told from a third-person omniscient point of view generally provides a sense of authority and stability that makes the narrative seem reliable.
The use of a first-person narrator, on the other hand, often suggests a certain
bias, especially when the narrator relates events in which he or she has played a
part. In such cases the narrator sometimes has an obvious interest in the audience's
accepting his or her particular version of the story as truth.
Understanding the limits and rewards of a narrator's point of view is key to
interpreting what a story says.
CHECKLIST
Understanding Point of View
S Flow is the story narrated? Is it told in the first or the third person?
S If the story is told in the third person, is the point of view omniscient, or
does it stick closely to what is perceived by a particular character?
S What is gained by this choice?
S If the story is told by a first-person narrator, what is the speaker's main reason for telling the story?
^ Does the narrator have something at stake in presenting the events? What
does the narrator have to gain by making us believe his or her account?
S Does the first-person narrator fully understand his or her own motivations?
Is there some important aspect of the narrator's character or situation that is
being overlooked?
S If the story is told in the first person, is there anything peculiar about the
narrator? Does this peculiarity create any suspicions about the narrator's accuracy or reliability?
S What does the speaker's perspective add? Would the story seem as memorable if related from another narrative angle?
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
POINT
OF
VIEW
Choose a story from this book and analyze how point of view contributes to the
story's overall meaning. Come up with a thesis sentence, and back up your argument
with specific observations about the text. Incorporate at least three quotations, and
document them, as explained in the writing chapters at the end of the book. Some
stories that might lend themselves well to this assignment are "Sonny's Blues,"
"Cathedral," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "Teenage Wasteland."
MORE
TOPICS
FOR
WRITING
1. Retell the events in " A & P" from the point of view of one of the story's minor characters:
Lengel, or Stokesie, or one of the girls. How does the story's emphasis change?
2. Here is another writing exercise to help you sense what a difference a point of view
makes. Write a short statement from the point of view of one of these characters: William
Faulkner's Homer Barron (on "My Affair with Miss Emily") or Anne Tyler's Donny
Coble (on "My MotherWhat a Pain!").
3. Imagine a story such as " A
P" or " A Rose for Emily" told by an omniscient third-person
narrator. Write several paragraphs about what would be lost (or gained) by such a change.
4. Write a paragraph or two on what point of view contributes to Tobias Wolff's "The Rich
Brother." How does the author's decision to tell the story from one brother's point of view
add to the story's overall meaning? If " T h e Rich Brother" were narrated from the unsuccessful brother's point of view, how different would the story be?
5. Choose any tale from "Stories for Further Reading," and, in a paragraph or two, describe
how point of view colors the general meaning. If you like, you may argue that the story
might be told more effectively from an alternate point of view.
6. Think back to a confrontation in your own life, and describe that event from a point of
view contrary to your own. Try to imagine yourself inside your speaker's personality, and
present the facts as that person would, as convincingly as you can.
7. With "Sonny's Blues" in mind, write about a family member or friend from your own
point of view, allowing, as Baldwin does, an understanding of that person's perspective to
slowly develop.
8. Tell the story of a confrontationbiographical or fictionalfrom the point of view of a
minor character peripheral to the central action. You could, for instance, tell the story of
a disastrous first date from the point of view of the unlucky waitress who serves the couple
dinner.
Character
Show me a character without anxieties
and I will show you a boring book.
MARGARET ATWOOD
From popular fiction and drama, both classic and contemporary, we are acquainted
with many stereotyped characters. Called stock characters, they are often known by
some outstanding trait or traits: the bragging soldier of Greek and Roman comedy, the
Prince Charming of fairy tales, the mad scientist of horror movies, the fearlessly reckless
police detective of urban action films, the greedy explorer of Tarzan films, the brilliant
but alcoholic brain surgeon of medical thrillers on television. Stock characters are especially convenient for writers of commercial fiction: they require little detailed portraiture, for we already know them well. Most writers of the literary story, however,
attempt to create characters who strike us not as stereotypes but as unique individuals. Although stock characters tend to have single dominant virtues and vices, characters in the finest contemporary short stories tend to have many facets, like people
we meet.
A character, then, is presumably an imagined person who inhabits a story
although that simple definition may admit to a few exceptions. In George Stewart's
novel Storm, the protagonist is the wind; in Richard Adams's Watership Down, the
main characters are rabbits. But usually we recognize, in the main characters of a
story, human personalities that become familiar to us. If the story seems "true to life,"
we generally find that its characters act in a reasonably consistent manner and that
the author has provided them with motivation: sufficient reason to behave as they
do. Should a character behave in a sudden and unexpected way, seeming to deny
what we have been told about his or her nature or personality, we trust that there was
a reason for this behavior and that sooner or later wre will discover it. This is not to
claim that all authors insist that their characters behave with absolute consistency,
for (as we shall see later in this chapter) some contemporary stories feature characters
who sometimes act without apparent reason. Nor can we say that, in good fiction,
characters never change or develop. In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens telis how
Ebenezer Scrooge, a tightfisted miser, reforms overnight, suddenly gives to the poor,
and endeavors to assist his clerk's struggling family. But Dickens amply demonstrates
why Scrooge had such a change of heart: four ghostly visitors, stirring kind memories
the old miser had forgotten and also warning him of the probable consequences of his
habits, provide the character (and hence the story) with adequate motivation.
T o borrow the useful terms of the English novelist E. M. Forster, characters may
seem flat or round, depending on whether a writer sketches or sculpts them. A flat,
character has only one outstanding trait or feature, or at most a few distinguishing
marks: for example, the familiar stock character of the mad scientist, with his lust for
absolute power and his crazily gleaming eyes. Flat characters, however, need not be
stock characters: in all of literature there is probably only one Tiny Tim, though his
functions in A Christmas Carol are mainly to invoke blessings and to remind others of
their Christian duties. Some writers, notably Balzac, who peopled his many novels
with hosts of characters, try to distinguish the flat ones by giving each a single odd
physical feature or mannerisma nervous twitch, a piercing gaze, an obsessive fondness for oysters. Round characters, however, present us with more facetsthat is,
their authors portray them in greater depth and in more generous detail. Such a
round character may appear to us only as he appears to the other characters in the
story. If their views of him differ, we will see him from more than one side. In other
stories, we enter a character's mind and come to know him through his own
thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. By the time we finish reading James Baldwin's
"Sonny's Blues" (in Chapter 2), we are well acquainted with the central characters
and find them amply three-dimensional.
Flat characters tend to stay the same throughout a story, but round characters often changelearn or become enlightened, grow or deteriorate. In William Faulkner's
"Barn Burning" (Chapter 5), the boy Sarty Snopes, driven to defy his proud and violent father, becomes at the story's end more knowing and more mature. (Some critics
call a fixed character static; a changing one, dynamic.) This is not to damn a flat character as an inferior work of art. In most fictioneven the greatestminor characters
tend to be flat instead of round. Why? Rounding them would cost time and space; and
so enlarged, they might only distract us from the main characters.
"A character, first of all, is the noise of his name," according to novelist William
Cass.1 Names, chosen artfully, can indicate natures. A simple illustration is the completely virtuous Squire Allworthy, the foster father in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.
Subtler, perhaps, is the custom of giving a character a name that makes an allusion: a
reference to some famous person, place, or thing in history, in other fiction, or in actuality. For his central characters in Moby-Dick, Herman Melville chose names from
the Old Testament, calling his tragic and domineering Ahab after a biblical tyrant
who came to a bad end, and his wandering narrator Ishmael after a biblical outcast.
Whether or not it includes an allusion, a good name often reveals the character of
the character. Charles Dickens, a vigorous and richly suggestive christener, named a
charming confidence man Mr. Jingle (suggesting something jingly, light, and superficially pleasant), named a couple of shyster lawyers Dodgson and Fogg (suggesting
dodging evasiveness and foglike obfuscation), and named two heartless educators,
who grimly drill their schoolchildren in "hard facts," Gradgind and M'Choakumchild. Henry James, who so loved names that he kept lists of them for characters he
might someday conceive, chose for a sensitive, cultured gentleman the name of Lambert Strether; for a down-to-earth, benevolent individual, the name of Mrs. Bread.
(But James may have wished to indicate that names cannot be identified with people
absolutely, in giving the fragile, considerate heroine of The Spoils of Poynton the
harsh-sounding name of Fleda Vetch.)
l "The
Concept of Character in Fiction," Fiction and the Figures of Life (New York: Knopf, 1970).
Instead of a hero, many a recent novel has featured an antihero: a protagonist
conspicuously lacking in one or more of the usual attributes of a traditional hero
(bravery, skill, idealism, sense of purpose). The antihero is an ordinary, unglorious
citizen of the modern world, usually drawn (according to Sean O'Faolain) as someone "groping, puzzled, cross, mocking, frustrated, and isolated."2 (Obviously, there
are antiheroines, too: Ellen, for instance, is the aimlessly drifting central character of
Edna O'Brien's novel August Is a Wicked Month.) If epic poets once drew their heroes
as decisive leaders of their people, embodying their people's highest ideals, antiheroes
tend to be loners, without perfections, just barely able to survive. Antiheroes lack
"character," as defined by psychologist Anthony Quinton to mean a person's conduct
or "persistence and consistency in seeking to realize his long-term aims.' 0 A gulf separates Leopold Bloom, antihero of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, from the hero of the
Greek Odyssey. In Homer's epic, Ulysses wanders the Mediterranean, battling monsters and overcoming enchantments. In Joyce's novel, Bloom wanders the littered
streets of Dublin, peddling advertising space. Meursault, the title character of Albert
Camus's novel The Stranger, is so alienated from his own life that he is unmoved at
the news of his mother's death.
Evidently, not only fashions in heroes but also attitudes toward human nature
have undergone change. In the eighteenth century, Scottish philosopher David Hume
argued that the nature of an individual is relatively fixed and unalterable. Hume mentioned, however, a few exceptions: "A person of an obliging disposition gives a peevish answer; but he has the toothache or has not dined. A stupid fellow discovers an
obvious alacrity in his carriage; but he has met with a sudden piece of good fortune."
For a long time after Hume, novelists and short-story writers seem to have assumed
that characters nearly always behave in a predictable fashion and that their actions
ought to be consistent with their personalities. Now and again, a writer differed: Jane
Austen in Pride and Prejudice has her protagonist Elizabeth Bennet remark to the citified Mr. Darcy, who fears that life in the country cannot be amusing, "But people
themselves alter so much, that there is something to be observed in them forever."
Many contemporary writers of fiction would deny even that people have definite
selves to alter. Following Sigmund Freud and other modern psychologists, they
assume that a large part of human behavior is shaped in the unconsciousthat, for
instance, a person might fear horses, not because of a basically timid nature, but
because of unconscious memories of having been nearly trampled by a horse when a
child. T o some writers it now appears that what Hume called a "disposition" (what
we call a "personality") is more vulnerable to change from such causes as age, disease,
neurosis, psychic shock, or brainwashing than was once believed. Hence, some characters in modern fiction appear to be shifting bundles of impulses. "You mustn't look
in my novel for the old stable ego of character," wrote D. H. Lawrence to a friend
about The Rainbow; and in that novel and others Lawrence demonstrated his view of
individuals as bits of one vast Life Force, spurred to act by incomprehensible passions
and urgesthe "dark gods" in them. The idea of the gratuitous act, a deed without
cause or motive, is explored in Andre Gide's novel Lafcadio's Adventures, in which
an ordinary young man without homicidal tendencies abruptly and for no reason
pushes a stranger from a speeding train. The usual limits of character are playfully
violated by Virginia Woolf in Orlando, a novel whose protagonist, defying time, lives
AThe
Vanishing Hero (Boston: Little, 1957).
*"The Continuity of Persons," Times Literary Supplement, 27 July 1973.
right on from Elizabethan days into the present, changing in midstory from a man
into a woman. Characterization, as practiced by nineteenth-century novelists, almost
entirely disappears in Franz Kafka's The Castle, whose protagonist has no home, no
family, no definite appearancenot even a name, just the initial K. Characters are
things of the past, insists the contemporary French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Still, many writers of fiction go on portraying them.
Katherine Anne Porter
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
1930
Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)
was born
in Indian Creek, Texas. Her mother died when
she was two, and Porter was raised by a grandmother who surrounded the growing girl with books.
At sixteen she ran away from school and soon married a railway clerk in Louisiana. Three years later,
she divorced her husband and began supporting
herself as a reporter in Chicago, Denver, and Fort
Worth, and sometimes as an actress and ballad
singer while traveling through the South. Sojourns in
Europe and in Mexico supplied her with material
for some of her finest stories. Her brilliant, sensitive short fiction, first collected in Flowering
Judas (1930), won her a high reputation. Her
one novel, Ship of Fools (1962), with which she
KATHERINE A N N E PORTER
( Jill Krementz, Inc.)
had struggled for twenty years, received harsh
critical notices, but proved a commercial success. Made into a movie, it ended Porter s lifelong struggle to earn a living. In 1965 her
Collected Stories received a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
She flicked her wrist neatly out of Doctor Harry's pudgy careful fingers and
pulled the sheet up to her chin. The brat ought to be in knee breeches. Doctoring
around the country with spectacles on his nose! "Get along now, take your schoolbooks and go. There's nothing wrong with me."
Doctor Harry spread a warm paw like a cushion on her forehead where the
forked green vein danced and made her eyelids twitch. "Now, now, be a good girl,
and we'll have you up in no time."
"That's no way to speak to a woman nearly eighty years old just because she's
down. I'd have you respect your elders, young man."
"Well, Missy, excuse me." Doctor Harry patted her cheek. "But I've got to warn
you, haven't I? You're a marvel, but you must be careful or you're going to be good
and sorry."
"Don't tell me what I'm going to be. I'm on my feet now, morally speaking. It's
Cornelia. I had to go to bed to get rid of her."
Her bones felt loose, and floated around in her skin, and Doctor Harry floated like
a balloon around the foot of the bed. He floated and pulled down his waistcoat and
swung his glasses on a cord. "Well, stay where you are, it certainly can't hurt you."
"Get along and doctor your sick," said Granny Weatherall. "Leave a well
woman alone. I'll call for you when I want you. . . . Where were you forty years ago
when I pulled through milk-leg and double pneumonia? You weren't even born.
Don't let Cornelia lead you on," she shouted, because Doctor Harry appeared to
float up to the ceiling and out. "1 pay my own bills, and I don't throw my money
awray on nonsense!"
She meant to wave good-by, but it was too much trouble. Her eyes closed of
themselves, it was like a dark curtain drawn around the bed. T h e pillow rose and
floated under her, pleasant as a hammock in a light wind. She listened to the leaves
rustling outside the window. No, somebody was swishing newspapers: no, Cornelia
and Doctor Harry were whispering together. She leaped broad awake, thinking they
whispered in her ear.
"She was never like this, never like this!" "Well, what can we expect?" "Yes,
eighty years old. . . . "
Well, and what if she was? She still had ears. It was like Cornelia to whisper 10
around doors. She always kept things secret in such a public way. She was always being tactful and kind. Cornelia was dutiful; that was the trouble with her. Dutiful and
good: "So good and dutiful," said Granny, "that I'd like to spank her." She saw herself
spanking Cornelia and making a fine job of it.
"What'd you say, Mother?"
Granny felt her face tying up in hard knots.
"Can't a body think, I'd like to know?"
"1 thought you might want something."
"I do. I want a lot of things. First off, go away and don't whisper."
1.5
She lay and drowsed, hoping in her sleep that the children would keep out and
let her rest a minute. It had been a long day. Not that she was tired. It was always
pleasant to snatch a minute now and then. There was always so much to be done, let
me see: tomorrow.
Tomorrow was far away and there was nothing to trouble about. Things were finished somehow when the time came; thank God there was always a little margin over
for peace: then a person could spread out the plan of life and tuck in the edges orderly. It was good to have everything clean and folded away, with the hair brushes
and tonic bottles sitting straight on the white embroidered linen: the day started
without fuss and the pantry shelves laid out with rows of jelly glasses and brown jugs
and white stone-china jars with blue whirligigs and words painted on them: coffee,
tea, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice: and the bronze clock with the lion on top
nicely dusted off. The dust that lion could collect in twenty-four hours! The box in
the attic with all those letters tied up, well, she'd have to go through that tomorrow.
All those lettersGeorge's letters and John's letters and her letters to them both
lying around for the children to find afterwards made her uneasy. Yes, that would be
tomorrow's business. No use to let them know how silly she had been once.
While she was rummaging around she found death in her mind and it felt
clammy and unfamiliar. She had spent so much time preparing for death there was
no need for bringing i t up again. Let it take care of itself now. When she was sixty she
had felt very old, finished, and went around making farewell trips to see her children
and grandchildren, with a secret in her mind: This is the very last of your mother,
children! Then she made her will and came down with a long fever. That was all just
a notion like a lot of other things, but it was lucky too, for she had once for all got
over the idea of dying for a long time. Now she couldn't be worried. She hoped she
had better sense now. Her father had lived to be one hundred and two years old and
had drunk a noggin of strong hot toddy on his last birthday. He told the reporters it
was his daily habit, and he owed his long life to it. He had made quite a scandal and
was very pleased about it. She believed she'd just plague Cornelia a little.
"Cornelia! Cornelia!" No footsteps, but a sudden hand on her cheek. "Bless you,
where have you been?"
"Here, Mother."
"Well, Cornelia, 1 want a noggin of hot toddy."
"Are you cold, darling?"
"I'm chilly, Cornelia. Lying in bed stops the circulation. I must have told you
that a thousand times."
Well, she could just hear Cornelia telling her husband that Mother was getting a
little childish and they'd have to humor her. T h e thing that most annoyed her was
that Cornelia thought she was deaf, dumb, and blind. Little hasty glances and tiny
gestures tossed around her and over her head saying, "Don't cross her, let her have
her way, she's eighty years old," and she sitting there as if she lived in a thin glass
cage. Sometimes Granny almost made up her mind to pack up and move back to her
own house where nobody could remind her every minute that she was old. Wait,
wait, Cornelia, till your own children whisper behind your back!
In her day she had kept a better house and had got more work done. She wasn't
too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for advice when one of the children
jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped in. and talked things over: "Now, Mammy,
you've a good business head, I want to know what you think of this?. . . " Old. Cornelia
couldn't change the furniture around without asking. Little things, little things!
They had been so sweet when they were little. Granny wished the old days were back
again with the children young and everything to be done over. It had been a hard
pull, but not too much for her. When she thought of all the food she had cooked, and
all the clothes she had cut and sewed, and all the gardens she had madewell, the
children showed it. There they were, made out of her, and they couldn't get away
from that. Sometimes she. wanted to see John again and point to them and say, Well,
I didn't do so badly, did I? But that would have to wait. That was for tomorrow. She
used to think of him as a man, but now all the children were older than their father,
and he would be a child beside her if she saw him now. It seemed strange and there
was something wrong in the idea. Why, he couldn't possibly recognize her. She had
fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the post holes herself and clamping the wires
with just a negro boy to help. That changed a woman. John would be looking for a
young woman with the peaked Spanish comb in her hair and the painted fan. Digging post holes changed a woman. Riding country roads in the winter when women
had their babies was another thing: sitting up nights with sick horses and sick negroes
and sick children and hardly ever losing one. John, I hardly ever lost one of them!
John would see that in a minute, that would be something he could understand, she
wouldn't have to explain anything!
It. made her feel like rolling up her sleeves and putting the whole place to rights
again. No matter if Cornelia was determined to be everywhere at once, there were a
great many things left undone on this place. She would start tomorrow and do them.
It was good to be strong enough for everything, even if all you made melted and
changed and slipped under your hands, so that by the time you finished you almost
forgot what you were working for. What was it I set out to do? she asked herself intently, but she could not. remember. A fog rose over the valley, she saw it marching
across the creek swallowing the trees and moving up the hill like an army of ghosts.
Soon it would be at the near edge of the orchard, and then it was time to go in and
light the lamps. Come in, children, don't stay out in the night air.
Lighting the lamps had been beautiful. The children huddled up to her and
breathed like little calves waiting at the bars in the twilight. Their eyes followed the
match and watched the flame rise and settle in a blue curve, then they moved away
from her. The lamp was lit, they didn't have to be scared and hang on to mother any
more. Never, never, never more. God, for all my life I thank Thee. Without Thee,
my God, I could never have done it. Hail, Mary, full of grace.
I want you to pick all the fruit this year and see that nothing is wasted. There's
always someone who can use it. Don't let good things rot for want of using. You waste
life when you waste good food. Don't let things get lost. It's bitter to lose things.
Now, don't let me get to thinking, not when I am tired and taking a little nap before
supper. . . .
The pillow rose about her shoulders and pressed against her heart and the memory was being squeezed out of it: oh, push down the pillow, somebody: it would
smother her if she tried to hold it. Such a fresh breeze blowing and such a green day
with no threats in it. But he had not come, just the same. What does a woman do
when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn't
come? She tried to remember. No, I swear he never harmed me but in that. He never
harmed me but in that. . . and what if he did? There wTas the day, the day, but a whirl
of dark smoke rose and covered it, crept up and over into the bright field where
everything was planted so carefully in orderly rows. That was hell, she knew hell
when she saw it. For sixty years she had prayed against remembering him and against
losing her soul in the deep pit of hell, and now the two things were mingled in one
and the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her
head when she had just got rid of Doctor Harry and was trying to rest a minute.
Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don't let your
wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You were jilted,
weren't you? Then stand up to it. Her eyelids wavered and let in streamers of bluegray light like tissue paper over her eyes. She must get up and pull the shades down or
she'd never sleep. She was in bed again and the shades were not down. How could
that happen? Better turn over, hide from the light, sleeping in the light gave you
nightmares. "Mother, how do you feel now?" and a stinging wetness on her forehead.
But I don't like having my face washed in cold water!
Hapsy? George? Lydia? Jimmy? No, Cornelia, and her features were swollen and
full of little puddles. "They're coming, darling, they'll all be here soon." Go wash your
face, child, you look funny.
Instead of obeying, Cornelia knelt down and put her head on the pillow. She
seemed to be talking but there was 110 sound. "Well, are you tongue-tied? Whose
birthday is it? Are you going to give a party?"
Cornelia's mouth moved urgently in strange shapes. "Don't do that, you bother
me, daughter."
"Oh, no, Mother. Oh, no. . . ."
Nonsense. It was strange about children. They disputed your every word. "No
wrhat, Cornelia?"
"Here's Doctor Harry."
"I won't see that boy again. He just left three minutes ago."
"That was this morning, Mother. It's night now. Here's the nurse."
30
35
"This is Doctor Harry, Mrs. Weatherall. I never saw you look so young and
happy!"
"Ah, I'll never be young againbut I'd be happy if they'd let me lie in peace and
get rested."
She thought she spoke up loudly, but no one answered. A warm weight on her
forehead, a warm bracelet on her wrist, and a breeze went on whispering, trying to
tell her something. A shuffle of leaves in the everlasting hand of God. He blew on
them and they danced and rattled. "Mother, don't mind, we're going to give you a little hypodermic." "Look here, daughter, how do ants get in this bed? I saw sugar ants
yesterday." Did you send for Hapsy too?
It was Hapsy she really wanted. She had to go a long way back through a great
many rooms to find Hapsy standing with a baby on her arm. She seemed to herself to
be Hapsy also, and the baby on Hapsy's arm was Hapsy and himself and herself, all at
once, and there was no surprise in the meeting. Then Hapsy melted from within and
turned flimsy as gray gauze and the baby was a gauzy shadow, and Hapsy came up
close and said, "I thought you'd never come," and looked at her very searchingly and
said, "You haven't changed a bit!" They leaned forward to kiss, when Cornelia began
whispering from a long way off, "Oh, is there anything you want to tell me? Is there
anything I can do for you?"
Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to see
George. I want you to find George. Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I
want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house
like any other woman. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine
children out of him. Better than I hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there was something else besides
the house and the man and the children. Oh, surely they were not all? What was it?
Something not given back. . . . Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew
into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and
the agony was unbelievable: Yes, John, get the Doctor now, no more talk, my time
has come.
When this one was born it should be the last. The last. It should have been born
first, for it was the one she had truly wanted. Everything came in good time. Nothing
left out, left over. She was strong, in three days she would be as well as ever. Better. A
woman needed milk in her to have her full health.
"Mother, do you hear me?"
"I've been telling you"
"Mother, Father Connolly's here."
"I went to Holy Communion only last week. Tell him I'm not so sinful as all
that."
"Father just wants to speak to you."
He could speak as much as he pleased. It was like him to drop in and inquire
about her soul as if it were a teething baby, and then stay on for a cup of tea and a
round of cards and gossip. He always had a funny story of some sort, usually about an
Irishman who made his little mistakes and confessed them, and the point lay in some
absurd thing he would blurt out in the confessional showing his struggles between native piety and original sin. Granny felt easy about her soul. Cornelia, where are your
manners? Give Father Connolly a chair. She had her secret comfortable understanding with a few favorite saints who cleared a straight road to God for her. All as surely
signed and sealed as the papers for the new Forty Acres. Forever . . . heirs and assigns
forever. Since the day the wedding cake was not cut, but thrown out and wasted. The
whole bottom dropped out of the world, and there she was blind and sweating with
nothing under her feet and the walls falling away. His hand had caught her under the
breast, she had not fallen, there was the freshly polished floor with the green rug on
it, just as before. He had cursed like a sailor's parrot and said, "I'll kill him for you."
Don't lay a hand on him, for my sake leave something to God. "Now, Ellen, you must
believe what I tell you. . . ."
So there was nothing, nothing to worry about any more, except sometimes in the
night one of the children screamed in a nightmare, and they both hustled out shaking
and hunting for the matches and calling, "There, wait a minute, here we are!" John,
get the doctor now, Hapsy's time has come. But there was Hapsy standing by the bed
in a white cap. "Cornelia, tell Hapsy to take off her cap. I can't see her plain."
Her eyes opened very wide and the room stood out like a picture she had seen
somewhere. Dark colors with the shadows rising towards the ceiling in long angles. T h e tall black dresser gleamed with nothing on it but John's picture, enlarged from a little one, with John's eyes very black when they should have been
blue. You never saw him, so how do you know how he looked? But the man insisted the copy was perfect, it was very rich and handsome. For a picture, yes, but
it's not my husband. T h e table by the bed had a linen cover and a candle and a
crucifix. T h e light was blue from Cornelia's silk lampshades. No sort of light at all,
just frippery. You had to live forty years with kerosene lamps to appreciate honest
electricity. She felt very strong and she saw Doctor Harry with a rosy nimbus
around him.
"You look like a saint, Doctor Harry, and I vow that's as near as you'll ever come
to it."
"She's saying something."
"I heard you, Cornelia. What's all this carrying-on?"
"Father Connolly's saying"
Cornelia's voice staggered and bumped like a cart in a bad road. It rounded corners and turned back again arid arrived nowhere. Granny stepped up in the cart very
lightly and reached for the reins, but a man sat beside her and she knew him by his
hands, driving the cart. She did not look in his face, for she knew without seeing, but
looked instead down the road where the trees leaned over and bowed to each other
and a thousand birds were singing a Mass. She felt like singing too, but she put her
hand in the bosom of her dress and pulled out a rosary, and Father Connolly murmured Latin in a very solemn voice and tickled her feet. My God, will you stop that
nonsense? I'm a married woman. What if he did run awav and leave me to face the
priest by myself? I found another a whole world better. I wouldn't have exchanged
my husband for anybody except St. Michael himself, and you may tell him that for
me with a thank you in the bargain.
Light flashed on her closed eyelids, and a deep roaring shook her. Cornelia, is
that lightning? I hear thunder. There's going to be a storm. Close all the windows.
Call the children in. . . . "Mother, here we are, all of us." "Is that you, Hapsy?" "Oh,
no, I'm Lydia. We drove as fast as we could." Their faces drifted above her, drifted
away. The rosary fell out of her hands and Lydia put it back. Jimmy tried to help,
their hands fumbled together, and Granny closed two fingers around Jimmy's thumb.
Beads wouldn't do, it must be something alive. She was so amazed her thoughts ran
round and round. So, my dear Lord, this is my death and I wasn't even thinking
about it. My children have come to see me die. But I can't, it's not time. Oh, I always
50
55
hated surprises. I wanted to give Cornelia the amethyst setCornelia, you're to have
the amethyst set, but Hapsy's to wear it when she wants, and, Doctor Harry, do shut
up. Nobody sent for you. Oh, my dear Lord, do wait a minute. I meant to do something about the Forty Acres, Jimmy doesn't need it and Lydia will later on, with that
worthless husband of hers. I meant to finish the altar cloth and send six bottles of
wine to Sister Borgia for her dyspepsia. I want to send six bottles of wine to Sister
Borgia, Father Connolly, now don't let me forget.
Cornelia's voice made short turns and tilted over and crashed, "Oh, Mother, oh,
Mother, oh, Mother
"
"I'm not going, Cornelia. I'm taken by surprise. I can't go."
You'll see Hapsy again. What about her? "I thought you'd never come." Granny
made a long journey outward, looking for Hapsy. What if I don't find her? What
then? Her heart sank down and down, there was no bottom to death, she couldn't
come to the end of it. The blue light from Cornelia's lampshade drew into a tiny
point in the center of her brain, it flickered and winked like an eye, quietly it fluttered and dwindled. Granny lay curled down within herself, amazed and watchful,
staring at the point of light that was herself; her body was now only a deeper mass of
shadow in an endless darkness and this darkness would curl around the light and
swallow it up. God, give a sign!
For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom and the priest in
the house. She could not remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them
all away. Oh, no, there's nothing more cruel than thisI'll never forgive it. She
stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light.
QUESTIONS
1. In the very first paragraph, what does the writer tell us about Ellen (Granny) Weatherall?
2. What does the name of Weatherall have to do with Granny's nature (or her life story)?
What other traits or qualities do you find in her?
3. "Her bones felt loose, and floated around in her skin, and Doctor Harry floated like a
balloon" (paragraph 6). What do you understand from this statement? By what other
remarks does the writer indicate Granny's condition? In paragraph 56, why does Father
Connolly tickle Granny's feet? At what other moments in the story does she fail to
understand what is happening, or confuse the present with the past?
4. Exactly what happened to Ellen Weatherall sixty years earlier? What effects did this
event have on her?
5. In paragraph 49, whom do you guess to be the man who "cursed like a sailor's parrot"? In
paragraph 56, whom do you assume to be the man driving the cart? Is the fact that these
persons are not clearly labeled and identified a failure on the author's part?
6. What is stream of consciousness? Would you call "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" a
stream of consciousness story? Refer to the story in your reply.
7. Sum up the character of the daughter Cornelia.
8. Why doesn't Granny's last child Hapsy come to her mother's deathbed?
9. Would you call the character of Doctor Harry "flat" or "round"? Why is his flatness (or
roundness) appropriate to the story?
10. How is this the story of another "jilting"? What is similar between that fateful day of sixty
years ago (described in paragraphs 29, 49, and 61) and the moment when Granny is
dying? This time, who is the "bridegroom" not in the house?
11. "This is the story of an eighty-year-old woman lying in bed, getting groggy, and dying. I
can't see why it should interest anybody." Flow would you answer this critic?
Katherine Mansfield
Miss Brill
Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp (1888-1923),
who
shortened her byline, was born into a sedate Victorian
family in New Zealand, daughter of a successful businessman. At fifteen, she emigrated to England to attend
school and did not ever permanently return Down Under. In 1918, after a time of wild-oat sowing in bohemian London, she married the journalist and critic
John Middleton Murry. All at once, Mansfield found
herself struggling to define her sexual identity, to earn a
living by her pen, to endure World War I (in which her
brother was killed in action), and to survive the ravages
of tuberculosis. She died at thirty-four, in France, at a
spiritualist commune where she had sought to regain her
health. Mansfield wrote no novels, but during her brief
career concentrated on the short story, in which form of
1922
KATHERINE MANSFIELD
art she has few peers. Bliss (1920) and The GardenParty and Other Stories (1922) ivere greeted with an acclaim that has continued; her collected short stories were published in 1937. Some of her stories celebrate life, others wryly
poke fun at it. Many reveal, in ordinary lives, small incidents that open like doorways into
significances.
Although it was so brilliantly finethe blue sky powdered with gold and great
spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins PubliquesMiss Brill was glad
that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your
mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip,
and now and again a leaf came driftingfrom nowhere, from the sky. Miss Brill put
up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She
had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken out the moth-powder, given it a
good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes. "What has been happening to me?" said the sad little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her
again from the red eider-down! . . . But the nose, which was of some black composition, wasn't at all firm. It must have had a knock, somehow. Never minda little dab
of black sealing-wax when the time camewhen it was absolutely necessary.... Little
rogue! Yes, she really felt like that about it. Little rogue biting its tail just by her left
ear. She could have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt a tingling in her hands and arms, but that came from walking, she supposed. And when
she breathed, something light and sadno, not sad, exactlysomething gentle
seemed to move in her bosom.
There were a number of people out this afternoon, far more than last Sunday.
And the band sounded louder and gayer. That was because the Season had begun.
For although the band played all year round on Sundays, out of season it was never
the same. It was like some one playing with only the family to listen; it didn't care
how it played if there weren't any strangers present. Wasn't the conductor wearing a
new coat, too? She was sure it was new. He scraped with his foot and flapped his arms
like a rooster about to crow, and the bandsmen sitting in the green rotunda blew out
their cheeks and glared at the music. Now there came a little "fiutey" bitvery
pretty!a little chain of bright drops. She was sure it would be repeated. It was; she
lifted her head and smiled.
Only two people shared her "special" seat: a fine old man in a velvet coat, his
hands clasped over a huge carved walking-stick, and a big old woman, sitting upright,
with a roll of knitting on her embroidered apron. They did not speak. This was disappointing, for Miss Brill always looked forward to the conversation. She had become
really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in
other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.
She glanced, sideways, at the old couple. Perhaps they would go soon. Last Sunday,
too, hadn't been as interesting as usual. An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a
dreadful Panama hat and she button boots. And she'd gone on the whole time about
how she ought to wear spectacles; she knew she needed them; but that it was no good
getting any; they'd be sure to break and they'd never keep on. And he'd been so patient. He'd suggested everythinggold rims, the kind that curved round your ears,
little pads inside the bridge. No, nothing would please her. "They'll always be sliding
down my nose!" Miss Brill wanted to shake her.
The old people sat on the bench, still as statues. Never mind, there was always
the crowd to watch. T o and fro, in front of the flower-beds and the band rotunda, the
couples and groups paraded, stopped to talk, to greet, to buy a handful of flowers from
the old beggar who had his tray fixed to the railings. Little children ran among them,
swooping and laughing; little boys with big white silk bows under their chins, little
girls, little French dolls, dressed up in velvet and lace. And sometimes a tiny staggerer came suddenly rocking into the open from under the trees, stopped, stared, as
suddenly sat down "flop," until its small high-stepping mother, like a young hen,
rushed scolding to its rescue. Other people sat on the benches and green chairs, but
they were nearly always the same, Sunday after Sunday, andMiss Brill had often
noticedthere was something funny about nearly all of them. They were odd, silent,
nearly all old, and from the way they stared they looked as though they'd just come
from dark little rooms or eveneven cupboards!
Behind the rotunda the slender trees with yellow leaves down drooping, and
through them just a line of sea, and beyond the blue sky with gold-veined clouds.
Turn-turn-turn tiddle-um! tiddle-um! turn tiddley-um turn ta! blew the band.
Two young girls in red came by and two young soldiers in blue met them, and
they laughed and paired and went off arm-in-arm. Two peasant women with funny
straw hats passed, gravely, leading beautiful smoke-colored donkeys. A cold, pale nun
hurried by. A beautiful woman came along and dropped her bunch of violets, and a
little boy ran after to hand them to her, and she took them and threw them away as if
they'd been poisoned. Dear me! Miss Brill didn't know wrhether to admire that or
not! And now an ermine toque and a gentleman in grey met just in front of her. Fie
was tall, stiff, dignified, and she was wearing the ermine toque she'd bought when her
hair was yellow. Now everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes, was the same
color as the shabby ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips,
was a tiny yellowish paw. Oh, she was so pleased to see himdelighted! She rather
thought they were going to meet that afternoon. She described where she'd b e e n
everywhere, here, there, along by the sea. T h e day was so charmingdidn't he agree?
And wouldn't he, perhaps? . . . But he shook his head, lighted a cigarette, slowly
breathed a great deep puff into her face, and, even while she was still talking and
laughing, flicked the match away and walked on. T h e ermine toque was alone; she
smiled more brightly than ever. But even the band seemed to know what she was
feeling and played more softly, played tenderly, and the drum beat, "The Brute! The
Brute!" over and over. What would she do? What was going to happen now? But as
Miss Brill wondered, the ermine toque turned, raised her hand as though she'd seen
some one else, much nicer, just over there, and pattered away. And the band
changed again and played more quickly, more gaily than ever, and the old couple on
Miss Brill's seat got up and marched away, and such a funny old man with long
whiskers hobbled along in time to the music and was nearly knocked over by four
girls walking abreast.
Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here,
watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play. Who could believe the
sky at the back wasn't painted? But it wasn't till a little brown dog trotted on solemn
and then slowly trotted off, like a little "theatre" dog, a little dog that had been
drugged, that Miss Brill discovered what it was that made it so exciting. They were all
on the stage. They weren't only the audience, not only looking on; they were acting.
Even she had a part and came every Sunday. No doubt somebody would have noticed
if she hadn't been there; she was part of the performance after all. How strange she'd
never thought of it like that before! And yet it explained why she made such a point
of starting from home at just the same time each weekso as not to be late for the
performanceand it also explained why she had quite a queer, shy feeling at telling
her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons. No wonder! Miss Brill
nearly laughed out loud. She was on the stage. She thought of the old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper four afternoons a week while he slept in the
garden. She had got quite used to the frail head on the cotton pillow, the hollowed
eyes, the open mouth and the high pinched nose. If he'd been dead she mightn't
have noticed for weeks; she wouldn't have minded. But suddenly he knew he was
having the paper read to him by an actress! "An actress!" The old head lifted; two
points of light quivered in the old eyes. "An actressare ye?" And Miss Brill
smoothed the newspaper as though it were the manuscript of her part and said gently:
"Yes, I have been an actress for a long time."
The band had been having a rest. Now they started again. And what they played
was warm, sunny, yet there was just a faint chilla something, what was it?not sadnessno, not sadnessa something that made you want to sing. The tune lifted,
lifted, the light shone; and it seemed to Miss Brill that in another moment all of them,
all the whole company, would begin singing. The young ones, the laughing ones who
were moving together, they would begin, and the men's voices, very resolute and
brave, would join them. And then she too, she too, and the others on the benches
they would come in with a kind of accompanimentsomething low, that scarcely
rose or fell, something so beautifulmoving . . . And Miss Brill's eyes filled with tears
and she looked smiling at all the other members of the company. Yes, we understand,
we understand, she thoughtthough what they understood she didn't know.
Just at that moment a boy and a girl came and sat down where the old couple
had been. They were beautifully dressed; they were in love. The hero and heroine, of
course, just arrived from, his father's yacht. And still soundlessly singing, still with
that trembling smile, Miss Brill prepared to listen.
"No, not now," said the girl. "Not here, I can't."
"But why? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there?" asked the boy.
"Why does she come here at allwho wants her? Why doesn't she keep her silly old
-mug at home?"
10
"It's her fu-fur which is so funny," giggled the girl. "It's exactly like a fried whiting."
"Ah, be off with you!" said the boy in an angry whisper. Then: "Tell me, my
petite cherie"
"No, not here," said the girl. "Not yet"
On her way home she usually bought a slice of honeycake at the baker's. It was
her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made
a great difference. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny presenta surprisesomething that might very well not have been there. She hurried
on the almond Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.
Rut to-day she passed the baker's boy, climbed the stairs, went into the little
dark roomher room like a cupboardand sat down on the red eiderdown. She sat
there for a long time. The box that the fur came out of w7as on the bed. She unclasped
the necklet quickly; quickly, without looking, laid it inside. But when she put the lid
on she thought she heard something crying.
QUESTIONS
1. What details provide insight into Miss Brill's character and lifestyle?
2. What point of view Is used in "Miss Brill"? How does this method improve the story?
3. Where and in what season does the story take place? Would the effect be the same if the
story were set, say, in a remote Alaskan village in the winter?
4. What draws Miss Brill to the park every Sunday? What is the nature of the startling revelation that delights her on the day the story takes place?
5. Miss Brill's sense of herself is at least partly based on her attitudes toward others. Give instances of this tendency, showing also how it is connected with her drastic change of mood.
6. What explanations might there be for Miss Brill's thinking, in the last line of the story,
that she "heard something crying"?
Tobias Wolff
The Rich Brother
Tobias Wolff was born in Birmingham, Alabama,
in 1945, the son of an aerospace engineer and a waitress and secretary. Following his parents' divorce, Tobias moved with his mother to Washington State
while his older brother, Geoffrey, remained with
their father (a pathological liar who was the subject
of Geoffrey Wolffs acclaimed memoir The Duke
of Deception). Tobias Wolff s own memoir, This
Boy's Life (1989), describes, among other things,
his tense relationship with his abusive stepfather; it
was the basis for the 1993 film starring Robert De
Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. In 1964 Wolff
joined the Army, where he spent four years, including a year in Vietnam as a Special Forces language expert. This experience is recounted in a second memoir, In Pharaoh's Army: Memories
TOBIAS W O L F F
of the Lost War (1994). After his military service, he earned a bachelor's degree at Oxford
University and a master s at Stanford University, where he currently teaches in the creative writing program. Wolff is the author of five volumes of fiction, the novella The Barracks Thief
(1984, PEN/Faulkner Award), the novel Old School (2003), and three volumes of short stories, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981), Back in the World (1985),
and The Night in Question (1996).
Acknowledging Raymond Carver (his onetime faculty colleague at Syracuse University) and Flarmery O'Connor as influences, Wolff writes stories that, in the words of one
critic, create a "sometimes comic, always compassionate world of ordinary people who suffer twentieth-century martyrdoms of growing up, growing old, loving and lacking love, living
with parents and lovers and wives and their own weaknesses." He himself has said: uAll my
stories are in one way or another autobiographical. Sometimes they're autobiographical in
the actual events which they describe, sometimes more in their depiction of a particular character. In fact, you could say that all of my characters are reflections of myself, in that I share
their wish to count for something and their almost complete confusion as to how this is supposed to be done " Wolff lives in Northern California.
There were two brothers, Pete and Donald.
Pete, the older brother, was in real estate. He and his wife had a Century 21 franchise in Santa Cruz. Pete worked hard and made a lot of money, but not any more
than he thought he deserved. He had two daughters, a sailboat, a house from which
he could see a thin slice of the ocean, and friends doing well enough in their own
lives not to wish bad luck on him. Donald, the younger brother, was still single. He
lived alone, painted houses when he found the work, and got deeper in debt to Pete
when he didn't.
No one would have taken them for brothers. Where Pete was stout and hearty
and at home in the world, Donald was bony, grave, and obsessed with the fate of his
soul. Over the years Donald had worn the images of two different Perfect Masters0
around his neck. Out of devotion to the second of these he entered an ashram0 in
Berkeley, where he nearly died of undiagnosed hepatitis. By the time Pete finished
paying the medical bills Donald had become a Christian. He drifted from church to
church, then joined a pentecostal community that met somewhere in the Mission
District 0 to sing in tongues and swap prophecies.
Pete couldn't make sense of it. Their parents were both dead, but while they
were alive neither of them had found it necessary to believe in anything. They managed to be decent people without making fools of themselves, and Pete had the same
ambition. He thought that the whole thing was an excuse for Donald to take himself
seriously.
The trouble was that Donald couldn't content himself with worrying about his
own soul. He had to worry about everyone else's, and especially Pete's. He handed
down his judgments in ways that he seemed to consider subtle: through significant
silence, innuendo, looks of mild despair that said, Brother, what have you come to?
What Pete had come to, as far as he could tell, was prosperity. That was the real issue
between them. Pete prospered and Donald did not prosper.
Perfect Masters: in Hindu mysticism, God-realized souls who work to help others toward the
realization of God. ashram: secluded place where a community of Hindus lead lives of simplicity and meditation. Mission District: run-down and, at one time, dangerous section of San
Francisco.
At the age of forty Pete took up sky diving. He made his first jump with two
friends who'd started only a few months earlier and were already doing stunts. He
never would have used the word mystical, but that was how7 Pete felt about the experience. Later he made the mistake of trying to describe it to Donald, who kept asking
how much it cost and then acted appalled when Pete told him.
"At least Pm trying something new," Pete said. "At least Pm breaking the pattern."
Not long after that conversation Donald also broke the pattern, by going to live
on a farm outside Paso Robles. The farm was owned by several members of Donald's
community, who had bought it and moved there with the idea of forming a family of
faith. That was how Donald explained it in the first letter he sent. Every week Pete
heard how happy Donald was, how "in the Lord." He told Pete that he was praying
for him, he and the rest of Pete's brothers and sisters on the farm.
"1 only have one brother," Pete wanted to answer, "and that's enough." But he
kept this thought to himself.
In November the letters stopped. Pete didn't worry about this at first, but when
he called Donald at Thanksgiving Donald was grim. He tried to sound upbeat but he
didn't try hard enough to make it convincing. "Now listen," Pete said, "you don't
have to stay in that place if you don't want to."
"I'll be all right," Donald answered.
"That's not the point. Being all right is not the point. If you don't like what's going on up there, then get out."
"I'm all right," Donald said again, more firmly. "I'm doing fine."
But he called Pete a week later and said that he was quitting the farm. When
Pete asked him where he intended to go, Donald admitted that he had no plan. His
car had been repossessed just before he left the city, and he was flat broke.
"I guess you'll have to stay with us," Pete said.
Donald put up a show of resistance. Then he gave in. "Just until I get my feet on
the ground," he said.
"Right," Pete said. "Check out your options." He told Donald he'd send him
money for a bus ticket, but as they were about to hang up Pete changed his mind. He
knew that Donald would try hitchhiking to save the fare. Pete didn't want him out
on the road all alone where some head case would pick him up, where anything could
happen to him.
"Better yet," he said, "I'll come and get you."
"You don't have to do that. I didn't expect you to do that," Donald said. He
added, "It's a pretty long drive."
"Just tell me how to get there."
But Donald wouldn't give him directions. He said that the farm was too depressing,
that Pete wouldn't like it. Instead, he insisted on meeting Pete at a service station
called Jonathan's Mechanical Emporium.
"You must be kidding," Pete said.
"It's close to the highway," Donald said. "I didn't name it."
"That's one for the collection," Pete said.
The day before he left to bring Donald home, Pete received a letter from a man
who described himself as "head of household" at the farm where Donald had been
living. From this letter Pete learned that Donald had not quit the farm, but had
been asked to leave. The letter was written on the back of a mimeographed survey
form asking people to record their response to a ceremony of some kind. T h e last
question said:
What did you feel during the liturgy ?
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Being
Becoming
Being and Becoming
None of the Above
All of the Above
Pete tried to forget the letter. But of course he couldn't. Each time he thought of
it he felt crowded and breathless, a feeling that came over him again when he drove
into the service station and saw Donald sitting against a wall with his head on his
knees. It was late afternoon. A paper cup tumbled slowly past Donald's feet, pushed
by the damp wind.
Pete honked and Donald raised his head. He smiled at Pete, then stood and
stretched. His arms were long and thin and white. He wore a red bandanna across his
forehead, a T-shirt with a couple of words on the front. Pete couldn't read them because the letters were inverted.
"Grow up," Pete yelled. "Get a Mercedes."
Donald came up to the window. He bent down and said, "Thanks for coming.
You must be totally whipped."
"I'll make it." Pete pointed at Donald's T-shirt. "What's that supposed to say?"
Donald looked down at his shirt front. "Try God. I guess I put it on backwards.
Pete, could I borrow a couple of dollars? I owe these people for coffee and sandwiches."
Pete took five twenties from his wallet and held them out the window.
Donald stepped back as if horrified. "I don't need that much."
"I can't keep track of all these nickels and dimes," Pete said, "just pay me back
when your ship comes in." He waved the bills impatiently. "Go ontake it."
"Only for now." Donald took the money and went into the service station office.
He came out carrying two orange sodas, one of which he gave to Pete as he got into
the car. "My treat," he said.
"No bags?"
"Wow, thanks for reminding me." Donald balanced his drink on the dashboard, but the slight rocking of the car as he got out tipped it onto the passenger's
seat, where half its contents foamed over before Pete could snatch it up again.
Donald looked on while Pete held the bottle out the window, soda running down
his fingers.
"Wipe it up," Pete told him. "Quick!"
"With what?"
Pete stared at Donald. "That shirt. Use the shirt."
Donald pulled a long face but did as he was told, his pale skin puckering against
the wind.
"Great, just great," Pete said. "We haven't even left the gas station yet."
Afterwards, on the highway, Donald said, "This is a new car, isn't it?"
"Yes. This is a new car."
"Is that why you're so upset about the seat?"
"Forget it, okay? Let's just forget about it."
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45
" I said I was sorry."
P e t e said, " I just w i s h y o u ' d b e m o r e careful. T h e s e seats are m a d e o f leather. T h a t
s t a i n w o n ' t c o m e out, n o t t o m e n t i o n t h e smell. I d o n ' t see w h y I c a n ' t h a v e
leather
seats that s m e l l like leather i n s t e a d o f o r a n g e p o p . "
" W h a t was w r o n g with the other car?"
Pete g l a n c e d o v e r at D o n a l d . D o n a l d h a d raised t h e h o o d o f the b l u e sweatshirt
50
h e ' d p u t o n . T h e p e a k e d h o o d a b o v e h i s g a u n t , w a t c h f u l face g a v e h i m t h e l o o k o f a n
inquisitor.
" T h e r e w a s n ' t a n y t h i n g w r o n g w i t h it," P e t e said. " I just h a p p e n e d to like t h i s o n e
better."
Donald
nodded.
T h e r e w a s a l o n g s i l e n c e b e t w e e n t h e m as P e t e d r o v e o n a n d t h e d a y d a r k e n e d tow a r d e v e n i n g . O n e i t h e r side o f t h e r o a d lay s t u b b l e - c o v e r e d fields. A
line of low hills
r a n a l o n g t h e h o r i z o n , t o p p e d h e r e a n d t h e r e w i t h trees b l a c k a g a i n s t t h e g r e y sky. I n
the a p p r o a c h i n g line o f cars a driver t u r n e d o n h i s headlights. Pete d i d the same.
" S o w h a t h a p p e n e d ? " h e a s k e d . " F a r m life n o t y o u r b a g ? "
D o n a l d t o o k s o m e t i m e to a n s w e r , a n d at last h e said, s i m p l y , " I t w a s m y fault."
55
" W h a t was your fault?"
" T h e w h o l e thing. D o n ' t play d u m b , Pete. I k n o w they wrote to you."
Donald
l o o k e d at P e t e , t h e n s t a r e d o u t t h e w i n d s h i e l d a g a i n .
" I ' m not playing dumb."
D o n a l d shrugged.
" A l l I r e a l l y k n o w is t h e y a s k e d y o u t o l e a v e , " P e t e w e n t o n . " I d o n ' t k n o w a n y o f
60
the particulars."
" I b l e w it," D o n a l d said. " B e l i e v e m e , y o u d o n ' t w a n t t o h e a r t h e g o r y details."
" S u r e I d o , " Pete said. H e added, " E v e r y b o d y likes the gory details."
" Y o u m e a n e v e r y b o d y likes to hear h o w s o m e o n e m e s s e d up."
" R i g h t , " P e t e s a i d . " T h a t ' s t h e w a y it is h e r e o n S p a c e s h i p E a r t h . "
D o n a l d b e n t o n e k n e e o n t o the f r o n t seat a n d l e a n e d against t h e d o o r so that h e
was facing Pete instead of the windshield. Pete was aware of D o n a l d ' s scrutiny.
waited. N i g h t was c o m i n g o n in a rush n o w ,
filling
65
He
the h o l l o w s of the land. D o n a l d ' s
l o n g c h e e k s a n d deep-set eyes were d a r k w i t h s h a d o w . Flis b r o w w a s white. " D o
you
ever d r e a m about m e ? " D o n a l d asked.
" D o I e v e r d r e a m a b o u t y o u ? W h a t k i n d o f a q u e s t i o n is t h a t ? O f c o u r s e I d o n ' t
d r e a m a b o u t y o u , " Pete said, untruthfully.
" W h a t do you dream about?"
"Sex and money. Mostly money. A
n i g h t m a r e is w h e n I d r e a m I d o n ' t h a v e a n y . "
" Y o u ' r e just m a k i n g t h a t u p , " D o n a l d said.
70
Pete smiled.
" S o m e t i m e s I w a k e u p at n i g h t , " D o n a l d w e n t o n , " a n d I c a n tell y o u ' r e d r e a m i n g
about me."
" W e were t a l k i n g a b o u t the f a r m , " Pete said. " L e t ' s
finish
that conversation
and
t h e n we c a n talk about our various out-of-body experiences a n d the interesting things
we did during previous
incarnations."
For a m o m e n t D o n a l d l o o k e d like a g r i n n i n g skull; t h e n h e turned serious again.
" T h e r e ' s n o t m u c h to tell," h e said. " I just d i d n ' t d o a n y t h i n g r i g h t . "
" T h a t ' s a little v a g u e , " P e t e said.
" W e l l , l i k e t h e g r o c e r i e s . W h e n e v e r it w a s m y t u r n t o g e t t h e g r o c e r i e s I ' d b l o w it
s o m e h o w . I ' d b r i n g t h e g r o c e r i e s h o m e a n d h a l f o f t h e m w o u l d b e m i s s i n g , o r Yd
have
75
all the wrong things, the wrong kind of flour or the wrong kind of chocolate or whatever. One time I gave them away. It's not funny, Pete."
Pete said, "Who did you give the groceries to?"
"Just some people I picked up on the way home. Some ft eldworkers. They had
about eight kids with them and they didn't even speak Englishjust nodded their
heads. Still, I shouldn't have given away the groceries. Not all of them, anyway. I really learned my lesson about that. You have to be practical. You have to be fair to
yourself." Donald leaned forward, and Pete could sense his excitement. "There's nothing actually wrong with being in business," he said. "As long as you're fair to other
people you can still be fair to yourself. I'm thinking of going into business, Pete."
"We'll talk about it," Pete said. "So, that's the story? There isn't any more to it
than that?"
"What did they tell you?" Donald asked.
"Nothing."
"They must have told you something."
Pete shook his head.
"They didn't tell you about the fire?" When Pete shook his head again Donald regarded him for a time, then folded his arms across his chest and slumped back into the
corner. "Everybody had to take turns cooking dinner. I usually did tuna casserole or
spaghetti with garlic bread. But this one night I thought I'd do something different,
something really interesting." Donald looked sharply at Pete. "It's all a big laugh to
you, isn't it?"
"I'm sorry," Pete said.
"You don't know when to quit. You just keep hitting away."
"Tell me about the lire, Donald."
Donald kept watching him. "You have this compulsion to make me look foolish."
"Come off it, Donald. Don't make a big thing out of this."
"I know why you do it. It's because you don't have any purpose in life. You're
afraid to relate to people who do, so you make fun of them."
"Relate," Pete said.
"You're basically a very frightened individual," Donald said. "Very threatened.
You've always been like that. Do you remember when you used to try to kill me?"
"I don't have any compulsion to make you look foolish, Donaldyou do it yourself. You're doing it right now."
"You can't tell me you don't remember," Donald said. "It was after my operation.
You remember that."
"Sort of." Pete shrugged. "Not really."
"Oh yes," Donald said. "Do you want to see the scar?"
"I remember you had an operation. I don't remember the specifics, that's all. And
I sure as hell don't remember trying to kill you."
"Oh yes," Donald repeated, maddeningly. "You bet your life you did. All the time.
The thing was, I couldn't have anything happen to me where they sewed me up because then my intestines would come apart again and poison me. That was a big issue,
Pete. Mom was always in a state about me climbing trees and so on. And you used to
hit me there every chance you got."
"Mom was in a state every time you burped," Pete said. "I don't know. Maybe I
bumped into you accidentally once or twice. I never did it deliberately."
"Every chance you got," Donald said. "Like when the folks went out at night and
'left you to baby-sit. I'd hear them say good night, and then I'd hear the car start up,
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95
and when they were gone I'd lie there and listen. After a while I would hear you coming down the hall, and I would close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. There were
nights when you would stand outside the door, just stand there, and then go away
again. But most nights you'd open the door and I would hear you in the room with
me, breathing. You'd come over and sit next to me on the bedyou remember, Pete,
you have toyou'd sit next to me on the bed and pull the sheets back. If I was on my
stomach you'd roll me over. Then you would lift up my pajama shirt and start hitting
me on my stitches. You'd hit me as hard as you could, over and over. I was afraid that
you'd get mad if you knew I was awake. Is that strange or what? I was afraid that you'd
get mad if you found out that I knew you were trying to kill me." Donald laughed.
"Come on, you can't tell me you don't remember that."
"It might have happened once or twice. Kids do those things. I can't get all excited about something I maybe did twenty-five years ago."
"No maybe about it. You did it."
Pete said, "You're wearing me out with this stuff. We've got a long drive ahead of
us and if you don't back off pretty soon we aren't going to make it. You aren't, anyway."
Donald turned away.
"I'm doing my best," Pete said. The self-pity in his own voice made the words
sound like a lie. But they weren't a lie! He was doing his best.
The car topped a rise. In the distance Pete saw a cluster of lights that blinked out
when he started downhill. There was no moon. The sky was low and black.
"Come to think of it," Pete said, "I did have a dream about you the other night."
Then he added, impatiently, as if Donald were badgering him, "A couple of other
nights, too. I'm getting hungry," he said.
"The same dream?"
"Different dreams. I only remember one of them. There was something wrong
with me, and you were helping out. Taking care of me. Just the two of us. I don't
know where everyone else was supposed to be."
Pete left it at that. He didn't tell Donald that in this dream he was blind.
"I wonder if that was when I woke up," Donald said. He added, "I'm sorry I got into
that thing about my scar. I keep trying to forget it but I guess I never will. Not really. It
was pretty strange, having someone around all the time who wanted to get rid of me."
"Kid stuff," Pete said. "Ancient history."
They ate dinner at a Denny's on the other side of King City. As Pete was paying
the check he heard a man behind him say, "Excuse me, but I wonder if I might ask
which way you're going?" and Donald answer, "Santa Cruz."
"Perfect," the man said.
Pete could see him in the fish-eye mirror above the cash register: a red blazer
with some kind of crest on the pocket, little black moustache, glossy black hair
combed down on his forehead like a Roman emperor's. A rug, Pete thought. Definitely a rug.
Pete got his change and turned. "Why is that perfect?" he asked.
The man looked at Pete. He had a soft, ruddy face that was doing its best to express pleasant surprise, as if this new wrinkle were all he could have wished for, but
the eyes behind the aviator glasses showed signs of regret. His lips were moist and
shiny. "I take it you're together," he said.
"You got it," Pete told him.
"All the better, then," the man went on. "It so happens I'm going to Santa Cruz
myself. Had a spot of car trouble down the road. T h e old Caddy let me down."
"What kind of trouble?" Pete asked.
"Engine trouble," the man said. "Pm afraid it's a bit urgent. My daughter is sick.
Urgently sick. I've got a telegram here." He patted the breast pocket of his blazer.
Before Pete could say anything Donald got into the act again. "No problem,"
Donald said. "We've got tons of room."
"Not that much room," Pete said.
Donald nodded. "I'll put my things in the trunk."
"The trunk's full," Pete told him.
"It so happens I'm traveling light," the man said. "This leg of the trip anyway. In
fact, I don't have any luggage at this particular time."
Pete said, "Left it in the old Caddy, did you?"
"Exactly," the man said.
"No problem," Donald repeated. He walked outside and the man went with him.
Together they strolled across the parking lot, Pete following at a distance. When
they reached Pete's car Donald raised his face to the sky, and the man did the same.
They stood there looking up. "Dark night," Donald said.
"Stygian," the man said.
Pete still had it in his mind to brush him off, but he didn't do that. Instead he
unlocked the door for him. He wanted to see what would happen. It was an adventure, but not a dangerous adventure. The man might steal Pete's ashtrays but he
wouldn't kill him. If Pete got killed on the road it would be by some spiritual person
in a sweatsuit, someone with his eyes on the far horizon and a wet Try God T-shirt in
his duffel bag.
As soon as they left the parking lot the man lit a cigar. He blew a cloud of smoke
over Pete's shoulder and sighed with pleasure. "Put it out," Pete told him.
"Of course," the man said. Pete looked in the rearview mirror and saw the man
take another long puff before dropping the cigar out the window. "Forgive me," he
said. "I should have asked. Name's Webster, by the way."
Donald turned and looked back at him. "First name or last?"
The man hesitated. "Last," he said finally.
"I know a Webster," Donald said. "Mick Webster."
"There are many of us," Webster said.
"Big fellow, wooden leg," Pete said.
Donald gave Pete a look.
Webster shook his head. "Doesn't ring a bell. Still, I wouldn't deny the connection.
Might be one of the cousinry."
"What's your daughter got?" Pete asked.
"That isn't clear," Webster answered. "It appears to be a female complaint of
some nature. Then again it may be tropical." He was quiet for a moment, and added:
"If indeed it is tropical, I will have to assume some of the blame myself. It was my
own vaulting ambition that first led us to the tropics and kept us in the tropics all
those many years, exposed to every evil. Truly I have much to answer for. I left my
wife there."
Donald said quietly, "You mean she died?"
"I buried her with these hands. The earth will be repaid, gold for gold."
"Which tropics?" Pete asked.
"The tropics of Peru."
"What part of Peru are they in?"
"The lowlands," Webster said.
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"What's it like down there? In the lowlands."
"Another world," Webster said. His tone was sepulchral. "A world better imagined than described."
"Far out," Pete said.
The three men rode in silence for a time. A line of trucks went past in the other
direction, trailers festooned with running lights, engines roaring.
"Yes," Webster said at last, "I have much to answer for."
Pete smiled at Donald, but Donald had turned in his seat again and was gazing at
Webster. "Fm sorry about your wife," Donald said.
"What did she die of?" Pete asked.
"A wasting illness," Webster said. "The doctors have no name for it, but I do."
He leaned forward and said, fiercely, "Greed. My greed, not hers. She wanted no part
of it."
Pete bit his lip. Webster was a find and Pete didn't want to scare him off by hooting at him. In a voice low and innocent of knowingness, he asked, "What took you
there?"
"It's difficult for me to talk about."
"Try," Pete told him.
"A cigar would make it easier."
Donald turned to Pete and said, "It's okay with me."
"All right," Pete said. "Go ahead. Just keep the window rolled down."
"Much obliged." A match flared. There were eager sucking sounds.
"Let's hear it," Pete said.
"I am by training an engineer," Webster began. "My work has exposed me to all
but one of the continents, to desert and alp and forest, to every terrain and season of
the earth. Some years ago I was hired by the Peruvian government to search for tungsten in the tropics. My wife and daughter accompanied me. We were the only white
people for a thousand miles in any direction, and we had no choice but to live as the
Indians livedto share their food and drink and even their culture."
Pete said, "You knew the lingo, did you?"
"We picked it up." The ember of the cigar bobbed up and down. "We were used
to learning as necessity decreed. At any rate, it became evident after a couple of years
that there was no tungsten to be found. My wife had fallen ill and was pleading to be
taken home. But I was deaf to her pleas, because by then I was on the trail of another
metala metal far more valuable than tungsten."
"Let me guess," Pete said. "Gold?"
Donald looked at Pete, then back at Webster.
"Gold," Webster said. "A vein of gold greater than the Mother Lode itself. After
I found the first traces of it nothing could tear me away from my searchnot the
sickness of my wife or anything else. I was determined to uncover the vein, and so I
didbut not before I laid my wife to rest. As I say, the earth will be repaid."
Webster was quiet. Then he said, "But life must go on. In the years since my
wife's death I have been making the arrangements necessary to open the mine. I
could have clone it immediately, of course, enriching myself beyond measure, but I
knew what that would meanthe exploitation of our beloved Indians, the brutal destruction of their environment. I felt I had too much to atone for already." Webster
paused, and when he spoke again his voice was dull and rushed, as if he had used up
all the interest he had in his own words. "Instead I drew up a program for returning
the bulk of the wealth to the Indians themselves. A kind of trust fund. T h e interest
alone will allow them to secure their ancient lands and rights in perpetuity. At the
same time, our investors will he rewarded a thousandfold. Two-thousandfold. Everyone will prosper together."
"That's great," said Donald. "That's the way it ought to be."
Pete said, "I'm willing to bet that you just happen to have a few shares left. Am I
right?" ^
Webster made no reply.
"Well?" Pete knew that Webster was on to him now, but he didn't care. The
story had bored him. He'd expected something different, something original, and
Webster had let him down. He hadn't even tried. Pete felt sour and stale. His eyes
burned from cigar smoke and the high beams of road-hogging truckers. "Douse the
stogie," he said to Webster. "I told you to keep the window down."
"Got a little nippy back here."
175
Donald said, "Hey, Pete. Lighten up."
"Douse it!"
Webster sighed. He got rid of the cigar.
"I'm a wreck," Pete said to Donald. "You want to drive for a while?"
Donald nodded.
180
Pete pulled over and they changed places.
Webster kept his counsel in the back seat. Donald hummed while he drove, until
Pete told him to stop. Then everything was quiet.
Donald was humming again when Pete woke up. Pete stared sullenly at the road,
at the white lines sliding past the car. After a few moments of this he turned and said,
"How long have I been out?"
Donald glanced at him. "Twenty, twenty-five minutes."
Pete looked behind him and saw that Webster was gone. "Where's our friend?"
"You just missed him. He got out in Soledad. 0 He told me to say thanks and
good-bye."
"Soledad? What about his sick daughter? How did he explain her away?"
"He has a brother living there. He's going to borrow a car from him and drive the
rest of the way in the morning."
"I'll bet his brother's living there," Pete said. "Doing fifty concurrent life sentences.
His brother and his sister and his mom and his dad."
"I kind of liked him," Donald said.
"I'm sure you did," Pete said wearily.
"He was interesting. He's been places."
"His cigars had been places, I'll give you that."
"Come on, Pete."
"Come on yourself. What a phony."
"You don't know that."
"Sure I do."
"How? How do you know?"
Pete stretched. "Brother, there are some things you're just born knowing. What's
the gas situation?"
"We're a little low."
"Then why didn't you get some more?"
Soledad: city in central California, site of a state prison.
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"I wish you wouldn't snap at me like that," Donald said.
"Then why don't you use your head? What if we run out?"
" W e l l make it," Donald said. "I'm pretty sure we've got enough to make it. You
didn't have to be so rude to him," Donald added.
Pete took a deep breath. "I don't feel like running out of gas tonight, okay?"
Donald pulled in at the next station they came to and filled the tank while Pete
went to the men's room. When Pete came back, Donald was sitting in the passenger's
seat. The attendant came up to the driver's window as Pete got in behind the wheel.
He bent down and said, "Twelve fifty-five."
"You heard the man," Pete said to Donald.
Donald looked straight ahead. He didn't move.
"Cough up," Pete said. "This trip's on you."
"I can't."
"Sure you can. Break out that wad."
Donald glanced up at the attendant, then at Pete. "Please," he said. "Pete, I
don't have it anymore."
Pete took this in. He nodded, and paid the attendant.
Donald began to speak when they left the station but Pete cut him off. He said,
"I don't want to hear from you right now. You just keep quiet or I swear to God I
won't be responsible."
They left the fields and entered a tunnel of tall trees. The trees went on and on.
"Let me get this straight," Pete said at last. "You don't have the money I gave you."
"You treated him like a bug or something," Donald said.
"You don't have the money," Pete said again.
Donald shook his head.
"Since I bought dinner, and since we didn't stop anywhere in between, I assume
you gave it to Webster. Is that right? Is that what you did with it?"
"Yes."
Pete looked at Donald. His face was dark under the hood but he still managed to
convey a sense of remove, as if none of this had anything to do with him.
"Why?" Pete asked. "Why did you give it to him?" When Donald didn't answer,
Pete said, "A hundred dollars. Gone. Just like that. I 'worked for that money, Donald."
"I know, I know," Donald said.
"You don't know! How could you? You get money by holding out your hand."
"I work too," Donald said.
"You work too. Don't kid yourself, brother."
Donald leaned toward Pete, about to say something, but Pete cut him off again.
"You're not the only one on the payroll, Donald. I don't think you understand
that. I have a family."
"Pete, I'll pay you back."
"Like hell you will. A hundred dollars!" Pete hit the steering wheel with the palm
of his hand. "Just because you think I hurt some goofball's feelings. Jesus, Donald."
"That's not the reason," Donald said. "And I didn't just give him the money."
"What do you call it, then? What do you call what you did?"
"I invested it. I wanted a share, Pete." When Pete looked over at him Donald
nodded and said again, "I wanted a share."
Pete said, "I take it you're referring to the gold mine in Peru."
"Yes," Donald said.
"You believe that such a gold mine exists?"
Donald looked at Pete, and Pete could see him just beginning to catch on. "You'll
believe anything," Pete said. "Won't you? You really will believe anything at all."
"I'm sorry," Donald said, and turned away.
Pete drove on between the trees and considered the truth of what he had just said
that Donald would believe anything at all. And it came to him that it would be just like
this unfair life for Donald to come out ahead in the end, by believing in some outrageous
promise that would turn out to be true and that he, Pete, would reject out of hand because he was too wised up to listen to anybody's pitch anymore except for laughs. What
a joke. What a joke if there really was a blessing to be had, and the blessing didn't come
to the one who deserved it, the one who did all the work, but to the other.
And as if this had already happened Pete felt a shadow move upon him, darkening his thoughts. After a time he said, "I can see where all this is going, Donald."
"I'll pay you back," Donald said.
"No," Pete said. "You won't pay me back. You can't. You don't know how. All
you've ever done is take. All your life."
Donald shook his head.
"I see exactly where this is going," Pete went on. "You can't work, you can't take
care of yourself, you believe anything anyone tells you. Pm stuck with you, aren't I?"
He looked over at Donald. "I've got you on my hands for good."
Donald pressed his fingers against the dashboard as if to brace himself. "I'll get
out," he said.
Pete kept driving.
"Let me out," Donald said. "I mean it, Pete."
"Do you?"
Donald hesitated. "Yes," he said.
"Be sure," Pete told him. "This is it. This is for keeps."
"I mean it."
"All right. You made the choice." Pete braked the car sharply and swung it to
the shoulder of the road. He turned off the engine and got out. Trees loomed on both
sides, shutting out the sky. The air was cold and musty. Pete took Donald's duffel bag
from the back seat and set it down behind the car. He stood there, facing Donald in
the red glow of the taillights. "It's better this way," Pete said.
Donald just looked at him.
"Better for you," Pete said.
Donald hugged himself. He was shaking. "You don't have to say all that," he told
Pete. "I don't blame you."
"Blame me? What the hell are you talking about? Blame me for what?"
"For anything," Donald said.
"I want to know what you mean by blame me."
"Nothing. Nothing, Pete. You'd better get going. God bless you."
"That's it," Pete said. He dropped to one knee, searching the packed dirt with his
hands. He didn't know what he was looking for, his hands would know when they
found it.
Donald touchcd Pete's shoulder. "You'd better go," he said.
Somewhere in the trees Pete heard a branch snap. He stood up. He looked at Donald, then went back to the car and drove away. He drove fast, hunched over the wheel,
conscious of the wray he was hunched and the shallowness of his breathing, refusing to
look in the mirror above his head until there was nothing behind him but darkness.
Then he said, "A hundred dollars," as if there were someone to hear.
240
245
250
255
260
The trees gave way to fields. Metal fences ran beside the road, plastered with
windblown scraps of paper. Tide fog hung above the ditches, spilling into the road,
dimming the ghostly halogen lights that burned in the yards of the farms Pete passed.
The fog left beads of water rolling up the windshield.
Pete rummaged among his cassettes. He found Pachelbel's Canon 0 and pushed it
into the tape deck. When the violins began to play he leaned back and assumed an
attentive expression as if he were really listening to them. He smiled to himself like a
man at liberty to enjoy music, a man who has finished his work and settled his debts,
done all things meet and due.
And in this way, smiling, nodding to the music, he went another mile or so and
pretended that he was not already slowing down, that he was not going to turn back,
that he would be able to drive on like this, alone, and have the right answer when his
wife stood before him in the doorway of his home and asked, Where is he? Where is
your brother?
Q U E S T I O MS
1. Are the brothers in the story developing characters or static ones? Does either of" them
undergo a change, or do we simply learn more about their established personalities as the
story proceeds?
2. What point of view does Wolff employ in this story? Do Pete's perceptions of Donald
seem fundamentally sound to you, or is it necessary to go beyond them for a more objective appraisal?
3. Donald tells Pete that "you don't have any purpose in life. You're afraid to relate to people
who do, so you make fun of them" (paragraph 89). "You're basically a very frightened individual" (paragraph 91). Do you agree with this analysis or not? Explain.
4. Do you believe Donald's claim that Pete tried to kill him when they were children? Why
or why not?
5. In one of Pete's dreams he is blind and dependent on Donald to take care of him. Does
Pete really need Donald? If so, for what?
6. Near the end of the story, Pete wants to know what Donald means when he says "I don't
blame you." What clo you think he means?
7. Could this story have been called "My Brother's Keeper"? Explain.
Raymond Carver
Cathedral
1983
Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, Raymond Carver (1938-1988)
moved at three with his parents to Yakima, Washington, where his father found employment as a sawmill worker. In
his early years Carver worked brie fly at a lumber mill and at other unskilled jobs, including a
stint as a tulip-picker. Married with two children before he was twenty, he experienced bluecollar desperation on terms more intimate than have most American writers, though he once
quipped that, until he read critics' reactions to his works, he never realized that the characters in his stories uwere so bad offCareer
attended several universities, including Chico
State College, where he studied with novelist John Gardner, and Humboldt State College
Pachelbel's Canon: musical composition by Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706); it became widely
known through its use in the film Ordinary People (1980).
(now California State University, Humboldt), where he earned a degree in 1963. He briefly
attended the Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa, but pressured by the need to support his family, he returned to California, working for three years as a hospital custodian before finding a job editing textbooks. In 1967 he met Gordon Lish, the influential editor who
would publish several of his stories in Esquire, and had one of his early stories selected for
publication in The Best American Short Stories of 1967. Under Lish's demanding tutelage, Carver learned to strip his fiction of everything but the essentials. Through the early
1970s, though plagued with bankruptcies, increasing dependency on alcohol, and marital
problems, Carver began teaching in various one-year appointments at several universities.
Carver s publishing career began with a collection of poems, Near Klamath (1968).
His collections of short stories include Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1977), What
We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1983), and Where
Pm Calling From (1988), which contained new and selected work. The compression of
language he learned as a poet may in part account for the lean quality of his prose, what has
been termed "minimalista
term Carver himself did not like, complaining that the term
"smacks of smallness of vision and execution." In his last decade Carver taught creative
writing at Syracuse University, living with the poet Tess Gallagher, whom he married in
1988. His receipt of the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award in 1983 finally allowed
him to devote his full time to writing. He divided his remaining years between Syracuse and
Port Angeles, Washington. Carver s personal victory in 1977 over decades of alcoholism
underscored the many professional triumphs of his final decade. He once said, uIf you want
the truth, Ym prouder of that, that I quit drinking, than I am of anything in my life." His
reputation as a master craftsman of the contemporary short story was still growing at the end
of his life, which ended prematurely after a struggle with lung cancer.
This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he was on his way to spend the night.
His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife's relatives in Connecticut. He
called my wife from his in-laws'. Arrangements were made. Fie would come by train,
a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn't seen him
since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind
man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn't
enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me.
My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly
and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my
house was not something I looked forward to.
That summer in Seattle she had needed a job. She didn't have any money. The
man she was going to marry at the end of the summer was in officers' training school.
Fie didn't have any money, either. But she was in love with the guy, and he was in
love with her, etc. She'd seen something in the paper: HELP WANTEDReading to
Blind Man, and a telephone number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the
spot. She'd worked with this blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing. She helped him organize his little office in the county
social-service department. They'd become good friends, my wife and the blind man.
How do I know these things? She told me. And she told me something else. On her
last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to
this. She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her noseeven her
neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. She was always
trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something
really important had happened to her.
When we first started going out together, she showed me the poem. In the poem,
she recalled his fingers and the way they had moved around over her face. In the
poem, she talked about what she had felt at the time, about what went through her
mind when the blind man touched her nose and lips. I can remember I didn't think
much of the poem. Of course, I didn't tell her that. Maybe I just don't understand poetry. I admit it's not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to read.
Anyway, this man who'd first enjoyed her favors, the officer-to-be, he'd been
her childhood sweetheart. So okay. I'm saying that at the end of the summer she let
the blind man run his hands over her face, said good-bye to him, married her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle.
But they'd kept in touch, she and the blind man. She made the first contact after a
year or so. She called him up one night from an Air Force base in Alabama. She
wanted to talk. They talked. He asked her to send a tape and tell him about her
life. She did this. She sent the tape. On the tape, she told the blind man about her
husband and about their life together in the military. She told the blind man she
loved her husband but she didn't like it where they lived and she didn't like it that
he was part of the military-industrial thing. She told the blind man she'd written a
poem and he was in it. She told him that she was writing a poem about what it was
like to be an Air Force officer's wife. T h e poem wasn't finished yet. She was still
writing it. The blind man made a tape. He sent her the tape. She made a tape. This
went on for years. My wife's officer was posted to one base and then another. She
sent tapes from Moody AFB, McGuire, McConnell, and finally Travis, near Sacramento, where one night she got to feeling lonely and cut off from people she kept
losing in that moving-around life. She got to feeling she couldn't go it another
step. She went in and swallowed all the pills and capsules in the medicine chest
and washed them down with a bottle of gin. Then she got into a hot bath and
passed out.
But instead of dying, she got sick. She threw up. Her officerwhy should he
have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want?came
home from somewhere, found her, and called the ambulance. In time, she put it all
on a tape and sent the tape to the blind man. Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff
on tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split. Next to writing a poem every year, I
think it was her chief means of recreation. On one tape, she told the blind man she'd
decided to live away from her officer for a time. On another tape, she told him about
her divorce. She and I began going out, and of course she told her blind man about it.
She told him everything, or so it seemed to me. Once she asked me if I'd like to hear
the latest tape from the blind man. This was a year ago. I was on the tape, she said.
So I said okay, I'd listen to it. I got us drinks and we settled down in the living room.
We made ready to listen. First she inserted the tape into the player and adjusted a
couple of dials. Then she pushed a lever. The tape squeaked and someone began to
talk in this loud voice. She lowered the volume. After a few minutes of harmless
chitchat, I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn't
even know! And then this: "From all you've said about him, I can only conclude"
But we were interrupted, a knock at the door, something, and we didn't ever get back
to the tape. Maybe it was just as well. I'd heard all I wanted to.
Now this same blind man was coming to sleep in my house.
"Maybe I could take him bowling," I said to my wife. She was at the draining
board doing scalloped potatoes. She put down the knife she was using and turned
around.
"If you love me/' she said, "you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay.
But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I'd make him feel
comfortable." She wiped her hands with the dish towel.
"I don't have any blind friends," I said.
"You don't have any friends," she said. "Period. Besides," she said, "goddamn it,
his wife's just died! Don't you understand that? The man's lost his wife!"
I didn't answer. She'd told me a little about the blind man's wife. Her name was
Beulah. Beulah! That's a name for a colored woman.
"Was his wife a Negro?" I asked.
"Are you crazy?" my wife said. "Have you just flipped or something?" She picked
up a potato. I saw it hit the floor, then roll under the stove. "What's wrong with you?"
she said. "Are you drunk?"
"I'm just asking," I said.
Right then my wife filled me in with more detail than I cared to know. I made a
drink and sat at the kitchen table to listen. Pieces of the story began to fall into place.
Beulah had gone to work for the blind man the summer after my wife had
stopped working for him. Pretty soon Beulah and the blind man had themselves a
church wedding. It was a little weddingwho'd want to go to such a wedding in the
first place?just the two of them, plus the minister and the minister's wife. But it was
a church wedding just the same. It was what Beulah had wanted, he'd said. But even
then Beulah must have been carrying the cancer in her glands. After they had been
inseparable for eight yearsmy wife's word, inseparableBeulah's health went into a
rapid decline. She died in a Seattle hospital room, the blind man sitting beside the
bed and holding on to her hand. They'd married, lived and worked together, slept togetherhad sex, sureand then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his
having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding. Hearing this, I felt sorry for the blind man for a little bit. And then I found
myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led. Imagine a woman who
could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who
could go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her
beloved. A woman whose husband could never read the expression on her face, be it
misery or something better. Someone who could wear makeup or notwhat difference to him? She could, if she wanted, wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a
straight pin in her nostril, yellow slacks, and purple shoes, no matter. And then to
slip off into death, the blind man's hand on her hand, his blind eyes streaming
tears-I'm imagining nowher last thought maybe this: that he never even knew
what she looked like, and she on an express to the grave. Robert wTas left with a small
insurance policy and a half of a twenty-peso Mexican coin. The other half of the coin
went into the box with her. Pathetic.
So when the time rolled around, my wife went to the depot to pick him up. With
nothing to do but waitsure, I blamed him for thatI was having a drink and
watching the T V when I heard the car pull into the drive. I got up from the sofa with
my drink and wTent to the window to have a look.
I saw my wife laughing as she parked the car. I saw her get out of the car and shut
the door. She was still wearing a smile. Just amazing. She went around to the other
side of the car to where the blind man was already starting to get out. This blind man,
feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say.
The blind man reached into the backseat and dragged out a suitcase. My wife took
his arm, shut the car door, and, talking all the way, moved him down the drive and
10
15
t h e n tip t h e s t e p s t o t h e f r o n t p o r c h . I t u r n e d o f f t h e T V . I f i n i s h e d m y d r i n k , r i n s e d
t h e glass, d r i e d m y h a n d s . T h e n I w e n t to t h e d o o r .
M y w i f e s a i d , " I w a n t y o u t o m e e t R o b e r t . R o b e r t , t h i s is m y h u s b a n d . I ' v e
told
y o u all a b o u t h i m . " S h e w a s b e a m i n g . S h e h a d this b l i n d m a n b y h i s c o a t sleeve.
T h e b l i n d m a n let g o o f h i s s u i t c a s e a n d u p c a m e h i s h a n d .
20
I t o o k it. H e s q u e e z e d h a r d , h e l d m y h a n d , a n d t h e n h e l e t it g o .
" I feel like w e ' v e already m e t , " h e
boomed.
" L i k e w i s e , " I said. I d i d n ' t k n o w w h a t else to say. T h e n I said, " W e l c o m e .
h e a r d a lot a b o u t y o u . " W e
b e g a n to m o v e t h e n , a little g r o u p , f r o m t h e p o r c h
I've
into
the living r o o m , m y wife g u i d i n g h i m by the arm. T h e b l i n d m a n was carrying his
s u i t c a s e i n h i s o t h e r h a n d . M y w i f e s a i d t h i n g s l i k e , " T o y o u r left h e r e , R o b e r t . T h a t ' s
r i g h t . N o w w a t c h it, t h e r e ' s a c h a i r . T h a t ' s it. S i t d o w n r i g h t h e r e . T h i s i s t h e s o f a .
W e just b o u g h t this sofa t w o w e e k s ago."
I started to say s o m e t h i n g a b o u t t h e o l d sofa. I ' d l i k e d t h a t o l d sofa. B u t I d i d n ' t
say a n y t h i n g . T h e n I w a n t e d to say s o m e t h i n g else, s m a l l - t a l k , a b o u t t h e s c e n i c r i d e
a l o n g t h e H u d s o n . H o w g o i n g to N e w Y o r k , y o u s h o u l d s i t o n t h e r i g h t - h a n d s i d e o f
the train, a n d c o m i n g
from
N e w Y o r k , t h e l e f t - h a n d side.
" D i d y o u h a v e a g o o d t r a i n r i d e ? " I said. " W h i c h side o f t h e t r a i n d i d y o u sit o n ,
25
by the way?"
" W h a t a q u e s t i o n , w h i c h s i d e ! " m y w i f e said. " W h a t ' s it m a t t e r w h i c h s i d e ? " s h e
said.
" I just asked," I said.
" R i g h t side," the b l i n d m a n said. " I h a d n ' t b e e n o n a t r a i n i n nearly forty years.
N o t since I was a kid. W i t h m y folks. T h a t ' s b e e n a l o n g time. I ' d nearly forgotten the
sensation. I h a v e w i n t e r i n m y beard n o w , " h e said. " S o I ' v e b e e n told, a n y w a y . D o
l o o k d i s t i n g u i s h e d , m y d e a r ? " the b l i n d m a n said to m y wife.
" Y o u l o o k d i s t i n g u i s h e d , R o b e r t , " s h e said. " R o b e r t , " s h e said, " R o b e r t , it's just
so g o o d to see y o u . "
M y wife
finally
t o o k h e r eyes off the b l i n d m a n a n d l o o k e d at m e . I h a d t h e feel-
30
ing she didn't like w h a t she saw. I shrugged.
I've never met, or personally k n o w n , a n y o n e w h o was blind. T h i s blind m a n was
late forties, a h e a v y - s e t , b a l d i n g m a n w i t h s t o o p e d s h o u l d e r s , as if h e c a r r i e d a g r e a t
w e i g h t t h e r e . H e w o r e b r o w n s l a c k s , b r o w n s h o e s , a l i g h t - b r o w n s h i r t , a tie, a s p o r t s
coat. Spiffy. H e also h a d this full beard. B u t h e d i d n ' t use a c a n e a n d h e didn't, w e a r
d a r k glasses. I ' d a l w a y s t h o u g h t d a r k glasses were a m u s t for t h e b l i n d . F a c t was,
w i s h e d h e h a d a pair. A t
first
glance, h i s eyes l o o k e d like a n y o n e else's eyes. B u t
I
if
y o u l o o k e d close, there was s o m e t h i n g different about them. T o o m u c h white i n the
iris, f o r o n e t h i n g , a n d t h e p u p i l s s e e m e d t o m o v e a r o u n d i n t h e s o c k e t s w i t h o u t h i s
k n o w i n g it o r b e i n g a b l e t o s t o p it. C r e e p y . A s I s t a r e d a t h i s f a c e , I s a w t h e l e f t p u p i l
t u r n i n t o w a r d h i s n o s e w h i l e t h e o t h e r m a d e a n e f f o r t t o k e e p i n o n e p l a c e . B u t it
w a s o n l y a n e f f o r t , f o r t h a t e y e w a s o n t h e r o a m w i t h o u t h i s k n o w i n g i t o r w a n t i n g it
t o be.
I said, " L e t m e get y o u a d r i n k . W h a t ' s y o u r p l e a s u r e ? W e h a v e a little o f e v e r y thing. It's o n e of o u r pastimes."
" B u b , I ' m a S c o t c h m a n m y s e l f , " h e s a i d fast e n o u g h i n t h i s b i g v o i c e .
" R i g h t , " I said. B u b ! " S u r e y o u are. I k n e w
H e let h i s
fingers
it."
t o u c h h i s suitcase, w h i c h w a s s i t t i n g a l o n g s i d e t h e sofa. H e w a s
t a k i n g his bearings. I d i d n ' t b l a m e h i m for that.
"I'll m o v e that u p to your r o o m , " m y wife said.
35
"No, that's fine," the blind man said loudly. "It can go up when I go up."
"A little water with the Scotch?" I said.
"Very little," he said.
"I knew it," I said.
40
He said, "Just a tad. The Irish actor, Barry Fitzgerald? I'm like that fellow. When
I drink water, Fitzgerald said, I drink water. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey."
My wife laughed. The blind man brought his hand up under his beard. Fie lifted his
beard slowly and let it drop.
I did the drinks, three big glasses of Scotch with a splash of water in each. Then
we made ourselves comfortable and talked about Robert's travels. First the long flight
from the West Coast to Connecticut, we covered that. Then from Connecticut up
here by train. We had another drink concerning that leg of the trip.
I remembered having read somewThere that the blind didn't smoke because, as
speculation had it, they couldn't see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that
much and that much only about blind people. But this blind man smoked his cigarette down to the nubbin and then lit another one. This blind man filled his ashtray
and my wife emptied it.
When we sat down at the table for dinner, we had another drink. My wife
heaped Robert's plate with cube steak, scalloped potatoes, green beans. 1 buttered
him up two slices of bread. I said, "Here's bread and butter for you." I swallowed some
of my drink. "Now let us pray," I said, and the blind man lowered his head. My wife
looked at me, her mouth agape. "Pray the phone won't ring and the food doesn't get
cold," I said.
We dug in. We ate everything there was to eat on the table. We ate like there 45
wras no tomorrow. We didn't talk. W e ate. We scarfed. We grazed that table. We
wrere into serious eating. T h e blind man had right away located his foods, he knew
just where everything was on his plate. I watched with admiration as he used his
knife and fork on the meat. He'd cut two pieces of meat, fork the meat into his
mouth, and then go all out for the scalloped potatoes, the beans next, and then he'd
tear off a hunk of buttered bread and eat that. He'd follow this up with a big drink of
milk. It didn't seem to bother him to use his fingers once in a while, either.
We finished everything, including half a strawberry pie. For a few moments, we
sat as if stunned. Sweat beaded on our faces. Finally, we got up from the table and left
the dirty plates. We didn't look back. We took ourselves into the living room and
sank into our places again. Robert and my wife sat on the sofa. I took the big chair.
W e had us two or three more drinks while they talked about the major things that
had come to pass for them in the past ten years. For the most part, I just listened.
Now and then I joined in. I didn't want him to think I'd left the room, and I didn't
want her to think I was feeling left out. They talked of things that had happened to
themto them!these past ten years. I waited in vain to hear my name on my
wife's sweet lips: "And then my dear husband came into my life"something like
that. But I heard nothing of the sort. More talk of Robert. Robert had done a little of
everything, it seemed, a regular blind jack-of-all-trades. But most recently he and his
wife had had an Amway distributorship, from which, 1 gathered, they'd earned their
living, such as it was. The blind man was also a ham radio operator. He talked in his
loud voice about conversations he'd had with fellow operators in Guam, in the
Philippines, in Alaska, and even in Tahiti. He said he'd have a lot of friends there if
he ever wanted to go visit those places. From time to time, he'd turn his blind face toward me, put his hand under his beard, ask me something. How long had I been in
my present position? (Three years.) Did I like my work? (I didn't.) Was I going to stay
with it? (What were the options?) Finally, when I thought he was beginning to run
down, I got up and turned on the T V .
My wife looked at me with irritation. She was heading toward a boil. Then she
looked at the blind man and said, "Robert, do you have a TV?"
The blind man said, "My dear, 1 have two TVs. I have a color set and a blackand-white thing, an old relic. It's funny, but if I turn the T V on, and I'm always turning it on, I turn on the color set. It's funny, don't you think?"
I didn't know what to say to that. I had absolutely nothing to say to that. No
opinion. So I watched the news program and tried to listen to what the announcer
was saying.
"This is a color T V , " the blind man said. "Don't ask me how, but I can tell."
"We traded up a while ago," I said.
The blind man had another taste of this drink. He lifted his beard, sniffed it, and
let it fall. He leaned forward on the sofa. He positioned his ashtray on the coffee
table, then put the lighter to his cigarette. He leaned back on the sofa and crossed his
legs at the ankles.
My wife covered her mouth, and then she yawned. She stretched. She said, "I
think I'll go upstairs and put on my robe. I think I'll change into something else.
Robert, you make yourself comfortable," she said.
"I'm comfortable," the blind man said.
"I want you to feel comfortable in this house," she said.
"I am comfortable," the blind man said.
After she'd left the room, he and I listened to the weather report and then to the
sports roundup. By that time, she'd been gone so long I didn't know if she was going to
come back. I thought she might have gone to bed. I wished she'd come back downstairs. I didn't want to be left alone with a blind man. I asked him if he wanted another drink, and he said sure. Then I asked if he wanted to smoke some dope with me.
I said I'd just rolled a number. I hadn't, but I planned to do so in about two shakes.
"I'll try some with you," he said.
"Damm right," I said. "That's the stuff."
"I got our drinks and sat down on the sofa with him. Then I rolled us two fat
numbers. I lit one and passed it. I brought it to his fingers. He took it and inhaled.
"Hold it as long as you can," I said. I could tell he didn't know the first thing.
My wife came back downstairs wearing her pink robe and her pink slippers.
"What do I smell?" she said.
"We thought we'd have us some cannabis," I said.
My wife gave me a savage look. Then she looked at the blind man and said,
"Robert, I didn't know you smoked."
He said, "I do now, my dear. There's a first time for everything. But I don't feel
anything yet."
"This stuff is pretty mellow," I said. "This stuff is mild. It's dope you can reason
with," I said. "It doesn't mess you up."
"Not much it doesn't, bub," he said, and laughed.
My wife sat on the sofa between the blind man and me. I passed her the number.
She took it and toked and then passed it back to me. "Which way is this going?" she
said. Then she said, "I shouldn't be smoking this. I can hardly keep my eyes open as it
is. That dinner did me in. I shouldn't have eaten so much."
" I t w a s t h e s t r a w b e r r y p i e , " t h e b l i n d m a n said. " T h a t ' s w h a t d i d it," h e said, a n d
70
he laughed his big laugh. T h e n h e shook his head.
" T h e r e ' s m o r e strawberry pie," I said.
" D o y o u w a n t s o m e m o r e , R o b e r t ? " m y wife said.
" M a y b e i n a little w h i l e , " h e said.
W e g a v e o u r a t t e n t i o n t o t h e T V . M y w i f e y a w n e d a g a i n . S h e s a i d , " Y o u r b e d is
m a d e u p w h e n y o u feel like g o i n g to bed, R o b e r t . I k n o w y o u m u s t h a v e h a d a l o n g
day. W h e n y o u ' r e ready to g o to bed, say so." S h e p u l l e d his arm. " R o b e r t ? "
H e c a m e to a n d said, " I ' v e h a d a real n i c e time. T h i s beats tapes, d o e s n ' t it?"
I said, " C o m i n g at y o u , " a n d I p u t t h e n u m b e r b e t w e e n h i s fingers. H e
75
inhaled,
h e l d t h e s m o k e , a n d t h e n l e t it g o . I t w a s l i k e h e ' d b e e n d o i n g it s i n c e h e w a s
nine
years old.
" T h a n k s , b u b , " h e s a i d . " B u t I t h i n k t h i s is a l l f o r m e . I t h i n k I ' m b e g i n n i n g
to
f e e l i t , " h e s a i d . H e h e l d t h e b u r n i n g r o a c h o u t f o r m y w T ife.
" S a m e h e r e , " s h e s a i d . " D i t t o . M e , t o o . " S h e t o o k t h e r o a c h a n d p a s s e d it t o m e .
" I m a y just sit h e r e for a w h i l e b e t w e e n y o u t w o guys w i t h m y eyes closed. B u t
don't
let m e b o t h e r y o u , o k a y ? E i t h e r o n e o f y o u . I f it b o t h e r s y o u , s a y s o . O t h e r w i s e , I m a y
just sit h e r e w i t h m y eyes c l o s e d u n t i l y o u ' r e r e a d y t o g o t o b e d , " s h e said. " Y o u r b e d ' s
m a d e up, R o b e r t , w h e n y o u ' r e ready. It's r i g h t n e x t to o u r r o o m at t h e t o p o f t h e
stairs. W e ' l l s h o w y o u u p w h e n y o u ' r e ready. Y o u w a k e m e u p n o w , y o u g u y s , if I fall
asleep." S h e said t h a t a n d t h e n s h e c l o s e d h e r eyes a n d w e n t to sleep.
T h e n e w s p r o g r a m e n d e d . I g o t u p a n d c h a n g e d t h e c h a n n e l . I sat b a c k d o w n
on
t h e sofa. I w i s h e d m y wife h a d n ' t p o o p e d out. H e r h e a d lay across the b a c k o f t h e
sofa, h e r m o u t h o p e n . S h e ' d t u r n e d s o t h a t h e r r o b e s l i p p e d a w a y f r o m h e r legs, e x p o s i n g a j u i c y t h i g h . I r e a c h e d t o d r a w h e r r o b e b a c k o v e r h e r , a n d it w a s t h e n t h a t I
g l a n c e d at t h e b l i n d m a n . W h a t t h e h e l l ! I f l i p p e d t h e r o b e o p e n a g a i n .
" Y o u say w h e n y o u w a n t s o m e strawberry pie," I said.
80
" I will," h e said.
I said, " A r e y o u tired? D o y o u w a n t m e to t a k e y o u u p to y o u r b e d ? A r e y o u r e a d y
to h i t the h a y ? "
" N o t yet," h e said. " N o , I'll stay u p w i t h y o u , bub. If that's all right. I'll stay
up
u n t i l y o u ' r e ready to t u r n in. W e h a v e n ' t h a d a c h a n c e to talk. K n o w w h a t I m e a n ? I
f e e l l i k e m e a n d h e r m o n o p o l i z e d t h e e v e n i n g . " H e l i f t e d h i s b e a r d a n d h e l e t it f a l l .
H e p i c k e d u p his cigarettes a n d his lighter.
" T h a t ' s all right," I said. T h e n I said, " I ' m g l a d for the c o m p a n y . "
A n d I g u e s s I w a s . E v e r y n i g h t I s m o k e d d o p e a n d s t a y e d u p a s l o n g as I c o u l d b e fore I fell asleep. M y wife a n d I h a r d l y e v e r w e n t to b e d at t h e s a m e t i m e . W h e n I d i d
g o to sleep, I h a d t h e s e d r e a m s . S o m e t i m e s I ' d w a k e u p f r o m o n e o f t h e m , m y
heart
g o i n g crazy.
S o m e t h i n g about the c h u r c h a n d the M i d d l e A g e s was o n the T V . N o t your runof-the-mill T V
fare. I w a n t e d t o w a t c h s o m e t h i n g else. I t u r n e d t o t h e o t h e r
chan-
n e l s . B u t t h e r e w a s n o t h i n g o n t h e m , e i t h e r . S o I t u r n e d b a c k t o t h e first c h a n n e l a n d
apologized.
" B u b , i t ' s a l l r i g h t , " t h e b l i n d m a n s a i d . " I t ' s fine w i t h m e . W h a t e v e r y o u w a n t t o
w a t c h is o k a y . I ' m a l w a y s l e a r n i n g s o m e t h i n g . L e a r n i n g n e v e r e n d s . I t w o n ' t h u r t m e
to learn s o m e t h i n g t o n i g h t . I got ears," h e said.
W e d i d n ' t say a n y t h i n g for a time. H e w a s l e a n i n g f o r w a r d w i t h h i s h e a d t u r n e d
a t m e , h i s r i g h t e a r a i m e d i n t h e d i r e c t i o n o f t h e set. V e r y d i s c o n c e r t i n g . N o w
and
85
then his eyelids drooped and then they snapped open again. Now and then he put his
fingers into his beard and tugged, like he was thinking about something he was hearing on the television.
On the screen, a group of men wearing cowls was being set upon and tormented
by men dressed in skeleton costumes and men dressed as devils. The men dressed as
devils wore devil masks, horns, and long tails. This pageant was part of a procession.
The Englishman who was narrating the thing said it took place in Spain once a year.
I tried to explain to the blind man what was happening.
"Skeletons/5 he said. "I know about skeletons," he said, and he nodded.
90
The T V showed this one cathedral. Then there was a long, slow look at another
one. Finally, the picture switched to the famous one in Paris, with its flying buttresses
and its spires reaching up to the clouds. The camera pulled away to show the whole
of the cathedral rising above the skyline.
There were times when the Englishman who was telling the thing would shut
up, would simply let the camera move around the cathedrals. Or else the camera
would tour the countryside, men in fields walking behind oxen. I waited as long as I
could. Then I felt I had to say something. I said, "They're showing the outside of this
cathedral now. Gargoyles. Little statues carved to look like monsters. Now I guess
they're in Italy. Yeah, they're in Italy. There's paintings on the walls of this one
church."
"Are those fresco paintings, bub?" he asked, and he sipped from his drink.
I reached for my glass. But it was empty. I tried to remember what I could remember. "You're asking me are those frescoes?" I said. "That's a good question. I
don't know."
The camera moved to a cathedral outside Lisbon. The differences in the Portuguese 9.5
cathedral compared with the French and Italian were not that great. But they were
there. Mostly the interior stuff. Then something occurred to me, and I said, "Something
has occurred to me. Do you have any idea what a cathedral is? What they look like,
that is? Do you follow me? If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any notion
what they're talking about? Do you know the difference between that and a Baptist
church, say?"
He let the smoke dribble from his mouth. "I knowr they took hundreds of workers
fifty or a hundred years to build," he said. "I just heard the man say that, of course. I
know generations of the same families worked on a cathedral. I heard him say that,
too. The men who began their life's work on them, they never lived to see the completion of their work. In that wise, bub, they're no different from the rest of us, right?"
Fie laughed. Then his eyelids drooped again. His head nodded. He seemed to be
snoozing. Maybe he was imagining himself in Portugal. The T V was showing another
cathedral now. This one was in Germany. T h e Englishman's voice droned on.
"Cathedrals," the blind man said. Fie sat up and rolled his he-ad back and forth. "If
you want the truth, bub, that's about all I know. What I just said. What I heard him
say. But maybe you could describe one to me? I wish you'd do it. I'd like that. If you
want to know, I really don't have a good idea."
I stared hard at the shot of the cathedral on the T V . How could I even begin to
describe it? But say my life depended on it. Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who said 1 had to do it or else.
I stared some more at the cathedral before the picture flipped off into the countryside. There was no use. 1 turned to the blind man and said, "To begin with, they're
very tall." I was looking around the room for clues. "They reach way up. Up and up.
Toward the sky. They're so big, some of them, they have to have these supports. To
help hold them up, so to speak. These supports are called buttresses. They remind me
of viaducts, for some reason. But maybe you don't know viaducts, either? Sometimes
the cathedrals have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and
ladies. Don't ask me why this is," I said.
He was nodding. The whole upper part of his body seemed to be moving back
and forth.
"I'm not doing so good, am I?" I said.
100
He stopped nodding and leaned forward on the edge of the sofa. As he listened to
me, he was running his fingers through his beard. I wasn't getting through to him, 1 could
see that. But he waited for me to go on just the same. He nodded, like he was trying to encourage me. I tried to think what else to say. "They're really big," I said. "They're massive.
They're built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes. In those olden days, when they built
cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God. In those olden days, God was an important
part of everyone's life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building. I'm sony," I said,
"but it looks like that's the best I can do for you. I'm just no good at it."
"That's all right, bub," the blind man said. "Hey, listen. I hope you don't mind
my asking you. Can I ask you something? Let me ask you a simple question, yes or no.
I'm just curious and there's no offense. You're my host. But let me ask if you are in
any way religious? You don't mind my asking?"
I shook my head. He couldn't see that, though. A wink is the same as a nod to a
blind man. "I guess I don't believe in it. In anything. Sometimes it's hard. You know
what I'm saying?"
"Sure, I do," he said.
"Right," I said.
105
The Englishman was still holding forth. My wife sighed in her sleep. She drew a
long breath and went on with her sleeping.
"You'll have to forgive me," I said. "But I can't tell you what a cathedral looks
like. It just isn't in me to do it. I can't do any more than I've done."
The blind man sat very still, his head down, as he listened to me.
I said, "The truth is, cathedrals don't mean anything special to me. Nothing.
Cathedrals. They're something to look at on late-night T V . That's all they are."
It was then that the blind man cleared his throat. He brought something up. He no
took a handkerchief from his back pocket. Then he said, "I get it, bub. It's okay. It
happens. Don't worry about it," he said. "Hey, listen to me. Will you do me a favor? I
got an idea. Why don't you find us some heavy paper? And a pen. We'll do something. We'll draw one together. Get us a pen and some heavy paper. Go on, bub, get
the stuff," he said.
So I went upstairs. My legs felt like they didn't have any strength in them. They
felt like they did after I'd done some running. In my wife's room I looked around. I
found some ballpoints in a little basket on her table. And then I tried to think where
to look for the kind of paper he was talking about.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, I found a shopping bag with onion skins in the bottom of the bag. I emptied the bag and shook it. I brought it into the living room and
sat down with it near his legs. I moved some things, smoothed the wrinkles from the
bag, spread it out on the coffee table.
The blind man got down from the sofa and sat next to me on the carpet.
He ran his fingers over the paper. He went up and down the sides of the paper.
- The edges, even the edges. He fingered the corners.
" A l l r i g h t , " h e said. " A l l right, let's d o h e r . "
us
H e found m y hand, the h a n d w i t h the pen. H e closed his h a n d over m y
hand.
" G o a h e a d , b u b , d r a w , " h e said. " D r a w . Y o u ' l l see. I'll f o l l o w a l o n g w i t h y o u . It'll b e
o k a y . Just b e g i n n o w l i k e I ' m t e l l i n g y o u . Y o u ' l l see. D r a w , " t h e b l i n d m a n said.
S o I b e g a n . First I d r e w a b o x t h a t l o o k e d like a h o u s e . It c o u l d h a v e b e e n t h e
h o u s e I l i v e d i n . T h e n I p u t a r o o f o n it. A t e i t h e r e n d o f t h e r o o f , I d r e w s p i r e s . C r a z y .
" S w e l l , " h e said. "Terrific. Y o u ' r e d o i n g
fine,"
h e said. " N e v e r t h o u g h t
anything
l i k e t h i s c o u l d h a p p e n i n y o u r l i f e t i m e , d i d y o u , b u b ? W e l l , i t ' s a s t r a n g e life, w e a l l
k n o w t h a t . G o o n n o w . K e e p it u p , "
I p u t i n w i n d o w s w i t h arches. I d r e w flying buttresses. I h u n g great doors. I c o u l d n't stop. T h e T V
my
fingers.
s t a t i o n w e n t o f f t h e air. I p u t d o w n t h e p e n a n d c l o s e d a n d
opened
T h e b l i n d m a n felt a r o u n d o v e r t h e p a p e r . H e m o v e d t h e tips o f h i s
fin-
gers o v e r t h e paper, all o v e r w h a t I h a d d r a w n , a n d h e n o d d e d .
"Doing
fine,"
120
the b l i n d m a n said.
I t o o k u p t h e p e n a g a i n , a n d h e f o u n d m y h a n d . I k e p t a t it. I ' m n o a r t i s t . B u t
kept d r a w i n g just t h e same.
M y
w i f e o p e n e d u p h e r e y e s a n d g a z e d a t u s . S h e s a t u p 011 t h e s o f a , h e r
robe
h a n g i n g o p e n . S h e said, " W h a t are y o u d o i n g ? T e l l m e , I w a n t to k n o w . "
I didn't a n s w e r her.
T h e b l i n d m a n s a i d , " W e ' r e d r a w i n g a c a t h e d r a l . M e a n d h i m a r e w o r k i n g o n it.
P r e s s h a r d , " h e s a i d t o m e . " T h a t ' s r i g h t . T h a t ' s g o o d , " h e s a i d . " S u r e . Y o u g o t it, b u b ,
I c a n tell. Y o u d i d n ' t t h i n k y o u c o u l d . B u t y o u c a n , c a n ' t y o u ? Y o u ' r e c o o k i n g
with
gas n o w . Y o u k n o w w h a t I ' m s a y i n g ? W e ' r e g o i n g to really h a v e us s o m e t h i n g h e r e i n
a minute. H o w ' s
the old a r m ? " h e said. " P u t s o m e p e o p l e i n there n o w . W h a t ' s
cathedral without people?"
M y wife said, " W h a t ' s g o i n g o n ? R o b e r t , w h a t are y o u d o i n g ? W h a t ' s g o i n g o n ? "
125
" I t ' s all r i g h t , " h e s a i d to her. " C l o s e y o u r eyes n o w , " t h e b l i n d m a n s a i d to me.
1 d i d it. I c l o s e d t h e m j u s t l i k e h e s a i d .
" A r e they closed?" h e said. " D o n ' t fudge."
" T h e y ' r e closed," I said.
" K e e p t h e m that w a y , " h e said. H e said, " D o n ' t stop n o w . Draw7."
130
S o w e k e p t o n w i t h it. H i s f i n g e r s r o d e m y f i n g e r s a s m y h a n d w e n t o v e r
the
p a p e r . It w a s l i k e n o t h i n g else i n m y life u p t o n o w .
T h e n h e s a i d , " I t h i n k t h a t ' s it. I t h i n k y o u g o t i t , " h e s a i d . " T a k e a l o o k .
do you
What
think?"
B u t I h a d m y eyes closed. I t h o u g h t I ' d k e e p t h e m t h a t w a y for a little l o n g e r . I
t h o u g h t it w a s s o m e t h i n g I o u g h t t o d o .
" W e l l ? " h e said. " A r e y o u
looking?"
M y eyes w e r e still c l o s e d . I w a s i n m y h o u s e . I k n e w that. B u t I d i d n ' t feel like I
was inside anything.
" I t ' s really s o m e t h i n g , " I said.
QUESTIONS
1. What details in "Cathedral" make clear the narrator's initial attitude toward blind people? What hints does the author give about the reasons for this attitude? At what point in
the story do the narrator's preconceptions about blind people start to change?
2. For what reason does the wife keep asking Robert if he'd like to go to bed (paragraphs
7 4 - 7 8 ) ? What motivates the narrator to make the same suggestion in paragraph 82?
What effect does Robert's reply have 011 the narrator?
135
3. What makes the narrator start explaining what he's seeing on television?
4. How does the point of view contribute to the effectiveness of the story?
5. At the end, the narrator has an epiphany. How would you describe it?
6. Would you describe the narrator as an antihero? Use specific details from the story to
back up your response.
7. Is the wife a flat or a round character? What about Robert? Support your conclusion about
each of them.
8. In a good story, a character doesn't suddenly become a completely different sort of person.
Find details early in the story that show the narrator's more sensitive side and thus help to
make his development credible and persuasive.
W R I T I N G
WRITERS
ON
E F F E C T IV E LY
WRITING
Raymond Carver
Commonplace but Precise Language
It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write
about commonplace things and objects using
commonplace but precise language, and to
endow those thingsa chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earringwith
immense, even startling power. It is possible to
write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue
and have it send a chill along the reader's
spinethe source of artistic delight, as
Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of
writing that most interests me. I hate
sloppy or haphazard writing whether it flies
under the banner of experimentation or
else is just clumsily rendered realism. In
Isaac Babel's wonderful short story, "Guy de
1983
R A Y M O N D CARVER
Maupassant," the narrator has this to say about the writing of fiction: "No iron can
pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place." This too
ought to go on a three-by-five.
Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he
found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the
story again and putting commas back in the same places. I like that way of working
on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have,
finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the
right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say. If the words are
heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some reasonif the words are in any way blurredthe reader's eyes will slide
right over them and nothing will be achieved.
From "On Writing"
WRITING
ABOUT
CHARACTER
How Character Creates Action
Although readers usually consider plot the central element of fiction, writers usually
remark that stories begin with characters. They imagine a person in loving detail and
then wait to see what that character will do. "By the time I write a story," said
Katherine Anne Porter, "my people are up and alive and walking around and taking
things into their own hands." A story's action usually grows out of the personality of
its protagonist and the situation he or she faces. As critic Phyllis Bottome observed,
"If a writer is true to his characters, they will give him his plot."
Not all characters are created equal. A sure sign of a skilled writer is the ability
to create memorable characters. A great writer like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens
can create characters so vivid and compelling that readers almost have the illusion
the figures are real people.
In writing about the protagonist (or any other figure) in a story, begin by studying his or her personality. What makes this individual different from the other characters in the story? Note that the way characters speak can immediately reveal important things about their personalities, beliefs, and behavior. A single line of
dialogue can tell the audience a great deal, as in an old film in which the comedian
W. C. Fields confides, "A woman drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her."
CHECKLIST
Writing About Character
S Who is the main character or protagonist of the story?
S Make a quick list of the character's physical, mental, moral, or behavioral
traits. Which of these characteristics seem especially significant to the action of the story?
S Does the main character have an antagonist in the story? How do they differ?
S Does the way the protagonist speaks reveal anything about his or her character?
S If the story is told in the first person, what is revealed about how the protagonist views his or her surroundings?
S What is the character's primary motivation? Does this motivation seem as
reasonable to you as it does to the protagonist? If not, what is suggested by
this unreasonableness?
^ Does the protagonist fully understand his or her motivations?
S In what ways is the protagonist changed or tested by the events of the story?
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
CHARACTER
Choose a story with a dynamic protagonist. (See the beginning of this chapter for a discussion
of dynamic characters.) Write an essay exploring how that character evolves over the course of
the story7, providing evidence from the story to back up your argument. Some good story
choices might be Faulkner's " B a m Burning," Carver's "Cathedral," Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues,"
or W o l f f s "The Rich Brother."
MORE
L
TOPICS
FOR
WRITING
Using a story from this book, write a short essay that explains why a protagonist takes a
crucial life-changing action. What motivates this character to do something that seems
bold or surprising? You might consider:
What motivates the narrator to overcome his instinctive antipathy to the blind man in
"Cathedral"?
What motivates the older brother to write to Sonny during his incarceration in
"Sonny's Blues"?
Why doesn't Miss Brill buy her usual slice of honeycake on her way home at the end of
"Miss Brill"?
2. Choose a minor character from any of the stories in this book, and write briefly on what
the story reveals about that person, reading closely for even the smallest of details. Is he or
she a stock character? Why or why not? (See the beginning of this chapter for a discussion
of stock characters.)
3. Choose a story in which the main character has an obvious antagonist, such as "Cathedral," "Sonny's Blues," or "The Rich Brother." What role does this second character play
in bringing the protagonist to a new awareness of life?
4. Choose a dynamic character from one of the stories you've read so far. Write a brief essay
on how the events in the story relate to your chosen character's strengths or shortcomings. (See the beginning of this chapter for a discussion of dynamic characters.)
5. Choose a favorite character from a television show you watch regularly. What details are
provided (either in the show's dialogue or in its visuals) to communicate the personality
of this character? Would you say this person is a stock character or a rounded one? Write
a brief essay making a case for your position.
6. Browse through magazines and newspapers to find a picture of a person you can't identify.
Cut out the picture. Create a character based on the picture. As many writers do, make a
list of characteristics, from the large (her life's ambition) to the small (his favorite breakfast cereal). As you build your list, make sure your details add up to a rounded character.
(See the beginning of this chapter for a discussion of rounded versus flat characters.)
7. Choose a stock character from one of the stories you have read from this book, and
write your own short story with that character as a protagonist. Turn your stock character into a rounded one by imagining the details of his or her life more fully. (Again,
be sure to look at the beginning of this chapter for a description of what makes a character rounded or flat.)
Settin
What are the three key rules of real estate?
Location, location, location!
A M E R I C A N BUSINESS PROVERB
By the setting of a story, we mean its time and place. The word might remind you of
the metal that holds a diamond in a ring, or of a set used in a playperhaps a bare
chair in front of a slab of painted canvas. But often, in an effective short story, setting
may figure as more than mere background or underpinning. It can make things happen. It can prompt characters to act, bring them to realizations, or cause them to reveal their inmost natures.
T o be sure, the idea of setting includes the physical environment of a story: a
house, a street, a city, a landscape, a region. (Where a story takes place is sometimes
called its locale.) Physical places mattered so greatly to French novelist Honore de
Balzac that sometimes, before writing a story set in a particular town, he would visit
that town, select a few houses, and describe them in detail, down to their very smells.
"The place in which an event occurred," Henry James admiringly said of him, "was in
his view of equal moment with the event itself . . . it had a part to play; it needed to
be made as definite as anything else."
But besides place, setting may crucially involve the time of the storyhour,
year, or century. It might matter greatly that a story takes place at daw7n, or on the
day of the first moon landing. When we begin to read a historical novel, we are soon
made aware that we aren't reading about life in the twenty-first century. In The Scarlet
Letter, nineteenth-century author Nathaniel Hawthorne, by a long introduction and
a vivid opening scene at a prison door, prepares us to witness events in the Puritan
community of Boston in the earlier seventeenth century. This setting, together with
scenes of Puritan times we recall from high school history, helps us understand what
happens in the novel. W e can appreciate the shocked agitation in town when a
woman is accused of adultery: she has given illegitimate birth. Such an event might
seem common today, but in the stern, God-fearing New England Puritan community, it was a flagrant defiance of church and state, which were all-powerful (and
were all one). That reader will make no sense of The Scarlet Letter who ignores its
settingif to ignore the setting is even possible, given how much attention
Hawthorne pays to it.
That Hawthorne's novel takes place in a time remote from our own leads us to
expect different customs and different attitudes. Some critics and teachers regard the
setting of a story as its whole society, including the beliefs and assumptions of its
characters. Still, we suggest that for now you keep your working definition of setting
simple. Call it time and place. If later you should feel that your definition needs
widening and deepening, you can always expand it.
Besides time and place, setting may also include the weather, which in some stories may be crucial. Climate seems as substantial as any character in William
Faulkner's "Dry September." After sixty-two rainless days, a long unbroken spell of
late-summer heat has frayed every nerve in a small town and caused the main character, a hotheaded white supremacist, to feel more and more irritation. The weather,
someone remarks, is "enough to make a man do anything." When a false report circulates that a white woman has been raped by a black man, the rumor, like a match
flung into a dry field, ignites rage and provokes a lynching. Evidently, to understand
the story we have to recognize its locale, a small town in Mississippi in the 1930s during an infernal heat wave. Fully to take in the meaning of Faulkner's story, we have
to take in the setting in its entirety.
Physical place, by the way, is especially vital to a regional writer, who usually
sets stories (or other work) in one geographic area. Such a writer, often a native of
the place, tries to bring it alive to readers who live elsewhere. William Faulkner, a
distinguished regional writer, almost always sets his novels and stories in his native
Mississippi. Though born in St. Louis, Kate Chopin became known as a regional
writer for writing about Louisiana in many of her short stories and in her novel The
Aivakening. Willa Cather, for her novels of frontier Nebraska, often is regarded as
another outstanding regionalist (though she also set fiction in Quebec, the Southwest, and, in "Paul's Case," in Pittsburgh and New York). There is often something
arbitrary, however, about calling an author a regional writer. The label often has a
political tinge; it means that the author describes an area outside the political and
economic centers of a society. In a sense, wre might think of James Joyce as a regional writer, in that all his fiction takes place in the city of Dublin, but instead we
usuallv call him an Irish one.
As such writers show, a place can profoundly affect the character who grew up in
it. Willa Cather is fond of portraying strong-minded, independent women, such as
the heroine of her novel My Antonfa, strengthened in part by years of coping with
the hardships of life on the wind-lashed prairie. Not that every writer of stories in
which a place matters greatly will draw the characters as helpless puppets of their environment. Few writers do so, although that may be what you find in novels of
naturalismfiction of grim realism, in which the writer observes human characters
like a scientist observing ants, seeing them as the products and victims of environment and heredity. 1 Theodore Dreiser carries on the tradition of naturalism in such
novels as The Financier (1912). It begins in a city setting. A young lad (who will grow
up to be a ruthless industrialist) is watching a battle to the death between a lobster
and a squid in a fish-market tank. Dented for the rest of his life by this grim scene, he
decides that's exactly the way to live in human society.
/
lrThe
founder of naturalism in fiction was French novelist Emilc Zola (1840-1902), who in a vast series of
twenty novels about the family RougoivMacquart traced a case of syphilis through several generations. In
America, Stephen Crane wrote an early naturalist novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), and showed
the way for later novelists such as Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, and James T. Farrell.
Setting may operate more subtly than that fish tank. Often, setting and character will reveal each other. Recall how Faulkner, at the start of "A Rose for Emily," depicts Emily Grierson's house, once handsome but now "an eyesore among eyesores"
surrounded by gas stations. Still standing, refusing to yield its old-time horse-andbuggy splendor to the age of the automobile, the house in "its stubborn and coquettish decay" embodies the character of its owner. In some fiction, setting is closely
bound with theme (what the story is saying)as you will find in John Steinbeck's
"The Chrysanthemums" (Chapter 7), a story beginning with a fog that has sealed off
a valley from the rest of the worlda fog like the lid on a pot. In The Scarlet Letter,
even small details contain powerful hints. At the beginning of his novel, Hawthorne
remarks of a colonial jailhouse:
Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street,
was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and
such unsightly vegetation, w7hich evidently found something congenial in
the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a
prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold,
was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate
gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty
to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came
forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be
kind to him.
Apparently, Hawthorne wishes to show us that Puritan Boston, a town of rutted
streets and an ugly jail with a tangled grass-plot, may be rough but has beauty in it.
As the story unfolds, he will further suggest (among other things) that secret sin
and a beautiful child may go together like pigweed and wild roses. In his artfully
crafted novel, setting is one withnot separate fromcharacters, theme, and
symbols.
In some stories, a writer will seem to draw a setting mainly to evoke atmosphere.
In such a story, setting starts us feeling whatever the storyteller would have us feel. In
"The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe's setting the action in an old, dark, lantern-lit house
greatly contributes to our sense of uneaseand so helps the story's effectiveness.
(Old, dark mansions are favorite settings for the Gothic story, a long-popular kind of
fiction mentioned again in Chapter 8.)
But be warned: you'll meet stories in which setting appears hardly to matter. In
W. Somerset Maugham's fable, "The Appointment in Samarra," all we need to be told
about the setting is that it is a marketplace in Baghdad. In that brief fable, the inevitability of death is the point, not an exotic setting. In this chapter, though, you will
meet four fine stories in which setting, for one reason or another, counts greatly.
Without it, none of these stories could happen.
K a t e Ctiopsn
The Storm
1898
Kate Chopin (1851-1904) was born Katherine
O'Flaherty in St. Louis, daughter of an Irish immigrant grown wealthy in retailing. On his death,
young Kate was raised by her mother s family:
aristocratic Creoles, descendants of the French
and Spaniards who had colonized Louisiana.
Young Kate received a convent schooling, and at
nineteen married Oscar Chopin, a Creole cotton
broker from New Orleans. Later, the Chopins
lived on a plantation near
Cloutierville}
Louisiana, a region whose varied peopleCreoles, Cajuns, blacksKate Chopin was later to
write about with loving care in Bayou Folk
(1894) and A Night in Arcadia (1897). The
shock of her husband's sudden death in 1883,
KATE C H O P I N
which left her with the raising of six children,
seems to have plunged Kate Chopin into writing. She read and admired fine woman writers of her day, such as the Maine realist Sarah
Orne Jewett. She also read Maupassant, Zola, and other new (and scandalous) French naturalist writers. She began to bring into American fiction some of their hard-eyed observation
and their passion for telling unpleasant truths. Determined, in defiance of her times, frankly
to show the sexual feelings of her characters, Chopin suffered from neglect and censorship.
When her major novel, The Awakening, appeared in 1899, critics were outraged by her
candid portrait of a woman who seeks sexual and professional independence. After causing
such a literary scandal, Chopin was unable to get her later work published, and wrote little
more before she died. The Awakening and many of her stories had to wait seven decades
for a sympathetic audience.
i
The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain. Bobinot,
who was accustomed to converse on terms of perfect equality with his little son,
called the child's attention to certain somber clouds that were rolling with sinister
intention from the west, accompanied by a sullen, threatening roar. They were at
Friedheimer's store and decided to remain there till the storm had passed. They sat
within the door on two empty kegs. Bibi was four years old and looked very wise.
"Mama'll be 'fraid, yes," he suggested with blinking eyes.
"She'll shut the house. Maybe she got Sylvie helpin' her this evenin'," Bobinot
responded reassuringly.
"No; she ent got Sylvie. Sylvie was helpin' her yistiday," piped Bibi.
Bobinot arose and going across to the counter purchased a can of shrimps, of
which Calixta was very fond. Then he returned to his perch on the keg and sat
stolidly holding the can of shrimps while the storm burst. It shook the wooden store
and seemed to be ripping great furrows in the distant field. Bibi laid his little hand on
his father's knee and was not afraid.
II
Calixta, at home, felt no uneasiness for their safety. She sat at a side window
sewing furiously on a sewing machine. She was greatly occupied and did not notice
the approaching storm. But she felt very warm and often stopped to mop her face on
which the perspiration gathered in beads. She unfastened her white sacque at the
throat. It began to grow dark, and suddenly realizing the situation she got up hurriedly and went about closing windows and doors.
Out on the small front gallery she had hung Bobinot's Sunday clothes to air and
she hastened out to gather them before the rain fell. As she stepped outside, Alcee
Laballiere rode in at the gate. She had not seen him very often since her marriage,
and never alone. She stood there with Bobinot's coat in her hands, and the big rain
drops began to fall. Alcee rode his horse under the shelter of a side projection where
the chickens had huddled and there were plows and a harrow piled up in the corner.
"May I come and wait on your gallery till the storm is over, Calixta?" he asked.
"Come 'long in, M'sieur Alcee."
His voice and her own startled her as if from a trance, and she seized Bobinot's
vest. Alcee, mounting to the porch, grabbed the trousers and snatched Bibi's braided
jacket that was about to be carried away by a sudden gust of wind. He expressed an
intention to remain outside, but it was soon apparent that he might as well have
been out in the open: the water beat in upon the boards in driving sheets, and he
went inside, closing the door after him. It was even necessary to put something beneath the door to keep the water out.
"My! what a rain! It's good two years sence it rain like that," exclaimed Calixta
as she rolled up a piece of bagging and Alcee helped her to thrust it beneath the
crack.
She was a little fuller of figure than five years before when she married; but she
had lost nothing of her vivacity. Her blue eyes still retained their melting quality;
and her yellow hair, dishevelled by the wind and rain, kinked more stubbornly than
ever about her ears and temples.
The rain beat upon the low, shingled roof with a force and clatter that threatened to break an entrance and deluge them there. They were in the dining room
the sitting roomthe general utility room. Adjoining was her bed room, with Bibi's
couch along side her own. The door stood open, and the room writh its white, monumental bed, its closed shutters, looked dim and mysterious.
Alcee flung himself into a rocker and Calixta nervously began to gather up from
the floor the lengths of a cotton sheet which she had been sewring.
"If this keeps up, Dieu sait if the levees goin' to stan' it!" she exclaimed.
"What have you got to do with the levees?"
"I got enough to do! An' there's Bobinot with Bibi out in that stormif he only
didn' left Friedheimer's!"
"Let us hope, Calixta, that Bobinot's got sense enough to come in out of a
cyclone."
She went and stood at the window with a greatly disturbed look on her face. She
wiped the frame that was clouded with moisture. It was stifiingly hot. Alcee got up
and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down
Dieu sait: God only knows.
in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the distant wood in a
gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant. A bolt struck a tall chinaberry
tree at the edge of the field. It filled all visible space with a blinding glare and the
crash seemed to invade the very boards they stood upon.
Calixta put her hands to her eyes, and with a cry, staggered backward. Alcee's arm
encircled her, and for an instant he drew her close and spasmodically to him.
"Bonce/"0 she cried, releasing herself from his encircling arm and retreating from
the window, "the house'll go next! If I only knew w'ere Bibi was!" She would not compose herself; she would not be seated. Alcee clasped her shoulders and looked into her
face. The contact of her warm, palpitating body when he had unthinkingly drawn her
into his arms, had aroused all the old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh.
"Calixta," he said, "don't be frightened. Nothing can happen. The house is too
low to be struck, with so many tall trees standing about. There! aren't you going to be
quiet? say, aren't you?" He pushed her hair back from her face that was warm and
steaming. Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a
glimpse of her full, firm bosom disturbed him powerfully. As she glanced up at him
the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously
betrayed a sensuous desire. He looked down into her eyes and there was nothing for
him to do but gather her lips in a kiss. It reminded him of Assumption. 0
"Do you rememberin Assumption, Calixta?" he asked in a low voice broken by
passion. Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and
kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a
desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against
which his honor forbade him to prevail. Nowwell, nowher lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, wTh.ite throat and her whiter breasts.
They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her
laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as
wrhit.e as the couch she lay upon. Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first
time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath
and perfume to the undying life of the world.
The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a
white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous
nature that had never yet been reached.
When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy,
inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her,
they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery.
He stayed cushioned upon her, breathless, dazed, enervated, with his heart beating
like a hammer upon her. With one hand she clasped his head, her lips lightly touching
his forehead. The other hand stroked with a soothing rhythm his muscular shoulders.
The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away. The rain beat softly
upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield.
The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening green world into a
palace of gems. Calixta, on the gallery, watched Alcee ride away. He turned and
smiled at her with a beaming face; and she lifted her pretty chin in the air and laughed
aloud.
Bontcl: Heavens!
Assumption: a parish west of New Orleans,
20
25
III
Bobinot and Bibi, trudging home, stopped without at the cistern to make themselves presentable.
"My! Bibi, w'at will yo' mama say! You ought to be ashame'. You oughtn' put
on those good pants. Look at 'em! An' that mud on yo' collar! How you got that
mud on yo' collar, Bibi? I never saw such a boy!" Bibi was the picture of pathetic
resignation. Bobinot was the embodiment of serious solicitude as he strove to remove from his own person and his son's the signs of their tramp over heavy roads
and through wet fields. He scraped the mud off Bibi's bare legs and feet with a stick
and carefully removed all traces from his heavy brogans. Then, prepared for the
worstthe meeting with an overscrupulous housewife, they entered cautiously at
the back door.
Calixta was preparing supper. She had set the table and was dripping coffee at
the hearth. She sprang up as they came in.
"Oh, Bobinot! You back! My! but I was uneasy. W e r e you been during the rain?
An' Bibi? he ain't wet? he ain't hurt?" She had clasped Bibi and was kissing him effusively. Bobinot's explanations and apologies which he had been composing all along
the way, died on his lips as Calixta felt him to see if he were dry, and seemed to express nothing but satisfaction at their safe return.
"I brought you some shrimps, Calixta," offered Bobinot, hauling the can from his
ample side pocket and laying it on the table.
"Shrimps! Oh, Bobinot! you too good fo' anything!" and she gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek that resounded. "J't/ous repondsy we'll have feas' to night!
umph-umph!"
Bobinot and Bibi began to relax and enjoy themselves, and when the three
seated themselves at table they laughed much and so loud that anyone might have
heard them as far away as Laballiere's.
IV
Alcee Laballiere wrote to his wife, Clarisse, that night. It was a loving letter, full
of tender solicitude. He told her not to hurry back, but if she and the babies liked it
at Biloxi, to stay a month longer. He was getting on nicely; and though he missed
them, he was willing to bear the separation a while longerrealizing that their
health and pleasure were the first things to be considered.
v
As for Clarisse, she was charmed upon receiving her husband's letter. She and
the babies were doing well. T h e society was agreeable; many of her old friends and
acquaintances were at the bay. And the first free breath since her marriage seemed to
restore the pleasant liberty of her maiden days. Devoted as she was to her husband,
their intimate conjugal life was something which she was more than willing to forego
for a while.
So the storm passed and everyone was happy.
J'vous reponds: Let me tell you.
QUESTIONS
1. Exactly where does Chopin's story take place? How can you tell?
2. What circumstances introduced in Part I turn out to have a profound effect on events in
the story?
3. What details in "The Storm" emphasize the fact that Bobinot loves his wife? What details
reveal how imperfectly he comprehends her nature?
4- What general attitudes toward sex, love, and marriage does Chopin imply? Cite evidence
to support your answer.
5. What meanings do you find in the title "The Storm"?
6. In the story as a whole, how do setting and plot reinforce each other?
To Build a Fire
1910
Jack London (1876-1916), bom in San Francisco,
won a large popular audience for his novels of
the sea and the Yukon: The Call of the Wild
(1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), and White
Fang (1906). Like Ernest Hemingway, he was
a writer who lived a strenuous life. In 1893, he
marched cross-country in Coxey's Army, an organized protest of the unemployed; in 1897, he
took part in the Klondike gold rush; and later as
a reporter, he covered the Russo-Japanese War
and the Mexican Revolution. Son of an unmarried mother and a father who denied his paternity, London grew up in poverty. At fourteen,
he began holding hard jobs: working in a canning
JACK
L0ND0N
factory and a jute-mill, serving as a deck hand,
pirating oysters in San Francisco Bay. These experiences persuaded him to join the Socialist Labor Party and crusade for workers7 rights. In
his political novel The Iron Heel (1908), London envisions a grim totalitarian America.
Like himself, the hero of his novel Martin Eden (1909) is a man of brief schooling who
gains fame as a writer, works for a cause, loses faith in it, and. finds life without meaning.
Though endowed with immense physical energyhe wrote fifty volumesLondon drank
hard, spent fast, and played out early. While his reputation as a novelist may have declined
since his own day, some of his short stories have lasted triumphantly.
Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man turned
aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and
little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep
bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at
his wratch. It was nine o'clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was
not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over
the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had
been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky line and dip immedi- .
ately from view.
T h e man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile
wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow.
It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice jams of the freeze-up
had formed. North and south, as far as the eye could see, it was unbroken white, save
for a dark hairline that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to
the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hairline was the trailthe main
trailthat led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water;
and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand
miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael, on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half
a thousand more.
But all thisthe mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from
the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it allmade no
impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer
in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that
he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in
the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd
degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that
was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature,
and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of
heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of
frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear flaps, warm
moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought
that never entered his head.
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle
that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow,
the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this
spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty belowhow much
colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the
old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They
had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come
the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring
from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark,
it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would
be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his
jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the
naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon
grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A foot of snow had
fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was glad he was without a sled, travelling light. In fact, he carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He
was surprised, however, at the cold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed
his numb nose and cheekbones with his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered
man, but the hair on his face did not protect the high cheekbones and the eager nose
that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf dog, graycoated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild
wolf The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time
for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's
judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than
sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing
point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost
obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain
there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man's
brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into
camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it
wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.
T h e frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of
frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes whitened by its crystalled
breath. The man's red beard and mustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly,
the deposit taking the form of ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he
exhaled. Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and the muzzle of ice held his lips so
rigidly that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice. The result
was that a crystal beard of the color and solidity of amber was increasing its length 011
his chin. If he fell down it would shatter itself, like glass, into brittle fragments. But
he did not mind the appendage. It was the penalty all tobacco chewers paid in that
country, and he had been out before in two cold snaps. They had not been so cold as
this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they had been
registered at fifty below and at fifty-live.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crossed a wide
flat, and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed of a small stream. This was Henderson
Creek, and he knew he was ten miles from the forks. He looked at his watch. It was
ten o'clock. He was making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at the forks at half-past twelve. He decided to celebrate that event by eating his
lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping discouragement, as
the man swung along the creek bed. The furrow of the old sled trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow covered the marks of the last runners. In a month no
man had come up or down that silent creek. T h e man held steadily on. He was not
much given to thinking, and just then particularly he had nothing to think about
save that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o'clock he would be in camp
with the boys. There was nobody to talk to; and, had there been, speech would have
been impossible because of the ice muzzle on his mouth. So he continued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.
Oncc in a while the thought reiterated itself thai il was very cold and that he
had never experienced such cold. As he walked along he rubbed his cheekbones and
nose with the back of his mittened hand. He did this automatically, now and again
changing hands. But, rub as he would, the instant he stopped his cheekbones were
numb, and the following instant the end of his nose went numb. He was sure to frost
his cheeks; he knew that, and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised a
10
nose strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap passed across the cheeks, as
well, and saved them. But it didn't matter much, after all. What were frosted cheeks?
A bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.
Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber jams, and always he
sharply noted where he placed his feet. Once, coming around a bend, he shied
abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail. The creek he knew was frozen
clear to the bottomno creek could contain water in that arctic winterbut he
knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along
under the snow and on top the ice of the creek. He knew that the coldest snaps never
froze these springs, and he knew likewise their danger. They were traps. They hid
pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the
snow. Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and ice skin, so that when one
broke through he kept on breaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to
the waist.
That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the give under his feet and
heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice skin. And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger. At the very least it meant delay, for he would be
forced to stop and build a fire, and under its protection to bare his feet while he dried
his socks and moccasins. He stood and studied the creek bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of water came from the right. He reflected awhile, rubbing his
nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and testing the footing for
each step. Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh chew of tobacco and swung along
at his four-mile gait.
In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar traps. Usually
the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance that advertised
the danger. Once again, however, he had a close call; and once, suspecting danger,
he compelled the dog to go on in front. The dog did not want to go. It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken
surface. Suddenly it broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer
footing. It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that clung
to it turned to ice. It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then dropped down
in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. This was
a matter of instinct. T o permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It did not
know this. It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts
of its being. But the man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and he
removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the ice particles. He did
not expose his fingers more than a minute, and was astonished at the swift numbness
that smote them. It certainly was cold. He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the
hand savagely across his chest.
At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun was too far south on its
winter journey to clear the horizon* The bulge of the earth intervened between it and
Henderson Creek, where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no
shadow. At half-past twelve, to the minute, he arrived at the forks of the creek. He
was pleased at the speed he had made. If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the
boys by six. He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch. T h e action
consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief moment the numbness
laid hold of the exposed fingers. He did not put the mitten on, but, instead, struck the
fingers a dozen sharp smashes against his leg. Then he sat down on a snow-covered log
to eat. The sting that followed upon the striking of his fingers against his leg ceased so
quickly that he was startled. He had had no chance to take a bite of biscuit. He struck
the fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten, baring the other hand for the
purpose of eating. He tried to take a mouthful, but the ice muzzle prevented. He had
forgotten to build a fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckled he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers. Also, he noted that the
stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already passing away.
He wondered whether the toes were warm or numb. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were numb.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up. He was a bit frightened. He
stamped up and down until the stinging returned into the feet. It certainly was cold,
was his thought. That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling
how cold it sometimes got in the country. And he had laughed at him at the time!
That showed one must not be too sure of things. There was no mistake about it, it
was cold. He strode up and down, stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by the returning warmth. Then he got out matches and proceeded to make a
fire. From the undergrowth, where high water of the previous spring had lodged a
supply of seasoned twigs, he got his firewood. Working carefully from a small beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and in
the protection of which he ate his biscuits. For the moment the cold of space was
outwitted. The dog took satisfaction in the fire, stretching out close enough for
warmth and far enough away to escape being singed.
When the man had finished, he filled his pipe and took his comfortable time
over a smoke. Then he pulled on his mittens, settled the ear flaps of his cap firmly
about his ears, and took the creek trail up the left fork. T h e dog was disappointed and
yearned back toward the fire. This man did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and
seven degrees below freezing point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it
had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in
such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this cold came. On
the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one
was the toil slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip lash and of harsh and menacing throat sounds that threatened the
whip lash. So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man. Itwas not concerned in the welfare of the man; it was for its own sake that it yearned
back toward the fire. But the man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound of whip
lashes, and the dog swung in at the man's heels and followed after.
The man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber beard.
Also, his moist breath quickly powdered with white his mustache, eyebrows, and
lashes. There did not seem to be so many springs on the left fork of the Henderson,
and for half an hour the man saw no signs of any. And then it happened. At a place
where there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through. It was not. deep. He wet himself halfway to the
knees before he floundered out to the firm crust.
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp with
the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would have to build
15
a fire and dry out his footgear. This was imperative at that low temperaturehe
knew that much; and he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, tangled
in the underbrush about the trunks of several small spruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry firewoodsticks and twigs, principally, but also larger portions of seasoned branches and fine, dry, last year's grasses. He threw down several large pieces
on top of the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from
drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching a
match to a small shred of birch bark that he took from his pocket. This burned even
more readily than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed the young flame with
wisps of dry grass and with the tiniest dry twigs.
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger. Gradually, as the
flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame. He knew there must be no failure. When it is seventy-five
below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a firethat is, if his feet
are wet. If his feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile and
restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored
by running when it is seventy-five below. No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet
will freeze the harder.
All this the man knew. T h e old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it
the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice. Already all sensation
had gone out of his feet. T o build the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb. His pace of four miles an hour had
kept his heart pumping blood to the surface of his body and to all the extremities.
But the instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down. T h e cold of space
smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow. T h e blood of his body recoiled before it. T h e
blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped
that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now7 it ebbed away and sank down into
the recesses of his body. T h e extremities were the first to feel its absence. His wet
feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they had
not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of ail
his body chilled as it lost its blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched by the frost,
for the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was feeding it with twigs the
size of his finger. In another minute he would be able to feed it with branches the
size of his wrist, and then he could remove his wet footgear, and, while it dried, he
could keep his naked feet warm by the fire, rubbing them at first, of course, with
snow7. The fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the oldtimer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. T h e old-timer had been very serious in laying
down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well,
here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those
old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. Alia man had to do was
to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone.
But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing. And
he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were,
for he could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote
20
from his body and from him. When he touched a twig, he had to look and see
whether or not he had hold of it. The wires were pretty well down between him and
his finger ends.
All of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping and crackling and
promising life with every dancing flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They
were coated with ice; the thick German socks were like sheaths of iron halfway to the
knees; and the moccasin strings were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by
some conflagration. For a moment he tugged with his numb fingers, then, realizing
the folly of it, he drew his sheath knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own fault or, rather,
his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree. He should have
built it in the open. But it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop
them directly on the fire. Now the tree under which he had done this carried a
weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was
fully freighted. Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the treean imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough capsized its
load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out!
Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.
The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of
death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been. Then he
grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right. If he had only had
a trail mate he would have been in no danger now. The trail mate could have built the
fire. Well, it was up to him to build the fire over again, and this second time there
must be no failure. Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes. His feet
must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some time before the second fire was
ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busy all the
time they were passing through his mind. He made a new foundation for a fire, this
time in the open, where no treacherous tree could blot it out. Next he gathered drygrasses and tiny twigs from the high-water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way
he got many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the
best he could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of the larger
branches to be used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog
sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eye, for it looked upon him
as the fire provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of birch
bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not feel it with his fingers, he
could hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for it. Try as he would, he could not clutch
hold of it. And all the time, in his consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant
his feet were freezing. This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought
against it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and threshed his
arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might against his sides. He did this
sitting down, and he stood up to do it; and all the while the dog sat in the snow, its
wolf brush of a tail curled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf ears pricked
25
forward intently as it watched the man. And the man, as he beat and threshed with
his arms and hands, felt a great surge of envy as he regarded the creature that was .
warm and secure in its natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first faraway signals of sensation in his beaten
fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved into a stinging ache that was
excruciating, but which the man hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten
from his right hand and fetched forth the birch bark. The exposed fingers were
quickly going numb again. Next he brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But
the tremendous cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He tried to pick
it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch. He
was very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing feet, and nose, and cheeks, out
of his mind, devoting his whole soul to the matches. He watched, using the sense of
vision in place of that of touch, and when he saw his fingers on each side the bunch,
he closed themthat is, he willed to close them, for the wires were down, and the
fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitten on the right hand, and beat it fiercely
against his knee. Then, with both mittened hands, he scooped the bunch of matches,
along with much snow, into his lap. Yet he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels of his
mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The ice crackled and
snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth. He drew the lower jaw in,
curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate a match. He succeeded in getting one, which he dropped on his lap. He
was no better off. He could not pick it up. Then he devised a way. He picked it up in
his teeth and scratched it on his leg. Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in
lighting it. As it flamed he held it with his teeth to the birch bark. But the burning
brimstone went up his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically.
The match fell into the snow and went out.
The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of controlled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel with a partner. He
beat his hands, but failed in exciting any sensation. Suddenly he bared both hands,
removing the mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole bunch between the heels
of his hands. His arm muscles not being frozen enabled him to press the hand heels
tightly against the matches. Then he scratched the bunch along his leg. It flared into
flame, seventy sulphur matches at once! There was no wind to blow7 them out. He
kept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and held the blazing bunch
to the birch bark. As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand. His
flesh was burning. He could smell it. Deep down below the surface he could feel it.
The sensation developed into pain that grew7 acute. And still he endured it, holding
the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would not light readily because his
own burning hands were in the way, absorbing most of the flame.
At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart. The blazing
matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch bark was alight. He began laying dry
grasses and the tiniest twrigs on the flame. He could not pick and choose, for he had
to lift the fuel between the heels of his hands. Small pieces of rotten wood and green
moss clung to the twigs, and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. He
cherished the flame carefully and awkwardly. It meant life, and it must not perish.
The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him begin to shiver,
and he grew more awkward. A large piece of green moss fell squarely on the little fire.
He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too
far, and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs
separating and scattering. He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of the
tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away from him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out. T h e fire provider had
failed. As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting
across the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless, hunching movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other, shifting its weight back and
forth on them with wistful eagerness.
T h e sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered the tale of
the man, caught in the blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass,
and so was saved. He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until
the numbness went out of them. Then he could build another fire. He spoke to the
dog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a strange note of fear that frightened the
animal, w7ho had never known the man to speak in such a way before. Something
was the matter, and its suspicious nature sensed dangerit knew not what danger,
but somewhere, somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened its ears down at the sound of the man's voice, and its restless, hunching
movements and the liftings and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced;
but it would not come to the man. He got on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog. This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled
mincingly away.
The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness. Then he
pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth, and got upon his feet. He glanced down
at first in order to assure himself that he was really standing up, for the absence of
sensation in his feet left him unrelated to the earth. His erect position in itself started
to drive the webs of suspicion from the dog's mind; and when he spoke peremptorily,
with the sound of whip lashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customary allegiance
and came to him. As it came within reaching distance, the man lost his control. His
arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced genuine surprise when he discovered
that his hands could not clutch, that there was neither bend nor feeling in the fingers. He had forgotten for the moment that they were frozen and that they were
freezing more and more. All this happened quickly, and before the animal could get
away, he encircled its body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this
fashion held the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.
But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit there. He
realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath knife nor throttle the animal.
He released it, and it plunged wildly away, with tail between its legs, and still
snarling. It halted forty feet away and surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply
pricked forward.
The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them
hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one should have to use
his eyes in order to find out where his hands were. He began threshing his arms back
and forth, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did this for five minutes,
violently, and his heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to his
shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. He had an impression that they
hung like weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the impression
down, he could not find it.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly
became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his
fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and
death with the chances against him. This threw him into a panic, and he turned
and ran up the creek bed along the old, dim trail. The dog joined in behind and
kept up with him. He ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never
known in his life. Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through the snow, he began
to see things againthe banks of the creek, the old timber jams, the leafless aspens,
and the sky. The running made him feel better. He did not shiver. Maybe, if he ran
on, his feet would thaw out; and anyway, if he ran far enough, he would reach camp
and the boys. Without doubt he would lose some fingers and toes and some of his
face; but the boys would take care of him, and save the rest of him when he got
there. And at the same time there was another thought in his mind that said he
would never get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away, that
the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead.
This thought he kept in the background and refused to consider. Sometimes it
pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to
think of other things.
It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so frozen that he could
not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight of his body. He seemed
to himself to skim along above the surface, and to have no connection with the
earth. Somewhere he had once seen a winged Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury
felt as he felt when skimming over the earth.
His theory of running until he reached the camp and the boys had one flaw in it:
he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he decided,
and next time he would merely walk and keep on going. As he sat and regained his
breath, he noted that he was feeling quite warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet,
when he touched his nose and cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not
thaw them out. Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the thought came to
him that the frozen portions of his body must be extending. He tried to keep this
thought down, to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the panicky
feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic. But the thought asserted itself,
and persisted, until it produced a vision of his body totally frozen. This was too much,
and he made another wild run along the trail. Once he slowed down to a walk, but
the thought of the freezing extending itself made him run again.
And ail the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell down a second time, it curled its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of him, facing him, curiously eager and intent. T h e warmth and security of the animal angered him, and
he cursed it till it flattened down its ears appeasingly. This time the shivering came
more quickly upon die man. He was losing in his battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from all sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no
more than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his last
panic. When he had recovered his breath arid control, he sat up and entertained in
his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the conception
did not come to him in such terms. His idea of it was that he had been making a
fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut offsuch was the
simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as
well take it decently. With this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking
an anesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse
ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he found himself with
them, coming along the trail and looking for himself. And, still with them, he came
around a turn in the trail and found himself lying in the snow. He did not belong
with himself any more, for even then he was out of himself, standing with the boys
and looking at himself in the snow. It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he
got back to the States he could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted on from
this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly,
warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of
Sulphur Creek.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and
satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting. The brief
day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no signs of a fire to be made,
and, besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a man to sit like that in the
snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the man remained silent. Later the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man
and caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little
longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly
in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it
knew, where were the other food providers and fire providers.
QUESTIONS
1. Roughly how much of London's story is devoted to describing the setting? What particular details make it memorable?
2. T o what extent does setting determine what happens in this story?
3. From what point of view is London's story told?
4. In " T o Build a Fire" the man is never given a name. What is the effect of his being called
simply "the man" throughout the story?
5. From the evidence London gives us, what stages are involved in the process of freezing to
death? What does the story gain from London's detailed account of the man's experience
with each successive stage?
6. What are the most serious mistakes the man makes? T o what factors do you attribute
these errors?
40
T. Coraghessan Boyfe
Greasy Lake
T. Coraghessan Boyle (the T. stands for Tom)
was born in 1948 in Peeks kill, New York, the
son of Irish immigrants. He.grew up, he recalls,
"as a sort of pampered punk" who did not read a
book until he was eighteen. After a brief period
as a high school teacher, he studied in the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, submitting a
collection of stories for his Ph.D. He now teaches
writing at the University of Southern California
and sometimes plays saxophone in a rockabilly
band. His stories in Esquire, Paris Review, the
Atlantic, and other magazines quickly won him
notice for their outrageous macabre humor and
bizarre inventiveness. Boyle has published seven
volumes of short stories, including Greasy Lake
(1985), T.C. Boyle Stories (1998), ami Tooth
and Claw (2005). He has also published nine
1985
T. C O R A G H E S S A N BOYLE
novels that are quite unlike anything else in contemporary American fiction. The subjects of
some Boyle novels reveal his wide-ranging and idiosyncratic interests. Water Music (1982)
conce?*ns an eighteenth-century expedition to Africa. Budding Prospects (1984) is a picaresque romp among adventurous marijuana growers. East Is East (1990) is a half-serious,
half-comic story of a Japanese fugitive in an American writers' colony. The Road to
Wellville (1993), which was made into a film with Anthony Hopki7is and Matthew Broderick, takes place in 1907 in a sanitarium run by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of cornflakes fame,
with cameo appearances by Henry Ford., Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone. The Inner
Circle (2004) concerns 1940s sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and his circle of intimates.
Boyle's most recent novel is Talk Talk (2006). He lives in Southern California.
It's about a mile down on the dark side of Route 88.
Bruce Springsteen
There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was
good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. We were all dangerous
characters then. We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in
our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine. When we
wheeled our parents' whining station wagons out onto the street we left a patch of rubber half a block long. We drank gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird, and Bali Hai.
We were nineteen. We were bad. We read Andre Gide and struck elaborate poses to
show that we didn't give a shit about anything. At night, we went up to Greasy Lake.
Through the center of town, up the strip, past the housing developments and
shopping malls, street lights giving way to the thin streaming illumination of the
Andre Gide: controversial French writer (1869-1951) whose novels, including The Counterfeiters
and Lafcadio's Adventures, often show individuals in conflict with accepted morality.
headlights, trees crowding the asphalt in a black unbroken wall: that was the way out
to Greasy Lake. The Indians had called it Wakan, a reference to the clarity of its waters. Now it was fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and
strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires. There was a single ravaged
island a hundred yards from shore, so stripped of vegetation it looked as if the air
force had strafed it. We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we
wanted to snuff the rich scent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her
clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars,
savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus
of frogs and crickets. This was nature.
I was there one night, late, in the company of two dangerous characters. Digby
wore a gold star in his right ear and allowed his father to pay his tuition at Cornell;
Jeff was thinking of quitting school to become a painter/musician/head-shop proprietor. They were both expert in the social graces, quick with a sneer, able to manage a
Ford with lousy shocks over a rutted and gutted blacktop road at eighty-five while
rolling a joint as compact as a Tootsie Roll Pop stick. They could lounge against a
bank of booming speakers and trade "man"s with the best of them or roll out across
the dance floor as if their joints worked on bearings. They were slick and quick and
they wore their mirror shades at breakfast and dinner, in the shower, in closets and
caves. In short, they were bad.
I drove. Digby pounded the dashboard and shouted along with Toots & the
Maytals while Jeff hung his head out the window and streaked the side of my
mother's Bel Air with vomit. It was early June, the air soft as a hand on your cheek,
the third night of summer vacation. T h e first two nights we'd been out till dawn,
looking for something we never found. On this, the third night, we'd cruised the
strip sixty-seven times, been in and out of every bar and club we could think of in a
twenty-mile radius, stopped twice for bucket chicken and forty-cent hamburgers,
debated going to a party at the house of a girl Jeffs sister knew, and chucked two
dozen raw eggs at mailboxes and hitchhikers. It was 2:00 A.M.; the bars were closing. There was nothing to do but take a bottle of lemon-flavored gin up to Greasy
Lake.
The taillights of a single car winked at us as we swung into the dirt lot with its
tufts of weed and washboard corrugations; '57 Chevy, mint, metallic blue. On the far
side of the lot, like the exoskeleton of some gaunt chrome insect, a chopper leaned
against its kickstand. And that was it for excitement: some junkie halfwit biker and a
car freak pumping his girlfriend. Whatever it was wre were looking for, we weren't
about to find it at Greasy Lake. Not that night.
But then all of a sudden Digby was fighting for the wheel. "Hey, that's Tony
Lovett's car! Hey!" he shouted, while I stabbed at the brake pedal and the Bel Air
nosed up to the gleaming bumper of the parked Chevy. L)igby leaned on the horn,
laughing, and instructed me to put my blights on. I flicked on the brights. This was
hilarious. A joke. Tony would experience premature withdrawal and expect to be
confronted by grim-looking state troopers with flashlights. We hit the horn, strobed
the lights, and then jumped out of the car to press our witty faces to Tony's windows;
for all we knew we might even catch a glimpse of some little fox's tit, and then we
could slap backs with red-faced Tony, roughhouse a little, and go on to new heights
of adventure and daring.
The first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate, was losing my grip
.on the keys. In the excitement, leaping from the car with the gin in one hand and a
roach clip in the other, I spilled them in the grassin the dark, rank, mysterious
nighttime grass of Greasy Lake. This was a tactical error, as damaging and irreversible
in its way as Westmoreland's decision to dig in at Khe Sanh. I felt it like a jab of intuition, and I stopped there by the open door, peering vaguely into the night that
puddled up round my feet.
The second mistakeand this was inextricably bound up with the firstwas identifying the car as Tony Lovett's. Even before the very bad character in greasy jeans and
engineer boots ripped out of the driver's door, I began to realize that this chrome blue
was much lighter than the robin's-egg of Tony's car, and that Tony's car didn't have
rear-mounted speakers. Judging from their expressions, Digby and Jeff were privately
groping toward the same inevitable and unsettling conclusion as I was.
In any case, there was no reasoning with this bad greasy characterclearly he
was a man of action. The first lusty Rockette 0 kick of his steel-toed boot caught me
under the chin, chipped my favorite tooth, and left me sprawled in the dirt. Like a
fool, I'd gone down on one knee to comb the stiff hacked grass for the keys, my mind
making connections in the most dragged-out, testudineous way, knowing that things
had gone wrong, that I was in a lot of trouble, and that the lost ignition key was my
grail and my salvation. T h e three or four succeeding blows were mainly absorbed by
my right buttock and the tough piece of bone at the base of my spine.
Meanwhile, Digby vaulted the kissing bumpers and delivered a savage kung-fu
blow to the greasy character's collarbone. Digby had just finished a course in martial
arts for phys-ed credit and had spent the better part of the past two nights telling us
apocryphal tales of Bruce Lee types and of the raw power invested in lightning blows
shot from coiled wrists, ankles, and elbows. The greasy character was unimpressed.
He merely backed off a step, his face like a Toltec mask, and laid Digby out with a
single whistling roundhouse blow . . . but by now Jeff had got into the act, and I was
beginning to extricate myself from the dirt, a tinny compound of shock, rage, and impotence wadded in my throat.
Jeff was on the guy's back, biting at his ear. Digby was on the ground, cursing. I
went for the tire iron I kept under the driver's seat. I kept it there because bad characters always keep tire irons under the driver's seat, for just such an occasion as this.
Never mind that I hadn't been involved in a fight since sixth grade, wThen a kid with
a sleepy eye and two streams of mucus depending from his nostrils hit me in the knee
with a Louisville slugger,0 never mind that I'd touched the tire iron exactly twice before, to change tires: it was there. And I went for it.
I was terrified. Blood was beating in my ears, my hands were shaking, my heart
turning over like a dirtbikc in the wrong gear. My antagonist was shirtless, and a single
cord of muscle flashed across his chest as he bent forward to peel Jeff from his back like
a wet overcoat. "Motherfucker," he spat, over and over, and 1 was aware in that instant
that all four of usDigby, Jeff, and myself includedwere chanting "motherfucker,
motherfucker," as if it were a battle cry. (What happened next? the detective asks the
Westmoreland's decision . . . Khe Sanh: General William C. Westmoreland commanded U.S. troops
in Vietnam (1964-68). In late 1967 the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces attacked Khe
Sanh (or Khesanh) with a show of strength, causing Westmoreland to expend great effort to defend
a plateau of relatively little tactical importance. Rockette: member of a dance troupe in the stage
show at Radio City Music Hall, New York, famous for its ability to kick fast and high with wonderful coordination. Loiusville slugger: a brand of baseball bat.
io
murderer from beneath the turned-down brim of his porkpie hat. I don't know, the
murderer says, something came over me. Exactly.)
Digby poked the flat of his hand in the bad character's face and I came at him
like a kamikaze, mindless, raging, stung with humiliationthe whole thing, from the
initial boot in the chin to this murderous primal instant involving no more than sixty
hyperventilating, gland-flooding secondsI came at him and brought the tire iron
down across his ear. T h e effect was instantaneous, astonishing. He was a stunt man
and this was Hollywood, he was a big grimacing toothy balloon and 1 was a man with
a straight pin. He collapsed. Wet his pants. Went loose in his boots.
A single second, big as a zeppelin, floated by. We were standing over him in a
circle, gritting our teeth, jerking our necks, our limbs and hands and feet twitching
with glandular discharges. No one said anything. W e just stared down at the guy, the
car freak, the lover, the bad greasy character laid low. Digby looked at me; so did Jeff.
I was still holding the tire iron, a tuft of hair clinging to the crook like dandelion
fluff, like down. Rattled, I dropped it in the dirt, already envisioning the headlines,
the pitted faces of the police inquisitors, the gleam of handcuffs, clank of bars, the big
black shadows rising from the back of the cell . . . when suddenly a raw torn shriek
cut through me like all the juice in all the electric chairs in the country.
It was the fox. She was short, barefoot, dressed in panties and a man's shirt.
"Animals!" she screamed, running at us with her fists clenched and wisps of blowdried hair in her face. There was a silver chain round her ankle, and her toenails
flashed in the glare of the headlights. I think it was the toenails that did it. Sure, the
gin and the cannabis and even the Kentucky Fried may have had a hand in it, but it
was the sight of those flaming toes that set us offthe toad emerging from the loaf in
Virgin Springlipstick
smeared on a child; she was already tainted. We were on her
like Bergman's deranged brotherssee no evil, hear none, speak nonepanting,
wheezing, tearing at her clothes, grabbing for flesh. We were bad characters, and we
were scared and hot and three steps over the lineanything could have happened.
It didn't.
Before we could pin her to the hood of the car, our eyes masked with lust and
greed and the purest primal badness, a pair of headlights swung into the lot. There we
were, dirty, bloody, guilty, dissociated from, humanity and civilization, the first of the
Ur-crimes behind us, the second in progress, shreds of nylon panty and spandex
brassiere dangling from our fingers, our flies open, lips lickedthere we were, caught
in the spotlight. Nailed.
We bolted. First for the car, and then, realizing we had no way of starting it, for
the woods. I thought nothing. I thought escape. T h e headlights came at me like accusing fingers. I was gone.
Ram-bam-bam, across the parking lot, past the chopper and into the feculent undergrowth at the lake's edge, insects flying up in my face, weeds whipping, frogs and
snakes and red-eyed turtles splashing off into the night: I was already ankle-deep in
muck and tepid wrater and still going strong. Behind me, the girl's screams rose in intensity, disconsolate, incriminating, the screams of the Sabine women,0 the Christian
Virgin Spring: film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1960). Sabine women: members of an ancient tribe in Italy, according to legend, forcibly carried off" by the early Romans under Romulus to
be their wives. The incident is depicted in a famous painting, "The Rape of the Sabine Women," by
seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin.
15
martyrs, Anne Frank0 dragged from the garret. I kept going, pursued by those cries,
imagining cops and bloodhounds. The water was up to my knees when I realized what
I was doing: I was going to swim for it. Swim the breadth of Greasy Lake and hide myself in the thick clot of woods on the far side. They'd never find me there.
I was breathing in sobs, in gasps. The water lapped at my waist as I looked out
over the moon-burnished ripples, the mats of algae that clung to the surface like
scabs. Digby and Jeff had vanished. I paused. Listened. T h e girl was quieter now,
screams tapering to sobs, but there were male voices, angry, excited, and the highpitched ticking of the second car's engine. I waded deeper, stealthy, hunted, the
ooze sucking at my sneakers. As I was about to take the plungeat the very instant
I dropped my shoulder for the first slashing strokeI blundered into something.
Something unspeakable, obscene, something soft, wet, moss-grown. A patch of
weed? A log? When I reached out to touch it, it gave like a rubber duck, it gave like
flesh.
In one of those nasty little epiphanies for which we are prepared by films and T V
and childhood visits to the funeral home to ponder the shrunken painted forms of
dead grandparents, I understood what it was that bobbed there so inadmissibiy in the
dark. Understood, and stumbled back in horror and revulsion, my mind yanked in six
different directions (I was nineteen, a mere child, an infant, and here in the space of
five minutes I'd struck down one greasy character and blundered into the waterlogged
carcass of a second), thinking, T h e keys, the keys, why did I have to go and lose the
keys? I stumbled back, but the muck took hold of my feeta sneaker snagged, balance lostand suddenly I was pitching face forward into the buoyant black mass,
throwing out my hands in desperation while simultaneously conjuring the image of
reeking frogs and muskrats revolving in slicks of their own deliquescing juices.
AAAAArrrgh! I shot from the water like a torpedo, the dead man rotating to expose
a mossy beard and eyes cold as the moon. I must have shouted out, thrashing around
in the weeds, because the voices behind me suddenly became animated.
"What was that?"
"It's them, it's them: they tried to, tried to . . . rape me!" Sobs.
A man's voice, flat Midwestern accent. "You sons a bitches, we'll kill you!"
Frogs, crickets.
Then another voice, harsh, r-less, Lower East Side: "Motherfucker!" I recognized
the verbal virtuosity of the bad greasy character in the engineer boots. Tooth
chipped, sneakers gone, coated in mud and slime and worse, crouching breathless in
the weeds waiting to have my ass thoroughly and definitively kicked and fresh from
the hideous stinking embrace of a three-days-dead-corpse, I suddenly felt a rush of joy
and vindication: the son of a bitch was alive! Just as quickly, my bowels turned to ice.
"Come on out of there, you pansy mothers!" the bad greasy character wras screaming.
He shouted curses till he was out of breath.
The crickets started up again, then the frogs. I held my breath. All at once was a
sound in the reeds, a swishing, a splash: thunk-a-thunk. They were throwing rocks.
The frogs fell silent. I cradled my head. Swish, swish, thunk-a-thunk. A wedge of
feldspar the size of a cue ball glanced off my knee. I bit my finger.
Anne Frank: German Jewish girl (1929-1945) whose diary written during the Nazi occupation of
the Netherlands later became world-famous. She hid with her family in a secret attic in Amsterdam,
but was caught by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camp at Belsen, where she died.
It was then that they turned to the car. I heard a door slam, a curse, and then the
sound of the headlights shatteringalmost a good-natured sound, celebratory, like
corks popping from the necks of bottles. This was succeeded by the dull booming of
the fenders, metal on metal, and then the icy crash of the windshield. I inched forward, elbows and knees, my belly pressed to the muck, thinking of guerrillas and
commandos and The Naked and the Dead.0 I parted the weeds and squinted the
length of the parking lot.
The second carit was a Trans-Amwas still running, its high beams washing
the scene in a lurid stagy light. Tire iron flailing, the greasy bad character was laying
into the side of my mother's Bel Air like an avenging demon, his shadow riding up
the trunks of the trees. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp-whomp. The other two guys
blond types, in fraternity jacketswere helping out with tree branches and skullsized boulders. One of them was gathering up bottles, rocks, muck, candy wrappers,
used condoms, poptops, and other refuse and pitching it through the window on the
driver's side. I could see the fox, a white bulb behind the windshield of the '57
Chevy. "Bobbie," she whined over the thumping, "come on." The greasy character
paused a moment, took one good swipe at the left taillight, and then heaved the tire
iron halfway across the lake. Then he fired up the '57 and was gone.
Blond head nodded at blond head. One said something to the other, too low for
me to catch. They were no doubt thinking that in helping to annihilate my
mother's car they'd committed a fairly rash act, and thinking too that there were
three bad characters connected with that very car watching them from the woods.
Perhaps other possibilities occurred to them as wellpolice, jail cells, justices of the
peace, reparations, lawyers, irate parents, fraternal censure. Whatever they were
thinking, they suddenly dropped branches, bottles, and rocks and sprang for their
car in unison, as if they'd choreographed it. Five seconds. That's all it took. The engine shrieked, the tires squealed, a cloud of dust rose from the rutted lot and then
settled back on darkness.
I don't know how long I lay there, the bad breath of decay all around me, my
jacket heavy as a bear, the primordial ooze subtly reconstituting itself to accommodate my upper thighs and testicles. My jaws ached, my knee throbbed, my coccyx was
on fire. I contemplated suicide, wondered if I'd need bridgework, scraped the recesses
of my brain for some sort of excuse to give my parentsa tree had fallen on the car, I
was blinded by a bread truck, hit and run, vandals had got to it while we were playing
chess at Digby's. Then I thought of the dead man. Fie was probably the only person
on the planet worse off than I was. I thought about him, fog on the lake, insects
chirring eerily, and felt the tug of fear, felt the darkness opening up inside me like a
set of jaws. Who was he, I wondered, this victim of time and circumstance bobbing
sorrowfully in the lake at my back. The owner of the chopper, no doubt, a bad older
character come to this. Shot during a murky drug deal, drowned while drunkenly
frolicking in the lake. Another headline. My car was wrecked; he was dead.
When the eastern half of the sky went from black to cobalt and the trees began
to separate themselves from the shadows, I pushed myself up from the mud and
stepped out into the open. By now the birds had begun to take over for the crickets,
and dew lay slick on the leaves. There was a smell in the air, raw and sweet at the
same time, the smell of the sun firing buds and opening blossoms. I contemplated the
The Naked and the Dead: novel (1948) by Norman Mailer, about U.S. Army life in World War II.
30
car. It lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a
vanished civilization. Everything was still. This was nature.
I was circling the car, as dazed and bedraggled as the sole survivor of an air blitz,
when Digby and Jeff emerged from the trees behind me. Digby's face wras crosshatched with smears of dirt; Jeffs jacket was gone and his shirt was torn across the
shoulder. They slouched across the lot, looking sheepish, and silently came up beside
me to gape at the ravaged automobile. No one said a word. After a while Jeff swung
open the driver's door and began to scoop the broken glass and garbage off the seat. I
looked at Digby. He shrugged. "At least they didn't, slash the tires," he said.
It was true: the tires were intact. There was no windshield, the headlights were
staved in, and the body looked as if it had been sledge-hammered for a quarter a shot
at the county fair, but the tires were inflated to regulation pressure. The car was drivable. In silence, all three of us bent to scrape the mud and shattered glass from the interior. I said nothing about the biker. When we were finished, I reached in my pocket
for the keys, experienced a nasty stab of recollection, cursed myself, and turned to
search the grass. I spotted them almost immediately, no more than five feet from the
open door, glinting like jewels in the first tapering shaft of sunlight. There was no reason to get philosophical about it: I eased into the seat and turned the engine over.
It was at that precise moment that the silver Mustang with the flame decals rumbled into the lot. All three of us froze; then Digby and Jeff slid into the car and
slammed the door. We watched as the Mustang rocked and bobbed across the ruts
and finally jerked to a halt beside the forlorn chopper at the far end of the lot. "Let's
go," Digby said. I hesitated, the Bel Air wheezing beneath me.
Two girls emerged from the Mustang. Tight jeans, stiletto heels, hair like frozen
fur. They bent over the motorcycle, paced back and forth aimlessly, glanced once or
twice at us, and then ambled over to where the reeds sprang up in a green fence
round the perimeter of the lake. One of them cupped her hands to her mouth. "Al,"
she called. "Hey, Al!"
"Come on," Digby hissed. "Let's get out of here."
But it was too late. The second girl was picking her way across the lot, unsteady
on her heels, looking up at us and then away. She was oldertwenty-five or -six
and as she came closer we could see there was something wrong with her: she was
stoned or drunk, lurching now and waving her arms for balance. I gripped the steering wheel as if it were the ejection lever of a flaming jet, and Digby spat out my
name, twice, terse and impatient.
"Hi," the girl said.
We looked at her like zombies, like war veterans, like deaf-and-dumb pencil
peddlers.
She smiled, her lips cracked and dry. "Listen," she said, bending from the waist to
look in the window, "you guys seen Al?" Her pupils were pinpoints, her eyes glass.
She jerked her neck. "That's his bike over thereAl's. You seen him?"
Al. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to get out of the car and retch, I wanted
to go home to my parents' house and crawl into bed. Digby poked me in the ribs.
"We haven't seen anybody," I said.
The girl seemed to consider this, reaching out a slim veiny arm to brace herself
against the car. "No matter," she said, slurring the t's, "he'll turn up." And then, as
if she'd just taken stock of the whole scenethe ravaged car and our battered
faces, the desolation of the placeshe said: "Hey, you guys look like some pretty
bad charactersbeen fightin', huh?" W e stared straight ahead, rigid as catatonics.
35
40
She was fumbling in her pocket and muttering something. Finally she held out a
handful of tablets in glassine wrappers: "Hey, you want to party, you want to do
some of these with me and Sarah?"
I just looked at her. I thought I was going to cry. Digby broke the silence. "No,
thanks," he said, leaning over me. "Some other time."
I put the car in gear and it inched forward with a groan, shaking off pellets of
glass like an old dog shedding water after a bath, heaving over the ruts on its worn
springs, creeping toward the highway. There was a sheen of sun on the lake. I looked
back. The girl was still standing there, watching us, her shoulders slumped, hand outstretched.
QU E S T 3 0 M S
1. Around what year, would you say, was it that "courtesy and winning ways went out of
style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste"?
2. What is it about Digby and Jeff that inspires the narrator to call them "bad"?
3. Twice in "Greasy Lake"in paragraphs 2 and 32appear the words, "This was nature."
What contrasts do you find between the "nature" of the narrator's earlier and later views?
4. What makes the narrator and bis friends run off into the woods?
5. How does the heroes' encounter with the two girls at the end of the story differ from their
earlier encounter with the girl from the blue Chevy? How do you account for the difference? When at the end of the story the girl offers to party with the three friends, what
makes the narrator say, "I thought I was going to cry"?
6. How important to what happens in this story is Greasy Lake itself? What details about
the lake and its shores strike you as particularly memorable (whether funny, disgusting, or
both)?
Amy Tan
A Pair of Tickets
1989
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California, in 1952. Both of her parents were recent
Chinese immigrants. Her father was an electrical engineer (as well as a Baptist minister);
her mother was a vocational nurse. When her father and older brother both died of brain tumors, the fifteen-year-old Tan moved with her mother and younger brother to Switzerland,
where she attended high school. On their return to the United States Tan attended Linfield
College, a Baptist school in Oregon, but she eventually transferred to California State
University at San Jose. At this time Tan and her mother argued about her future. The
mother insisted her daughter pursue premedical studies in preparation for becoming a neurosurgeon, but Tan wanted to do something else. For six months the two did not speak to
one another. Tan worked for IBM writing computer manuals and also wrote freelance
business articles under a pseudonym. In 1987 she and her mother visited China together.
This experience, which is reflected in "A Pair of Ticketsdeepened
Tan's sense of her
Chinese American identity. "As soon as my feet touched China," she wrote, "I became
Chinese." Soon after, she began writing her first novel, T h e Joy Luck Club (1989),
which consists of sixteen interrelated stories about a group of Chinese American mothers
and their daughters. (The club of the title is a ivoman's social group.) T h e Joy Luck
Club became both a critical success and a best-seller, and was made into a movie in
.1993. In 1991 Tan published her second novel, The Kitchen God's Wife. Her later
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novels include The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bone-setter's Daughter
(2001), and Saving Fish from Drowning (2005). She has also published two books for
children, The Moon Lady (1992) and The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994). In 2003,"
she published The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, a collection of autobiographical ivritings. Tan performs with a "vintage garage 9 band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, which also includes, a?nong others, Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Scott Turow.
She lives outside San F?*a?aclsco with her husband.
The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China,
I feci different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through
a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, My mother was
right. I am becoming Chinese.
"Cannot be helped," my mother said when I was fifteen and had vigorously denied
that I had any Chinese whatsoever below my skin. I was a sophomore at Galileo High
in San Francisco, and all my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese as they
were. But my mother had studied at a famous nursing school in Shanghai, and she said
she knew all about genetics. So there was no doubt in her mind, whether I agreed or
not: Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese.
"Someday you will see," said my mother. "It is in your blood, waiting to be let go."
And when she said this, I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant
tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome,0 a
cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my mother did to embarrass
mehaggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public,
being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter clothes.
But today 1 realize I've never really known what it means to be Chinese. I am
thirty-six years old. My mother is dead and I am on a train, carrying w7ith me her
dreams of coming home. 1 am going to China.
We are first going to Guangzhou, my seventy-two-year-old father, Canning
Woo, and I, where we will visit his aunt, whom he has not seen since he was ten
years old. And I don't know whether it's the prospect of seeing his aunt or if it's because he's back in China, but now he looks like he's a young boy, so innocent and
happy 1 want to button his sweater and pat his head. We are sitting across from each
other, separated by a little table with two cold cups of tea. For the first time I can ever
remember, my father has tears in his eyes, and all he is seeing out the train window is a
sectioned field of yellow, green, and brown, a narrow canal flanking the tracks, low rising hills, and three people in blue jackets riding an ox-driven cart on this early October
morning. And I can't help myself. I also have misty eyes, as if I had seen this a long,
long time ago, and had almost forgotten.
In less than three hours, we will be in Guangzhou, which my guidebook tells me
is how one properly refers to Canton these days. It seems all the cities 1 have heard of,
except Shanghai, have changed their spellings. I think they are saying China has
changed in other ways as well. Chungking is Chongqing. And Kweilin is Guilin. I
have looked these names up, because after we see my father's aunt in Guangzhou, we
will catch a plane to Shanghai, where I will meet my two half-sisters for the first time.
They are my mother's twin daughters from her first marriage, little babies she
was forced to abandon on a road as she was fleeing Kweilin for Chungking in 1944.
syndrome: a group of symptoms that occur together as the sign of a particular disease or abnormality.
That was all my mother had told me about these daughters, so they had remained
babies in my mind, all these years, sitting on the side of a road, listening to bombs
whistling in the distance while sucking their patient red thumbs.
And it was only this year that someone found them and wrote with this joyful
news. A letter came from Shanghai, addressed to my mother. When I first heard
about this, that they were alive, 1 imagined my identical sisters transforming from little babies into six-year-old girls. In my mind, they were seated next to each other at a
table, taking turns with the fountain pen. One would write a neat row of characters:
Dearest Mama. We are alive. She would brush back her wispy bangs and hand the
other sister the pen, and she would write: Come get us. Please hurry.
Of course they could not know that my mother had died three months before,
suddenly, when a blood vessel in her brain burst. One minute she was talking to my
father, complaining about the tenants upstairs, scheming how to evict them under
the pretense that relatives from China were moving in. The next minute she was
holding her head, her eyes squeezed shut, groping for the sofa, and then crumpling
softly to the floor with fluttering hands.
So my father had been the first one to open the letter, a long letter it turned out.
And they did call her Mama. They said they always revered her as their true mother.
They kept a framed picture of her. They told her about their life, from the time my
mother last saw them on the road leaving Kweilin to when they were finally found.
And the letter had broken my father's heart so muchthese daughters calling
my mother from another life he never knewthat he gave the letter to my mother's
old friend Auntie Lindo and asked her to write back and tell my sisters, in the gentlest way possible, that my mother was dead.
But instead Auntie Lindo took the letter to the Joy Luck Club and discussed
with Auntie Ying and Auntie An-mei what should be done, because they had known
for many years about my mother's search for her twin daughters, her endless hope.
Auntie Lindo and the others cried over this double tragedy, of losing my mother
three months before, and now again. And so they couldn't help but think of some
miracle, some possible way of reviving her from the dead, so my mother could fulfill
her dream.
So this is what they wrote to my sisters in Shanghai: "Dearest Daughters, I too
have never forgotten you in my memory or in my heart. I never gave up hope that we
would see each other again in a joyous reunion. I am only sorry it has been too long. I
want to tell you everything about my life since I last saw you. I want to tell you this
when our family comes to see you in China. . . ." They signed it with my mother's
name.
It wasn't until all this had been done that they first told me about my sisters, the
letter they received, the one they wrote back.
"They'll think she's coming, then," I murmured. And I had imagined my sisters
now being ten or eleven, jumping up and down, holding hands, their pigtails bouncing,
excited that their mothertheir motherwas coming, whereas my mother was dead.
"How can you say she is not coming in a letter?" said Auntie Lindo. "She is their
mother. She is your mother. You must be the one to tell them. All these years, they
have been dreaming of her." And I thought she was right.
But then I started dreaming, too, of my mother and my sisters and how it would
be if I arrived in Shanghai. Ail these years, while they waited to be found, I had lived
with my mother and then had lost her. I imagined seeing my sisters at the airport.
.They would be standing on their tip-toes, looking anxiously, scanning from one dark
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15
head to another as we got off the plane. And I would recognize them instantly, their
faces with the identical worried look.
"Jyejye, Jyejye. Sister, Sister. We are here," I saw myself saying in my poor version of Chinese.
"Where is Mama?" they would say, and look around, still smiling, two flushed
and eager faces. "Is she hiding?" And this would have been like my mother, to stand
behind just a bit, to tease a little and make people's patience pull a little on their
hearts. I would shake my head and tell my sisters she was not hiding.
"Oh, that must be Mama, no?" one of my sisters would whisper excitedly, pointing to another small woman completely engulfed in a tower of presents. And that,
too, would have been like my mother, to bring mountains of gifts, food, and toys for
childrenail bought on saleshunning thanks, saying the gifts were nothing, and
later turning the labels over to show my sisters, "Calvin Klein, 100% wool."
I imagined myself starting to say, "Sisters, I am sorry, I have come alone . . ." and
before I could tell themthey could see it in my facethey were wailing, pulling
their hair, their lips twisted in pain, as they ran away from me. And then I saw myself
getting back on the plane and coming home.
After I had dreamed this scene many timeswatching their despair turn from
horror into angerI begged Auntie Lindo to write another letter. And at first she refused.
"How can I say she is dead? I cannot write this," said Auntie Lindo with a
stubborn look.
"But it's cruel to have them believe she's coming on the plane," I said. "When
they see it's just me, they'll hate me."
"Hate you? Cannot be." She was scowling. "You are their own sister, their only
family."
"You don't understand," I protested.
"What I don't understand?" she said.
And I whispered, "They'll think I'm responsible, that she died because I didn't
appreciate her."
And Auntie Lindo looked satisfied and sad at the same time, as if this were tme
and 1 had finally realized it. She sat down for an hour, and when she stood up she
handed me a two-page letter. She had tears in her eyes. I realized that the very thing
I had feared, she had done. So even if she had written the news of my mother's death
in English, I wouldn't have had the heart to read it.
"Thank you," I whispered.
The landscape has become gray, filled with low flat cement buildings, old factories, and then tracks and more tracks filled with trains like ours passing by in the
opposite direction. I see platforms crowded with people wearing drab Western
clothes, with spots of bright colors: little children wearing pink and yellow, red and
peach. And there are soldiers in olive green and red, and old ladies in gray tops and
pants that stop mid-calf. We are in Guangzhou.
Before the train even comes to a stop, people are bringing down their belongings
from above their seats. For a moment there is a dangerous shower of heavy suitcases
laden with gifts to relatives, half-broken boxes wrapped in miles of string to keep the
contents from spilling out, plastic bags filled with yarn and vegetables and packages of
dried mushrooms, and camera cases. And then we are caught in a stream of people
rushing, shoving, pushing us along, until we find ourselves in one of a dozen lines
waiting to go through customs. I feel as if I were getting on the number .30 Stockton
bus in San Francisco. I am in China, I remind myself. And somehow the crowds don't
bother me. It feels right. I start pushing too.
I take out the declaration forms and my passport. "Woo," it says at the top, and
below that, "June May," who was born in "California, U.S.A.," in 1951. I wonder if
the customs people will question whether I'm the same person in the passport photo.
In this picture, my chin-length hair is swept back and artfully styled. I am wearing
false eyelashes, eye shadow, and lip liner. My cheeks are hollowed out by bronze
blusher. But I had not expected the heat in October. And now my hair hangs limp
with the humidity. I wear 110 makeup; in Hong Kong my mascara had melted into
dark circles and everything else had felt like layers of grease. So today my face is
plain, unadorned except for a thin mist of shiny sweat on my forehead and nose.
Even without makeup, I could never pass for true Chinese. 1 stand five-foot-six,
and my head pokes above the crowd so that I am eye level only with other tourists.
My mother once told me my height came from my grandfather, who was a northerner, and may have even had some Mongol blood. "This is what your grandmother
once told me," explained my mother. "But now it is too late to ask her. They are all
dead, your grandparents, your uncles, and their wives and children, all killed in the
war, when a bomb fell on our house. So many generations in one instant."
She had said this so matter-of-factly that I thought she had long since gotten
over any grief she had. And then I wondered how she knew they were all dead.
"Maybe they left the house before the bomb fell," I suggested.
"No," said my mother. "Our whole family is gone. It is just you and I."
"But how do you know? Some of them could have escaped."
"Cannot be," said my mother, this time almost angrily. And then her frown was
washed over by a puzzled blank look, and she began to talk as if she were trying to remember where she had misplaced something. "I went back to that house. I kept looking up to where the house used to be. And it wasn't a house, just the sky. And below,
underneath my feet, were four stories of burnt bricks and wood, all the life of our
house. Then off to the side I saw things blown into the yard, nothing valuable. There
was a bed someone used to sleep in, really just a metal frame twisted up at one corner.
And a book, I don't know what kind, because every page had turned black. And I saw
a teacup which was unbroken but filled with ashes. And then I found my doll, with
her hands and legs broken, her hair burned off. . . . When I was a little girl, I had cried
for that doll, seeing it all alone in the store window, and my mother had bought it for
me. It was an American doll with yellow hair. It could turn its legs and arms. The eyes
moved up and down. And when I married and left my family home, I gave the doll to
my youngest niece, because she was like me. She cried if that doll was not with her always. Do you see? If she was in the house with that doll, her parents were there, and so
everybody was there, waiting together, because that's how our family was."
The woman in the customs booth stares at my documents, then glances at me
briefly, and with two quick movements stamps everything and sternly nods me along.
And soon my father and I find ourselves in a large area filled with thousands of people
and suitcases. I feel lost and my father looks helpless.
"Excuse me," I say to a man who looks like an American. "Can you tell me
where I can get a taxi?" He mumbles something that sounds Swedish or Dutch.
"Syau Yen! Syau Yen!" I hear a piercing voice shout from behind me. An old
woman in a yellow knit beret is holding up a pink plastic bag filled with wrapped
.trinkets. I guess she is trying to sell us something. But my father is staring down at
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this tiny sparrow of a woman, squinting into her eyes. And then his eyes widen, his
face opens up and he smiles like a pleased little boy.
"Aiyi! Aiyi!" Auntie Auntie!he says softly.
"Syau Yen!" coos my great-aunt. I think it's funny she has just called my father
"Little Wild Goose." It must be his baby milk name, the name used to discourage
ghosts from stealing children.
They clasp each other's handsthey do not hugand hold on like this, taking
turns saving, "Look at you! You are so old. Look how old you've become!" They are
both crying openly, laughing at the same time, and I bite my lip, trying not to cry. I'm
afraid to feel their joy. Because I am thinking how different our arrival in Shanghai
will be tomorrow, how awkward it will feel.
Now Aiyi beams and points to a Polaroid picture of my father. My father had
wisely sent pictures when he wrote and said we were coming. See how smart she was,
she seems to intone as she compares the picture to my father. In the letter, my father
had said we would call her from the hotel once we arrived, so this is a surprise, that
they've come to meet us. 1 wonder if my sisters will be at the airport.
It is only then that I remember the camera. I had meant to take a picture of my
father and his aunt the moment they met. It's not too late.
"Here, stand together over here," 1 say, holding up the Polaroid. The camera flashes
and I hand them the snapshot. Aiyi and my father still stand close together, each of
them holding a corner of the picture, watching as their images begin to form. They are
almost reverentially quiet. Aiyi is only five years older than, my father, which makes her
around seventy-seven. But she looks ancient, shrunken, a mummified relic. Her thin
hair is pure white, her teeth are brown with decay. So much for stories of Chinese
women looking young forever, I think to myself.
Now Aiyi is crooning to me:"Jandale." So big already. She looks up at me, at my
full height, and then peers into her pink plastic bagher gifts to us, I have figured
outas if she is wondering what she will give to me, now that 1 am so old and big.
And then she grabs my elbow with her sharp pincerlike grasp and turns me around. A
man and woman in their fifties are shaking hands with my father, everybody smiling
and saying, "Ah! Ah!" They are Aiyi's oldest son and his wife, and standing next to
them are four other people, around my age, and a little girl who's around ten. The introductions go by so fast, all I know is that one of them is Aiyi's grandson, with his
wife, and the other is her granddaughter, with her husband. And the little girl is Lili,
Aiyi's great-granddaughter.
Aiyi and my father speak the Mandarin dialect from their childhood, but the rest
of the family speaks only the Cantonese of their village. I understand only Mandarin
but can't speak it that well. So Aiyi and my father gossip unrestrained in Mandarin,
exchanging news about people from their old village. And they stop only occasionally to talk to the rest of us, sometimes in Cantonese, sometimes in English.
"Oh, it is as I suspected," says my father, turning to me. "He died last summer."
And I already understood this. I just don't know who this person, Li Gong, is. I feel as
if I were in the United Nations and the translators had run amok.
"Hello," I say to the little girl. "My name is Jing-mei." But the little girl squirms
to look away, causing her parents to laugh with embarrassment. I try to think of
Cantonese words I can say to her, stuff I learned from friends in Chinatown, but all
I can think of are swear words, terms for bodily functions, and short phrases like
"tastes good," "tastes like garbage," and "she's really ugly." And then I have another
plan: I hold up the Polaroid camera, beckoning Lili with my finger. She immediately
jumps forward, places one hand on her hip in the manner of a fashion model, juts out
her chest, and flashes me a toothy smile. As soon as I take the picture she is standing
next to me, jumping and giggling every few seconds as she watches herself appear on
the greenish film.
By the time we hail taxis for the ride to the hotel, Lili is holding tight onto my
hand, pulling me along.
In the taxi, Aiyi talks nonstop, so I have no chance to ask her about the different
sights we are passing by.
"You wrote and said you would come only for one day," says Aiyi to my father in
an agitated tone. "One day! How can you see your family in one day! Toishan is
many hours' drive from Guangzhou. And this idea to call us when you arrive. This is
nonsense. We have no telephone."
My heart races a little. I wonder if Auntie Lindo told my sisters we would call
from the hotel in Shanghai?
Aiyi continues to scold my father. "I was so beside myself, ask my son, almost
turned heaven and earth upside down trying to think of a way! So we decided the
best was for us to take the bus from Toishan and come into Guangzhoumeet you
right from the start."
And now I am holding my breath as the taxi driver dodges between trucks and
buses, honking his horn constantly. We seem to be on some sort of long freeway
overpass, like a bridge above the city. I can see row after row of apartments, each
floor cluttered with laundry hanging out to dry on the balcony. We pass a public bus,
with people jammed in so tight their faces are nearly wedged against the window.
Then I see the skyline of what must be downtown Guangzhou. From a distance, it
looks like a major American city, with high rises and construction going on everywhere. As we slow down in the more congested part of the city, I see scores of little
shops, dark inside, lined with counters and shelves. And then there is a building, its
front laced with scaffolding made of bamboo poles held together with plastic strips.
Men and women are standing on narrow platforms, scraping the sides, working without safety straps or helmets. Oh, would OSFIA have a field day here, I think.
Aiyi's shrill voice rises up again: "So it is a shame you can't see our village, our
house. My sons have been quite successful, selling our vegetables in the free market.
We had enough these last few years to build a big house, three stories, all of new
brick, big enough for our whole family and then some. And every year, the money is
even better. You Americans aren't the only ones who know how to get rich!"
The taxi stops and I assume we've arrived, but then I peer out at what looks like
a grander version of the Hyatt Regency. "This is communist China?" I wonder out
loud. And then I shake my head toward my father. "This must be the wrong hotel." I
quickly pull out our itinerary, travel tickets, and reservations. I had explicitly instructed
my travel agent to choose something inexpensive, in the thirty-to-forty-dollar range.
I'm sure of this. And there it says on our itinerary: Garden Hotel, Huanshi Dong Lu.
Well, our travel agent had better be prepared to eat the extra, that's all I have to say.
The hotel is magnificent. A bellboy complete with uniform and sharp-creased
cap jumps forward and begins to carry our bags into the lobby. Inside, the hotel looks
like an orgy of shopping arcades and restaurants all encased in granite and glass. And
rather than be impressed, I am worried about the expense, as well as the appearance
OSHA: Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency that regulates and monitors
.workplace safety conditions.
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it must give Aiyi, that we rich Americans cannot he without our luxuries even for
one night.
But when I step up to the reservation desk, ready to haggle over this hooking
mistake, it is confirmed. Our rooms are prepaid, thirty-four dollars each. 1 feel sheepish, and Aiyi and the others seem delighted by our temporary surroundings. Lili is
looking wide-eyed at an arcade filled with video games.
Our whole family crowds into one elevator, and the bellboy waves, saying he will
meet us on the eighteenth floor. As soon as the elevator door shuts, everybody becomes very quiet, and when the door finally opens again, everybody talks at once in
what sounds like relieved voices. I have the feeling Aiyi and the others have never
been on such a long elevator ride.
Our rooms are next to each other and are identical. The rugs, drapes, bedspreads
are all in shades of taupe. There's a color television with remote-control panels built
into the lamp table between the two twin beds. The bathroom has marble walls and
floors. I find a built-in wet bar with a small refrigerator stocked with Heineken beer,
Coke Classic, and Seven-Up, mini-bottles of Johnnie Walker Red, Bacardi rum, and
Smirnoff vodka, and packets of M & M's, honey-roasted cashews, and Cadbury
chocolate bars. And again I say out loud, "This is communist China?"
My father comes into my room. "They decided we should just stay here and visit,"
he says, shrugging his shoulders. "They say, Less trouble that way. More time to talk."
"What about dinner?" I ask. I have been envisioning my first real Chinese feast
for many days already, a big banquet with one of those soups steaming out of a carved
winter melon, chicken wrapped in clay, Peking duck, the works.
My father walks over and picks up a room service book next to a Travel & Leisure
magazine. He flips through the pages quickly and then points to the menu. "This is
what they want," says my father.
So it's decided. We are going to dine tonight in our rooms, with our family, sharing hamburgers, french fries, and apple pie a la mode.
65
Aiyi and her family are browsing the shops while we clean up. After a hot ride
on the train, I'm eager for a shower and cooler clothes.
The hotel has provided little packets of shampoo which, upon opening, I discover is the consistency and color of hoisin sauce. This is more like it, I think. This is
China. And I rub some in my damp hair.
Standing in the shower, I realize this is the first time I've been by myself in what
seems like days. But instead of feeling relieved, I feel forlorn. I think about what my
mother said, about activating my genes and becoming Chinese. And I wonder what
she meant.
Right after my mother died, I asked myself a lot of things, things that couldn't be
answered, to force myself to grieve more. It seemed as if I wanted to sustain my grief,
to assure myself that I had cared deeply enough.
But now I ask the questions mostly because I want to know the answers. What
was that pork stuff she used to make that had the texture of sawdust? What were the
names of the uncles who died in Shanghai? What had she dreamt all these years
about her other daughters? All the times when she got mad at me, was she really
thinking about them? Did she wish I were they? Did she regret that I wasn't?
?o
At one o'clock in the morning, I awake to tapping sounds on the window. I must
have dozed off and now I feel my body uncramping itself. I'm sitting on the floor,
75
leaning against one of the twin beds. Lili is lying next to me. The others are asleep,
too, sprawled out on the beds and floor. Aiyi is seated at a little table, looking verysleepy. And my father is staring out the window, tapping his fingers on the glass. The
last time I listened my father was telling Aiyi about his life since he last saw her. How
he had gone to Yenching University, later got a post with a newspaper in Chungking,
met my mother there, a young widow. How they later fled together to Shanghai to try
to find my mother's family house, but there was nothing there. And then they traveled eventually to Canton and then to Hong Kong, then Haiphong and finally to
San Francisco. . . .
"Suyuan didn't tell me she was trying all these years to find her daughters," he is
now saying in a quiet voice. "Naturally, I did not discuss her daughters with her. 1
thought she was ashamed she had left them behind."
"Where did she leave them?" asks Aiyi. "How were they found?"
1 am wide awake now. Although I have heard parts of this story from my
mother's friends.
"It happened when the Japanese took over Kweilin," says my father.
"Japanese in Kweilin?" says Aiyi. "That was never the case. Couldn't be. The
Japanese never came to Kweilin."
"Yes, that is what the newspapers reported. I know this because I was working for
the news bureau at the time. The Kuomintang often told us what we could say and
could not say. But we knew the Japanese had come into Kwangsi Province. We had
sources who told us how they had captured the Wuchang-Canton railway. How they
were coming overland, making very fast progress, marching toward the provincial
capital."
Aiyi looks astonished. "If people did not know this, how could Suyuan know the
Japanese were coming?"
"An officer of the Kuomintang secretly warned her," explains my father.
"Suyuan's husband also was an officer and everybody knew that officers and their
families would be the first to be killed. So she gathered a few possessions and, in the
middle of the night, she picked up her daughters and fled on foot. The babies were
not even one year old."
"How could she give up those babies!" sighs Aiyi. "Twin girls. We have never
had such luck in our family." And then she yawns again.
"What were they named?" she asks. I listen carefully. I had been planning on using just the familiar "Sister" to address them both. But now I want to know how to
pronounce their names.
"They have their father's surname, Wang," says my father. "And their given
names are Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa."
"What do the names mean?" I ask.
"Ah." My father draws imaginary characters on the window. "One means 'Spring
Rain,' the other 'Spring Flower,' " he explains in English, "because they born in the
spring, and of course rain come before flower, same order these girls are born. Your
mother like a poet, don't you think?"
I nod my head. I see Aiyi nod her head forward, too. But it fails forward and stays
there. She is breathing deeply, noisily. She is asleep.
"And what does Ma's name mean?" I whisper.
"'Suyuan,'" he says, writing more invisible characters on the glass. "The way she
write it in Chinese, it mean 'Long-Cherished Wish.' Quite a fancy name, not so ordinary like flower name. See this first character, it mean something like 'Forever Never
so
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Forgotten.' But there is another way to write 'Suyuan.' Sound exactly the same, but
the meaning is opposite." His finger creates the brushstrokes of another character.
"The first part look the same: 'Never Forgotten.' But the last part add to first part
make the whole word mean 'Long-Field Grudge.' Your mother get angry with me, I
tell her her name should be Grudge."
My father is looking at me, moist-eyed. "See, I pretty clever, too, hah?"
I nod, wishing I could find some way to comfort him. "And what about my
name," I ask, "what does Jing-mei' mean?"
"Your name also special," he says. I wonder if any name in Chinese is not something special. " 'Jing' like excellent jing. Not just good, it's something pure, essential,
the best quality. Jing is good leftover stuff when you take impurities out of something
like gold, or rice, or salt. So what is leftjust pure essence. And 'Mei,' this is common meiy as in meimei, 'younger sister.'"
I think about this. My mother's long-cherished wish. Me, the younger sister who 95
was supposed to be the essence of the others. I feed myself with the old grief, wondering
how disappointed my mother must have been. Tiny Aiyi stirs suddenly, her head rolls
and then falls back, her mouth opens as if to answer my question. She grunts in her
sleep, tucking her body more closely into the chair.
"So why did she abandon those babies on the road?" I need to know, because
now I feel abandoned too.
"Long time I wondered this myself," says my father. "But then I read that letter
from her daughters in Shanghai now, and I talk to Auntie Lindo, all the others. And
then I knew. No shame in what she done. None."
"What happened?"
"Your mother running away" begins my father.
"No, tell me in Chinese," I interrupt. "Really, I can understand."
100
He begins to talk, still standing at the window, looking into the night.
After fleeing Kweilin, your mother walked for several days trying to find a main
road. Her thought was to catch a ride on a truck or wagon, to catch enough rides until she reached Chungking, where her husband was stationed.
She had sewn money and jewelry into the lining of her dress, enough., she
thought, to barter rides all the way. If I am lucky, she thought, I will not have to trade
the heavy gold bracelet and jade ring. These were things from her mother, your
grandmother.
By the third day, she had traded nothing. The roads were filled with people,
everybody running and begging for rides from passing trucks. The trucks rushed by,
afraid to stop. So your mother found no rides, only the start of dysentery pains in her
stomach.
Fler shoulders ached from the two babies swinging from scarf slings. Blisters grewT 105
on her palms from holding two leather suitcases. And then the blisters burst and began to bleed. After a while, she left the suitcases behind, keeping only the food and a
few clothes. And later she also dropped the bags of wheat flour and rice and kept
walking like this for many miles, singing songs to her little girls, until she was delirious with pain and fever.
Finally, there was not one more step left in her body. She didn't have the strength
to carry7 those babies any farther. She slumped to the ground. She knew she would die
of her sickness, or perhaps from thirst, from starvation, or from the Japanese, who she
was sure were marching right behind her.
She took the babies out of the slings and sat them on the side of the road, then
lay down next to them. You babies are so good, she said, so quiet. They smiled back,
reaching their chubby hands for her, wanting to be picked up again. And then she
knew she could not bear to watch her babies die with her.
She saw a family with three young children in a cart going by. "Take my babies, I
beg you," she cried to them. But they stared back with empty eyes and never stopped.
She saw another person pass and called out again. This time a man turned
around, and he had such a terrible expressionyour mother said it looked like death
itselfshe shivered and looked away.
When the road grew quiet, she tore open the lining of her dress, and stuffed jew- 110
elry under the shirt of one baby and money under the other. She reached into her
pocket and drew out the photos of her family, the picture of her father and mother,
the picture of herself and her husband on their wedding day. And she wrote on the
back of each the names of the babies and this same message: "Please care for these babies with the money and valuables provided. When it is safe to come, if you bring
them to Shanghai, 9 Weichang Lu, the Li family will be glad to give you a generous
reward. Li Suyuan and Wang Fuchi."
And then she touched each baby's cheek and told her not to cry. She would go
down the road to find them some food and would be back. And without looking
back, she walked down the road, stumbling and crying, thinking only of this one last
hope, that her daughters would be found by a kindhearted person who would care for
them. She would not allow herself to imagine anything else.
She did not remember how far she walked, which direction she went, when she
fainted, or how she was found. When she awoke, she was in the back of a bouncing
truck with several other sick people, all moaning. And she began to scream, thinking
she was now on a journey to Buddhist hell. But the face of an American missionary
lady bent over her and smiled, talking to her in a soothing language she did not understand. And yet she could somehow understand. She had been saved for no good
reason, and it was now too late to go back and save her babies.
When she arrived in Chungking, she learned her husband had died two weeks before. She told me later she laughed when the officers told her this news, she was so
delirious with madness and disease. To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing.
I met her in a hospital. She was lying on a cot, hardly able to move, her dysentery had drained her so thin. I had come in for my foot, my missing toe, which was
cut off by a piece of falling rubble. She was talking to herself, mumbling.
"Look at these clothes," she said, and I saw she had on a rather unusual dress for 115
wartime. It was silk satin, quite dirty, but there was no doubt it was a beautiful dress.
"Look at this face," she said, and I saw her dusty face and hollow cheeks, her eyes
shining back. "Do you see my foolish hope?"
"I thought I had lost everything, except these two things," she murmured. "And
I wondered which I would lose next. Clothes or hope? Flope or clothes?"
"But now, see here, look what is happening," she said, laughing, as if all her
prayers had been answered. And she was pulling hair out of her head as easily as one
lifts new wheat from wet soil.
It was an old peasant woman who found them. "How could I resist?" the peasant
woman later told your sisters when they were older. They were still sitting obediently
near where your mother had left them, looking like little fairy queens waiting for
their sedan to arrive.
The woman, Mei Ching, and her husband, Mei Han, lived in a stone cave. There 120
were thousands of hidden caves like that in and around Kweilin so secret that the people
remained hidden even after the war ended. The Meis would come out of their cave
every few days and forage for food supplies left on the road, and sometimes they would
see something that they both agreed was a tragedy to leave behind. So one day they took
back to their cave a delicately painted set of rice bowls, another day a little footstool
with a velvet cushion and two new wedding blankets. And once, it was your sisters.
They were pious people, Muslims, who believed the twin babies were a sign of
double luck, and they were sure of this when, later in the evening, they discovered
how valuable the babies were. She and her husband had never seen rings and
bracelets like those. And while they admired the pictures, knowing the babies came
from a good family, neither of them could read or write. It was not until many
months later that Mei Ching found someone who could read the writing on the back.
By then, she loved these baby girls like her own.
In 1952 Mei Han, the husband, died. The twins were already eight years old, and
Mei Ching now decided it was time to find your sisters' true family.
She showed the girls the picture of their mother and told them they had been
born into a great family and she would take them back to see their true mother and
grandparents. Mei Ching told them about the reward, but she swore she would refuse
it. She loved these girls so much, she only wanted them to have what they were entitled toa better life, a fine house, educated ways. Maybe the family would let her
stay on as the girls' amah. Yes, she was certain they would insist.
Of course, when she found the place at 9 Weichang Lu, in the old French Concession, it was something completely different. It was the site of a factory building,
recently constructed, and none of the workers knew what had become of the family
whose house had burned down on that spot.
Mei Ching could not have known, of course, that your mother and I, her new 125
husband, had already returned to that same place in 1945 in hopes of finding both
her family and her daughters.
Your mother and I stayed in China until 1947. We went to many different
citiesback to Kweilin, to Changsha, as far south as Kunming. She was always looking out of one corner of her eye for twin babies, then little girls. Later we went to
Hong Kong, and when we finally left in 1949 for the United States, I think she was
even looking for them on the boat. But when we arrived, she no longer talked about
them. I thought, At last, they have died in her heart.
When letters could be openly exchanged between China and the United States,
she wrote immediately to old friends in Shanghai and Kweilin. I did not know she
did this. Auntie Lindo told me. But of course, by then, all the street names had
changed. Some people had died, others had moved away. So it took many years to
find a contact. And when she did find an old schoolmate's address and wrote asking
her to look for her daughters, her friend wrote back and said this was impossible, like
looking for a needle on the bottom of the ocean. How did she know her daughters
were in Shanghai and not somewhere else in China? The friend, of course, did not
ask, How do you know your daughters are still alive?
So her schoolmate did not look. Finding babies lost during the war was a matter
of foolish imagination, and she had no time for that.
But every year, your mother wrote to different people. And this last year, I think
she got a big idea in her head, to go to China and find them herself. I remember she
told me, "Canning, we should go, before it is too late, before we are too old." And I
told her we were already too old, it was already too late.
I just thought she wanted to be a tourist! I didn't know she wanted to go and 130
look for her daughters. So when I said it was too late, that must have put a terrible
thought in her head that her daughters might be dead. And I think this possibility
grew bigger and bigger in her head, until it killed her.
Maybe it was your mother's dead spirit who guided her Shanghai schoolmate to
find her daughters. Because after your mother died, the schoolmate saw your sisters,
by chance, while shopping for shoes at the Number One Department Store on Nanjing Dong Road. She said it was like a dream, seeing these two women who looked so
much alike, moving down the stairs together. There was something about their facial
expressions that reminded the schoolmate of your mother.
She quickly walked over to them and called their names, which of course, they
did not recognize at first, because Mei Ching had changed their names. But your
mother's friend was so sure, she persisted. "Are you not Wang Chwun Yu and Wang
Chwun Hwa?" she asked them. And then these double-image women became very
excited, because they remembered the names written on the back of an old photo, a
photo of a young man and woman they still honored, as their much-loved first parents, who had died and become spirit ghosts still roaming the earth looking for them.
At the airport, I am exhausted. I could not sleep last night. Aiyi had followed me
into my room at three in the morning, and she instantly fell asleep on one of the twin
beds, snoring with the might of a lumberjack. 1 lay awake thinking about my mother's
story, realizing how much I have never known about her, grieving that my sisters and
I had both lost her.
And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I
think, about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving
good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will. Finding my mother in my father's
story and saying good-bye before I have a chance to know her better.
Aiyi smiles at me as we wait for our gate to be called. She is so old. 1 put one arm 135
around her and one around Lili. They are the same size, it seems. And then it's time.
As we wave good-bye one more time and enter the waiting area, 1 get the sense I am
going from one funeral to another. In my hand I'm clutching a pair of tickets to
Shanghai. In two hours we'll be there.
The plane takes off. I close my eyes. How can I describe to them in my broken
Chinese about our mother's life? Where should I begin?
"Wake up, we're here," says my father. And I awake with my heart pounding in
my throat. I look out the window and we're already on the runway. It's gray outside.
And now I'm walking down the steps of the plane, onto the tarmac and toward
the building. If only, I think, if only my mother had lived long enough to be the one
walking toward them. I am so nervous I cannot even feel my feet. I am just moving
somehow.
Somebody shouts, "She's arrived!" And then I see her. Her short hair. Her small
body. And that same look on her face. She has the back of her hand pressed hard
against her mouth. She is crying as though she had gone through a terrible ordeal and
were happy it is over.
And I know it's not my mother, yet it is the same look she had when I was five 140
and had disappeared all afternoon, for such a long time, that she was convinced I was
dead. And when I miraculously appeared, sleepy-eyed, crawling from underneath my
bed, she wept and laughed, biting the back of her hand to make sure it was true.
And now I see her again, two of her, waving, and in one hand there is a photo,
the Polaroid I sent them. As soon as I get beyond the gate, we run toward each other,
all three of us embracing, all hesitations and expectations forgotten.
"Mama, Mama," we all murmur, as if she is among us.
My sisters look at me, proudly. "Meimeijandcde" says one sister proudly to the other.
"Little Sister has grown up." I look at their faces again and 1 see no trace of my mother in
them. Yet they still look familiar. And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so
obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go.
My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughing and wiping the tears
from each other's eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my father hands me the
snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops.
T h e gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharp- 145
ening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it:
Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise
to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.
QUESTIONS
1. How is die external setting of "A Pair of Tickets" essential to what happens internally to
the narrator in the course of this story?
2. How7 does the narrator's view of her father change by seeing him in a different setting?
3. In what ways does the narrator feel at home in China? In what ways does she feel foreign?
4. What do the narrator and her half-sisters have in common? How does this factor relate to
the theme of the story?
5. In what ways does the story explore specifically Chinese American experiences? In what
other ways is the story grounded in universal family issues?
leimy
WRITING
m'
WRITERS
ON
EFFECTIVELY
J.-'..,'..-;
WRITING
A m y Tan
Setting the Voice
Lately, I've been giving more thought to the
kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, 1 have described it to people as "broken"
or "fractured" English. But I wince when I
say that. It has always bothered me that I
can think of no way to describe it other than
"broken," as if it were damaged and needed
to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness
and soundness. I've heard other terms used,
"limited English," for example. But they
seem just as bad, as if everything is limited,
including people's perceptions of the limited
English speaker.
1989
AMY TAN
X ; ..: .:.. 'I. . & X^fj
I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother's "limited"
English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. 1 believed that
her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect. And 1 had plenty of empirical
evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at
restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to
understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.
But it wasn't until 1985 that 1 finally began to write fiction. And at first I wrote
using what I thought to be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally
prove 1 had mastery over the English language. Here's an example from the first
draft of a story that later made its way into The Joy Luck Club, but without this line:
"That was my mental quandary in its nascent state." A terrible line, which I can
barely pronounce.
Fortunately, for reasons I won't get into today, I later decided I should envision
a reader for the stories I would write. And the reader I decided upon was my
mother, because these were stories about mothers. So with this reader in mind
and in fact she did read my early draftsI began to write stories using all the Englishes 1 grew up with: the English I spoke to my mother, which for lack of a better
term might be described as "simple"; the English she used with me, which for lack
of a better term might be described as "broken"; my translation of her Chinese,
which could certainly be described as "watered down"; and what I imagined to be
her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal
language, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a
Chinese structure. I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal:
her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of
her thoughts.
Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded
where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: "So easy to read."
From "Mother Tongue"
WRITING
ABOUT
SETTING
TSie importance of Setting
The time and place in which a story is set serve as more than mere backdrop. A particular setting can create a mood or provide clues to a protagonist's nature. Setting
can play as large a role as plot and characters do by prompting a protagonist into an
action he or she might not otherwise undertake.
A story's setting constitutes the external reality that surrounds the internal reality of the protagonist's personality. The external pressure of the setting is often the
key factor that compels or invites the protagonist into action. To write about a story's
setting, therefore, invites you to study not only the time and place but also their relation to the protagonist.
When preparing to write about a story, be sure to consider where and when it is
set, and what role the setting plays.
CHECKLIST
Analyzing Setting
^ Where does the story take place?
S What does the setting suggest about the characters' lives?
S Are there significant differences in the settings for different characters?
What does this suggest about each person?
S When does the story take place? Is the time of year or time of day significant?
S Does the weather play a meaningful role in the story's action?
S What is the protagonist's relationship to the setting? Does it create a
strongly positive or negative reaction?
S Does the setting of the story in some way compel the protagonist into action?
S Does the story's time or place suggest something about the character of the
protagonist?
S Does a change in setting during the story suggest some internal change in
the protagonist?
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
SETTING
Choose a story from this chapter, and explore how character and setting are interrelated. A possible topic would be to describe the significance of setting to the protagonist in "A Pair of Tickets" or "Greasy Lake." How does the setting of the climax in
the story contribute to a change in the character's personal perspective?
MORE
TOPICS
FOR
WRITING
1. "Greasy Lake" takes its title and epigraph from Bruce Springsteen's song "Spirit in the
Night," about a carefree night at a lakeside party. If you're not familiar with the song, you
can find the lyrics on the Internet or download the song to get the full effect. Contrast
the role setting plays in the story and in the song. What do you make of the fact that
Boyle's story is so much darker than the song to which it refers?
2. Write about how setting functions as a kind of character in "To Build a Fire." Do the
landscape and weather act as the antagonist in the story's plot?
3. Think of a placeon campus or beyondto which you often return. If possible, go there.
Make a list of every physical detail you can think of to describe that place. Then look the
list over and write a paragraph on what sort of mood is suggested by it. If you were to describe your emotional connection to the place, which three details would you choose?
Why?
4- Choose any story in this book, and pay careful attention to setting as you read it. Write
several paragraphs reflecting on the following questions: What details in the story suggest
the time and place in which it is set? Is setting central to the story? If the action were
transplanted to some other place and time, how would the story change?
5
Tone and Style
Style has no fixed laws; it is changed by the usage
of the people, never the same for any length of time.
SENECA
Iii many Victorian novels it was customary for some commentator, presumably the
author, to interrupt the story from time to time, remarking on the action, offering
philosophical asides, or explaining the procedures to be followed in telling the story.
Two hours later, Dorothea was seated in an inner room or boudoir of a
handsome apartment, in the Via Sistina. I am sorry to add that she was
sobbing bitterly. . . .
George Eliot in Middlemarch (1873)
But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope.
Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers (1857)
And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man and a
brother, not only to introduce, but occasionally step down from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to love them and
shake them by the hand; if they are silly, to laugh at them confidentially in
the reader's sleeve; if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the
strongest terms which politeness admits of.
William Makepeace Thackeray in Vanity Fair (1847-1848)
Of course, the voice of this commentator was not identical with that of the "real-life"
authorthe one toiling over an inkpot, worrying about publication deadlines and
whether the rent would be paid. At times the living author might have been far different in personality from that usually wise and cheerful intruder who kept addressing
the reader of the book. Much of the time, to be sure, the author probably agreed with
whatever attitudes this alter ego expressed. But, in effect, the author created the
character of a commentator to speak for him or her and throughout the novel artfully
sustained that character's voice.
Such intrusions, although sometimes useful to the "real" author and enjoyable to
the reader, are today rare. Modern storytellers, carefully keeping out of sight, seldom
comment on their plots and characters. Apparently they agree with Anton Chekhov
that a writer should not judge the characters but should serve as their "impartial witness." And yet, no less definitely than Victorian novelists who introduced commentators, writers of effective stories no doubt have feelings toward their characters and
events. The authors presumably care about these imaginary people and, in order for
the story to grasp and sustain our interest, have to make us see these people in such a
way that we, too, will care about them. When at the beginning of the short story "In
Exile" Chekhov introduces us to a character, he does so with a description that
arouses sympathy:
The Tartar was worn out and ill, and wrapping himself in his rags, he talked
about how good it was in the province of Simbirsk, and what a beautiful and
clever wife he had left at home. He was not more than twenty-five, and in
the firelight his pale, sickly face and woebegone expression made him seem
like a boy.
Other than the comparison of the Tartar to a child, the details in this passage seem
mostly factual: the young man's illness, ragged clothes, facial expression, and topics
of conversation. But these details form a portrait that stirs pity. By his selection of
these imaginary details out of countless others that he might have included,
Chekhov firmly directs our feelings about the Tartar, so miserable and pathetic in his
sickness and his homesickness. We cannot know, of course, exactly what the living
Chekhov felt; but at least we can be sure that we are supposed to share the compassion and tenderness of the narratorChekhov's impartial (but human) witness.
Not only the author's choice of details may lead us to infer his or her attitude,
but also choice of characters, events, and situations, and choice of words. When the
narrator of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness comes upon an African outpost littered
with abandoned machines and notices "a boiler wallowing in the grass," the exact
word wallowing conveys an attitude: that there is something swinish about this scene
of careless waste. Whatever leads us to infer the author's attitude is commonly called
tone. Like a tone of voice, the tone of a story may communicate amusement, anger,
affection, sorrow, contempt. It implies the feelings of the author, so far as we can
sense them. Those feelings may be similar to feelings expressed by the narrator of the
story (or by any character), but sometimes they may be dissimilar, even sharply opposed. The characters in a story may regard an event as sad, but we sense that the author regards it as funny. T o understand the tone of a story, then, is to understand
some attitude more fundamental to the story than whatever attitude the characters
explicitly declare.
The tone of a story, like a tone of voice, may convey not simply one attitude, but a
medley. Reading "A & P" (Chapter 1), we have mingled feelings about Sammy: delight
in his wicked comments about other people and his skewering of hypocrisy; irritation at
his smugness and condescension; admiration for his readiness to take a stand; sympathy
for the pain of his disillusionment. Often the tone of a literary story will be too rich and
complicated to sum up in one or two words. But to try to describe the tone of such a
story may be a useful way to penetrate to its center and to grasp the whole of it.
One of the clearest indications of the tone of a story is the style in which it is written. In general, style refers to the individual traits or characteristics of a piece of wrriting: to a writer's particular ways of managing words that we come to recognize as habitual or customary. A distinctive style marks the work of a fine writer: we can tell his or
her work from that of anyone else. From one story to another, however, the writer may
fittingly change style; and in some stories, style may be altered meaningfully as the
story goes along. In his novel As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner changes narrators
with every chapter, and he distinguishes the narrators one from another by giving
each an individual style or manner of speaking. Though each narrator has his or her
own style, the book as a whole demonstrates Faulkner's style as well. For instance,
one chapter is written from the point of view of a small boy, Vardaman Bundren,
member of a family of poor Mississippi tenant farmers, whose view of a horse in a
barn reads like this:
It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of componentssnuffings and stampings; smells of cooling
flesh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of a co-ordinated whole of splotched
hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an is
different from my is.1
How can a small boy unaccustomed to libraries use words like integrity, components, illusion, and coordinated? Elsewhere in the story, Vardaman says aloud, with no trace of
literacy, "Hit was a-laying right there on the ground." Apparently, in the passage it is
not the voice of the boy that we are hearing, but something resembling the voice of
William Faulkner, elevated and passionate, expressing the boy's thoughts in a style
that admits Faulknerian words.
Usually, style indicates a mode of expression: the language a writer uses. In this
sense, the notion of style includes such traits as the length and complexity of sentences, and d i c t i o n , or choice of words: abstract or concrete, bookish ("unrelated
scattering of components") or close to speech ("Hit was a-laying right there on the
ground"). Involved in the idea of style, too, is any habitual use of imagery, patterns of
sound, figures of speech, or other devices.
More recently, several writers of realistic fiction, called m i n i m a l i s t s A n n Beattic,
Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Masonhave written with a flat, laid-back, unemotional tone, in an appropriately bare, unadorned style. Minimalists seem to give
nothing but facts drawrn from ordinary life, sometimes in picayune detail. Here is a
sample passage, from Raymond Carver's story "A Small, Good Thing":
She pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. She closed her eyes and
leaned her head against the wheel for a minute. She listened to the ticking
sounds the engine made as it began to cool. Then she got out of the car. She
could hear the dog barking inside the house. She went to the front door,
which was unlocked. She went inside and turned on lights and put on a kettle of water for tea. She opened some dog food and fed Slug on the back
porch. The dog ate in hungry little smacks. It kept running into the kitchen
to see that she was going to stay.
Explicit feeling and showy language are kept at a minimum here. Taken out of context, this description may strike you as banal, as if the writer himself were bored; but
it works effectively as a part of Carver's entire story. As in all good writing, the style
here seems a faithful mirror of what is said in it. At its best, such writing achieves "a
hard-won reduction, a painful stripping away of richness, a baring of bone." 2
T o see what style means, compare the stories in this chapter by William Faulkner
("Barn Burning") and by Ernest Hemingway ("A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"). Faulkner
1 Modern
Library edition (New York: Random, 19.30) 379.
^Letter in the Neiv York Times Book Review, 5 June 1988.
frequently falls into a style in which a statement, as soon as uttered, is followed by another statement expressing the idea in a more emphatic way. Sentences are interrupted
with parenthetical elements (asides, like this) thrust into them unexpectedly. At times,
Faulkner writes of seemingly ordinary matters as if giving a speech in a towering passion.
Here, from "Barn Burning," is a description of how a boy's father delivers a rug:
"Don't, you want me to help?" he whispered. Flis father did not answer and
now he heard again that stiff foot striking the hollow portico with that
wooden and clocklike deliberation, that outrageous overstatement of the
weight it carried. T h e rug, hunched, not. flung (the boy could tell that even
in the darkness) from his father's shoulder struck the angle of wall and floor
with a sound unbelievably loud, thunderous, then the foot again, unhurried
and enormous; a light came on in the house and the boy sat, tense, breathing steadily and quietly and just a little fast, though the foot itself did not increase its beat at all, descending the steps now; now the boy could see him.
Faulkner is not merely indulging in language for its own sake. As you will find when you
read the whole story, this rug delivery is vital to the story, and so too is the father's profound defianceindicated by his walk. By devices of styleby metaphor and simile
("wooden and clocklike"), by exact qualification ("not flung"), by emphatic adjectives
("loud, thunderous")Faulkner is carefully placing his emphases. By the words he selects to describe the father's stride, Faulkner directs how wre feel toward the man and perhaps also indicates his own wondering but skeptical attitude toward a character whose
very footfall is "outrageous" and "enormous." (Fond of long sentences like the last one in
the quoted passage, Faulkner remarked that there are sentences that need to be written
in the way a circus acrobat pedals a bicycle on a high wire: rapidly, so as not to fall off.)
Hemingway's famous style includes both short sentences and long, but when the
sentences are long, they tend to be relatively simple in construction. Flemingway likes
long compound sentences (clause plus clause plus clause), sometimes joined with
"and"s. He interrupts such a sentence with a dependent clause or a parenthetical element much less frequently than Faulkner does. The effect is like listening to speech:
In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust
and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was
quiet and he felt the difference.
Hemingway is a master of swift, terse dialogue, and often casts whole scenes in the
form of conversation. As if he were a closemouthed speaker unwilling to let his feelings loose, the narrator of a Hemingway story often addresses us in understatement,
implying greater depths of feeling than he puts into words. Read the following story
and you will see that its style and tone cannot be separated.
Ernest Hemingway
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
1933
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961),
born in Oak Park, Illinois, bypassed college to be a cub
reporter. In World War I, as an eighteen-year-old volunteer ambulance driver in Italy, he
was wounded in action. In 1922 he settled in Paris, then aswarm with writers; he later recalled
that time in A Moveable Feast (1964). Hemingway won swift acclaim for his early stories,
(1925), and for his first, perhaps finest, novel, T h e S u n A l s o R i s e s ( 1 9 2 6 ) ,
portraying a "lost generation" of postwar American drifters in France and Spain. For
W h o m t h e B e l l T o l l s (1940) depicts life during the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway became a celebrity, often photographed as a marlin fisherman or a lion hunter. A fan of bullfighting, he wrote two nonfiction books on the subject: D e a t h i n t h e A f t e r n o o n (1932)
and T h e D a n g e r o u s S u m m e r (1985). After World War II, with his fourth wife, journalist Mary Welsh, he made his home in Cuba, where he wrote The Old M a n and the Sea
(1952). The Nobel Prize for literature came his way in 1954. In 1961, mentally distressed
and physically ailing, he shot himself. Hemingway brought a hard-bitten realism to American fiction. His heroes live dangerously, by personal codes of honor, courage, and endurance. Hemingway's distinctively crisp, unadorned style left American literature permanently changed.
In Our Time
I t w a s late a n d e v e r y o n e h a d left t h e cafe e x c e p t a n o l d m a n w h o sat i n
the
s h a d o w t h e leaves o f t h e tree m a d e a g a i n s t t h e electric light. I n t h e d a y t i m e
the
street w a s d u s t y , b u t at n i g h t t h e d e w s e t t l e d t h e d u s t a n d t h e o l d m a n l i k e d to sit late
b e c a u s e h e w a s d e a f a n d n o w a t n i g h t it w a s q u i e t a n d h e felt t h e d i f f e r e n c e . T h e
two
w a i t e r s i n s i d e t h e cafe k n e w t h a t t h e o l d m a n w a s a little d r u n k , a n d w h i l e h e w a s a
g o o d c l i e n t t h e y k n e w t h a t if h e b e c a m e t o o d r u n k h e w o u l d l e a v e w i t h o u t p a y i n g , s o
they kept watch o n him.
" L a s t w e e k h e tried to c o m m i t s u i c i d e , " o n e w a i t e r said.
"Why?"
" H e was i n despair."
" W h a t about?"
"Nothing."
" H o w d o y o u k n o w it w a s
nothing?"
" H e has plenty of money."
T h e y sat t o g e t h e r at a table t h a t w a s close against t h e wall n e a r the d o o r o f the
cafe a n d l o o k e d at t h e t e r r a c e w h e r e t h e t a b l e s w e r e all e m p t y e x c e p t w h e r e t h e o l d
m a n sat i n t h e s h a d o w o f t h e l e a v e s o f t h e tree t h a t m o v e d s l i g h t l y i n t h e w i n d . A
girl
a n d a s o l d i e r w e n t b y i n t h e street. T h e street l i g h t s h o n e o n t h e brass n u m b e r o n h i s
collar. T h e girl w o r e n o h e a d c o v e r i n g a n d h u r r i e d beside h i m .
" T h e g u a r d w i l l p i c k h i m up," o n e waiter said.
10
" W h a t d o e s it m a t t e r i f h e g e t s w h a t h e ' s a f t e r ? "
" H e h a d better get off t h e street n o w . T h e g u a r d w i l l get h i m . T h e y w e n t b y
five
minutes ago."
The
old m a n sitting i n the s h a d o w
rapped o n
h i s s a u c e r w i t h h i s glass.
The
y o u n g e r waiter w e n t over to h i m .
" W h a t do you want?"
T h e o l d m a n l o o k e d at h i m . " A n o t h e r b r a n d y , " h e said.
15
" Y o u ' l l b e d r u n k , " t h e w a i t e r said. T h e o l d m a n l o o k e d at h i m . T h e w a i t e r w e n t
away.
" H e ' l l stay all n i g h t , " h e said to h i s colleague. " I ' m sleepy n o w . I n e v e r get i n t o
b e d b e f o r e t h r e e o ' c l o c k . H e s h o u l d h a v e k i l l e d h i m s e l f last w e e k . "
T h e waiter took the brandy bottle a n d another saucer from the counter
inside
t h e cafe a n d m a r c h e d o u t to t h e o l d m a n ' s table. H e p u t d o w n t h e s a u c e r a n d p o u r e d
the glass full o f b r a n d y .
" Y o u s h o u l d h a v e k i l l e d y o u r s e l f last w e e k , " h e s a i d to t h e d e a f m a n . T h e
m a n motioned with his
finger.
old
" A little m o r e , " h e said. T h e w a i t e r p o u r e d o n i n t o t h e
glass so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of
the pile. "Thank you," the old man said. The waiter took the bottle back inside the
cafe. He sat down at the table with his colleague again.
"He's drunk now," he said.
"He's drunk every night." 0
"What did he want to kill himself for?"
"How should I know?"
"How did he do it?"
"He hung himself with a rope."
"Who cut him down?"
"His niece."
"Why did they do it?"
"Fear for his soul."
"How much money has he got?"
"He's got plenty."
"Fie must be eighty years old."
"Anyway I should say he was eighty." 0
"I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o'clock. What kind of
hour is that to go to bed?"
"Fie stays up because he likes it."
"He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me."
"He had a wife once too."
"A wife would be no good to him now."
"You can't tell. He might be better with a wife."
"His niece looks after him."
"I know. You said she cut him down."
"1 wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing."
"Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now,
drunk. Look at him."
"I don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for
those who must work."
T h e old man looked from his glass across the square, then over at the waiters.
"Another brandy," he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry
came over.
"Finished," he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ
when talking to drunken people or foreigners. "No more tonight. Close now."
"Another," said the old man.
"No. Finished." The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook
his head.
The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from
his pocket and paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip.
The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily
but with dignity.
"He's drunk now," lie said. "He's drunk every night": The younger waiter perhaps says both these
lines. A device of Hemingway's style is sometimes to have a character pause, then speak againas
often happens in actual speech. "He must be eighty years old." "Anyway I should say he was
eightyIs
this another instance of the same character's speaking twice? Clearly, it is the younger waiter who
says the next line, "I wish he would go home/'
"Why didn't you let him stay and drink?" the unhurried waiter asked. They were
putting up the shutters. "It is not half-past two."
"I want to go home to bed."
"What is an hour?"
"More to me than to him."
"An hour is the same."
"You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home."
"It's not the same."
"No, it is not," agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He
was only in a hurry.
"And you? You have 110 fear of going home before the usual hour?"
"Are you trying to insult me?"
"No, hombre, only to make a joke."
"No," the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal
shutters. "I have confidence. I am all confidence."
"You have youth, confidence, and a job," the older waiter said. "You have
everything."
"And what do you lack?"
"Everything but work."
"You have everything I have."
"No. I have never had confidence and I am not young."
"Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up."
"I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waiter said. "With all
those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night."
"I want to go home and into bed."
"We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was not dressed to go
home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are
very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one
who needs the cafe."
"Hombre, there are bodegas0 open all night long."
"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The
light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."
"Good night," said the younger waiter.
"Good night," the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be
clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can
you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours.
What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It
was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it
needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he
knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada
be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this
nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into
nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with
thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.
"What's yours?" asked the barman.
"Nada."
bodegas; wineshops,
nada y pues . . . nada: nothing and then nothing and nothing and then nothing.
"Otro loco mas," said the barman and turned away.
"A little cup," said the waiter.
The barman poured it for him.
"The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished," the waiter said.
The barman looked at him but did not answer. It was too late at night for
conversation.
"You want another copita?" 0 the barman asked.
"No, thank you," said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A
clean, well-lighted cafe was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he
would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he
would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many
must have it.
QUESTIONS
1. What besides insomnia makes the older waiter reluctant to go to bed? Comment especially on his meditation with its nada refrain. Why does he so well understand the old
man's need for a cafe? What does the cafe represent for the two of them?
2. Compare the younger waiter and the older waiter in their attitudes toward the old man.
Whose attitude do you take to be closer to that of the author? Even though Hemingway
does not editorially state his own feelings, how does he make them clear to us?
3. Point to sentences that establish the style of the story. What is distinctive in them? What
repetitions of words or phrases seem particularly effective? Does Hemingway seem to favor a simple or an erudite vocabulary?
4. What is the story's point of view? Discuss its appropriateness.
William Faulkner
1939
Barn Burning
William Faulkner (1897-1962) receives a capsule biography in Chapter 2y page 28, along
with his story UA Rose for EmilyHis
"Barn Burning" is among his many contributions to the
history of Yoknapatawpha, an imaginary Mississippi county in which the Sartorises and the
de Spains are landed aristocrats living by a code of honor and the Snopesesmost of them
are shiftless ne'er-do-wells.
The store in which the Justice of the Peace's court was sitting smelled of cheese.
T h e boy, crouched on his nail keg at the back of the crowded room, knew he
smelled cheese, and more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves closepacked with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach
read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind but from the scarlet
devils and the silver curve of fishthis, the cheese which he knew he smelled and
the hermetic meat which his intestines believed he smelled coming in intermittent
gusts momentary and brief between 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. He could
not see the table where the Justice sat and before which his father and his father's
Otro loco mas: another lunatic,
copita: little cup.
enemy (our enemy he thought in that despair: oum! mine and, hisn both! He's my father!)
stood, but he could hear them, the two of them that is, because his father had said
no word yet:
"But what proof have you, Mr. Harris?"
"I told you. The hog got into my corn. I caught it up and sent it back to him. He
had no fence that would hold it. I told him so, warned him. The next time 1 put the
hog in my pen. When he came to get it I gave him enough wire to patch up his pen.
The next time I put the hog up and kept it. I rode down to his house and saw the wire
I gave him still rolled on to the spool in his yard. I told him he could have the hog
when he paid me a dollar pound fee. That evening a nigger came with the dollar and
got the hog. He was a strange nigger. He said, 'He say to tell you wood and hay kin
burn.' I said, What?' T h a t whut he say to tell you,' the nigger said. 'Wood and hay
kin burn.' That night my barn burned. I got the stock out but I lost the barn."
"Where's the nigger? Have you got him?"
"He was a strange nigger, I tell you. I don't know what became of him."
"But that's not proof. Don't you see that's not proof?"
"Get that boy up here. He knows." For a moment the boy thought too that the
man meant his older brother until Flarris said, "Not him. The little one. The boy," and,
crouching, small for his age, small and wiry like his father, in patched and faded jeans
even too small for him, with straight, uncombed, brown hair and eyes gray and wild as
storm scud, he saw the men between himself and the table part and become a lane of
grim faces, at the end of which he saw the Justice, a shabby, collarless, graying man in
spectacles, beckoning him. He felt no floor under his bare feet; he seemed to walk beneath the palpable weight of the grim turning faces. His father, still in his black Sundaycoat donned not for the trial but for the moving, did not even look at him. He aims for
me to lie, he thought, again with that frantic grief and despair. And I will have to do hit.
"What's your name, boy?" the Justice said.
"Colonel Sartoris Snopes," the boy whispered.
"Hey?" the Justice said. "Talk louder. Colonel Sartoris? I reckon anybody
named for Colonel Sartoris in this country can't help but tell the truth, can they?"
The boy said nothing. Enemy! Enemy! he thought; for a moment he could not even
see, could not see that the Justice's face was kindly nor discern that his voice was
troubled when he spoke to the man named Harris: "Do you want me to question this
boy?" But he could hear, and during those subsequent long seconds while there was
absolutely no sound in the crowded little room save that of quiet and intent breathing it was as if he had swung outward at the end of a grape vine, over a ravine, and at
the top of the swing had been caught in a prolonged instant of mesmerized gravity,
weightless in time.
"No!" Harris said violently, explosively. "Damnation! Send him out of here!"
Now time, the fluid world, rushed beneath him again, the voices coming to him
again through the smell of cheese and sealed meat, the fear and despair and the old
grief of blood:
"This case is closed. I can't find against you, Snopes, but I can give you advice.
Leave this country and don't come back to it."
Flis father spoke for the first time, his voice cold and harsh, level, without
emphasis: "I aim to. I don't figure to stay in a country among people who . . . " he said
something unprintable and vile, addressed to no one.
"That'll do," the Justice said. "Take your wagon and get out of this country
before dark. Case dismissed."
His father turned, and he followed the stiff black coat, the wiry figure walking a
little stiffly from where a Confederate provost's man's musket ball had taken him in
the heel on a stolen horse thirty years ago, followed the two backs now, since his
older brother had appeared from somewhere in the crowd, no taller than the father
but thicker, chewing tobacco steadily, between the two lines of grim-faced men and
out of the store and across the worn gallery and down the sagging steps and among
the dogs and half-grown boys in the mild May dust, where as he passed a voice hissed:
"Barn burner!"
Again he could not see, whirling; there was a face in a red haze, moonlike, bigger
than the full moon, the owner of it half again his size, he leaping in the red haze toward the face, feeling no blow, feeling no shock when his head struck the earth,
scrabbling up and leaping again, feeling no blow this time either and tasting no
blood, scrabbling up to see the other boy in full flight and himself already leaping
into pursuit as his father's hand jerked him back, the harsh, cold voice speaking
above him: "Go get in the wagon."
It stood in a grove of locusts and mulberries across the road. His two hulking sisters
in their Sunday dresses and his mother and her sister in calico and sunbonnets were already in it, sitting on and among the sorry residue of the dozen and more movings
which even the boy could rememberthe battered stove, the broken beds and chairs,
the clock inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which would not run, stopped at some fourteen
minutes past two o'clock of a dead and forgotten day and time, which had been his
mother's dowry. She was crying, though when she saw him she drew her sleeve across
her face and began to descend from the wagon. "Get back," the father said.
"He's hurt. I got to get some water and wash his . . ."
"Get back in the wagon," his father said. He got in too, over the tail-gate. His father
mounted to the seat where the older brother already sat and struck the gaunt mules
two savage blows with the peeled willow, but without heat. It was not even sadistic;
it was exactly that same quality which in later years would cause his descendants to
over-run the engine before putting a motor car into motion, striking and reining
back in the same movement. The wagon went on, the store with its quiet crowd of
grimly watching men dropped behind; a curve in the road hid it. Forever he thought.
Maybe he's done satisfied now, now that he has . . . stopping himself, not to say it aloud
even to himself. His mother's hand touched his shoulder.
"Does hit hurt?" she said.
"Naw," he said. "Hit don't hurt. Lemme be."
"Can't you wipe some of the blood off before hit dries?"
"Til wash to-night," he said. "Lemme be, I tell you."
The wagon went on. He did not know where they were going. None of them
ever did or ever asked, because it was always somewhere, always a house of sorts waiting for them a day or two days or even three days away. Likely his father had already
arranged to make a crop on another farm before he . . . Again he had to stop himself.
He (the father) always did. There was something about 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.
That night they camped, in a grove of oaks and beeches where a spring ran. The
nights were still cool and they had a fire against it, of a rail lifted from a nearby fence
and cut into lengthsa small fire, neat, niggard almost, a shrewd fire; such fires were
his father's habit and custom always, even in freezing weather. Older, the boy might
have remarked this and wondered why not a big one; why should not a man who had
not only seen the waste and extravagance of war, but who had in his blood an inherent voracious prodigality with material not his own, have burned everything in sight?
Then he might have gone a step farther and thought that that was the reason: that
niggard blaze was the living fruit of nights passed during those four years in the woods
hiding from all men, blue and gray, with his strings of horses (captured horses, he
called them). And older still, he might have divined the true reason: that the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father's being, as the element of
steel or of powder spoke to other men, as the one weapon for the preservation of integrity, else breath were not worth the breathing, and hence to be regarded with respect and used with discretion.
But he did not think this now and he had seen those same niggard blazes all his
life. He merely ate his supper beside it and was already half asleep over his iron plate
when his father called him, and once more he followed the stiff back, the stiff and
ruthless limp, up the slope and on to the starlit road where, turning, he could see his
father against the stars but without face or deptha shape black, flat, and bloodless
as though cut from tin in the iron folds of the frockcoat which had not been made for
him, the voice harsh like tin and without heat like tin:
"You were fixing to tell them. You would have told him."
He didn't answer. His father struck him with the flat of his hand on the side of
the head, hard but without heat, exactly as he had struck the two mules at the store,
exactly as he would strike either of them with any stick in order to kill a horse fly, his
voice without heat or anger: "You're getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to
learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you.
Do you think either of them, any man there this morning, would? Don't you know all
they wanted was a chance to get at me because they knew I had them beat? Eh?"
Later, twenty years later, he was to tell himself, "If I had said they wanted only truth,
justice, he would have hit me again." But now he said nothing. He was not crying.
He just stood there. "Answer me," his father said.
"Yes," he whispered. His father turned.
"Get on to bed. We'll be there tomorrow."
Tomorrow they were there. In the early afternoon the wagon stopped before a
paintless two-room house identical almost with the dozen others it had stopped before even in the boy's ten years, and again, as on the other dozen occasions, his
mother and aunt got down arid began to unload the wagon, although his two sisters
and his father and brother had not moved.
"Likely hit ain't fitten for hawgs," one of the sisters said.
"Nevertheless, fit it will and you'll hog it and like it," his father said. "Get out of
them chairs and help your Ma unload."
The two sisters got down, big, bovine, in a flutter of cheap ribbons; one of them
drew from the jumbled wagon bed a battered lantern, the other a worn broom. His father handed the reins to the older son and began to climb stiffly over the wheel.
"When they get unloaded, take the team to the barn and feed them." Then he said,
and at first the boy thought he was still speaking to his brother: "Come with me."
"Me?" he said.
"Yes," his father said. "You."
"Abner," his mother said. His father paused and looked backthe harsh level
stare beneath the shaggy, graying, irascible brows.
30
35
"I reckon 111 have a word with the man that aims to begin tomorrow owning me
body and soul for the next eight months/'
They went back up the road. A week agoor before last night, that ishe
would have asked where they were going, but not now. His father had struck him before last night but never before had he paused afterward to explain why; it was as if
the blow and the following calm, outrageous voice still rang, repercussed, divulging
nothing to him save the terrible handicap of being young, the light weight of his few
years, just heavy enough to prevent his soaring free of the world as it seemed to be ordered but not heavy enough to keep him footed solid in it, to resist it and try to
change the course of its events.
Presently he could see the grove of oaks and cedars and the other flowering trees
and shrubs where the house would be, though not the house yet. They walked beside a
fence massed with honeysuckle and Cherokee roses and came to a gate swinging open
between two brick pillars, and now, beyond a sweep of drive, he saw the house for the
first time and at that instant he forgot his father and the terror and despair both, and
even when he remembered his father again (who had not stopped) the terror and despair did not return. Because, for all the twelve movings, they had sojourned until now
in a poor country, a land of small farms and fields and houses, and he had never seen a
house like this before. Hit's big as a courthouse he thought quietly, with a surge of peace
and joy whose reason he could not have thought into words, being too young for that:
They are safe from him. People whose lives are a part of this peace and dignity are beyond his
touch, he no more to them than a buzzing wasp: capable of stinging for a little moment but
that's all; the spell of this peace and dignity rendering even the barns and stable and cribs
which belong to it impervious to the puny flames he might contrive . . . this, the peace and
joy, ebbing for an instant as he looked again at the stiff black back, the stiff and implacable limp of the figure which was not dwarfed by the house, for the reason that it
had never looked big anywhere and which now, against the serene columned backdrop, had more than ever that impervious quality of something cut ruthlessly from tin,
depthless, as though, sidewise to the sun, it would cast no shadow. Watching him, the
boy remarked the absolutely undeviating course which his father held and saw the stiff
foot come squarely down in a pile of fresh droppings where a horse had stood in the
drive and which his father could have avoided by a simple change of stride. But it
ebbed only a moment, though he could not have thought this into words either, walking on in the spell of the house, which he could even want but without envy, without
sorrow, certainly never with that ravening and jealous rage which unknown to him
walked in the ironlike black coat before him: M ay be he will feel it too. M ay be it will even
change him now from, what maybe he couldn't help but be.
They crossed the portico. Now he could hear his father's stiff foot as it came
down on the boards with clocklike finality, a sound out of all proportion to the displacement of the body it bore and which was not dwarfed either by the white door
before it, as though it had attained to a sort of vicious and ravening minimum not to
be dwarfed by anythingthe flat, wide, black hat, the formal coat of broadcloth
which had once been black but which had now that friction-glazed greenish cast of
the bodies of old house flies, the lifted sleeve which was too large, the lifted.hand like
a curled claw. The door opened so promptly that the boy knew the Negro must have
been watching them all the time, an old man with neat grizzled hair, in a linen
jacket, who stood barring the door with his body, saying, "Wipe yo foots, white man,
fo you come in here. Major ain't home nohow."
"Get out of my way, nigger," his father said, without heat too, flinging the door
back and the Negro also and entering, his hat still 011 his head. And now the boy saw
40
the prints of the stiff foot on the door jamb and saw them appear on the pale rug behind the machinelike deliberation of the foot which seemed to bear (or transmit)
twice the weight which the body compassed. The Negro was shouting "Miss Lula!
Miss Lula!" somewhere behind them, then the boy, deluged as though by a warm wave
by a suave turn of the carpeted stair and a pendant glitter of chandeliers and a mute
gleam of gold frames, heard the swift feet and saw her too, a ladyperhaps he had
never seen her like before eitherin a gray, smooth gown with lace at the throat and
an apron tied at the waist and the sleeves turned back, wiping cake or biscuit dough
from her hands with a towel as she came up the hall, looking not at his father at all but
at the tracks on the blond rug with an expression of incredulous amazement.
"I tried," the Negro cried. "I tole him to . . ."
"Will you please go away?" she said in a shaking voice. "Major de Spain is not at
home. Will you please go away?"
His father had not spoken again. He did not speak again. He did not even look
at her. He just stood stiff in the center of the rug, in his hat, the shaggy iron-gray
brows twitching slightly above the pebble-colored eyes as he appeared to examine
the house with brief deliberation. Then with the same deliberation he turned; the
boy watched him pivot on the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag around the arc of
the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear. His father never looked at it, he
never once looked down at the rug. The Negro held the door. It closed behind them,
upon the hysteric and indistinguishable woman-wail. His father stopped at the top of
the steps and scraped his boot clean on the edge of it. At the gate he stopped again.
He stood for a moment, planted stiffly on the stiff foot, looking back at the house.
"Pretty and wrhite, ain't, it?" he said. "That's sweat. Nigger sweat. Maybe it ain't white
enough yet to suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat with it."
Two hours later the boy was chopping wood behind the house within which his
mother and aunt and the two sisters (the mother and aunt, not the two girls, he knew
that.; even at this distance and muffled by walls the flat loud voices of the two girls
emanated an incorrigible idle inertia) were setting up the stove to prepare a meal,
when he heard the hooves and saw the linen-clad man on a fine sorrel mare, whom
he recognized even before he saw the rolled rug in front of the Negro youth following
on a fat bay carriage horsea suffused, angry face vanishing, still at full gallop, beyond the corner of the house where his father and brother were sitting in the two
tilted chairs; and a moment later, almost before he could have put the axe down, he
heard the hooves again and watched the sorrel mare go back out of the yard, already
galloping again. Then his father began to shout one of the sisters' names, who
presently emerged backward from the kitchen door dragging the rolled rug along the
ground by one end while the other sister walked behind it.
"If you ain't going to tote, go on and set up the wash pot," the first said.
"You, Sarty!" the second shouted. "Set up the wash pot!" His father appeared at
the door, framed against that shabbiness, as he had been against that other bland
perfection, impervious to either, the mother's anxious face at his shoulder.
"Go on," the father said. "Pick it up." The two sisters stooped, broad, lethargic;
stooping, they presented an incredible expanse of pale cloth and a flutter of tawdry
ribbons.
"If I thought enough of a rug to have to git hit all the way from France I wouldn't
keep hit where folks coming in would have to tromp on hit," the first said. They
raised the rug.
"Abner," the mother said. "Let me do it."
"You go back and git dinner," his father said. "I'll tend to this."
45
50
From the woodpile through the rest of the afternoon the boy watched them, the
rug spread flat in the dust beside the bubbling wash pot, the two sisters stooping over
it with that profound and lethargic reluctance, while the father stood over them in
turn, implacable and grim, driving them though never raising his voice again. He
could smell the harsh homemade lye they were using; he saw his mother come to the
door once and look toward them with an expression not anxious now but very like
despair; he saw his father turn, and he fell to with the axe and saw from the comer of
his eye his father raise from the ground a flattish fragment of field stone and examine
it and return to the pot, and this time his mother actually spoke: "Abner. Abner.
Please don't. Please, Abner/'
Then he was done too. It was dusk; the whippoorwills had already begun. He
could smell coffee from the room where they would presently eat the cold food remaining from the mid-afternoon meal, though when he entered the house he realized
they were having coffee again probably because there was a fire on the hearth, before
which the rug now lay spread over the backs of the two chairs. The tracks of his father's foot were gone. Where they had been were now long, water-cloudy scoriations
resembling the sporadic course of a Lilliputian mowing machine.
It still hung there while they ate the cold food and then went to bed, scattered
without order or claim up and down the two rooms, his mother in one bed, where his
father would later lie, the older brother in the other, himself, the aunt, and the two
sisters on pallets on the floor. But his father was not in bed yet. The last thing the boy
remembered was the depthless, harsh silhouette of the hat and coat bending over the
rug and it seemed to him that he had not even closed his eyes when the silhouette
was standing over him, the fire almost dead behind it, the stiff foot prodding him
awake. "Catch up the mule," his father said.
When he returned with the mule his father was standing in the back door, the
rolled rug over his shoulder. "Ain't you going to ride?" he said.
"No. Give me your foot."
He bent his knee into his father's hand, the wiry, surprising power flowed
smoothly, rising, he rising with it, on to the mule's bare back (they had owned a
saddle once; the boy could remember it though not when or where) and with the
same effortlessness his father swung the rug up in front of him. Now in the starlight
they retraced the afternoon's path, up the dusty road rife with honeysuckle,
through the gate and up the black tunnel of the drive to the lightless house, where
he sat on the mule and felt the rough warp of the rug drag across his thighs and
vanish.
"Don't you want me to help?" he whispered. His father did not answer and now
he heard again that stiff foot striking the hollow portico with that wooden and
clocklike deliberation, that outrageous overstatement of the weight it carried. T h e
rug, hunched, not flung (the boy could tell that even in the darkness) from his father's shoulder struck the angle of wall and floor with a sound unbelievably loud,
thunderous, then the foot again, unhurried and enormous; a light came on in the
house and the boy sat, tense, breathing steadily and quietly and just a little fast,
though the foot itself did not increase its beat at all, descending the steps now; now
the boy could see him.
"Don't you want to ride now?" he whispered. "We kin both ride now," the light
within the house altering now, flaring up and sinking. He's coming down the stairs
novo, he thought. He had already ridden the mule up beside the horse block;
presently his father was up behind him and he doubled the reins over and slashed the
mule across the neck, but before the animal could begin to trot the hard, thin arm
came around him, the hard, knotted hand jerking the mule back to a walk.
In the first red rays of the sun they were in the lot, putting plow gear on the
mules. This time the sorrel mare was in the lot before he heard it at all, the rider
collarless and even bareheaded, trembling, speaking in a shaking voice as the
woman in the house had done, his father merely looking up once before stooping
again to the hame he was buckling, so that the man on the mare spoke to his stooping back:
"You must realize you have ruined that rug. Wasn't there anybody here, any of
your women . . . " he ceased, shaking, the boy watching him, the older brother leaning
now in the stable door, chewing, blinking slowly and steadily at nothing apparently.
"It cost a hundred dollars. But you never had a hundred dollars. You never will. So
I'm going to charge you twenty bushels of corn against your crop. I'll add it in your
contract and when you come to the commissary you can sign it. That won't keep
Mrs. de Spain quiet but maybe it will teach you to wipe your feet off before you enter
her house again."
Then he was gone. The boy looked at his father, who still had not spoken or
even looked up again, who was now adjusting the logger-head in the hame.
"Pap," he said. His father looked at himthe inscrutable face, the shaggy brows 65
beneath where the gray eyes glinted coldly. Suddenly the boy went toward him, fast,
stopping as suddenly. "You done the best you could!" he cried. "If he wanted hit done
different why didn't he wait and tell you how? He won't git no twenty bushels! He
won't git none! We'll gather hit and hide hit! I kin watch . . ."
"Did you put the cutter back in that straight stock like l told you?"
"No, sir," he said.
"Then go do it."
That was Wednesday. During the rest of that week he worked steadily, at what
was within his scope and some which was beyond it, with an industry that did not
need to be driven nor even commanded twice; he had this from his mother, with
the difference that some at least of what he did he liked to do, such as splitting
wood with the half-size axe which his mother and aunt had earned, or saved money
somehow, to present him with at Christmas. In company with the two older
women (and on one afternoon, even one of the sisters), he built pens for the shoat
and the cow which were a part of his father's contract with the landlord, and one
afternoon, his father being absent, gone somewhere on one of the mules, he went
to the field.
They were running a middle buster now, his brother holding the plow straight 70
while he handled the reins, and walking beside the straining mule, the rich black soil
shearing cool and damp against his bare ankles, he thought Maybe this is the end of it.
Maybe even that twenty bushels that seems hard to have to pay for just a rug will be a cheap
price for him to stop forever and always from being ivhat he used to be; thinking, dreaming
now, so that his brother had to speak sharply to him to mind the mule: Maybe he even
won't collect the twenty bushels. Maybe it will all add up and balance and vanishcorn,
rug, fire; the terror and grief; the being pulled two ways like between two teams of horses
gone, done with for ever and ever.
Then it was Saturday; he looked up from beneath the mule he was harnessing
and saw his father in the black coat and hat. "Not that," his father said. "The wagon
gear." And then, two hours later, sitting in the wagon bed behind his father and
brother on the seat, the wagon accomplished a final curve, and he saw the weathered
paintless store with its tattered tobacco- and patent-medicine posters and the tethered wagons and saddle animals below the gallery. He mounted the gnawed steps behind his father and brother, and there again was the lane of quiet, watching faces for
the three of them to walk through. He saw the man in spectacles sitting at the plank
table and he did not need to be told this was a Justice of the Peace; he sent one glare
of fierce, exultant, partisan defiance at the man in collar and cravat now, whom he
had seen but twice before in his life, and that on a galloping horse, who now wore on
his face an expression not of rage but of amazed unbelief which the boy could not
have known was at the incredible circumstance of being sued by one of his own tenants, and came and stood against his father and cried at the Justice: "He ain't done it!
He ain't burnt. .
"Go back to the wagon," his father said.
"Burnt?" the Justice said. "Do I understand this rug was burned too?"
"Does anybody here claim it was?" his father said. "Go back to the wagon." But
he did not, he merely retreated to the rear of the room, crowded as that other had
been, but not to sit down this time, instead, to stand pressing among the motionless
bodies, listening to the voices:
"And you claim twenty bushels of corn is too high for the damage you did to the
rug?"
"He brought the rug to me and said he wanted the tracks w7ashed out of it. I
washed the tracks out and took the rug back to him."
"But you didn't carry the rug back to him in the same condition it was in before
you made the tracks on it."
His father did not answer, and now for perhaps half a minute there was no
sound at all save that of breathing, the faint, steady suspiration of complete and
intent listening.
"You decline to answer that, Mr. Snopes?" Again his father did not answer. "I'm
going to find against you, Mr. Snopes. I'm going to find that you were responsible for
the injury to Major de Spain's rug and hold you liable for it. But twenty bushels of
corn seems a little high for a man in your circumstances to have to pay. Major de
Spain claims it cost a hundred dollars. October corn will be worth about fifty cents.
I figure that if Major de Spain can stand a ninety-five dollar loss on something he
paid cash for, you can stand a five-dollar loss you haven't earned yet. I hold you in
damages to Major de Spain to the amount of ten bushels of corn over and above
your contract with him, to be paid to him out of your crop at gathering time. Court
adjourned."
It had taken no time hardly, the morning was but half begun. He thought they
would return home and perhaps back to the field, since they were late, far behind all
other farmers. But instead his father passed on behind the wagon, merely indicating
with his hand for the older brother to follow with it, and crossed the road toward the
blacksmith shop opposite, pressing on after his father, overtaking him, speaking,
whispering up at the harsh, calm face beneath the weathered hat: "He won't git no
ten bushels either. He won't git one. W e ' l l . . ." until his father glanced for an instant
down at him, the face absolutely calm, the grizzled eyebrows tangled above the cold
eyes, the voice almost pleasant, almost gentle:
"You think so? Well, we'll wait till October anyway."
The matter of the wagonthe setting of a spoke or two and the tightening of
the tiresdid not take long either, the business of the tires accomplished by driving
the wagon into the spring branch behind the shop and letting it stand there, the
mules nuzzling into the water from time to time, and the boy on the seat with the idle
reins, looking up the slope and through the sooty tunnel of the shed where the slow
hammer rang and where his father sat on an upended cypress bolt, easily, either talking or listening, still sitting there when the boy brought the dripping wagon up out of
the branch and halted it before the door.
"Take them on to the shade and hitch," his father said. He did so and returned.
His father and the smith and a third man squatting on his heels inside the door were
talking, about crops and animals; the boy, squatting too in the ammoniac dust and
hoof-parings and scales of rust, heard his father tell a long and unhurried story out of
the time before the birth of the older brother even when he had been a professional
horsetrader. And then his father came up beside him where he stood before a tattered
last year's circus poster on the other side of the store, gazing rapt and quiet at the
scarlet horses, the incredible poisings and convulsions of tulle and tights and the
painted leers of comedians, and said, "It's time to eat."
But not at home. Squatting beside his brother against the front wall, he watched
his father emerge from the store and produce from a paper sack a segment of cheese
and divide it carefully and deliberately into three with his pocket knife and produce
crackers from the same sack. They all three squatted on the gallery and ate, slowly,
without talking; then in the store again, they drank from a tin dipper tepid water
smelling of the cedar bucket and of living beech trees. And still they did not go
home. It was a horse lot this time, a tall rail fence upon and along which men stood
and sat and out of which one by one horses were led, to be walked and trotted and
then cantered back and forth along the road while the slow swapping and buying
went on and the sun began to slant westward, theythe three of themwatching
and listening, the older brother with his muddy eyes and his steady, inevitable tobacco, the father commenting now and then on certain of the animals, to no one in
particular.
It was after sundown when they reached home. They ate supper by lamplight,
then, sitting on the doorstep, the boy watched the night fully accomplish, listening
to the whippoorwills and the frogs, when he heard his mother's voice: "Abner! No!
No! Oh, God. Oh, God. Abner!" and he rose, whirled, and saw the altered light
through the door where a candle stub now burned in a bottle neck on the table and
his father, still in the hat and coat, at once formal and burlesque as though dressed
carefully for some shabby and ceremonial violence, emptying the reservoir of the
lamp back into the five-gallon kerosene can from which it had been filled, while the
mother tugged at his arm until he shifted the lamp to the other hand and flung her
back, not savagely or viciously, just hard, into the wall, her hands flung out against
the wall for balance, her mouth open and in her face the same quality of hopeless
despair as had been in her voice. Then his father saw him standing in the door.
"Go to the barn and get that can of oil we were oiling the wagon with," he said.
T h e boy did not move. Then he coulcl speak.
" W h a t . . ." he cried. "What are you . . ."
"Go get that oil," his father said. "Go."
Then he was moving, running, outside the house, toward the stable: 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. I
85
could keep on, he thought. I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see
his face again. Onfy I can't. I can't, the rusted can in his hand now, the liquid sploshing in it as he ran back to the house and into it, into the sound of his mother's weeping in the next room, and handed the can to his father.
"Ain't you going to even send a nigger?" he cried. "At least you sent a nigger
before!"
This time his father didn't strike him. The hand came even faster than the blow
had, the same hand which had set the can on the table with almost excruciating care
flashing from the can toward him too quick for him to follow it, gripping him by the
back of his shirt and on to tiptoe before he had seen it quit the can, the face stooping
at him in breathless and frozen ferocity, the cold, dead voice speaking over him to
the older brother who leaned against the table, chewing with that steady, curious,
sidewise motion of cows:
"Empty the can into the big one and go on. I'll catch up with you."
"Better tie him up to the bedpost," the brother said.
"Do like I told you," the father said. Then the boy was moving, his bunched shirt
and the hard, bony hand between his shoulder-blades, his toes just touching the
floor, across the room and into the other one, past the sisters sitting with spread
heavy thighs in the two chairs over the cold hearth, and to where his mother and
aunt sat side by side on the bed, the aunt's arm about his mother's shoulders.
"Hold him," the father said. The aunt made a startled movement. "Not you," the
father said. "Lennie. Take hold of him. I want to see you do it." His mother took him
by the wrist. "You'll hold him better than that. If he gets loose don't you know what
he is going to do? He will go up yonder." He jerked his head toward the road. "Maybe
I'd better tie him."
"I'll hold him," his mother whispered.
"See you do then." Then his father was gone, the stiff foot heavy and measured
upon the boards, ceasing at last.
Then he began to struggle. His mother caught him in both arms, he jerking and
wrenching at them. He would be stronger in the end, he knew that. But he had no
time to wait for it. "Lemme go!" he cried. "I don't want to have to hit you!"
"Let him go!" the aunt said. "If he don't go, before God, I am going up there
myself!"
"Don't you see I can't?" his mother cried. "Sarty! Sarty! No! No! Help me,
Lizzie!"
Then he was free. His aunt grasped at him but it was too late. He whirled, running, his mother stumbled forward on to her knees behind him, crying to the nearer
sister: "Catch him, Net! Catch him!" But that was too late too, the sister (the sisters
were twins, born at the same time, yet either of them now gave the impression of being, encompassing as much living meat and volume and weight as any other two of
the family) not yet having begun to rise from the chair, her head, face, alone merely
turned, presenting to him in the flying instant an astonishing expanse of young female features untroubled by any surprise even, wearing only an expression of bovine
interest. Then lie was out of the room, out of the house, in the mild dust of the starlit
road and the heavy rifeness of honeysuckle, the pale ribbon unspooling with terrific
slowness under his running feet, reaching the gate at last and turning in, running, his
heart and lungs drumming, on up the drive toward the lighted house, the lighted
door. He did not knock, he burst in, sobbing for breath, incapable for the moment of
speech; he saw the astonished face of the Negro in the linen jacket without knowing
when the Negro had appeared.
"De Spain!" he cried, panted. "Where's . . ." then he saw the white man too
emerging from a white door down the hall. "Barn!" he cried. "Barn!"
"What?" the white man said. "Barn?"
"Yes!" the boy cried. "Barn!"
"Catch him!" the white man shouted.
105
But it was too late this time too. The Negro grasped his shirt, but the entire
sleeve, rotten with washing, carried away, and he was out that door too and in the
drive again, and had actually never ceased to run even while he was screaming into
the white man's face.
Behind him the white man was shouting, "My horse! Fetch my horse!" and
he thought for an instant of cutting across the park and climbing the fence into the road,
but he did not know the park nor how the vine-massed fence might be and he dared
not risk it. So he ran on down the drive, blood and breath roaring; presently he was
in the road again though he could not see it. He could not hear either: the galloping
mare was almost upon him before he heard her, and even then he held his course, as
if the very urgency of his wild grief and need must in a moment more find him wings,
waiting until the ultimate instant to hurl himself aside and into the weed-choked
roadside ditch as the horse thundered past and on, for an instant in furious silhouette
against the stars, the tranquil early summer night sky which, even before the shape of
the horse and rider vanished, stained abruptly and violently upward: a long, swirling
roar incredible and soundless, blotting the stars, and he springing up and into the
road again, 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, stumbling, tripping over something and scrabbling up again without ceasing to
run, looking backward over his shoulder at the glare as he got up, running on among
the invisible trees, panting, sobbing, "Father! Father!"
At midnight he was sitting on the crest of a hill. He did not know it was midnight
and he did not know how far he had come. But there was no glare behind him now
and he sat now, his back toward what he had called home for four days anyhow, his
face toward the dark woods which he would enter when breath was strong again,
small, shaking steadily in the chill darkness, hugging himself into the remainder of his
thin, rotten shirt, the grief and despair now no longer terror and fear but just grief and
despair. Father. My father, he thought. "He was brave!" he cried suddenly, aloud but
not loud, no more than a whisper. "He was! He was in the war! He was in Colonel
Sartoris' cav'ry!" not knowing that his father had gone to that war a private in the hne
old European sense, wearing no uniform, admitting the authority of and giving fidelity
to no man or army or flag, going to war as Malbrouck 0 himself did: for bootyit
meant nothing and less than nothing to him if it were enemy booty or his own.
The slow constellations wheeled on. It would be dawn and then sun-up after a
while and he would be hungry. But that would be tomorrow and now he was only
cold, and walking would cure that. His breathing was easier now and he decided to
Malbrouck: John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), English general victorious in die
Battle of Blenheim (1704), which triumph drove the French army out of Germany. The French
called him Malbrouck, a name they found easier to pronounce.
get. up and go on, and then he found that he had been asleep because he knew it was
almost dawn, the night almost over. He could tell that from the whippoorwills. They
were everywhere now among the dark trees below him, constant and inflectioned
and ceaseless, so that, as the instant for giving over to the day birds drew nearer and
nearer, there was no interval at all between them. He got up. He was a little stiff, butwalking would cure that too as it would the cold, and soon there would be the sun.
He went on down the hill, toward the dark woods within which the liquid silver
voices of the birds called unceasingthe rapid and urgent beating of the urgent and
quiring heart of the late spring night. He did not look back.
QUESTIONS
1. After delivering his warning to Major de Spain, the boy Snopes does not actually witness
what happens to his father and brother, nor what happens to the Majors barn. But what
do you assume happens? What, evidence is given in the story?
2. What do you understand to be Faulkner's opinion of Abner Snopes? Make a guess, indicating details in the story that convey attitudes.
3. Which adjectives best describe the general tone of the story: calm, amused, disinterested,
scornful, marveling, excited, impassioned1 Point out passages that may be so described.
What do you notice about the style in which these passages are written?
4. In tone and style, how does "Barn Burning" compare with Faulkner's story "A Rose for
Emily" (Chapter 2)? T o what do you attribute any differences?
5. Suppose that, instead of "Barn Burning," Faulkner had written another story told by
Abner Snopes in the first person. Why would such a story need a style different from that
of "Barn Burning"? (Suggestion: Notice Faulkner's descriptions of Abner Snopes's voice.)
6. Although "Barn Burning" takes place some thirty years after the Civil War, how does the
war figure in it?
If a friend declares, "Oh, sure, I just love to have four papers due on the same day,"
you detect that the statement contains irony. This is verbal irony, the most familiar
kind, in which we understand the speaker's meaning to be far from the usual meaning
of the wordsin this case, quite the opposite. (When the irony is found, as here, in a
somewhat sour statement tinged with mockery, it is called sarcasm.)
Irony, of course, occurs in writing as well as in conversation. When in a comic
moment in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Gimpel the Fool" the sexton announces, "The
wealthy Reb Gimpel invites the congregation to a feast in honor of the birth of a
son," the people at the synagogue burst into laughter. They know that Gimpel, in
contrast to the sexton's words, is not a wealthy man but a humble baker; that the son
is not his own but his wife's lover's; and that the birth brings no honor to anybody.
Verbal irony, then, implies a contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is
meant. There are also times when the speaker, unlike the reader, does not realize the
ironic dimension of his or her words; such instances are known as dramatic irony.
The most famous example occurs in Sophocles' tragic drama Oedipus the King, when
Oedipus vows to find and punish the murderer of King Laius, unaware that he himself
is the man he seeks, and adds: "if by any chance / he proves to be an intimate of our
house, I here at my hearth, with my full knowledge, / may the curse I just called down
on him strike me!" Dramatic irony may also be used, of course, for lighter purposes: for
example, Daisy Coble, the mother in Anne Tyler's 'Teenage Wasteland" (Chapter 2),
whose attitudes and moods shift constantly according to what others tell her, responds to the idea that she should be less strict with her son by saying, "But see, he's
still so suggestible." Stories often contain other kinds of irony besides such verbal
irony. A situation, for example, can be ironic if it contains some wry contrast or incongruity. In Jack London's "To Build a Fire" (Chapter 4), it is ironic that a freezing
man, desperately trying to strike a match to light a fire and save himself, accidentally
ignites all his remaining matches.
An entire story may be told from an ironic point of view. Whenever we sense
a sharp distinction between the narrator of a story and the author, irony is likely
to occurespecially when the narrator is telling us something that we arc clearly
expected to doubt or to interpret very differently. In "A & P," Sammy (who tells his
own story) makes many smug and cruel observations about the people around him; but
the author makes clear to us that much of his superiority is based on immaturity and
lack of self-knowledge. (This irony, by the way, does not negate the fact that Sammy
makes some very telling comments about society's superficial values and rigid and judgmental attitudes, comments that Updike seems to endorse and wants us to endorse as
well.) And when we read Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," surely we feel
that most of the time the older waiter speaks for the author. Though the waiter gives us
a respectful, compassionate view of a lonely old man, and we don't doubt that the view
is Hemingway's, still, in the closing lines of the story wre are reminded that author and
waiter are not identical. Musing on the sleepless night ahead of him, the waiter tries to
shrug off his problem "After all, it is probably only insomnia"but the reader, who
recalls the waiter's bleak view of nada, nothingness, knows that it certainly isn't mere
insomnia that keeps him awake but a dread of solitude and death. At that crucial moment, Hemingway and the older waiter part company, and we perceive an ironic point
of view, and also a verbal irony, "After all, it is probably only insomnia."
Storytellers are sometimes fond of ironic twists of fatedevelopments that reveal a terrible distance between what people deserve and what they get, between
what is and what ought to be. In the novels of Thomas Hardy, some hostile fate
keeps playing tricks to thwart the main characters. In Tess of the D'UrbervUles, an
all-important letter, thrust under a door, by chance slides beneath a carpet and is not
received. Such an irony is sometimes called an irony of fate or a cosmic irony, for it
suggests that some malicious fate (or other spirit in the universe) is deliberately frustrating human efforts. Evidently, there is an irony of fate in the servant's futile attempt to escape Death in the fable "The Appointment, in Samarra," and perhaps in
the flaring up of the all-precious matches in "To Build a Fire" as well. T o notice an
irony gives pleasure. It may move us to laughter, make us feel wonder, or arouse our
sympathy. By so involving us, ironywhether in a statement, a situation, an unexpected event, or a point of viewcan render a story more likely to strike us, to affect
us, and to be remembered.
A n obvious prank of fate occurs in O. Henry's short story "The Cop and the
Anthem," in which a hobo, wanting to spend the winter housed and fed at the city's
expense, repeatedly tries and fails to get himself arrested, until the music he hears
from a nearby church makes him decide to mend his ways and find a jobat which
point he is run in for vagrancy and sentenced to three months! An even more famous example of O. Plenty's irony is the following story, perhaps the best-known and
most-loved of his many tales.
O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
The Gift of the Magi
1906
William Sydney Porter, known to the world as
O. Henry (1862-1910),
was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. He began writing in his
mid-twenties, contributing humorous sketches to
various periodicals, including his own magazine
the Rolling Stone (whose title may have been
an allusion to his employment history, w'hich included work in a drugstore, on a ranch, and in a
bank, among other places). In 1896 he was indicted for embezzlement from the First National
Bank of Austin, Texas; he fled to Honduras before his trial, but returned when he found that
his wife was terminally ill. He was convicted,
and served three years of a five-year sentence;
his guilt or innocence has never been definitively
established. Released in 1901, he moved to New
O. HENRY
York the following year. Already a well-known
writer, for the next three years he produced a story every week for the New York World while
also contributing tales and sketches to magazines. Beginning with Cabbages and Kings in
1904, his stories were published in nine highly successful collections in the few remaining
years of his life, as well as in three posthumously issued volumes. Financial extravagance and
alcoholism darkened his hist days, culminating in his death from, tuberculosis at the age of
forty-seven. New York, his icBaghdad on the Hudson" is the locale of more than half of his
stories, but his own experiences provided settingssuch as Texas, the South, Central America, and even prisonsfor many others, as well as underscoring his sympathy with the poor,
the downtrodden, and the outcast. The title of his 1906 collection The Four Million was an
allusion to the population ofNeiv York City at that time and a sarcastic play on "The Four
Hundreda
phrase used to describe the upper crust of Manhattan high society. Ranked during his lifetime with Hawthorne and Foe, O. Henry is more likely now to be invoked in negative terms, for his sentimentality and especially for his reliance on frequently forced trick endings, but the most prestigious annual volume of the best American short fiction is still called
The O. Henry Prize Stories, and the best of his own work is loved by millions of readers.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in
pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent, imputation of
parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Delia counted it. One dollar
and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and
howl. So Delia did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of
sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the
second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly
beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy
squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an
electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining
thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was
shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James
Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and
greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Delia.
Which is all very good.
Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood
by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy
Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had
calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a
happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and
rare and sterlingsomething just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of
being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen
a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception
of his looks. Delia, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were
shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she
pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which
they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's
and his grandfather's. T h e other was Delia's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in
the flat across the airshaft, Delia would have let her hair hang out the window
some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon
been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have
pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from
envy.
So now Delia's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of
brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.
And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute
and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts
and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down
the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds."
One flight up Delia ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white,
chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Delia.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass writh a practiced hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Delia.
io
15
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was
no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was
a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by
substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentationas all good things should
do. It was even worthy of T h e Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and valuethe description applied to both.
Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87
cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in
any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Delia reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and
reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing
the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task,
dear friendsa mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that
made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in
the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me,
he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I dooh! What could
I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove
hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Delia doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the
stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a
habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she
whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-twoand to be burdened with a family! He
needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His
eyes were fixed upon Delia, and there was an expression in them that she could not
read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror,
nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her
fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Delia wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and
sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present.
It'll grow out againyou won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a
nicewhat a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at thatpatent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Delia. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm
me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Delia. "It's sold, I tell yousold and gone, too. It's
Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head
were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could
ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Delia. For ten
seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other
direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a yearwhat is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts,
but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl
any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while
at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic
scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails,
necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of
the flat.
For there lay The Combsthe set of combs, side and back, that Delia had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with
jeweled rimsjust the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them
without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that
should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with
dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Delia leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon
her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright
and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at
the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks
on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the
back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while.
They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your
combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise menwonderfully wise menwho brought
gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege
of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for
each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of
these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all
who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest.
They are the magi.
35
40
45
QUESTIONS
1. How would you describe the style of this story? Does the author's tone tell you anything
about his attitude toward the characters and events of the narrative?
2. What do the details in paragraph 7 tell you about Delia and Jim's financial situation?
3. O . Henry tells us that Jim "needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves" (paragraph
25). Why do you think Delia didn't buy him these things for Christmas instead of a watch
chain?
4. "Eight dollars a week or a million a yearwhat is the difference? A mathematician or a
wit would give you the wrong answer" (paragraph 34). What, in your view, is "the wrong
answer," and why is it wrong? What might the right answer be?
5. What is ironic about the story's ending? Is this plot twist the most important element of
the conclusion? If not, what is?
Saboteur
2000
Ha Jin is the pen name of Xuefei Jin, who was
born in Liaoning, China, in 1956. The son of a
military officer and a worker, Jin grew up during
the turbulent Cultural Revolution, a ten-year
upheaval initiated by the Communist Party in
1966 to transform China into a Marxist
workers' society by destroying all remnants of
the nation s ancient past. During this period
many schools and universities were closed and
intellectuals were required to work in proletarian
jobs. At fourteen, Jin joined the People's Liberation Army, where he remained for nearly six
years, and later worked as a telegraph operator
for a railroad company. He then attended Heilongjiang University, where in 1981 he received
HA JIN
a B.A. in English. After earning an M.A. in
American literature from Shangdong University
in 1984, Jin traveled to the United States to work on a Ph.D. at Brandeis University. He
intended to return to China, but the Communist Party's violent suppression of the student
movement in 1989 made him decide to stay in the United States and write only in English.
"It's such, a brutal governmenthe
commented, "I was very a n g r y , and I decided not to return to China." "Writing in English became my means of survival," he remarked, "of
spending or wasting my life, of retrieving losses, mine, and those of others." He completed
his Ph.D. in 1993.
Jin has published three books of poetry, Between Silences (1990), Facing Shadows
(1996), and Wreckage (2001), and four novels, In the Pond (1998), Waiting (J 999,
National Book Award), The Crazed (2002), and War Trash (2004,
PEN/Faulkner
Award). His first volume of short fiction, Ocean of Words (1996), drawn from his experience in the People's Liberation Army, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. His subsequent
collections of stories are Under the Red Flag (1997, Flannery O'Connor Award) and
The Bridegroom (2000, Asia?! American Literary Award). He is a professor of English at
Boston University.
Mr. Chiu and his bride were having lunch in the square before Muji Train Station. On the table between them were two bottles of soda spewing out brown foam
and two paper boxes of rice and sauteed cucumber and pork. "Let's eat/' he said to
her, and broke the connected ends of the chopsticks. He picked up a slice of streaky
pork and put it into his mouth. As he was chewing, a few crinkles appeared on his
thin jawT o his right, at another table, two railroad policemen were drinking tea and
laughing; it seemed that the stout, middle-aged man was telling a joke to his young
comrade, who was tall and of athletic build. Now and again they would steal a glance
at Mr. Chiu's table.
The air smelled of rotten melon. A few flies kept buzzing above the couple's lunch.
Hundreds of people were rushing around to get on the platform or to catch buses to
downtown. Food and fruit vendors were crying for customers in lazy voices. About a
dozen young women, representing the local hotels, held up placards which displayed
the daily prices and words as large as a palm, like FREE MEALS, AIR-CONDITIONING, and
ON THE RIVER. In the center of the square stood a concrete statue of Chairman Mao,
at whose feet peasants were napping, their backs on the warm granite and their faces
toward the sunny sky. A flock of pigeons perched on the Chairman's raised hand and
forearm.
The rice and cucumber tasted good, and Mr. Chiu was eating unhurriedly. His
sallow face showed exhaustion. He was glad that the honeymoon was finally over and
that he and his bride were heading back for Harbin. During the two weeks' vacation,
he had been worried about his liver, because three months ago he had suffered from
acute hepatitis; he was afraid he might have a relapse. But he had had no severe
symptoms, despite his liver being still big and tender. On the whole he was pleased
with his health, which could endure even the strain of a honeymoon; indeed, he was
on the course of recovery. He looked at his bride, who took off her wire glasses,
kneading the root of her nose with her fingertips. Beads of sweat coated her pale
cheeks.
"Are you all right, sweetheart?" he asked.
"I have a headache. I didn't sleep well last night."
"Take an aspirin, will you?"
"It's not that serious. Tomorrow is Sunday and I can sleep in. Don't worry."
As they were talking, the stout policeman at the next table stood up and threw
a bowl of tea in their direction. Both Mr. Chiu's and his bride's sandals were wet
instantly.
"Hooligan!" she said in a low voice.
Mr. Chiu got to his feet and said out loud, "Comrade Policeman, why did you do
this?" He stretched out his right foot to show the wet sandal.
"Do what?" the stout man asked huskily, glaring at Mr. Chiu while the young
fellow was whistling.
"See, you dumped tea on our feet."
"You're lying. You wet your shoes yourself."
"Comrade Policemen, your duty is to keep order, but you purposely tortured us
common citizens. Why violate the law you are supposed to enforce?" As Mr. Chiu
was speaking, dozens of people began gathering around.
With a wave of his hand, the man said to the young fellow, "Let's get hold of him!"
They grabbed Mr. Chiu and clamped handcuffs around his wrists. He cried, "You
can't do this to me. This is utterly unreasonable."
10
15
"Shut up!" The man pulled out his pistol. "You can use your tongue at our
headquarters."
The young fellow added, "You're a saboteur, you know that? You're disrupting
public order."
The bride was too petrified to say anything coherent. She was a recent college
graduate, had majored in fine arts, and had never seen the police make an arrest. All
she could say was, "Oh, please, please!"
The policemen were pulling Mr. Chiu, but he refused to go with them, holding
the corner of the table and shouting, "We have a train to catch. We already bought
the tickets."
The stout man punched him in the chest. "Shut up. Let your ticket expire."
With the pistol butt he chopped Mr. Chiu's hands, which at once released the table.
Together the two men were dragging him away to the police station.
Realizing he had to go with them, Mr. Chiu turned his head and shouted to his
bride, "Don't wait for me here. Take the train. If I'm not back by tomorrow morning,
send someone over to get me out."
She nodded, covering her sobbing mouth with her palm.
After removing his belt, they locked Mr. Chiu into a cell in the back of the
Railroad Police Station. The single window in the room was blocked by six steel bars;
it faced a spacious yard, in which stood a few pines. Beyond the trees, two swings
hung from an iron frame, swaying gently in the breeze. Somewhere in the building a
cleaver was chopping rhythmically. There must be a kitchen upstairs, Mr. Chiu
thought.
He was too exhausted to worry about what they would do to him, so he lay down
on the narrow bed and shut his eyes. He wasn't afraid. T h e Cultural Revolution was
over already, and recently the Party had been propagating the idea that all citizens
were equal before the law. T h e police ought to be a law-abiding model for common
people. As long as he remained coolheaded and reasoned with them, they probably
wouldn't harm him.
Late in the afternoon he was taken to the Interrogation Bureau on the second
floor. On his way there, in the stairwell, he ran into the middle-aged policeman who
had manhandled him. The man grinned, rolling his bulgy eyes and pointing his fingers
at him as if firing a pistol. Egg of a tortoise! Mr. Chiu cursed mentally.
The moment he sat down in the office, he burped, his palm shielding his mouth.
In front of him, across a long desk, sat the chief of the bureau and a donkey-faced
man. On the glass desktop was a folder containing information on his case. He felt it
bizarre that in just a matter of hours they had accumulated a small pile of writing
about him. On second thought he began to wonder whether they had kept a file on
him all the time. How could this have happened? He lived and worked in Harbin,
more than three hundred miles away, and this was his first time in Muji. City.
The chief of the bureau was a thin, bald man who looked serene and intelligent.
His slim hands handled the written pages in the folder in the manner of a lecturing
scholar. To Mr. Chiu's left sat a young scribe, with a clipboard on his knee and a
black fountain pen in his hand.
"Your name?" the chief asked, apparently reading out the question from a form.
"Chiu Maguang."
"Age?"
"Thirty-four."
20
25
30
"Profession?"
"Lecturer."
35
"Work unit?"
"Harbin University."
"Political status?"
"Communist Party member."
The chief put down the paper and began to speak. "Your crime is sabotage, al- 40
though it hasn't induced serious consequences yet. Because you are a Party member,
you should be punished more. You have failed to be a model for the masses and you"
"Excuse me, sir," Mr. Chiu cut him off.
"What?"
"I didn't do anything. Your men are the saboteurs of our social order. They threw
hot tea 011 my feet and on my wife's feet. Logically speaking, you should criticize
them, if not punish them."
"That statement is groundless. You have no witness. Why should I believe you?"
the chief said matter-of-factly.
"This is my evidence." He raised his right hand. "Your man hit my fingers with a 45
pistol."
"That doesn't prove how7 your feet got wet. Besides, you could have hurt your
fingers yourself."
"But I am telling the truth!" Anger flared up in Mr. Chiu. "Your police station
owes me an apology. My train ticket has expired, my new leather sandals are ruined,
and I am late for a conference in the provincial capital. You must compensate me for
the damage and losses. Don't mistake me for a common citizen who would tremble
when you sneeze. I'm a scholar, a philosopher, and an expert in dialectical materialism. If necessary, we will argue about this in The Northeastern Daily, or we will go to
the highest People's Court in Beijing. Tell me, what's your name?" He got carried
away with his harangue, which was by no means trivial and had worked to his advantage on numerous occasions.
"Stop bluffing us," the donkey-faced man broke in. "We have seen a lot of your
kind. We can easily prove you are guilty. Here are some of the statements given by
eyewitnesses." He pushed a few sheets of paper toward Mr. Chiu.
Mr. Chiu was dazed to see the different handwritings, which all stated that he
had shouted in the square to attract attention and refused to obey the police. One of
the witnesses had identified herself as a purchasing agent from a shipyard in Shanghai. Something stirred in Mr. Chiu's stomach, a pain rising to his rib. He gave out a
faint moan.
"Now you have to admit you are guilty," the chief said. "Although it's a serious 50
crime, we won't punish you severely, provided you write out a self-criticism and
promise that you won't disrupt the public order again. In other words, your release
will depend on your attitude toward this crime."
"You're daydreaming," Mr. Chiu cried. "I won't write a word, because Pm innocent.. I demand that you provide me with a letter of apology so I can explain to my
university why Pm late."
Both the interrogators smiled contemptuously. "Well, we've never done that,"
said the chief, taking a puff of his cigarette.
"Then make this a precedent."
"That's unnecessary. We are pretty certain that you will comply with our
wishes." The chief blew a column of smoke toward Mr. Chiu's face.
/
At the tilt of the chief s head, two guards stepped forward and grabbed the criminal by
the arms. Mr. Chiu meanwhile went on saying, "I shall report you to the Provincial Administration. You'll have to pay for this! You are worse than the Japanese military police."
They dragged him out of the room.
After dinner, which consisted of a bowl of millet porridge, a corn bun, and a
piece of pickled turnip, Mr. Chiu began to have a fever, shaking with a chill and
sweating profusely. He knew that the fire of anger had gotten into his liver and that
he was probably having a relapse. No medicine was available, because his briefcase
had been left with his bride. At home it would have been time for him to sit in front
of their color T V , drinking jasmine tea and watching the evening news. It was so
lonesome in here. The orange bulb above the single bed was the only source of light,
which enabled the guards to keep him under surveillance at night. A moment ago he
had asked them for a newspaper or a magazine to read, but they turned him down.
Through the small opening on the door noises came in. It seemed that the police
on duty were playing cards or chess in a nearby office; shouts and laughter could be
heard now and then. Meanwhile, an accordion kept coughing from a remote corner
in the building. Looking at the ballpoint and the letter paper left for him by the
guards when they took him back from the Interrogation Bureau, Mr. Chiu remembered the old saying, "When a scholar runs into soldiers, the more he argues, the
muddier his point becomes." How ridiculous this whole thing was. He ruffled his
thick hair with his fingers.
He felt miserable, massaging his stomach continually. T o tell the truth, he was
more upset than frightened, because he would have to catch up with his work once
he was back homea paper that was due at the printers next week, and two dozen
books he ought to read for the courses he was going to teach in the fall.
A human shadow flitted across the opening. Mr. Chiu rushed to the door and
shouted through the hole, "Comrade Guard, Comrade Guard!"
"What do you want?" a voice rasped.
"I want you to inform your leaders that I'm very sick. I have heart disease and hepatitis. 1 may die here if you keep me like this without medication."
"No leader is on duty on the weekend. You have to wait till Monday."
"What? You mean I'll stay in here tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"Your station will be held responsible if anything happens to me."
"We know that. Take it easy, you won't die."
It seemed illogical that Mr. Chiu slept quite well that night, though the light
above his head had been on all the time and the straw mattress was hard and infested
with fleas. He was afraid of ticks, mosquitoes, cockroachesany kind of insect but
fleas and bedbugs. Once, in the countryside, where his school's faculty and staff had
helped the peasants harvest crops for a week, his colleagues had joked about his flesh,
which they said must have tasted nonhuman to fleas. Except for him, they were all afflicted with hundreds of bites.
More amazing now, he didn't miss his bride a lot. He even enjoyed sleeping
alone, perhaps because the honeymoon had tired him out and he needed more rest.
The backyard was quiet on Sunday morning. Pale sunlight streamed through the
pine branches. A few sparrows were jumping on the ground, catching caterpillars and
ladybugs. Holding the steel bars, Mr. Chiu inhaled the morning air, which smelled
meaty. There must have been an eatery or a cooked-meat stand nearby. He reminded
himself that he should take this detention with ease. A sentence that Chairman Mao
had written to a hospitalized friend rose in his mind: "Since you are already in here,
you may as well stay and make the best of it."
His desire for peace of mind originated in his fear that his hepatitis might get
worse. He tried to remain unperturbed. However, he was sure that his liver was
swelling up, since the fever still persisted. For a whole day he lay in bed, thinking
about his paper on the nature of contradictions. Time and again he was overwhelmed
by anger, cursing aloud, "A bunch of thugs!" He swore that once he was out, he
would write an article about this experience. He had better find out some of the
policemen's names.
It turned out to be a restful day for the most part; he was certain that his university would send somebody to his rescue. All he should do now was remain calm and
wait patiently. Sooner or later the police would have to release him, although they
had no idea that he might refuse to leave unless they wrote him an apology. Damn
those hoodlums, they had ordered more than they could eat!
When he woke up on Monday morning, it was already light. Somewhere a man
was moaning; the sound came from the backyard. After a long yawn, and kicking off
the tattered blanket, Mr. Chiu climbed out of bed and went to the window. In the
middle of the yard, a young man was fastened to a pine, his wrists handcuffed around
the trunk from behind. Fie was wriggling and swearing loudly, but there was no sight
of anyone else in the yard. Fie looked familiar to Mr. Chiu.
Mr. Chiu squinted his eyes to see who it was. T o his astonishment, he recognized
the man, who was Fenjin, a recent graduate from the Law Department at Harbin
University. Two years ago Mr. Chiu had taught a course in Marxist materialism, in
which Fenjin had enrolled. Now, how on earth had this young devil landed here?
Then it dawned on him that Fenjin must have been sent over by his bride. What
a stupid woman! A bookworm, who only knew how to read foreign novels! He had
expected that she would contact the school's Security Section, which would for sure
send a cadre here. Fenjin held no official position; he merely worked in a private law
firm that had just two lawyers; in fact, they had little business except for some detective work for men and women who suspected their spouses of having extramarital
affairs. Mr. Chiu was overcome with a wave of nausea.
Should he call out to let his student know he was nearby? He decided not to, because he didn't know what had happened. Fenjin must have quarreled with the police
to incur such a punishment. Yet this could never have occurred if Fenjin hadn't come
to his rescue. So no matter what, Mr. Chiu had to do something. But what could he do?
It was going to be a scorcher. He could see purple steam shimmering and rising
from the ground among the pines. Poor devil, he thought, as he raised a bowl of corn
glue to his mouth, sipped, and took a bite of a piece of salted celery.
When a guard came to collect the bowl and the chopsticks, Mr. Chiu asked
him what had happened to the man in the backyard. "He called our boss 'bandit,'"
the guard said. "He claimed he was a lawyer or something. An arrogant son of a
rabbit."
Now it was obvious to Mr. Chiu that he had to do something to help his rescuer.
Before he could figure out a way, a scream broke out in the backyard. He rushed to
the window and saw a tall policeman standing before Fenjin, an iron bucket on the
ground. It was the same young fellow who had arrested Mr. Chiu in the square two
days before. The man pinched Fenjin's nose, then raised his hand, which stayed in
75
the air for a few seconds, then slapped the lawyer across the face. As Fenjin was
groaning, the man lifted up the bucket and poured water on his head.
"This will keep you from getting sunstroke, boy. I'll give you some more every
hour," the man said loudly.
Fenjin kept his eyes shut, yet his wry face showed that he was struggling to hold
back from cursing the policeman, or, more likely, that he was sobbing in silence. He
sneezed, then raised his face and shouted, "Let me go take a piss."
"Oh, yeah?" the man bawled. "Pee in your pants."
Still Mr. Chiu didn't make any noise, gripping the steel bars with both hands, his
fingers white. The policeman turned and glanced at the cell's window; his pistol,
partly holstered, glittered in the sun. With a snort he spat his cigarette butt to the
ground and stamped it into the dust.
Then the door opened and the guards motioned Mr. Chiu to come out. Again
they took him upstairs to the Interrogation Bureau.
The same men were in the office, though this time the scribe was sitting there
empty-handed. At the sight of Mr. Chiu the chief said, "Ah, here you are. Please be
seated."
After Mr. Chiu sat down, the chief waved a white silk fan and said to him, "You
may have seen your lawyer. He's a young man without manners, so our director had
him taught a crash course in the backyard."
"It's illegal to do that. Aren't you afraid to appear in a newspaper?"
"No, we are not, not even on T V . What else can you do? We are not afraid of
any story you make up. We call it fiction. What we do care about is that you cooperate with us. That is to say, you must admit your crime."
"What if I refuse to cooperate?"
"Then your lawyer will continue his education in the sunshine."
A swoon swayed Mr. Chiu, and he held the arms of the chair to steady himself.
A numb pain stung him in the upper stomach and nauseated him, and his head was
throbbing. He was sure that the hepatitis was finally attacking him. Anger was flaming up in his chest; his throat was tight and clogged.
The chief resumed, "As a matter of fact, you don't even have to write out your selfcriticism. We have your crime described clearly here. All we need is your signature."
Holding back his rage, Mr. Chiu said, "Let me look at that."
With a smirk the donkey-faced man handed him a sheet which carried these words:
I hereby admit that on July 13 I disrupted public order at Muji Train
Station, and that I refused to listen to reason when the railroad police issued
their warning. Thus I myself am responsible for my arrest. After two days'
detention, I have realized the reactionary nature of my crime. From now on,
I shall continue to educate myself with all my effort and shall never commit
this kind of crime again.
A voice started screaming in Mr. Chiu's ears, "Lie, lie!" But he shook his head
and forced the voice away. He asked the chief, "If I sign this, will you release both my
lawyer and me?"
"Of course, we'll do that." The chief was drumming his fingers on- the blue
foldertheir file on him.
Mr. Chiu signed his name and put his thumbprint under his signature.
"Now you are free to go," the chief said with a smile, and handed him a piece of
paper to wipe his thumb with.
Mr. Chiu was so sick that he couldn't stand up from the chair at first try. Then
he doubled his effort and rose to his feet. He staggered out of the building to meet his
lawyer in the backyard, having forgotten to ask for his belt back. In his chest he felt
as though there were a bomb. If he were able to, he would have razed the entire police station and eliminated all their families. Though he knew he could do nothing
like that, he made up his mind to do something.
"I'm sony about this torture, Fenjin," Mr. Chiu said when they met.
too
"It doesn't matter. They are savages." The lawyer brushed a patch of dirt off his
jacket with trembling fingers. Water was still dribbling from the bottoms of his
trouser legs.
"Let's go now," the teacher said.
The moment they came out of the police station, Mr. Chiu caught sight of a tea
stand. He grabbed Fenjin's arm and walked over to the old woman at the table. "Two
bowls of black tea," he said and handed her a one-yuan note.
After the first bowl, they each had another one. Then they set out for the train
station. But before they walked fifty yards, Mr. Chiu insisted on eating a bowl of treeear soup at a food stand. Fenjin agreed. He told his teacher, "You mustn't treat me
like a guest."
"No, I want to eat something myself."
105
As if dying of hunger, Mr. Chiu dragged his lawyer from restaurant to restaurant
near the police station, but at each place he ordered no more than two bowls of food.
Fenjin wondered why his teacher wouldn't stay at one place and eat his fill.
Mr. Chiu bought noodles, wonton, eight-grain porridge, and chicken soup, respectively, at four restaurants. While eating, he kept saying through his teeth, "If
only I could kill all the bastards!" At the last place he merely took a few sips of the
soup without tasting the chicken cubes and mushrooms.
Fenjin was baffled by his teacher, who looked ferocious and muttered to himself
mysteriously, and whose jaundiced face was covered with dark puckers. For the first
time Fenjin thought of Mr. Chiu as an ugly man.
Within a month over eight hundred people contracted acute hepatitis in Muji.
Six died of the disease, including two children. Nobody knew how the epidemic had
started.
QUESTIONS
1. Why is Mr. Chiu in Muji?
2. In the story's second paragraph, two railroad policemen are sitting next to Mr. Chiu and
his wife. Why do you think they are laughing and looking at the newly wed couple?
.3. With what specific crime is Mr. Chiu charged? Is he guilty?
4- What is Mr. Chiu's initial reaction to his arrest?
5. Why does Mr. Chiu initially refuse to sign a confession? Why does he eventually decide
to sign it?
6. What is ironic about Mr. Chiu's arrest? What is ironic about his ultimate confession?
7. When does Mr. Chiu decide to revenge himself on the police?
8. Is Mr. Chiu's revenge justified? Are the effects of his revenge proportionate to his own
suffering?
9. What is ironic about the story's title? W h o is the saboteur?
WRITERS
ON
WRITING
Ernest Hemingway
The Direct Style
1964
"When you write," he [Hemingway] said,
"Your object is to convey every sensation,
sight, feeling, emotion, to the reader. So you
have to work over what you write. If you use a
pencil, you get three different views of it to
see if you are getting it across the way you
want to. First, when you read it over, then
when it is typed, and again in proof. And it
keeps it fluid longer so that you can improve
it easier,"
"How do you ever learn to convey
every sensation, sight and feeling to the
reader? Just keep working at it for forty-odd
years the way you have? Are there any
tricks?"
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
"No. The hardest trade in the world to
do is the writing of straight, honest prose about human beings. But there are ways you
can train yourself."
"How?"
"When you walk into a room and you get a certain feeling or emotion, remember
back until you see exactly what it was that gave you the emotion. Remember what
the noises and smells were and what was said. Then write it down, making it clear
so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling you had. And watch people,
observe, try to put yourself in somebody else's head. If two men argue, don't just
think who is right and who is wrong. Think what both their sides are. As a man,
you know who is right and who is wrong; you have to judge. As a writer, you should
not judge, you should understand."
From "An Afternoon with Hemingway" by Edward Stafford
WRITING
ABOUT
TONE
AND
STYLE
Be style-Conscious
If you look around a crowded classroom, you will noticeconsciously or notthe
styles of your fellow students. The way they dress, talk, and even sit conveys information about their attitudes. A haircut, a T-shirt, a tattoo, a piece of jewelry all silently
say something. Similarly, a writer's stylehis or her own distinct voicecan give
the reader crucial extra information.
Style goes beyond the surface. Just as a person's gestures and vocal inflections
give the listener clues to the meaning of his or her words, literary style helps to create
meaning. T o analyze a writer's style, think about how he or she handles the following
four elements:
Diction: Consider the flavor of words chosen by the author for a particular story.
In "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," for example, Hemingway favors simple,
unemotional, and descriptive language, whereas in "The Storm," Chopin
uses extravagant and emotionally charged diction. Each choice reveals
something important about the story.
Sentence structure: Look for patterns in a story's sentence structure. Hemingway
is famous for his short, clipped sentences, which often repeat certain key
words. Faulkner, however, favors long, elaborate syntax that immerses the
reader in the emotion of the narrative.
Tone: Try to determine the writer s attitude toward the story he or she is telling.
In "The Gospel According to Mark," Borges uses dispassionate restraint to
present a central irony, a tragic misunderstanding that will doom his protagonist. Tan's "A Pair of Tickets," by contrast, creates a tone of hushed
excitement and direct emotional involvement.
Organization: Examine the order in which information is presented. Borges tells
his story in a straightforward, chronological manner, which eventually
makes it possible for us to appreciate the tale's complex undercurrents.
Other stories (for example, Atwood's "Happy Endings" in "Stories for Further
Reading") present the narrative's events in more complicated and surprising
wavs.
j
CHECKLIST
Thinking About Tone and Style
S Does the writer use word choice in a distinctive way?
S Does the author tend toward long or shorteven fragmentedsentences?
S How would you characterize the writer's voice? Is it formal or casual?
Distant or intimate? Impassioned or restrained?
/
S Can the narrator's words be taken at face value? Is there anything ironic
about the narrator's voice?
^ How does the writer arrange the material? Is information delivered chronologically, or is the organization more complex?
S What is the writer's attitude toward the material? How can you tell?
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON T O N E
AND
STYLE
Examine a short story with a style you admire. Write an essay in which you analyze the author's approach toward diction, sentence structure, tone, and organization. How do these elements work together to create a certain mood? How does that mood contribute to the story's
meaning? If your chosen story has a first-person narrator, how do stylistic choices help to create
a sense of that particular character?
MORE
TOPICS
FOR
WRITING
1. Write a brief analysis of irony in either "Saboteur," "The Gift of the Magi," or "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall." What sorts of irony does your story employ? (See the section
on irony earlier in this chapter for a list of the different types.)
2. Consider a short story in which the narrator is the central character, perhaps " A & P,"
"Greasy Lake," "Araby," "I Stand Here Ironing," or "Cathedral." In a brief essay, showhow the character of the narrator determines the style of the story. Examine language in
particularwords or phrases, slang expressions, figures of speech, local or regional usage.
3. Write a page in which you describe eating a meal in the company of others, either at
the dining hall, or in a favorite restaurant, or at home with family. Using sensory details,
convey a sense of the setting, the quality of the food, and the presence of your dining
companions. Now rewrite your paragraph as Ernest Hemingway. Finally, rewrite it as
William Faulkner.
4. After you have completed the previous exercise, write about the experience. What did
you learn, through imitation, about the styles of Hemingway and Faulkner?
5. In a paragraph, describe a city street as seen through the eyes of a college graduate who
has just moved to the city to start a new career. Now describe that same street in the
voice of an old woman walking home from the hospital where her husband has just died.
Finally, describe the street in the voice of a teenage runaway. In each paragraph, refrain
from identifying your character or saying anything about his or her circumstances. Simply
present the street as each character would perceive it.
Theme
,
v.^.,.-
-v.
They say great themes make great novels . . . but
what these young writers don't understand is that
there is no greater theme than men and women.
JOHN O'HARA
The theme of a story is whatever general idea or insight the entire story reveals. In
some stories the theme is unmistakable. At the end of Aesop's fable about the council of the mice that can't decide who will bell the cat, the theme is stated in the
moral: It is easier to propose a thing than to carry it out. In a work of commercial fiction,
too, the theme (if any) is usually obvious. Consider a typical detective thriller in
which, say, a rookie police officer trained in scientific methods of crime detection
sets out to solve a mystery sooner than his or her rival, a veteran sleuth whose only
laboratory is carried under his hat. Perhaps the veteran solves the case, leading to the
conclusion (and the theme), "The old ways are the best ways after all." Another story
by the same writer might dramatize the same rivalry but reverse the outcome, having
the rookie win, thereby reversing the theme: "The times are changing! Let's shake
loose from old-fashioned ways." In such commercial entertainments, a theme is like a
length of rope with which the writer, patently and mechanically, trusses the story
neatly (usually too neatly) into meaningful shape.
In literary fiction, a theme is seldom so obvious. That is, a theme need not be a
moral or a message; it may be what the happenings add up to, what the story is about.
When we come to the end of a finely wrought short story such as Ernest Hemingway's
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (Chapter 5), it may be easy to sum up the plotto
say what happensbut it is more difficult to sum up the story's main idea. Evidently,
Hemingway relates eventshow a younger waiter gets rid of an old man and how an
older waiter then goes to a coffee barbut in themselves these events seem relatively
slight, though the story as a whole seems large (for its size) and full of meaning. For
the meaning, we must look to other elements in the story besides what happens in it.
And it is clear that Hemingway is most deeply interested in the thoughts and feelings
of the older waiter, the character who has more and more to say as the story progresses, until at the end the story is entirely confined to his thoughts and perceptions.
What is meaningful in these thoughts and perceptions? The older waiter understands
the old man and sympathizes with his need for a clean, well-lighted place. If we say
that, w7e are still talking about what happens in the story, though we have gone beyond merely recording its external events. But a theme is usually stated in general
words. Another try: "Solitary people who cannot sleep need a cheerful, orderly place
where they can drink with dignity." That's a little better. We have indicated, at least,
that Hemingway's story is about more than just an old man and a couple of waiters.
But what about the older waiter's meditation on nada, nothingness? Coming near the
end of the story, it takes great emphasis, and probably no good statement of Hemingway's theme can leave it out. Still another try at a statement: "Solitary people need a
place of refuge from their terrible awareness that their lives (or, perhaps, human
lives) are essentially meaningless." Neither this nor any other statement of the story's
theme is unarguably right, but at least the sentence helps the reader to bring into focus one primary idea that Hemingway seems to be driving at. When we finish reading
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," we feel that there is such a theme, a unifying vision,
even though we cannot reduce it absolutely to a tag. Like some freshwater lake alive
with creatures, Hemingway's story is a broad expanse, reflecting in many directions.
No wonder that many readers will view it in different ways.
Moral inferences may be drawn from the story, no doubt, for Hemingway is indirectly giving us advice for properly regarding and sympathizing with the lonely, the
uncertain, and the old. But the story doesn't set forth a lesson that wre are supposed to
put into practice. One could argue that "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" contains
several themes, and other statements could be made to take in Hemingway's views of
love, of communication between people, of dignity. Great short stories, like great
symphonies, frequently have more than one theme.
In many a fine short story, theme is the center, the moving force, the principle of
unity. Clearly, such a theme is something other than the characters and events of its
story. T o say of James Joyce's "Araby" (Chapter 12) that it is about a boy who goes to a
bazaar to buy a gift for a young woman, only to arrive too late, is to summarize plot, not
theme. (The theme might be put, "The illusions of a romantic child are vulnerable," or it
might be put in any of a few hundred other ways.) Although the title of Shirley Jackson's
"The Lottery" (Chapter 7), with its hint of the lure of easy riches, may arouse pleasant
expectations, which the neutral tone of the narrative does nothing to dispel, the
themethe larger realization that the story leaves us withhas to do with the ways in
which cruel and insensitive attitudes can come to seem like normal and natural ones.
Sometimes you will hear it said that the theme of a story (say, Faulkner's "Bam
Burning") is "loss of innocence" or "initiation into maturity," or that the theme of
some other story (Hurston's "Sweat," for instance) is "the revolt of the downtrodden."
This is to use theme in a larger and more abstract sense than we use it here. Although
such general descriptions of theme can be usefulas in sorting a large number of stories into rough categorieswe suggest that, in the beginning, you look for whatever
truth or insight you think the writer of a story reveals. Try to sum it up in a sentence.
By doing so, you will find yourself looking closely at the story, trying to define its principal meaning. You may find it helpful, in making your sentence-statement of theme,
to consider these points:
1. Look back once more at the title of the story. From what you have read,
what does it indicate?
2. Does the main character in any way change in the story? Does this character
arrive at any eventual realization or understanding? Are you left with any
realization or understanding you did not have before?
.3. Does the author make any general observations about life or human nature?
Do the characters make any? (Caution: Characters now and again will utter
opinions with which the reader is not necessarily supposed to agree.)
4. Does the story contain any especially curious objects, mysterious flat characters, significant animals, repeated names, song titles, or whatever, that hint
at meanings larger than such things ordinarily have? In literary stories, such
symbols may point to central themes. (For a short discussion of symbolism
and a few illustrations, see Chapter 7.)
5. When you have worded your statement of theme, have you cast your statement into general language, not just given a plot summary?
6. Does your statement hold true for the story as a whole, not for just part of it?
In distilling a statement of theme from a rich and complicated story, we have, of
course, no more encompassed the whole story than a paleontologist taking a plaster
mold of a petrified footprint has captured a living brontosaurus. A writer (other than
a fabulist) does not usually set out with theme in hand, determined to make every detail in the story work to demonstrate it. Well then, the skeptical reader may ask, if
only some stories have themes, if those themes may be hard to sum up, and if readers
will probably disagree in their summations, why bother to state themes? Isn't it too
much trouble? Surely it is, unless the effort to state a theme ends in pleasure and
profit. Trying to sum up the point of a story in our own words is merely one way to
make ourselves better aware of whatever we may have understood vaguely and tentatively. Attempted with loving care, such statements may bring into focus our scattered impressions of a rewarding story, may help to clarify and hold fast whatever wisdom the storyteller has offered us.
Stephen Crane
The Open Boat
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
was born in
Newark, New Jersey, a Methodist minister s
last and fourteenth child. After flunking out of
both Lafayette College and Syracuse University, he became a journalist in New York, specializing in grim life among the down-and-out
who people his early self-published novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893). Restlessly
generating material for stories, Crane trekked to
the Southwest, New Orleans, and Mexico.
"The Open Boat" is based on experience. En
route to Havana to report the Cuban revolution
for the New York Press, Crane was shipwrecked when the SS Commodore sank in
heavy seas east of New Smyrna, Florida, on
January 2, 1897. He escaped in a ten-foot
STEPHEN CRANE
lifeboat with the captain and two members of the
(Courtesy of the Newark Public Library)
crew. Later that year, Crane moved into a
stately home in England with Cora Taylor, former madam of a Florida brothel, hobnobbed
with literary greats, and lived beyond his means. Hounded by creditors, afflicted by tuberculosis, he died in Germany at twenty-eight. Crane has been called the first writer of American realism. His famed novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895) gives an imagined but
convincing account of a young Union soldier s initiation into battle. A handful of his short
stories appear immortal. He was an original poet, too, writing terse, sardonic poems in open
forms, at the time considered radical In his short life, Crane greatly helped American literature to come of age.
A TALE INTENDED TO BE AFTER THE FACT:
BEING THE EXPERIENCE OF FOUR MEN FROM THE SUNK STEAMER COMMODORE
I
None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate,
save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of
the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its
edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.
Many a man ought to have a bathtub larger than the boat which here rode upon
the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each
frothtop was a problem in small-boat navigation.
The cook squatted in the bottom, and looked with both eyes at the six inches of
gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat
forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the
boat. Often he said, "Gawd! that was a narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably
gazed eastward over the broken sea.
The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself
suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar,
and it seemed often ready to snap.
The correspondent, 0 pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered
why he was there.
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound
dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and
most enduring when, willy-nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down.
The mind of the master of a vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he
command for a day or a decade; and this captain had on him the stern impression of a
scene in the grays of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a topmast with
a white ball on it, that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low and lower, and
down. Thereafter there was something strange in his voice. Although steady, it was
deep with mourning, and of a quality beyond oration or tears.
"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.
"A little more south, sir," said the oiler in the stern.
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and by the
same token a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared and plunged
like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse
making at a fence outrageously high. The manner of her scramble over these walls
of water is a mystic thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these
problems in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a crest, she would
correspondent: foreign correspondent, newspaper reporter.
slide and race and splash down a long incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in
front of the next menace.
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important
and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping
boats. In a ten-foot dinghy one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line
of waves that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in a
dinghy. As each slaty wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the
men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the
final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water. There was a terrible
grace in the move of the waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of
the crests.
In the wan light the faces of the men must have been gray. Their eyes must have
glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed from a balcony, the
whole thing would doubtless have been weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat
had no time to see it, and if they had had leisure, there were other things to occupy
their minds. The sun swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the color of the sea changed from slate to emerald green streaked with amber
lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect upon the color of the waves that
rolled toward them.
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The cook had said: 'There's
a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us
they'll come off in their boat and pick us up."
"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.
"The crew," said the cook.
"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I understand
them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."
"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.
"No, they don't," said the correspondent.
"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.
"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'm thinking of as
being near Mosquito Inlet Light; perhaps it's a life-saving station."
"We're not there yet," said the oiler in the stern.
11
As the boat bounced from the top of each wave the wind tore through the hair
of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down again the spray slashed
past them. The crest of each of these waves was a hill, from the top of which the men
surveyed for a moment a broad tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was
probably splendid, it was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights
of emerald and white and amber.
"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook. "If not, where would we
be? Wouldn't have a show."
"That's right," said the correspondent.
The busy oiler nodded his assent.
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20
Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor, contempt,
tragedy, all in one. "Do you think we've got much of a show now, boys?" said he.
Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and hawing. To
express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be childish and stupid, but
they all doubtless possessed this sense of the situation in their minds. A young man
thinks doggedly at such times. On the other hand, the ethics of their condition was
decidedly against any open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.
"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "we'll get ashore all right."
But there was that in his tone which made them think; so the oiler quoth, "Yes!
if this wind holds."
The cook was bailing. "Yes! if we don't catch hell in the surf."
Canton-flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the sea, near
patches of brown seaweed that rolled over the waves with a movement like carpets
on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some
in the dinghy, for the wrath of the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of
prairie chickens a thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at
the men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and sinister in
their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them, telling them to be
gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight on the top of the captain's head.
The bird flew parallel to the boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in
the air in chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain's
head. "Ugly brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as if you were made with a
jacknife." The cook and the correspondent swore darkly at the creature. The captain
naturally wished to knock it away with the end of the heavy painter, but he did not
dare do it, because anything resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized this
freighted boat; and so, with his open hand, the captain gently and carefully waved
the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain breathed
easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier because the bird struck their
minds at this time as being somehow gruesome and ominous.
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. And also they rowed.
They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the oiler took both
oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the oiler; then the correspondent.
They rowed and they rowred. The very ticklish part of the business was when the time
came for the reclining one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last
star of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change seats in
the dinghy. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the thwart and moved with
care, as if he were of Sevres. 0 Then the man in the rowing-seat slid his hand along
the other thwart. It was all done with the most extraordinary care. As the two sidled
past each other, the whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the
captain cried: "Look out, now! Steady, there!"
T h e brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were like islands,
bits of earth. They were travelling, apparently, neither one way nor the other. They
were, to all intents, stationary. They informed the men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.
The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow after the dinghy soared on a great swell,
said that he had seen the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet. Presently the cook remarked
Sevres: ehinaware made in this French town.
that he had seen it. The correspondent was at the oars then, and for some reason he too
wished to look at the lighthouse; but his back was toward the far shore, and the waves
were important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn his head.
But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others, and when at the crest of it
he swiftly scoured the western horizon.
"See it?" said the captain.
"No," said the correspondent, slowly; "I didn't see anything."
"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that direction."
At the top of another wave the correspondent did as he was bid, and this time
his eyes chanced on a small, still thing on the edge of the swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an anxious eye to find a lighthouse so tiny.
"Think we'll make it, Captain?"
"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else," said the
captain.
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea and splashed viciously by the crests,
made progress that in the absence of seaweed was not apparent to those in her. She
seemed just a wee thing wallowing, miraculously top up, at the mercy of five oceans.
Occasionally a great spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.
"Bail her, cook," said the captain, serenely.
"All right, Captain," said the cheerful cook.
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It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established 011 the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in
the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a
correspondent, and they were friendsfriends in a more curiously iron-bound degree
than may be common. T h e hurt captain, Lying against the water-jar in the bow,
spoke always in a low voice and calmly; but he could never command a more ready
and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dinghy. It was more than a
mere recognition of w7hat was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a
quality that was personal and heart-felt. And after this devotion to the commander
of the boat, there was this comradeship, that the correspondent, for instance, who
had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience
of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it.
"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoat on the
end of an oar, and give you two boys a chance to rest." So the cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the overcoat; the oiler steered; and the little
boat made good way with her new rig. Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to
keep a sea from breaking into the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success.
Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now almost assumed color, and appeared like a little gray shadow on the sky. The man at the oars
could not be prevented from turning his head rather often to try for a glimpse of this
little gray shadow.
At last, from the top of each wave, the men in the tossing boat could sec land.
Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky, this land seemed but a long
black shadow on the sea. It certainly was thinner than paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the cook, who had coasted this shore often in schooners.
"Captain, by the way, I believe they abandoned that life-saving station there about a
year ago."
45
"Did they?" said the captain.
The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now
obliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued their old impetuous swooping at the dinghy, and the little craft, no longer under way, struggled
woundily over them. The oiler or the correspondent took the oars again.
Shipwrecks are apropos of nothing. If men could only train for them and have
them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there would be less drowning
at sea. Of the four in the dinghy none had slept any time worth mentioning for two
days and two nights previous to embarking in the dinghy, and in the excitement of
clambering about the deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat
heartilv.
For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the correspondent was
fond of rowing at this time. The correspondent wondered ingenuously how in the
name of all that was sane could there be people who thought it amusing to row a
boat. It was not an amusement; it was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of
mental aberrations could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to the
muscles and crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in general how the
amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced oiler smiled in full sympathy.
Previously to the foundering, by the way, the oiler had worked double watch in the
engine-room of the ship.
"Take her easy now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves. If we have
to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll sure have to swim for it. Take
your time."
Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line of black
and a line of whitetrees and sand. Finally the captain said that he could make out a
house on the shore. "That's the house of refuge, sure," said the cook. "They'll see us
before long, and come out after us."
The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to make us out
now, if he's looking through a glass," said the captain. "He'll notify the life-saving
people."
"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the wreck,"
said the oiler, in a low voice, "else the life-boat would be out hunting us."
Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came again. It
had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finallv a new sound struck the ears
of the men in the boat. It was the low thunder of the surf on the shore. "We'll never
be able to make the lighthouse now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more
north, Billie."
"A little more north, sir," said the oiler.
Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and all
but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this expansion
doubt and direful apprehension were leaving the minds of the men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be ashore.
Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat, and they
now rode this wild colt of a dinghy like circus men. The correspondent thought that
he had been drenched to the skin, but happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat,
he found therein eight cigars. Four of them were soaked with seawater; four were perfectly scatheless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches; and thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat and, with an assurance of an
j
impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the big cigars, and judged well and
ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of water.
IV
"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life about
your house of refuge."
"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"
A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was of low dunes
topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain, and sometimes they
could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the beach. A tiny house was blocked
out black upon the sky. Southward, the slim lighthouse lifted its little gray length.
Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dinghy northward. "Funny they don't
see us," said the men.
The surfs roar was here dulled, but its tone was nevertheless thunderous and
mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers the men sat listening to this roar.
"We'll swamp sure," said everybody.
It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within twenty miles
in either direction; but the men did not know this fact, and in consequence they
made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the eyesight of the nation's lifesavers. Four scowling men sat in the dinghy and surpassed records in the invention of
epithets.
"Funny they don't see us."
The light-heartedness of a former time had completely faded. T o their sharpened
minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of incompetency and blindness and,
indeed, cowardice. There was the shore of the populous land, and it was bitter and
bitter to them that from it came no sign.
"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a try for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us have strength left to swim after
the boat swamps."
And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for the shore.
There was a sudden tightening of muscles. There was some thinking.
"If we don't all get ashore," said the captain"if we don't all get ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"
They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As for the reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, wras I
allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely
to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is
preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should
be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not
her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning
and save me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd.But no; she cannot, mean to
drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work."
Afterward the man might have had an impulse to shake his fist at the clouds. "Just
you drown me, now, and then hear what I call you!"
T h e billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed always
just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil of foam. There was a
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preparatory and long growl in the speech of them. No mind unused to the sea would
have concluded that the dinghy could ascend these sheer heights in time. The shore
was still afar. The oiler was a wily surfman. "Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live
three minutes more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea again,
Captain?
"Yes; go ahead!" said the captain.
This oiler, by a series of quick miracles and fast and steady oarsmanship, turned
the boat in the middle of the surf and took her safely to sea again.
There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed sea to
deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke: "Well, anyhow, they must have seen
us from the shore by now."
The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the gray, desolate east. A
squall, marked by dingy clouds and clouds brick-red like smoke from a burning building, appeared from the south-east.
"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?"
"Funny they haven't seen us."
"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're fishin'.
Maybe they think we're damned fools."
It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward, but wind
and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea, and sky formed their
mighty angle, there were little dots which seemed to indicate a city on the shore.
"St. Augustine?"
The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."
And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed; then the oiler rowed. It
was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of more aches and pains
than are registered in books for the composite anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited
area, but it can become the theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles,
wrenches, knots, and other comforts.
"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.
"No," said the oiler; "hang it!"
When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he
suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an.
obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the
boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl
of a wave-crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came inboard and
drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain
that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably upon the ocean as if
he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress.
"Look! There's a man on the shore!"
"Where?"
"There! See 'im?"
"Yes, sure! Lie's walking along."
"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"
"He's waving at us!"
"So he is! By thunder!"
"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out here for us
in half an hour."
"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."
The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching glance
to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating stick, and they rowed to it.
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A bath towel was by some weird chance in the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the
captain waved it. The oarsman did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask
questions.
"What's he doing now?"
"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think,There he goes againtoward
the house.Now he's stopped again."
"Is he waving at us?"
"No, not now; he was, though."
"Look! There comes another man!"
"He's running."
"Look at him go, would you!"
"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both waving at
us. Look!"
"There comes something up the beach."
"What the devil is that thing?"
"Why, it looks like a boat."
"Why, certainly, it's a boat."
"No; it's on wheels."
"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along shore on a
wagon."
"That's the life-boat, sure."
"No, by God, it'sit's an omnibus."
"I tell you it's a life-boat."
"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of the these big hotel
omnibuses."
"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you suppose
they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going around collecting the lifecrew, hey?"
"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag. He's standing
on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other two fellows. Now they're all
talking together. Look at the fellow with the flag. Maybe he ain't waving it!"
"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why, certainly, that's his coat."
"So it is; it's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his head. But
would you look at him swing it!"
"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a winter-resort
hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boarders to see us drown."
"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signalling, anyhow?"
"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a life-saving
station up there."
"No; he thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah, there,
Willie!"
"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you suppose
he means?"
"He don't mean anything; he's just playing."
"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea and wait, or go
north, or go south, or go to hell, there would be some reason in it. But look at him!
He just stands there and keeps his coat revolving like a wheel. The ass!"
"There come more people."
"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"
"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."
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125
"That fellow is still waving his coat."
"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It don't mean
anything."
"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be that there's a
life-saving station there somewhere."
"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave!"
"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever since
he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men to bring a boat out?
A fishing boatone of those big yawlscould come out here all right. Why don't he
do something?"
"Oh, it's all right now."
"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that they've seen us."
A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on the sea
slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men began to shiver.
"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood, "If we
keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here all night!"
"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've seen us
now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out after us."
The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this
gloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of people.
T h e spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made the voyagers shrink and
swear like men who were being branded.
"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like socking him one,
just for luck."
"Why? What did he do?"
"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."
In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and then
the oiler rowed. Gray-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically, turn by turn,
plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse had vanished from the southern
horizon, but finally a pale star appeared, just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron
in the west passed before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black.
The land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder of the
surf.
"If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be
drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to
come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my
nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?"
The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged to speak
to the oarsman.
"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"
"Keep her head, up, sir." The voices were weary and low.
This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and listlessly in
the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable of noting the tall black
waves that swept forward in a most sinister silence, save for an occasional subdued
growl of a crest.
T h e cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the water
under this nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke. "Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"
V
"Pie!" said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk about those
things, blast you!"
"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches, and"
150
A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled finally,
the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south, changed to full gold. On the
northern horizon a new light appeared, a small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the furniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing
but waves.
Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in the dinghy
that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warm by thrusting them under his
companions. Their legs indeed extended far under the rowing-seat until they
touched the feet of the captain forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired
oarsman, a wave came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chilling
water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and groan, and
sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat gurgled about them as
the craft rocked.
The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he lost the
ability, and then arouse the other from his sea-water couch in the bottom of the boat.
The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward and the overpowering
sleep blinded him; and he rowed yet afterward. Then he touched a man in the bottom
of the boat, and called his name. "Will you spell me for a little while?" he said meekly.
"Sure, Billie," said the correspondent, awaking and dragging himself to a sitting 155
position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler, cuddling down in the seawater at the cook's side, seemed to go to sleep instantly.
The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without snarling.
The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boat headed so that the tilt of
the roller would not capsize her, and to preserve her from filling when the crests
rushed past. The black waves were silent and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often
one was almost upon the boat before the oarsman was aware.
In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure that the
captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be always awake. "Captain,
shall I keep her making for that light north, sir?"
The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points off the port
bow."
The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the warmth
which this clumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed almost stove-like
when a rower, whose teeth invariably chattered wildly as soon as he ceased his labor,
dropped down to sleep.
The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleeping under- 160
foot. The cook's arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with their fragmentary
clothing and haggard faces, they were the babes of the seaa grotesque rendering of
the old babes in the wood.
Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a growling
of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder
that it did not set the cook afloat in his life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but
the oiler sat up, blinking his eyes and shaking with the new cold.
"Oh, I'm awful sorry, Billie," said the correspondent, contritely.
"That's all right, old boy/' said the oiler, and lay down again and was asleep.
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent thought
that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had a voice as it came
over the waves, and it was sadder than the end.
There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming trail of phos- 165
phorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black waters. It might have been
made by a monstrous knife.
Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with open mouth
and looked at the sea.
Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish light, and this
time it was alongside the boat, and might almost have been reached with an oar. The
correspondent saw an enormous fin speed like a shadow through the water, hurling
the crystalline spray and leaving the long glowing trail.
The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face was hidden,
and he seemed to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea. They certainly were
asleep. So, being bereft of sympathy, he leaned a little way to one side and swore
softly into the sea.
But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead or astern, on
one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled the long sparkling streak, and
there was to be heard the whirroo of the dark fin. The speed and power of the thing
was greatly to be admired. It cut the water like a gigantic and keen projectile.
The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the same horror 170
that it would if he had been a picnicker. He simply looked at the sea dully and swore
in an undertone.
Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone with the thing. He
wished one of his companions to awake by chance and keep him company with it.
But the captain hung motionless over the water-jar, and the oiler and the cook in the
bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.
VI
"If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be
drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to
come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"
During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude that it
was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable
injustice of it. For it was certainly an abominable injustice to drown a man who had
worked so hard, so hard. The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other
people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that
she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to
throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and
no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be 110 tangible thing to hoot, he feels, perhaps, the desire to 175
confront a personification and indulge in picas, bowed to one knee, and with hands
supplicant, saying, "Yes, but I love myself."
A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him.
Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.
The men in the dinghy had not discussed these matters, but each had, no
doubt, reflected upon them in silence and according to his mind. There was seldom
any expression upon their faces save the general one of complete weariness. Speech
was devoted to the business of the boat.
T o chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this verse, but it suddenly
was in his mind.
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers;
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand,
And he said, "I never more shall see my own, my native land." 0
In his childhood the correspondent had been made acquainted with the fact that
a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had informed him of the soldier's plight, but the
dinning had naturally ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared
to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than the breaking of a pencil's point.
Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was no 180
longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile drinking tea
and warming his feet at the grate; it was an actualitystern, mournful, and fine.
The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his feet out
straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his chest in an attempt to thwart
the going of his life, the blood came between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance,
a city of low square forms was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset
hues. T h e correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and perfectly impersonal
comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers.
The thing which had followed the boat and waited had evidently grown bored
at the delay. There was no longer to be heard the slash of the cutwater, and there
was no longer the flame of the long trail. The light in the north still glimmered, but
it was apparently no nearer to the boat. Sometimes the boom of the surf rang in the
correspondent's ears, and he turned the craft seaward then and rowed harder.
Southward, some one had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It was too low
and too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflection upon the bluff
in back of it, and this could be discerned from the boat. The wind came stronger,
and sometimes a wave suddenly raged out like a mountain cat, and there was to be
seen the sheen and sparkle of a broken crest.
The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. "Pretty long
night," he observed to the correspondent. He looked at the shore. "Those life-saving
people take their time."
"Did you see that shark playing around?"
"Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right."
185
"Wish I had known you were awake."
Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat.
"Billie!" There was a slow and gradual disentanglement.
"Billie, will you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
190
A soldier of the legion . . . native larid: The correspondent remembers a Victorian ballad about a German
.dying in the French Foreign Legion, "Bingen on the Rhine'' by Caroline Norton.
As soon as the correspondent touched the cold, comfortable sea-water in the
bottom of the boat and had huddled close to the cook's life-belt he was deep in sleep,
despite the fact that his teeth played all the popular airs. This sleep was so good to
him that it was but a moment before he heard a voice call his name in a tone that
demonstrated the last stages of exhaustion. "Will you spell me?"
"Sure, Billie."
The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the correspondent took
his course from the wide-awake captain.
Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and the captain directed
the cook to take one oar at the stern and keep the boat facing the seas. He was to call
out if he should hear the thunder of the surf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get respite together. "We'll give those boys a chance to get into shape
again," said the captain. They curled down and, after a few preliminary chatterings
and trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither knew they had bequeathed to
the cook the company of another shark, or perhaps the same shark.
As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the side and
gave them a fresh soaking, but this had no power to break their repose. The ominous
slash of the wind and the water affected them as it would have affected mummies.
"Boys," said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice, "she's
drifted in pretty close. I guess one of you had better take her to sea again." The correspondent, aroused, heard the crash of the toppled crests.
As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whisky-and-water, and this
steadied the chills out of him. "If I ever get ashore and anybody shows me even a
photograph of an oar"
At last there was a short conversation.
"Billie!Billie, will you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
VII
When the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and sky were each of the
gray hue of the dawning. Later, carmine and gold was painted upon the waters. The
morning appeared finally, in its splendor, with a sky of pure blue, and the sunlight
flamed on the tips of the waves.
On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tall white windmill reared above them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appeared on the beach. The
cottages might have formed a deserted village.
The voyagers scanned die shore. A conference was held in the boat. "Well," said
the captain, "if no help is coming, we might better try a run through the surf right
away. If we stay out here much longer we will be too weak to do anything for ourselves
at all." The others silently acquiesced in this reasoning. T h e boat was headed for the
beach. The correspondent wondered if none ever ascended the tall wind-tower, and
if they never looked seaward. This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the
plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of
nature amid the struggles of the individualnature in the wind, and nature in the
vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous,
nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It is, perhaps, plausible that a man
in this situation, impressed with the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of life, and have them taste wickedly in his mind, and wish for another
chance. A distinction between right and wrong seems absurdly clear to him, then, in
this new ignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words, and be better and
brighter during an introduction or at a tea.
"Now, boys," said the captain, "she is going to swamp sure. All we can do is to
work her in as far as possible, and then when she swamps, pile out and scramble for
the beach. Keep cool now, and don't jump until she swamps sure."
The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf. "Captain," he 205
said, "I think I'd better bring her about and keep her head-on to the seas and back
her in."
"All right, Billie," said the captain. "Back her in." The oiler swung the boat
then, and, seated in the stern, the cook and the correspondent were obliged to look
over their shoulders to contemplate the lonely and indifferent shore.
The monstrous inshore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were again
enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slanted beach. "We won't
get in very close," said the captain. Each time a man could wrest his attention from
the rollers, he turned his glance toward the shore, and in the expression of the eyes
during this contemplation there was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing
the others, knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glances was
shrouded.
As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the fact. He tried
to coerce his mind into thinking of it, but the mind was dominated at this time by
the muscles, and the muscles said they did not care. It merely occurred to him that if
he should drown it would be a shame.
There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men simply
looked at the shore. "Now, remember to get well clear of the boat when you jump,"
said the captain.
Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash, and the long 210
white comber came roaring down upon the boat.
"Steady now," said the captain. The men were silent.. They turned their eyes
from the shore to the comber and waited. The boat slid up the incline, leaped at the
furious top, bounced over it, and swung down the long back of the wave. Some water
had been shipped, and the cook bailed it out.
But the next crest crashed also. T h e tumbling, boiling flood of white water
caught the boat and whirled it almost perpendicular. Water swarmed in from all
sides. The correspondent had his hands on the gunwale at this time, and when the
water entered at that place he swiftly withdrew his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.
The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled deeper
into the sea.
"Bail her out, cook! Bail her out!" said the captain.
"All right, Captain," said the cook.
215
"Now, boys, the next one will do for us sure," said the oiler. "Mind to jump clear
of the boat."
The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly swallowed the
dinghy, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into the sea. A piece of life-belt
had lain in the bottom of the boat, and as the correspondent went overboard he held
this to his chest with his left hand.
The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was colder than
he had expected to find it off the coast of Florida. This appeared to his dazed mind as
a fact important enough to be noted at the time. The coldness of the water was sad; it
was tragic. This fact was somehow mixed and confused with his opinion of his own
situation, so that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was cold.
When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy water. Afterward he saw his companions in the sea. The oiler was ahead in the race. Fie was
swimming strongly and rapidly. Off to the correspondent's left, the cook's great
white and corked back bulged out of the wTater; and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good hand to the keel of the overturned dinghy.
There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent wondered
at it amid the confusion of the sea.
It seemed also very attractive; but the correspondent knew that it was a long
journey, and he paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver lay under him, and
sometimes he whirled down the incline of a wave as if he were on a handsled.
But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset with difficulty.
Fie did not pause swimming to inquire what manner of current had caught him, but
there his progress ceased. The shore was set before him like a bit of scenery on a
stage, and he looked at it and understood with his eyes each detail of it.
As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling to him,
"Turn over on your back, cook! Turn over on your back and use the oar."
"All right, sir." The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an oar, went
ahead as if he were a canoe.
Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent, with the captain
clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have appeared like a man raising himself to look over a board fence if it were not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the
boat. The correspondent marvelled that the captain could still hold to it.
They passed on nearer to shorethe oiler, the cook, the captainand following
them went the water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas.
The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemya current.
The shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff topped with little silent
cottages, was spread like a picture before him. It was very near to him then, but he
was impressed as one who, in a gallery, looks at a scene from Brittany or Algiers.
He thought: "I am going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible? Can
it be possible?" Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final
phenomenon of nature.
But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small deadly current, for he
found suddenly that he could again make progress toward the shore. Later still he was
aware that the captain, clinging with one hand to the keel of the dinghy, had his face
turned away from the shore and toward him, and was calling his name. "Come to the
boat! Come to the boat!"
In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that when one gets
properly wearied drowning must really be a comfortable arrangementa cessation of
hostilities accompanied by a large degree of relief; and he was glad of it, for the main
thing in his mind for some moments had been horror of the temporary agony. Fie did
not wish to be hurt.
Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with most
remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically off him.
"Come to the boat!" called the captain.
"All right, Captain." As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain let himself down to bottom and leave the boat. Then the correspondent performed his one
little marvel of the voyage. A large wave caught him and flung him w7ith ease and
supreme speed completely over the boat and far beyond it. It struck him even then as
an event in gymnastics and a true miracle of the sea. A n overturned boat in the surf
is not a plaything to a swimming man.
The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but his condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each wave knocked him
into a heap, and the undertow pulled at him.
Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing and 235
running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook, and then
waded toward the captain; but the captain waved him away and sent him to the correspondent. He was nakednaked as a tree in winter; but a halo was about his head,
and he shone like a saint. He gave a strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at
the correspondent's hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulae, said,
"Thanks, old man." But suddenly the man cried, "What's that?" He pointed a swift
finger. The correspondent said, "Go."
In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sand that
was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea.
The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he
achieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particular part of his body. It
was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thud was grateful to him.
It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets, clothes,
and flasks, and women with coffee-pots and all the remedies sacred to their minds.
The welcome of the land to the men from the sea was warm and generous; but a still
and dripping shape was carried slowly up the beach, and the land's welcome for it
could only be the different and sinister hospitality of the grave.
When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the
wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on the shore, and they feltthat they could then be interpreters.
QUESTIONS
1. In actuality, Crane, the captain of the Commodore, and the two crew members spent
nearly thirty hours in the open boat. William Higgins, the oiler, was drowned as Crane
describes. Does a knowledge of these facts in any way affect your response to the story?
Would you admire the story less if you believed it to be pure fiction?
2. Sum up the personalities of each of the four men in the boat: captain, cook, oiler, and
correspondent.
3. What is the point of view of the story?
4. In paragraph 9, we are told that as each wave came, the boat "seemed like a horse making
at a fence outrageously high." Point to the other vivid similes or figures of speech. What
do they contribute to the story's effectiveness?
5. Notice some of the ways in which Crane, as a storyteller conscious of plot, builds suspense. What enemies or obstacles do the men in the boat confront? What is the effect of
the scene of the men who wave from the beach (paragraphs 8 6 - 1 4 1 ) ? What is the climax
of the story? (If you need to be refreshed on the meaning of climax, see the discussion of
plot in Chapter 1 and in the Glossary.)
6. In paragraph 70 (and again in paragraph 143), the men wonder, "Was I brought here
merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?"
What variety of irony do you find in this quotation?
7. Why does die scrap of verse about die soldier dying in Algiers (paragraph 178) suddenly
come to mean so much to the correspondent?
8. What theme in "The Open Boat" seems most important to you? Where is it stated?
9. What secondary themes also enrich the story? See for instance paragraph 43 (the
thoughts on comradeship).
10. How do you define heroism? W h o is a hero in "The Open Boat"?
How I Met My Husband
Alice Munro, one of the most widely admired contemporary writers in Candida, was born of farm parents in 1931 in Wingham, in southwestern Ontario,
an area in which she has spent most of her life. Its
small-town people figure in many of her stories. For
two years, she attended the University of Western
Ontario, but dropped out at twenty, after her first
marriage. The mother of three daughters, Munro is a
particularly sensitive explorer of the relations between
parents and children, yet she ranges widely in choosing her themes. She has published twelve remarkable
collections of short fiction, including Dance of the
Happy Shades (1968), Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You (1974), The Beggar Maid (1982),
Open Secrets (1994), The Love of a Good Woman
(1998), Runaway (2004), and The View from Cas-
1974
ALICE M U N R 0
tie Rock (2006). Munro's Selected Stories appeared
in 1996, comfirming her position as one of the greatest living masters of short fiction. Three
of her books have won Canada's prestigious Governor Generals Literary Award; in the
United States she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The short story is her
true medium, and she has declared her preference for (<the story that will zero in and give you
intense, but not connected, moments of experience
We heard the plane come over at noon, roaring through the radio news, and we
were sure it was going to hit the house, so we all ran out into the yard. We saw it come
in over the treetops, all red and silver, the first close-up plane I ever saw. Mrs. Peebles
screamed.
"Crash landing," their little boy said. Joey was his name.
"It's okay," said Dr. Peebles. "He knows what he's doing." Dr. Peebles was only
an animal doctor, but had a calming way of talking, like any doctor.
This was my first jobworking for Dr. and Mrs. Peebles, who had bought an old
house out on the Fifth Line, about five miles out of town. It was just when the trend
was starting of town people buying up old farms, not to work them but to live on them.
We watched the plane land across the road, where the fairgrounds used to be. It
did make a good landing field, nice and level for the old race track, and the barns and
display sheds torn down now for scrap lumber so there was nothing in the way. Even
the old grandstand bays had burned.
"All right," said Mrs. Peebles, snappy as she always was when she got over her
nerves. "Let's go back in the house. Let's not stand here gawking like a set of farmers."
She didn't say that to hurt my feelings. It never occurred to her.
I was just setting the dessert down when Loretta Bird arrived, out of breath, at
the screen door.
"I thought it was going to crash into the house and kill youse all!"
She lived on the next place and the Peebleses thought she was a countrywoman, they didn't know the difference. She and her husband didn't farm, he
worked on the roads and had a bad name for drinking. They had seven children and
couldn't get credit at the HiWay Grocery. The Peebleses made her welcome, not
knowing any better, as I say, and offered her dessert.
Dessert was never anything to write home about, at their place. A dish of Jell-O
or sliced bananas or fruit out of a tin. "Have a house without a pie, be ashamed until
you die," my mother used to say, but Mrs. Peebles operated differently.
Loretta Bird saw me getting the can of peaches.
"Oh, never mind," she said. "I haven't got the right kind of a stomach to trust
what comes out of those tins, I can only eat home canning."
I could have slapped her. I bet she never put down fruit in her life.
"I know what he's landed here for," she said. "He's got permission to use the fairgrounds and take people up for rides. It costs a dollar. It's the same fellow who was
over at Palmerston 0 last week and was up the lakeshore before that. I wouldn't go up,
if you paid me."
"I'd jump at the chance," Dr. Peebles said. "I'd like to see this neighborhood
from the air."
Mrs. Peebles said she would just as soon see it from the ground. Joey said he
wanted to go and Heather did, too. Joey was nine and Heather was seven.
"Would you, Edie?" Heather said.
I said I didn't know. I was scared, but I never admitted that, especially in front of
children I was taking care of.
"People are going to be coming out here in their cars raising dust and trampling
your property, if I was you I would complain," Loretta said. She hooked her legs
around the chair rung and I knew we were in for a lengthy visit. After Dr. Peebles
went back to his office or out on his next call and Mrs. Peebles went for her nap, she
would hang around me while I was trying to do the dishes. She would pass remarks
about the Peebleses in their own house.
"She wouldn't find time to lay down in the middle of the day, if she had seven
kids like I got."
She asked me did they fight and did they keep things in the dresser drawer not to
have babies with. She said it was a sin if they did. I pretended I didn't know what she
was talking about.
I was fifteen and away from home for the first time. My parents had made the effort and sent me to high school for a year, but I didn't like it. I was shy of strangers
and the work was hard, they didn't make it nice for you or explain the way they do
now. At the end of the year the averages were published in the paper, and mine came
out at the very bottom, 37 percent. My father said that's enough and I didn't blame
him. The last thing I wanted, anyway, was to go 011 and end up teaching school. It
happened the very day the paper came out with my disgrace in it, Dr. Peebles was
Palmerston: a town in southern Ontario, Canada.
10
15
20
staying at our place for dinner, having just helped one of the cows have twins, and he
said I looked smart to him and his wife was looking for a girl to help. He said she felt
tied down, with the two children, out in the country. I guess she would, my mother
said, being polite, though I could tell from her face she was wondering what on earth
it would be like to have only two children and no barn work, and then to be complaining.
When I went home I would describe to them the work I had to do, and it made
everybody laugh. Mrs. Peebles had an automatic washer and dryer, the first I ever
saw. I have had those in my own home for such a long time now it's hard to remember how much of a miracle it was to me, not having to struggle with the wringer and
hang up and haul down. Let alone not having to heat water. Then there was practically no baking. Mrs. Peebles said she couldn't make pie crust, the most amazing
thing I ever heard a woman admit. I could, of course, and I could make light biscuits
and a white cake and dark cake, but they didn't want it, she said they watched their
figures. The only thing 1 didn't like about working there, in fact, was feeling half
hungry a lot of the time. I used to bring back a box of doughnuts made out at home,
and hide them under my bed. The children found out, and I didn't mind sharing, but
I thought I better bind them to secrecy.
The day after the plane landed Mrs. Peebles put both children in the car and
drove over to Chesley, to get their hair cut. There was a good woman then at Chesley
for doing hair. She got hers done at the same place, Mrs. Peebles did, and that meant
they would be gone a good while. She had to pick a day Dr. Peebles wasn't going out
into the country, she didn't have her own car. Cars were still in short supply then, after
the war.
I loved being left in the house alone, to do my work at leisure. The kitchen was
all white and bright yellow, with fluorescent lights. That was before they ever
thought of making the appliances all different colors and doing the cupboards like
dark old wood and hiding the lighting. I loved light. I loved the double sink. So
would anybody new-come from washing dishes in a dishpan with a rag-plugged hole
on an oilcloth-covered table by light of a coal-oil lamp. I kept everything shining.
The bathroom too. I had a bath in there once a week. They wouldn't have
minded if I took one oftener, but to me it seemed like asking too much, or maybe
risking making it less wonderful. T h e basin and the tub and the toilet were all pink,
and there were glass doors with flamingoes painted on them, to shut off the tub. The
light had a rosy cast and the mat sank under your feet like snow, except that it was
warm. The mirror wras three-way. With the mirror all steamed up and the air like a
perfume cloud, from things 1 was allowed to use, I stood up on the side of the tub and
admired myself naked, from three directions. Sometimes I thought about the way we
lived out at home and the way we lived here and how one way was so hard to imagine when you were living the other way. But I thought it was still a lot easier, living
the way we lived at home, to picture something like this, the painted flamingoes and
the warmth and the soft mat, than it was anybody knowing only things like this to
picture how it was the other way. And why was that?
I was through my jobs in no time, and had the vegetables peeled for supper and
sitting in cold water besides. Then I went into Mrs. Peebles' bedroom. I had been in
there plenty of times, cleaning, and I always took a good look in her closet, at the
clothes she had hanging there. 1 wouldn't have looked in her drawers, but a closet is
open to anybody. That's a lie. I would have looked in drawers, but 1 would have felt
worse doing; it and been more scared she could tell.
Some clothes in her closet she wore all the time, I was quite familiar with them.
Others she never put on, they were pushed to the back. I was disappointed to see no
wedding dress. But there was one long dress I could just see the skirt of, and I was hungering to see the rest. Now I took note of where it hung and lifted it out. It was satin, a
lovely weight on my arm, light bluish-green in color, almost silvery. It had a fitted,
pointed waist and a full skirt and an off-the-shoulder fold hiding the little sleeves.
Next thing was easy. I got out of my own things and slipped it on. I was slimmer 30
at fifteen than anybody would believe who knows me now and the fit was beautiful. I
didn't, of course, have a strapless bra on, which was what it needed, I just had to slide
my straps down my arms under the material. Then I tried pinning up my hair, to get
the effect. One thing led to another. I put on rouge and lipstick and eyebrow pencil
from her dresser. The heat of the day and the weight of the satin and all the excitement made me thirsty, and I went out to the kitchen, got-up as I was, to get a glass of
ginger ale with ice cubes from the refrigerator. The Peebleses drank ginger ale, or
fruit drinks, all day, like water, and 1 was getting so I did too. Also there was no limit
on ice cubes, which I was so fond of I would even put them in a glass of milk.
I turned from putting the ice tray back and saw a man watching me through the
screen. It was the luckiest thing in the world I didn't spill the ginger ale down the
front of me then and there.
"I never meant to scare you. I knocked but you were getting the ice out, you didn't
hear me."
I couldn't see what he looked like, he was dark the way somebody is pressed up
against a screen door with the bright daylight behind them. I only knew he wasn't
from around here.
"I'm from the plane over there. My name is Chris Watters and what I was wondering was if I could use that pump."
There was a pump in the yard. That was the way the people used to get their water. 35
Now I noticed he was carrying a pail.
"You're welcome," I said. "I can get it from the tap and save you pumping." I
guess I wanted him to know we had piped water, didn't pump ourselves.
"I don't mind the exercise." He didn't move, though, and finally he said, "Were
you going to a dance?"
Seeing a stranger there had made me entirely forget how I was dressed.
"Or is that the way ladies around here generally get dressed up in the afternoon?"
I didn't know how to joke back then. I was too embarrassed.
40
"You live here? Are you the lady of the house?"
"I'm the hired girl."
Some people change when they find that out, their whole way of looking at you
and speaking to you changes, but his didn't.
"Well, I just wanted to tell you you look very nice. I was so surprised when I
looked in the door and saw you. Just because you looked so nice and beautiful."
I wasn't even old enough then to realize how out of the common it is, for a man 45
to say something like that to a woman, or somebody he is treating like a woman. For
a man to say a word like beautiful I wasn't old enough to realize or to say anything
back, or in fact to do anything but wish he would go away. Not that I didn't like him,
but just that it upset me so, having him look at me, and me trying to think of something to say.
He must have understood. He said good-bye, and thanked me, and went and
started filling his pail from the pump. I stood behind the Venetian blinds in the dining
room, watching him. When he had gone, I went into the bedroom and took the
dress off and put it back in the same place. I dressed in my own clothes and took
my hair down and washed my face, wiping it on Kleenex, which 1 threw in the
wastebasket.
The Peebleses asked me what kind of man he was. Young, middle-aged, short,
tall? I couldn't say.
"Good-looking?" Dr. Peebles teased me.
I couldn't think a thing but that he would be coming to get his water again, he
would be talking to Dr. or Mrs. Peebles, making friends with them, and he would
mention seeing me that first, afternoon, dressed up. Why not mention it? He would
think it was funny. And no idea of the trouble it would get me into.
After supper the Peebleses drove into town to go to a movie. She wanted to go
somewhere with her hair fresh done. I sat in my bright kitchen wondering what to
do, knowing I would never sleep. Mrs. Peebles might not fire me, when she found
out, but it would give her a different feeling about me altogether. This was the first
place I ever worked but I already had picked up things about the way people feel
when you are working for them. They like to think you aren't curious. Not just that you
aren't dishonest, that isn't enough. They like to feel you don't notice things, that you
don't think or wonder about anything but what they liked to eat and how they liked
things ironed, and so on. I don't mean they weren't kind to me, because they were.
They had me eat my meals with them (to tell the truth I expected to, I didn't know
there were families who don't) and sometimes they took me along in the car. But all
the same.
I went up and checked on the children being asleep and then I went out. I had to
do it. I crossed the road and went in the old fairgrounds gate. T h e plane looked unnatural sitting there, and shining with the moon. Off at the far side of the fairgrounds
where the bush was taking over, I saw his tent.
He was sitting outside it smoking a cigarette. He saw me coming.
"Hello, were you looking for a plane ride? 1 don't start taking people up till tomorrow." Then he looked again and said, "Oh, it's you. I didn't know you without
your long dress on."
My heart was knocking away, my tongue was dried up. I had to say something.
But I couldn't. My throat was closed and I was like a deaf-and-dumb.
"Did you want a ride? Sit down. Have a cigarette."
I couldn't even shake my head to say no, so he gave me one.
"Put it in your mouth or I can't light it. It's a good thing I'm used to shy ladies."
I did. It wasn't the first time I had smoked a cigarette, actually. My girlfriend out
home, Muriel Lowe, used to steal them from her brother.
"Look at your hand shaking. Did you just want to have a chat, or what?"
In one burst I said, "I wisht you wouldn't say anything about that dress."
"What dress? Oh, the long dress."
"It's Mrs. Peebles'."
"Whose? Oh, the lady you work for? She wasn't home so you got dressed up in
her dress, eh? You got dressed up and played queen. I don't blame you. You're not
smoking the cigarette right. Don't just puff. Draw it in. Did anybody ever show you
how to inhale? Are you scared I'll tell on you? Is that it?"
I was so ashamed at having to ask him to connive this way I couldn't nod. I just
looked at him and he saw yes.
" W e l l I won't. I won't in the slightest way m e n t i o n it or embarrass you. 1 give
you my word o f h o n o r . "
65
T h e n he changed the subject, to help me out, seeing I couldn't even t h a n k h i m .
" W h a t do you t h i n k o f this sign?"
It was a board sign lying practically at my feet.
SEE THE WORLD FROM THE SKY. ADULTS $ 1 . 0 0 , CHILDREN 50^. QUALIFIED PILOT.
" M y old sign was getting pretty beat up, I thought I'd make a new one. T h a t ' s
what I've b e e n doing with my time today."
T h e lettering wasn't all that handsome, I thought. I could have done a better
one in half an hour.
70
"I'm n o t an expert at sign making."
"It's very good," I said.
"I don't need it for publicity, word o f m o u t h is usually enough. 1 turned away two
carloads tonight. I felt like taking it easy. I didn't tell t h e m ladies were dropping in to
visit m e . "
N o w I remembered the children and I was scared again, in case one of them had
waked up and called me and I wasn't there.
75
" D o you h a v e to go so soon?"
I remembered some manners. " T h a n k you for the cigarette."
" D o n ' t forget. You h a v e my word of h o n o r . "
I tore off across the fairgrounds, scared I'd see the car heading h o m e from town.
M y sense o f time was mixed up, I didn't know how long I'd b e e n out of the house. But
it was all right, it wasn't late, t h e children were asleep. 1 got in my bed myself and lay
thinking what a lucky end to the day, after all, and among things to be grateful for I
could be grateful Loretta Bird hadn't b e e n the o n e who caught me.
T h e yard and borders didn't get trampled, it wasn't as bad as that. A l l the same it
seemed very public, around the house. T h e sign was o n the fairgrounds gate. People
c a m e mostly after supper but a good many in the afternoon, too. T h e Bird children
all came without fifty cents between them and hung on the gate. W e got used to the
e x c i t e m e n t of the plane coming in and taking off, it wasn't excitement anymore. I
never went over, after that one time, but would see him when he came to get his water.
I would be out o n the steps doing sitting-down work, like preparing vegetables, if I
could.
80
" W h y don't you c o m e over? I'll take you up in my plane."
" I ' m saving my m o n e y , " I said, because I couldn't think o f anything else.
"For what? For getting married?"
I shook my head.
"I'll take you up for free if you c o m e sometime when it's slack. I thought you
would c o m e , and h a v e a n o t h e r cigarette."
I made a face to hush him, because you n e v e r could tell when the children would
be sneaking around the porch, or Mrs. Peebles herself listening in the house. S o m e times she came out and had a conversation with him. H e told her things he hadn't
bothered to tell me. But t h e n I h a d n ' t thought to ask. H e told her h e had b e e n in the
war, t h a t was where h e learned to fly a plane, and how he couldn't settle down to ordinary life, this was what he liked. S h e said she couldn't imagine anybody liking such
a thing. T h o u g h sometimes, she said, she was almost bored enough to try anything
herself, she wasn't brought up to living in the country. It's all my husband's idea, she
said. T h i s was news to me.
"Maybe you ought to give flying lessons," she said.
85
"Would you take them?"
She just laughed.
Sunday was a busy flying day in spite of it being preached against from two pulpits. We were all sitting out watching. Joey and Heather were over on the fence with
the Bird kids. Their father had said they could go, after their mother saying all week
they couldn't.
A car came down the road past the parked cars and pulled up right in the drive.
It was Loretta Bird who got out, all importance, and on the driver's side another
woman got out, more sedately. She was wearing sunglasses.
"This is a lady looking for the man that flies the plane," Loretta Bird said. "I heard
her inquire in the hotel coffee shop where I was having a Coke and I brought her out."
"I'm sorry to bother you," the lady said. "I'm Alice Kelling, Mr. Watters' fiancee."
This Alice Kelling had on a pair of brown and white checked slacks and a yellow
top. Her bust looked to me rather low and bumpy. She had a worried face. Her hair
had had a permanent, but had grown out, and she wore a yellow band to keep it off her
face. Nothing in the least pretty or even young-looking about her. But you could tell
from how she talked she was from the city, or educated, or both.
Dr. Peebles stood up and introduced himself and his wife and me and asked her
to be seated.
"He's up in the air right now, but you're welcome to sit and wait. He gets his
water here and he hasn't been yet. He'll probably take his break about five."
"That is him, then?" said Alice Kelling, wrinkling and straining at the sky.
"He's not in the habit of running out on you, taking a different name?" Dr. Peebles
laughed. He was the one, not his wife, to offer iced tea. Then she sent me into the
kitchen to fix it. She smiled. She was wearing sunglasses too.
"He never mentioned his fiancee," she said.
I loved fixing iced tea with lots of ice and slices of lemon in tall glasses. I ought
to have mentioned before, Dr. Peebles was an abstainer, at least around the house, or
I wouldn't have been allowed to take the place. I had to fix a glass for Loretta Bird
too, though it galled me, and when I went out she had settled in my lawn chair, leaving me the steps.
"I knew you was a nurse when I first heard you in that coffee shop."
"How would you know a thing like that?"
"I get my hunches about people. Was that how you met him, nursing?"
"Chris? Well yes. Yes, it was."
"Oh, were you overseas?" said Mrs. Peebles.
"No, it was before he went overseas. I nursed him when he was stationed at
Centralia and had a ruptured appendix. W e got engaged and then he went overseas.
My, this is refreshing, after a long drive."
"He'll be glad to see you," Dr. Peebles said. "It's a rackety kind of life, isn't it, not
staying one place long enough to really make friends."
"Youse've had a long engagement," Loretta Bird said.
Alice Kelling passed that over. "I was going to get a room at the hotel, but when
I was offered directions I came on out. Do you think I could phone them?"
"No need," Dr. Peebles said. "You're five miles away from him if you stay at the
hotel. Here, you're right across the road. Stay with us. We've got rooms on rooms,
look at this big house."
Asking people to stay, just like that, is certainly a country thing, and maybe
seemed natural to h i m now, but n o t to Mrs. Peebles, from the way she said, o h yes, we
h a v e plenty of room. O r to A l i c e Kelling, who kept protesting, but let herself be worn
down. I got the feeling it was a temptation to her, to be t h a t close. I was trying for a
look at her ring. Her nails were painted red, h e r lingers were freckled and wrinkled. It
was a tiny stone. Muriel Lowe's cousin had o n e twice as big.
Chris came to get his water, late in the afternoon just as Dr. Peebles had predicted.
H e must have recognized the car from a w7ay off. Pie c a m e smiling.
" H e r e I am chasing after you to see what you're up to," called A l i c e Kelling. S h e
got up and went to meet h i m and they kissed, just touched, in front of us.
"You're going to spend a lot o n gas t h a t way," Chris said.
Dr. Peebles invited Chris to stay for supper, since he had already put up the sign 115
t h a t said: NO MORE RIDES TILL 7 P.M. Mrs. Peebles wanted it served in the yard, in spite
of the bugs. O n e thing strange to anybody from the country is this eating outside. I
had made a potato salad earlier and she had made a jellied salad, t h a t was one thing
she could do, so it was just a matter of getting those out, and some sliced meat and
cucumbers and fresh leaf lettuce. Loretta Bird hung around for some time saying,
" O h , well, I guess I better get h o m e to those yappers," and, "It's so n i c e just sitting
here, I sure h a t e to get up," but nobody invited her, I was relieved to see, and finally
she had to go.
T h a t night after rides were finished A l i c e Kelling and Chris went off somewhere
in her car. I lay awake till they got back. W h e n I saw the car lights sweep my ceiling
I got up to look down o n t h e m through the slats of my blind. I d o n ' t know what I
thought I was going to see. Muriel Lowe and 1 used to sleep 011 h e r front veranda and
watch her sister and her sister's boy friend saying good night. Afterward we couldn't
get to sleep, for longing for somebody to kiss us and rub against us and we would talk
about suppose you were out in a boat with a boy and he wouldn't bring you in to
shore unless you did it, or what if somebody got you trapped in a barn, you would
h a v e to, wouldn't you, it wouldn't be your fault. Muriel said her two girl cousins used
to try with a toilet paper roll t h a t o n e o f t h e m was a boy. W e wouldn't do anything
like that; just lay and wondered.
A l l that happened was that Chris got out of the car o n o n e side and she got out
011 the o t h e r and they walked off separatelyhim toward the fairgrounds and her toward the house. I got back in bed and imagined about me c o m i n g h o m e with him,
n o t like that.
N e x t morning A l i c e Kelling got up late and I fixed a grapefruit for h e r the way I
had learned and Mrs. Peebles sat down with her to visit and have a n o t h e r cup o f coffee. Mrs. Peebles seemed pleased enough now, having company. A l i c e Kelling said
she guessed she better get used to putting in a day just watching Chris take off and
c o m e down, and Mrs. Peebles said she didn't know if she should suggest it because
A l i c e Kelling was the o n e with the car, but the lake was only twenty-five miles away
and what a good day for a picnic.
A l i c e Kelling took her up on the idea and by eleven o ' c l o c k they were in the car,
with Joey and H e a t h e r and a sandwich luiich I had made. T h e only thing was that
Chris hadn't c o m e down, and she wanted to tell him where they were going.
"Edie'll go over and tell h i m , " Mrs. Peebles said. " T h e r e ' s n o problem."
A l i c e Kelling wrinkled her face and agreed.
" B e sure and tell h i m we'll be b a c k by five!"
120
I didn't see that he would be concerned about knowing this right away, and I
thought of him eating whatever he ate over there, alone, cooking on his camp stove, so I got to work and mixed up a crumb cake and baked it, in between the other work
I had to do; then, when it was a bit cooled, wrapped it in a tea towel I didn't do anything to myself but take off my apron and comb my hair. I would like to have put
some makeup on, but I was too afraid it would remind him of the way he first saw me,
and that would humiliate me all over again.
He had come and put another sign on the gate: NO RIDES THIS P.M. APOLOGIES. I
worried that he wasn't feeling well. No sign of him outside and the tent flap was
down. I knocked on the pole.
"Come in," he said, in a voice that would just as soon have said Stay out.
1 lifted the flap.
"Oh, it's you. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you."
He had been just sitting on the side of the bed, smoking. Why not at least sit and
smoke in the fresh air?
"I brought a cake and hope you're not sick," I said.
"Why would I be sick? Ohthat sign. That's all right. I'm just tired of talking to
people. I don't mean you. Have a seat." He pinned back the tent flap. "Get some
fresh air in here."
I sat on the edge of the bed, there was no place else. It was one of those foldup
cots, really; I remembered and gave him his fiancee's message.
He ate some of the cake. "Good."
"Put the rest away for when you're hungry later."
"I'll tell you a secret. I won't be around here much longer."
"Are you getting married?"
"Ha ha. What time did you say they'd be back?"
"Five o'clock."
"Well, by that time this place will have seen the last of me. A plane can get further than a car." Fie unwrapped the cake and ate another piece of it, absentmindedly.
"Now you'll be thirsty."
"There's some water in the pail."
"It won't be very cold. I could bring some fresh. I could bring some ice from the
refrigerator."
"No," he said. "I don't want you to go. I want a nice long time of saying good-bye
to you."
He put the cake away carefully and sat beside me and started those little kisses,
so soft, I can't ever let myself think about them, such kindness in his face and lovely
kisses, all over my eyelids and neck and ears, all over, then me kissing back as well as
I could (I had only kissed a boy on a dare before, and kissed my own arms for practice) and we lay back on the cot and pressed together, just gently, and he did some
other things, not bad things or not in a bad way. It was lovely in the tent, that smell
of grass and hot tent cloth with the sun beating down on it, and he said, "I wouldn't
do you any harm for the world." Once, when he had rolled on top of me and we were
sort of rocking together on the cot, he said softly, "Oh, no," and freed himself and
jumped up and got the water pail. He splashed some of it on his neck and face, and
the little bit left, on me lying there.
"That's to cool us off, miss."
When we said good-bye I wasn't at all sad, because he held my face and said,
"I'm going to write you a letter. I'll tell you where I am and maybe you can come and
see me. Would you like that? Okay then. You wait." I was really glad I think to get
away from him, it was like he was piling presents on me I couldn't get the pleasure of
till I considered them alone.
No consternation at first about the plane being gone. They thought he had
taken somebody up, and I didn't enlighten them. Dr. Peebles had phoned he had to
go to the country, so there was just us having supper, and then Loretta Bird thrusting
her head in the door and saying, "I see he's took off."
"What?" said Alice {Celling, and pushed back her chair.
"The kids come and told me this afternoon he was taking down his tent. Did he
think he'd run through all the business there was around here? He didn't take off
without letting you know, did he?"
"He'll send me word," Alice Kelling said. "He'll probably phone tonight. He's
terribly restless, since the war."
"Edie, he didn't mention to you, did he?" Mrs. Peebles said. "When you took
over the message?"
"Yes," I said. So far so true.
"Well why didn't you say?" All of them were looking at me. "Did he say where he
was going?"
"He said he might try Bayfield," I said. What made me tell such a lie? I didn't
intend it.
"Bayfield, how far is that?" said Alice Kelling.
Mrs. Peebles said, "Thirty, thirty-five miles."
"That's not far. Oh, well, that's really not far at all. It's on the lake, isn't it?"
You'd think I'd be ashamed of myself, setting her on the wrong track. I did it to
give him more time, whatever time he needed. I lied for him, and also, I have to admit, for me. Women should stick together and not do things like that. I see that now,
but didn't then. I never thought of myself as being in any way like her, or coming to
the same troubles, ever.
She hadn't taken her eyes off me. I thought she suspected my lie.
"When did he mention this to you?"
"Earlier."
"When you were over at the plane?"
"Yes."
"You must've stayed and had a chat." She smiled at me, not. a nice smile. "You
must've stayed and had a little visit with him."
"I took a cake," I said, thinking that telling some truth would spare me telling
the rest.
"We didn't have a cake," said Mrs. Peebles rather sharply.
"I baked one."
Alice Kelling said, "That was very friendly of you."
"Did you get permission," said Loretta Bird. "You never know what these girls'll
do next," she said. "It's not they mean harm so much, as they're ignorant."
"The cake is neither here nor there," Mrs. Peebles broke in. "Edie, I wasn't aware
you knew Chris that well."
I didn't know what to say.
"I'm not surprised," Alice Kelling said in a high voice. "I knew by the look of her
as soon as I saw her. We get them at the hospital all the time." She looked hard at me
With her stretched smile. "Having their babies. We have to put them in a special
ward because of their diseases. Little country tramps. Fourteen and fifteen years old.
You should see the babies they have, too."
"There was a bad woman here in town had a baby that pus was running out of its
eyes," Loretta Bird put in.
"Wait a minute," said Mrs. Peebles. "What is this talk? Edie. What about you
and Mr. Watters? Were you intimate with him?"
"Yes," I said. I was thinking of us lying on the cot and kissing, wasn't that intimate? And I would never deny it.
They were all one minute quiet, even Loretta Bird.
"Well," said Mrs. Peebles. "I am surprised. I think I need a cigarette. This is the
first of any such tendencies I've seen in her," she said, speaking to Alice Kelling, but
Alice Kelling was looking at me.
"Loose little bitch." Tears ran down her face. "Loose little bitch, aren't you? I
knew as soon as I saw you. Men despise girls like you. He just made use of you and
went off, you know that, don't you? Girls like you are just nothing, they're just public
conveniences, just filthy little rags!"
"Oh, now," said Mrs. Peebles.
"Filthy," Alice Kelling sobbed. "Filthy little rags!"
"Don't get yourself upset," Loretta Bird said. She was swollen up with pleasure at
being in on this scene. "Men are all the same."
"Edie, I'm very surprised," Mrs. Pebbles said. "I thought your parents were so
strict. You don't want to have a baby, do you?"
I'm still ashamed of what happened next. I lost control, just like a six-year-old, I
started howling. "You don't get a baby from just doing that!"
"You see. Some of them are that ignorant," Loretta Bird said.
But Mrs. Peebles jumped up and caught my arms and shook me.
"Calm down. Don't get hysterical. Calm down. Stop crying. Listen to me. Listen
I'm wondering, if you know what being intimate means. Now tell me. What did you
think it meant?"
"Kissing," I howled.
She let go. "Oh, Edie. Stop it. Don't be silly. It's all right. It's all a misunderstanding. Being intimate means a lot more than that. Oh, I wondered,"
"She's trying to cover up, now," said Alice Kelling. "Yes. She's not so stupid. She
sees she got herself in trouble."
"I believe her," Mrs. Peebles said. "This is an awful scene."
"Well there is one way to find out," said Alice Kelling, getting up. "After all, I
am a nurse."
Mrs. Peebles drew a breath and said, "No. No. Go to your room, Edie. And stop
that noise. This is too disgusting."
I heard the car start in a little while. I tried to stop crying, pulling back each
wave as it started over me. Finally I succeeded, and lay heaving on the bed.
Mrs. Peebles came and stood in the doorway.
"She's gone," she said. "That Bird woman too. Of course, you know you should
never have gone near that man and that is the cause of all this trouble. I have a
headache. As soon as you can, go and wash your face in cold water and get at the
dishes and we will not say any more about this."
Nor we didn't. I didn't figure out till years later the extent of what I had been saved
from. Mrs. Peebles was not very friendly to me afterward, but she was fair. Not very
friendly is die wrong way of describing what she was. She had never been very friendly.
It was just that now she had to see me all the time and it got on her nerves, a little.
As for me, I put it all out of my mind like a bad dream and concentrated on waiting
for my letter. The mail came every day except Sunday, between one-thirty and two in
the afternoon, a good time for me because Mrs. Peebles was always having her nap. I
would get the kitchen all cleaned and then go up to the mailbox and sit in the grass,
waiting, I was perfectly happy, waiting. I forgot all about Alice Kelling and her misery
and awful talk and Mrs. Peebles and her chilliness and the embarrassment of whether
she told Dr. Peebles and the face of Loretta Bird, getting her fill of other people's troubles. I was always smiling when the mailman got there, and continued smiling even after
he gave me the mail and I saw today wasn't the day. The mailman was a Carmichael. I
knew by his face because there are a lot of Carmichaels living out by us and so many of
them have a sort of sticking-out. top lip. So I asked his name (he was a young man, shy,
but good-humored, anybody could ask him anything) and then 1 said, "I knew by your
face!" He was pleased by that and always glad to see me and got a little less shy. "You've
got the smile I've been waiting for all day!" he used to holler out the car window.
It never crossed my mind for a long time a letter might not come. 1 believed in it
coming just like I believed the sun would rise in the morning. I just put off my hope
from day to day, and there was the goldenrod out around the mailbox and the children
gone back to school, and the leaves turning, and I was wearing a sweater when I went
to wait. One clay walking back with the hydro bill stuck in my hand, that was all, looking across at the fairgrounds with the full-blown milkweed and dark teasels, so much
like fall, it just struck me: No letter was ever going to come. It was an impossible idea to
get used to. No, not impossible. If I thought about Chris's face when he said he was going to write me, it was impossible, but if I forgot that and thought about the actual tin
mailbox, empty, it was plain and true. I kept on going to meet the mail, but my heart
was heavy now like a lump of lead. I only smiled because I thought of the mailman
counting on it, and he didn't have an easy life, with the winter driving ahead.
Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, all over.
There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I
imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and my hair starting to get gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. So I stopped meeting the mail. If there were women all through life waiting, and women busy and not
waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there might be things the second
kind of women have to pass up and never know about, it still is better.
I was surprised when the mailman phoned the Peebleses' place in the evening and
asked for me. He said he missed me. He asked if I would like to go to Goderich, where
some well-known movie was on, I forget now what. So I said yes, and I went out with
him for two years and he asked me to many him, and we were engaged a year more while
I got my things together, and then we did marry. He always tells the children the story of
how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, and naturally I laugh and let
him, because I like for people to think what pleases them and makes them happy.
QUESTIONS
1. What is your attitude toward Edie, the narratorsympathy, condescension, disapproval,
or something more complicated? Explain.
2. What aspects of Mrs. Peebles and her life does Edie admire or envy? What things about
Mrs. Peebles does she find off-putting?
.3. Why does Edie dislike Loretta Bird so much?
4- Reread the description of Alice Kelling in paragraph 94. What details does Edie notice
about her, and why are these qualities important to Edie?
5. It is interesting that the story contains no description of Chris Watters's personal appearance. Why not, do you think? What are the things about him that really matter to Edie?
6. The twist at the end of the story may remind you of "The Gift of the Magi." Is there here,
as there is in O. Henry's tale, more to the conclusion than just a clever surprise?
7. How would you state the theme of this story? Explain.
Luke 15:11-32
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
(Authorized or King James version, 1611)
And he said, A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his
father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto
them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and
took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he
sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the
husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare,
and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be
called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his
father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion,
and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father I
have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called
thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on
him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted
calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive
again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Now his elder son was
in the field: and he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing.
And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said
unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he
hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore
came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo,
these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:
But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots,
thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he saicl unto him, Son thou art ever with
me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad:
for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.
QUESTIONS
1. This story has traditionally been called "The Parable of the Prodigal Son.'' What does
prodigal mean? Which of the two brothers is prodigal?
2. What position does the younger son expect when he returns to his father s house? What
does the father give him?
3. When the older brother sees the celebration for his younger brother's return, he gets angry. He makes a very reasonable set of complaints to his father. He has indeed been a
loyal and moral son, but what virtue does the older brother lack?
4. Is the father fair to the elder son? Explain your answer.
5. Theologians have discussed this parable's religious significance for two thousand years.
What, in your own words, is the human theme of the story?
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Harrison Bergeron
1961
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922. During the Depression his father, a
well-to-do architect, had virtually no work, and the family lived in reduced circumstances.
Vonnegut attended Cornell University, where he studied sciences but also became managing
editor of the daily student newspaper. In 1943 he enlisted in the U.S. Army. During the
Battle of the Bulge he was captured by German troops and interned as a prisoner of war in
Dresden, where he survived the massive Allied firebombing, which killed over 130,000 people, mostly civilians. (The firebombing of Dresden became the central incident in Vonnegut's best-selling 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse Five.) After the war Vonnegut worked as
a reporter and later as a public relations man for General Electric in Schenectady, New
York. After publishing several science fiction stories in national magazines, he quit his job in
1951 to write full-time. His first novel, Player Piano, appeared in 1952, followed by
Sirens of Titan (1959), and his first best-seller, Cat's Cradle (1963)all now considered
classics of literary science fiction. Among his many later books are Jailbird (1979), Bluebeard (1987), Hocus Pocus (1990), Timequake (1997), God Bless You,
Dr. Kevorkian (2000), and A Man Without a Country (2005). Hzs short fiction is collected in Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) and Bagombo Snuff Box (1999). He
was named New1 York State Author for the period 2001-2003. Vonnegut is a singular figure in modern American fiction. An ingenious comic writer, he has combined the popular
genre of science fiction with the literary tradition of dark satirea combination splendidly
realized in "Harrison Bergeron."
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than
anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or
quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th
Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the
United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April, for instance,
still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month
that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison,
away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard.
Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about
anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above
normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear
it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so,
the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from
taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks,
hut she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from
a burglar alarm.
"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.
"Huh?" said George.
"That danceit was nice," said Hazel.
"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't
really very goodno better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were
burdened with sash weights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that
no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something
the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't
be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio
scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George
what the latest sound had been.
"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," said
George.
"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," said
Hazel, a little envious. "All the things they think, up."
"Um," said George.
"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel.
Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a
woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel,
"I'd have chimes on Sundayjust chimes. Kind of in honor of religion."
"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.
"Wellmaybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."
"Good as anybody else," said George.
"Who knows better'n I do what normal is?" said Hazel.
"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son
who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped
that.
"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the
rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were
holding their temples.
"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on
the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." She was
referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked
around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't
care if you're not equal to me for a while."
George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't notice
it any more. It's just a part of me."
"You been so tired latelykind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some
way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of
them lead balls. Just a few."
"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said
George. "I don't call that a bargain."
"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. "I
meanyou don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around."
"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd get away
with itand pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody
competing against, everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"
"I'd hate it," said Hazel.
.30
"There you are," said George. "The minute people start cheating on laws, what
do you think happens to society?"
If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George
couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel.
"What would?" said George blankly.
"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?"
35
"Who knows?" said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't
clear at. first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like ail announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high
excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and gentlemen"
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
"That's all right" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing.
He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise
for trying so hard."
"Ladies and gentlemen" said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must 40
have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it
was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her
handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for
a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me"
she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as
extremely dangerous."
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen upside
down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the
full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was
exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had
ever borne heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men
could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a
tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles
were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches
besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, 45
a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked
like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred
pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a
red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white
teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
"If you see this boy," said the ballerina, "do notI repeat, do nottry to reason
with him."
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. T h e
photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though
dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have
for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My
God" said George, "that must be Harrison!"
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone.
A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The
knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody
must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickenedI am a greater
mler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps
guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head
harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor,
the god of thunder.
"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her
throne!"
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical
handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
"Now" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning
of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of
their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and
dukes and earls."
The music began. It was normal at firstcheap, silly, false. But Harrison
snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the
music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a whilelistened
gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girl's tiny waist, letting her sense the
weightlessness that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the
laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer
to it.
It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.
They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended
in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the
studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor
and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and
told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone
out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him
up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying?" he said to Hazel.
"Yup," she said.
"What about?" he said.
"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."
"What was it?" he said.
"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.
"Forget sad things," said George.
"I always do," said Hazel
"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun
in his head.
"GeeI could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.
"You can say that again," said George.
"Gee" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."
QUESTIONS
1. What tendencies in present-day American society is Vonnegut satirizing? Does the story
argue for anything? How would you sum up its theme?
2. Is Diana Moon Glampers a "flat" or a "round" character? (If you need to review these
terms, see the discussion of character in Chapter 3 and in the Glossary.) Would you call
Vonneguts characterization of her "realistic"? If not, why doesn't it need to be?
3. From what point of view is the story told? Why is it more effective than if Harrison Bergeron
had told his own story in the first person?
4. Two sympathetic critics of Vonnegut's work, Karen and Charles Wood, have said of his
stories: "Vonnegut proves repeatedly . . . that men and women remain fundamentally the
same, no matter what technology surrounds them." Try applying this comment to "Harrison Bergeron." Do you agree?
70
75
80
85
90
5. Stanislaw Lem, Polish author of Solaris and other novels, once made this thoughtful criticism of many of his contemporaries among science fiction writers:
T h e revolt against the machine and against civilization, the praise of the "aesthetic"
nature of catastrophe, the dead-end course of human civilizationthese are their
foremost problems, the intellectual content of their works. Such S F is as it were a
priori vitiated by pessimism, in the sense that anything that may happen will be for
the worse. ( " T h e Time-Travel Story and Related Matters of SF Structuring," Science
Fiction Studies 1 [19741, 1 4 3 - 5 4 . )
How might Lem's objection be raised against "Harrison Bergeron"? In your opinion, does
it negate the value of Vonnegut's story?
WRITING
WRITERS
ON
EFFECTIVELY
WRITING
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
1971, 1973
The Themes of Science Fiction
INTERVIEWER: Y O U talked a lot about the dif-
ficulties you had when you first began. For
instance, I think you gave one of the reasons
for using the science fiction form as the fact
that you were a professional writer and had
to do something which was popular.
VONNEGUT: In the beginning I was writing
about what concerned me, and what was all
around me was machinery. I myself had had
some training in engineering and chemistry
rather than in the arts and I was working
for General Electric in a big factory city,
Schenectady. So the first book I wrote was
about Schenectady, which is full of machinery and engineers. And I was classified
as a science fiction writer. Well, in the
KURT V O N N E G U T J R .
past, science fiction writers have been beneath the attention of any serious critic. That is, far above you are the people dealing with the really important, beautiful issues and using great skills and so forth. It
used to be that if you were a science fiction writer you really didn't belong in the
arts at all, and other artists wouldn't talk to you. You just had this scruffy little gang
of your own.
00
INTERVIEWER: What attracted you to using the form [of science fiction] yourself?
VONNEGUT: . . . 1 saw a milling m a c h i n e for c u t t i n g t h e rotors o n j e t engines, gas turbines. T h i s was a very e x p e n s i v e t h i n g for a m a c h i n i s t t o do, to cut w h a t is essentially
one of those Brancusi forms. So they had a computer-operated milling machine built
to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 and the guys who
were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run by little boxes
and punched cards. Player Piano was my response to the implications of having
everything run by little boxes. T h e idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. T o have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing
to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.
INTERVIEWER: S O science fiction seemed like the best way to write about your
thoughts on the subject.
VONNEGUT: There was no avoiding it, since General Electric Company was science
fiction.
From interviews with Laurie Clancy and David Standish
WRITING
ABOUT
THEME
Stating the Theme
A clear, precise statement about a story's theme can serve as a promising thesis sentence. After you read a short story, you will probably have some vague sense of its
themethe central unifying idea, or the point of the story. How do you hone that
vague sense of theme into a sharp and intriguing thesis?
Start by making a list of all the story's possible themes. If you are discussing
Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," your list might say:
Man versus nature
Life-and-death struggle
Camaraderie of people in crisis
Blindness of fate
Courage in face of danger
Bravery not enough
From there, determine which points are most important, and formulate a single sentence in which you touch on each one. For Crane, you might have circled "man versus nature," "blindness of fate," and "bravery not enough," and your summary might
be: "The central theme of T h e Open Boat' is nature's indifference to the fate of even
the most courageous individuals."
Remember, your goal is to transcend a mere one-sentence plot summary. Try to
capture the story's essence, its deeper meaning.
To flesh out your statement into an essay, relate details of the story to the theme
you have spelled out. Like all thesis sentences, yours must stand up in the face of the evidence. If you encounter elements of the story that seem to contradict your thesis, you
may need to do some fine-tuning. Your thesis, or statement of theme, should apply to
everything in the story. If it doesn't, reevaluate. You may have missed some crucial detail, or you may be overlooking the story's central preoccupation, focusing instead on a
peripheral one. If this is the case, you will need to start from scratch. This happens to the
best of writers; recognizing your own mistakes is an important step in critical thinking.
CHECKLIST
Determining a Story's Theme
S List as many possible themes as you can.
S Circle the two or three most important points and try to combine them into
a sentence. This sentence is your preliminary thesis.
S Relate particular details of the story to the theme you have spelled out.
Consider plot details, dialogue, setting, point of view, titleany elements
that seem especially pertinent.
S Check whether all the elements of the story fit your thesis. If not, reevaluate
your thesis.
S Have you missed an important aspect of the story? Or, have you chosen to
focus on a secondary idea, overlooking the central one?
S If necessary, rework your thesis until it applies to every element in the story.
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
THEME
Choose a story that catches your attention, and go through the steps outlined above to develop
a strong thesis sentence about die story's theme. T h e n flesh out your argument into an essay,
supporting your thesis with evidence from the text, including quotations. Some good storychoices might be "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," "The Chrysanthemums," " A Good Man Is
Hard to Find," and "The Lottery."
MORE
TOPICS
FOR
WRITING
1. Define the central theme of "Harrison Bergeron." Is Vonnegut's early 1960s vision of the
future still relevant today? Why or why not?
2. Think of a social trend that worries you. With "Harrison Bergeron" in mind, write a brief
science fiction parable to warn against this danger to society. Try to pick a less familiar or
surprising trend instead of one of the hot-button social issues that immediately pop into
your mind.
3. "To Build a Fire" and "The Open Boat" both address the theme of a human being pitted
against indifferent nature. Contrast the stories' approaches to this theme. How do the
tones of the stories differ? How do these tonal differences help to communicate on theme?
4- What does "How I Met My Husband" have to say about first love? Back up your response
with specific evidence from the story.
5. Write a brief personal narrative about your first crush. Use dialogue and sensory detail to
capture a sense of time, place, and the personalities involved. Your narrative should have
a thematic focusfor example, the sting of first love, or its many delights.
6. A recent Time magazine article describes a young California woman who distanced herself from her Chinese heritage until reading The Joy Luck Club "turned her into a 'bornagain Asian.' It gave her new insights into why her mom was so hard on her and why the
ways she showed lovesay, through foodwere different from those of the families [she]
saw on T V , who seemed to say 'I love you' all day long." Have you ever had a similar experience, in which something you read gave you a better understanding of a loved one, or
even yourself?
7
Symbol
All you have to do is close your eyes
and wait for the symbols.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsbyf a huge pair of bespectacled eyes stares
across a wilderness of ash heaps, from a billboard advertising the services of an
oculist. Repeatedly entering into the story, the advertisement comes to mean more
than simply the availability of eye examinations. Fitzgerald has a character liken it to
the eyes of God; he hints that some sad, compassionate spirit is brooding as it
watches the passing procession of humanity. Such an object is a symbol: in literature,
a thing that suggests more than its literal meaning. Symbols generally do not "stand
for" any one meaning, nor for anything absolutely definite; they point, they hint, or,
as Henry James put it, they cast long shadows. T o take a large example: in Herman
Melville's Moby-Dick, the great white whale of the book's title apparently means
more than the literal dictionary-definition meaning of an aquatic mammal. He also
suggests more than the devil, to whom some of the characters liken him. The great
whale, as the story unfolds, comes to imply an amplitude of meanings, among them
the forces of nature and the whole created universe.
This indefinite multiplicity of meanings is characteristic of a symbolic story and
distinguishes it from an allegory, a story in which persons, places, and things form a
system of clearly labeled equivalents. In a simple allegory, characters and other elements often stand for other definite meanings, wrhich are often abstractions. You will
meet such a character in another story in this book, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young
Goodman Brown." This tale's main female character, Faith, represents the religious
virtue suggested by her name. Supreme allegories are found in some biblical parables
("The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field . . . ,"
Matthew 13:24-30). A classic allegory is the medieval play Everyman, whose hero
represents us all, and who, deserted by false friends called Kindred and Goods, faces
the judgment of God accompanied only by a faithful friend called Good Deeds. In
John Bunyan's seventeenth-century allegory Pilgrim's Progress, the protagonist,
Christian, struggles along the difficult road toward salvation, meeting along the way
persons such as Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who directs him into a more comfortable
path (a wrong turn), and the residents of a town called Fair Speech, among them a
hypocrite named Mr. Facing-both-ways. Not all allegories are simple: Dante's Divine
Comedy, written in the Middle Ages, continues to reveal new meanings to careful
readers. Allegory was much beloved in die Middle Ages, but in contemporary fiction
it is rare. One modern instance is George Orwell's long fable Animal Farm, in which (among its double meanings) barnyard animals stand for human victims and totalitarian oppressors.
Symbols in fiction are not generally abstract terms such as love or truth, but
are likely to be perceptible objects (or worded descriptions that cause us to imagine them). In William Faulkner's " A Rose for Emily" (Chapter 2), Miss Emily's invisible watch ticking at the end of a golden chain not only indicates the passage of
time, but also suggests that time passes without even being noticed by the watch's
owner, and the golden chain carries suggestions of wealth and authority. Objects
(and creatures) that seem insignificant in themselves can take on a symbolic importance in the larger context: in Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies"
(Chapter 12) the piece of gum that Mrs. Das gives Mr. Kapasi"As soon as
Mr. Kapasi put the gum in his mouth a thick sweet liquid burst onto his tongue"
underscores her effect on his slumbering senses, as does his later comment on the
wild monkeys: "They are more hungry than dangerous. . . . Do not provoke them
with food, and they will not bother you." Often the symbols we meet in fiction are
inanimate objects, but other things also may function symbolically. In James
Joyce's "Araby" (Chapter 12), the very name of the bazaar, Arabythe poetic
name for Arabiasuggests magic, romance, and The Arabian Nights; its syllables
(the narrator tells us) "cast an Eastern enchantment over me." Even a locale, or a
feature of physical topography, can provide rich suggestions. Recall Ernest
Hemingway's " A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (Chapter 5), in which the cafe is
not merely a cafe, but an island of refuge from night, chaos, loneliness, old age,
and impending death.
In some novels and stories, symbolic characters make brief cameo appearances.
Such characters often are not well-rounded and fully known, but are seen fleetingly
and remain slightly mysterious. In Heart of Darkness, a short novel by Joseph Conrad,
a steamship company that hires men to work in the Congo maintains in its waiting
room two women who knit black woollike the classical Fates. Usually such a symbolic character is more a portrait than a personor somewhat portraitlike, as
Faulkner's Miss Emily, who twice appears at a window of her house "like the carven
torso of an idol in a niche." Though Faulkner invests Miss Emily with life and vigor,
he also clothes her in symbolic hints: she seems almost to personify the vanishing
aristocracy of the antebellum South, still maintaining a black servant and being ruthlessly betrayed by a moneymaking Yankee. Sometimes a part of a character's body or
an attribute may convey symbolic meaning: a baleful eye, as in Edgar Allan Poe's
"The Tell-Tale Heart" (Chapter 11).
Much as a symbolic whale holds more meaning than an ordinary whale, a
symbolic act is a gesture with larger significance than usual. For the boy's father in
Faulkner's "Barn Burning" (Chapter 5), the act of destroying a barn is no mere act of
spite, but an expression of his profound hatred for anything not belonging to him.
Faulkner adds that burning a barn reflects the father's memories of the "waste and extravagance of war," and further adds that "the element of fire spoke to some deep
mainspring" in his being. A symbolic act, however, doesn't have to be a gesture as
large as starting a conflagration. Before setting out in pursuit of the great white
whale, Melville's Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick deliberately snaps his tobacco pipe
and throws it away, as if to suggest (among other things) that he will let no pleasure
or pastime distract him from his vengeance.
Why do writers have to symbolizewhy don't, they tell us outright? One advantage of a symbol is that it is so compact, and yet so fully laden. Both starkly concrete
and slightly mysterious, like Miss Emily's invisible ticking watch, it may impress us
with all the force of something beheld in a dream or in a nightmare. The watch suggests, among other things, the slow and invisible passage of time. What this symbol
says, it says more fully and more memorably than could be said, perhaps, in a long
essay on the subject.
T o some extent (it may be claimed), all stories are symbolic. Merely by holding up for our inspection these characters and their actions, the writer lends them
.some special significance. But this is to think of symbol in an extremely broad and
inclusive way. For the usual purposes of reading a story and understanding it, there
is probably little point in looking for symbolism in every word, in every stick or
stone, in every striking of a match, in every minor character. Still, to be on the
alert for symbols when reading fiction is perhaps wiser than to ignore them. Not to
admit that symbolic meanings may be present, or to refuse to think about them,
would be another way to misread a storyor to read no further than its outer
edges.
How, then, do you recognize a symbol in fiction when you meet it? Fortunately,
the storyteller often gives the symbol particular emphasis. It may be mentioned repeatedly throughout the story; it may even supply the story with a title ("Barn Burning," "A
Clean, Well-Lighted Place," "Araby"). At times, a crucial symbol will open a story or
end it. Unless an object, act, or character is given some such special emphasis and importance, we may generally feel safe in taking it at face value. Probably it isn't a symbol
if it points clearly and unmistakably toward some one meaning, like a whistle in a factory, whose blast at noon means lunch. But an object, an act, or a character is surely
symbolic (and almost as surely displays high literary art) if, when we finish the story, we
realize that it was that itemthose gigantic eyes; that clean, well-lighted cafe; that
burning of a bamwhich led us to the author's theme, the essential meaning.
John Steinbeck
The Chrysanthemums
John Steinbeck (1902-I968)
was born in Salinas, California, in the fertile valley he remembers
in "The ChrysanthemumsOff
and on, he attended Stanford University, then sojourned in
New York as a reporter and a bricklayer. After
years of struggle to earn his living by fiction, Steinbeck reached a large audience with Tortilla Flat
(1935), a loosely woven novel portraying Mexican Americans in Monterey with fondness and
sympathy. Great acclaim greeted The Grapes of
Wrath (1939), the story of a family of Oklahoma
farmers who, ruined by dust storms in the 1930s,
join a mass migration to California. Like Ernest
Hemingway and Stephen Crane, Steinbeck piided
himself on his journalism: in World War II, he
JOHN STEINBECK
filed dispatches from battlefronts in Italy and Africa, and in 1966 he wrote a column from South
Vietnam. Known widely behind the Iron Curtain, Steinbeck accepted an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, and reported on his trip in A Russian Journal (1948). In 1962 he became the
seventh American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but critics have never placed Steinbeck
on the same high shelf with Faulkner and Hemingway. He wrote much, not all good, and yet his
best work adds to an impressive total. Besides The Grapes of Wrath, it includes In Dubious
Battle (1936), a novel of an apple-pickers' strike; Of Mice and Men (1937), a powerful short
novel (also a play) of comradeship between a hobo and a retarded man; The Log from the Sea
of Cortez (1951), a nonaction account of a unarine biological expedition; and the short stories in
The Long Valley (1938). Throughout the fiction he wrote in his prime, Steinbeck maintains an
appealing sympathy for the pom and downtrodden, the lonely and dispossessed.
The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley 0 from the sky
and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and
made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit
deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the
foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed
in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The
thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.
It was a time of quiet and of waiting. T h e air was cold and tender. A light wind
blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain
before long; but fog and rain do not go together.
Across the river, on Henry Allen's foothill ranch there was little work to be
done, for the hay was cut and stored and the orchards were plowed up to receive the
rain deeply when it should come. The cattle on the higher slopes were becoming
shaggy and rough-coated.
Elisa Allen, working in her flower garden, looked down across the yard and saw
Henry, her husband, talking to two men in business suits. The three of them stood by
the tractor shed, each man with one foot on the side of the little Fordson. They
smoked cigarettes and studied the machine as they talked.
Elisa watched them for a moment and then went back to her work. She was
thirty-five. Her face was lean and strong and her eyes were as clear as water. Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled low
down over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the snips, the trowel and
scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She wore heavy leather gloves to
protect her hands while she worked.
She was cutting down the old year's chrysanthemum stalks with a pair of short
and powerful scissors. She looked down toward the men by the tractor shed now and
then. Her face was eager and mature and handsome; even her work with the scissors
was over-eager, over-powerful. The chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy
for her energy.
She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of her glove, and left a
smudge of earth on her cheek in doing it. Behind her stood the neat white farm
house with red geraniums close-banked around it as high as the windows. It was a
hard-swept looking little house with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat
on the front steps.
Salinas Valley: south of San Francisco in the Coast Ranges region of California.
Elisa cast another glance toward the tractor shed. The strangers were getting
into their Ford coupe. She took off a glove and put her strong fingers down into the
forest of new green chrysanthemum sprouts that were growing around the old roots.
She spread the leaves and looked down among the close-growing stems. No aphids
were there, no sowbugs or snails or cutworms. Her terrier fingers destroyed such pests
before they could get started.
Elisa started at the sound of her husband's voice. He had come near quietly, and
he leaned over the wire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs
and chickens.
"At it again," he said. "You've got a strong new crop coming."
Elisa straightened her back and pulled on the gardening glove again. "Yes.
They'll be strong this coming year." In her tone and 011 her face there was a little
smugness.
"You've got a gift with things," Henry observed. "Some of those yellow chrysanthemums you had this year were ten inches across. I wish you'd work out in the
orchard and raise some apples that big."
Her eyes sharpened. "Maybe I could do it, too. I've a gift with things, all right.
My mother had it. She could stick anything in the ground and make it grow. She said
it was having planters' hands that knew how to do it."
"Well, it sure works with flowers," he said.
"Henry, who were those men you were talking to?"
"Why, sure, that's what I came to tell you. They were from the Western Meat
Company. I sold those thirty head of three-year-old steers. Got nearly my own price,
too."
"Good," she said. "Good for you."
"And I thought," he continued, "I thought how it's Saturday afternoon, and we
might go into Salinas for dinner at a restaurant, and then to a picture showto celebrate, you see."
"Good," she repeated. "Oh, yes. That will be good."
Henry put on his joking tone. "There's fights tonight. How'd you like to go to
the fights?"
"Oh, no," she said breathlessly. "No, I wouldn't like fights."
"Just fooling, Elisa. We'll go to a movie. Let's see. It's two now. I'm going to take
Scotty and bring down those steers from the hill. It'll take us maybe two hours. We'll
go in town about five and have dinner at the Cominos Hotel. Like that?"
"Of course I'll like it. It's good to eat away from home."
"All right, then. I'll go get up a couple of horses."
She said, "I'll have plenty of time to transplant some of these sets, I guess."
She heard her husband calling Scotty down by the barn. And a little later she
saw the two men ride up the pale yellow hillside in search of the steers.
There was a little square sandy bed kept for rooting the chrysanthemums. With
her trowel she turned the soil over and over, and smoothed it and patted it firm.
Then she dug ten parallel trenches to receive the sets. Back at the chrysanthemum
bed she pulled out the little crisp shoots, trimmed off the leaves of each one with her
scissors and laid it on a small orderly pile.
A squeak of wheels and plod of hoofs came from the road. Elisa looked up. The
country road ran along the dense bank of willows and cottonwoods that bordered die
river, and up this road came a curious vehicle, curiously drawn. It was an old springwagon, with a round canvas top on it like the cover of a prairie schooner. It was
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drawn by an old bay horse and a little grey-and-white burro. A big stubble-bearded
man sat between the cover flaps and drove the crawling team. Underneath the wagon, between the hind wheels, a lean and rangy mongrel dog walked sedately. Words were
painted on the canvas, in clumsy, crooked letters. "Pots, pans, knives, sisors, lawn
mores, Fixed." Two rows of articles, and the triumphantly definitive "Fixed" below.
The black paint had run down in little sharp points beneath each letter.
Elisa, squatting on the ground, watched to see the crazy, loose-jointed wagon
pass by. But it didn't pass. It turned into the farm road in front of her house, crooked
old wheels skirling and squeaking. T h e rangy dog darted from between the wheels
and ran ahead. Instantly the two ranch shepherds flew out at him. Then all three
stopped, and with stiff and quivering tails, with taut straight legs, with ambassadorial
dignity, they slowly circled, sniffing daintily. The caravan pulled up to Elisa's wire
fence and stopped. Now the newcomer dog, feeling out-numbered, lowered his tail
and retired under the wagon with raised hackles and bared teeth.
The man on the wagon seat called out, "That's a bad dog in a fight when he gets
started."
Elisa laughed. "I see he is. How soon does he generally get started?"
The man caught up her laughter and echoed it heartily. "Sometimes not for
weeks and weeks," he said. Fie climbed stiffly down, over the wheel. The horse and
the donkey drooped like unwatered flowers.
Elisa saw that he was a very big man. Although his hair and beard were greying,
he did not look old. His worn black suit was wrinkled and spotted with grease. The
laughter had disappeared from his face and eyes the moment his laughing voice
ceased. Flis eyes were dark, and they were full of the brooding that gets in the eyes of
teamsters and of sailors. T h e calloused hands he rested on the wire fence were
cracked, and every crack was a black line. He took off his battered hat.
"I'm off my general road, ma'am," he said. "Does this dirt road cut over across the
river to the Los Angeles highway?"
Elisa stood up and shoved the thick scissors in her apron pocket. "Well, yes, it
does, but it winds around and then fords the river. I don't think your team could pull
through the sand."
He replied with some asperity. "It might surprise you what them beasts can pull
through."
"When they get started?" she asked.
He smiled for a second. "Yes. When they get started."
"Well," said Elisa, "I think you'll save time if you go back to the Salinas road and
pick up the highway there."
He drew a big finger down the chicken wire and made it sing. "I ain't in any
hurry, ma'am. I go from Seattle to San Diego and back every year. Takes all my time.
About six months each way. I aim to follow nice weather."
Elisa took off her gloves and stuffed them in the apron pocket with the scissors.
She touched the under edge of her man's hat, searching for fugitive hairs. "That
sounds like a nice kind of a way to live," she said.
He leaned confidentially over the fence. "Maybe you noticed the writing on my
wagon. I mend pots and sharpen knives and scissors. You got any of them things to do?"
"Oh, no," she said quickly. "Nothing like that." Her eyes hardened with resistance.
"Scissors is the worst thing," he explained. "Most people just ruin scissors trying
to sharpen 'em, but I know how. I got a special tool. It's a little bobbit kind of thing,
and patented. But it sure does the trick."
"No. My scissors are all sharp."
"All right, then. Take a pot," he continued earnestly, "a bent pot, or a pot with
a hole. I can make it like new so you don't have to buy no new ones. That's a saving
for you."
"No," she said shortly. "I tell you I have nothing like that for you to do."
His face fell to an exaggerated sadness. His voice took on a whining undertone.
"I ain't had a thing to do today. Maybe I won't have no supper tonight. You see I'm
off my regular road. I know folks on the highway clear from Seattle to San Diego.
They save their things for me to sharpen up because they know I do it so good and
save them money."
"I'm sorry," Elisa said irritably. "I haven't anything for you to do."
His eyes left her face and fell to searching the ground. They roamed about until
they came to the chrysanthemum bed where she had been working. "What's them
plants, ma'am?"
The irritation and resistance melted from Elisa's face. "Oh, those are chrysanthemums, giant whites and yellows. I raise them every year, bigger than anybody
around here."
"Kind of a long-stemmed flower? Looks like a quick puff of colored smoke?" he
asked.
"That's it. What a nice way to describe them."
"They smell kind of nasty till you get used to them," he said.
"It's a good bitter smell," she retorted, "not nasty at all."
He changed his tone quickly. "I like the smell myself."
"I had ten-inch blooms this year," she said.
The man leaned farther over the fence. "Look. I know a lady down the road a
piece, has got the nicest garden you ever seen. Got nearly every kind of flower but no
chrysanthemums. Last time I was mending a copper-bottom washtub for her (that's a
hard job but I do it good), she said to me, 'If you ever run acrost some nice chrysanthemums I wish you'd try to get me a few seeds.' That's w7hat she told me."
Elisa's eyes grew alert and eager. "She couldn't have known much about chrysanthemums. You can raise them from seed, but it's much easier to root the little sprouts
you see there."
"Oh," he said. "I s'pose I can't take none to her, then."
"Why yes you can," Elisa cried. "I can put some in damp sand, and you can carry
them right along with you. They'll take root in the pot if you keep them damp. And
then she can transplant them."
"She'd sure like to have some, ma'am. You say they're nice ones?"
"Beautiful," she said. "Oh, beautiful." Her eyes shone. She tore off the battered
hat and shook out her dark pretty hair. "I'll put them in a flower pot, and you can
take them right with you. Come into the yard."
While the man came through the picket gate Elisa ran excitedly along the geranium-bordered path to the back of the house. And she returned carrying a big red
flower pot. The gloves were forgotten now. She kneeled on the ground by the starting
bed and dug up the sandy soil with her fingers and scooped it into the bright new
flower pot. Then she picked up the little pile of shoots she had prepared. With her
strong fingers she pressed them in the sand and tamped around them with her knuckles. The man stood over her. "I'll tell you what to do," she said. "You remember so
you can tell the lady."
"Yes, I'll try to remember."
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"Well, look. These will take root in about a month. Then she must set them out,
about a foot apart in good rich earth like this, see?" She lifted a handful of dark soil
for him to look at. "They'll grow fast and tall Now remember this: In July tell her to
cut them down, about eight inches from the ground."
"Before they bloom?" he asked.
"Yes, before they bloom." Her face was tight with eagerness. "They'll grow right
up again. About the last of September the buds will start."
She stopped and seemed perplexed. "It's the budding that takes the most care,"
she said hesitantly. "I don't know how to tell you." She looked deep into his eyes,
searchingly. Her mouth opened a little, and she seemed to be listening. "I'll try to tell
you," she said. "Did you ever hear of planting hands?"
"Can't say I have, ma'am."
"Well, 1 can only tell you what it feels like. It's when you're picking off the buds
you don't want. Everything goes right down into your fingertips. You watch your fingers work. They do it themselves. You can feel how it is. They pick and pick the
buds. They never make a mistake. They're with the plant. Do you see? Your fingers
and the plant. You can feel that, right up your arm. They know. They never make a
mistake. You can feel it. When you're like that you can't do anything wrong. Do you
see that? Can you understand that?"
She was kneeling on the ground looking up at him. Her breast swelled passionately.
The man's eyes narrowed. He looked away self-consciously. "Maybe I know," he
said. "Sometimes in the night in the wagon there"
Elisa's voice grew husky. She broke in on him, "I've never lived as you do, but I
know what you mean. When the night is darkwhy, the stars are sharp-pointed, and
there's quiet. Why, you rise up and up! Every pointed star gets driven into your body.
It's like that. Hot and sharp andlovely."
Kneeling there, her hand went out toward his legs in the greasy black trousers.
Her hesitant fingers almost touched the cloth. Then her hand dropped to the ground.
She crouched low like a fawning dog.
He said, "It's nice, just like you say. Only when you don't have no dinner, it ain't."
She stood up then, very straight, and her face was ashamed. She held the flower
pot out to him and placed it gently in his arms. "Here. Put it in your wagon, on the
seat, where you can watch it. Maybe I can find something for you to do."
At the back of the house she dug in the can pile and found two old and battered
aluminum saucepans. She carried them back and gave them to him.. "Here, maybe
you can fix these."
His manner changed. He became professional. "Good as new I can fix them." At
the back of his wagon he set a little anvil, and out of an oily tool box dug a small machine hammer. Elisa came through the gate to watch him while he pounded out the
dents in the kettles. His mouth grew sure and knowing. At a difficult part of the work
he sucked his under-lip.
"You sleep right in the wagon?" Elisa asked.
"Right in the wagon, ma'am. Rain or shine I'm dry as a cow in there."
"It must be nice," she said. "It must be very nice. I wish women could do such,
things."
"It ain't the right kind of a life for a woman."
Her upper lip raised a little, showing her teeth. "How do you know? How can
you tell?" she said.
"I don't know, ma'am," he protested. "Of course I don't know. Now here's your 85
kettles, done. You don't have to buy no new ones."
"How much?"
"Oh, fifty cents'll do. I keep my prices down and my work good. That's why I
have all them satisfied customers up and down the highway."
Elisa brought him a fifty-cent piece from the house and dropped it in his hand.
"You might be surprised to have a rival some time. I can sharpen scissors, too. And I
can beat the dents out of little pots. I could show you what a woman might do."
He put his hammer back in the oily box and shoved the little anvil out of sight.
"It would be a lonely life for a woman, ma'am, and a scarey life, too, with animals
creeping under the wagon all night." He climbed over the singletree, steadying himself with a hand on the burro's white rump. He settled himself in the seat, picked up
the lines. "Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said. "I'll do like you told me; I'll go back
and catch the Salinas road."
"Mind," she called, "if you're long in getting there, keep the sand damp."
90
"Sand, ma'am?. . . Sand? Oh, sure. You mean around the chrysanthemums. Sure
I will." He clucked his tongue. The beasts leaned luxuriously into their collars. The
mongrel dog took his place between the back wheels. T h e wagon turned and crawled
out the entrance road and back the way it had come, along the river.
Elisa stood in front of her wire fence watching the slow progress of the caravan. Her shoulders were straight, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed, so
that the scene came vaguely into them. Her lips moved silently, forming the words
"Good-byegood-bye." Then she whispered, "That's a bright direction. There's a
glowing there." The sound of her whisper startled her. She shook herself free and
looked about to see whether anyone had been listening. Only the dogs had heard.
They lifted their heads toward her from their sleeping in the dust, and then stretched
out their chins and settled asleep again. Elisa turned and ran hurriedly into the house.
In the kitchen she reached behind the stove and felt the water tank. It was full
of hot water from the noonday cooking. In the bathroom she tore off her soiled
clothes and flung them into the corner. And then she scrubbed herself with a little
block of pumice, legs and thighs, loins and chest and arms, until her skin was
scratched and red. When she had dried herself she stood in front of a mirror in her
bedroom and looked at her body. She tightened her stomach and threw out her
chest. She turned and looked over her shoulder at her back.
After a while she began to dress, slowly. She put on her newest underclothing
and her nicest stockings and the dress which was the symbol of her prettiness. She
worked carefully 011 her hair, penciled her eyebrows and rouged her lips.
Before she was finished she heard the little thunder of hoofs and the shouts of 95
Henry and his helper as they drove the red steers into the corral. She heard the gate
bang shut and set herself for Henry's arrival.
His step sounded on the porch. He entered the house calling, "Elisa, where are you?"
"In my room, dressing. I'm not ready. There's hot water for your bath. Hurry up.
It's getting late."
When she heard him splashing in the tub, Elisa laid his dark suit on the bed, and
shirt and socks and tie beside it. She stood his polished shoes on the floor beside the
bed. Then she went to the porch and sat primly and stiffly down. She looked toward
the river road where the willow-line was still yellow with frosted leaves so that under
the high grey fog they seemed a thin band of sunshine. This was the only color in the
grey afternoon. She sat unmoving for a long time. Her eyes blinked rarely.
Henry came banging out of the door, shoving his tie inside his vest as he came.
Elisa stiffened and her face grew tight. Henry stopped short and looked at her. "Why-why, Elisa. You look so nice!"
"Nice? You think I look nice? What do you mean by 'nice'?"
Henry blundered on. "I don't know. I mean you look different, strong and
happy."
"I am strong? Yes, strong. What do you mean 'strong'?"
He looked bewildered. "You're playing some kind of a game," he said helplessly.
"It's a kind of a play. You look strong enough to break a calf over your knee, happy
enough to eat it like a watermelon."
For a second she lost her rigidity. "Henry! Don't talk like that. You didn't know
what you said." She grew complete again. "I'm strong," she boasted. "I never knew
before how strong."
Henry looked down toward the tractor shed, and when he brought his eyes back
to her, they were his own again. "I'll get out the car. You can put on your coat while
I'm starting."
Elisa went into the house. She heard him drive to the gate and idle down his motor, and then she took a long time to put on her hat. She pulled it here and pressed it
there. When Henry turned the motor off she slipped into her coat and went out.
The little roadster bounced along on the dirt road by the river, raising the birds
and driving the rabbits into the brush. Two cranes flapped heavily over the willowline and dropped into the river-bed.
Far ahead on the road Elisa saw a dark speck. She knew.
She tried not to look as they passed it, but her eyes would not obey. She whispered to herself sadly, "He might have thrown them off the road. That wouldn't have
been much trouble, not very much. But he kept the pot," she explained. "He had to
keep the pot. That's why he couldn't get them off the road."
The roadster turned a bend and she saw the caravan ahead. She swung full
around toward her husband so she could not see the little covered wagon and the
mismatched team as the car passed them.
In a moment it was over. The thing was clone. She did not look back.
She said loudly, to be heard above the motor, "It will be good, tonight, a good
dinner."
"Now you're changed again," Henry complained. He took one hand from the
wheel and patted her knee. "I ought to take you in to dinner oftener. It would be
good for both of us. We get so heavy out on the ranch."
"Henry," she asked, "could we have wine at dinner?"
"Sure we could. Say! That will be fine."
She was silent for a while; then she said, "Henry, at those prize fights, do the
men hurt each other very much?"
"Sometimes a little, not often. Why?"
"Well, I've read how they break noses, and blood runs down their chests. I've
read how the fighting gloves get heavy and soggy with blood."
He looked around at her. "What's the matter, Elisa? I didn't know you read
things like that." He brought the car to a stop, then turned to the right over the Salinas River bridge.
"Do any women ever go to the fights?" she asked.
"Oh, sure, some. What's the matter, Elisa? Do you want to go? I don't think
you'd like it, but I'll take you if you really want to go."
S h e relaxed limply in the seat. " O h , no. N o . I don't want to go. I'm sure I d o n ' t . "
Her face was turned away from him. "It will b e enough if we c a n h a v e wine. It will be
plenty." S h e turned up her coat collar so he could n o t see that she was crying
weaklylike an old woman.
QUESTIONS
1. When we first meet Elisa Allen in her garden, with what details does Steinbeck delineate
her character for us?
2. Elisa works inside a c\vire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and
chickens" (paragraph 9). What does this wire fence suggest?
3. How would you describe Henry and Elisa's marriage? Cite details from the story.
4. For what motive does the traveling salesman, take an interest in Elisa's chrysanthemums?
What immediate effect does his interest have on Elisa?
5. For what possible purpose does Steinbeck give us such a detailed account of Elisa's preparations for her evening out? Notice her tearing off her soiled clothes, her scrubbing her
body with pumice (paragraphs 9 3 - 9 4 ) .
6. Of what significance to Elisa is the sight of the contents of the flower pot discarded in the
road? Notice that, as her husband's car overtakes the covered wagon, Elisa averts her eyes;
and then Steinbeck adds, "In a moment it was over. The thing was done. She did not
look back" (paragraph 111). Explain this passage.
7. How do you interpret Elisa's asking for wine with dinner? How do you account for her
new interest in prizefights?
8. In a sentence, try to state this short story's theme.
9. Why are Elisa Allen's chrysanthemums so important to this story? Sum up what you understand them to mean.
Shirley Jackson
The Lottery
1948
Shirley Jackson (1919-1965),
a native of San Francisco, moved in her teens to Rochester,
New York. She started college at the University of Rochester, but had to drop out, stricken
by severe depression, a problem that was to recur at intervals throughout her life. Later she
graduated from Syracuse University. With her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, a literary
critic, she settled in Bennington, Vermont, in a spraivling house built in the nineteenth century. There Jackson conscientiously set herself to produce a fixed number of words each day.
She wrote novelsThe
Road Through the Waif (1948)and
three psychological
thrillersHangsaman
(1951),
T h e Haunting of Hill House (1959),
and W e H a v e A l -
ways Lived in the Castle (1962). She wrote light, witty articles for Good Housekeeping
and other popular magazines about the horrors of housekeeping and rearing four children,
collected
in Life A m o n g the Savages (1953)
and Raising D e m o n s (1957);
but
she
claimed to have written these only for money. When "The Lottery" appeared in the New
Yorker in 1948, that issue of the magazine quickly sold out. Her purpose in writing the
story, Jackson declared, had been "to shock the story's readers with a graphic demonstration
of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."
T h e morning o f J u n e 2 7 t h was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a fullsummer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. T h e
people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the
bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery
took two days and had to be started on June 2 6 t h , but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so
it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the
villagers to get h o m e for n o o n dinner.
T h e children assembled first, of course. S c h o o l was recently over for the summer,
and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together
quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of
the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already
stuffed his pockets full o f stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie
D e l a c r o i x t h e villagers pronounced this name "Dellacroy"eventually made a
great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the
other boys. T h e girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys, and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands
of their older brothers or sisters.
S o o n the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. T h e y stood together, away from the pile of stones in
the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. T h e
women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk.
T h e y greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. S o o n the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children,
and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of
stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother.
T h e lottery was conductedas were the square dances, the teenage club, the
Halloween programby Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic
activities. He was a roundfaced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people
were sorry for him, because h e had no children and his wife was a scold. W h e n he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers and he waved and called, "Little late today, folks." T h e postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three-legged stool, and the stool was put
in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black b o x down on it. T h e villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool, and
when Mr. Summers said, " S o m e of you fellows want to give me a hand?" there was a
hesitation before two men, Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, came forward to
hold the b o x steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.
T h e original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black
box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the
oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about
making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented
by the black box. T h e r e was a story that the present box had been made with some
pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first
people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers
began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade
off without any thing's being done. T h e black box grew shabbier e a c h year; by now it
was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.
Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of
the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having
slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations.
Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was
tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on
growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black
box. T h e night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of
paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers's coal
company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square n e x t
morning. T h e rest of the year, the box was put away, sometimes one place, sometimes
another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the
post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.
T h e r e was a great deal of fussing to be clone before Mr. Summers declared the
lottery open. T h e r e were lists to make u p o f heads of families, heads of households
in each family, members of each household in each family. T h e r e was the proper
swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as t h e official of the lottery; at one
time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by
the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless c h a n t that had been rattled off duly
each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so
when h e said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the
people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse.
T h e r e had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official o f t h e lottery had had to use
in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had
changed with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to
each person approaching. Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white
shirt and blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly on the black box, he seemed
very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers,
Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown
over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd. " C l e a n forgot what
day it was," she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and they both laughed
softly. " T h o u g h t my old man was out back stacking wood," Mrs. Hutchinson went on,
"and then I looked out the window and the kids were gone, and then I remembered it
was the twenty-seventh and came a-running." S h e dried her hands on her apron, and
Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're in time, though. They're still talking away up there."
Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her husband and children standing near the front. S h e tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as
a farewell and began to make her way through the crowd. T h e people separated goodhumoredly to let her through; two or three people said, in voices just loud enough to
be heard across the crowd, "Here comes your Missus, H u t c h i n s o n , " and "Bill, she
made it after all." Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had
been waiting, said cheerfully, " T h o u g h t we were going to have to get on without you,
Tessie." Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning, " W o u l d n ' t have me leave m'dishes in the
sink, now would you, J o e ? " and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people
stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival.
" W e l l , now," Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get started, get this over
with, so's we can go back to work. Anybody ain't here?"
"Dunbar," several people said. "Dunbar, Dunbar."
10
Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar," he said. " T h a t ' s right. He's
broke his leg, hasn't he? W h o ' s drawing for him?"
"Me, 1 guess," a woman said, and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. " W i f e
draws for her husband," Mr. Summers said. " D o n ' t you have a grown boy to do it for
you, Janey?" Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the
answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with an expression of polite interest while Mrs.
Dunbar answered.
"Horace's not but sixteen yet," Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. "Guess I gotta till in
for the old man this year."
" R i g h t , " Mr. Summers said. H e made a note on the list h e was holding. T h e n he
asked, " W a t s o n boy drawing this year?"
A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. " H e r e , " he said. "I'm drawing for m'mother and m e . " He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices
in the crowd said things like " G o o d fellow, J a c k , " and " G l a d to see your mother's got
a man to do it."
15
" W e l l , " Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone. Old M a n W a r n e r make it?"
"Here," a voice said, and Mr. Summers nodded.
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked
at the list. " A l l ready?" he called. "Now, I'll read the namesheads of families first
and the men come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your
hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?"
T h e people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions; most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around. T h e n Mr.
Summers raised one hand high and said, "Adams." A man disengaged himself from
the crowd and came forward. "Hi, S t e v e , " Mr. Summers said, and Mr. Adams said,
"Hi, J o e . " T h e y grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously. T h e n Mr. Adams
reached into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one
corner as he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd, where he stood a
little apart from his family, not looking down at his hand.
" A l l e n , " Mr. Summers said. "Anderson. . . . B e n t h a m . "
"Seems like there's n o time at all betw r een lotteries any more," Mrs. Delacroix
said to Mrs. Graves in the back row7. " S e e m s like we got through with the last one
only last week."
" T i m e sure goes fast," Mrs. Graves said.
"Clark. . . . Delacroix."
" T h e r e goes my old m a n , " Mrs. Delacroix said. S h e held her breath while her
husband went forward.
20
25
"Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while
one of the women said, " G o on, Janey," and another said, " T h e r e she goes."
" W e ' r e n e x t , " Mrs. Graves said. S h e watched while Mr. Graves came around
from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely, and selected a slip of paper
from the box. By now, all through the crowd there were m e n holding the small folded
papers in their large hands, turning them over and over nervously. Mrs. Dunbar and
her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of paper.
"Harburt. . . . Hutchinson."
" G e t up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said, and the people near her laughed.
"Jones."
" T h e y do say," Mr. Adams said to O l d M a n W a r n e r , who stood n e x t to him,
"that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
30
Old M a n W a r n e r snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young
folks, nothing's good enough for them. N e x t thing you know, they'll be wanting to go
back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a
saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be
eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody."
" S o m e places have already quit lotteries," Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that" Old M a n Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools."
"Martin." A n d Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. " O v e r d y k e . . . . Percy."
"I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. "I wish they'd hurry."
"They're almost through," her son said.
"You get ready to run tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said.
Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and selected a slip from the box. T h e n he called, " W a r n e r . "
"Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery," Old M a n W a r n e r said as he went
through the crowd. "Seventy-seventh time."
" W a t s o n . " T h e tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. S o m e o n e said,
" D o n ' t be nervous, J a c k , " and Mr. Summers said, " T a k e your time, son."
35
40
"Zanini."
A f t e r that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers,
holding his slip o f paper in the air, said, " A l l right, fellows." For a minute, no o n e
moved, and t h e n all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all w o m e n began to
speak at o n c e , saying, " W h o is it?" " W h o ' s got it?" "Is it the Dunbars?" "Is it t h e
W a t s o n s ? " T h e n t h e voices began to say, "It's H u t c h i n s o n . It's B i l l . " "Bill
H u t c h i n s o n ' s got it."
" G o tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.
People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill H u t c h i n s o n was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie Hutchinson
shouted to Mr. Summers, "You didn't give him time enough to take any paper he
wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!"
45
" B e a good sport, Tessie," Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, " A l l of us
took the same c h a n c e . "
" S h u t up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.
"Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done pretty fast, and now we've got
to be hurrying a little more to get done in time." He consulted his next list. "Bill," he said,
"you draw for the Hutchinson family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?"
"There's D o n and Eva," Mrs. H u t c h i n s o n yelled. " M a k e t h e m take their c h a n c e ! "
"Daughters draw with their husbands' families, Tessie," Mr. Summers said 50
gently. "You know that as well as anyone else."
"It wasn't fair," Tessie said.
"I guess not, J o e , " Bill H u t c h i n s o n said regretfully. "My daughter draws with her
husband's family, that's only fair. A n d I've got no other family except the kids."
" T h e n , as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's you," Mr. Summers said in
explanation, "and as far as drawing for households is concerned, that's you, too. Right?"
" R i g h t , " Bill Hutchinson said.
"How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked formally.
" T h r e e , " Bill Hutchinson said. "There's Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave.
A n d Tessie and m e . "
" A l l right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got their tickets back?"
55
Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. "Put them in the box, then,"
Mr. Summers directed. "Take Bill's and put it in."
"I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. "I
tell you it wasn't fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that."
Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box, and he dropped all
the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.
"Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her.
"Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked, and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance
around at his wife and children, nodded.
"Remember," Mr. Summers said, "take the slips and keep them folded until each
person has taken one. Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves took the hand of the
little boy, who came willingly with him up to the box. "Take a paper out of the box,
Davy," Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box and laughed. "Take just
one paper," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you hold it for him." Mr. Graves took the
child's hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist and held it while little
Dave stood next to him and looked up at him wonderingly.
"Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends
breathed heavily as she went forward, switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily
from the box. "Bill, Jr.," Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face red and his feet overlarge, nearly knocked the box over as he got a paper out. "Tessie," Mr. Summers said.
She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went
up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.
"Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt
around, bringing his hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.
The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy," and the sound of
the whisper reached the edges of the crowd.
"It's not the way it used to be," Old Man Warner said clearly. "People ain't the
way they used to be."
"All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave's."
Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the
crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill,
Jr., opened theirs at the same time, and both beamed and laughed, turning around to
the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked at
Bill Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.
"It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. "Show us her paper, Bill."
Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand.
It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with
the heavy pencil in the coal-company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there
was a stir in the crowd.
"All right, folks," Mr. Summers said, "let's finish quickly."
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box,
they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was
ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had
come out of the box. Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up
with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. "Come on," she said. "Hurry up."
Mrs. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for breath, "I
can't run at all. You'll have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a
few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her
hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A
stone hit her on the side of the head.
Old Man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was
in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.
"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.
QUESTIONS
1. Where do you think "The Lottery" takes place? What purpose do you suppose the writer
has in making this setting appear so familiar and ordinary?
2. In paragraphs 2 and 3, what details foreshadow the ending of the story?
3. Take a close look at Jackson's description of the black wooden box (paragraph 5) and of
the black spot on the fatal slip of paper (paragraph 72). What do these objects suggest to
you? Are there any other symbols in the story?
4. What do you understand to be the writer's own attitude toward the lottery and the stoning? Exactly what in the story makes her attitude clear to us?
5. What do you make of Old Man Warner's saying, "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon"
(paragraph 32)?
6. What do you think Shirley Jackson is driving at? Consider each of the following interpretations and, looking at the story, see if you can find any evidence for it:
Jackson takes a primitive fertility rite and playfully transfers it to a small town in
North America.
Jackson, writing her story soon after World War II, indirectly expresses her horror
at the Holocaust. She assumes that the massacre of the Jews was carried out by
unwitting, obedient people, like these villagers.
Jackson is satirizing our own society, in which men are selected for the army by lottery.
Jackson is just writing a memorable story that signifies nothing at all.
No One's a Mystery
Elizabeth Tallent ivas born in Washington, D . C . ,
in 1954. Her father was a research chemist, her
mother a speech therapist who gave up her job to
raise Tallent and her two younger siblings. She attended Illinois State University, where she majored
in anthropology. Tallent initially planned to do
graduate ivork in anthropology, but instead she
pursued a literary career, living for many years in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her first published short
story, "Ice," appeared in the New Yorker in 1980.
Her first collection of stories, In Constant Flight, was
published in 1983, followed by a novel, Museum
Pieces, in 1985. Two subsequent collections of short
. stories have appeared, Time with Children (1987)
and Honey (1993). Winner of an O. Henry
ELIZABETH TALLENT
Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Tallent has also published a
critical study of John Updike's fiction. She currently teaches in the creative writing program
at Stanford University. "No One's a Mystery" originally appeared in Harper's in 1985
and is in the collection Time with Children.
For my eighteenth birthday Jack gave me a five-year diary with a latch and a little key, light as a dime. I was sitting beside him scratching at the lock, which didn't
want to work, when he thought he saw his wife's Cadillac in the distance, coming toward us. He pushed me down onto the dirty floor of the pickup and kept one hand on
my head while I inhaled the musk of his cigarettes in the dashboard ashtray and sang
along with Rosanne Cash on the tape deck. We'd been drinking tequila and the bottle was between his legs, resting up against his crotch, where the seam of his Levi's
was bleached linen-white, though the Levi's were nearly new. I don't know why his
Levi's always bleached like that, along the seams and at the knees. In a curve of cloth
his zipper glinted, gold.
"It's her," he said. "She keeps the lights on in the daytime. I can't think of a
single habit in a woman that irritates me more than that." W h e n he saw that I
was going to stay still he took his hand from my head and ran it through his own
dark hair.
"Why does she?" I said.
"She thinks it's safer. Why does she need to be safer? She's driving exactly fiftyfive miles an hour. She believes in those signs: 'Speed Monitored by Aircraft.' It
doesn't matter that you can look up and see that the sky is empty."
"She'll see your lips move, Jack. She'll know you're talking to someone."
"She'll think I'm singing along with the radio."
He didn't lift his hand, just raised the fingers in salute while the pressure of his
palm steadied the wheel, and I heard the Cadillac honk twice, musically; he was driving easily eighty miles an hour. I studied his boots. The elk heads stitched into the
leather were bearded with frayed thread, the toes were scuffed, and there was a compact wedge of muddy manure between the heel and the solethe same boots he'd
been wearing for the two years I'd known him. On the tape deck Rosanne Cash sang,
"Nobody's into me, no one's a mystery."0
"Do you think she's getting famous because of who her daddy is or for herself?"
Jack said.
"There are about a hundred pop tops on the floor, did you know that? Some little
kid could cut a bare foot on one of these, Jack."
"No little kids get into this truck except for you."
"Flow come you let it get so dirty?"
"'How come,'" he mocked. "You even sound like a kid. You can get back into
the seat now, if you want. She's not going to look over her shoulder and see you."
"How do you know?"
"I just know," he said. "Like I know I'm going to get meat loaf for supper. It's in
the air. Like I know what you'll be writing in that diary."
"What will I be writing?" I knelt, on my side of the seat and craned around to
look at the butterfly of dust printed on my jeans. Outside the window Wyoming was
"Nobody's into me, no one's a mystery": from the song "It Hasn't Happened Yet" by John Fliatt,
recorded in 1982 by Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash. The song's speaker claims to feel none
of the heartache predicted for her after a broken romance.
dazzling in the heat. The wheat was fawn and yellow and parted smoothly by the thin
dirt road. I could smell the water in the irrigation ditches hidden in the wheat.
"Tonight you'll write, I love Jack. This is my birthday present from him. I can't
imagine anybody loving anybody more than I love Jack."'
can't."
"In a year you'll write, 'I wonder what I ever really saw in Jack. 1 wonder why I
spent so many days just riding around in his pickup. It's true he taught me something
about sex. It's true there wasn't ever much else to do in Cheyenne.'"
"I won't write that."
"In two years you'll write, 'I wonder what that old guy's name was, the one with
the curly hair and the filthy dirty pickup truck and time on his hands.'"
"I won't write that."
"No?"
"Tonight I'll write, 'I love Jack. This is my birthday present from him. I can't
imagine anybody loving anybody more than 1 love Jack."'
"No, you can't," he says. "You can't imagine it."
"In a year I'll write, 'Jack should be home any minute now. The table's setmy
grandmother's linen and her old silver and the yellow candles left over from the weddingbut I don't know if I can wait until after the trout d la Navarra to make love to
him.'"
"It must have been a fast divorce."
"In two years I'll write, 'Jack should be home by now. Little Jack is hungry for his
supper. He said his first word today besides "Mama" and "Papa." He said, "Caca.""'
Jack laughed. "He was probably trying to fingerpaint with caca on the bathroom
wall when you heard him say it."
"In three years I'll write, 'My nipples are a little sore from nursing Eliza
Rosamund.'"
"Rosamund. Every little girl should have a middle name she hates."
"'Her breath smells like vanilla and her eyes are just Jack's color of blue.'"
"That's nice," Jack said.
"So? Which one do you like?"
"I like yours," he said. "But I believe mine."
"It doesn't matter. I believe mine."
"Not in your heart of hearts, you don't."
1 ou re wrong.
"I'm not wrong," he said. "And her breath would smell like your milk, and it's
kind of a bittersweet smell, if you want to know the truth."
QUESTIONS
1. How does Jack's present to the narrator, the "five-year diary with a latch and a little key,"
function symbolically in the story ?
2. W h a t do we learn about Jack's marriage? Through what details are these insights
coin mi mi rated?
3. What does each character's version of their future tell us about him or her?
4. The story ends with Jack's words, "if you want to know the truth." Do you think that the
narrator does want to know the truth? Explain.
5. A quoted phrase can often take on new meanings in a new context. Consider the story's
title: Is its application to the story literal or ironic?
20
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30
35
Ursula K. Le Gum
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was born in 1929 on
St. Ursula's Day (October 21) in Berkeley,
California, the only daughter and youngest child
of Theodora Kroeber, a folklorist, and Alfred
Kroeber, a renowned anthropologist. Both parents had been widowed in previous marriages,
and they created an intellectually lively and
happy home for their four children. Le Guin attended Radcliffe College, where she graduated
Phi Beta Kappa, and then entered Columbia
University to do graduate work in French and
Italian literature. While completing her M . A . ,
she wrote her first stories. On a Fulbright fellowship to France, she met Charles Le Guin, a
professor of French history, whom she married
in Paris in 1953. Over the next decade Le Guin
reared three children and worked on her writing in private.
1975
URSULA K. L E G U I N
In the early sixties Le Guin began publishing in both science fiction pulp magazines such
as Amazing Stories and academic journals such as Western Humanities Review. In
1966 her first novel, Rocannon's World, was published as an Ace science fiction paperback originalhardly a respectable format for the debut of one of America's premier writers. RocannoiVs World began Le Guin's cycle of "Hainish" novels, a loosely structured
but subtly interlocked series about intergalactic civilizations. Planet of Exiles (1966) and
City of Illusions (1967), also paperback originals, quickly followed in the cycle. In 1968
Le Guin published A Wizard of Earthsea, the first novel in her Earthsea Trilogynow
considered a classic of children's literature. The next two volumes, T h e Tombs of A t u a n
(1971), which won a Newbery citation, and T h e Farthest Shore (1972), which won a
National Book Award, brought Le Guin mainstream acclaim. (In recent years Le Guin has
augmented both cycles, publishing a new Hainish novel, T h e Telling, in 2000 and two
new Earthsea volumes, T h e O t h e r W i n d and Tales from Earthsea, in 2001.)
Meanwhile, Le Guin's next adult book, T h e Left H a n d of Darkness (1969), won
both the Hugo and the Nebula awardsscience fiction's two most prized honorsfor the
year's best science fiction novel. Her novel T h e Dispossessed (1974) also won both
awardsan unprecedented feat in the history of the genre. She has also twice won Hugos for
best short story, including the 1974 award for "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
Le Guin has published more than thirty novels and volumes of short stories. Other recent
books of hers include the two short-story collections T h e Birthday of the World (2002) and
Changing Planes (2003); T h e W a v e in the Mind: Talks and Essays o n the Writer, the
Reader, and the Imagination (2004); and Incredible Good Fortune: N e w Poems
(2006). In 2002 Le Guin received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of
short fiction. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
One of the few science fiction writers ivhose work has earned general critical acclaim,
Le Guin belongs most naturally in the company of major novelists of ideas such as Aldous
Huxley, George Orwell, and Anthony Burgess, who have used the genre of science fiction to
explore the possible consequences of ideological rather than technological change. Bringing a
social scientist's eye and a feminist's sensibility to the task, Le Guin has employed this notably speculative genre to critique contemporary civilization. She has been especially concerned with issues of social justice and equality, whether between classes, sexes, or races. In
short storiessuch as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"she creates complex
imaginary civilizations, envisioned with anthropological authority, and her aim is less to
imagine alien cultures than to explore humanity.
W i t h a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, t h e Festival of Summer
came to the city. Omelas, bright-towered by t h e sea. T h e rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted
walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks
and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long
stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry w o m e n carrying
their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a
shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession
was a dance. C h i l d r e n dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows'
crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards
the n o r t h side of the city, where o n the great water-meadow called the G r e e n Fields
boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long,
lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before t h e race. T h e horses wore n o gear at
all but a halter without bit. T h e i r manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold,
and green. T h e y flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they
were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the n o r t h and west the m o u n t a i n s stood up half encircling Omelas o n her bay. T h e air of morning was so clear t h a t the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across t h e miles of sunlit air,
under the dark blue of t h e sky. T h e r e was just enough wind to make t h e banners
that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and t h e n . In the silence of the
broad green meadows one could hear t h e music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air t h a t from
time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous
clanging of the bells.
Joyous! H o w is one to tell about joy? H o w describe the citizens of Omelas?
T h e y were n o t simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do n o t say
the words of cheer m u c h any more. All smiles have become archaic. G i v e n a description such as this o n e tends to make certain assumptions. G i v e n a description
such as this one tends to look next for t h e King, mounted on a splendid stallion and
surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled
slaves. But there was n o king. T h e y did n o t use swords, or keep slaves. T h e y were
n o t barbarians. I do n o t know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that
they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got
on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and t h e bomb.
Yet I repeat that these were n o t simple folk, n o t dulcet shepherds, noble savages,
bland Utopians. T h e y were n o t less complex t h a n us. T h e trouble is t h a t we have a
bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as
something rather stupid. O n l y pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the
treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom
of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to
c o n d e m n delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. W e have
almost lost hold; we can n o longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration
of joy. H o w c a n I tell you about t h e people of Omelas? T h e y were n o t na'ive and
happy c h i l d r e n t h o u g h their children were, in fact, happy. T h e y were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were n o t wretched. O miracle! but I wish I
could describe it better. I wish I could c o n v i n c e you. Omelas sounds in my words
like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would
be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I c a n n o t suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I
think t h a t there would be n o cars or helicopters in and above t h e streets; this follows from t h e fact that t h e people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based
on a just discrimination of w h a t is necessary, w h a t is neither necessary nor destructive, a n d w h a t is destructive. In t h e middle category, h o w e v e r t h a t of t h e u n n e c essary but undestructive, t h a t of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of
marvelous devices n o t yet i n v e n t e d here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a
cure for t h e c o m m o n cold. O r they could have n o n e of that: it doesn't matter. As
you like it. I incline to t h i n k t h a t people from towns up a n d down t h e coast h a v e
been c o m i n g in to O m e l a s d u r i n g t h e last days before t h e Festival 011 very fast little trains a n d double-decked trams and t h a t t h e train station of O m e l a s is actually t h e h a n d s o m e s t building in t o w n , t h o u g h plainer t h a n t h e m a g n i f i c e n t
Farmers' M a r k e t . But e v e n granted trains, I fear t h a t O m e l a s so far strikes some of
you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add a n orgy.
If an orgy would help, d o n ' t hesitate. Let us n o t , however, h a v e temples f r o m
w h i c h issue beautiful n u d e priests a n d priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready
to c o p u l a t e w i t h any m a n or w o m a n , lover or stranger, who desires u n i o n w i t h
the deep godhead of t h e blood, a l t h o u g h t h a t was my first idea. But really it
would be better n o t to h a v e any temples in O m e l a s a t least, n o t m a n n e d temples. Religion yes, clergy n o . Surely t h e beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of t h e needy and t h e rapture of
the flesh. Let t h e m join t h e processions. Let tambourines be struck above t h e copulations, a n d the glory of desire be proclaimed u p o n t h e gongs, and (a n o t unimportant point) let t h e offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved a n d looked after
by all. O n e thing I k n o w there is n o n e of in Omelas is guilt. But w h a t else should
there be? I t h o u g h t at first there were n o drugs, but that is puritanical. For those
who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may p e r f u m e t h e ways of t h e
city, drooz w h i c h first brings a great lightness and brilliance to t h e mind a n d
limbs, and t h e n after some hours a dreamy languor, a n d w o n d e r f u l visions at last
of the very arcana and i n m o s t secrets of t h e Universe, as well as exciting t h e
pleasure of sex beyond all belief; a n d it is n o t h a b i t - f o r m i n g . For more modest
tastes I t h i n k there o u g h t to be beer. W h a t else, w h a t else belongs in t h e joyous
city? T h e sense of victory, surely, t h e celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do w i t h o u t soldiers. T h e joy built u p o n successful slaughter is n o t
the right kind of joy; it will n o t do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and
generous c o n t e n t m e n t , a magnanimous t r i u m p h felt n o t against some outer enemy
but in c o m m u n i o n with t h e finest and fairest in t h e souls of all m e n everywhere
and t h e splendor of t h e world's summer: this is w h a t swells the hearts of t h e people
of Omelas, and t h e victory they celebrate is t h a t of life. I really d o n ' t t h i n k many
of t h e m need to take drooz.
Most of the processions have reached t h e G r e e n Fields by now. A marvelous
smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioned. T h e faces
of small children are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a m a n a couple of
crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. T h e youths and girls have mounted their horses
and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course. A n old woman,
small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young m e n wear
her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd,
alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do
n o t speak to him, for h e never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes
wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of t h e tune.
H e finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.
As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from
the pavillion near t h e starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. T h e horses rear
on their slender legs, and some of t h e m neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my
beauty, my hope. . . ." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. T h e crowds
along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. T h e Festival of
Summer has begun.
Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? T h e n let me
describe one more thing.
In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps
in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked
door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, seco n d h a n d from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of
the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a
rusty bucket. T h e floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. T h e
room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool
room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but
actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it
has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits h u n c h e d in the corner
farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is
locked; and nobody will come. T h e door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimesthe child has no understanding of time or intervalsometimes
the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. O n e of
t h e m may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. T h e others never come
close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. T h e food bowl and the water
jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, t h e eyes disappear. T h e people at the door
never say anything, but the child, who has n o t always lived in the tool room, and
can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it
says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" T h e y never answer. T h e child used to
scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so t h i n there are n o
calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives o n a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a
day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its
own excrement continually.
T h e y all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to
- see it, others are c o n t e n t merely to know it is there. T h e y all know that it has to be
there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that
their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the
health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even
the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly
on this child's abominable misery.
This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve,
whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the
child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see
the child. N o matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young
spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. T h e y feel disgust, which they
had thought themselves superior to. T h e y feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all
the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing
they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it
were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were
done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would
wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. T o exchange all the goodness and grace
of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt
within the walls indeed.
T h e terms are strict and absolute; there may n o t even be a kind word spoken to
the child.
O f t e n t h e young people go h o m e in tears, or in a tearless rage, w h e n they
have seen t h e child a n d faced this terrible paradox. T h e y may brood over it for
weeks or years. But as time goes o n they begin to realize t h a t e v e n if t h e child
could be released, it would n o t get m u c h good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of w a r m t h and food, n o doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile
to k n o w any real joy. It has b e e n afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits
are too u n c o u t h for it to respond to h u m a n e t r e a t m e n t . Indeed, after so long it
would probably be wretched w i t h o u t walls about it to p r o t e c t it, and darkness for
its eyes, and its o w n e x c r e m e n t to sit in. T h e i r tears at t h e bitter injustice dry
w h e n they begin to perceive t h e terrible justice of reality and to accept it. Yet it is
their tears and anger, t h e trying of their generosity and t h e a c c e p t a n c e of their
helplessness, w h i c h are perhaps t h e true source of t h e splendor of their lives.
Theirs is n o vapid, irresponsible happiness. T h e y know t h a t they, like t h e child,
are n o t free. T h e y k n o w compassion. It is t h e existence of t h e child, a n d their
knowledge of its existence, t h a t makes possible the nobility of their architecture,
the poignancy of their music, t h e profundity of their science. It is because of the
child t h a t they are so gentle with children. T h e y k n o w t h a t if t h e wretched one
were n o t t h e r e snivelling in t h e dark, t h e other one, t h e flute-player, could make
n o joyful music as t h e young riders line up in their beauty for t h e race in t h e sunlight of the first m o r n i n g of summer.
N o w do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more
thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.
A t times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does n o t go
h o m e to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go h o m e at all. Sometimes also a m a n or
woman m u c h older falls silent for a day or two, and t h e n leaves home. These people
go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. T h e y keep walking, and walk
straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. T h e y keep walking
across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman.
Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellowlit windows, and o n out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or
north, toward the mountains. T h e y go on. T h e y leave Omelas, they walk ahead into
the darkness, and they do not come back. T h e place they go toward is a place even
less imaginable to most of us t h a n t h e city of happiness. I c a n n o t describe it at all. It
is possible that it does n o t exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the
ones who walk away from Omelas.
QUESTIONS
1. Does die narrator live in Omelas? What do we know about die narrator's society?
2. What is the narrator's opinion of Omelas? Docs the author seem to share that opinion?
3. What is the narrator's attitude toward "the ones who walk away from Omelas"? Would
the narrator have been one of those who walked away?
4. How do you account for the narrator's willingness to let us readers add to the story anything we like?"If an orgy would help, don't hesitate" (paragraph 3). Doesn't Ursula Le
Guin care what her story includes?
5. What does the locked, dark cellar in which the child sits suggest? What other details in
the story are suggestive enough to be called symbolic?
6. Do you find in the story any implied criticism of our own society?
WRITERS
ON
WRITING
Shirley Jackson
Biography of a Story
I had written the story three weeks before, on
a bright June morning when summer seemed
to have come at last, with blue skies and warm
sun and no heavenly signs to warn me that my
morning's work was anything but just another
story. T h e idea had come to me while I was
pushing my daughter up the hill in her
strollerit was, as I say, a warm morning, and
the hill was steep, and beside my daughter the
stroller held the day's groceriesand perhaps
the effort of that last fifty yards up the hill put
an edge to the story; at any rate, I had the idea
fairly clearly in my mind when I put my
daughter in her playpen and the frozen vegetables in the refrigerator, and, writing the
story, I found that it went quickly and easily,
(i960) 1968
SHIRLEY JACKSON
moving from beginning to end without pause. As a matter of fact, when I read it over
later I decided that except for one or two minor corrections, it needed no changes, and
the story I finally typed up and sent off to my agent the next day was almost word for
word the original draft. This, as any writer of stories can tell you, is not a usual thing. All
I know is that when I came to read the story over I felt strongly that I didn't want to fuss
with it. I didn't think it was perfect, but I didn't want to fuss with it. It was, I thought, a
serious, straightforward story, and I was pleased and a little surprised at the ease with
which it had been written; I was reasonably proud of it, and hoped that my agent would
sell it to some magazine and I would have the gratification of seeing it in print.
My agent did not care for the story, butas she said in her note at the timeher
job was to sell it, not to like it. She sent it at once to the New Yorker, and about a week
after the story had been written I received a telephone call from the fiction editor of the
New Yorker; it was quite clear that he did n o t really care for the story, either, but the
New Yorker was going to buy it. H e asked for one changethat the date mentioned in
the story be changed to coincide with the date of the issue of the magazine in which
the story would appear, and I said of course. H e t h e n asked, hesitantly, if I had any
particular interpretation of my own for the story; Mr. Harold Ross, t h e n the editor of
the New Yorker, was not altogether sure that h e understood the story, and wondered if
I cared to enlarge upon its meaning. I said no. Mr. Ross, h e said, thought that the story
might be puzzling to some people, and in case anyone telephoned the magazine, as
sometimes happened, or wrote in asking about the story, was there anything in particular I wanted t h e m to say? N o , I said, nothing in particular; it was just a story I wrote.
I had n o more preparation t h a n that. I went on picking up the mail every morning, pushing my daughter up and down the hill in her stroller, anticipating pleasurably the check from the New Yorker, and shopping for groceries. T h e weather stayed
nice and it looked as though it was going to be a good summer. T h e n , on June 28, the
New Yorker came out with my story.
Things began mildly enough with a note from a friend at the New Yorker: "Your
story has kicked up quite a fuss around t h e office," h e wrote. I was flattered; it's nice
to think that your friends notice what you write. Later that day there was a call from
one of t h e magazine's editors; they had had a couple of people p h o n e in about my
story, h e said, and was there anything I particularly wanted him to say if there were
any more calls? N o , I said, nothing particular; anything he chose to say was perfectly
all right with me; it was just a story.
I was further puzzled by a cryptic note from another friend: "Heard a man talking
about a story of yours o n the bus this morning," she wrote. "Very exciting. I wanted to
tell him I knew the author, but after I heard what he was saying I decided I'd better not."
O n e of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization
that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of
millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote. It had simply never occurred to me that these millions
and millions of people might be so far from being uplifted that they would sit down
and write me letters I was downright scared to open; of the three-hundred-odd letters
that I received that summer I can count only thirteen that spoke kindly to me, and
they were mostly from friends. Even my mother scolded me: "Dad and I did n o t care
at all for your story in the New Yorker," she wrote sternly, "it does seem, dear, that
this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. W h y
don't you write something to cheer people up?"
By mid-July I had begun to perceive that I was very lucky indeed to be safely in Vermont, where no one in our small town had ever heard of the New Yorlcer, much less read
my story. Millions of people, and my mother, had taken a pronounced dislike to me.
T h e magazine kept n o track of telephone calls, but all letters addressed to me
care of the magazine were forwarded directly to me for answering, and all letters addressed to the magazinesome of t h e m addressed to Harold Ross personally; these
were the most v e h e m e n t w e r e answered at the magazine and t h e n the letters were
sent me in great batches, along with carbons of the answers written at the magazine.
I have all the letters still, and if they could be considered to give any accurate cross
section of the reading public, or the reading public of the New Yorker, or even the
reading public of one issue of the New Yorker, 1 would stop writing now.
Judging from these letters, people who read stories are gullible, rude, frequently
illiterate, and horribly afraid of being laughed at. Many of the writers were positive
that the New Yorker was going to ridicule t h e m in print; and the most cautious letters
were headed in capital letters: NOT FOR PUBLICATION or PLEASE DO NOT PRINT THIS
LETTER, or at best, THIS LETTER MAY BE PUBLISHED AT YOUR USUAL RATES OF PAYMENT.
Anonymous letters, of which there were a few, were destroyed. T h e New Yorker
never published any c o m m e n t of any kind about the story in the magazine, but did issue one publicity release saying that the story had received more mail than any piece
of fiction they had ever published; this was after t h e newspapers had gotten into the
act, in midsummer, with a front-page story in the San Francisco Chronicle begging to
know what the story meant, and a series of columns in N e w York and Chicago papers
pointing out that New Yorker subscriptions were being canceled right and left.
Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of t h a t first
summerthree themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation, and
plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been
anthologized, dramatized, televised, and e v e n i n one completely mystifying transformationmade into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am
addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? T h e general tone of the early letters, however,
was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were n o t so much
concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these
lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch.
From
WRITING
ABOUT
Come Along with Me
SYMBOLS
Recognizing Symbols
O n e danger in analyzing a story's symbolism is the temptation to read symbolic meaning
into everything. Writers don't simply assign arbitrary meanings to items in their stories;
generally, a horse is a horse, and a hammer is just a hammer. Sometimes, though, an object means something more to a character. T h i n k of the locked diary in "No One's a
Mystery" or the flowers in "The Chrysanthemums." A n image acquires symbolic resonance because it is organically important to the actions and emotions of the story.
T o "read" a symbol, ask yourself what it means to the protagonist of your story.
Consider a symbolic, object's relevance to the plot. W h a t events, characters, and ideas
are associated with it? It also helps to remember that some symbols arrive with cultural
baggage. Any great w7hite whale that swims into a work of contemporary fiction will inevitably summon up the symbolic associations of Melville's fish Moby Dick.
W h e n you write about symbols, remember: in literature, few7 symbols are hidden.
Don't go on a symbol hunt. As you read or reread a story, any real symbol will usually find
you. If an object appears time and again, or is tied inextricably to the story's events, it's
likely to suggest something beyond itself W h e n an object, an action, or a place has emotional or intellectual power beyond its literal importance, t h e n it is a genuine symbol.
CHECKLIST
Thinking About Symbols
S W h i c h objects, actions, or places seem unusually significant?
S List t h e specific objects, people, and ideas w i t h w h i c h a particular symbol is
associated.
S Locate the exact place in t h e story where t h e symbol links itself to the other
thing.
S Ask w h e t h e r each symbol comes w i t h ready-made cultural associations. If
so, w h a t are these?
S Avoid far-fetched interpretations. Focus first o n t h e literal things, places,
and actions in the story.
S D o n ' t m a k e a symbol m e a n too m u c h or too little; d o n ' t limit it to o n e narrow association or claim it summons up many different things.
S Be specific. Identify t h e exact place in t h e story where a symbol takes o n a
deeper meaning.
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
SYMBOLS
From the stories in this book, choose o n e w i t h a strong central symbol. Explain how
the symbol helps to c o m m u n i c a t e t h e story's meaning, citing specific m o m e n t s in t h e
text. H e r e is an example of a paper written o n t h a t topic by S a m a n t h a L. Brown, a
student of Melinda Barth's at El C a m i n o College.
SAMPLE
STUDENT
PAPER
Brown 1
Samantha L. Brown
Professor Barth
English 210
2 6 May 200 6
An Analysis of the Symbolism in Steinbeck's
"The Chrysanthemums"
Symbols are used in literature to convey a
special meaning to the reader. In his short story "The
Thesis sentence = Chrysanthemums , " John Steinbeck uses chrysanthemums
for both realistic and symbolic purposes. The
Brown 2
chrysanthemums advance the plot by creating the story's
central conflict. They also help define the character of
Elisa, provide a greater understanding of the setting,
Clarification and
elaboration of
thesis
and play a vital part in revealing the story's theme.
In the plot, the chrysanthemums cause the conflict
that animates the story. The only reason Elisa talked to
the tinker was because of his admiration of her
chrysanthemums. Their conversation initiates the story's
Topic sentence
on the realistic
purposes of the
story's primary
symbol
central conflict. The reader sees Elisa is unhappy and
emotionally isolated from her husband. When she is talking
with the tinker, she feels she has finally met someone she
can be intimate with emotionally. This illusion is
shattered, however, when she discovers her plant starts on
the side of the road. The discarded, dying plants
Textual evidence?
symbolize her shortened life. Therefore, without the
chrysanthemums, there wouldn't have been a conflict.
Without a conflict, Elisa's story would not have happened.
The chrysanthemums also provide the reader with
insight into Elisa. The reader better understands her
character through her gardening, her discussion with the
tinker, and her realization of what the tinker had done
Topic sentence
on the symbolic
significance of
the story's key j
symbol
with her plant starts. Elisa is a passionate person. When
she is gardening, one can see where her passion is
funneled. She has a sexual attachment to her flowers. The
tinker's admiration causes her to develop sexual feelings
about him. Furthermore, when she sees her plant starts
discarded on the side of the road, the reader can deduce
two things about her character. First, one can see that
Textual evidence
Elisa does not have an emotional bond with her husband.
Second, one comprehends how deeply she feels defeated.
Once again, the chrysanthemums initiate both insights.
Without the flowers, the reader would not understand
Elisa. Her reaction concerning her flowers defines her
First two
charactcr.
sentences
announce
"The Chrysanthemums" is set in rural Monterey in the t o p i c connection
1930s. The setting has great importance to the story.
between setting
and key symbol
Brown 3
Elisa could have never grown her ten-inch blooms in
contemporary New York City. The chrysanthemums and her
garden also create further images of the rural area Elisa
lives in. This is important because the reader must
understand the isolation of Elisa from the world. Her
isolation is also implied in Elisa's comment to the
tinker that she didn't know the woman down the road.
One would assume that Elisa would know the women on
neighboring farms. They should be her friends. Hence,
the chrysanthemums help define the setting and create a
better understanding of the story itself. Elisa's
physical and emotional isolation, which is exemplified
in the setting, is one of the reasons for her reaction
to the tinker and her actions with her husband.
Topic sentence
on relationship
between theme
and key symbol
The theme of a story is the main message the writer
hopes to convey. The chrysanthemums are vital to
Steinbeck's presentation of the theme. The function of
this story is to better understand Elisa's real
character. At the beginning, Elisa is presented as a
strong woman, one who is strong enough to break the back
of a calf. She regards herself as strong, as does her
husband. At the end, Elisa is seen huddled like an old
woman, crying weakly. The newly revealed Elisa is not the
strong woman that she or her husband thought she was.
Like most people, she is deluded about her emotional
Textual evidence}
strength. It wasn't until Elisa saw the plant starts on
the side of the road that she felt the sting of her
rejection and isolation. Until that moment, her gardening
had protectedor at least distracted--her from her
loneliness, isolation, and feelings of inadequacy.
Elisa's chrysanthemums play a critical role in
illuminating the story's theme. Without seeing the
Elaboration on
how symbol
reveals theme
sprouts on the side of the road, the reader could not
have concluded two of the major points in the
understanding of this story. First, Elisa is a sad,
lonely woman. Second, she is emotionally detached from
Brown 4
her husband. That is the picture Steinbeck intended his
reader to understand. This lonely, emotionally detached
woman puts all her passion and energy into her flowers.
Elisa's chrysanthemums are central to this story.
Understanding how they function as a symbol is imperative
Restatement of
thesis
to understanding the story. Elisa's character completely
revolves around her flowers. The conflict is created
through the flowers. Finally, the theme emerges from
understanding this woman and the importance of her
Conclusion sums;
up main idea
without simply
restating it
chrysanthemums. To understand Steinbeck's symbolism,
therefore, is essential to understanding how the story
works.
MORE
TOPI C S FOR
WRI TTNG
1. Choose a story from this chapter. Describe your experience of reading that story, and of
encountering its symbols. At what point did the main symbol's meaning become clear?
What in the story indicated the larger importance of that symbol?
2. From any story in this book, select an object, or place, or action that seems clearly symbolic. How do you know? Now select an object, place, or action from the same story that
clearly seems to signify no more than itself. How can you tell?
3. Analyze the symbolism in a story from "Stories for Further Reading." Some good choices
might be "Dead Men's Path," "The Story of an Hour," and "Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been?" Choose a symbol that recurs over the course of the story, and
look closely at each appearance it makes. How does the story's use of the symbol evolve?
4. In an essay of 600 to 800 words, compare and contrast the symbolic use of the scapegoat
in "The Lottery" and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
8
Evaluating a Story
There are three kinds of readers: one who enjoys
without judging; a third, ivho judges without enjoying;
another in the middle, who judges while enjoying and
enjoys while judging.
J O H A N N W O L F G A N G V O N GOETHE
W h e n we evaluate a story, we consider it and place a value on it. Perhaps we decide
that it is a masterpiece, or a bit of trash, or (like most fiction we read) a work of some
value in between. N o cut-and-dried method of judgment will work o n every story,
and so in this chapter we have n o n e to propose. Still, there are things we can look for
in a storyusually clear indications of its author's competence.
In judging t h e quality of a baseball glove, we first have to be aware that a
catcher's mitt differsfor good reasonsfrom a first baseman's glove. It is no less
true that, before evaluating a story, we need to recognize its nature. T o see, for instance, that a story is a fable (or perhaps a tale) may save us from condemning it as a
failed short story.
Good critics of literature have at least a working knowledge of some of its conventions. By conventions we mean usual devices and features of a literary work, by
which we can recognize its kind. W h e n in movies or on television we watch a yarn
about a sinister old mansion full of horrors, we recognize the conventions of that
long-lived species of fiction, the Gothic story. The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story
(1764), by English author Horace Walpole, started the genre, supplied its name, and
established its favorite trappings. In Walpole's short novel, O t r a n t o is a cobwebbed
ruin full of underground passages and massive doors that slam unexpectedly. T h e r e
are awful objects: a statue that bleeds, a portrait t h a t steps from its frame, a giant helmet that falls and leaves its victim "dashed to pieces." Atmosphere is essential to a
G o t h i c story: dusty halls, shadowy landscapes, whispering servants "seen at a distance
imperfectly through the dusk" (the quotation is from A n n Radcliffe's novel The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794). In C h a r l o t t e Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), we find the model
for a legion of heroines in the G o t h i c fiction of our own day. In the best-selling
G o t h i c romances of Victoria Holt, Phyllis A . W h i t n e y , and others, young women
similarly find love while working as governesses in ominous mansions. Lacking English castles, American authors of G o t h i c fiction have had to make do with dark old
houseslike those in N a t h a n i e l Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables, in
Charlotte Perkins Oilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," and in the short stories of
Edgar Allan Poe, such as " T h e Tell-Tale Heart." William Faulkner, who brought the
tradition to Mississippi, gives " A Rose for Emily" some familiar conventions: a rundown mansion, a mysterious servant, a madwoman, a hideous secret. But Faulkner's
story, in its portrait of an aristocrat who refuses to admit that her world has vanished,
goes far beyond G o t h i c conventions. W h e n you set up court as a judge of stories, to
recognize such conventions will be an advantage. Knowing a G o t h i c story for what it
is, you won't c o n d e m n it for lacking "realism." A n d being aware of the G o t h i c elements in "A Rose for Emily" may help you see how original Faulkner manages to be,
in spite of employing some handed-down conventions.
Is the story a piece of commercial fiction tailored to a formula, or is it unique in
its design? You can't demand the subtlety of a Katherine A n n e Porter from a writer of
hard-boiled detective stories. N e i t h e r c a n you put down " T h e Jilting of G r a n n y
Weatherall" for lacking slam-bang action. Some stories are n o more t h a n light, entertaining bits of fluffno point in damning them, unless you dislike fluff or find
t h e m badly written. Of course, you are within your rights to prefer solidity to fluff, or
to prefer a Porter story to a typical paperback romance by a hack wrriter. Kurt Vonnegut's
"Harrison Bergeron," though a simpler and briefer story t h a n Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, is n o less finished, complete, and satisfactory as a work of art. Yet, considered in another light, Kafka's short novel may well seem a greater work t h a n Vonnegut's. It reveals greater depths of meaning and enfolds more life.
Masterpieces often have flaws; and so, whenever we can, we need to consider a
story in its entirety. Some novels by T h o m a s Hardy and by T h e o d o r e Dreiser impress
(on the whole), despite passages of stilted dialogue and other clumsy writing. If a
story totally fails to enlist our sympathies, probably it suffers from some basic ineptitude: choice of an inappropriate point of view, a style ill-suited to its theme, or possibly insufficient knowledge of h u m a n beings. In some ineffectual stories, things important to the w7riter (and to the story) remain private and unmentioned. In other
stories, the writer's interests may be perfectly clear but they may n o t interest the
reader, for they are n o t presented with sufficient art.
Some stories fail from sentimentality, a defect in a work whose writer seems to
feel tremendous emotion and implies that we too should feel it, but does not provide
us enough reason to share such feelings. Sentimentality is rampant in televised weekday afternoon soap operas, whose characters usually palpitate with passion for reasons
n o t quite known, and who speak in melodramatic tones as if heralding the end of t h e
world. In some fiction, conventional objects (locks of baby hair, posthumously
awarded medals, pressed roses) frequently signal, "Let's have a good cry!" Visiting
h o m e after her marriage, the character Amelia in William Makepeace Thackeray's
Vanity Fair effuses about the bed she slept in w h e n a virgin: "Dear little bed! how
many a long night had she wept o n its pillow." 1 Teary sentimentality is more comm o n in nineteenth-century fiction t h a n in ours. W e have gone to the other extreme,
some critics think, into a sentimentality of t h e violent and the hard-boiled. But in a
grossly sentimental work of any kind, failure inheres in our refusal to go along with
the author's implied attitudes. W e smirk w h e n we are expected to cry, feel delight
Sentimentality in fiction is older than the Victorians. Popular in eighteenth-century England, the
sentimental novel (or novel of sensibility) specialized in characters whose ability to shed quick and copious tears signified their virtuous hearts. Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) and Henry
Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771) are classics of the genre. An abundance of tears does nor prevent
such novels from having merit.
when we are supposed to be horrified. As Oscar Wilde said about a notoriously
drawn-out and overwritten death scene in Charles Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop:
" O n e must have a heart of stone to read the d e a t h of Little Nell without laughing."
In evaluating a story, we may usefully ask a few questions:
1. W h a t is the tone of the story? By what means and how effectively is it communicated?
2. W h a t is the point of view? Does it seem appropriate and effective in this
story? Imagine the story told from a different point of view; would such a
change be for the worse or for the better?
3. Does the story show us unique and individual scenes, events, and charactersor weary stereotypes?
4. A r e any symbols evident? If so, do they direct us to the story's central
theme, or do they distract us from it?
5. How appropriate to the t h e m e of the story, and to its subject matter, are its
tone and style? Is it ever difficult or impossible to sympathize with the attitudes of the author (insofar as we can tell what they are)?
6. Does our interest in the story mainly depend on following its plot, o n finding out what will h a p p e n next? O r does the author go beyond the events to
show us what they mean? A r e the events (however fantastic) credible, or
are they incredibly melodramatic? Does the plot greatly depend on farfetched coincidence?
7. Has the writer caused characters, events, and settings to come alive? A r e
they full of breath and motion, or simply told about in the abstract ("She
was a lovable girl whose life had been highly exciting")? Unless the story is a
fable or a tale, which needs n o detailed description or deep portrayal of
character, t h e n we may well expect t h e story to contain enough vividly
imagined detail to make us believe in it.
YiyuH Li
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
2005
Yiyun Li was born in 1972 and grew up in Beijing, China. A high-school student at the time
of the government's violent supfyression of the student protests in Tiananmen Square in June
1989, she knew from eyewitness accounts of family members what had actually occurred,
despite the official denials. After a year of required military service and "political re-education," she studied biology at Peking University. Determined to come to the United States,
she was accepted into graduate programs at four American institutions and enrolled at the
University of Iowa in 1996. In the following year, she took an evening course in writing, and
afterward began to write articles and stories in English. ("When I wrote in Chinese, I censored myself," she has said. UI feel very lucky that Vve discovered a language I can use.") In
2000, nearing completion of a Ph.D. in immunology, she decided that her real interest was
writing, and arranged to leave the program with a master s degree. She earned two more master s degrees, one in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa and the other in fiction
from the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop. By late 2003, her work had begun to appear in
such venues as the New Yorker and the Paris Review. In 2005, she published the collection
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, on the strength of which she won the first annual
Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Li teaches in the master of fine arts program at Mills College and lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons.
A rocket scientist, Mr. Shi tells people w h e n they ask about his profession in
C h i n a . Retired, he t h e n adds, out of modesty, when people marvel. Mr. Shi learned
the phrase from a w o m a n during a layover at Detroit, w h e n h e tried to explain to her
his work, drawing pictures w h e n his English failed to help. "A rocket scientist!" the
w o m a n exclaimed, laughing out loud.
People he meets in America, already friendly, seem more so w h e n they learn his
profession, so h e likes to repeat the words whenever possible. Five days into his visit
at his d a u g h t e r s place, in this Midwest town, Mr. Shi has made quite a few acquaintances. Mothers with babies in strollers wave at him. A n old couple, the husband in
suit and the wife in skirt, show up in the park every morning at nine o'clock, her
h a n d on his arm; they stop and greet him, the husband always the one speaking, the
wife smiling. A w o m a n living in the retirement h o m e a block away comes to talk to
him. She is seventy-seven, two years his senior, and was originally from Iran. Despite
the fact they b o t h speak little English, they have n o problem understanding each
other, and in n o time they become friends.
"America good country," she says often. "Sons make rich money."
America is indeed a good country. Mr. Shi's daughter works as a librarian in the
East Asian department in the college library and earns more in a year t h a n h e made
in twenty.
"My daughter, she make lots of money, too."
"I love America. G o o d country for everybody."
"Yes, yes. A rocket scientist I am in C h i n a . But very poor. Rocket scientist, you
know?" Mr. Shi says, his hands making a peak.
"I love C h i n a . C h i n a a good country, very old," the woman says.
"America is young country, like young people."
"America a happy country."
"Young people are more happy t h a n old people," Mr. Shi says, and then realizes
that it is too abrupt a conclusion. H e himself feels happier at this m o m e n t t h a n h e remembers h e ever did in his life. T h e woman in front of him, who loves everything
with or without a good reason, seems happy, too.
Sometimes they run out of English. She switches to Persian, mixed with a few
English words. Mr. Shi finds it hard to speak Chinese to her. It is she who carries the
conversation alone then, for ten or twenty minutes. H e nods and smiles effusively.
H e does n o t understand m u c h of what she is saying, but h e feels her joy in talking to
him, the same joy he feels listening to her.
Mr. Shi starts to look forward to t h e mornings w h e n h e sits in the park and
waits for her. "Madam" is w h a t h e uses to address her, as h e has never asked her
name. M a d a m wears colors that h e does n o t imagine a w o m a n of her age, or where
she came from, would wear, red and orange and purple and yellow. S h e has a pair of
metal barrettes, a white elephant and a hlue-and-green peacock. T h e y clasp on her
t h i n hair in a wobbly way that reminds h i m of his daughter w h e n she was a small
childbefore her hair was fully grown, with a plastic butterfly hanging loose o n her
forehead. Mr. Shi, for a brief m o m e n t , wants to tell M a d a m how m u c h h e misses the
days w h e n his daughter was small and life was hopeful. But h e is sure, even before
h e starts, t h a t his English would fail him. Besides, it is never his h a b i t to talk about
the past.
In the evenings, w h e n his daughter comes home, Mr. Shi has the supper ready.
He took a cooking class after his wife died, a few years ago, and ever since has studied
the culinary art with the same fervor with which h e studied mathematics and physics
when h e was a college student. "Every m a n is born with more talents t h a n he knows
how to use," he says at dinner. "I wouldVe never imagined taking up cooking, but
here I am, better t h a n I imagined."
"Yes, very impressive," his daughter says.
" A n d likewise"Mr. Shi takes a quick glance at his daughter"life provides
more happiness t h a n we ever know. W e have to train ourselves to look for it."
His daughter does n o t reply. Despite the pride h e takes in his cooking and her
praises for it, she eats little and eats out of duty. It worries h i m that she is n o t putting
enough enthusiasm into life as she should be. Of course, she has her reasons, newly
divorced after seven years of marriage. His ex-son-in-law went back to Beijing permanently after the divorce. Mr. Shi does n o t know what led the boat of their marriage to run into a h i d d e n rock, but whatever the reason is, it must n o t be her fault.
She is made for a good wife, soft-voiced and kindhearted, dutiful and beautiful, a
younger version of her mother. W h e n his daughter called to inform h i m of the divorce, Mr. Shi imagined her in inconsolable pain, and asked to come to America, to
help her recover. She refused, and h e started calling daily and pleading, spending a
good solid m o n t h of his pension on the long-distance bill. She finally agreed when h e
announced that his wish for his seventy-fifth birthday was to take a look at America.
A lie it was, but the lie turned out to be a good reason. America is worth taking a
look at; more t h a n that, America makes him a new person, a rocket scientist, a good
conversationalist, a loving father, a happy m a n .
After dinner, Mr. Shi's daughter either retreats to her bedroom to read or drives
away and comes home at late hours. Mr. Shi asks to go out with her, to accompany her
to the movies he imagines that she watches alone, but she refuses in a polite but firm
manner. It is certainly not healthy for a woman, especially a contemplative woman like
his daughter, to spend too much time alone. He starts to talk more to tackle her solitude,
asking questions about the part of her life he is not witnessing. How was her work of the
day? he asks. Fine, she says tiredly. N o t discouraged, h e asks about her colleagues,
whether there are more females than males, how old they are, and, if they are married,
whether they have children. H e asks what she eats for lunch and whether she eats alone,
what kind of computer she uses, and what books she reads. He asks about her old school
friends, people he believes she is out of contact with because of the shame of the divorce.
He asks about her plan for the future, hoping she understands the urgency of her situation. W o m e n in their marriageable twenties and early thirties are like lychees that have
been picked from the tree; each passing day makes them less fresh and less desirable, and
only too soon will they lose their value, and have to be gotten rid of at a sale price.
Mr. Shi knows enough n o t to m e n t i o n t h e sale price. Still, h e c a n n o t help but
lecture on the fruitfulness of life. T h e more h e talks, the more he is moved by his own
patience. His daughter, however, does not improve. She eats less and becomes quieter each day. W h e n h e finally points out that she is not enjoying her life as she
should, she says, "How do you get this conclusion? I'm enjoying my life all right."
"But that's a lie. A happy person will never be so quiet!"
She looks up from the bowl of rice. "Baba, you used to be very quiet, remember?
W e r e you unhappy then?"
Mr. Shi, n o t prepared for such directness from his daughter, is unable to reply.
H e waits for her to apologize and change t h e topic, as people with good manners do
w h e n they realize they are embarrassing others with their questions, but she does n o t
let h i m go. Her eyes behind her glasses, wide open and unrelenting, remind h i m of
her in her younger years. W h e n she was four or five, she went after him every possible
moment, asking questions and demanding answers. T h e eyes remind him of her
mother too; at one time in their marriage, she gazed at him with this questioning
look, waiting for a n answer h e did n o t have for her.
H e sighs. "Of course I've always been happy."
"There you go, Baba. W e can be quiet and happy, can't we?"
"Why n o t talk about your happiness with me?" Mr. Shi says. "Tell me more
about your work."
"You didn't talk m u c h about your work either, remember? Even w h e n I asked."
"A rocket scientist, you know how it was. My work was confidential."
"You didn't talk m u c h about anything," his daughter says.
Mr. Shi opens his m o u t h but finds no words coming. A f t e r a long moment, he
says, "I talk more now. I'm improving, no?"
"Sure," his daughter says.
"That's what you need to do. Talk more," Mr. Shi says. " A n d start now7."
His daughter, however, is less enthusiastic. S h e finishes her meal quickly in her
usual silence and leaves the apartment before h e finishes his.
T h e next morning, Mr. Shi confesses to Madam, "The daughter, she's n o t happy."
"Daughter a happy thing to have," M a d a m says.
"She's divorced."
M a d a m nods, and starts to talk in Persian. Mr. Shi is n o t sure if Madam knows
what divorce means. A woman so boldly in love with the world like her must have
been shielded from life's unpleasantness, by her husband, or her sons maybe. Mr. Shi
looks at Madam, her face brightened by her talking and laughing, and almost envies
her for the energy that his daughter, forty years younger, does n o t possess. For the day
Madam wears a bright orange blouse with prints of purple monkeys, all tumbling and
grinning; on her head she wears a scarf with the same pattern. A displaced woman
she is, but n o doubt happily displaced. Mr. Shi tries to recall what h e knows about
Iran and the country's recent history; with his limited knowledge, all he can conclude is that Madam must be a lucky woman. A lucky man he is, too, despite all the
big and small imperfections. How extraordinary, Mr. Shi thinks, that Madam and he,
from different worlds and with different languages, have this opportunity to sit and
talk in the autumn sunshine.
"In C h i n a we say, Xiu bai shi ke tong zhou," Mr. Shi says w h e n M a d a m stops. It
takes three hundred years of prayers to have the chance to cross a river with someone
in the same boat, h e thinks of explaining to M a d a m in English, but then, what's the
difference between the languages? M a d a m would understand him, w7ith or without
the translation. "That we get to meet and talk to each otherit must have taken a fo?ag
time of good prayers to get us here" h e says in Chinese to Madam.
Madam smiles in agreement.
"There's a reason for every relationship, that's what the saying means. Husband and
wife, parents and children, friends and enemies, strangers you bump into in the street. It
takes three thousand years of prayers to place your head side by side with your loved one s on
the pillow. For father and daughter1 A thousand years, maybe. People don't end up randomly as father and daughter, that's for sure. But the daughter, she doesn't understand this.
She must be thinking I'm a nuisance. She prefers I shut up because that's how she's known
me always. She doesn't understand that I didn't talk much with her mother and her because
1 was a rocket scientist back then. Everything was confidential. We worked all day and when
evening came, the security guards came to collect all our notebooks and scratch papers. We
signed our names on the archive folders, and that was a day's work. Never allowed to tell our
family what we were doing. We were trained not to talk."
Madam listens, b o t h hands folding o n her heart. Mr. Shi hasn't been sitting so
close to a woman his age since his wife died; even when she was alive, he had never
talked this much to her. His eyes feel heavy. Imagine he's traveled half a world to his
daughter, to make up for all the talks he denied her w h e n she was younger, but only to
find her uninterested in his words. Imagine Madam, a stranger who does n o t even
know his language, listens to him with more understanding. Mr. Shi massages his eyes
with his two thumbs. A m a n his age shouldn't indulge himself in unhealthy emotions;
he takes long breaths, and laughs slightly. "Of course, there's a reason for a bad relationship, tooI must be fraying halfheartedly for a thousand years for the daughter."
Madam nods solemnly. S h e understands him, he knows, but he does n o t w a n t to
burden her with his petty unhappiness. H e rubs his hands as if to get rid of the dust of
memory. "Old stories," he says in his best English. "Old stories are n o t exciting."
"I love stories," M a d a m says, and starts to talk. Mr. Shi listens, and she smiles all
the time. H e looks at the grinning monkeys o n her head, bobbing up and down w h e n
she breaks out laughing.
"Lucky people we are," h e says after she finishes talking. "In America, we can
talk anything."
"America good country." Madam nods. "I love America."
T h a t evening, Mr. Shi says to his daughter, "I met this Iranian lady in the park.
Have you met her?"
"No."
"You should meet her sometime. She's so very optimistic. You may find her illuminating for your situation."
"What's my situation?" his daughter asks without looking up from her food.
"You tell me," Mr. Shi says. W h e n his daughter makes n o move to help the conversation, h e says, "You're experiencing a dark time."
"How do you know she would shed light o n my life?"
Mr. Shi opens his mouth, but c a n n o t find an answer. H e is afraid that if h e explains h e and Madam talk in different languages, his daughter will think of him as a
crazy old man. Things that make sense at one time suddenly seem absurd in a different light. H e feels disappointed in his daughter, someone he shares a language with
but with w h o m he can n o longer share a dear m o m e n t . After a long pause, he says,
"You know, a woman shouldn't ask such direct questions. A good woman is deferential
and knows how to make people talk."
"I'm divorced, so certainly I'm not a good woman according to your standard."
Mr. Shi, thinking his daughter is unfairly sarcastic, ignores her. "Your mother
was an example of a good woman."
"Did she succeed in making you talk?" his daughter asks, and her eyes, looking
directly into his, are fiercer t h a n h e knows.
"Your mother wouldn't be so confrontational."
"Baba, first you accused me of being too quiet. 1 start to talk, and you are saying
I'm talking in a wrong way."
"Talking is not only asking questions. Talking is you telling people how you feel
about them, and inviting them to tell you how they feel about you."
"Baba, since w h e n did you become a therapist?"
" I ' m h e r e t o h e l p y o u , a n d I ' m t r y i n g m y best," M r . S h i says. " I n e e d t o k n o w
y o u e n d e d up i n a divorce. I n e e d to k n o w w h a t w e n t w r o n g a n d help y o u to
why
find
the
right p e r s o n the n e x t time. Y o u ' r e m y daughter a n d I w a n t y o u to be happy. I d o n ' t
w a n t y o u to fall t w i c e . "
" B a b a , I d i d n ' t ask y o u before, b u t h o w l o n g d o y o u p l a n to stay i n A m e r i c a ? " his
60
d a u g h t e r says.
" U n t i l you recover."
H i s d a u g h t e r s t a n d s up, t h e legs o f t h e c h a i r s c r a p i n g t h e floor.
" W e ' r e t h e o n l y f a m i l y for e a c h o t h e r n o w , " M r . S h i says, a l m o s t p l e a d i n g , b u t
h i s d a u g h t e r closes h e r b e d r o o m d o o r b e f o r e h e says m o r e . M r . S h i l o o k s at t h e d i s h e s
t h a t are b a r e l y t o u c h e d b y h i s d a u g h t e r , t h e fried t o f u c u b e s stuffed w i t h
mushrooms,
shrimps, a n d ginger, the collage
of b a m b o o
chopped
shoots, red peppers,
and
s n o w peas. E v e n t h o u g h h i s d a u g h t e r a d m i r e s his c o o k i n g every e v e n i n g , h e senses
the halfheartedness
i n her praise; s h e does n o t k n o w
the c o o k i n g has become
his
praying, a n d she leaves the prayers unanswered.
"The wife would've done a better job of cheering the daughter up,"
M r . S h i says
to
"They
were closer to each other. Wasn't that I was not close to them. I loved them dearly. It's what
happened when you were a rocket scientist. I worked hard during the day, and at night I couldn't
stop thinking about my work. Everything was confidential so I couldn't talk to my family about
what I was thinking about. But the wife, she was the most understanding woman in the world.
She knew I was so occupied with my work, and she wouldn't interrupt my thoughts, and wouldn't let the daughter, either. I know now that it was not healthy for the daughter. I should've left
my working self in the office. I was too young to understand that. Now the daughter, she doesn't
have anything to say tome."
M a d a m t h e n e x t m o r n i n g . H e feels m o r e at ease s p e a k i n g to h e r i n C h i n e s e n o w .
T r u l y it w a s h i s m i s t a k e , n e v e r e s t a b l i s h i n g a h a b i t o f t a l k i n g t o h i s d a u g h t e r .
B u t t h e n , h e argues for h i m s e l f i n h i s time, a m a n like h i m , a m o n g the few
65
chosen
to w o r k for a g r a n d cause, h e h a d to b e a r m o r e d u t i e s t o w a r d h i s w o r k t h a n h i s f a m i l y .
H o n o r a b l e a n d sad, b u t h o n o r a b l e m o r e t h a n sad.
At
the dinner
table that e v e n i n g , M r .
Shi's daughter
informs h i m
that
she's
f o u n d a C h i n e s e - s p e a k i n g travel agency that runs tours b o t h o n the East C o a s t
and
t h e W e s t . " Y o u ' r e h e r e to t a k e a l o o k at A m e r i c a . I t h i n k it's best y o u t a k e a c o u p l e o f
tours before winter comes."
" A r e they expensive?"
" I ' l l pay, B a b a . It's w h a t y o u w a n t e d for y o u r birthday, n o ? "
S h e is h i s d a u g h t e r a f t e r a l l ; s h e r e m e m b e r s h i s w i s h a n d s h e h o n o r s it. B u t w h a t
s h e d o e s n o t u n d e r s t a n d i s t h a t t h e A m e r i c a h e w a n t s t o s e e is t h e c o u n t r y w h e r e s h e
is h a p p i l y m a r r i e d . H e
scoops vegetables a n d
fish
into her bowl. " Y o u should
eat
m o r e , " h e says i n a gentle voice.
" S o , I ' m g o i n g to c a l l t h e m t o m o r r o w a n d b o o k t h e t o u r s , " h i s d a u g h t e r says.
" Y o u k n o w , staying here probably does m o r e g o o d for me. I ' m a n old m a n
70
now,
n o t very g o o d for traveling."
" B u t t h e r e ' s n o t m u c h to see h e r e . "
" W h y n o t ? T h i s is t h e A m e r i c a I w a n t e d t o s e e . D o n ' t w o r r y . I h a v e m y
friends
here. I w o n ' t be too much, o f a n a n n o y a n c e to y o u . "
T h e p h o n e rings before h i s d a u g h t e r replies. S h e p i c k s u p the p h o n e a n d
auto-
m a t i c a l l y goes i n t o h e r b e d r o o m . H e waits for the b a n g of the door. S h e n e v e r takes a
-call i n f r o n t o f h i m , e v e n w i t h s t r a n g e r s t r y i n g t o sell h e r s o m e t h i n g o n t h e p h o n e .
few e v e n i n g s w h e n s h e t a l k e d l o n g e r a n d t a l k e d i n a h u s h e d v o i c e , h e h a d to struggle
not to put his ear on the door and listen. This evening, however, she seems to have a
second thought, and leaves the bedroom door open.
H e listens to her speak English on the phone, her voice shriller than he has ever
known it to be. She speaks fast and laughs often. H e does n o t understand her words, but
even more, he does not understand her manner. Her voice, too sharp, too loud, too immodest, is so unpleasant to his ears that for a moment he feels as if h e had accidentally
caught a glimpse of her naked body, a total stranger, not the daughter h e knows.
H e stares at her when she comes out of the room. She puts the receiver back,
and sits down at the table without saying anything. H e watches her face for a moment, and asks, " W h o was it on the phone?"
"A friend."
"A male friend, or a female?"
"A male."
H e waits for her to give further explanation, but she seems to have n o such intention. After a while, he says, "Is this manis he a special friend?"
"Special? Sure."
"How special is he?"
"Baba, maybe this'll make you worry less about meyes, he is a very special one.
More t h a n a friend," his daughter says. "A lover. Do you feel better now that you
know my life isn't as miserable as you thought?"
"Is he American?"
" A n A m e r i c a n now, yes, but he came from Romania."
A t least the m a n grew up in a communist country, Mr. Shi thinks, trying to be
positive. "Do you know h i m well? Does he understand youwhere you were from,
and your culturewell? Remember, you can't make the same mistakes twice. You
have to be really careful."
"We've k n o w n each other for a long time."
"A long time? A m o n t h is n o t a long time!"
"Longer t h a n that, Baba."
" O n e and a half m o n t h s at most, right? Listen, I know you are in pain, but a
woman shouldn't rush, especially in your situation. A b a n d o n e d w o m e n t h e y make
mistakes in loneliness!"
His daughter looks up. "Baba, my marriage wasn't what you thought. I wasn't
abandoned."
Mr. Shi looks at his daughter, her eyes candid with resolve and relief. For a mom e n t he almost wants her to spare h i m any further detail, but like all people, once
she starts talking, h e c a n n o t stop her. "Baba, we were divorced because of this man. I
was the abandoner, if you want to use the term."
"But why?"
"Things go wrong in a marriage, Baba."
"One night of being husband and wife in bed makes them in love for a hundred days.
You were married for seven years! H o w could you do this to your husband? W h a t was
the problem, anyway, besides your little extramarital affair?" Mr. Shi says. A disloyal
woman is t h e last thing he raised his daughter to be.
"There's n o p o i n t talking about it now."
"I'm your father. I have a right to know," Mr. Shi says, banging on the table with
a hand.
"Our problem was I never talked enough for my husband. H e always suspected
that I was hiding something from h i m because I was quiet."
"You were hiding a lover from him."
Mr. Shi's daughter ignores his words. " T h e more h e asked me to talk, t h e more
I wanted to be quiet and alone. I'm n o t good at talking, as you've pointed out."
"But that's a lie. You just talked over the p h o n e with such immodesty! You
talked, you laughed, like a prostitute!"
Mr. Shi's daughter, startled by the vehemence of his words, looks at him for a
long m o m e n t before she replies in a softer voice. "It's different, Baba. W e talk in English, and it's easier. I don't talk well in Chinese."
"That's a ridiculous excuse!"
"Baba, if you grew up in a language that you never used to express your feelings,
it would be easier to take up another language and talk more in the new language. It
makes you a new person."
"Are you blaming your mother and me for your adultery?"
"That's n o t what I'm saying, Baba!"
"But isn't it what you meant? W e didn't do a good job bringing you up in Chinese
so you decided to find a new language and a new lover when you couldn't talk to your
husband honestly about your marriage."
"You never talked, and M a m a never talked, w h e n you b o t h knew there was a
problem in your marriage. I learned not to talk."
"Your m o t h e r and 1 never had a problem. W e were just quiet people."
"But it's a lie!"
"No, it's not. I know I made the mistake of being too preoccupied with my work,
but you have to understand I was quiet because of my profession."
"Baba," Mr. Shi's daughter says, pity in her eyes. "You k n o w it's a lie, too. You
were never a rocket scientist. Mama knew. I knew. Everybody knew."
Mr. Shi stares at his daughter for a long time. "I don't understand what you mean."
"But you know, Baba. You never talked about what you did at work, true, but
other peoplethey talked about you."
Mr. Shi tries to find some words to defend himself, but his lips quiver without
making a sound.
His daughter says, "I'm sorry, Baba. I didn't m e a n to hurt you."
Mr. Shi takes long breaths and tries to maintain his dignity. It is n o t hard to do
so, after all, as he has, for all his life, remained calm about disasters. "You didn't hurt
me. Like you said, you were only talking about truth," he says, and stands up. Before
h e retreats to the guest bedroom, she says quietly behind him, "Baba, I'll book the
tours for you tomorrow."
Mr. Shi sits in the park and waits to say his farewell to Madam. H e has asked his
daughter to arrange for him to leave from San Francisco after his tour of America.
There'll still be a week before he leaves, but he has only the courage to talk to
M a d a m one last time, to clarify all the lies h e has told about himself. He was n o t a
rocket scientist. H e had had the training, and had been one for three years out of the
thirty-eight years h e worked for the Institute. Hard for a young man to remain quiet
about his work, Mr. Shi rehearses in his mind. A young rocket scientist, such pride and
glory. You just wanted to share the excitement with someone.
T h a t someonetwenty-five years old, forty-two years agowas the girl working
on the card-punching machine for Mr. Shi. Punchers they were called back then, a
profession that has long been replaced by more advanced computers, but of all the
.things that have disappeared from his life, a card puncher is what h e misses most. His
100
105
no
115
card puncher. "Name is Yilan," Mr. Shi says aloud to the air, and someone greets the
n a m e with a happy hello. Madam is walking toward h i m with a basket of autumn
leaves. S h e picks up one and hands it to Mr. Shi. "Beautiful," she says.
Mr. Shi studies the leaf, its veins to the tiniest branches, the different shades of 120
yellow and orange. N e v e r before has he seen the world in such detail. He tries to remember the softened edges and dulled colors h e was more used to, but like a patient
with his cataracts taken away, he finds everything sharp and bright, appalling yet attractive. "I want to tell something to you," Mr. Shi says, and M a d a m flashes an eager
smile. Mr. Shi shifts on the bench, and says in English, "I was n o t a rocket scientist."
M a d a m nods hard. Mr. Shi looks at her, and then looks away. "I was not a rocket
scientist because of a woman. The only thing we did was talk. Nothing wrong with talking,
you would imagine, but no, talking between a married man and an unmarried girl was not
accepted. That's how sad our time was back then." Yes, sad is the word, n o t crazy as
young people use to talk about that period. "One would always want to talk, even when
not talking was part of our training." A n d talking, such a commonplace thing, but how
people got addicted to it! T h e i r talking started from five minutes of break in the office, and later they sat in the cafeteria and talked the whole lunch break. T h e y talked
about their hope and excitement in the grand history they were taking part in, of
building the first rocket for their young communist mother.
"Once you started talking, you talked more, and more. It was different than going home
and talking to your wife because you didn't have to hide anything. We talked, about our own
lives, of course. Talking is like riding with an unreined horse, you don't know where you end up
and you don't have to think about it. That's what our talking was like, but we weren't having an
affair as they said. We were never in love," Mr. Shi says, and then, for a short moment, is
confused by his own words. W h a t kind of love is he talking about? Surely they were in
love, not the love they were suspected of havinghe always kept a respectful distance,
their hands never touched. But a love in which they talked freely, a love in which their
minds touchedwasn't it love, too? Wasn't it how his daughter ended her marriage, because of all the talking with another man? Mr. Shi shifts on the bench, and starts to
sweat despite the cool breeze of October. H e insisted they were innocent when they
were accused of having an affair; he appealed for her when she was sent down to a
provincial town. She was a good puncher, but a puncher was always easier to train. H e
was, however, promised to remain in the position on the condition that he publicly admitted his love affair and gave a self-criticism. H e refused because h e believed he was
wronged. "I stopped being a rocket scientist at thirty-two. Never was I involved in any research
after that, but everything at work was confidential so the wife didn't know." A t least that was
what he thought until the previous night. H e was assigned to the lowest position that
could happen to someone with his traininghe decorated offices for the birthdays of
Chairman Mao and the Party; he wheeled the notebooks and paperwork from one research group to the other; in the evening he collected his colleagues' notebooks and paperwork, logged them in, and locked them in the file cabinet in the presence of two security guards. He maintained his dignity at work, and went home to his wife as a
preoccupied and silent rocket scientist. H e looked away from the questions in his wife's
eyes until the questions disappeared one day; he watched his daughter grow up, quiet
and understanding as his wife was, a good girl, a good woman. Thirty-two guards he
worked with during his career, young m e n in uniforms and carrying empty holsters on
their belts, but the bayonets on their rifles were real.
But then, there was n o other choice for him. T h e decision h e madewasn't it
out of loyalty to the wife, and to the other woman? How could h e have admitted t h e
love affair, hurt his good wife, and remained a selfish rocket scientistor, even more
impossible, given up a career, a wife, and a two-year-old daughter for the not so glorious desire to spend a lifetime with another woman? "It is what we sacrifice that makes
life meaningful"Mr. Shi says the line that was often repeated in their training. H e
shakes his head hard. A foreign country gives one foreign thoughts, he thinks. For a n
old m a n like him, it is n o t healthy to ponder too m u c h over memory. A good m a n
should live in the present moment, with Madam, a dear friend sitting next to him,
holding up a perfect golden ginkgo leaf to the sunshine for h i m to see.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Early in the story, the author says of Mr. Shi that "it is never his habit to talk about the
past" (paragraph 13). Why do you think that is?
2. What qualities about Mr. Shi's friend "Madam" make her particularly appealing to him?
3. Mr. Shi says to his daughter, "Talking is you telling people how you feel about them, and
inviting them to tell you how they feel about you" (paragraph 57). Is this really what he
does when he talks to her?
4. What is the significance of the story's title?
5. Do you think that Mr. Shi really loves his daughter? Give the reasons for your answer,
with details from the text.
6. At paragraph 17 Mr. Shi thinks that "America makes him a new person." In what ways
does he seem like a new person? In what ways does he not? After confronting the realities
of his life, is he truly a new person at the end of the story?
7- How do you think the author wants you to feel about Mr. Shi after you have read the story?
' -
. .;'.
V . *
:':
?-
"KITING
'.. -
WRITERS
ON
" W W
v.-:*,;:.
EFFECT I
BSI^lii^mi
WRITING
Yiyuo Li
What I Could Not Write About Was Why I Was Writing
Despite my daytime bravado, I was terrified at
night. I was afraid of being sent to prison for
what I had said to my squad mates; I was
afraid of failing my brainwashing so that I
would be kept in the army for another year or
kicked out of Peking University. It was then,
one night while in the platoon storeroom,
that I discovered the song "American Pie."
I was not the only patron of the storeroom after lights-out. T h r e e other girls in my
platoon had shared t h e expense of a brighter
light bulb. Every night w h e n I snuclc into the
room, they were already in position, two of
them memorizing English vocabulary and
.the third one reading a thick photocopied
volume of Gone tvith the Wind. Sometimes
2004
Y I Y U N LI
other girls would try to squeeze in, but with t h e four of us taking up the space between the shovels and brooms, there was n o place for another person. O t h e r options
were exploredthe small and damp room where we h u n g our laundry was taken up
by a few regulars, as were the two most desired toilet stalls, the ones with doors. Most
of the late-night roamers belonged to the group who believed their only future was to
go to America; they studied English at night and lived with their American dreams
in the dreary daytime. I did n o t consider myself o n e of t h e m , e v e n t h o u g h I too
listened to tapes of English conversations.
W h e n the last of the three girls had finished her late-night study between one
and two o'clock, she would replace the bulb with the original one, a greasy ten-watt.
After she had closed the door, I took out my journal from my uniform pocket and
wrote in the dim light. I did n o t want anyone sitting next to me while I was writing.
Even alone in t h e storeroom, I wrote in a heavily metaphoric language, n o t about my
life, but about the a u t u m n crickets moaning in the grass, t h e pigs strolling by the drill
ground, the hungry spiders trapping the even hungrier flies. Every day w h e n I was in
drill I worried that someone would find my journal under my t h i n straw mattress.
W h a t I could not write about was why I was writing, and obsessively I wrote down
irrelevant things so that I could stop worrying.
O n e night, I put an unmarked tape in my Walkman. Instead of the usual Englishlanguage conversation, there was a m a n playing t h e guitar and singing the saddest
song I h a d ever heard. T h e tape had found its way to me because a high school friend
of mine, who had a crush on an English teacher, had recorded the song off a tape sent
home by his sister from America. His passion ran out before he had a chance to present the cassette to the teacher so, instead, he had stuck it in the pile of English tapes
I brought to the camp.
I curled up on the floor and wept before the last girl left the storeroom. She
looked briefly at me and returned to the photocopied novel. I did not understand most
of the lyrics, but a few lines, sad and slow, made me shiver. "And in the street the children screamed / T h e lovers cried and the poets dreamed / But n o t a wrord was spoken /
T h e church bells all were broken," the m a n chanted. I did n o t understand how he
could remain calm at such a calamity, singing so patiently about a silenced world that
one could n o t love but still could not give up the hope of loving and changing.
From u Bye Bye, Beijing"
WRITING
AN
EVALUATION
Judging a Story's Value
Taste can be hard to explain. W e all have personal favoritesa baseball team, a
movie star, a C D we listen to over and over. Asked why we like the things and people
that we do, we can find ourselves stumped. As Woody Allen famously said, "The
heart wants what it wants."
W h e n we read a story, poem, or play, it's likely that personal taste will color our
response; we might prefer action over romance, or react strongly against any tale set
out in the wilderness. How, then, do we strive to evaluate a story by some perspective
other t h a n the narrowdy personal?
Although it may never be possibleor even desirablecompletely to exclude our
own subjective responses in judging a story, it is possible to begin the evaluation process
by asking how the work itself asks to be judged. W h a t effect does the story intend
humor, horror, suspense, introspection? Do the other elements in the story meaningfully contribute to this goal?
Identifying the genre of a story gives us a sense of how the author intends it to be
read. W e wouldn't necessarily expect depth of psychological characterization in a science fiction story, but we would be hard-pressed to admire a realistic coming-of-age
story that lacked it. A horror story that wasn't scary would be a dud, but we shouldn't
complain that a terrifying tale disappointed us by not being funny.
Keeping in mind the expectations of the story's particular genre can help you
evaluate a story o n its own terms. Remember, too, that the best strategy is not to
deny your personal response but to find some other perspective by which to analyze
your response in relation to the text.
CHECKLIST
Evaluating a
Story
S Does the story belong to any recognizable genre (or literary type) of fiction?
Is it an adventure, a coming-of-age story, a romantic comedy, a fable?
S W h a t are the expectations of that genre? H o w well does the story fulfill
them?
S W h a t emotional effect does the story intend? Do the elements of the story
all contribute to this goal?
^ Apart from genre conventions, what expectations does the story set up?
H o w well does it deliver on those expectations?
S Is the story sentimental? (Does the author seem to want to evoke stronger
emotions t h a n the story itself deserves?) In contrast, a story that succeeds in
evoking strong emotion in the reader may be considered successful in fulfilling the expectations it evokes.
^
If you detect small flaws in the story, are they enough to detract from its full
effect?
S H o w do tone, point of view, characterization, symbolism, dialogue, style,
setting, and plot contribute to the story's full effect?
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
EVALUATING
STORY
Write a short essay evaluating "A T h o u s a n d Years of Good Prayers." Begin by discussing the type of story Yiyun Li seems to have written. W h a t effects does the story
try to create? W h a t does t h e author want to communicate? T h e n evaluate how successful you t h i n k she is in achieving these aims.
MORE
TOPiCS
FOR
WRITING
1. Choose a story you have enjoyed reading. Why do you think it appealed to you? Though
you may begin with matters of personal taste, be sure to move on to the more objective
criteria discussed in this chapter.
2. Reread a story that you dislike, for whatever reason. Write on what there is to admire
about this story. After all, somebody liked it enough to include it in this book. Come up
with a minimum of three strengths possessed by the story.
3. Choose a story that deals with strong emotion in an understated way and rewrite several
key passages to make it extravagantly sentimental. Some good choices are "No One's a
Mystery," "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and "The Lottery." Now write briefly about
what this exercise revealed about understatementhow to achieve it, and why it can
prove useful to a writer.
and Novels
The novel is the one bright book of life.
D . H. LAWRENCE
A m o n g the forms of imaginative literature in our language, the novel has been the
favorite of b o t h writers and readers for more t h a n two hundred years. Broadly delined, a novel is a book-length story in prose, whose author tries to create the sense
that while we read, we experience actual life.
This sense of actuality, also found in artful short stories, may be the quality that sets
the novel apart from other long prose narratives. W h y do we not apply the name novel
to, for instance, Gulliver s Travels? In his marvel-filled account of Lemuel Gulliver's voyages among pygmies, giants, civilized horses, and noxious humanoid swine, Jonathan
Swift does not seem primarily to care if we find his story credible. T h o u g h he arrays the
adventures of Gulliver in painstaking detail (and, ironically, has Gulliver swear to the
truth of them), Swift neither attempts nor achieves a convincing illusion of life. For his
book is a fantastic satire that finds resemblances between noble horses and man's reasoning faculties, between debased apes and man's kinship with the beasts.
Unlike other major literary formsdrama, lyric, ballad, and epicthe novel is a
relative newcomer. Originally, the drama in ancient Greece came alive only when
actors performed it; t h e epic or heroic poem (from the classic Iliad through the Old
English Beowulf), only w h e n a bard sang or chanted it. But t h e English novel came
to maturity in literate times, in the eighteenth century, and by its nature was something different: a story to be communicated silently, at whatever m o m e n t and at
whatever pace (whether quickly or slowly and meditatively) the reader desired.
Some definitions of the novel would more strictly limit its province. "The Novel
is a picture of real life and manners, and of the time in w h i c h it was written," declared Clara Reeve in 178.5, thus distinguishing the novel from the romance, which
"describes what never happened nor is likely to happen." By so specifying that the
novel depicts life in the present day, the critic was probably observing the derivation
of t h e word novel. A k i n to the French word for "news" (nouvelles), it comes from the
Italian novella ("something new and small"), a term applied to a newly made storytaking place in recent times, and n o t a traditional story taking place long ago.
Also drawing a line between novel and romance, N a t h a n i e l Hawthorne, in his
'preface to The House of the Seven Gables (1851), restricted the novel "not merely to
the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience/' A
romance had n o such limitations. Such a definition would deny the n a m e of novel to any fantastic or speculative storyto, say, the G o t h i c novel and the science fiction
novel. Carefully bestowed, the labels novel and romance may be useful to distinguish
between t h e true-to-life story of usual people in ordinary places (such as George
Eliot's Silas Marner or A m y Tan's The Joy Lack Club) and the larger-than-life story of
daring deeds and high adventure, set in the past or future or in some timeless land
(such as Walter Scott's Ivanhoe or J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings). But the labels are difficult to apply to m u c h modern fiction, in which ordinary life is sometimes
mingled with outlandishness. W h o can say that James Joyce's Ulysses is not a novel,
for though it contains moments of dream and drunken hallucination, the total effect,
as in any successful novel, is a sense of the actual.
This sense of the actual is, perhaps, the hallmark of a novel, whether or not the
events it relates are literally possible. T o achieve this sense, novelists have employed
many devices, and frequently have tried to pass off their storytelling as reporting.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his introduction to The Scarlet Letter, gives a minute account of his finding documents tied with a faded red ribbon and gathering dust in a
customs-house, on which he claims to base his novel. Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire
(1962) tells its story in the form of a scholarly edition of a 999-line poem, complete
with a biographical c o m m e n t a r y by a friend of t h e late poet. T h e m a j o r characters
of Max Apple's 1987 novel The Propheteers include W a l t Disney, Howard Johnson,
C . W . Post, and Clarence Birdseye (the inventor of frozen vegetables). Mixing historical fact with shameless invention, Apple creates a story of entrepreneurial vision
and eccentricity weird enough to seem true.
Many early novels were told in the form of letters. Sometimes these epistolary
novels contained letters by only one character; often they contained letters by several of the characters in t h e book. By casting his novel Pamela (1740) into the form
of personal letters, Samuel Richardson helped give the story the appearance of being
not invented but discovered from real documents. Alice Walker's The Color Purple
(1982) is a more recent, epistolary novel, though some of the letters that tell the story
are addressed to God. A n o t h e r method favored by novelists is to write as though setting down a memoir or an autobiography. Daniel Defoe, whose skill in feigning such
memoirs was phenomenal, even succeeded in writing the supposedly true confessions
of a woman retired from a life of crime, Moll Flanders (1722), and in maintaining a
vivid truthfulness:
Going through Aldersgate Street, there was a pretty little child who had
been at a dancing-school, and was going h o m e all alone: and my prompter,
like a true devil, set me upon this innocent creature. I talked to it, and it
prattled to me again, and I took it by the hand and led it along till I came to
a paved alley t h a t goes into Bartholomew Close, and I led it in there. T h e
child said that was n o t its way home. I said, "Yes, my dear, it is; I'll show you
the way home." T h e child had a little necklace on of gold beads, and I had
my eye upon that, and in the dark of the alley I stooped, pretending to mend
the child's clog that was loose, and took off her necklace, and the child
never felt it, and so led the child on again. Here, I say, the devil put me
upon killing the child in the dark alley, that it might n o t cry, but the very
thought frighted m e so that I was ready to drop down; but I turned the child
about and bade it go back again. . . . T h e last affair left n o great concern
upon me, for as I did the poor child n o harm, I only said to myself, I had
given the parents a just reproof for their negligence in leaving t h e poor little
lamb to come h o m e by itself, and it would teach them to take more care of it
another time.
W h a t could sound more like the voice of an experienced child-robber t h a n this manner of excusing her crime, and even justifying it?
Informed that a student had given up the study of mathematics to become a novelist, the logician David Hilbert drily remarked, "It was just as well: he did n o t have
enough imagination to become a first-rate mathematician." 1 It is true that some novelists place great emphasis on research and notetaking. James A. Michener, the internationally best-selling author of novels such as Centennnial (which tracks life in Colorado
from prehistory through modern times) and Chesapeake (which describes 400 years of
events o n Maryland's Eastern Shore), started work o n a book by studying everything
available about his chosen subject. H e also traveled to locations that might appear in
the book, interviewed local people, and compiled immense amounts of scientific, historical, and cultural data. Research alone, however, is n o t enough to finish a novel.
A novel grows to completion only through the slow mental process of creation, selection, and arrangement. But raw facts can sometimes provide a beginning. Many novels started w h e n the author read some arresting episode in a newspaper or magazine.
Theodore Dreiser's impressive study of a murder, A n American Tragedy (1925), for
example, was inspired by a journalist's account of a real-life case.
Since b o t h t h e novel and journalism try to capture the fabric of everyday life,
there has long been a close relationship between the two literary forms. Many novelists, among t h e m Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, and Jack London, began their
writing careers as cub reporters. Ambrose Bierce was the most influential newspaper
satirist of his day. T h e two modes of writing, however, remain different. "Literature is
the art of writing something that will be read twice," commented critic and novelistCyril Connolly, "journalism what will be grasped at once." Journalism greatly influences how novelists depict the world around them. S t e p h e n Crane's "The O p e n
Boat" (Chapter 6) began as a newspaper account of his actual experiences in a small
rowboat after the sinking of t h e Commodore in 1897. A journalist might have been
c o n t e n t with such a gripping first-person story of surviving a shipwreck, but a great
fiction writer has the gift of turning personal bad luck into art, and C r a n e eventually
created a masterpiece of fiction based on fact.
In the 1960s there was a great deal of talk about the nonfiction novel, in which
the author presents actual people and events in story form. T h e vogue of the nonfiction novel was created by T r u m a n Capote's In Cold Blood (1966), which depicts an
actual multiple murder and the resulting trial in Kansas. C a p o t e traveled to the scene
of the crime and interviewed all of t h e principal parties, including the murderers.
N o r m a n Mailer wrote a similar novel, The Executioner s Song (1979), chronicling the
life and death of Gary Gilmore, the U t a h murderer who demanded his own execution. More recently, J o h n Berendt's darkly comic 1994 account of the upperclass and
underclass of Savannah, Georgia, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (which also
centers o n a murder and the subsequent, trial), revived interest in the form. Perhaps
t h e n a m e "nonfiction novel" (Capote's term for it) or "true life novel" (as Mailer
calls his Gilmore story) is newer t h a n the form. In the past, writers of autobiography
. Quoted by William H. Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life (New York: Knopf, 1970).
have cast their memoirs into what looks like novel form: Richard Wright in Black
Boy (1945), William Burroughs in Junkie (1953). Derived not from the a u t h o r s memory but from his reporting, John Mersey's Hiroshima (1946) reconstructs the lives
of six survivors of the atom bomb as if they were fictional In reading such works we
may nearly forget we are reading literal truth, so well do the techniques of the novel
lend remembered facts an air of immediacy.
A familiar kind of fiction that claims a basis in fact is the historical novel, a
detailed reconstruction of life in another time, perhaps in another place. In some historical novels the author attempts a faithful picture of daily life in another era, as
does Robert Graves in I, Claudius (1934), a novel of patrician Rome. More often,
history is a backdrop for an exciting story of love and heroic adventure. Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (set in Puritan Boston), H e r m a n Melville's Moby-Dick
(set in the heyday of Yankee whalers), and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of
Courage (set on the battlefields of the Civil War) are historical novels in that their
authors lived considerably later t h a n the scenes and events that they depictedand
strove for truthfulness, by imaginative means.
O t h e r varieties of novel will be familiar to anyone who scans the racks of paperback books in any drugstore: the mystery or detective novel, the Western novel, the
science fiction novel, and other enduring types. Classified according to less wellknown species, novels are sometimes said to belong to a category if they contain some
recognizable kind of structure or theme. S u c h a category is the
Bildungsroman
(German for a "novel of growth or development"), sometimes called the apprenticeship novel after its classic example, Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship (1796) by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This is the kind of novel in which a youth struggles toward maturity, seeking, perhaps, some consistent worldview or philosophy of life.
Sometimes the apprenticeship novel is evidently the author's recollection of his own
early life: James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Mark Twain's
Tom Sawyer.
In a picaresque novel (another famous category), a likable scoundrel wanders
through adventures, living by his wits, duping the straight citizenry. T h e name comes
from Spanish: picaro, "rascal" or "rogue." T h e classic picaresque novel is the anonymous Spanish Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), imitated by many English writers,
among them Henry Fielding in his story of a London thief and racketeer, Jonathan
Wild (1743). Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn owes something to the tradition; like
early picaresque novels, it is told in episodes rather than in one all-unifying plot and is
narrated in the first person by a hero at odds with respectable society ("dismal regular
and decent," Huck Finn calls it). In Twain's novel, however, the traveling swindlers
who claim to be a duke and a dauphin are much more typical rogues of picaresque fiction than Huck himself, an honest innocent. Modern novels worthy of the name include J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man (1965), Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie
March (1953), Erica Jong's Fanny (1981), and Seth Morgan's Homeboy (1990).
T h e term short novel (or novella) mainly describes the size of a narrative; it
refers to a narrative midway in length between a short story and a novel. (E. M.
Forster once said that a novel should be at least 50,000 words in length, and most editors and publishers would agree with that definition.) Generally a short novel, like a
short story, focuses on just one or two characters; but, unlike a short story, it has
room to examine them in great depth and detail. A short novel also often explores its
characters over a greater period of time. Many writers, such as Thomas M a n n , Henry
James, Joseph Conrad, and Willa Cather, favored the novella (called nouvelle in
France) as a perfect medium between the necessary compression of the short story and
the potential sprawl of the novel. Franz Kafka's famous novella The Metamorphosis is
included in this book. W h e n the term novelette is used, it usually refers (often disapprovingly) to a short novel written for a popular magazine, especially in such fields as
science fiction, romance, Westerns, and horror.
Trying to perceive a novel as a whole, we may find it helpful to look for the same
elements that we have noticed in reading short stories. By asking ourselves leading
questions, we may be drawn more deeply into the novel's world, and may come to recognize and appreciate the techniques of the novelist. Does the novel have themes, or
an overall theme? W h o is its main character? W h a t is the author's kind of narrative
voice? W h a t do we know about the tone, style, and use of irony? W h y is this novel
written from one point of view rather than from another? If the novel in question is
large and thickly populated, it may help to read it with a pencil and take brief notes.
Forced to put the novel aside and later return to it, the reader may find that the notes
refresh the memory. Notetaking habits differ, but perhaps these might be 110 more
than, say, "Theme introduced, p. 27," or "Old clothes dealer, p. 109walking symbol?" Some readers find it useful to list briefly whatever each chapter accomplishes.
Others make lists of a novel's characters, especially w h e n reading classic Russian novels in which the reader has to recall that Dostoyevsky's Alexey Karamazov is also identified by his pet name, Alyosha, or that, in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Princess
Catherine Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya and "Kitty" are one and the same.
O n c e our reading of a novel is finished and we prepare to discuss it or write about
it, it may be a good idea to browse through it again, rereading brief portions. This
m e t h o d of overall browsing may also help w h e n first approaching a bulky and difficult novel. Just as an explorer mapping unfamiliar territory may find it best to begin
by taking a n aerial view of it, so too the reader approaching an exceptionally thick
and demanding novel may wish, at the start, to look for its general shape. This is the
method of some professional book reviewers, who size up a novel (even an easy-toread spy story, because they are not reading for pleasure) by skimming the first chapter, a middle chapter or two, and the last chapter; t h e n going back and browsing at
top speed through the rest. Reading a novel in this grim fashion, of course, the reviewer does not really know it thoroughly, any more t h a n a tourist knows the mind
and heart of a foreign people after just, strolling in a capital city and riding a tour bus
to a few monuments. T h e reviewer's method will, however, provide a general notion
of what the author is doing, and at the very least will tell something of his or her
tone, style, point of view, and competence. W e suggest this method only as a way to
approach a book that, otherwise, the reader might n o t want to approach at all. It may
be a comfort in studying some obdurate-looking or highly experimental novel, such
as James Joyce's Ulysses or Henry James's The Sacred Fount. But the reader will find it
necessary to return to the book, in order to know it, and to read it honestly, in detail.
T h e r e is, of course, n o shortcut to novel reading, and probably the best method is to
settle in comfort and read the book through: with your own eyes, n o t with the borrowed glasses of literary criticism.
T h e death of the novel has been frequently announced. Competition from television, DVDs, video games, and the Internet, critics claim, will overwhelm the habit of
reading; the public is lazy and will follow the easiest route available for entertainment.
But in England and America television and films have been sending people back in
vast numbers to the books they dramatize. Jane Austen has never lacked readers, but
films such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility (not to
mention Clueless, a teenage version of Emma set in Beverly Hills, or Bride and Prejudice, a singing and dancing Bollywood treatment set in modern-day India) made heroine of the world's best-selling novelists. Stylish adaptations of Philip K. Dick's offbeat
science fiction, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report, have created
a cult for his once neglected work. Even experimental novels such as Virginia Woolf s
Orlando and William Burroughs's Naked Lunch have become successful films that have
in turn sent a new generation of readers back to the books. Sometimes Hollywood
even helps bring a good book into print. N o one would publish Thomas Disch's sophisticated children's novella, The Brave Little Toaster, until W a l t Disney turned it
into a cartoon movie. A major publisher t h e n n o t only rushed it into print, but commissioned a sequel as well.
Meanwhile, each year new novels by the hundreds continue to appear, their
authors wistfully looking for a public. A chosen few reach tens of thousands of
readers through book clubs, and, through paperback reprint editions, occasionally
millions more. T o forecast the end of the novel seems risky, for the novel exercises
the imagination of the beholder. A t any hour, at a touch of the hand, it opens and
(with n o warm-up) begins to speak. O n c e printed, it consumes n o further energy. Often so small it may be carried in a pocket, it may yet survive by its ability to contain
multitudes (a "capacious vessel," Henry James called it): a thing that is both a work
of art and an amazingly compact system for the storage and retrieval of imagined life.
The Death of Ivan llych
1886
TRANSLATED BY LOUISE A N D AYLMER MAUDE
The complex and contradictory Leo NiJiolaevich
Tolstoy (1828-1910) is generally considered the
greatest Russian novelist. Born on his aristocratic
family's country estate, Yasnaya Poly ana, in
central Russia, he ivas orphaned at nine and
raised by his aunts. At sixteen, Tolstoy entered
Kazan University to study law, but soon returned to the family estate. The young count
took off for St. Petersburg and Moscow, where
he led a profligate lifecarefully listing his
moral transgressions in his diary. In 1851 Tolstoy joined the army and fought in the Caucasus. It was there that he completed his first book,
Childhood (1852), a lyrical memoir. Having
served in the Crimean War, he left the army in
LEO TOLSTOY
1856 to become a writer.
For the next six decades the brilliant and
perpetually dissatisfied Tolstoy tried to settle in Yasnaya Poly ana, but frequently escaped to
St. Petersburg and Western Europe. In 1862 he wed Sony a Bers, an intellectual middleclass woman. Initially happy, the marriage was eventually undermined by the sex-obsessed
and guilt-ridden Tolstoy, who engaged in many infidelities (which were sometimes followed
by the author's unsuccessful renunciations of sex). Despite its many problems, the marriage
produced thirteen children. At Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy wrote his two greatest novels, the
six-volume W a r and Peace ( 1 8 6 3 - 1 8 6 9 ) , which depicts the lives of five aristocratic Russian families during the Napoleonic Wars, and A n n a Karenina (1877),
tells the
tragic story of a woman led by romantic illusions into a destructive adulterous liaison. As
Tolstoy grew older, he became obsessed with early Christianity. He formulated his own version of Christ's teachings, stressing simplicity, love, nonviolence, and community property.
Excommunicated by the Orthodox Church, the county who now dressed in peasant clothing,
preached his "Christian anarchism" to the Russian intelligentsia in streams of books and
pamphlets. Upset by his ruined marriage and his inability to renounce his personal wealth,
the eighty-two-year-old Tolstoy fled home one night to enter a monastery. He died of pneumonia a few days later in a provincial railway station.
Tolstoy is one of the great masters of European Realism. His fame came early and has
never been seriously challenged. Much of his fiction examines a tragic predicament of human existencethe difficult search for truth and justice in a world of limited knowledge and
ethical imperfection. Tolstoy resolutely believed in the moral development of humanity, but
was also painfully aware of the obstacles to genuine progress. His gripping novella T h e
Death of Ivan Ilych dramatizes Tolstoy's central spiritual concerns. His antiheroic Everyman faces death with the horrifying realization that he has not lived a correct or meaningful life.
i
During an interval in the Melvinski trial in the large building of the Law Courts,
the members and public prosecutor met in Ivan Egorovich Shebek's private room,
where the conversation turned on the celebrated Krasovski case. Fedor Vasilievich
warmly maintained that it was n o t subject to their jurisdiction, Ivan Egorovich maintained the contrary, while Peter Ivanovich, n o t having entered into the discussion at
the start, took no part in it but looked through the Gazette which had just been
handed in.
"Gentlemen," h e said, "Ivan Ilych has died!"
"You don't say so!"
"Here, read it yourself," replied Peter Ivanovich, h a n d i n g Fedor Vasilievich the
paper still damp from the press. Surrounded by a black border were the words:
"Praskovya Fedorovna Golovina, with profound sorrow, informs relatives and friends
of the demise of her beloved husband Ivan Ilych Golovin, Member of the C o u r t of
Justice, which occurred on February the 4 t h of this year 1882. T h e funeral will take
place on Friday at one o'clock in the afternoon."
Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked by them
all. H e had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be incurable. His post had
been kept open for him, but there had b e e n conjectures that in case of his death
Alexeev might receive his appointment, and that either Vinnikov or Shtabel would
succeed Alexeev. So o n receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's d e a t h the first thought of
each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it
might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances.
"I shall be sure to get ShtabePs place or Vinnikov's," thought Fedor Vasilievich.
"I was promised that long ago, and the promotion means an extra eight hundred
rubles a year for me besides the allowance."
"Now I must apply for my brother-in-law's transfer from Kaluga," thought Peter
Ivanovich. "My wife will be very glad, and t h e n she won't be able to say that I never
do anything for her relations."
"I thought h e would never leave his bed again," said Peter Ivanovich aloud. "It's
very sad."
"But what really was the matter with him?"
"The doctors couldn't sayat least they could, but each of them said something 10
different. W h e n last I saw h i m I thought h e was getting better."
"And I haven't been to see h i m since the holidays. I always m e a n t to go."
"Had he any property?"
"I t h i n k his wife had a littlebut something quite trifling."
" W e shall have to go to see her, but they live so terribly far away."
"Far away from you, you mean. Everything's far away from your place."
15
"You see, he never c a n forgive my living on t h e o t h e r side of t h e river," said
Peter Ivanovich, smiling at Shebek. T h e n , still talking of the distances between different parts of the city, they returned to the Court.
Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions likely to result from Ivan Ilych's death, the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance
aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling t h a t "it is he who is
dead and not I."
Each one thought or felt, "Well, he's dead but I'm alive!" But the more intimate
of Ivan Ilych's acquaintances, his so-called friends, could n o t help thinking also that
they would now have to fulfil the very tiresome demands of propriety by attending
the funeral service and paying a visit of condolence to the widow.
Fedor Vasilievich and Peter Ivanovich had been his nearest acquaintances. Peter
Ivanovich had studied law with Ivan Ilych and had considered himself to be under
obligations to him.
Having told his wife at dinner-time of Ivan Ilych's death and of his conjecture 20
that it might be possible to get her brother transferred to their circuit, Peter
Ivanovich sacrificed his usual nap, put o n his evening clothes, and drove to Ivan
Ilych's house.
A t the entrance stood a carriage and two cabs. Leaning against the wall in the
hall downstairs near the cloak-stand was a coffin-lid covered with cloth of gold, ornamented with gold cord and tassels, that had been polished up with metal powder.
T w o ladies in black were taking off their fur cloaks. Peter Ivanovich recognized one
of them as Ivan Ilych's sister, but the other was a stranger to him. His colleague
Schwartz was just coming downstairs, but o n seeing Peter Ivanovich enter h e stopped
and winked at him, as if to say: "Ivan Ilych has made a mess of thingsnot like you
and me."
Schwartz's face with his Piccadilly whiskers and his slim figure in evening dress
had as usual an air of elegant solemnity which contrasted with the playfulness of his
character and had a special piquancy here, or so it seemed to Peter Ivanovich.
Peter Ivanovich allowed the ladies to precede h i m and slowly followed t h e m upstairs. Schwartz did not come down but remained where h e was, and Peter Ivanovich
understood that h e wanted to arrange where they should play bridge that evening.
T h e ladies went upstairs to the widow's room, and Schwartz with seriously compressed lips but a playful look in his eyes, indicated by a twist of his eyebrows t h e
room to the right where the body lay.
Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered feeling uncertain
what h e would have to do. All he knew was that at such times it is always safe to
cross oneself. But h e was n o t quite sure whether one should make obeisances while
doing so. H e therefore adopted a middle course. O n entering the room h e began
crossing himself and made a slight m o v e m e n t resembling a bow. A t the same time, as
far as the motion of his head and arm allowed, h e surveyed the room. T w o young
menapparently nephews, one of w h o m was a high-school pupilwere leaving the
room, crossing themselves as they did so. A n old w o m a n was standing motionless,
and a lady with strangely arched eyebrows was saying something to her in a whisper.
A vigorous, resolute C h u r c h Reader, in a frock-coat, was reading something in a
loud voice with an expression that precluded any contradiction. T h e butler's assistant, Gerasim, stepping lightly in front of Peter Ivanovich, was strewing something
o n the floor. Noticing this, Peter Ivanovich was immediately aware of a faint odor of a
decomposing body.
T h e last time h e had called on Ivan Ilych, Peter Ivanovich had seen Gerasim in
the study. Ivan Ilych had been particularly fond of him and he was performing the
duty of a sick nurse.
Peter Ivanovich continued to make the sign of the cross, slightly inclining his
head in an intermediate direction between the coffin, the Reader, and the icons on
the table in a corner of the room. Afterwards, w h e n it seemed to h i m that this movem e n t of his arm in crossing himself had gone o n too long, h e stopped and began to
look at the corpse.
T h e dead m a n lay, as dead men always lie, in a specially heavy way, his rigid
limbs sunk in the soft cushions of the coffin, with the head forever bowed o n the pillow. His yellow waxen brow with bald patches over his sunken temples was thrust up
in the way peculiar to the dead, the protruding nose seeming to press o n the upper
lip. H e was much changed and had grown even t h i n n e r since Peter Ivanovich had
last seen him, but, as is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and
above all more dignified t h a n when h e was alive. T h e expression on the face said that
what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly. Besides this
there was in that expression a reproach and a warning to the living. This warning
seemed to Peter Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him. He felt a
certain discomfort and so he hurriedly crossed himself once more and turned and
went out the doortoo hurriedly and too regardless of propriety, as he himself was
aware.
Schwartz was waiting for h i m in t h e adjoining room with legs spread wide apart
and b o t h hands toying with his top-hat behind his back. T h e mere sight of that playful, well-groomed, and elegant figure refreshed Peter Ivanovich. H e felt that
Schwartz was above all these happenings and would n o t surrender to any depressing
influences. His very look said that this incident of a church service for Ivan Ilych
could not be a sufficient reason for infringing the order of t h e sessionin other
words, that it would certainly n o t prevent his tin wrapping a new pack of cards and
shuffling them that evening while a f o o t m a n placed four fresh candles on the table:
in fact, that there was n o reason for supposing that this incident would hinder their
spending the evening agreeably. Indeed h e said this in a whisper as Peter Ivanovich
passed him, proposing t h a t they should meet for a game at Fedor Vasilievich's. But
apparently Peter Ivanovich was n o t destined to play bridge that evening. Praskovya
Fedorovna (a short, fat woman who despite all efforts to the contrary had continued
to broaden steadily from her shoulders downwards and who had the same extraordinarily arched eyebrows as the lady who had been standing by the coffin), dressed all
in black, her head covered with lace, came out of her own room with some other
ladies, conducted them to the room where the dead body lay, and said: "The service
will begin immediately. Please go in."
Schwartz, making an indefinite bow, stood still, evidently neither accepting nor
declining this invitation. Praskovya Fedorovna, recognizing Peter Ivanovich, sighed,
25
went close up to him, took his hand, and said: "I know you were a true friend to Ivan
Ilych . . . " and looked at h i m awaiting some suitable response. A n d Peter Ivanovich
knew that, just as it had been the right thing to cross himself in that room, so what
he had to do here was to press her hand, sigh, and say, "Believe me. . . ." So he did all
this and as he did it felt that the desired result had been achieved: that b o t h h e and
she were touched.
"Come with me. I want to speak to you before it begins," said the widow. "Give
me your arm."
Peter Ivanovich gave her his arm and they went to t h e inner rooms, passing
Schwartz, who winked at Peter Ivanovich compassionately.
"That does for our bridge! D o n ' t object if we find another player. Perhaps you
can cut in w h e n you do escape," said his playful look.
Peter Ivanovich sighed still more deeply and despondently, and Praskovya Fedorovna pressed his arm gratefully. W h e n they reached t h e drawing-room, upholstered in pink cretonne and lighted by a dim lamp, they sat down at the tableshe
on a sofa and Peter Ivanovich on a low pouffe, the springs of which yielded spasmodically under his weight. Praskovya Fedorovna had been o n the point of warning h i m
to take another seat, but felt that such a warning was out of keeping with her present
condition and so changed her mind. As h e sat down on the pouffe Peter Ivanovich
recalled how Ivan Ilych had arranged this room and had consulted him regarding this
pink c r e t o n n e with green leaves. T h e whole room was full of furniture and knickknacks, and o n her way to the sofa the lace of the widow's black shawl caught on the
carved edge of the table. Peter Ivanovich rose to detach it, and the springs of the
pouffe, relieved of his weight, rose also and gave h i m a push. T h e widow began detaching her shawl herself, and Peter Ivanovich again sat down, suppressing the rebellious springs of the pouffe under him. But the widow had n o t quite freed herself and
Peter Ivanovich got up again, and again the pouffe rebelled and even creaked. W h e n
this was all over she took out a clean cambric handkerchief and began to weep. T h e
episode with the shawl and the struggle with the pouffe h a d cooled Peter Ivanovich's
emotions and he sat there with a sullen look on his face. This awkward situation was
interrupted by Sokolov, Ivan Ilych's butler, who came to report that the plot in the
cemetery that Praskovya Fedorovna had chosen would cost two hundred rubles. She
stopped weeping and, looking at Peter Ivanovich with the air of a victim, remarked
in French that it was very hard for her. Peter Ivanovich made a silent gesture signifying his full conviction t h a t it must indeed be so.
"Please smoke," she said in a magnanimous yet crushed voice, and turned to
discuss with Sokolov t h e price of the plot for the grave.
Peter Ivanovich while lighting his cigarette heard her inquiring very circumstantially into the prices of different plots in the cemetery and finally decide which she
would take. W h e n that was done she gave instructions about engaging the choir.
Sokolov t h e n left the room.
"I look after everything myself," she told Peter Ivanovich, shifting the albums
that lay on the table; and noticing that the table was endangered by his cigarette-ash,
she immediately passed h i m an ashtray, saying as she did so: "I consider it an affectation to say that my grief prevents my attending to practical affairs. O n t h e contrary, if
anything canI won't say console me, butdistract me, it is seeing to everything
concerning him." She again took out her handkerchief as if preparing to cry, but suddenly, as if mastering her feeling, she shook herself and began to speak calmly. "But
there is something I want to talk to you about."
Peter Ivanovich bowed, keeping control of the springs of the pouffe, which
immediately began quivering under him.
"He suffered terribly the last few days."
"Did he?" said Peter Ivanovich.
"Oh, terribly! H e screamed unceasingly, n o t for minutes but for hours. For the
last three days h e screamed incessantly. It was unendurable. I c a n n o t understand how
I bore it; you could hear him three rooms off. O h , what I h a v e suffered!"
"Is it possible that h e was conscious all that time?" asked Peter Ivanovich.
"Yes," she whispered. "To the last m o m e n t . Fie took leave of us a quarter of an
hour before h e died, and asked us to take Vasya away."
T h e thought of the sufferings of this m a n he had k n o w n so intimately, first as a
merry little boy, t h e n as a school-mate, and later as a grown-up colleague, suddenly
struck Peter Ivanovich with horror, despite an unpleasant consciousness of his own
and this woman's dissimulation. H e again saw that brow, and that nose pressing
down o n the lip, and felt afraid for himself.
"Three days of frightful suffering and t h e n death! W h y , t h a t might suddenly, at
any time, h a p p e n to me," h e thought, and for a m o m e n t felt terrified. Buthe did
not himself know h o w t h e customary reflection at once occurred to h i m that this
had happened to Ivan Ilych and n o t to him, and that it should n o t and could not
happen to him, and that to think that it could would be yielding to depression which
h e ought n o t to do, as Schwartz's expression plainly showed. A f t e r w h i c h reflection
Peter Ivanovich felt reassured, and began to ask with interest about t h e details
of Ivan Ilych's death, as though death was an accident natural to Ivan Ilych but
certainly n o t to himself.
After many details of the really dreadful physical sufferings Ivan Ilych had endured (which details h e learnt only from the effect those sufferings had produced on
Praslcovya Fedorovna's nerves) the widow apparently found it necessary to get to
business.
"Oh, Peter Ivanovich, how hard it is! H o w terribly, terribly hard!" and she again
began to weep.
Peter Ivanovich sighed and waited for her to finish blowing her nose. W h e n she
had done so he said, "Believe me . . ." and she again began talking and brought out
what was evidently her chief concern with himnamely, to question h i m as to how
she could obtain a grant of money from the government, o n the occasion of her husband's death. S h e made it appear that she was asking Peter Ivanovich's advice about
her pension, but he soon saw that she already knew about that to the minutest detail,
more even t h a n he did himself. S h e knew how m u c h could be got out of the government in consequence of her husband's death, but wanted to find out whether she
could n o t possibly extract something more. Peter Ivanovich tried to think of some
means of doing so, but after reflecting for a while and, out of propriety, condemning
the government for its niggardliness, h e said h e thought that n o t h i n g more could be
got. T h e n she sighed and evidently began to devise means of getting rid of her visitor.
Noticing this, h e put out his cigarette, rose, pressed her hand, and went out into the
anteroom.
In the dining-room where t h e clock stood that Ivan Ilych had liked so much
and had bought at an antique shop, Peter Ivanovich met a priest and a few acquaintances who had come to attend t h e service, and he recognized Ivan Ilych's daughter,
a handsome young woman. S h e was in black and her slim figure appeared slimmer
t h a n ever. S h e had a gloomy, determined, almost angry expression, and bowed to
40
45
Peter Ivanovich as though h e were in some way to blame. Behind her, with the same
offended look, stood a wealthy young man, an examining magistrate, whom Peter Ivanovich also knew and who was her fiance, as he had heard. H e bowed mournfully
to t h e m and was about to pass into t h e death-chamber, w h e n from under the stairs
appeared the figure of Ivan Ilych's schoolboy son, who was extremely like his father.
He seemed a little Ivan Ilych, such as Peter Ivanovich remembered w h e n they studied law7 together. His tear-stained eyes had in t h e m the look that is seen in the eyes
of boys of thirteen or fourteen who are n o t pure-minded. W h e n h e saw Peter
Ivanovich he scowled morosely and shamefacedly. Peter Ivanovich nodded to him
and entered the death-chamber. T h e service began: candles, groans, incense, tears,
and sobs. Peter Ivanovich stood looking gloomily down at his feet. H e did n o t look
once at t h e dead man, did n o t yield to any depressing influence, and was one of the
first to leave the room. T h e r e was n o one in t h e anteroom, but Gerasim darted out
of the dead man's room, rummaged with his strong hands among the fur coats to find
Peter Ivanovich's, and helped h i m on with it.
"Well, friend Gerasim," said Peter Ivanovich, so as to say something. "It's a sad
affair, isn't it?"
"It's God's will. W e shall all come to it some day," said Gerasim, displaying his
t e e t h t h e even, white teeth of a healthy peasantand, like a m a n in t h e thick of
urgent work, he briskly opened the front door, called the coachman, helped Peter
Ivanovich into the sledge, and sprang back to t h e porch as if in readiness for what h e
had to do next.
Peter Ivanovich found t h e fresh air particularly pleasant after the smell of incense, t h e dead body, and carbolic acid.
" W h e r e to, sir?" asked the coachman.
"It's n o t too late even now . . . I'll call round on Fedor Vasilievich."
H e accordingly drove there and found them just finishing the first rubber, so that
it was quite convenient for h i m to cut in.
II
Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most
terrible.
H e had been a member of the Court of Justice, and died at the age of forty-five.
His father had been a n official who after serving in various ministries and departments in Petersburg had made the sort of career which brings m e n to positions from
which by reason of their long service they c a n n o t be dismissed, though they are obviously unfit to hold any responsible position, and for whom therefore posts are specially created, which, though fictitious, carry salaries of from six to ten thousand
rubles that are n o t fictitious, and in receipt of which they live o n to a great age.
Such was the Privy Councillor and superfluous member of various superfluous
institutions, llya Epimovich Golovin.
H e h a d three sons, of w h o m I v a n Ilych was t h e second. T h e eldest son was
following in his father's footsteps only in a n o t h e r d e p a r t m e n t , and was already
approaching that stage in the service at which a similar sinecure would be reached.
T h e third son was a failure. H e had ru ined his prospects in a number of positions and
was now serving in the railway department. His father and brothers, and still more
their wives, n o t merely disliked meeting him, but avoided remembering his existence
unless compelled to do so. His sister had married Baron Greff, a Petersburg official of
her father's type. Ivan Ilych was le phenix de lafamille0 as people said. H e was neither
as cold and formal as his elder brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy
mean between t h e m a n intelligent, polished, lively, and agreeable man. H e had
studied with his younger brother at the School of Law, but the latter had failed to
complete the course and was expelled w h e n he was in the fifth class. Ivan Ilych finished the course well. Even when he was at the School of Law he was just what h e remained for the rest of his life: a capable, cheerful, good-natured, and sociable man,
though strict in the fulfillment of what he considered to be his duty: and h e considered his duty to be what was so considered by those in authority. N e i t h e r as a boy nor
as a m a n was he a toady, but from early youth was by nature attracted to people of
high station as a fly is drawn to the light, assimilating their ways and views of life and
establishing friendly relations with t h e m . All the enthusiasms of childhood and
youth passed without leaving much trace o n him; he succumbed to sensuality, to
vanity, and latterly among the highest classes to liberalism, but always within limits
w h i c h his instinct unfailingly indicated to h i m as correct.
A t school he had done things which had formerly seemed to h i m very horrid and
made him feel disgusted with himself w h e n he did them; but w h e n later on he saw
that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard
t h e m as wrong, h e was able n o t exactly to regard t h e m as right, but to forget about
them entirely or n o t be at all troubled at remembering them.
Having graduated from the School of Law and qualified for the t e n t h rank of the
civil service, and having received money from his father for his equipment, Ivan
Ilych ordered himself clothes at Scharmer's, the fashionable tailor, hung a medallion
inscribed respice /inem on his watch-chain, took leave of his professor and the prince
who was patron of the school, had a farewell dinner with his comrades at Donon's
first-class restaurant, and with his new and fashionable portmanteau, linen, clothes,
shaving a n d other toilet appliances, and a traveling rug all purchased at the best
shops, he set off for one of the provinces where through his father's influence, h e had
been attached to the Governor as a n official for special service.
In the province Ivan Ilych soon arranged as easy and agreeable a position for
himself as he had had at the School of Law. H e performed his official tasks, made his
career, and at the same time amused himself pleasantly and decorously. Occasionally
h e paid official visits to country districts, where he behaved with dignity both to his
superiors and inferiors, and performed the duties entrusted to him, which related
chiefly to the sectarians, 0 with an exactness and incorruptible honesty of which he
could n o t but feel proud.
In official matters, despite his youth and taste for frivolous gaiety, he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe; but in society h e was o f t e n amusing and
witty, and always good-natured, correct in his manner, and ban enfantas
the Governor and his wifewith whom he was like one of the familyused to say of him.
In the province he had an affair with a lady who made advances to the elegant
young lawyer, and there was also a milliner; and there were carousals with aides-decamp who visited the district, and after-supper visits to a certain outlying street of
doubtful reputation; and there was too some obsequiousness to his chief and even to
le phenix de lafamille: French for "the prize of the family." respice finem: Latin for "Think of the
end (of your life)." sectarians: dissenters from the Orthodox Church, bon enfant: French for "a
well-behaved child."
60
his chief's wife, but all this was done with such a tone of good breeding that n o hard
names could be applied to it. It all came under the heading of the French saying: "II faut que jeunesse se passe."0 It was all done with clean hands, in clean linen, with
French phrases, and above all among people of the best society and consequently
with the approval of people of rank.
So Ivan Ilych served for five years and t h e n came a change in his official life.
T h e new and reformed judicial institutions were introduced, and new men were
needed. Ivan Ilych became such a new man. H e was offered the post of examining
magistrate, and h e accepted it though the post was in another province and obliged
him to give up the connections he had formed and to make new ones. His friends
met to give him a send-off; they had a group-photograph taken and presented h i m
with a silver cigarette-case, and h e set off to his new post.
As examining magistrate Ivan Ilych was just as comme il faut and decorous a
man, inspiring general respect and capable of separating his official duties from his
private life, as h e had been when acting as a n official o n special service. His duties
now as examining magistrate were far more interesting and attractive t h a n before. In
his former position it had been pleasant to wear an undress uniform made by
Scharmer, and to pass through the crowd of petitioners and officials who were timorously awaiting an audience with the Governor, and who envied h i m as with free and
easy gait h e went straight into his chief s private room to have a cup of tea and a cigarette with him. But n o t many people had been directly dependent on himonly
police officials and the sectarians w h e n h e w e n t on special missionsand h e liked to
treat them politely, almost as comrades, as if h e were letting t h e m feel that he who
had the power to crush t h e m was treating t h e m in this simple, friendly way. T h e r e
were t h e n but few such people. But now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych felt
that everyone without exception, even the most important and self-satisfied, was in
his power, and that he need only write a few words on a sheet of paper with a certain
heading, and this or that important, self-satisfied person would be brought before h i m
in the role of an accused person or a witness, and if he did not choose to allow him to
sit down, would have to stand before h i m and answer his questions. Ivan Ilych never
abused his power; h e tried on the contrary to soften its expression, but the consciousness of it and of the possibility of softening its effect, supplied the chief interest and
attraction of his office. In his work itself, especially in his examinations, he very soon
acquired a method of eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the legal aspect of
the case, and reducing even the most complicated case to a form in which it would be
presented on paper only in its externals, completely excluding his personal opinion
of the matter, while above ail observing every prescribed formality. T h e work was
new and Ivan Ilych was one of the first m e n to apply the new C o d e of 1864.
O n taking up the post of examining magistrate in a new town, h e made new acquaintances and connections, placed himself on a new footing, and assumed a somewhat different tone. H e took up an attitude of rather dignified aloofness towards the
provincial authorities, but picked out the best circle of legal gentlemen and wealthy
gentry living in the town and assumed a tone of slight dissatisfaction with the government, of moderate liberalism, and of enlightened citizenship. A t the same time,
"11 faut que jeunesse se passe": "Youth doesn't last." comme il faut: "as required," rule-abiding.
Code of 1864: The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 was followed by a thorough all-round reform of
judicial proceedings. [Translators' note.]
w i t h o u t at all altering t h e elegance of his toilet, h e ceased shaving his c h i n and
allowed his beard to grow as it pleased.
Ivan Ilych settled down very pleasantly in this new town. T h e society there,
which inclined towards opposition to the Governor, was friendly, his salary was
larger, and he began to play vint, which h e found added n o t a little to the pleasure of
life, for he had a capacity for cards, played good-humoredly, and calculated rapidly
and astutely, so that h e usually won.
A f t e r living there for two years he met his future wife, Praskovya Fedorovna
Mikhel, who was the most attractive, clever, and brilliant girl of the set in which he
moved, and among other amusements and relaxations from his labors as examining
magistrate, Ivan Ilych established light arid playful relations with her.
W h i l e he had been an official o n special service h e had been accustomed to
dance, but now as a n examining magistrate it was exceptional for h i m to do so. If he
danced now, he did it as if to show that though h e served under the reformed order of
things, and had reached the fifth official rank, yet w h e n it came to dancing h e could
do it better t h a n most people. So at the end of an evening he sometimes danced with
Praskovya Fedorovna, and it was chiefly during these dances t h a t h e captivated her.
She fell in love with him. Ivan Ilych had at first n o definite intention of marrying,
but wThen the girl fell in love with h i m h e said to himself: "Really, why shouldn't I
marry?"
Praskovya Fedorovna came of a good family, was not bad-looking, and had some
little property. Ivan Ilych might have aspired to a more brilliant match, but even this
was good. H e had his salary, and she, he hoped, would have an equal income. She
was well connected, and was a sweet, pretty, and thoroughly correct young woman.
T o say that Ivan Ilych married because h e fell in love with Praskovya Fedorovna and
found that she sympathized with his views of life would be as incorrect as to say that
he married because his social circle approved of the match. H e was swayed by both
these considerations: the marriage gave h i m personal satisfaction, and at the same
time it was considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates.
So Ivan Ilych got married.
T h e preparations for marriage and the beginning of married life, with its conjugal caresses, the new furniture, new crockery, and new linen, were very pleasant until
his wife became pregnantso that Ivan Ilych had begun to think that marriage
would n o t impair the easy, agreeable, gay, and always decorous character of his life,
approved of by society and regarded by himself as natural, but would even improve it.
But from the first months of his wife's pregnancy, something new, unpleasant, depressing, and unseemly, and from which there was no way of escape, unexpectedly
showed itself.
His wife, without any reasonde gaiete de coeur as Ivan Ilych expressed it to
himselfbegan to disturb the pleasure and propriety of their life. She began to be
jealous without any cause, expected h i m to devote his whole a t t e n t i o n to her, found
fault with everything, and made coarse and ill-mannered scenes.
A t first Ivan Ilych hoped to escape from the unpleasantness of this state of affairs
by the same easy and decorous relation to life that had served h i m heretofore: h e
tried to ignore his wife's disagreeable moods, continued to live in his usual easy and
pleasant way, invited friends to his house for a game of cards, and also tried going out
vint: a form of bridge. [Translators' note.]
de gaiete de coeur: "from pure whim."
70
to his club or spending his evenings with friends. But one day his wife began upbraiding him so vigorously, using such coarse words, and continued to abuse h i m every
time he did n o t fulfil her demands, so resolutely and with such evident determination
n o t to give way till he submittedthat is, till he stayed at h o m e and was bored just as
she wasthat he became alarmed. H e now realized that matrimonyat any rate
with Praskovya Fedorovnawas n o t always conducive to the pleasures and amenities
of life, but o n t h e contrary often infringed b o t h comfort and propriety, and that h e
must therefore e n t r e n c h himself against such infringement. A n d Ivan Ilych began to
seek for means of doing so. Flis official duties were the one thing that imposed upon
Praskovya Fedorovna, and by means of his official work and the duties attached to it
he began struggling with his wife to secure his own independence.
W i t h t h e birth of their child, the attempts to feed it and the various failures in
doing so, and with the real and imaginary illnesses of m o t h e r and child, in which
Ivan Ilych's sympathy was demanded but about which h e understood nothing, t h e
need of securing for himself an existence outside his family life became still more
imperative.
As his wife grew more irritable and exacting and Ivan Ilych transferred t h e
center of gravity of his life more and more to his official work, so did he grow to like
his work better and became more ambitious t h a n before.
Very soon, within a year of his wedding, Ivan Ilych had realized t h a t marriage,
though it may add some comforts to life, is in fact a very intricate and difficult affair
towards which in order to perform one's duty, that is, to lead a decorous life approved
of by society, one must adopt a definite attitude just as towards one's official duties.
A n d Ivan Ilych evolved such an attitude towards married life. H e only required
of it those conveniencesdinner at home, housewife, and bedwhich it could give
him, and above all that propriety of external forms required by public opinion. For
the rest h e looked for light-hearted pleasure and propriety, and was very thankful
when h e found them, but if h e met with antagonism and querulousness he at once retired into his separate fenced-off world of official duties, where h e found satisfaction.
Ivan Ilych was esteemed a good official, and after three years was made Assistant
Public Prosecutor. Flis new duties, their importance, the possibility of indicting and
imprisoning anyone h e chose, the publicity his speeches received, and the success h e
had in all these things, made his work still more attractive.
More children came. His wife became more and more querulous and ill-tempered,
but the attitude Ivan Ilych had adopted towards his h o m e life rendered h i m almost
impervious to her grumbling.
After seven years' service in that town he was transferred to another province as
Public Prosecutor. T h e y moved, but were short of money and his wife did n o t like the
place they moved to. T h o u g h the salary was higher the cost of living was greater, besides which two of their children died and family life became still more unpleasant
for him.
Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for every inconvenience they encountered in their new7 home. Most of the conversations between husband and wife,
especially as to the children's education, led to topics which recalled former disputes,
and those disputes were apt to flare up again at any m o m e n t . T h e r e remained only
those rare periods of amorousness which still came to them at times but did n o t last
long. These were islets at which they anchored for a while and t h e n again set out
upon that ocean of veiled hostility which showed itself in their aloofness from one
another. This aloofness might have grieved Ivan Ilych had he considered that it
ought n o t to exist, but he now regarded the position as normal, and even made it the
goal at which he aimed in family life. His aim was to free himself more and more from
those unpleasantnesses and t o give t h e m a semblance of harmlessness and propriety.
He attained this by spending less and less time with his family, and w h e n obliged to
be at h o m e h e tried to safeguard his position by the presence of outsiders. T h e chief
thing, however, was that he had his official duties. T h e whole interest of his life now
centered in the official world and that interest absorbed him. T h e consciousness of
his powrer, being able to ruin anybody h e wished to ruin, the importance, even the
external dignity of his entry into court, or meetings with his subordinates, his success
with superiors and inferiors, and above all his masterly handling of cases, of which he
was consciousall this gave h i m pleasure and filled his life, together with chats with
his colleagues, dinners, and bridge. So that on t h e whole Ivan Ilych's life continued
to flow as h e considered it should dopleasantly and properly.
So things continued for another seven years. His eldest daughter was already sixteen, another child had died, and only one son was left, a schoolboy and a subject of
dissension. Ivan Ilych wanted to p u t h i m in t h e S c h o o l of Law, but to spite h i m
Praskovya Fedorovna entered h i m at t h e H i g h School. T h e daughter h a d been
educated at h o m e and had turned out well: the boy did n o t learn badly either.
m
So Ivan Ilych lived for seventeen years after his marriage. H e was already a Public Prosecutor of long standing, and had declined several proposed transfers while
awaiting a more desirable post, w h e n a n unanticipated and unpleasant occurrence
quite upset t h e peaceful course of his life. H e was expecting to be offered the post of
presiding judge in a University town, but H a p p e somehow came to the front and obtained the a p p o i n t m e n t instead. Ivan Ilych became irritable, reproached Happe, and
quarreled both with h i m and with his immediate superiorswho became colder to
h i m and again passed h i m over w h e n other appointments were made.
This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan Ilych's life. It was t h e n that, it became
evident on the one h a n d that his salary was insufficient for t h e m to live on, and on
the other t h a t h e had been forgotten, arid n o t only this, but that what was for him
the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.
Even his father did n o t consider it his duty to help him. Ivan Ilych felt himself abandoned by everyone, and that they regarded his position with a salary of 3,500 rubles
as quite normal and even fortunate. H e alone knew that with the consciousness of
the injustices done him, with his wife's incessant nagging, and with the debts h e had
contracted by living beyond his means, his position was far from normal.
In order to save money that summer h e obtained leave of absence and went with
his wife to live in the country at her brother's place.
In the country, without his work, h e experienced ennui for the first time in his
life, and n o t only ennui but intolerable depression, and h e decided that it was impossible to go o n living like that, and t h a t it was necessary to take energetic measures.
Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and down the veranda, h e decided to
go to Petersburg and bestir himself, in order to punish those w h o had failed to appreciate him and to get transferred to a n o t h e r ministry.
N e x t day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother, he started for
Petersburg with the sole object of obtaining a post with a salary of five thousand rubles
a year. He was no longer bent o n any particular department, or tendency, or kind of
activity. All he now wanted was an appointment to another post with a salary of five
85
thousand rubles, either in the administration, in the banks, with the railways, in one
of the Empress Marya's Institutions, 0 or even in the customsbut it had to carry with it a salary of five thousand rubles and be in a ministry other t h a n that in which
they had failed to appreciate him.
A n d this quest of Ivan Ilych's was crowned with remarkable and unexpected sue- 90
cess. A t Kursk an acquaintance of his, F. L Ilyin, got into the first-class carriage, sat
down beside Ivan Ilych, and told h i m of a telegram just received by the Governor of
Kursk announcing that a change was about to take place in the ministry: Peter
Ivanovich was to be superseded by Ivan Semenovich.
T h e proposed change, apart from its significance for Russia, had a special significance for Ivan Ilych, because by bringing forward a new man, Peter Petrovich, and
consequently his friend Zachar Ivanovich, it was highly favorable for Ivan Ilych,
since Zachar Ivanovich was a friend and colleague of his.
In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on reaching Petersburg Ivan Ilych
found Zachar Ivanovich and received a definite promise of a n a p p o i n t m e n t in his
former department of Justice.
A week later he telegraphed to his wife: "Zachar in Miller's place. I shall receive
appointment 011 presentation of report."
T h a n k s to this change of personnel, Ivan Ilych had unexpectedly obtained an
appointment in his former ministry which placed h i m two stages above his former
colleagues besides giving him five thousand rubles salary and three thousand five
hundred rubles for expenses connected with his removal. All his ill humor towards
his former enemies and the whole department vanished, and Ivan Ilych was completely
happy.
H e returned to the country more cheerful and contented t h a n he had been for a 95
long time. Praskovya Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce was arranged between
them. Ivan Ilych told of how he had been feted by everybody in Petersburg, how all
those who had been his enemies were put to shame and now fawned 011 him, how envious they were of his appointment, and how m u c h everybody in Petersburg had
liked him.
Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and appeared to believe it. She did n o t
contradict anything, but only made plans for their life in the town to which they
were going. Ivan Ilych saw with delight that these plans were his plans, that he and
his wife agreed, and that, after a stumble, his life was regaining its due and natural
character of pleasant lightheadedness and decorum.
Ivan Ilych had come back for a short time only, for he had to take up his new duties on the 10th of September. Moreover, h e needed time to settle into the new
place, to move all his belongings from t h e province, and to buy and order many additional things: in a word, to make such arrangements as h e had resolved on, which
were almost exactly what Praskovya Fedorovna too had decided on.
N o w that everything had happened so fortunately, and that he and his wife were
at one in their aims and moreover saw so little of one another, they got on together
better t h a n they had done since the first years of marriage. Ivan Ilych had thought of
taking his family away with h i m at once, but the insistence of his wife's brother and
her sister-in-law, who had suddenly become particularly amiable and friendly to him
and his family, induced h i m to depart alone.
Empress Marya's Institutions: orphanages.
So he departed, and t h e cheerful state of mind induced by his success and by the
harmony between his wife and himself, the one intensifying the other, did not leave
him. H e found a delightful house, just the thing both h e and his wife had dreamt of.
Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style, a convenient and dignified study,
rooms for his wife and daughter, a study for his sonit might have been specially built
for them. Ivan Ilych himself superintended the arrangements, chose the wallpapers,
supplemented the furniture (preferably with antiques which h e considered particularly
comme il faut)y and supervised the upholstering. Everything progressed and progressed
and approached the ideal h e had set himself: even w h e n things were only half completed they exceeded his expectations. H e saw what a refined and elegant character,
free from vulgarity, it would all have when it was ready. O n falling asleep h e pictured
to himself how the reception-room would look. Looking at the yet unfinished drawing-room h e could see the fireplace, the screen, the what-not, t h e little chairs dotted
here and there, the dishes and plates on the walls, and the bronzes, as they would be
when everything was in place. H e was pleased by t h e thought of how his wife and
daughter, who shared his taste in this matter, would be impressed by it. They were certainly n o t expecting as much. H e had been particularly successful in finding, and buying cheaply, antiques which gave a particularly aristocratic character to the whole
place. But in his letters h e intentionally understated everything in order to be able to
surprise them. All this so absorbed h i m that his new dutiesthough he liked his official workinterested him less than h e had expected. Sometimes h e even had moments of absentmindedness during the Court Sessions, and would consider whether he
should have straight or curved cornices for his curtains. H e was so interested in it all
that he often did things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains.
O n c e when mounting a stepladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand,
how h e wanted the hangings draped, he made a false step and slipped, but being a
strong and agile man he clung o n and only knocked his side against the knob of the
window frame. T h e bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and he felt particularly bright and well just then. H e wrote: "I feel fifteen years younger." H e thought
he would have everything ready by September, but it dragged on till mid-October. But
the result was charming n o t only in his eyes but to everyone who saw it.
In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate 100
means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like
themselves: there were damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished
bronzesall t h e things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional. He was very happy w h e n he
met his family at the station and brought t h e m to the newly furnished house all lit
up, where a footman in a white tie opened the door into the hall decorated with
plants, and when they went o n into the drawing-room and the study uttering exclamations of delight. H e conducted them everywhere, drank in their praises eagerly,
and beamed with pleasure. A t tea that evening, when Praskovya Fedorovna among
other things asked h i m about his fall, h e laughed and showed t h e m how h e had gone
flying and had frightened the upholsterer.
"It's a good thing I'm a bit of an athlete. A n o t h e r m a n might h a v e been killed,
but I merely knocked myself, just there; it hurts w h e n it's touched, but it's passing off
alreadyit's only a bruise."
So they began living in their new h o m e i n which, as always happens, w h e n
they got thoroughly settled in they found they were just one room shortand with
the increased income, which as always was just a little (some five hundred rubles) too
little, but it was all very nice.
Things went particularly well at first, before everything was finally arranged and
while something had still to be done: this thing bought, that thing ordered, another
thing moved, and something else adjusted. T h o u g h there were some disputes between husband and wife, they were b o t h so well satisfied and had so m u c h to do that
it all passed off without any serious quarrels. W h e n n o t h i n g was left to arrange it became rather dull and something seemed to be lacking, but they were t h e n making acquaintances, forming habits, and life was growing fuller.
Ivan Ilych spent his mornings at the law courts and came home to dinner, and at
first he was generally in a good humor, though h e occasionally became irritable just
on account of his house. (Every spot o n t h e tablecloth or the upholstery, and every
broken window-blind string, irritated him. H e had devoted so much trouble to arranging it all that every disturbance of it distressed him.) But on t h e whole his life
ran its course as he believed life should do: easily, pleasantly, and decorously.
H e got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the paper, and t h e n put on his undress
uniform and went to t h e law courts. T h e r e the harness in which h e worked had already been stretched to fit h i m and he d o n n e d it without a hitch: petitioners, inquiries at the chancery, the chancery itself, and the sittings public and administrative. In all this the thing was to exclude everything fresh and vital, which always
disturbs the regular course of official business, and to admit only official relations
with people, and t h e n only on official grounds. A man would come, for instance,
wanting some information. Ivan Ilych, as o n e in whose sphere the matter did n o t lie,
would have n o t h i n g to do with him: but if the man had some business with him in
his official capacity, something that could be expressed o n officially stamped paper,
he would do everything, positively everything h e could within the limits of such relations, and in doing so would maintain the semblance of friendly h u m a n relations,
that is, would observe the courtesies of life. As soon as the official relations ended, so
did everything else. Ivan Ilych possessed this capacity to separate his real life from
the official side of affairs and n o t mix the two, in the highest degree, and by long
practice and natural aptitude had brought it to such a pitch t h a t sometimes, in the
manner of a virtuoso, h e would even allow himself to let the h u m a n and official relations mingle. He let himself do this just because h e felt that h e could at any time he
chose resume the strictly official attitude again and drop the h u m a n relation. A n d he
did it all easily, pleasantly, correctly, and even artistically. In the intervals between
the sessions h e smoked, drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a little about general topics, a little about cards, but most of all about official appointments. Tired, but
with the feelings of a virtuosoone of t h e first violins who has played his part in an
orchestra with precisionhe would return h o m e to find that his wife and daughter
had been out paying calls, or had a visitor, and that his son had been to school, had
done his homework with his tutor, and was duly learning what is taught at High
Schools. Everything was as it should be. After dinner, if they had n o visitors, Ivan
Ilych sometimes read a book that was being m u c h discussed at the time, and in the
evening settled down to work, that is, read official papers, compared the depositions
of witnesses, and noted paragraphs of the C o d e applying to them. This was neither
dull nor amusing. It was dull when h e might have been playing bridge, but if no
bridge was available it was at any rate better t h a n doing n o t h i n g or sitting with his
wife. Ivan Ilych's chief pleasure was giving little dinners to which h e invited m e n and
women of good social position, and just as his drawing-room resembled all other
drawing-rooms so did his enjoyable little parties resemble all other such parties.
O n c e they even gave a dance. Ivan Ilych enjoyed it and everything went off
well, except that it led to a violent quarrel with his wife about the cakes and sweets.
Praskovya Fedorovna had made her own plans, but Ivan Ilych insisted on getting
everything from an expensive confectioner and ordered too many cakes, and the
quarrel occurred because some of those cakes were left over and the confectioner's
bill came to forty-five rubles. It was a great and disagreeable quarrel. Praskovya
Fedorovna called h i m "a fool and an imbecile," and h e clutched at his head and
made angry allusions to divorce.
But the dance itself had been enjoyable. T h e best people were there, and Ivan
Ilych h a d danced with Princess Trufonova, a sister of the distinguished founder of the
Society "Bear My Burden."
T h e pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition; his social
pleasures were those of vanity; but Ivan Ilych's greatest pleasure was playing bridge.
H e acknowledged that whatever disagreeable incident happened in his life, the pleasure that beamed like a ray of light above everything else was to sit down to bridge
with good players, not noisy partners, and of course to four-handed bridge (with five
players it was annoying to have to stand out, though one pretended n o t to mind), to
play a clever and serious game (when the cards allowed it), and t h e n to have supper
and drink a glass of wine. After a game of bridge, especially if h e h a d won a little (to
win a large sum was unpleasant), Ivan Ilych went t o bed in specially good humor.
So they lived. T h e y formed a circle of acquaintances among the best people and
were visited by people of importance and by young folk. In their views as to their acquaintances, husband, wife, and daughter were entirely agreed, and tacitly and unanimously kept at arm's length and shook off t h e various shabby friends and relations
who, with much show of affection, gushed into the drawing-room with its Japanese
plates on the walls. Soon these shabby friends ceased to obtrude themselves and only
the best people remained in the Golovins' set.
Young men made up to Lisa, and Petrishchev, an examining magistrate and 110
Dmitri Ivanovich Petrishchev's son and sole heir, began to be so attentive to her that
Ivan Ilych had already spoken to Praskovya Fedorovna about it, and considered
whether they should n o t arrange a party for them, or get up some private theatricals.
So they lived, and all went well, without change, and life flowed pleasantly.
IV
T h e y were all in good health. It could n o t be called ill health if Ivan Ilych sometimes said that he had a queer taste in his m o u t h and felt some discomfort in his left
side.
But this discomfort increased and, though not exactly painful, grew into a sense of
pressure in his side accompanied by ill humor. A n d his irritability became worse and
worse and began to mar the agreeable, easy, and correct life that had established itself
in the Golovin family. Quarrels between husband and wife became more and more
frequent, and soon the ease and amenity disappeared and even the decorum was barely
maintained. Scenes again became frequent, and very few of those islets remained on
which husband and wife could meet without an explosion. Praskovya Fedorovna now
had good reason to say that her husband's temper was trying. W i t h characteristic exaggeration she said he had always had a dreadful temper, and that it had needed all her
good nature to put up with it for twenty years. It was true that now the quarrels were
started by him. His bursts of temper always came just before dinner, often just as he began to eat his soup. Sometimes h e noticed that a plate or dish was chipped, or the food
was n o t right, or his son put his elbow on the table, or his daughter's hair was n o t done
as he liked it, and for all this he blamed Praskovya Fedorovna. A t first she retorted
and said disagreeable things to him, but once or twice h e fell into such a rage at the beginning of dinner that she realized it was due to some physical derangement
brought on by taking food, and so she restrained herself and did not answer, but only
hurried to get t h e dinner over. She regarded this self-restraint as highly praiseworthy.
Having come to the conclusion that her husband had a dreadful temper and made
her life miserable, she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself
the more she hated her husband. She began to wish h e would die; yet she did n o t
want him to die because t h e n his salary would cease. A n d this irritated her against
h i m still more. She considered herself dreadfully unhappy just because n o t even his
death could save her, and though she concealed her exasperation, that hidden exasperation of hers increased his irritation also.
After one scene in w h i c h Ivan Ilych had been particularly unfair and after which
he had said in explanation that h e certainly was irritable but that it was due to his
not being well, she said that if h e was ill it should be attended to, and insisted on his
going to see a celebrated doctor.
He went. Everything took place as h e had expected and as it always does. T h e r e 115
was the usual waiting and t h e important air assumed by the doctor, with which he
was so familiar (resembling that w r hich h e himself assumed in court), and the sounding and listening, and the questions which called for answers that were foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary, and t h e look of importance which implied
that "if only you put yourself in our hands we will arrange everythingwe know indubitably how it has to be done, always in the same way for everybody alike." It was
all just as it was in t h e law courts. T h e doctor put o n just the same air towards h i m as
he himself put on towards an accused person.
T h e doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so-and-so inside the patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so did n o t confirm this, t h e n h e must assume
that and that. If he assumed that and that, t h e n . . . and so on. T o Ivan Ilych only
one question was important: was his case serious or not? But the doctor ignored that
inappropriate question. From his point of view it was n o t the one under consideration, the real question was to decide between a floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or
appendicitis. It was n o t a question of Ivan Ilych's life or death, but one between a
floating kidney and appendicitis. A n d that question the doctor solved brilliantly, as it
seemed to Ivan Ilych, in favor of the appendix, with t h e reservation that should an
examination of the urine give fresh indications t h e matter would be reconsidered.
All this was just what Ivan Ilych had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand
times in dealing with m e n on trial. T h e doctor summed up just as brilliantly, looking
over his spectacles triumphantly and even gaily at the accused. From the doctor's
summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that things were bad, but that for the doctor, and
perhaps for everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for h i m it was bad.
A n d this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in h i m a great feeling of pity for
himself and of bitterness towards t h e doctor's indifference to a matter of such importance.
H e said n o t h i n g of this, but rose, placed the doctor's fee 011 the table, and remarked with a sigh: " W e sick people probably often put inappropriate questions. But
tell me, in general, is this complaint dangerous, or n o t ? . . ."
T h e doctor looked at h i m sternly over his spectacles with one eye, as if to say:
"Prisoner, if you will n o t keep to the questions put to you, I shall be obliged to have
you removed from the court."
"I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper. T h e analysis may
show something more." A n d the doctor bowed.
Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in his sledge, and drove 120
home. All t h e way h o m e h e was going over what the doctor had said, trying to translate those complicated, obscure, scientific phrases into plain language and find in
them an answer to the question: "Is my condition bad? Is it very bad? O r is there as
yet n o t h i n g m u c h wrong?" A n d it seemed to him that the meaning of what the doctor had said was that it was very bad. Everything in the streets seemed depressing.
T h e cabmen, t h e houses, the passers-by, and the shops, were dismal. His ache, this
dull gnawing ache that never ceased for a moment, seemed to have acquired a new
and more serious significance from the doctor s dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now
watched it with a new and oppressive feeling.
H e reached h o m e and began to tell his wife about it. She listened, but in the
middle of his account his daughter came in with her h a t on, ready to go out with her
mother. She sat down reluctantly to listen to this tedious story, but could not stand it
long, and her m o t h e r too did n o t hear him to the end.
"Well, I am very glad," she said. "Mind now to take your medicine regularly.
Give me the prescription and 111 send Gerasim to the chemist's." A n d she went to
get ready to go out.
W h i l e she was in the room Ivan Ilych had hardly taken time to breathe, but he
sighed deeply when she left it.
"Well," h e thought, "perhaps it isn't so bad after a l l "
H e began taking his medicine and following the doctor's directions, which had 125
been altered after the examination of the urine. But t h e n it happened that there was
a contradiction between the indications drawn from the examination of the urine
and the symptoms that showed themselves. It turned out that what was happening
differed from what the doctor had told him, and that h e had either forgotten, or
blundered, or hidden something from him. H e could not, however, be blamed for
that, and Ivan Ilych still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first derived some comfort from doing so.
From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilych's chief occupation was t h e exact fulfillment of t h e doctor's instructions regarding hygiene and the taking of medicine, and the observation of his pain and his excretions. His chief interests came to
be people's ailments and people's health. W h e n sickness, deaths, or recoveries were
mentioned in his presence, especially w h e n the illness resembled his own, he listened
with agitation which he tried to hide, asked questions, and applied what he heard to
his own case.
T h e pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilych made efforts to force himself to think
that he was better. A n d he could do this so long as n o t h i n g agitated him. But as soon
as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, any lack of success in his official work, or
held bad cards at bridge, h e was at once acutely sensible of his disease. H e had formerly borne such mischances, hoping soon to adjust what was wrong, to master it and
attain success, or make a grand slam. But now every mischance upset him and
plunged h i m into despair. H e would say to himself: "There now, just as I was beginning to get better and the medicine had begun to take effect, comes this accursed
misfortune, or unpleasantness. . . ." A n d he was furious with the mishap, or with the
people who were causing the unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that this fury
was killing h i m but could n o t restrain it. O n e would have thought that it should have
been clear to h i m that this exasperation with circumstances and people aggravated
his illness, and t h a t he ought therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But h e drew
the very opposite conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and h e watched for everything that might disturb it and became irritable at the slightest infringement of
it. His condition was rendered worse by the fact that h e read medical books and consulted doctors. T h e progress of his disease was so gradual that h e could deceive himself when comparing one day with a n o t h e r t h e difference was so slight. But w h e n
he consulted the doctors it seemed to h i m that he was getting worse, and even very
rapidly. Yet despite this h e was continually consulting them.
T h a t m o n t h he went to see another celebrity, who told him almost the same as
the first had done but put his questions rather differently, and the interview with this
celebrity only increased Ivan Ilych's doubts and fears. A friend of a friend of his, a very
good doctor, diagnosed his illness again quite differently from the others, and though
he predicted recovery, his questions and suppositions bewildered Ivan Ilych still more
and increased his doubts. A homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way,
and prescribed medicine which Ivan Ilych took secretly for a week. But after a week,
not feeling any improvement and having lost confidence both in the former doctor's
treatment and in this one's, he became still more despondent. O n e day a lady acquaintance mentioned a cure effected by a wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilych caught himself
listening attentively and beginning to believe that it had occurred. This incident
alarmed him. "Has my mind really weakened to such an extent?" h e asked himself.
"Nonsense! It's all rubbish. I mustn't give way to nervous fears but having chosen a
doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. T h a t is what I will do. N o w it's all settled. I
won't think about it, but will follow the treatment seriously till summer, and t h e n we
shall see. From now there must be n o more of this wavering!" This was easy to say but
impossible to carry out. T h e pain in his side oppressed h i m and seemed to grow worse
and more incessant, while the taste in his m o u t h grew stranger and stranger. It seemed
to h i m that his breath had a disgusting smell, and h e was conscious of a loss of appetite
and strength. T h e r e was n o deceiving himself: something terrible, new, and more important than anything before in his life, was taking place within him of which he
alone was aware. Those about him did not understand or would n o t understand it, but
thought everything in the world was going on as usual. T h a t tormented Ivan Ilych
more t h a n anything. Fie saw that his household, especially his wife and daughter w h o
were in a perfect whirl of visiting, did n o t understand anything of it and were annoyed
that he was so depressed and so exacting, as if he were to blame for it. T h o u g h they
tried to disguise it he saw that h e was an obstacle in their path, and that his wife had
adopted a definite line in regard to his illness and kept to it regardless of anything h e
said or did. Her attitude was this: "You know," she would say to her friends, "Ivan
Ilych can't do as other people do, and keep to the treatment prescribed for him. O n e
day he'll take his drops and keep strictly to his diet and go to bed in good time, but the
next day unless I watch him he'll suddenly forget his medicine, eat sturgeonwhich is
forbiddenand sit up playing cards till one o'clock in the morning."
" O h , come, when was that?" Ivan Ilych would ask in vexation. "Only once at
Peter Ivanovich's."
" A n d yesterday with Shebek."
"Well, even if I h a d n ' t stayed up, this pain would have kept m e awake."
"Be that as it may you'll never get well like that, but will always make us
wretched."
Praskovya Fedorovna's attitude to Ivan Ilych's illness, as she expressed it b o t h to
others and to him, was t h a t it was his own fault and was another of the annoyances
h e caused her. Ivan Ilych felt that this opinion escaped h e r involuntarilyhut t h a t
did n o t make it easier for him.
A t the law courts too, Ivan Ilych noticed, or thought he noticed, a strange attitude towards himself. It sometimes seemed to him that people were watching h i m inquisitively as a man whose place might soon be vacant. T h e n again, his friends would
suddenly begin to chaff him in a friendly way about his low spirits, as if the awful,
horrible, and unheard-of thing that was going on within him, incessantly gnawing at
him and irresistibly drawing h i m away, was a very agreeable subject for jests.
Schwartz in particular irritated h i m by his jocularity, vivacity, and savoir-faire, which
reminded him of what h e himself had been ten years ago.
Friends came to make up a set and they sat down to cards. They dealt, bending 135
the new cards to soften them, and he sorted t h e diamonds in his h a n d and found he
had seven. His partner said " N o trumps" and supported him with two diamonds.
W h a t more could be wished for? It ought to be jolly and lively. T h e y would make a
grand slam. But suddenly Ivan Ilych was conscious of that gnawing pain, that taste in
his mouth, and it seemed ridiculous that in such circumstances he should be pleased
to make a grand slam.
H e looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the table with his
strong hand and instead of snatching up t h e tricks pushed the cards courteously and
indulgently towards Ivan Ilych that h e might h a v e the pleasure of gathering them up
without the trouble of stretching out his h a n d for them. "Does h e think I am too
weak to stretch out my arm?" thought Ivan Ilych, and forgetting what h e was doing
he over-trumped his partner, missing the grand slam by three tricks. A n d what was
most awful of all was that h e saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich was about it but
did n o t himself care. A n d it was dreadful to realize why h e did not care.
T h e y all saw that he was suffering, and said: " W e can stop if you are tired. Take a
rest." Lie down? N o , h e was n o t at all tired, and h e finished t h e rubber. All were
gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych felt that he had diffused this gloom over them and
could n o t dispel it. T h e y had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilych was left alone
with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others,
and that this poison did n o t weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his
whole being.
W i t h this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must go to
bed, often to lie awake t h e greater part of t h e night. N e x t morning he had to get up
again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and write; or if he did not go out, spend at
h o m e those twenty-four hours a day each of which was a torture. A n d he had to live
thus all alone on t h e brink of an abyss, with n o one who understood or pitied him.
v
So one m o n t h passed and t h e n another. Just before t h e N e w Year his brother-inlaw came to town and stayed at their house. Ivan Ilych was at the law courts and
Praskovya Fedorovna had gone shopping. W h e n Ivan Ilych came h o m e and entered
his study he found his brother-in-law t h e r e a healthy, florid m a n u n p a c k i n g his
portmanteau himself. H e raised his head o n hearing Ivan Ilych's footsteps and looked
up at him for a m o m e n t without a word. T h a t stare told Ivan Ilych everything. His
brother-in-law opened his m o u t h to utter an exclamation of surprise but checked
himself, and that action confirmed it all.
"I have changed, eh?"
140
"Yes, there is a change."
A n d after that, try as he would to get his brother-in-law to return to the subject
of his looks, the latter would say n o t h i n g about it. Praskovya Fedorovna came home
and her brother went out to her. Ivan Ilych locked the door and began to examine
himself in t h e glass, first full face, t h e n in profile. H e took up a portrait of himself
taken with his wife, and compared it with what h e saw in the glass. T h e change in
him was immense. T h e n he bared his arms to the elbow, looked at them, drew the
sleeves down again, sat down on an ottoman, and grew blacker t h a n night.
u
N o , no, this won't do!" h e said to himself, and jumped up, went to the table,
took up some law papers, and began to read them, but could n o t continue. H e unlocked the door and went into the reception-room. T h e door leading to the drawingroom was shut. He approached it o n tiptoe and listened.
tc
No, you are exaggerating!" Praskovya Fedorovna was saying.
"Exaggerating! D o n ' t you see it? W h y , he's a dead man! Look at his eyesthere's
no light in them. Rut what is it that is wrong with him?"
"No o n e knows. Nikolaevich said something, but I don't know what. A n d
Leshchetitsky 0 said quite the contrary . . ."
Ivan Ilych walked away, went to his o w n room, lay down, and began musing:
"The kidney, a floating kidney." H e recalled all the doctors had told him of how it
detached itself and swayed about. A n d by an effort of imagination h e tried to catch
that kidney and arrest it and support it. So little was needed for this, it seemed to
him. "No, I'll go to see Peter Ivanovich 0 again." H e rang, ordered the carriage, and
got ready to go.
"Where are you going, Jean?" asked his wife, with a specially sad and exceptionally kind look.
This exceptionally kind look irritated him. H e looked morosely at her.
"I must go to see Peter Ivanovich."
H e went to see Peter Ivanovich, and together they went to see his friend, the
doctor. H e was in, and Ivan Ilych had a long talk with him.
Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what in the doctor's opinion was going on inside him, he understood it all.
T h e r e was something, a small thing, in the vermiform appendix. It might all
come right. Only stimulate the energy of one organ and check the activity of another, t h e n absorption would take place and everything would come right. H e got
h o m e rather late for dinner, ate his dinner, and conversed cheerfully, but could n o t
for a long time bring himself to go back to work in his room. A t last, however, h e
went to his study and did what was necessary, but the consciousness that h e had put
something asidean important, intimate matter which he would revert to when his
work was d o n e n e v e r left him. W h e n h e had finished his wrork h e remembered that
this intimate matter was the thought of his vermiform appendix. But h e did n o t give
himself up to it, and went to the drawingroom for tea. There were callers there, including the examining magistrate who was a desirable match for his daughter, and they
were conversing, playing the piano, and singing. Ivan Ilych, as Praskovya Fedorovna
remarked, spent that evening more cheerfully t h a n usual, but h e never for a m o m e n t
forgot that he had postponed the important matter of the appendix. A t eleven o'clock he said good-night and went to his bedroom. Since his illness he had slept
Nikolaevich, Leshchetitsky: two doctors, the latter a celebrated specialist. [Translators' note.)
Ivanovich: That was the friend whose friend was a doctor. [Translators' note.]
Peter
alone in a small room next to his study. H e undressed and took up a novel by Zola,
but instead of reading it h e fell into thought, and in his imagination t h a t desired improvement in the vermiform appendix occurred. There was the absorption and evacuation and the re-establishment of normal activity. "Yes, that's it!" h e said to himself. " O n e need only assist nature, that's all." H e remembered his medicine, rose,
took it, and lay down o n his back watching for the beneficent action of the medicine
and for it to lessen the pain. "I need only take it regularly and avoid all injurious influences. I am already feeling better, m u c h better." H e began touching his side: it was
n o t painful to t h e touch. "There, I really don't feel it. It's much better already." H e
put out the light and turned on his side . . . " T h e appendix is getting better, absorption is occurring." Suddenly h e felt the old, familiar, dull, gnawing pain, stubborn
and serious. T h e r e was the same familiar loathsome taste in his mouth. His heart
sank and h e felt dazed. "My G o d ! My God!" h e muttered. "Again, again! and it will
never cease." A n d suddenly the matter presented itself in a quite different aspect.
"Vermiform appendix! Kidney!" he said to himself. "It's n o t a question of appendix
or kidney, but of life and . . . death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and
I c a n n o t stop it. Yes. W h y deceive myself? Isn't it obvious to everyone but me that
I'm dying, and that it's only a question of weeks, days . . . it may h a p p e n this moment.
T h e r e was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going there!
Where?" A chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the throbbing
of his heart.
" W h e n I am not, w7hat will there be? T h e r e will be nothing. T h e n where shall I
be when I a m n o more? C a n this be dying? No, I don't want to!" H e jumped up and
tried to light the candle, felt for it with trembling hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back on his pillow.
"What's the use? It makes n o difference," he said to himself, staring with wide- 155
open eyes into the darkness. "Death. Yes, death. A n d n o n e of t h e m know or wish to
know it, and they have n o pity for me. N o w they are playing." (He heard through the
door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the same to them,
but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them.
A n d now they are merry . . . the beasts!"
Anger choked h i m and h e was agonizingly, unbearably miserable. "It is impossible that all m e n have been doomed to suffer this awful horror!" Fie raised himself.
"Something must be wrong. I must calm myselfmust think it all over from the
beginning." A n d he again began thinking. "Yes, the beginning of my illness: I
knocked my side, but I was still quite well that day and the next. It hurt a little, t h e n
rather more. I saw the doctors, then followed despondency and anguish, more doctors,
and I drew nearer to the abyss. My strength grew less and I kept coming nearer and
nearer, and now I have wasted away and there is n o light in my eyes. I think of the appendixbut this is death! I think of mending the appendix, and all the while here is
death! C a n it really be death?" Again terror seized h i m and h e gasped for breath. H e
leant down and began feeling for the matches, pressing with his elbow 011 the stand
beside the bed. It was in his way and hurt him, h e grew furious with it, pressed 011 it
still harder, and upset it. Breathless and in despair h e fell o n his back, expecting death
to come immediately.
Meanwhile the visitors were leaving. Praskovya Fedorovna was seeing them off.
She heard something fall and came in.
" W h a t has happened?"
"Nothing. I knocked it over accidentally."
160
S h e went out and returned with a candle. H e lay there panting heavily, like a
m a n who has run a thousand yards, and stared upwards at her with a fixed look.
" W h a t is it, Jean?"
"No . . . o . . . thing. I upset it." ("Why speak of it? She won't understand," he
thought.)
A n d in truth she did n o t understand. She picked up the stand, lit his candle, and
hurried away to see another visitor off. W h e n she came back h e still lay o n his back,
looking upwards.
" W h a t is it? Do you feel worse?"
"Yes."
She shook her head and sat down.
"Do you know, Jean, I think we must ask Leshchetitsky to come and see you
here."
This m e a n t calling in the famous specialist, regardless of expense. H e smiled
malignantly and said "No." She remained a little longer and t h e n went up to him and
kissed his forehead.
W h i l e she was kissing him h e hated her from the bottom of his soul and with
difficulty refrained from pushing her away.
"Good-night. Please G o d you'll sleep."
"Yes."
VI
Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and h e was in continual despair.
In the depth of his heart h e knew he was dying, but not only was he n o t accustomed to the thought, he simply did n o t and could n o t grasp it.
T h e syllogism h e had learnt from Kiezewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are
mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to
Caius, but certainly n o t as applied to himself. T h a t C a i u s m a n in the abstractwas
mortal, was perfectly correct, but h e wras not Caius, n o t a n abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. H e had been little Vanya, with a m a m m a
and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a c o a c h m a n and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood,
and youth. W h a t did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had
been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of her
dress rustle so for Caius? Had h e rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad?
Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? "Caius
really was mortal, and it was right for h i m to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych,
with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It c a n n o t be
that I ought to die. T h a t would be too terrible."
Such was his feeling.
"If I had to die like Caius I should have known it was so. A n inner voice would
have told me so, but there was n o t h i n g of t h e sort in me and I and all my friends felt
that our case was quite different from t h a t of Caius. A n d now here it is!" h e said to
himself. "It can't be. It's impossible! Bui here it is. IIow is this? I low is one to understand it?"
H e could n o t understand it, and tried to drive this false, incorrect, morbid
thought away and to replace it by other proper and healthy thoughts. But that
thought, and n o t the t h o u g h t only but t h e reality itself, seemed to come and
confront him.
A n d to replace that thought h e called up a succession of others, hoping to find in
t h e m some support. H e tried to get back into the former current of thoughts that had
once screened the thought of death from him. But strange to say, all that h a d formerly shut off, hidden, and destroyed his consciousness of death, no longer had that
effect. Ivan Ilych now spent most of his time in attempting to re-establish that old
current. H e would say to himself: "I will take up my duties againafter all I used to
live by them." A n d banishing all doubts he would go to the law courts, enter into
conversation with his colleagues, and sit carelessly as was his wont, scanning the
crowd with a thoughtful look and leaning b o t h his emaciated arms on the arms of his
oak chair; bending over as usual to a colleague and drawing his papers nearer he
would interchange whispers with him, and t h e n suddenly raising his eyes and sitting
erect would p r o n o u n c e certain words and open the proceedings. But suddenly in the
midst of those proceedings the pain in his side, regardless of the stage the proceedings
had reached, would begin its own gnawing work. Ivan Ilych would turn his a t t e n t i o n
to it and try to drive the thought of it away, but without success. It would come and
stand before h i m and look at him, and h e would be petrified and the light would die
out of his eyes, arid h e would again begin asking himself whether It alone was true.
A n d his colleagues and subordinates would see with surprise and distress that he, the
brilliant and subtle judge, was becoming confused and making mistakes. H e would
shake himself, try to pull himself together, manage somehow to bring the sitting to a
close, and return h o m e with the sorrowful consciousness that his judicial labors could
n o t as formerly hide from h i m what he wanted t h e m to hide, and could n o t deliver
h i m from It. A n d what was worst of all was that It drew his a t t e n t i o n to itself not in
order to make him take some action but only that h e should look at It, look it
straight in the face: look at it and, without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly.
A n d to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolationnew iso
screensand new screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then
they immediately fell to pieces or rather became transparent, as if It penetrated them
and n o t h i n g could veil It.
In these latter days h e would go into the drawing-room he had arrangedthat
drawing-room where h e had fallen and for the sake of which (how bitterly ridiculous
it seemed) he had sacrificed his lifefor he knew that his illness originated with
that knock. H e would enter and see that something had scratched the polished
table. H e would look for the cause of this and find that it was the bronze ornamentation of an album, that had got bent. H e would take up the expensive album which
h e had lovingly arranged, and feel vexed with his daughter and her friends for their
untidinessfor the album was torn here and there and some of t h e photographs
turned upside down. H e would put it carefully in order and bend the ornamentation
back into position. T h e n it would occur to him to place all those things in another
corner of the room, near the plants. H e could call t h e footman, but his daughter or
wife would come to help him. T h e y would n o t agree, and his wife would contradict
him, and he would dispute and grow angry. But t h a t was all right, for t h e n he did
n o t t h i n k about It. It was invisible.
But t h e n , w h e n h e was m o v i n g s o m e t h i n g himself, his wife would say: "Let
t h e servants do it. You will hurt yourself again." A n d suddenly It would flash through
t h e screen and h e would see it. It was just a flash, and h e hoped it would disappear,
but h e would involuntarily pay a t t e n t i o n to his side. "It sits there as before, gnawing
just the same!" A n d h e could n o longer forget It, but could distinctly see it looking at
him from behind the flowers. " W h a t is it all for?"
"It really is so! I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? H o w terrible and how stupid. It can't be true! It can't, but .
it is."
H e would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone with It: face to face with
It. A n d n o t h i n g could be done with It except to look at it and shudder.
VII
H o w it happened it is impossible to say because it came about step by step, unnoticed, but in the third m o n t h of Ivan Ilych's illness, his wife, his daughter, his son, his
acquaintances, the doctors, the servants, and above all he himself, were aware that
the whole interest he had for other people was whether h e would soon vacate his
place, and at last release the living from the discomfort caused by his presence and be
himself released from his sufferings.
He slept less and less. He was given opium and hypodermic injections of morphine, but this did not relieve him. T h e dull depression he experienced in a somnolent condition at first gave him a little relief, but only as something new, afterwards it
became as distressing as the pain itself or even more so.
Special foods were prepared for him by t h e doctors' orders, but all those foods became increasingly distasteful and disgusting to him.
For his excretions also special arrangements had to be made, and this was a torment to him every timea torment from the uncleanliness, t h e unseemliness, and
the smell, and from knowing that another person had to take part in it.
But just through this most unpleasant matter, Ivan Ilych obtained comfort.
Gerasim, the butler's young assistant, always came in to carry the things out. Gerasim
was a clean, fresh peasant lad, grown stout on town food and always cheerful and
bright. A t first the sight of him, in his clean Russian peasant costume, engaged on
that disgusting task embarrassed Ivan Ilych.
O n c e when h e got up from the commode too weak to draw up his trousers, he
dropped into a soft armchair and looked with horror at his bare, enfeebled thighs
with the muscles so sharply marked on t h e m .
Gerasim with a firm light tread, his heavy boots emitting a pleasant smell of tar
and fresh winter air, came in wearing a clean Hessian apron, the sleeves of his print
shirt tucked up over his strong, bare young arms; and refraining from looking at his
sick master out of consideration for his feelings, and restraining the joy of life that
beamed from his face, h e went up to the commode.
"Gerasim!" said Ivan Ilych in a weak voice.
Gerasim started, evidently afraid h e might have committed some blunder, and
with a rapid m o v e m e n t turned his fresh, kind, simple young face which just showed
the first downy signs of a beard.
"Yes, sir?"
" T h a t must be very unpleasant for you. You must forgive me. I am helpless."
" O h , why, sir," and Gerasim's eyes beamed and h e showed his glistening white
teeth, "what's a little trouble? It's a case of illness with you, sir."
A n d his deft strong hands did their accustomed task, and he went out of t h e
room stepping lightly. Five minutes later he as lightly returned.
Ivan Ilych was still sitting in the same position in the armchair.
"Gerasim," h e said when the latter had replaced the freshly washed utensil.
"Please come here and help me." Gerasim went up to him. "Lift me up. It is hard for
me to get up, and 1 have sent Dmitri away."
Gerasim went up to him, grasped his master with his strong arms deftly but gently, in the same way that he steppedlifted him, supported h i m with o n e hand, and
with the other drew up his trousers and would h a v e set h i m down again, but Ivan
Ilych asked to be led to the sofa. Gerasim, without an effort and without apparent
pressure, led him, almost lifting him, to the sofa, and placed h i m o n it.
" T h a n k you. How easily and well you do it all!"
Gerasim smiled again and turned to leave t h e room. But Ivan Ilych felt his presence such a comfort that h e did n o t want to let him go.
" O n e thing more, please move up that chair. No, the other o n e u n d e r my feet.
It is easier for me when my feet are raised."
Gerasim brought the chair, set it down gently in place, and raised Ivan Ilych's
legs on to it. It seemed to Ivan Ilych that he felt better while Gerasim was holding up
his legs.
"It's better w h e n my legs are higher," h e said. "Place that cushion under them."
Gerasim did so. H e again lifted the legs and placed them, and again Ivan Ilych
felt better while Gerasim held his legs. W h e n he set them down Ivan Ilych fancied
h e felt worse.
"Gerasim," he said. "Are you busy now?"
"Not at all, sir," said Gerasim, who had learnt from the townsfolk how to speak
to gentlefolk.
" W h a t have you still to do?"
" W h a t have I to do? I've done everything except chopping the logs for tomorrow.
" T h e n hold my legs up a bit higher, can you ?"
"Of course I can. W h y not?" A n d Gerasim raised his master's legs higher and
Ivan Ilych thought that in that position he did n o t feel any pain at all.
" A n d how about the logs?"
"Don't trouble about that, sir. There's plenty of time."
Ivan Ilych told Gerasim to sit down and hold his legs, and began to talk to him.
A n d strange to say it seemed to h i m that h e felt better while Gerasim held his legs
up.
After that Ivan Ilych would sometimes call Gerasim and get him to hold his legs
on his shoulders, and he liked talking to him. Gerasim did it all easily, willingly, simply, and with a good nature that touched Ivan Ilych. Health, strength, and vitality in
other people were offensive to him, but Gerasim's strength and vitality did not mortify but soothed him.
W h a t tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that he only need
keep quiet and undergo a treatment and t h e n something very good would result. He,
however, knew that do what they would nothing would come of it, only still more agonizing suffering and death. This deception tortured h i m t h e i r n o t wishing to admit what they all knew and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him concerning his
terrible condition, and wishing and forcing h i m to participate in that lie. Those
lieslies enacted over him on the eve of his death and destined to degrade this awful,
solemn act to the level of their visitings, their curtains, their sturgeon for dinner
were a terrible agony for Ivan Ilych. A n d strangely enough, many times w h e n they
were going through their antics over him he had been within a hairbreadth of calling
out to them: "Stop lying! You know and I know that I am dying. T h e n at least stop
lying about it!" But he had never had the spirit to do it. T h e awful, terrible act of his
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210
215
dying was, he could see, reduced by those about h i m to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing-room diffusing
an unpleasant odor) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all
his life long. He saw that n o one felt for him, because n o one even wished to grasp his
position. Only Gerasim recognized it and pitied him. A n d so Ivan Ilych felt at ease
only with him. He felt comforted w h e n Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all
night long) and refused to go to bed, saying: "Don't you worry, Ivan Ilych. I'll get
sleep enough later on," or w h e n h e suddenly became familiar and exclaimed: "If you
weren't sick it would be another matter, but as it is, why should I grudge a little trouble?" Gerasim alone did n o t lie; everything showed that he alone understood the
facts of the case and did not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt
sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled master. O n c e w h e n Ivan Ilych was sending h i m
away he even said straight out: " W e shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little
trouble?"expressing the fact that he did n o t think his work burdensome, because
he was doing it for a dying m a n and hoped someone would do the same for h i m w h e n
his time came.
A p a r t from this lying, or because of it, w h a t most t o r m e n t e d Ivan Ilych wTas
that no one pitied h i m as h e wished to be pitied. A t certain m o m e n t s after prolonged suffering h e wished most of all ( t h o u g h h e would have been ashamed to
confess it) for someone to pity h i m as a sick child is pitied. H e longed to be petted
and comforted. H e knew h e was an important functionary, t h a t h e had a beard
turning grey, and t h a t therefore w h a t h e longed for was impossible, but still h e
longed for it. A n d in Gerasim's attitude towards h i m there was something akin to
what h e wished for, and so t h a t attitude comforted him. Ivan Ilych wanted to weep,
wanted to be petted and cried over, and t h e n his colleague Shebek would come, and
instead of weeping and being petted, Ivan Ilych would assume a serious, severe, and
profound air, and by force of habit would express his opinion on a decision of the
Court of Cassation and would stubbornly insist o n that view. T h i s falsity around h i m
and within h i m did more t h a n anything else to poison his last days.
VIII
It was morning. He knew it was morning because Gerasim had gone, and Peter
the footman had come and put out t h e candles, drawn back one of the curtains, and
begun quietly to tidy up. W h e t h e r it was morning or evening, Friday or Sunday,
made no difference, it was all just t h e same: the gnawing, unmitigated, agonizing
pain, never ceasing for an instant, the consciousness of life inexorably waning but
n o t yet extinguished, the approach of that ever dreaded and hateful Death which was
the only reality, and always the same falsity. W h a t were days, weeks, hours, in such a
case?
"Will you have some tea, sir?"
"He wants things to be regular, and wishes the gentlefolk to drink tea in t h e
morning," thought Ivan Ilych, and only said "No."
"Wouldn't you like to move o n t o t h e sofa, sir?"
"Fie wants to tidy up the room, and I'm in the way. I am uncleanliness and disorder," he thought, and said only:
"No, leave me alone."
T h e m a n went o n bustling about. Ivan Ilych stretched out his hand. Peter came
up, ready to help.
" W h a t is it, sir?"
"My watch."
Peter took the watch which was close at h a n d and gave it to his master.
"Half-past eight. A r e they up?"
"No, sir, except Vasily Ivanovich" (the son) "who has gone to school. Praskovya 230
Fedorovna ordered me to wake her if you asked for her. Shall I do so?"
"No, there's no need to." "Perhaps I'd better have some tea," he thought, and
added aloud: "Yes, bring me some tea."
Peter went to the door, but Ivan Ilych dreaded being left alone. "How can I keep
him here? O h yes, my medicine." "Peter, give me my medicine." " W h y not? Perhaps
it may still do me some good." H e took a spoonful and swallowed it. "No, it won't
help. It's all tomfoolery, all deception," he decided as soon as he became aware of the
familiar, sickly, hopeless taste. "No, I can't believe in it any longer. But the pain, why
this pain? If it would only cease just for a m o m e n t ! " A n d h e moaned. Peter turned towards him. "It's all right. G o and fetch me some tea."
Peter went out. Left alone Ivan Ilych groaned not so m u c h with pain, terrible
though that was, as from mental anguish. Always and forever the same, always these
endless days and nights. If only it would come quicker! If only what would come
quicker? Death, darkness?. . . N o , no! A n y t h i n g rather than death!
W h e n Peter returned with t h e tea on a tray, Ivan Ilych stared at him for a time
in perplexity, n o t realizing who and w h a t h e was. Peter was disconcerted by that look
and his embarrassment brought Ivan Ilych to himself.
"Oh, tea! All right, put it down. Only help me to wash and put on a clean shirt." 235
A n d Ivan Ilych began to wash. W i t h pauses for rest, he washed his hands and
t h e n his face, cleaned his teeth, brushed his hair, and looked in the glass. He was terrified by what h e saw, especially by the limp way in which his hair clung to his pallid
forehead.
W h i l e his shirt was being changed h e knew that h e would be still more frightened at the sight of his body, so h e avoided looking at it. Finally he was ready. He
drew o n a dressing-gown, wrapped himself in a plaid, and sat down in t h e armchair to
take his tea. For a m o m e n t h e felt refreshed, but soon as he began to drink the tea he
was again aware of the same taste, and the pain also returned. H e finished it with an
elfort, and t h e n lay down stretching out his legs, and dismissed Peter.
Always the same. N o w a spark of hope flashes up, t h e n a sea of despair rages, and
always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. W h e n alone h e had a
dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with
others present it would be still worse. " A n o t h e r dose of m o r p h i n e t o lose consciousness. I will tell him, t h e doctor, that h e must t h i n k of something else. It's impossible,
impossible, to go on like this."
A n hour and another pass like that. But now there is a ring at the door bell. Perhaps it's the doctor? It is. H e comes in fresh, hearty, plump, and cheerful, with that
look on his face that seems to say: "There now, you're in a panic about something,
but we'll arrange it all for you directly!" T h e doctor knows this expression is out of
place here, but he has put it on once for all and can't take it offlike a m a n who has
put on a frock-coat in the morning to pay a round of calls.
T h e doctor rubs his hands vigorously and reassuringly.
240
"Brr! How cold it is! There's such a sharp frost; just let me warm myself!" h e says,
as if it were only a matter of waiting till h e was warm, and t h e n he would put everything right.
"Well now, how are you?"
Ivan Ilych feels that t h e doctor would like to say: "Well, how are our affairs?" but
that even he feels that this would n o t do, and says instead: " W h a t sort of a night have
vou had?"
Ivan Ilych looks at h i m as m u c h as to say: "Are you really never ashamed of
lying?" But t h e doctor does n o t wish to understand this question, and Ivan Ilych says:
"Just as terrible as ever. T h e pain never leaves me and never subsides. If only something . . . "
"Yes, you sick people are always like that. . . . There, now I think I am warm 245
enough. Even Praskovya Fedorovna, who is so particular, could find no fault with my
temperature. Well, now I can say good-morning," and the doctor presses his patient's
hand.
T h e n , dropping his former playfulness, h e begins with a most serious face to examine the patient, feeling his pulse and taking his temperature, and t h e n begins the
sounding and auscultation.
Ivan Ilych knows quite well and definitely that all this is nonsense and pure deception, but w h e n the doctor, getting down on his knee, leans over him, putting his
ear first higher t h e n lower, and performs various gymnastic movements over h i m
with a significant expression on his face, Ivan Ilych submits to it all as he used to submit to the speeches of the lawyers, though h e knew very well that they were all lying
and why they were lying.
T h e doctor, kneeling o n the sofa, is still sounding h i m when Praskovya Fedorovna's silk dress rustles at the door and she is heard scolding Peter for n o t having
let her know of the doctor's arrival.
She comes in, kisses her husband, and at once proceeds to prove that she has
been up a long time already, and only owing to a misunderstanding failed to be there
when the doctor arrived.
Ivan Ilych looks at her, scans her all over, sets against her t h e whiteness and 250
plumpness and cleanness of her hands and neck, the gloss of her hair, and the sparkle
of her vivacious eyes. He hates her with his whole soul. A n d the thrill of hatred h e
feels for her makes h i m suffer from her touch.
Her attitude towards him and his disease is still the same. Just as the doctor had
adopted a certain relation to his patient which h e could not abandon, so had she
formed one towards h i m t h a t h e was n o t doing something he ought to do and was
himself to blame, and that she reproached h i m lovingly for thisand she could n o t
now change that attitude.
"You see he doesn't listen to me and doesn't take his medicine at the proper
time. A n d above all he lies in a position that is 110 doubt bad for h i m w i t h his legs
I
up."
She described how he made Gerasim hold his legs up.
T h e doctor smiled with a contemptuous affability that said: "What's to be done?
These sick people do have foolish fancies of that kind, but we must forgive them."
W h e n the examination was over the doctor looked at his watch, and t h e n 255
Praskovya Fedorovna announced to Ivan Ilych that it was of course as he pleased, but
she had sent today for a celebrated specialist who would examine h i m and have a
consultation wyith Michael Danilovich (their regular doctor).
"Please don't, raise any objections. I am doing this for my own sake," she said ironically, letting it be felt that she was doing it all for his sake and only said this to leave
him no right to refuse. H e remained silent, knitting his brows. He felt that h e was so
surrounded and involved in a mesh of falsity that it was hard to unravel anything.
E v e r y t h i n g s h e d i d for h i m w a s entirely for h e r o w n sake, a n d s h e told h i m
she
w a s d o i n g f o r h e r s e l f w h a t s h e a c t u a l l y w a s d o i n g f o r h e r s e l f , as if t h a t w a s s o i n c r e d i ble that he m u s t u n d e r s t a n d the opposite.
A t half-past eleven the celebrated specialist arrived. A g a i n the s o u n d i n g
began
a n d the significant conversations in his presence a n d i n a n o t h e r r o o m , about the kidn e y s a n d t h e a p p e n d i x , a n d t h e q u e s t i o n s a n d answers, w i t h s u c h a n air o f
impor-
t a n c e t h a t a g a i n , i n s t e a d o f t h e r e a l q u e s t i o n o f life a n d d e a t h w h i c h n o w a l o n e c o n fronted h i m , the q u e s t i o n arose of the k i d n e y a n d a p p e n d i x w h i c h were n o t b e h a v i n g
as t h e y o u g h t to a n d w o u l d n o w b e a t t a c k e d b y M i c h a e l D a n i l o v i c h a n d t h e s p e c i a l ist a n d f o r c e d t o a m e n d t h e i r w a y s .
T h e celebrated specialist t o o k leave o f h i m w i t h a serious t h o u g h n o t
hopeless
look, a n d i n reply to the t i m i d q u e s t i o n I v a n I l y c h , w i t h eyes g l i s t e n i n g w i t h fear a n d
h o p e , p u t t o h i m as t o w h e t h e r t h e r e w a s a c h a n c e o f r e c o v e r y , s a i d t h a t h e c o u l d n o t
v o u c h f o r it b u t t h e r e w a s a p o s s i b i l i t y . T h e
look of hope with w h i c h Ivan
Ilych
w a t c h e d t h e d o c t o r o u t w a s s o p a t h e t i c t h a t P r a s k o v y a F e d o r o v n a , s e e i n g it, e v e n
w e p t as s h e left t h e r o o m t o h a n d t h e d o c t o r h i s fee.
T h e g l e a m o f h o p e k i n d l e d b y t h e d o c t o r ' s e n c o u r a g e m e n t d i d n o t last l o n g . T h e
260
s a m e r o o m , t h e s a m e pictures, c u r t a i n s , w a l l p a p e r , m e d i c i n e bottles, w e r e all there,
a n d the s a m e a c h i n g suffering b o d y , a n d I v a n I l y c h b e g a n to m o a n . T h e y g a v e h i m a
subcutaneous injection and he sank into oblivion.
I t w a s t w i l i g h t w h e n h e c a m e to. T h e y b r o u g h t h i m h i s d i n n e r a n d h e s w a l l o w e d
s o m e beef tea w i t h difficulty, a n d t h e n e v e r y t h i n g w a s the s a m e a g a i n a n d n i g h t was
coming on.
After
dinner,
at s e v e n o ' c l o c k ,
Praskovya
Fedorovna
came
into
the
room
in
e v e n i n g dress, h e r full b o s o m p u s h e d u p b y h e r corset, a n d w i t h traces o f p o w d e r o n h e r
face. S h e h a d r e m i n d e d h i m i n t h e m o r n i n g t h a t t h e y were g o i n g to t h e theater. S a r a h
B e r n h a r d t was visiting the t o w n a n d they h a d a box, w h i c h he h a d insisted o n
t a k i n g . N o w h e h a d f o r g o t t e n a b o u t it a n d h e r t o i l e t o f f e n d e d h i m , b u t h e
their
concealed
his v e x a t i o n w h e n h e r e m e m b e r e d that h e h a d himself insisted o n their securing a b o x
a n d g o i n g b e c a u s e it w o u l d b e a n i n s t r u c t i v e a n d a e s t h e t i c p l e a s u r e f o r t h e c h i l d r e n .
P r a s k o v y a F e d o r o v n a c a m e in, self-satisfied b u t y e t w i t h a r a t h e r g u i l t y air. S h e sat
d o w n a n d a s k e d h o w h e w a s , but, as h e saw, o n l y for t h e s a k e o f a s k i n g a n d n o t i n ord e r t o l e a r n a b o u t it, k n o w i n g t h a t t h e r e w a s n o t h i n g t o l e a r n a n d t h e n w e n t o n t o
w h a t she really w a n t e d to say: that s h e w o u l d n o t o n a n y a c c o u n t h a v e g o n e b u t t h a t
t h e b o x h a d b e e n t a k e n a n d H e l e n a n d t h e i r d a u g h t e r w e r e g o i n g , as w e l l as P e t rishchev (the e x a m i n i n g magistrate, their daughter's
fiance),
a n d t h a t it w a s o u t o f t h e
q u e s t i o n t o let t h e m g o a l o n e ; b u t t h a t s h e w o u l d h a v e m u c h p r e f e r r e d t o sit w i t h h i m
for a w h i l e ; a n d h e m u s t be sure to f o l l o w the doctor's orders w h i l e s h e was away.
" O h , and Fedor Petrovich"
(the
fiance)
" w o u l d like to c o m e in. M a y h e ?
A n d
Lisa?"
" A l l right."
Their
daughter
265
came
in
in full e v e n i n g
dress, h e r fresh y o u n g
flesh
( m a k i n g a s h o w o f that very flesh w h i c h i n his o w n case caused so m u c h
exposed
suffering),
strong, h e a l t h y , e v i d e n t l y i n love, a n d i m p a t i e n t w i t h illness, suffering, a n d
death,
because they interfered w i t h her happiness.
F e d o r P e t r o v i c h c a m e i n too, i n e v e n i n g dress, h i s h a i r c u r l e d
a la Capoul y
stiff c o l l a r r o u n d h i s l o n g s i n e w y n e c k , a n e n o r m o u s w h i t e s h i r t f r o n t , a n d
a la Capoul: imitating the hairdo of Victor Capoul, a contemporary French singer.
a tight
narrow
b l a c k trousers tightly stretched o v e r his s t r o n g thighs. H e h a d o n e w h i t e g l o v e tightly
d r a w n on, a n d was holding his opera hat in his hand.
F o l l o w i n g h i m the s c h o o l b o y crept in unnoticed, i n a n e w uniform, poor
fellow, a n d w e a r i n g g l o v e s . T e r r i b l y d a r k s h a d o w s s h o w e d u n d e r h i s eyes, t h e
little
mean-
ing of w h i c h I v a n I l y c h k n e w well.
H i s s o n h a d a l w a y s s e e m e d p a t h e t i c t o h i m , a n d n o w it w a s d r e a d f u l t o s e e t h e
boy's f r i g h t e n e d l o o k o f pity. It s e e m e d to I v a n I l y c h t h a t V a s y a w a s t h e o n l y
one
besides G e r a s i m w h o understood a n d pitied h i m .
T h e y all sat d o w n a n d a g a i n a s k e d h o w h e was. A
silence followed. Lisa
her m o t h e r a b o u t the opera-glasses, a n d there was a n altercation b e t w e e n
asked
mother
a n d d a u g h t e r as t o w h o h a d t a k e n t h e m a n d w h e r e t h e y h a d b e e n p u t . T h i s
sioned some
occa-
unpleasantness.
Fedor Petrovich inquired of I v a n I l y c h whether he h a d ever seen S a r a h Bernhardt.
I v a n I l y c h d i d n o t a t first c a t c h t h e q u e s t i o n , b u t t h e n r e p l i e d : " N o , h a v e y o u
seen
her before?"
"Yes, in Adrienne
Lecouvreur
P r a s k o v y a F e d o r o v n a m e n t i o n e d s o m e roles i n w h i c h S a r a h B e r n h a r d t was particularly g o o d . H e r d a u g h t e r d i s a g r e e d . C o n v e r s a t i o n s p r a n g u p as to t h e
elegance
a n d r e a l i s m o f h e r a c t i n g t h e s o r t o f c o n v e r s a t i o n t h a t is a l w a y s r e p e a t e d a n d is a l ways the same.
I n t h e m i d s t o f t h e c o n v e r s a t i o n F e d o r P e t r o v i c h g l a n c e d at I v a n I l y c h a n d b e c a m e silent. T h e o t h e r s also l o o k e d at h i m a n d g r e w silent. I v a n I l y c h w a s
staring
w i t h glittering eyes straight before h i m , e v i d e n t l y i n d i g n a n t w i t h t h e m . T h i s h a d to
b e r e c t i f i e d , b u t it w a s i m p o s s i b l e t o d o s o . T h e s i l e n c e h a d t o b e b r o k e n , b u t f o r a
t i m e n o o n e d a r e d t o b r e a k it a n d t h e y a l l b e c a m e a f r a i d t h a t t h e c o n v e n t i o n a l
de-
c e p t i o n w o u l d s u d d e n l y b e c o m e o b v i o u s a n d t h e t r u t h b e c o m e p l a i n to all. L i s a w a s
t h e first t o p l u c k u p c o u r a g e a n d b r e a k t h a t s i l e n c e , b u t b y t r y i n g t o h i d e w h a t e v e r y b o d y w a s f e e l i n g , s h e b e t r a y e d it.
" W e l l , if w e are g o i n g it's t i m e to start," s h e said, l o o k i n g at h e r w a t c h , a p r e s e n t
f r o m h e r father, a n d w i t h a f a i n t a n d s i g n i f i c a n t s m i l e at F e d o r P e t r o v i c h r e l a t i n g to
s o m e t h i n g k n o w n o n l y to t h e m . S h e g o t u p w i t h a rustle o f h e r dress.
T h e y all rose, said g o o d - n i g h t , a n d w e n t a w a y .
W h e n t h e y h a d g o n e it s e e m e d t o I v a n I l y c h t h a t h e felt b e t t e r ; t h e f a l s i t y h a d
g o n e w i t h t h e m . B u t the p a i n r e m a i n e d t h a t s a m e p a i n a n d that s a m e fear
that
m a d e e v e r y t h i n g m o n o t o n o u s l y alike, n o t h i n g h a r d e r a n d n o t h i n g easier. E v e r y t h i n g
was worse.
A g a i n minute followed minute and hour followed hour. Everything
remained
t h e s a m e a n d t h e r e w a s n o c e s s a t i o n . A n d t h e i n e v i t a b l e e n d o f it a l l b e c a m e
more
a n d m o r e terrible.
"Yes, s e n d G e r a s i m here," h e replied to a q u e s t i o n Peter asked.
IX
H i s w i f e r e t u r n e d late at n i g h t . S h e c a m e i n o n t i p t o e , b u t h e h e a r d h e r , o p e n e d
h i s eyes, a n d m a d e h a s t e to close t h e m a g a i n . S h e w i s h e d to s e n d G e r a s i m a w a y
to sit w i t h h i m herself, b u t h e o p e n e d h i s e y e s a n d said: " N o , g o a w a y . "
" A r e y o u i n great p a i n ? "
" A l w a y s the same."
"Take some opium."
H e agreed a n d took some. S h e w e n t away.
and
T i l l a b o u t three i n t h e m o r n i n g h e w a s i n a state o f stupefied misery. It s e e m e d to
285
h i m that h e a n d his p a i n were b e i n g thrust into a narrow, deep black sack, but t h o u g h
they w e r e p u s h e d further a n d further i n t h e y c o u l d n o t be p u s h e d to t h e b o t t o m .
And
t h i s , t e r r i b l e e n o u g h i n itself, w a s a c c o m p a n i e d b y s u f f e r i n g . H e w a s f r i g h t e n e d
yet
w a n t e d to fall t h r o u g h t h e s a c k , h e s t r u g g l e d b u t y e t c o o p e r a t e d . A n d s u d d e n l y
he
b r o k e t h r o u g h , fell, a n d r e g a i n e d c o n s c i o u s n e s s . G e r a s i m w a s s i t t i n g at t h e f o o t o f t h e
b e d d o z i n g quietly a n d patiently, w h i l e h e h i m s e l f lay w i t h h i s e m a c i a t e d s t o c k i n g e d
legs resting o n G e r a s i m s shoulders; the s a m e s h a d e d c a n d l e w a s there a n d the s a m e
unceasing pain.
" G o away, Gerasim," he whispered.
" I t ' s a l l r i g h t , sir. T i l s t a y a w h i l e . "
"No. G o
He
away."
r e m o v e d h i s legs f r o m G e r a s i m ' s shoulders, t u r n e d s i d e w a y s o n t o his
a n d felt s o r r y for h i m s e l f . H e o n l y w a i t e d till G e r a s i m h a d g o n e i n t o t h e n e x t
arm,
room
a n d t h e n restrained h i m s e l f n o longer but wept like a child. H e wept o n a c c o u n t
h i s helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty o f m a n , the cruelty of G o d ,
of
and
the absence of G o d .
" W h y h a s t T h o u d o n e all this? W h y h a s t T h o u b r o u g h t m e h e r e ? W h y , w h y dost
290
T h o u t o r m e n t m e so terribly?"
He
d i d n o t expect a n a n s w e r a n d yet w e p t because there w a s n o a n s w e r
and
c o u l d b e n o n e . T h e p a i n g r e w m o r e acute, b u t h e d i d n o t stir a n d d i d n o t call.
He
s a i d t o h i m s e l f : " G o o n ! S t r i k e m e ! B u t w h a t is i t f o r ? W h a t h a v e I d o n e t o T h e e ?
W h a t is i t f o r ? "
T h e n he grew quiet a n d not only ceased w e e p i n g but e v e n held his breath
and
b e c a m e all a t t e n t i o n . It w a s as t h o u g h h e w a s l i s t e n i n g n o t to a n a u d i b l e v o i c e b u t to
the v o i c e of his soul, to the current of t h o u g h t s arising w i t h i n h i m .
"What
is it y o u w a n t ? " w a s t h e
first
clear c o n c e p t i o n capable of expression
in
words, that he heard.
" W h a t d o y o u w a n t ? W h a t d o y o u w a n t ? " h e repeated to himself.
" W h a t d o I w a n t ? T o live a n d n o t to suffer," h e a n s w e r e d .
295
A n d again h e listened w i t h s u c h concentrated attention that e v e n his p a i n
did
not distract h i m .
" T o live? H o w ? " asked his inner voice.
" W h y , t o l i v e as I u s e d t o w e l l a n d p l e a s a n t l y . "
" A s y o u lived before, well a n d pleasantly?" the v o i c e repeated.
A n d i n i m a g i n a t i o n h e b e g a n t o r e c a l l t h e b e s t m o m e n t s o f h i s p l e a s a n t life. B u t
s t r a n g e t o s a y n o n e o f t h o s e b e s t m o m e n t s o f h i s p l e a s a n t life n o w s e e m e d at all w h a t
they had t h e n s e e m e d n o n e
of t h e m except the
first
recollections of
childhood.
T h e r e , i n c h i l d h o o d , t h e r e h a d b e e n s o m e t h i n g r e a l l y p l e a s a n t w i t h w h i c h it w o u l d
b e p o s s i b l e t o l i v e if it c o u l d r e t u r n . B u t t h e c h i l d w h o h a d e x p e r i e n c e d t h a t h a p p i n e s s e x i s t e d n o l o n g e r , it w a s l i k e a r e m i n i s c e n c e o f s o m e b o d y else.
A s s o o n as t h e p e r i o d b e g a n w h i c h h a d p r o d u c e d t h e p r e s e n t I v a n I l y c h , all t h a t
h a d t h e n seemed joys n o w melted before his sight a n d turned into s o m e t h i n g trivial
a n d often nasty.
A n d the further h e departed f r o m c h i l d h o o d a n d the nearer h e c a m e to the present t h e m o r e w o r t h l e s s a n d d o u b t f u l w e r e t h e joys. T h i s b e g a n w i t h t h e S c h o o l
Law. A
little t h a t w a s really g o o d w a s still f o u n d t h e r e t h e r e w a s
of
lightheadedness,
friendship, a n d hope. B u t in the upper classes there h a d already b e e n fewer o f s u c h
- g o o d m o m e n t s . T h e n d u r i n g t h e first y e a r s o f h i s o f f i c i a l c a r e e r , w h e n h e w a s i n t h e
300
service of the G o v e r n o r , s o m e pleasant m o m e n t s again occurred: they were the m e m ories o f l o v e for a w o m a n . T h e n all b e c a m e c o n f u s e d a n d t h e r e w a s still less o f w h a t
w a s g o o d ; later o n a g a i n t h e r e w a s still less t h a t w a s g o o d , a n d t h e f u r t h e r h e w e n t t h e
less t h e r e was. H i s m a r r i a g e , a m e r e a c c i d e n t , t h e n t h e d i s e n c h a n t m e n t t h a t f o l l o w e d
it, h i s w i f e ' s b a d b r e a t h a n d t h e s e n s u a l i t y a n d h y p o c r i s y ; t h e n t h e d e a d l y o f f i c i a l l i f e
a n d t h o s e p r e o c c u p a t i o n s a b o u t m o n e y , a y e a r o f it, a n d t w o , a n d t e n , a n d
twenty,
a n d a l w a y s t h e s a m e t h i n g . A n d t h e l o n g e r it l a s t e d t h e m o r e d e a d l y it b e c a m e . " I t is
as if I h a d b e e n g o i n g d o w n h i l l w h i l e I i m a g i n e d I w a s g o i n g u p . A n d
t h a t is r e a l l y
w h a t it w a s . I w a s g o i n g u p i n p u b l i c o p i n i o n , b u t t o t h e s a m e e x t e n t l i f e w a s
ebbing
a w a y f r o m m e . A n d n o w i t is a l l d o n e a n d t h e r e is o n l y d e a t h . "
" T h e n w h a t d o e s i t m e a n ? W h y ? I t c a n ' t b e t h a t l i f e is s o s e n s e l e s s a n d h o r r i b l e .
B u t if it r e a l l y h a s b e e n s o h o r r i b l e a n d s e n s e l e s s , w h y m u s t I d i e a n d d i e i n
T h e r e is s o m e t h i n g
agony?
wrong!"
" M a y b e I d i d n o t l i v e as I o u g h t t o h a v e d o n e , " it s u d d e n l y o c c u r r e d t o h i m . " B u t
h o w c o u l d that be, w h e n I d i d e v e r y t h i n g p r o p e r l y ? " h e replied, a n d i m m e d i a t e l y dism i s s e d f r o m h i s m i n d t h i s , t h e s o l e s o l u t i o n o f all t h e r i d d l e s o f life a n d d e a t h , as
s o m e t h i n g quite impossible.
" T h e n w h a t d o y o u w a n t n o w ? T o l i v e ? L i v e h o w ? L i v e as y o u l i v e d i n t h e l a w
c o u r t s w h e n t h e u s h e r p r o c l a i m e d T h e j u d g e is c o m i n g ! ' T h e j u d g e is c o m i n g ,
the
j u d g e ! " h e r e p e a t e d t o h i m s e l f . " H e r e h e is, t h e j u d g e . B u t I a m n o t g u i l t y ! " h e
ex-
claimed angrily. " W h a t
305
is i t f o r ? " A n d h e c e a s e d c r y i n g , b u t t u r n i n g h i s f a c e t o t h e
w a l l c o n t i n u e d t o p o n d e r o n t h e s a m e q u e s t i o n : W h y , a n d f o r w h a t p u r p o s e , is t h e r e
all t h i s h o r r o r ? B u t h o w e v e r m u c h h e p o n d e r e d h e f o u n d n o answTer. A n d
whenever
t h e t h o u g h t o c c u r r e d t o h i m , a s it o f t e n d i d , t h a t i t a l l r e s u l t e d f r o m h i s n o t
having
l i v e d as h e o u g h t to h a v e d o n e , h e at o n c e r e c a l l e d t h e c o r r e c t n e s s o f h i s w h o l e life
a n d d i s m i s s e d so s t r a n g e a n idea.
x
A n o t h e r f o r t n i g h t p a s s e d . I v a n I l y c h n o w n o l o n g e r left h i s s o f a . H e w o u l d
not
lie i n b e d b u t lay o n t h e sofa, f a c i n g t h e w a l l n e a r l y all t h e t i m e . H e suffered e v e r t h e
same unceasing agonies a n d in his loneliness pondered always o n the same
insoluble
q u e s t i o n : " W h a t is t h i s ? C a n it b e t h a t i t is D e a t h ? " A n d t h e i n n e r v o i c e
answered:
" Y e s , i t is D e a t h . "
"Why
t h e s e s u f f e r i n g s ? " A n d t h e v o i c e a n s w e r e d , " F o r n o r e a s o n t h e y just are
so." B e y o n d a n d besides this there was n o t h i n g .
F r o m t h e v e r y b e g i n n i n g o f h i s i l l n e s s , e v e r s i n c e h e h a d first b e e n t o see t h e d o c tor, I v a n I l y c h ' s life h a d b e e n d i v i d e d b e t w e e n t w o c o n t r a r y a n d a l t e r n a t i n g
moods:
n o w it w a s d e s p a i r a n d t h e e x p e c t a t i o n o f t h i s u n c o m p r e h e n d e d a n d t e r r i b l e d e a t h ,
a n d n o w h o p e a n d a n intently interested observation of the f u n c t i o n i n g of his
gans. N o w
before his eyes there was o n l y a k i d n e y or a n intestine that
or-
temporarily
e v a d e d its d u t y , a n d n o w o n l y t h a t i n c o m p r e h e n s i b l e a n d d r e a d f u l d e a t h f r o m w h i c h
it w a s i m p o s s i b l e t o e s c a p e .
T h e s e t w o states o f m i n d h a d a l t e r n a t e d f r o m t h e v e r y b e g i n n i n g o f h i s
b u t t h e f u r t h e r it p r o g r e s s e d t h e m o r e d o u b t f u l a n d f a n t a s t i c b c c a m c t h e
illness,
conception
o f t h e k i d n e y , a n d t h e m o r e real, t h e s e n s e o f i m p e n d i n g d e a t h .
H e h a d but to call to m i n d w h a t h e h a d b e e n three m o n t h s before a n d w h a t h e
was n o w , to call to m i n d w i t h w h a t regularity h e h a d b e e n g o i n g d o w n h i l l , for every
possibility o f h o p e to be shattered.
310
Latterly during t h a t loneliness in which he found himself as he lay facing the
back of the sofa, a loneliness in the midst of a populous town and surrounded by numerous acquaintances and relations but that yet could n o t h a v e been more complete
anywhereeither at the bottom of the sea or under the earthduring that terrible
loneliness Ivan Ilych had lived only in memories of the past. Pictures of his past rose
before h i m one after another. T h e y always began with what was nearest in time and
t h e n went back to what was most remoteto his childhoodand rested there. If he
thought of the stewed prunes t h a t had been offered h i m that day, his mind went back
to the raw shrivelled French plums of his childhood, their peculiar flavor and the flow
of saliva w h e n h e sucked their stones, and along with the memory of that taste came
a whole series of memories of those days: his nurse, his brother, and their toys. "No, I
mustn't think of that. . . . It is too painful," Ivan Ilych said to himself, and brought
himself back to the presentto the b u t t o n o n the back of the sofa and the creases in
its morocco. "Morocco is expensive, b u t it does not wear well: there had been a quarrel about it. It was a different kind of quarrel and a different kind of morocco thattime when we tore father's portfolio and were punished, and mamma brought us
some tarts. . . ." A n d again his thoughts dwelt on his childhood, and again it was
painful and he tried to banish t h e m and fix his mind on something else.
T h e n again together with that chain of memories another series passed through
his mindof how his illness had progressed and grown worse. T h e r e also the further
back he looked t h e more life there had been. T h e r e had been more of what was good
in life and more of life itself. T h e two merged together. "Just as the pain went on getting worse and worse, so my life grew worse and worse," he thought. "There is one
bright spot there at the back, at t h e beginning of life, and afterwards ail becomes
blacker and blacker and proceeds more and more rapidlyin inverse ratio to the
square of the distance from death," thought Ivan Ilych. A n d the example of a stone
falling downwards with increasing velocity entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing sufferings, flies further and further towards its e n d t h e most terrible suffering. "I
am flying. . . ." Fie shuddered, shifted himself, and tried to resist, but was already
aware that resistance was impossible, and again, with eyes weary of gazing but unable
to cease seeing what was before them, he stared at the back of the sofa and waited
awaiting that dreadful fall and shock and destruction.
"Resistance is impossible!" h e said to himself. "If I could only understand what it
is all for! But that too is impossible. A n explanation would be possible if it could be
said that I have n o t lived as I ought to. But it is impossible to say that," and he remembered all the legality, correctitude, and propriety of his life. "That at any rate
can certainly n o t be admitted," he thought, and his lips smiled ironically as if someone could see that smile and be taken in by it. "There is no explanation! Agony,
death. . . . W h a t for?"
XI
A n o t h e r two weeks went by in this way and during that fortnight an event occurred that Ivan Ilych and his wife had desired. Petrishchev formally proposed. It
happened in the evening. T h e next day Praskovya Fedorovna came into her husband's room considering how best to inform h i m of it, but that very night there had
been a fresh change for the worse in his condition. She found h i m still lying on the
sofa but in a different position. H e lay on his back, groaning and staring fixedly
straight in front of him.
She began to remind h i m of his medicines, but h e turned his eyes towards her
with such a look that she did n o t finish w h a t she was saying; so great an animosity, to
her in particular, did that look express.
"For Christ's sake let me die in peace!" he said.
She would have gone away, but just t h e n their daughter came in and went up to
say good morning. He looked at her as he had done at his wife, and in reply to her inquiry about his health said dryly that he would soon free t h e m all of himself. T h e y
were both silent and after sitting with h i m for a while went away.
"Is it our fault?" Lisa said to her mother. "It's as if we were to blame! I am sorry
for papa, but why should we be tortured?"
T h e doctor came at his usual time. Ivan Ilych answered "Yes" and "No," never
taking his angry eyes from him, and at last said: "You know you can do n o t h i n g for
me, so leave me alone."
"We can ease your sufferings."
"You can't even do that. Let me be."
T h e doctor went into the drawing-room and told Praskovya Fedorovna that the
case was very serious and that the only resource left was opium to allay her husband's
sufferings, which must be terrible.
It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan Ilych's physical sufferings were terrible,
but worse t h a n the physical sufferings were his mental sufferings, which were his
chief torture.
His mental sufferings were due to the fact that one night, as h e looked at
Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured face with its prominent cheekbones, t h e question
suddenly occurred to him: " W h a t if my whole life has really been wrong?"
It occurred to h i m that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely
that he had n o t spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to h i m that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by t h e most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses
w7hich h e had immediately suppressed, might h a v e been t h e real thing, and all the
rest false. A n d his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his
family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. H e tried to
defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what h e was defending. T h e r e was n o t h i n g to defend.
"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify it
what then?"
H e lay o n his back and began to pass his life in review in quite a new way. In the
morning w h e n he saw first his footman, t h e n his wife, t h e n his daughter, and t h e n the
doctor, their every word and movement confirmed to h i m the awful truth that had
been revealed to h i m during the night. In t h e m h e saw himselfall that for which h e
had livedand saw clearly that it was n o t real at all, but a terrible and huge deception
which had hidden both life and death. This consciousness intensified his physical suffering tenfold. H e groaned and tossed about, and pulled at his clothing which choked
and stifled him. A n d h e hated t h e m o n that account.
H e was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious, but at n o o n his sufferings began again. H e drove everybody away and tossed from side to side.
His wife came to h i m and said:
"Jean, my dear, do this for me. It can't do any h a r m and often helps. Healthy
people often do it."
315
320
325
330
H e o p e n e d his eyes wide.
" W h a t ? T a k e c o m m u n i o n ? W h y ? I t ' s u n n e c e s s a r y ! H o w e v e r . . ."
S h e b e g a n to cry.
" Y e s , d o , m y d e a r . I ' l l s e n d f o r o u r p r i e s t . H e is s u c h a n i c e m a n . "
" A l l right. V e r y well," h e muttered.
When
335
the priest c a m e a n d h e a r d h i s confession, I v a n I l y c h was softened
and
s e e m e d to feel a relief f r o m h i s d o u b t s a n d c o n s e q u e n t l y f r o m h i s sufferings, a n d for a
m o m e n t there c a m e a ray of h o p e . H e a g a i n b e g a n to t h i n k of the v e r m i f o r m a p p e n d i x a n d t h e p o s s i b i l i t y o f c o r r e c t i n g it. H e r e c e i v e d t h e s a c r a m e n t w i t h t e a r s i n h i s
eyes.
When
t h e y laid h i m d o w n a g a i n afterwards h e felt a m o m e n t ' s ease, a n d
the
h o p e that h e m i g h t live a w o k e i n h i m again. H e b e g a n to t h i n k of the operation that
h a d b e e n suggested to h i m . " T o live! I w a n t to live!" h e said to himself.
H i s wife c a m e i n to c o n g r a t u l a t e h i m after h i s c o m m u n i o n , a n d w h e n
uttering
the usual c o n v e n t i o n a l words she added:
" Y o u feel better, d o n ' t y o u ? "
W i t h o u t l o o k i n g at h e r h e said " Y e s . "
H e r dress, h e r
figure,
340
t h e e x p r e s s i o n o f h e r face, the t o n e o f h e r v o i c e , all re-
v e a l e d t h e s a m e t h i n g . " T h i s is w r o n g , it is n o t a s it s h o u l d b e . A l l y o u h a v e l i v e d f o r
a n d s t i l l l i v e f o r is f a l s e h o o d a n d d e c e p t i o n , h i d i n g l i f e a n d d e a t h f r o m y o u . " A n d
s o o n as h e a d m i t t e d t h a t t h o u g h t , h i s h a t r e d a n d h i s a g o n i z i n g p h y s i c a l
again sprang up, a n d w i t h that suffering a consciousness
as
suffering
of the unavoidable,
ap-
p r o a c h i n g e n d . A n d to this w a s a d d e d a n e w s e n s a t i o n o f g r i n d i n g s h o o t i n g p a i n a n d
a feeling of suffocation.
T h e e x p r e s s i o n o f his face w h e n h e uttered that " y e s " was dreadful. H a v i n g
ut-
t e r e d it, h e l o o k e d h e r s t r a i g h t i n t h e e y e s , t u r n e d o n h i s f a c e w i t h a r a p i d i t y e x t r a o r d i n a r y i n h i s w e a k state a n d s h o u t e d :
" G o away! G o away a n d leave m e alone!"
XII
F r o m t h a t m o m e n t the s c r e a m i n g b e g a n t h a t c o n t i n u e d for three days, a n d
was
s o t e r r i b l e t h a t o n e c o u l d n o t h e a r it t h r o u g h t w o c l o s e d d o o r s w i t h o u t h o r r o r . A t
the
m o m e n t h e a n s w e r e d h i s wife h e realized t h a t h e w a s lost, t h a t there w a s n o
return,
that the e n d h a d c o m e , the v e r y e n d , a n d h i s d o u b t s were still u n s o l v e d a n d r e m a i n e d
doubts.
" O h ! O h ! O h ! " he cried in various intonations. H e h a d begun by screaming "I
w o n ' t ! " a n d c o n t i n u e d s c r e a m i n g o n t h e letter O .
F o r three w h o l e days, d u r i n g w h i c h t i m e d i d n o t exist for h i m , h e struggled
t h a t b l a c k s a c k i n t o w h i c h h e w a s b e i n g thrust b y a n invisible, resistless force.
s t r u g g l e d as a m a n c o n d e m n e d t o d e a t h s t r u g g l e s i n t h e h a n d s o f t h e
in
He
executioner,
k n o w i n g t h a t h e c a n n o t s a v e h i m s e l f . A n d e v e r y m o m e n t h e felt t h a t d e s p i t e all h i s
efforts h e w a s d r a w i n g n e a r e r a n d n e a r e r to w h a t terrified h i m . H e felt t h a t h i s a g o n y
w a s d u e to h i s b e i n g t h r u s t i n t o t h a t b l a c k h o l e a n d still m o r e to h i s n o t b e i n g able to
g e t r i g h t i n t o it. H e w a s h i n d e r e d f r o m g e t t i n g i n t o it b y h i s c o n v i c t i o n t h a t h i s l i f e
h a d b e e n a g o o d o n e . T h a t v e r y j u s t i f i c a t i o n o f h i s life h e l d h i m fast a n d
prevented
h i s m o v i n g f o r w a r d , a n d it c a u s e d h i m m o s t t o r m e n t o f all.
S u d d e n l y s o m e f o r c e s t r u c k h i m i n t h e c h e s t a n d s i d e , m a k i n g it s t i l l h a r d e r t o
-breathe, a n d h e fell t h r o u g h t h e h o l e a n d t h e r e at t h e b o t t o m w a s a light. W h a t
had
345
happened to him was like the sensation one sometimes experiences in a railway carriage when one thinks one is going backwards while one is really going forwards and
suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.
"Yes, it was all n o t the right thing," he said to himself, "but that's n o matter. It
can be done. But what is t h e right thing?" he asked himself, and suddenly grew quiet.
This occurred at the end of the third day, two hours before his death. Just t h e n
his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. T h e dying m a n was
still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His h a n d fell on the boy's head, and
the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to cry.
A t that very m o m e n t Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light, and it
was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been, this
could still be rectified. H e asked himself, " W h a t is t h e right thing?" and grew still, listening. T h e n he felt t h a t someone was kissing his hand. H e opened his eyes, looked
at his son, and felt sorry for him. His wife came up to h i m and he glanced at her. She
was gazing at him open-mouthed, with undried tears o n her nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. H e felt sorry for her too.
"Yes, I am making t h e m wretched," he thought. "They are sorry, but it will be
better for t h e m when I die." He wished to say this but had n o t the strength to utter it.
"Besides, why speak? I must act," he thought. W i t h a look at his wife he indicated his
son and said: "Take h i m away . . . sorry for h i m . . . sorry for you too. . . ." H e tried to
add, "Forgive me," but said "forgo" and waved his h a n d , knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand.
A n d suddenly it grew clear to h i m that w h a t had been oppressing him and would
n o t leave him was all dropping away at once from two sides, from t e n sides, and from
all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as n o t to hurt them: release t h e m and
free himself from these sufferings. "How good and h o w simple!" h e thought. " A n d
the pain?" he asked himself. " W h a t has become of it? W h e r e are you, pain?"
H e turned his a t t e n t i o n to it.
"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be."
" A n d death . . . where is it?"
H e sought his former accustomed fear of death and did n o t find it. "Where is it?
W h a t death?" T h e r e was no fear because there was n o death.
In place of death there was light.
"So that's what it is!" h e suddenly exclaimed aloud. " W h a t joy!"
T o h i m all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant did
not change. For those present his agony continued for another two hours. Something
rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched, t h e n the gasping and rattle became less and less frequent.
"It is finished!" said someone near him.
H e heard these words and repeated t h e m in his soul.
"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is n o more!"
H e drew in a breath, stopped in t h e midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.
QUEST50MS
1. Sum up the reactions of Ivan's colleagues to the news of his death. What is implied in
Tolstoy's calling them riot friends, but "nearest acquaintances"?
2. What comic elements do you find in the account of the wake that Peter Ivanovich
attends?
3. In Tolstoy's description of the coipse and its expression (paragraph 27), what details seem
especially revealing and meaningful?
4. Do you think Tolstoy would have improved the story had he placed the events in chronological order? What if the opening scene of Ivan's colleagues at the law courts and the
wake scene were to be given last? What would be lost?
5. Would you call Ivan, when we first meet him, a religious man? Sum up his goals in life, his
values, and his attitudes.
6. By what "virtues" and abilities does Ivan rise through the ranks? While he continues to
succeed in his career, what happens to his marriage?
7. "Every spot on the tablecloth or the upholstery, and every broken window-blind string,
irritated him. He had devoted so much trouble to arranging it all that every disturbance of
it distressed him" (paragraph 104). W h a t do you make of this passage? What is its tone?
Does the narrator sympathize with Ivan's attachment to his possessions?
8. Consider the account of Ivan's routine in paragraph 105 ("he got up at nine . . ."). What
elements of a full life, what higher satisfactions, does this routine omit?
9. What caused Ivan's illness? How would it probably be diagnosed today? What is the
narrator's attitude toward Ivan's doctors?
10. In what successive stages does Tolstoy depict Ivan's growing isolation as his progressive
illness sets him more and more apart?
11. What are we apparently supposed to admire in the character and conduct of the servant
Gerasim?
12. What do you understand from the statement that Ivan's justification of his life "prevented
his moving forward, and it caused him most torment of all" (paragraph 346)?
13. What is memorable in the character of Ivan's schoolboy son? Why is he crucial to the
story? (Suggestion: Look closely at paragraphs 3 4 9 - 3 5 0 . )
14- What realization allows Ivan to triumph over pain? Why does he die gladly?
15. Henri Troyat has said that through the story of Ivan Ilych we imagine what our own
deaths will be. Is it possible to identify with an aging, selfish, worldly, nineteenth-century
Russian judge?
Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis
1915
TRANSLATED BY JOHN SISCOE
Franz Kaflia (1883-1924)
was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague,
Czechoslovakia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire). He was the only surviving son
of a domineering, successful father. After earning a law degree, Kaflia ivorked as a claims
investigator for the state accident insurance company. He worked on his stories at night, especially during his frequent bouts of insomnia. He never married, and lived mostly with his
parents. Kafka was such a careful and self-conscious writer that he found it difficult to finish
his w'ork and send it out for publication. During his lifetime he published only a few thin volumes of short fiction, most notably T h e Metamorphosis (1915) and In the Penal Colony
(1919). He never finished to his own satisfaction any of his three novels (all published
posthumously): T h e Trial (1925), T h e Castle (1926), and Amerika (1927). As Kaflia
was dying of tuberculosis, he begged his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to burn his
uncompleted manuscripts. Brod pondered this request but didn't obey. Kafka's two major
novels, T h e Trial and T h e Castle, both depict huge, remote, bumbling, irresponsible bureaucracies in whose power the individual feels helpless and blind. Kaflia's works appear
startlingly prophetic to readers looking back on them in the later light of Stalinism, World
War II, and the Holocaust. His haunting vision of an alienated modern world led the poet
W. H. Auden to remark at midcentury, "Had one to name the author who comes nearest to
bearing the same kind of relation to our age as Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe bore to
theirs, Kaflca is the first one would think of." T h e M e t a m o r p h o s i s , which arguably has the
most famous opening sentence in twentieth-century literature, show's Kafka's dreamlike fiction at its m o s t brilliant and most disturbing.
i
W h e n G r e g o r S a m s a awoke one m o r n i n g from troubled dreams, he found
self t r a n s f o r m e d i n h i s b e d i n t o a m o n s t r o u s insect. H e w a s l y i n g o n h i s b a c k ,
himwhich
w a s h a r d , as if p l a t e d i n a r m o r , a n d w h e n h e lifted h i s h e a d s l i g h t l y h e c o u l d see h i s
b e l l y : r o u n d e d , b r o w n , a n d d i v i d e d i n t o stiff a r c h e d s e g m e n t s ; o n t o p o f it t h e b l a n ket, a b o u t t o slip off a l t o g e t h e r , still barely c l i n g i n g . H i s m a n y legs, w h i c h s e e m e d p a thetically t h i n w h e n c o m p a r e d to t h e rest o f h i s b o d y , flickered h e l p l e s s l y before h i s
eyes.
" W h a t ' s h a p p e n e d to m e ? " h e t h o u g h t . It w a s n o dream. H i s r o o m , a
normal
t h o u g h s o m e w h a t s m a l l h u m a n b e d r o o m , l a y q u i e t l y w i t h i n its f o u r f a m i l i a r
Above
walls.
the table o n w h i c h his u n p a c k e d fabric samples were s p r e a d S a m s a was a
traveling s a l e s m a n h u n g the picture h e h a d recently cut out of a n illustrated m a g a zine a n d h a d set i n a l o v e l y gilt frame. It s h o w e d a l a d y w e a r i n g a fur h a t a n d a fur
stole, s i t t i n g u p r i g h t , a n d t h r u s t i n g o u t t o t h e v i e w e r a t h i c k fur muff, i n t o w h i c h h e r
whole forearm h a d disappeared.
G r e g o r ' s g l a n c e t h e n fell o n t h e w i n d o w , a n d t h e o v e r c a s t s k y o n e c o u l d h e a r
raindrops
drumming
on
the
tin sheeting
of the w i n d o w s i l l m a d e
him
f o u n d l y s a d . " W h a t if I w e n t b a c k t o s l e e p f o r a w h i l e a n d f o r g o t a l l t h i s
feel
pro-
nonsense,"
h e t h o u g h t . B u t that w a s n ' t to be, for h e w a s used to s l e e p i n g o n h i s r i g h t side a n d i n
his p r e s e n t state w a s u n a b l e to get i n t o t h a t p o s i t i o n . N o m a t t e r h o w h a r d h e
threw
h i m s e l f to his right, h e w o u l d immediately roll o n t o his b a c k again. H e m u s t
have
tried a h u n d r e d t i m e s , s h u t t i n g h i s e y e s s o as n o t t o see h i s w r i g g l i n g legs, n o t s t o p p i n g u n t i l h e b e g a n to feel i n h i s side a s l i g h t d u l l p a i n t h a t h e h a d n e v e r felt before.
" M y G o d , " h e t h o u g h t , " w h a t a n e x h a u s t i n g job I've c h o s e n ! A l w a y s o n the go,
d a y i n a n d d a y o u t . T h e r e are far m o r e w o r r i e s o n t h e r o a d t h a n at t h e office, w h a t
with
the
constant
travel,
the
nuisance
of
making
your
train
connections,
the
w r e t c h e d m e a l s e a t e n at o d d h o u r s , a n d the c a s u a l a c q u a i n t a n c e s y o u m e e t o n l y
p a s s i n g , n e v e r t o see a g a i n , n e v e r t o b e c o m e i n t i m a t e f r i e n d s . T o h e l l w i t h it a l l ! "
felt a s l i g h t i t c h o n t h e s u r f a c e o f h i s b e l l y . S l o w l y h e s h o v e d h i m s e l f o n h i s
in
He
back
closer to t h e b e d p o s t so t h a t h e c o u l d lift h i s h e a d m o r e easily. H e f o u n d t h e p l a c e
w h e r e it i t c h e d . I t w a s c o v e r e d w i t h s m a l l w h i t e s p o t s h e d i d n o t u n d e r s t a n d .
s t a r t e d t o t o u c h it w i t h o n e o f h i s legs, b u t p u l l e d b a c k i m m e d i a t e l y , f o r t h e
He
contact
sent a cold shiver t h r o u g h h i m .
H e slid b a c k d o w n to h i s f o r m e r p o s i t i o n . " G e t t i n g u p this early," h e t h o u g h t ,
" w o u l d t u r n a n y o n e i n t o a n idiot. A
m a n n e e d s h i s sleep. O t h e r s a l e s m e n live
like
h a r e m w o m e n . F o r e x a m p l e , w h e n I get b a c k to t h e h o t e l i n the m o r n i n g to write u p
t h e sales I ' v e m a d e , these g e n t l e m e n are s i t t i n g d o w n to breakfast. If I tried that w i t h
m y d i r e c t o r , I ' d b e f i r e d 011 t h e s p o t . A c t u a l l y , t h a t m i g h t n o t b e s u c h a b a d i d e a . I f I
d i d n ' t h a v e to c u r b m y t o n g u e because o f m y parents, I ' d h a v e g i v e n n o t i c e l o n g ago.
I ' d h a v e g o n e up to the director a n d told h i m f r o m the b o t t o m of m y heart
exactly
what I thought. T h a t would have knocked h i m from his desk! It's an odd way to run
things, this sitting high at a desk and talking down to employees, especially when,
since the director is hard of hearing, they have to approach so near. Well, there's hope
yet; as soon as I've saved enough money to pay hack what my parents owe h i m t h a t
should take another five or six yearsI'll go do it for sure. T h e n , I'll cut myself completely free. Right now, though, I'd better get up, as my train leaves at five."
H e looked at the alarm clock ticking on top of the chest of drawers. "God
Almighty!" he thought. It was half past six and the hands were quietly moving forward,
it was later than half past, it was nearly a quarter to seven. H a d n ' t the alarm clock gone
off? You could see from the bed that it had been correctly set for four o'clock; of course
it must have gone off. Yes, but could he really h a v e slept peacefully through that
ear-splitting racket? Well, if he h a d n ' t slept peacefully, he'd slept deeply all the
same. But what was h e to do now? T h e n e x t train left at seven, to make it h e would
have to rush like mad, and his samples weren't even packed, and he himself wasn't
feeling particularly spry or alert. A n d even if h e were to make the train, there would
be n o avoiding a scene with t h e director. T h e office messenger would've been waiting for the five o'clock train and would've long since reported his n o t showing up.
T h e messenger, dim-witted and lacking a will of his own, was a tool of the director.
Well, what if h e were to call in sick? But that would look embarrassing and suspicious
since in his five years with the firm Gregor had n o t been sick once. T h e director himself was sure to come over with the h e a l t h insurance doctor, would upbraid his parents for their son's laziness, and would cut short all excuses by deferring to the doctor,
w h o believed that everyone in the world was a perfectly healthy layabout. A n d really,
would he be so wrong in this case? A p a r t from a drowsiness that was hard to account
for after such a long sleep, Gregor really felt quite well, and in fact was exceptionally
hungry.
As he was thinking all this at top speed, without being able to make up his mind
to get out of b e d t h e alarm clock had just struck a quarter to sevena cautious tap
sounded on the door behind his head. "Gregor," said a voiceit was his m o t h e r
"it's a quarter to seven. Don't you have a train to catch?" T h a t gentle voice! Gregor
was shocked when he heard his own voice answering hers; unmistakably his own voice,
true, but mixed in with it, like an undertone, a miserable squeaking that allowed the
words to be clearly heard only for a m o m e n t before rising up, reverberating, to drown
out their meaning, so that no one could be sure if he had heard them correctly. Gregor
wanted to answer fully and give a complete explanation, but under the circumstances
h e merely said, "Yes, yes, thank you, Mother, I'm just getting up." Through the wooden
door between them the change in Gregor's voice was probably n o t obvious, for his
mother, quietly accepting his words, shuffled away. However, this brief exchange had
made the rest of the family aware that Gregor, surprisingly, was still in the house, and
already at one of the side doors his father was knocking, softly, yet with his fist. "Gregor, Gregor," he called, "what's the matter?" Before long he called once more in a
deeper voice, "Gregor? Gregor?" From the other side door came the sound of his sister's
voice, gentle and plaintive. "Gregor, aren't you feeling well? Is there anything I can get
you?" Gregor answered the two of them at the same time: "I'm almost ready." H e tried
hard to keep his voice from sounding strange by enunciating the words with great care,
and by inserting long pauses between the words. His father went back to his breakfast
but his sister whispered, "Gregor, please, open the door." But Gregor had no intention
of opening the door, and was thankful for having formed, while traveling, the prudent
habit of keeping all his doors locked at night, even at home.
W h a t he wanted to do now was to get up quietly and calmly, to get dressed, and
above all to eat his breakfast. Only t h e n would h e think about what to do next, for
he understood t h a t mulling things over in bed would lead him nowhere. H e remembered how often in the past he had felt some small pain in bed, perhaps caused by lying in an uncomfortable position, which as soon as h e had gotten up had proven to
be purely imaginary, and h e looked forward to seeing how this morning's fancies
would gradually fade and disappear. As for the change in his voice, h e h a d n ' t the
slightest doubt that it was n o t h i n g more t h a n the first sign of a severe cold, an occupational hazard of traveling salesmen.
Throwing off the blanket was easy enough; h e h a d only to puff himself up a little
and it slipped right off. But t h e next part was difficult, especially as he was so unusually wide. H e would have needed arms and legs to lift himself up; instead h e had only
these numerous little legs that never stopped moving and over which h e had n o control at all. As soon as he tried to bend one of t h e m it would straighten itself out, and
if h e finally succeeded in making it do as h e wished, all the others, as if set free, would
waggle about in a high degree of painful agitation. "But what's the point of lying uselessly in bed?" Gregor said to himself.
H e thought that h e might start by easing the lower part of his body out of bed
first, but this lower part, which incidentally h e h a d n ' t yet seen and of which he
couldn't form a clear picture, turned out to be very difficult to budgeit went so
slowly. W h e n finally, almost in a frenzy, he gathered his strength and pushed forward
desperately, he miscalculated his direction and bumped sharply against the post at
the foot of the bed, and t h e searing pain h e felt told him that, for right now at least,
it was exactly this lower part of his body that was perhaps the most tender.
So h e tried getting the top part of his body out first, and cautiously turned his
head towards the side of t h e bed. This proved easy enough, and eventually, despite its
breadth and weight the bulk of his body slowly followed the turning of his head. But
w h e n he finally got his head out over the edge of t h e bed he felt too afraid to go any
farther, for if h e were to let himself fall from this position only a miracle would prevent him from hurting his head. A n d it was precisely now, at all costs, that he must
n o t lose consciousness; he would be better off staying in bed.
But when after repeating his efforts h e lay, sighing, in his former position, and
once more watched his little legs struggling with one another more furiously t h a n
ever, if that were possible, and saw no way of bringing calm and order into this mindless confusion, he again told himself that it was impossible to stay in bed and that the
wisest course would be to stake everything o n the hope, however slight, of getting
away from t h e bed. A t the same time h e didn't forget to remind himself t h a t t h e
calmest of calm reflection was m u c h better t h a n frantic resolutions. During this
time he kept his eyes fixed as firmly as possible o n the window, but unfortunately the
morning fog, which shrouded even the other side of the narrow street, gave h i m little
comfort and cheer. "Already seven o'clock," h e said to himself w h e n the alarm clock
chimed again, "already seven and still such a thick fog." A n d for some time h e lay
still, breathing quietly, as if in the hope that utter stillness would bring all things
back to how they really and normally were.
But t h e n he said to himself: "I must make sure that I'm out of bed before it strikes
a quarter past seven. Anyway, by t h e n someone from work will have come to check
on me, since the office opens before seven." A n d h e immediately set the whole
length of his body rocking with a rhythmic motion in order to swing out of bed. If h e
tumbled out this way he could prevent his head from being injured by keeping it
tilted upward as h e f e l l His back seemed to be hard; the fall o n t o the carpet would
probably n o t h u r t it. His greatest worry was the thought of the loud crash he was
bound to make; it would probably cause anxiety, if n o t outright fear, on the other
side of the doors. Yet he had to take the chance.
W h e n Gregor was already half out of bedhis new technique made it more of a
game t h a n a struggle, since all h e had to do was to edge himself across by rocking
back and forthit struck h i m how simple it would be if he could get someone to help
him. T w o strong peoplehe thought of his father and the maidwould be more
t h a n enough. All they would have to do would be to slip their arms under his curved
back, lift h i m out of bed, bend down with their burden, and t h e n wait patiently while
h e flipped himself right side up onto the floor, where, one might hope, his little legs
would acquire some purpose. Well then, aside from the fact that the doors were
locked, wouldn't it be a good idea to call for help? In spite of his misery, he could n o t
help smiling at the thought.
H e had reached the point where, if h e rocked any harder, h e was in danger of
losing his balance, and very soon h e would have to commit himself, because in five
minutes it would be a quarter past s e v e n w h e n the doorbell rang. "It's someone
from the office," h e said to himself, and almost froze, while his little legs danced even
faster. For a m o m e n t everything remained quiet. "They won't open the door," Gregor
said to himself, clutching at a n absurd sort of hope. But then, of course, the maid, as
usual, went with her firm tread to the door and opened it. Gregor had only to hear
the visitor's first word of greeting to know at once who it wasthe office manager
himself. W h y was Gregor condemned to work for a firm where the most insignificant
failure to appear instantly provoked the deepest suspicion? W e r e the employees, one
and all, n o t h i n g but scoundrels? W a s n ' t there among t h e m one m a n who was true
and loyal, who if, one morning, h e were to waste an hour or so of the firm's time,
would become so conscience-stricken as to be driven out of his mind and actually
rendered incapable of leaving his bed? W o u l d n ' t it have been enough to send an office boy to askthat is, if such prying were necessary at all? Did the office manager
have to come in person, and thus demonstrate to an entire family of innocent people
that he was the only one wise enough to properly investigate this suspicious affair?
A n d it was more from the anxiety caused by these thoughts t h a n by any act of will
that Gregor swung himself out of bed with all his might. T h e r e was a loud thump, but
not really a crash. T h e carpet broke his fall somewhat, and his back too was more
elastic t h a n he had thought, so there was only a muffled thud that was relatively unobtrusive. However, h e had n o t lifted his head carefully enough and had banged it;
h e twisted it and rubbed it against the carpet in frustration and pain.
"Something fell down in there," said the office manager in the room on the left.
Gregor tried to imagine whether something like what had happened to him today
might one day h a p p e n to the office manager; really, one had to admit that it was possible. But as if in a blunt reply to this question the office manager took several determined steps in t h e next room and his patent leather boots creaked. From the room
on the right his sister was whispering to let h i m know what was going on: "Gregor,
the office manager is here." "I know," said Gregor to himself, but he didn't dare speak
loudly enough for his sister to hear him.
"Gregor," his father now said from the room on the left, "the office manager is
here and h e wants to know why you weren't on the early train. W e don't know what
to tell him. Besides, he wants to speak to you in person. So please open the door. I'm
sure he'll be kind enough to excuse any untidiness in your room." "Good morning,
15
Mr. Samsa," the manager was calling out amiably. "He isn't feeling well," said his
mother to the manager, while his father was still speaking at the door. "He's not well,
sir, believe me. W h y else would Gregor miss his train? T h e boy thinks of n o t h i n g but
his work. It nearly drives me to distraction the way he never goes out in the evening;
he's been here the last eight days, and every single evening he's stayed at home. H e
just sits here at the table with us quietly reading the newspapers or looking over train
schedules. T h e only e n j o y m e n t he gets is w h e n he's working away with his fretsaw. 0
For example he spent two or three evenings cutting out a little picture frame, you'd
be surprised at how pretty it is, it's hanging in his room, you'll see it in a minute as
soon as Gregor opens the door. By the way, I'm glad you've come, sir, we would've
never have gotten h i m to unlock the door by ourselves, he's so stubborn; and I'm sure
he's sick, even though he wouldn't admit it this morning." "I'm coming right now,"
said Gregor, slowly and carefully and n o t moving an inch for fear of missing a single
word of the conversation. "I can't imagine any other explanation, madam," said the
office manager, "I hope it's n o t h i n g serious. But on the other h a n d businessmen such
as ourselvesfortunately or unfortunatelyvery often have to ignore any minor indisposition, since the demands of business come first." "So, can the office manager
come in now?" asked Gregor's father impatiently, once more knocking on the door.
"No," said Gregor. In the room on the left there was a n embarrassed silence; in the
room on the right his sister began to sob.
But why didn't his sister go and join the others? Probably because she had just
gotten out of bed and hadn't even begun to dress yet. T h e n why was she crying? Because h e was in danger of losing his job, and because the director would start once
again dunning his parents for the money they owed him? Yet surely these were matters
one didn't need to worry about just now. Gregor was still here, and hadn't the slightest intention of deserting the family. True, at the m o m e n t he was lying on the carpet,
and n o one aware of his condition could seriously expect him to let the office manager in. But this minor discourtesy, for which in good time a n appropriate excuse
could easily be found, was unlikely to result in Gregor's being fired o n the spot. A n d
it seemed to Gregor far more sensible for t h e m now to leave him in peace t h a n to
bother h i m with their tears and entreaties. But the uncertainty that preyed upon
them excused their behavior.
"Mr. Samsa," the office manager now called in a louder voice, "what's t h e matter
with you? You've barricaded yourself in your room, giving only yes or no answers,
causing your parents a great deal of needless grief and neglectingI m e n t i o n this
only in passingneglecting your business responsibilities to an unbelievable degree.
I am speaking now in the name of your parents and of your director, and I beg you in
all seriousness to give me a complete explanation at once. I'm amazed at you, simply
amazed. I took you for a calm and reliable person, and now all at once you seem determined to make a ridiculous spectacle of yourself. Earlier this morning the director
did suggest to me a possible explanation for your disappearanceI'm referring to the
sums of cash that were recently entrusted to youbut I practically swore on my
solemn word of honor that this could n o t be. However, now w h e n I see how incredibly stubborn you are, I n o longer have t h e slightest desire to defend you. A n d your
position with the firm is by n o means secure. I came intending to tell you all this in
private, but since you're so pointlessly wasting my time I don't see why your parents
fretsaw: saw with a long, narrow, fine-toothed blade, for cutting thin wooden boards or metal plates
into patterns.
shouldn't hear it as w e l l For some time now your work has left m u c h to be desired.
W e are aware, of course, that this is n o t t h e prime season for doing business; but a
season for doing n o business at allthat, Mr. Samsa, does n o t and must n o t exist."
"But sir," Gregor called out distractedly, forgetting everything else in his excitement, "I'm o n the verge of opening the door right now. A slight indisposition, a dizzy
spell, has prevented me from getting up. I'm still in bed. But I'm feeling better already. I'm getting up now. Please be patient for just a moment. It seems I'm n o t quite
as well as I thought. But really I'm all right. Something like this can come on so suddenly! Only last night I was feeling fine, as my parents can tell you, or actually 1 did
have a slight premonition. I must have shown some sign of it. O h , wrhy didn't I report
it to the office! But one always thinks one can get better without having to stay at
home. Please, sir, have mercy on my parents! N o n e of what you've just accused me of
has any basis in fact; n o one has even spoken a word to me about it. Perhaps you
h a v e n ' t seen the latest orders I've sent in. Anyway, I can still make the eight o'clock
train. Don't let me keep you, sir, I'll be showing up at the office very soon. Please be
kind enough to inform them, and convey my best wishes to t h e director."
A n d while hurriedly blurting all this out, hardly knowing what h e was saying,
Gregor had reached the chest of drawers easily enough, perhaps because of the practice h e had already gotten in bed, and was now trying to use it to lift himself upright.
For he actually wanted to open t h e door, actually intended to show himself, and to
talk with the manager; he was eager to find out what the others, who now wanted to
see h i m so much, would say at the sight of him. If they recoiled in horror t h e n h e
would take no further responsibility and could remain peaceably where h e was. But if
they took it all in stride t h e n h e too h a d n o reason to be upset, and, if he hurried,
could even get to the station by eight. T h e first few times, h e slipped down the polished surface of the chest, but finally with one last heave h e stood upright. H e n o
longer paid attention to the burning pains in his abdomen, n o matter how they hurt.
T h e n , allowing himself to fall against the backrest of a nearby chair, h e clung to its
edges with his little legs. N o w he was once more in control of himself; h e fell silent,
and was able to hear what the manager was saying.
"Did you understand a single word?" the office manager was asking his parents.
"He's n o t trying to make fools of us, is he?" "My God," cried his mother, already in
tears, "maybe he's seriously ill and we're tormenting him. Grete! Grete!" she shouted
then. "Mother?" called his sister from the other side. They were calling to each other
across Gregor's room. "You must go to the doctor at once. Gregor is sick. G o get the
doctor now. Did you hear how Gregor was speaking?" " T h a t was the voice of an animal," said the manager in a tone that was noticeably restrained compared to his
mother's shrillness. " A n n a ! A n n a ! " his father shouted through the hall to the
kitchen, clapping his hands, "get a locksmith and hurry!" A n d t h e two girls, their
skirts rustling, were already running down the hallhow could his sister h a v e gotten
dressed so quickly?and were pulling the front door open. T h e r e was n o sound of its
being shut; evidently they had left it standing open, as is the custom in houses
stricken by some great sorrow.
But Gregor now felt much calmer. T h o u g h the words h e spoke were apparently
n o longer understandable, they seemed clear enough to him, even clearer t h a n before, perhaps because his hearing had grown accustomed to their sound. In any case,
people were now convinced that something was wrong with him, and were ready to
help him. T h e confidence and assurance with which these first measures had been
taken comforted him. H e felt himself being drawn back into the h u m a n circle and
20
hoped for marvelous and astonishing results from both doctor and locksmith, without
really drawing a distinction between them. T o ready his voice for the crucial discus :
sion t h a t was now almost upon him, to make it sound as clear as possible, he coughed
slightly, as quietly as h e could, since for all he knew it might sound different from human coughing. Meanwhile in the next room there was utter silence. Perhaps his parents and the manager were sitting at the table, whispering; perhaps they were, all of
them, leaning against the door, listening.
Gregor slowly advanced on the door, pushing the chair in front of him. T h e n h e
let go of it, grabbed o n t o the door for supportthe pads at the end of his little legs
were somewhat stickyand, leaning against it, rested for a m o m e n t after his efforts.
T h e n he started to turn the key in the lock with his mouth. Unfortunately, he didn't
really have any t e e t h h o w was he going to grip the key?but to make up for that
he clearly h a d very powerful jaws; with their help h e was in fact able to start turning
the key, paying no attention to the fact that he was surely hurting t h e m somehow, for
a brown liquid poured out of his mouth, flowed over the key, and dripped onto the
floor. "Listen," said the manager on the other side of the door, "he's turning the key."
This was a great encouragement to Gregor, but they should all have been cheering
h i m on, his mother and his father too. " C o m e on, Gregor," they should have been
shouting, "keep at it, hold on to that key!" A n d , imagining that they were all intently following his efforts, he grimly clamped his jaws on the key with all his might.
As the key continued to turn he danced around the lock, holding himself by his
m o u t h alone, either hanging o n t o the key or pressing down o n it with the full w7eight
of his body, as the situation required. T h e sharper sound of the lock as it finally
snapped free woke Gregor up completely. W i t h a sigh of relief h e said to himself, "So
1 didn't need the locksmith after all," and he pressed his head down on the handle to
open one wing of the double door.
Because he had to pull the wing in towards him, even w h e n it stood wide open
h e remained hidden from view7. H e had to edge slowly around this wing and to do it
very carefully or he would fall flat on his back as he made his entrance. H e was still
busy carrying out this maneuver, with n o time to notice anything else, when h e
heard the manager give a loud "Oh!"it sounded like a gust of windand now he
could see him, standing closest to the door, his hand over his open mouth, slowly
backing away as if propelled by the relentless pressure of some invisible force. His
m o t h e r i n spite of t h e manager's presence, she was standing there with her hair still
unpinned and sticking out in all directionsfirst folded her hands and looked at
Gregor's father, t h e n took two steps forward and sank to the floor, her skirts billowing
out all around her and her face completely buried in her breast. His father, glowering,
clenched his fist, as if h e intended to drive Gregor back into his room; t h e n he looked
around the living room with uncertainty, covered his eyes with his hands, and wept
so hard his great chest shook.
N o w Gregor made n o attempt to enter the living room, but leaned against the
locked wing of the double door, so that only half of his body was visible, w7ith his
head above it cocked to one side, peering at the others. Meanwhile the daylight had
grown m u c h brighter; across the street one could clearly see a section of the endless,
dark gray building oppositeit was a hospitalwith a row of uniform windows
starkly punctuating its facade. T h e rain was still falling, but only in large, visibly separate drops that looked as though they were being flung, one by one, o n t o the earth.
O n the table the breakfast dishes were set out in lavish profusion, for breakfast was
the most important meal of the day for Gregor's father, who lingered over it for hours
while reading various newspapers. Hanging on the opposite wall was a photograph of
Gregor from his army days, showing h i m as a lieutenant, with his h a n d on his sword
and his carefree smile demanding respect for his hearing and his rank. T h e door to
the hall stood open, and as the front door was open too, one could see the landing
beyond and the top of the stairs going down.
"Well," said Gregor, who was perfectly aware that h e was the only one who had
kept his composure, "I'll go now and get dressed, pack up my samples, and be on my
way. You will, you will let me go, won't you? You can see, sir, that I'm not stubborn
and I'm willing to work; t h e life of a traveling salesman is hard, but i couldn't live
without it. W h e r e are you going, sir? T o the office? You are? Will you give a n honest
report about all this? A m a n may be temporarily unable to work, but that's just the
time to remember the service h e has rendered in the past, and to bear in mind that
later on, w h e n the present problem has been resolved, he is sure to work with even
more energy and diligence t h a n before. As you know very well, 1 am deeply obligated
to the director. A t the same time, I'm responsible for my parents and my sister. I'm in
a tight spot right now, but I'll get out of it. D o n ' t make things more difficult for me
t h a n they already are. Stand up for me at the office! People don't like traveling salesmen, I know. T h e y think they make scads of money and lead lives of luxury. A n d
there's n o compelling reason for them to revise this prejudice. But you, sir, have a
better understanding of things t h a n t h e rest of the staff, a better understanding, if I
may say so, t h a n even the director himself, who, since h e is t h e owner, can be easily
swayed against an employee. You also know very well that a traveling salesman, who
is away from the office for most of the year, can so easily fall victim to gossip and bad
luck and groundless accusations, against which h e is powrerless to defend himself
since h e knows n o t h i n g about them until, returning h o m e exhausted from his journeys, he suffers personally from evil consequences that can n o longer be traced back
to their origins. Sir, please don't go away without giving me some word to show that
you think that I'm at least partly right!"
But the office manager had turned away at Gregorys first words, and was looking
at h i m now over one twitching shoulder, his m o u t h agape. A n d during Gregor's
speech he didn't stand still for even a m o m e n t , but without once taking his eyes off of
him kept edging towards the door, yet very slowly, as if there were some secret injunction against his leaving the room. H e was already in the hall, and from the suddenness with which h e took his last step out of the living room, one might have
thought h e had burned t h e sole of his foot. But once in the hall, he stretched out his
right h a n d as far as possible in the direction of the staircase, as if some supernatural
rescuer awaited h i m there.
Gregor realized that he could n o t let the manager leave in this frame of mind, or
his position with the firm would be in extreme jeopardy. His parents were incapable of
clearly grasping this; over the years they had come to believe that Gregor was set. for
life with this firm, and besides they were now so preoccupied with their immediate
problems that they had lost the ability to foresee events. But Gregor had this ability.
T h e manager must be overtaken, calmed, swayed, and finally convinced; the future of
Gregor and of his family depended on it! If only his sister were hereshe was perceptive; she had already begun to cry while Gregor was still lying calmly on his back.
A n d surely the manager, that ladies' man, would've listened to her; she would've shut
the door behind them and in the hall talked h i m out of his fright. But his sister wasn't
there, and he would have to handle this himself. A n d forgetting that h e had n o idea
what his powers of movement were, and forgetting as well that once again his words
would possibly, even probably, be misunderstood, h e let go of the door, pushed his
way through the opening, and started towards the manager, who by now was on the
landing, clinging in a ridiculous m a n n e r to the banister with b o t h hands. But as Gregor reached out for support, he immediately fell down with a little cry o n t o his numerous legs. T h e m o m e n t this happened h e felt, for the first time that morning, a
sense of physical well-being. His little legs had solid ground under them, and, he noticed with joy, they were at his command, and were even eager to carry h i m in whatever direction he might desire; and h e already felt sure that the final recovery from all
his misery was at hand. But at that very m o m e n t , as he lay o n the floor rocking with
suppressed motion, n o t far from his mother and just opposite her, she, who had
seemed so completely overwhelmed, leapt to her feet, stretched her arms out wide,
spread her fingers, and cried, "Help! For God's sake, help!" She t h e n craned her neck
forward as if to see Gregor better, but at the same time, inconsistently, backed away
from him. Forgetting that the table with all its dishes was behind her, she sat down
o n it, and, as if in a daze when she bumped into it, seemed utterly unaware that the
large coffee pot next to her had tipped over and was pouring out a flood of coffee onto
the carpet.
"Mother, Mother," said Gregor gently, looking up at her. For the m o m e n t h e
had completely forgotten the office manager; on the other hand, h e couldn't resist
snapping his jaws a few times at the sight of the streaming coffee. This made his
mother scream again; she ran from the table and into the outstretched arms of his father, who came rushing to her. But Gregor had n o time now for his parents. T h e
manager had already reached the staircase; with his chin o n the banister railing, h e
was looking back for the last time. Gregor darted forward, to be sure as possible of
catching up with him, but the manager must have guessed his intention, for h e
sprinted down several steps and disappeared. H e was still yelling " O o h h ! " and the
sound echoed throughout the stairwell.
Unfortunately the manager's escape seemed to make his father, who until now
had seemed reasonably calm, lose all sense of proportion. Instead of running after the
man himself, or at least not interfering with Gregor's pursuit, he grabbed with his
right hand the manager's cane, which h e had left behind, together with his h a t and
overcoat, on t h e chair; with his left h a n d h e snatched up a large newspaper from the
table. H e began stamping his feet and waving the cane and newspaper in order to
drive Gregor back into his room. N o t h i n g Gregor said made any difference, indeed,
nothing he said was even understood. N o matter how humbly h e lowered his head
his father only stamped the louder. Behind his father his mother, despite the cold,
had flung open a window and was leaning far outside it, her face in her hands. A
strong breeze from the street blew across the room to the stairwell, the window curtains billowed inwards, the newspapers fluttered on the table, stray pages skittered
across the floor. His father, hissing like a savage, mercilessly drove him back. But as
Gregor had had n o practice in walking backwards, it was a very slow process. If h e
had been given a chance to turn around t h e n h e would've gotten back into his room
at once, but h e was afraid that the length of time it would take him to turn around
would exasperate his father and that at any m o m e n t the cane in his father's hand
might deal h i m a fatal blow on his back or his head. In the end, though, he had n o
choice, for he noticed to his horror that while moving backwards h e couldn't even
keep a straight course. A n d so, looking back anxiously, h e began turning around as
quickly as possible, which in reality was very slowly. Perhaps his father divined his
good intentions, for he did not interfere, and even helped to direct the maneuver
from afar with the tip of his cane. If only h e would stop that unbearable hissing! It
made Gregor completely lose his concentration. H e had turned himself almost all the
way around when, confused by this hissing, he made a mistake and started turning
back the wrong way. But when at last he'd succeeded in getting his head in front of
the doorway, he found that his body was too wide to make it through. Of course his
father, in the state he was in, couldn't even begin to consider opening the other wing
of the door to let Gregor in. His mind was o n one thing only: to drive Gregor back
into this room as quickly as possible. H e would never have permitted the complicated preparations necessary for Gregor to haul himself upright and in that way perhaps slip through. Instead, making even more noise, h e urged Gregor forward as if the
way were clear. T o Gregor the noise behind him n o longer sounded like the voice of
merely one father; this really wasn't a joke, and Gregor squeezed himself into t h e
doorway, heedless of the consequences. O n e side of his body lifted up, h e was pitched
at an angle in the doorway; the other side was scraped raw, ugly blotches stained the
white door. Soon h e was stuck fast and couldn't have moved any further by himself.
O n one side his little legs hung trembling in the air, while those on the other were
painfully crushed against the floorwhen, from behind, his father gave h i m a hard
blow that was truly a deliverance, and bleeding profusely, h e flew7 far into his room.
Behind h i m the door was slammed shut with the cane, and t h e n at last everything
was still.
II
It was already dusk w h e n Gregor awoke from a deep, almost comatose sleep.
Surely, even if he h a d n ' t been disturbed he would've soon awakened by himself, since
he'd rested and slept long enough; yet it seemed to h i m that he'd been awakened by
the sound of hurried steps and the furtive closing of the halhvay door. T h e light from
the electric streetlamps cast pale streaks here and there on the ceiling and the upper
part of t h e furniture, but down below, where Gregor was, it was dark. Groping awkwardly with the feelers which h e was only now beginning to appreciate, he slowly
pushed himself over to the door to see what had been going 011 there. His left side felt
as if it were one long, painfully tightening scar, and he was actually limping on his
two rows of legs. O n e little leg, moreover, had been badly hurt during the morning's
eventsit was nearly miraculous that only one had been h u r t a n d it trailed along
lifelessly.
Only when he reached t h e door did h e realize what had impelled him forward
the smell of something to eat. For there stood a bowl full of fresh milk, in which
floated small slices of white bread. H e could almost h a v e laughed for joy, since he was
even hungrier now t h a n he'd been during the morning, and h e immediately dipped
his head into the milk, almost up to his eyes. But h e soon drew it back in disappointment; n o t only did h e find it difficult to eat because of the soreness in his left side
and he was capable of eating only if his whole gasping body cooperatedbut also because h e didn't like the milk at all, although it had once been his favorite drink,
which, no doubt, was why his sister had brought it in. In fact, he turned away from
the bowl almost in disgust, and crawded back to the middle of the room.
In the living room, as Gregor could see through the crack in the door, the
gaslight had been lit. But while this was the hour w h e n his father would usually be
reading the afternoon paper in a loud voice to his mother and sometimes to his sister
as well, now there wasn't a sound to be heard. Well, perhaps this custom of reading
aloud, which his sister was always telling h i m about or mentioning in her letters, had
recentLy been discontinued. Still, though the apartment was completely silent, it was
scarcely deserted. " W h a t a quiet life t h e family's been leading," said Gregor to him-,
self, and, staring fixedly into the darkness, h e felt a genuine pride at having been able
to provide his parents and his sister with such a life in such a nice apartment. But
what if all this calm, prosperity, and c o n t e n t m e n t were to end in horror? So as n o t to
give in to such thoughts, Gregor set himself in motion, and he crawled up and down
the room.
O n c e during the long evening first one of the side doors and t h e n the other was
opened a crack and t h e n quickly shut. Someone, it seemed, had wanted to come in
but t h e n had thought better of it. Gregor now stationed himself so as to somehow get
the hesitant visitor to come in or at least to find out who it might be. But the door
did n o t open again and h e waited in vain. T h a t morning w h e n the doors had been
locked, everyone had wanted to come in, but now after he'd unlocked one of the
doors himselfand the others had evidently been unlocked during the daynobody
came in, and the keys, too, were now on t h e outside.
It was late at night before the light was put out in the living room, and it was
easy for Gregor to tell that his parents and sister had stayed up all the while, since he
could plainly hear the three of t h e m as they tiptoed away. As it was obvious that n o
one would be visiting Gregor before morning, he had plenty of time in which to contemplate, undisturbed, how best to rearrange his life. But the open, high-ceilinged
room in which he was forced to lie flat o n the floor filled him with a dread which h e
couldn't account forsince it was, after all, the room h e had lived in for t h e past five
years. Almost unthinkingly, and n o t without a faint sense of shame, he scurried under the couch. There, although his back was slightly cramped and he could n o longer
raise his head, he immediately felt very m u c h at home, and his only regret was that
his body was too wide to fit completely under the couch.
There he spent t h e rest of the night, now in a doze from which hunger pangs
kept awakening h i m with a start, now preoccupied with worries and vague hopes, all
of which, however, led to the same conclusion: that for the time being h e must remain calm and, by being patient and showing every consideration, try to help his
family bear the burdens that his present condition had placed upon them.
Early the next m o r n i n g t h e night was barely overGregor got an opportunity
to test the strength of his newly-made resolutions, because his sister, who was almost
fully dressed, opened the hallway door and looked in expectantly. She didn't see h i m
at first, but when she spotted him u n d e r n e a t h the couchwell, my God, he had to
be somewhere, h e couldn't just fly awayshe was so surprised that she lost her selfcontrol and slammed t h e door shut again. But, as if she felt sorry for her behavior, she
opened it again right away and tiptoed in, as if she were in the presence of someone
who was very ill, or who was a stranger. Gregor had moved his head forward almost to
the edge of the couch and was watching her. Would she notice that he'd let the milk
sit there, and not from lack of hunger, and would she bring h i m some other food that
was more to his taste? If she wasn't going to do it o n her own, he'd sooner starve t h a n
call her attention to it, although in fact h e was feeling a tremendous urge to dash out
from under the couch, fling himself at his sister's feet, and beg her for something good
to eat. But his sister immediately noticed to her astonishment that the bowl was still
full, with only a little milk spilt around it. She picked up the bowl at o n c e n o t , it's
true, with her bare hands but using a ragand carried it out. Gregor was extremely
curious to find out what she would bring in its place, and h e speculated at length as to
what it might be. But h e never would have guessed what his sister, in the goodness of
her heart, actually did. She brought h i m a wide range of choices, all spread out o n an
old newspaper. There were old, half-rotten vegetables; bones left over from dinner,
covered w7ith a congealed white sauce; some raisins and almonds; a piece of cheese
which Gregor two days ago had declared inedible; a slice of plain bread, a slice of
bread and butter, and a slice with butter and salt. In addition to all this she replaced
the bowl, now evidently reserved for Gregor, filled this time with water. A n d out of a
sense of delicacy, since she knew t h a t Gregor wouldn't eat in front of her, she left in
a hurry, even turning the key in the lock in order that Gregor might know that he
was free to make himself as comfortable as possible. Gregor's legs whirred as they propelled h i m toward t h e food. Besides, his wounds must have healed completely, for he
no longer felt handicapped, which amazed him. H e thought of how, a m o n t h ago,
he'd cut his finger slightly with his knife and how only the day before yesterday that
little wound had still hurt. " A m I less sensitive now?" he wondered, greedily sucking
on the cheese, to which, above all the other dishes, h e was immediately and strongly
attracted. Tears of joy welled up in his eyes as h e devoured the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce. T h e fresh foods, on the other hand, were n o t to his liking; in fact,
h e couldn't stand to smell them and h e actually dragged t h e food h e wanted to eat a
little way off. He'd long since finished eating, and was merely lying lazily in the same
spot, when his sister began to slowly turn the key in the lock as a signal for h i m to
withdraw. H e got up at once, although he'd almost fallen asleep, and scurried back
under the couch. But it took a great deal of self-control for h i m to remain under the
couch even for the brief time his sister was in the room, for his heavy meal had
swollen his body to some extent and h e could scarcely breathe in that confined space.
Between little fits of suffocation h e stared with slightly bulging eyes as his unsuspecting sister took a broom and swept away n o t only the scraps of what he'd eaten, but
also the food that he'd left untouchedas if these too were n o longer any goodand
hurriedly dumped everything into a bucket, which she covered with a wooden lid
and carried away. She'd hardly turned her back before Gregor came out from under
the couch to stretch and puff himself out.
So this was how Gregor was fed each day, once in the morning when his parents
and the maid were still asleep, and again after the family's midday meal, while his
parents took another brief n a p and his sister could send the maid away on some errand or other. His parents didn't want Gregor to starve any more than his sister did,
but perhaps for t h e m to be directly involved in his feeding was more t h a n they could
bear, or perhaps his sister wanted to shield t h e m even from what might prove to be
no more t h a n a minor discomfort, for they were surely suffering enough as it was.
Gregor was unable to discover what excuses had served to get rid of the doctor
and the locksmith that first morning. Since the others couldn't understand what h e
said it never occurred to them, n o t even to his sister, that h e could understand them,
so w h e n his sister was in the room, h e had to be satisfied with occasionally hearing
her sighs and her appeals to the saints. O n l y later, after she began to get used to the
situationof course she could never become completely used to itwould Gregor
sometimes hear a remark that was intended to be friendly or could be so interpreted.
"He really liked it today," she'd say w h e n Gregor had polished off a good portion, and
w h e n the opposite was t h e case, which began to happen more and more often, she'd
say almost sadly, " O n c e again, h e didn't touch a thing."
But while Gregor wasn't able to get any news directly, he could overhear a considerable a m o u n t from the adjoining rooms, and as soon as h e would hear the sound
-of voices h e would immediately run to the appropriate door and press his whole body
40
against it. In the early days especially, there wasn't a conversation that didn't in some
way, if only indirectly, refer to him. For two w7hole days, at every meal, the family discussed what they should do, and they kept on doing so between meals as well, for at
least two members of the family were now always at home, probably because nobody
wanted to be in the apartment alone, and it would be unthinkable to leave it empty.
Furthermore, on the very first day the cookit wasn't completely clear how m u c h
she knew of what had h a p p e n e d h a d on her knees begged Gregor's mother to dismiss her immediately, and when she said her goodbyes a quarter of an hour later, she
thanked them for her dismissal with tears in her eyes, as if this had been the greatest
favor ever bestowed o n her in the house, and without having to be asked she made a
solemn vow never to breathe a word of this to anyone.
So now his sister, together with his mother, had to do all the cooking as well,
though in fact this wasn't too m u c h of a chore, since the family ate practically n o t h ing. Gregor kept hearing them vainly urging one another to eat, without receiving
any reply except, "No thanks, I've had enough," or some similar remark. T h e y didn't
seem to drink anything, either. His sister would often ask his father if he'd like some
beer, and would gladly offer to go out and get it herself. W h e n he wouldn't respond
she'd say, in order to remove any hesitation on his part, that she could always send
the janitor's wife, but at that point the father would finally utter an emphatic "No"
and that would be the end of the matter.
It was on the very first day that his father gave a full account, to both mother and
sister, of the family's financial situation and prospects. Every now and t h e n he would
get up from the table and take a receipt or notebook from out of the small safe he'd
salvaged from the collapse of his business five years before. H e could be heard opening the complicated lock and t h e n securing it again after taking out whatever he'd
been looking for. T h e account that his father gave, or at least part of it, was the first
encouraging news that Gregor had heard since being imprisoned. He'd always had
the impression that his father had failed to save a penny from the ruin of his business;
at least his father had never told h i m otherwise, and Gregor, for that matter, had
never asked h i m about it. A t that time Gregor's only concern had been to do his utmost to make t h e family forget as quickly as possible the business failure that had
plunged them all into a state of total despair. A n d so h e had set to work with tremendous zeal, and had risen almost overnight from junior clerk to become a traveling
salesman, which naturally opened up completely new financial opportunities so that
in no time at all his success was instantly translated, by way of commissions, into
hard cash, which could be laid out o n the table under the eyes of his astonished and
delighted family. T h o s e had been wonderful times, and they had never returned, at
least n o t with the same glory, even though later on Gregor had been earning enough
to pay the entire family's expenses, and in fact had been doing so. They'd simply gotten used to it, both family and Gregor; they had gratefully accepted the money, and
he had given it gladly, but n o special warmth went with it. Gregor had remained
close only to his sister, and it was his secret plan that she, who unlike Gregor loved
music and could play the violin with deep feeling, should next year attend the C o n servatory, despite the expense which, great as it was, would have to be met in some
way. During Gregor's brief stays in the city the subject of the Conservatory would often come up in his conversations with his sister, but always only as a beautiful dream
that wasn't meant to come true. His parents weren't happy to hear even these innocent remarks, but Gregor's ideas on the subject were firm and h e intended to make a
solemn a n n o u n c e m e n t on Christmas Eve.
Such were the thoughts, so futile in his present condition, that ran through his
mind as h e stood there, pressed against the door, listening. Sometimes h e would grow
so thoroughly weary that h e couldn't listen any more and would carelessly let his
head bump against the door, and though he'd pull it back immediately, even the
slight noise he'd made wrould be heard in the next room, causing everyone to fall
silent. "What's h e up to now?" his father would say after a pause, obviously looking at
the door, and only t h e n would the interrupted conversation gradually be resumed.
Gregor now learned with considerable thoroughnessfor his father tended to
repeat his explanations several times, partly because he h a d n ' t dealt with these matters in a long time, and partly because his mother didn't understand everything the
first time t h r o u g h t h a t despite their catastrophic ruin a certain amount of capital, a
very small amount, it's true, had survived intact from the old days, and thanks to the
interest being untouched had even increased slightly. A n d what was more, the money
which Gregor had been bringing home every m o n t h h e ' d kept only a small sum for
himselfhadn't been completely spent and had grown into a tidy sum. Gregor nodded
eagerly behind his door, delighted to hear of this unexpected foresight and thrift. Of
course he might have been able to use this extra money to pay off more of his father's debt to the director, and thus have brought nearer the clay when h e could quit
his current job, but, given the present circumstances, things were better the way his
father had arranged them.
N o w the sum of this money wasn't nearly large enough for t h e family to live off
the interest; t h e principal might support t h e m for a year, or two at the most, but
that was all. So this was really only a sum that was n o t to be touched, but saved instead for emergencies. As for money to live o n t h a t would have to be earned.
T h o u g h Gregor's father was indeed still healthy, nevertheless h e was an old man who
hadn't worked for five years and one from whom not too m u c h should be expected in
any case. During those five years, the first ones of leisure in his hard-working but unsuccessful life, he had put o n a lot of weight and consequently had grown somewhat
sluggish. A n d as for Gregor's elderly mother, was she supposed to start bringing in
money, burdened as she was by her asthma which made it a strain for her to even
walk across the apartment and which kept her gasping for breath every other day o n
the couch by the open window? O r should his sister go to work insteadshe who
though seventeen was still a child and one moreover w h o m it would be cruel to deprive of the life she'd led up until now, a life of wearing pretty clothes, sleeping late,
helping around the house, enjoying a few modest pleasures, and above all playing
t h e violin? A t first, whenever their conversation turned to the need to earn money,
Gregor would let go of the door and fling himself down on t h e cool leather couch
which stood beside it, for he felt h o t with grief and shame.
O f t e n h e would lie there all night long, n o t sleeping a wink, scratching at the
leather couch for hours. Or, undaunted by the great effort it required, h e would push
the chair over to t h e window. T h e n he would crawl up to the sill and, propped up by
the chair, would lean against the pane, apparently inspired by some memory of the
sense of freedom that gazing out a window used to give him. For in truth objects only
a short distance away were now, each day, becoming more indistinct; the hospital
across the street, which h e used to curse because he could see it all too clearly, was
now completely outside his field of vision, and if h e h a d n ' t known for a fact that h e
lived o n Charlotte Streeta quiet but nevertheless urban streethe could have
imagined that he was looking out his window at a wasteland where gray sky and gray
earth had indistinguishably merged as one. His observant sister needed only to notice
45
twice that the armchair had been moved to the window. From t h e n on, whenever
she cleaned the room, she carefully placed the chair back by the window, and even
began leaving the inner casement open.
If only Gregor had been able to speak to his sister and thank her for everything
she'd had to do for him, he could have b o m e her kindnesses more easily, but as it was
they were painful to him. Of course his sister tried her best to ease the general embarrassment, and naturally as time passed she grew better and better at it. But Gregor too,
over time, gained a clearer sense of what was involved. Even the way in which she entered the room was a torture to him. N o sooner had she stepped in w h e n n o t even
pausing to shut the door, despite the care she normally would take in sparing others the
sight of Gregor's roomshe would run straight over to the window and tear it open
with impatient fingers, almost as if she were suffocating, and she would remain for some
time by the window, even in the coldest weather, breathing deeply. Twice a day she
would terrify Gregor with all this noise and rushing around. He would cower under the
couch the entire time, knowing full well that she surely would have spared him this if
only she could have stood being in the room with him with the windows closed.
O n c e , about a m o n t h after Gregor's metamorphosisso there was really n o particular reason for his sister to be upset by his appearanceshe came in earlier t h a n
usual and caught Gregor as he gazed out the window, terrifying in his stillness. It
wouldn't have surprised Gregor if she'd decided n o t to come in, since his position
prevented her from opening the window right away, but n o t only did she n o t come
in, she actually jumped back and shut the doora stranger might have thought that
Gregor had been planning to ambush her and bite her. Of course h e immediately hid
under the couch, but he had to wait until n o o n before she came back, and this time
she seemed much more nervous t h a n usual. In this way he came to realize that t h e
sight of him disgusted her, and likely would always disgust her, and that she probably
had to steel herself n o t to run away at the sight of even the tiny portion of his body
that stuck out from under t h e couch. So, one day, to spare her even this, he carried
the bedsheet on his back over to the couchit took him four hoursand spread it so
that he was completely covered and his sister wouldn't be able to see him even if she
bent down. If she felt this sheet wasn't necessary t h e n of course she could remove it,
since obviously Gregor wasn't shutting himself away so completely in order to amuse
himself. But she left the sheet alone, and Gregor even thought that he caught a look
of gratitude when h e cautiously lifted the sheet a little with his head in order to see
how his sister was taking to this new arrangement.
During the first two weeks, his parents couldn't bring themselves to come in to see
him, and he frequently heard them remarking how much they appreciated his sister's
efforts, whereas previously they'd often been annoyed with her for being, in their eyes,
somewhat useless. But now both father and mother had fallen into the habit of waiting
outside Gregor's door while his sister cleaned up the room, and as soon as she emerged
she would have to tell them every detail of the room's condition, what Gregor had
eaten, how he'd behaved this time, and whether he'd perhaps shown a little improvement. It wasn't long before his mother began to want to visit Gregor, but his father
and sister were at first able to dissuade her by rational arguments to which Gregor listened with great care, and with which h e thoroughly agreed. But as time went by she
had to be restrained by force, and w h e n she cried out, "Let me go to Gregor, he's my
unhappy boy! Don't you understand t h a t I have to go to him?" Gregor began to think
that it might be a good idea if his mother did come in after all, n o t every day, naturally, but, say, once a week. She was really a much more capable person t h a n his sister,
so
who, for all her courage, was still only a child and h a d perhaps taken on such a difficult task only out of a childish impulsiveness.
Gregor's wish to see his mother was soon fulfilled. During the day Gregor didn't
want to show himself at the window, if only out of consideration for his parents. But
his few square meters of floor gave h i m little room to crawl around in, h e found it
hard to lie still even at night, and eating soon ceased to give him any pleasure. So in
order to distract himself he fell into t h e habit of crawling all over the walls and the
ceiling. He especially enjoyed hanging from the ceiling; it was completely different
from lying on the floor. H e could breathe more freely, a faint pulsing coursed through
his body, and in his state of almost giddy absentmindedness up there, Gregor would
sometimes, to his surprise, lose his grip and tumble o n t o the floor. But now, of
course, since h e h a d m u c h better control over his body, even such a great fall didn't
h u r t him. His sister noticed right away t h e n e w pastime Gregor had discovered for
himselfhe'd left sticky traces where he'd been crawlingand so she got it into her
head to provide Gregor with as m u c h room as possible to crawl around in by removing all the furniture that was in t h e wayespecially the chest of drawers and the
desk. But she couldn't manage this by herself; she didn't dare ask her father for help;
the maid wouldn't be of any use, for while this girl, who was around sixteen, was
brave enough to stay on after the cook had left, she'd asked to be allowed to always
keep the kitchen door locked, opening it only w h e n specifically asked to do so. This
left his sister with no choice but, one day w h e n her father was out, to ask her mother
for help. A n d indeed, her mother followed her w i t h joyful, excited cries, although
she fell silent when they reached the door to Gregor's room. Naturally his sister first
made sure that everything in the room was as it should be; only t h e n did she let her
mother come in. Gregor had hurriedly pulled his sheet even lower and had folded it
more tightly and it really did look as if it had been casually tossed over the couch.
This time Gregor also refrained from peeking out from under the sheet; he denied
himself the pleasure of seeing his mother for now and was simply glad that she'd
come after all. "Come on in, he's nowhere in sight," said his sister, apparently leading
his mother in by the hand. N o w Gregor could hear the two delicate women moving
the heavy chest of drawers away from its place, his sister stubbornly insisting on doing the hardest work, ignoring the warnings of her mother, who was afraid her daughter would overstrain herself. T h e work took a very long time. After struggling for over
a quarter of an hour, his mother suggested that they might leave the chest where it
was; in the first place, it was just too heavy, they'd never be done before his father
came h o m e and they'd have to leave it in the middle of the room, blocking Gregor's
movements in every direction; in the second place, it wasn't at all certain that they
were doing Gregor a favor in removing the furniture. It seemed to her that the opposite was true, the sight of the bare walls broke her heart; and why shouldn't Gregor
feel the same since he'd been used to this furniture for so long and would feel abandoned in the empty room? " A n d wouldn't it look as if," his m o t h e r concluded very
softlyin fact, she'd been almost whispering the entire time, as if she wanted to prevent Gregor, whose exact whereabouts she didn't know, from hearing the sound of
her voice (she was convinced that he couldn't understand her words)"as if by removing his furniture we were telling him that we'd given up all hope of his getting
better, and were callously leaving h i m to his own devices? I think the best course
would be to try to keep the room exactly the way it was, so that when Gregor does
come back to us he'll find everything the same, making it easier for him to forget
what has happened in the meantime."
W h e n h e heard his mother's words, Gregor realized that, over the past two
months, the lack of having anyone to converse with, together with the monotonous
life within the family, must have befuddled his mind; there wasn't any other way he
could explain to himself how h e could have ever seriously wanted his room cleared
out. Did he really want this warm room of his, so comfortably furnished with family
heirlooms, transformed into a lair where he'd be perfectly free to crawl around in
every direction, but only at the cost of simultaneously forgetting his h u m a n past,
swiftly and utterly? Just now he'd been on the brink of forgetting, and only his
mother's voice, which h e h a d n ' t heard for so long, had brought h i m back. N o t h i n g
should be removed; everything must stay. H e couldn't do without the furniture's
soothing influence o n his state of mind, and if the furniture were to impede his senselessly crawling around, that wouldn't be a loss but rather a great advantage.
But unfortunately his sister thought otherwise. She'd become accustomed, and
not without some justification, to assuming the role of the acknowledged expert
whenever she and her parents discussed Gregor's affairs; so her mother s advice was
enough for her to insist now not merely on her original plan of moving the chest and
the desk, but on the removal of every bit of furniture except for the indispensable
couch. Her resolve, to be sure, didn't stem merely from childish stubbornness or from
the self-confidence she had recently and unexpectedly gained at such great cost. For
in fact she'd noticed that while Gregor needed plenty of room to crawl around in, o n
the other hand, as far as she could tell, h e never used the furniture at all. Perhaps too,
the sentimental enthusiasm of girls her age, which they indulge themselves in at
every opportunity, now tempted Grete to make Gregor's situation all the more terrifying so that she might be able to do more for him. N o one but Grete would ever be
likely to enter a room where Gregor ruled the bare walls all alone.
A n d so she refused to give in to her mother, who in any case, from the sheer
anxiety caused by being in Gregor's room, seemed unsure of herself. She soon fell
silent and began as best she could to help her daughter remove t h e chest of drawers.
Well, if he must, t h e n Gregor could do without the chest, but the desk had to stay.
A n d 110 sooner had the two women, groaning and squeezing, gotten the chest out of
the room t h a n Gregor poked his head out from under the couch to see how h e might
intervene as tactfully as possible. But unfortunately it was his mother who came back
first, leaving Grete in the n e x t room, gripping the chest with her arms and rocking it
back and forth without, of course, being able to budge it from the spot. His mother
wasn't used to the sight of h i m i t might make her sick; so Gregor, frightened, scuttled backwards to the far end of the couch, but he couldn't prevent the front of the
sheet from stirring slightly. T h a t was enough to catch his mother's attention. S h e
stopped, stood still for a moment, and t h e n went back to Grete.
Gregor kept telling himself that nothing unusual was happening, that only a few
pieces of furniture were being moved around. But h e soon had to admit that all this
coming and going of the two women, their little calls to one another, the scraping of
the furniture across the floor, affected him as if it were some gigantic commotion rushing in on h i m from every side, and though he tucked in his head and legs and pressed
his body against the floor, h e had to accept the fact that h e wouldn't be able to stand it
much longer. T h e y were cleaning out his room, taking away from him everything that
he loved; already they'd carried off his chest, where he kept his fretsaw and his other
tools; now they were trying to pry his writing desk looseit was practically embedded
in the floorthe same desk where he'd always done his homework when he'd been a
student at business school, in high school, and even in elementary school. H e really
55
no longer had any time left in which to weigh the good intentions of these two
women whose existence, for that matter, he'd almost forgotten, since they were so exhausted by now that they worked in silence, the only sound being that of their weary,
plodding steps.
A n d so, while the women were in the next room, leaning against the desk and
trying to catch their breath, he broke out, changing his direction four timessince
h e really didn't know what to rescue firstwhen h e saw, hanging conspicuously on
the otherwise bare wall, the picture of the lady all dressed in furs. H e quickly crawled
up to it and pressed himself against the glass, which held h i m fast, soothing his hot
belly. N o w that Gregor completely covered it, this picture at least wasn't, about to be
carried away by anyone. H e turned his head towards the living room door, so that h e
could watch the w o m e n w h e n they returned.
They h a d n ' t taken m u c h of a rest and were already coming back. Grete had put
her arm around her mother and was almost carrying her. "Well, what should we take
next?" said Grete, looking around. A n d t h e n her eyes met Gregor's, looking down at
her from the wall. Probably only because her mother was there, she kept her composure, bent her head down to her mother to prevent her from glancing around, and
said, though in a hollow, quavering voice: "Come on, let's go back to the living room
for a minute." T o Gregor, her intentions were obvious: she wanted to get his mother
to safety and t h e n chase him down from the wail. Well, just let her try! H e clung to
his picture and h e wasn't going to give it up. He'd rather fly at Crete's face.
But Crete's wrords had made her m o t h e r even more anxious; she stepped aside,
glimpsed the huge brown blotch on the flowered wallpaper, and before she fully understood that what she was looking at was Gregor, she cried out, " O h God, oh God!"
in a hoarse scream of a voice, and, as if giving up completely, fell with outstretched
arms across the couch, and lay there without moving. "You! Gregor!" cried his sister,
raising her fist and glaring at him. These were the first words she had addressed directly to h i m since his metamorphosis. She ran into the next room to get some spirits
to revive her mother from her faint. Gregor also wanted to h e l p h e could rescue the
picture another timebut he was stuck to the glass and had to tear himself free. He
t h e n scuttled into the next room as if to give some advice, as h e used to, to his sister.
Instead h e had to stand behind her uselessly while she rummaged among various little bottles. W h e n she turned around she was startled, a bottle fell to the floor, a splinter of glass struck Gregor in the face, some sort of corrosive medicine splashed on
him, and Grete, without further delay, grabbing as many of the little bottles as she
could carry, ran inside with t h e m to her mother, and slammed the door shut behind
her with her foot. N o w Gregor was cut off from his mother, who was perhaps near
death because of him. H e didn't dare open the door for fear of scaring his sister, who
had to remain with his mother. T h e r e wasn't anything for him to do but wait; and so,
tormented by guilt and anxiety, he began crawling. H e crawled over everything,
walls, furniture, and ceiling, until finally, in despair, the room beginning to spin
around him, he collapsed o n t o t h e middle of t h e large table.
A short time passed; Gregor lay there stupefied. Everything was quiet around him;
perhaps that was a good sign. T h e n the doorbell rang. T h e maid, of course, stayed
locked up in her kitchen, so Grete had to answer the door. His father was back.
"What's happened?" were his first words. Grete's expression must've told him everything. Her answers came in muffled tonesshe was obviously burying her face in her
father's chest. "Mother fainted, but she's better now. Gregor's broken loose." "I knew
-it," her father said. "I told you this would happen, but you women refuse to listen." It
was clear to Gregor that his father had put the worst construction on Grete's all too
brief account and had assumed that Gregor was guilty of some violent act. T h a t .
meant that he must calm his father down, since h e had neither the time nor the ability to explain things to him. So h e fled to the door of his room and pressed himself
against it in order that his father might see, as soon as h e entered the living room,
that Gregor had every intention of returning immediately to his own room and there
was n o need to force h i m back. All they had to do was to open the door and h e would
disappear at once.
But his father wasn't in the mood to notice such subtleties; " A h ! " h e roared as
h e entered, in a voice that sounded at once furious and gleeful Gregor turned his
head from t h e door and lifted it towards his father. H e really h a d n ' t imagined that
his father would look the way h e did standing before h i m now; true, Gregor h a d become too absorbed lately by his new habit of crawling to bother about whatever else
might be going on in the apartment, and h e should have anticipated that there
would be some changes. A n d yet, and yet, could this really be his father? Was this
the same m a n who used to lie sunk in bed, exhausted, whenever Gregor would set
out o n o n e of his business trips; who would greet h i m u p o n his return in the evening
while sitting in his bathrobe in t h e armchair; who was hardly capable of getting to
his feet, and to show his joy could only lift up his arms; and who, o n those rare times
w h e n the whole family went out for a w a l k o n the occasional Sunday or on a legal
holidayused to painfully shuffle along between Gregor and his mother, who were
slow walkers themselves, and yet he was always slightly slower t h a n they, wrapped
up in his old overcoat, carefully planting his crook-handled cane before h i m with
every step, and almost invariably stopping and gathering his escort around h i m
whenever h e wanted to say something? Now, however, he held himself very erect,
dressed up in a closely-fitting blue uniform with gold buttons, of the kind worn by
bank messengers. His heavy c h i n thrust out over the stiff collar of his jacket; his
black eyes stared, sharp and bright, from under his bushy eyebrows; his white hair,
once so rumpled, was combed flat, it gleamed, and the part was meticulously exact.
H e tossed his c a p w h i c h bore a gold monogram, probably t h a t of some b a n k i n
an arc across the room so that it landed o n the couch, and with his hands in his
pockets, the tails of his uniform's long jacket flung back, his face grim, h e went after
Gregor. H e probably didn't know himself w h a t h e was going to do, but h e lifted his
feet unusually high, and Gregor was amazed at the immense size of the soles of his
boots. However, Gregor didn't dwell o n these reflections, for h e had known from
the very first day of his new life that his father considered only t h e strictest measures
to be appropriate in dealing with him. So h e ran ahead of his father, stopped w h e n
he stood still, and scurried o n again w h e n he made the slightest move. In this way
they circled the room several times without anything decisive happening; in fact,
their movements, because of their slow tempo, did n o t suggest those of a chase. So
Gregor kept to the floor for the time being, especially since he was afraid t h a t his father might consider any flight to the walls or ceiling to be particularly offensive. All
the same, Gregor had to admit t h a t h e wouldn't be able to keep up even this pace
for long, since whenever his father took a single step, Gregor had to perform a n entire series of movements. H e was beginning to get winded, since even in his former
life his lungs had never been strong. As h e kept staggering on like this, so weary h e
could barely keep his eyes open, since h e was saving all his strength for running; n o t
even thinking, dazed as he was, that there might be any other way to escape t h a n by
running; having almost forgotten that he was free to use the walls, though against
these walls, admittedly, were placed bits of intricately carved furniture, bristling
with spikes and sharp cornerssuddenly something sailed overhead, hit the floor
nearby, and rolled right in front of him. It was an apple; at once a second one came flying after it. Gregor stopped, petrified with fear; it was useless to keep on running, for
his father had decided to bombard him. H e had filled his pockets with the fruit from
the bowl on the sideboard and now he was throwing one apple after another, for
now at least without bothering to take good aim. These little red apples, colliding
w i t h one another, rolled around o n the floor as if electrified. O n e weakly-thrown
apple grazed Gregor's back, rolling off without causing harm. But a n o t h e r one that
came flying immediately afterwards actually imbedded itself in Gregor's back. Gregor wanted to drag himself onward, as if this shocking and unbelievable pain might
disappear if h e could only keep moving, but h e felt as if he were nailed to the spot,
and h e splayed himself out in t h e utter confusion of his senses. W i t h his last glance
h e saw the door of his room burst open, and his mother, wearing only her chemise
his sister had removed her dress to help her breathe after she'd faintedrush out,
followed by his screaming sister. H e saw his mother r u n tow r ard his father, her loosened underskirts slipping one by one o n t o the floor. Stumbling over her skirts she
flung herself upon his father, embraced him, was as one with h i m b u t now Gregor's
sight grew d i m a n d with her arms clasped around his father's neck, begged for
Gregor's life.
in
Gregor's serious wound, w h i c h made h i m suffer for over a m o n t h t h e apple
remained imbedded in his flesh as a visible reminder, no one having the courage to
remove itseemed to have persuaded even his father that Gregor, despite his present
pathetic and disgusting shape, was a member of the family who shouldn't be treated
as an enemy. O n the contrary, familial duty required t h e m to swallow their disgust
and to endure him, to endure h i m and n o t h i n g more.
A n d though his wound probably h a d caused Gregor to suffer a p e r m a n e n t loss
of mobility, and t h o u g h it now took him, as if h e were some disabled war veteran,
many a long m i n u t e to creep across his roomcrawling above ground level was out
of the questionyet in return for this deterioration of his c o n d i t i o n h e was granted
a compensation wdiich satisfied h i m completely: each day around dusk the living
room d o o r w h i c h h e was in the habit of watching closely for a n hour or two
ahead of timewas opened, and lying in the darkness of his room, invisible from
the living room, he could see t h e whole family sitting at t h e table lit by the lamp
and could listen to their conversation as if by general consent, instead of the way
h e ' d done before.
True, these were n o longer the lively conversations of old, those upon which
Gregor had mused somewhat wistfully as he'd settled wearily into his damp bed in
some tiny hotel room. Things were now very quiet for the most part. Soon after dinner his father would fall asleep in his armchair, while his mother and sister would admonish each other to be quiet; his mother, bending forward under the light, w7ould
sew fine lingerie for a fashion store; his sister, who had found work as a salesgirl,
would study shorthand and French in the evenings, hoping to obtain a better job in
the future. Sometimes his father would wake up, as if h e h a d n ' t the slightest idea that
he'd been asleep, and would say to his mother, "Look how7 long you've been sewing
again today!" and t h e n would fall back to sleep, while his mother and sister would
exchange weary smiles.
W i t h a kind of perverse obstinacy his father refused to take off his messenger s
uniform even in the apartment; while his robe h u n g unused on the clothes hook, he
would sleep fully dressed in his chair, as if h e were always ready for duty and were
waiting even here for the voice of his superior. As a result his uniform, which h a d n ' t
been new in the first place, began to get dirty in spite of all his mother and sister
could do to care for it, and Gregor would often spend entire evenings gazing at this
garment covered with stains and with its constantly polished buttons gleaming, in
which the old m a n would sit, upright and uncomfortable, yet peacefully asleep.
As soon as the clock would strike ten, his mother would try to awaken his father
with soft words of encouragement and t h e n persuade h i m to go to bed, for this wasn't
any place in which to get a decent night's sleep, and his father badly needed his rest,
since he had to be at work at six in the morning. But with the stubbornness t h a t had
possessed h i m ever since he'd become a bank messenger h e would insist on staying at
the table a little while longer, though he invariably would fall asleep again, and t h e n
it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could be persuaded to trade his chair
for bed. N o matter how m u c h mother and sister would urge h i m o n with little admonishments, he'd keep shaking his head for a good fifteen minutes, his eyes closed,
and wouldn't get up. Gregor's mother would tug at his sleeve, whisper sweet words
into his ear; and his sister would leave her homework to help her mother, but it was
all useless. H e only sank deeper into his armchair. N o t until the two women would
lift h i m up by the arms would he open his eyes, look now at one, now at the other,
and usually say, " W h a t a life. So this is the peace of my old age." A n d leaning on the
two women he would get up laboriously, as if he were his own greatest burden, and
would allow the w o m e n to lead him to the door, where, waving them aside, h e continued on his own, while Gregor's mother abandoned her sewing and her sister her
pen so that they might run after his father and continue to look after him.
W h o in this overworked and exhausted family had time to worry about Gregor
any more than was absolutely necessary? Their resources grew more limited; the maid
was now dismissed after all; a gigantic bony cleaning woman with white hair fluttering
about her head came in the mornings and evenings to do the roughest work; Gregor's
mother took care of everything else, in addition to her sewing. It even happened that
certain pieces of family jewelry which his mother and sister had worn with such pleasure at parties and celebrations in days gone by, were sold, as Gregor found out one
evening by listening to a general discussion of the prices they'd gone for. But their
greatest complaint was that they couldn't give up the apartment, which was too big for
their current needs, since n o one could figure out how they would move Gregor. But
Gregor understood clearly enough that it wasn't simply consideration for him which
prevented them moving, since he could have easily been transported in a suitable
crate equipped with a few air holes. T h e main reason preventing t h e m from moving
was their utter despair and the feeling that they had been struck by a misfortune far
greater than any that had ever visited their friends and relatives. W h a t the world demands of the poor they did to the utmost: his father fetched breakfast for the bank's
minor officials, his mother sacrificed herself for the underwear of strangers, his sister
ran back and forth behind the counters at the beck and call of customers; but they
lacked the strength for anything beyond this. A n d the wound in Gregor's back began
to ache once more w h e n his mother and sister, after putting his father to bed, returned
to the room, ignored their work, and sat huddled together cheek to cheek, and his
mother said, "Close that door, Grete," so that Gregor was back in the dark, while in
the next room the women wept together or simply stared at the table with dry eyes.
65
Gregor spent the days and nights almost entirely without sleep. Sometimes h e
imagined that the n e x t time t h e door opened he would once again assume control of
the family's affairs, as he'd done in the old days. Now, after a long absence, there
reappeared in his thoughts the director and the manager, the salesmen and the apprentices, the remarkably stupid errand runner, two or three friends from other firms,
a chambermaid at one of the provincial hotelsa sweet, fleeting memorya cashier
at a hat store w h o m he'd courted earnestly but too slowlythey all came to him
mixed up with strangers and with people w h o m he'd already forgotten. But instead of
helping him and his family they were all unapproachable, and he was glad when they
faded away. A t other times h e was in n o mood to worry about his family; he was utterly filled with rage at how badly he was being treated, and although he couldn't
imagine anything that might tempt his appetite, he nevertheless tried to think up
ways of getting into the pantry to take what was rightfully his, even if h e wasn't h u n gry. N o longer bothering to consider what Gregor might like as a treat, his sister, before she hurried off to work in the morning and after lunch, would shove any sort of
food into Gregor's room with her foot. In the evening, regardless of whether the food
had been picked at, oras was more often the caseleft completely untouched, she
would sweep it out with a swish of t h e broom. Nowadays she would clean the room in
the evening, and she couldn't have done it any faster. Streaks of grime ran along the
walls, balls of dust and dirt lay here and there on the floor. A t first, whenever his sister would come in, Gregor would station himself in some corner that was particularly
objectionable, as if his presence there might serve as a reproach to her. But he probably could have remained there for weeks without her mending h e r ways; she obviously could see the dirt as clearly as he could, but she'd made up her mind to leave it.
A t the same time she made certainwith a touchiness that was completely new to
her and which indeed was infecting the entire familythat the cleaning of Gregor's
room was to remain her prerogative. O n one occasion Gregor's mother had subjected
his room to a thorough cleaning, which she managed to accomplish only with the aid
of several buckets of waterall this dampness being a further annoyance to Gregor,
who lay flat, unhappy, and motionless o n t h e couch. But his mother's punishment
was n o t long in coming. For that evening, as soon as Gregor's sister noticed the difference in his room, she ran, deeply insulted, into t h e living room, and without regard for his mother's uplifted, beseeching hands, burst into a fit of tears. Both pare n t s t h e father, naturally, had been startled out of his armchairat first looked on
with helpless amazement, and then they joined in, the father on his right side blaming the mother: she shouldn't have interfered with the sister's cleaning of the room,
while o n his left side yelling at the sister t h a t she'd never be allowed to clean Gregor's room again. T h e mother was trying to drag the father, w h o was half out of his
mind, into their bedroom while the sister, shaking with sobs, pounded the table with
her little fists, and Gregor hissed loudly with rage because n o t one of them had
thought to close the door and spare him this scene and this commotion.
But even if his sister, worn out by her job at the store, had gotten tired of taking
care of Gregor as she once had, it wasn't really necessary for his mother to take her
place so that Gregor wouldn't be neglected. For now the cleaning woman was there.
This ancient widow, whose powerful bony frame had n o doubt helped her through
the hard times in her long life, wasn't at all repelled by Gregor. W i t h o u t being the
least bit inquisitive, she had once, by chance, opened the door to Gregor's room and
at the sight of Gregorwho, taken completely by surprise, began running back and
forth although n o one was chasing himstood there in amazement, her hands folded
over her belly. From t h e n on, morning and evening, she never failed to open his door
a crack and peek in on him. A t first she also would call h i m to her, using phrases she
probably m e a n t to be friendly, such as "Come o n over here, you old dung beetle!" or
"just look at that old dung beetle!" Gregor wouldn't respond to such forms of address,
but would remain motionless where he was as if the door had never been opened. If
only this cleaning woman, instead of pointlessly disturbing him whenever she felt
like it, had been given orders to clean his room every day! O n c e , early in the morning, when a heavy rain, perhaps a sign of the already approaching spring, was beating
against t h e window panes, Gregor became so exasperated w h e n the cleaning woman
started in with her phrases that h e made as if to attack her, though, of course, in a
slow and feeble manner. But instead of being frightened, the cleaning woman simply
picked up a chair by the door and, lifting it high in the air, stood there with her
m o u t h wide open. Obviously she didn't plan o n shutting it until the chair in her
hands had first come crashing down on Gregor's back. "So you're n o t going through
with it?" she asked as Gregor turned back while she calmly set the chair down again
in the corner.
By now Gregor was eating next to nothing. Only w h e n h e happened to pass by
the food set out for him would he take a bite, hold it in his mouth for hours, and t h e n
spit most of it out again. A t first he imagined that it was his anguish at the state of his
room that kept h i m from eating, but it was those very changes to which h e had
quickly become accustomed. T h e family had fallen into the habit of using t h e room
to store things for which there wasn't any place anywhere else, and there were many
of these things now, since one room in the apartment had been rented to three
boarders. These serious gentlemenall three of them had full beards, as Gregor once
noted, peering through a crack in the doorhad a passion for neatness, n o t only in
their room but since they were now settled in as boarders, throughout the entire
apartment, and especially in the kitchen. T h e y couldn't abide useless, let alone dirty,
junk. Besides, they'd brought most of their own household goods along with them.
This meant that many objects were now superfluous, which, while clearly without
any resale value, couldn't just be thrown out either. All these things ended up in
Gregor's room, and so did the ash bucket and the garbage can from t h e kitchen. Anything that wasn't being used at the m o m e n t was simply tossed into Gregor's room by
the cleaning woman, who was always in a tremendous hurry. Fortunately, Gregor
generally saw only the object in question and the h a n d that held it. Perhaps the
cleaning woman intended to come back for these things when she had the time, or
perhaps she planned o n throwing t h e m all out, but in fact there they remained, wherever they'd happened to land, except for Gregor's disturbing them as h e squeezed his
way through the junk pile. A t first h e did so simply because h e was forced to, since
there wasn't any other space to crawl in, but later he took a growing pleasure in these
rambles even though they left him dead tired and so sad that h e would lie motionless
for hours. Since the boarders would sometimes have their dinner at h o m e in the
shared living room, o n those evenings the door between that room and Gregor's
would remain shut. But Gregor didn't experience the door's n o t being open as a hardship; in fact there had been evenings when he'd ignored the open door and had lain,
unnoticed by the family, in the darkest corners of his room. But one time the cleaning
woman left the door slightly ajar, and it remained ajar when the boarders came in that
evening and the lamp was lit. T h e y sat down at the head of the table, where Gregor,
his mother and his father had sat in the old days; they unfolded their napkins, and
picked up their knives and forks. A t once his mother appeared at the kitchen door
carrying a platter of meat and right behind her came his sister carrying a platter piled
high with potatoes. T h e steaming food gave off a thick vapor. T h e platters were set
down in front of the boarders, who bent over t h e m as if to examine t h e m before eating, and in fact the one sitting in the middle, who was apparently looked up to as an
authority by the other two, cut into a piece of meat w7hile it was still on the platter,
evidently to determine if it was tender enough or whether perhaps it should be sent
back to the kitchen. H e was satisfied, and b o t h mother and daughter, who'd been
watching anxiously, breathed a sigh of relief and began to smile.
T h e family itself ate in the kitchen. Even so, before going to the kitchen his father came into t h e living room, bowed once and, cap in hand, walked around the
table. T h e boarders all rose together and mumbled something into their beards.
W h e n they were once more alone, they ate in almost complete silence. It seemed
strange to Gregor that, out of all the noises produced by eating, h e distinctly heard
t h e sound of their teeth chewing; it was as if h e were being told you needed teeth in
order to eat and that even with the most wonderful toothless jaws, you wouldn't be
able to accomplish a thing. "Yes, I'm hungry enough," Gregor told himself sadly, "but
n o t for those things. H o w well these boarders feed themselves, while I waste away."
T h a t very eveningduring this whole time Gregor couldn't once remember
hearing the violinthe sound of violin playing came from the kitchen. T h e boarders
had already finished their dinner, the one in the middle had pulled out a newspaper,
handed one sheet each to the other two, and now they were leaning back, reading
and smoking. W h e n the violin began to play, they noticed it, stood up, and tiptoed
to the hall doorway where they stood together in a tight group. T h e y must have been
heard in the kitchen for his father called, "Does the playing bother you, gentlemen?
W e can stop it at once." " O n the contrary," said the gentleman in the middle,
"wouldn't the young lady like to come and play in here where it's much more roomy
and comfortable?" "Why, certainly," called Gregor's father, as if he were the violinist.
Soon his father came in canying the music stand, his mother the sheet music, and his
sister t h e violin. His sister calmly got everything ready for playing; his parentswho
had never rented out rooms before and so were overly polite to the boardersdidn't
even dare to sit down in their own chairs. His father leaned against the door, slipping
his right h a n d between the buttons of his uniform's jacket, which he'd kept buttoned
up; but his mother was offered a chair by one of the gentlemen, and, leaving it where
h e happened to have placed it, she sat off to one side, in the corner.
His sister began to play; his father and mother, 011 either side, closely followed
the movements of her hands. Gregor, attracted by the playing, had moved a little farther forward and already had his head in t h e living room. H e was hardly surprised
that recently he'd shown so little concern for others, although in the past he'd taken
pride in being considerate. N o w more t h a n ever he had good reason to remain hidden, since h e wras completely covered with the dust that lay everywhere in his room
and was stirred up by the slightest movement. Moreover, threads, hairs, and scraps of
food clung to his back and sides, his indifference to everything was much too great
for him to have gotten o n t o his back and rubbed himself clean against the carpet, as
h e had once done several times a day. A n d despite his condition h e wasn't ashamed
to edge his way a little further across t h e spotless living room floor.
T o be sure, n o one took any notice of him. T h e family was completely absorbed by the violin-playing. T h e boarders, however, who h a d at first placed themselves, their hands in their pockets, m u c h too close to the music standclose
enough for every one of t h e m to h a v e followed the score, w h i c h surely must have
70
flustered his sistersoon retreated to t h e window, muttering to one another, with
their heads lowered. A n d there they remained while his father watched t h e m a n x - .
iously. It seemed all too obvious t h a t they had been disappointed in their hopes of
hearing good or entertaining violin-playing; they h a d h a d enough of the entire performance, and it was only out of politeness t h a t they c o n t i n u e d to let their peace
be disturbed. It was especially obvious, by t h e way they blew their smoke out of
their mouths and nosesit floated upwards to t h e ceilingjust how ill at ease they
were. A n d yet his sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was inclined to o n e
side, and her sad eyes carefully followed t h e notes of t h e music. Gregor crawled forward a little farther, keeping his head close to t h e floor so t h a t their eyes might
possibly meet. Was he a n animal, t h a t music could move h i m so? H e felt that h e
was being shown the way to an u n k n o w n n o u r i s h m e n t he yearned for. H e was determined to press o n until h e reached his sister, to tug at her skirt, and to let h e r
know in this way t h a t she should bring her violin into his room, for n o one h e r e
would h o n o r her playing as he would. H e would never let her out of his room again,
at least n o t for as long as h e lived; at last his horrifying appearance would be useful;
h e would be at every door of his room at once, hissing and spitting at the attackers.
His sister, however, wouldn't be forced to remain with him, she would do so of her
own free will. S h e would sit beside h i m o n the couch, leaning towards h i m and listening as h e confided t h a t h e had firmly i n t e n d e d to send her to t h e Conservatory,
and if the misfortune h a d n ' t intervened, h e would've a n n o u n c e d this to everyone
last Christmasfor h a d n ' t Christmas come and gone by now?without paying t h e
slightest a t t e n t i o n to any objection. A f t e r this declaration his sister would be so
moved that she would burst into tears, and Gregor would lift himself up to h e r
shoulder and kiss h e r 011 her neck, which, since she had started her job, she had
kept bare, without ribbon or collar.
"Mr. Samsa!" cried the middle gentleman to Gregor's father, and without wasting another word pointed with his index finger at Gregor, who was slowly advancing.
T h e violin stopped, the middle gentleman, shaking his head, smiled first at his friend
and t h e n looked at Gregor again. Instead of driving Gregor away, his father seemed
to think it more important to soothe the boarders, although they weren't upset at all
and appeared to consider Gregor more entertaining t h a n the violin-playing. His father rushed over to t h e m and with outstretched arms tried to herd t h e m back into
their room and at the same time block their view of Gregor w7ith his body. N o w they
actually got a little angryit wasn't clear whether this was due to his father's behavior or to their dawning realization that they had had all along, without knowing it, a
next-door neighbor like Gregor. They demanded explanations from his father, raised
their own arms now as well, tugged nervously at their beards, and only slowly backed
away toward their room. Meanwhile his sister had managed to overcome the bewildered state into which she'd fallen when her playing had been so abruptly interrupted, and after some moments spent holding the violin and bow in her slackly dangling hands and staring at the score as if she were still playing, she suddenly pulled
herself together, placed her instrument on her mother's lapshe was still sitting in
her chair with her lungs heaving, gasping for breathand ran into the next room,
which the boarders, under pressure from her father, were ever more swiftly approaching. O n e could see pillows and blankets flying high in the air and t h e n neatly arranging themselves under his sister's practical hands. Before the gentlemen had even
reached their room, she had finished making the beds and had slipped out.
O n c e again a perverse stubbornness seemed to grip Gregor's father, to the extent
that h e forgot to pay his tenants t h e respect still due them. H e kept on pushing and
shoving until the middle gentleman, who was already standing in the room's doorway, brought h i m up short with a thunderous stamp of his foot. "I hereby declare," h e
said, raising his h a n d and looking around for Gregor's mother and sister as well, "that
considering the disgusting conditions prevailing in this apartment and in this family"here h e suddenly spat on the floor "I'm giving immediate notice. Naturally
I'm n o t going to pay a penny for the time I've spent here; o n t h e contrary, I shall be
seriously considering bringing some sort of action against you with claims t h a t I assure youwill be very easy to substantiate." He stopped speaking and stared ahead of
him, as if expecting something. A n d indeed his two friends chimed right in, saying
"We're giving immediate notice too." W h e r e u p o n he grabbed the doorknob and
slammed the door shut with a crash.
Gregor's father, groping his way and staggering forward, collapsed into his armchair; it looked as if he were stretching himself out for his usual evening nap, but his
heavily drooping head, looking as if it had lost all means of support, showed that he
was anything but asleep. All this time Gregor had lain quietly right where the boarders had first seen him. His disappointment over the failure of his plan, and perhaps
also the weakness caused by eating so little for so long, made movement an impossibility. H e feared with some degree of certainty that at t h e very next m o m e n t the
whole catastrophe would fall o n his head, and he waited. He wasn't even startled
when the violin slipped from his mother's trembling fingers and fell off her lap with a
reverberating clatter.
"Dear parents," said his sister, pounding the table with her h a n d by way of preamble, "we can't go on like this. Maybe you d o n ' t realize it, but I do. I refuse to utter
my brother's n a m e in t h e presence of this monster, and so all I have to say is: we've
got to try to get rid of it. We've done everything humanly possible to take care of it
and put up with it; I don't think anyone can blame us in the least."
"She's absolutely right," said his father to himself. His mother, still trying to
catch her breath, with a wild look in her eyes, began to cough, her cupped hand muffling the sound.
His sister rushed over to his mother and held her forehead. His father seemed to
have been led to more definite thoughts by Grete's words; h e was sitting up straight
and toying with his messenger's cap, which lay o n the table among the dishes left
over from the boarders' dinner. From time to time h e would glance over at Gregor's
motionless form.
" W e must try to get rid of it," said his sister, speaking only to her father since her
mother's coughing was such that she was incapable of hearing a word. "It will be the
death of you both. I can see it coming. People who have to work as hard as we do
can't stand this constant torture at home. I can't stand it anymore either." A n d she
burst out sobbing so violently that her tears ran down o n t o her mother's face, where
she wiped them away mechanically with her hand.
"But, my child," said her father with compassion and remarkable understanding,
"what should we do?"
Gregor's sister could only shrug her shoulders as a sign of the helplessness that
had overcome her while she wept, in contrast to her earlier self-confidence.
"If h e could understand us," said her father tentatively; Gregor's sister, through
her tears, shook her h a n d violently to indicate h o w impossible that was.
75
so
"If h e could understand us," repeated her father, closing his eyes so as to take in
his daughter's belief that this was impossible, "then perhaps we might be able to .
reach some agreement with him, but the way things are"
"He's got to go," cried Gregor's sister, "it's t h e only way, Father. You just have
to get rid of t h e idea that this is Gregor. Our real misfortune is having believed it for
so long. But how can it be Gregor? If it were, he would've realized a long time ago
that it's impossible for h u m a n beings to live with a creature like that, and h e
would've left on his own accord. T h e n we would've lost a brother, but we'd have
been able to go o n living and h o n o r his memory. But the way things are, this animal
persecutes us, drives away our boarders, obviously it wants to take over the whole
apartment and make us sleep in t h e gutter. Look, Father," she suddenly screamed,
"he's at it again!" A n d in a panic w h i c h Gregor found incomprehensible his sister
abandoned his mother, and actually pushing herself from t h e chair as if she would
rather sacrifice her m o t h e r t h a n remain near Gregor, she rushed behind her father,
who, startled by this behavior, got up as well, half raising his arms in front of Grete
as if to protect her.
Gregor hadn't the slightest desire to frighten anyone, least of all his sister. H e
had merely started to turn around in order to go back to his room, a procedure which
admittedly looked strange, since, in his weakened condition h e had to use his head to
help him in this difficult maneuver, several times raising it and t h e n knocking it
against the floor. H e stopped and looked around. His good intentions seemed to have
been understood; the panic had only been temporary. Now, silent and sad, they all
looked at him. His mother lay in her armchair with her legs outstretched and pressed
together, her eyes almost closed from exhaustion. His father and sister sat side by
side, and his sister had put her arm around her father's neck.
"Now maybe they'll let me turn around," thought Gregor, resuming his efforts.
H e couldn't stop panting from the strain, and he also had to rest from time to time.
A t least n o one harassed h i m and h e was left alone. W h e n h e had finished turning
around, h e immediately began to crawd back in a straight line. H e was amazed at the
distance between h i m and his room and couldn't understand how, weak as he was,
he'd covered the same stretch of ground only a little while ago almost without being
aware of it. Completely intent on crawling rapidly, he scarcely noticed that neither a
word nor a n exclamation came from his family to interrupt his progress. Only wThen
he reached t h e doorway did he turn his head; not all the way, for he felt his neck
growing stiff, but enough to see that behind him all was as before except that his sister had gotten to her feet. His last glimpse was of his mother, who by now was fast
asleep.
H e was barely inside the room before the door was slammed shut, bolted, and
locked. Gregor was so frightened by t h e sudden noise behind him that his little legs
collapsed underneath him. It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She'd been
standing there, ready and waiting, and t h e n had sprung swiftly forward, before Gregor had even heard her coming. "At last!" she cried to her parents as she turned the
key in the lock.
" A n d now?" Gregor asked himself, looking around in the darkness. H e soon
discovered that h e was n o longer able to move. T h i s didn't surprise him; rather it
seemed to h i m strange that until now he'd actually been able to propel himself
with these t h i n little legs. In other respects he felt relatively comfortable. It was
true that his entire body ached, but t h e pain seemed to h i m to be growing fainter
and fainter a n d soon would go away altogether. T h e rotten apple in his back and
the inflamed area around it, completely covered with fine dust, hardly bothered him
anymore. H e recalled his family with deep emotion and love. His own belief that he
must disappear was, if anything, even firmer t h a n his sister's. H e remained in this
state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. H e could still just sense t h e general brightening outside his window. T h e n , involuntarily, his head sank all the way down, and from his nostrils came his last feeble
breath.
Early that morning, w h e n the cleaning woman appearedout of sheer energy
and impatience she always slammed all t h e doors, n o matter how often she'd been
asked n o t to, so hard that sleep was n o longer possible anywhere in the apartment
once she'd arrivedshe didn't notice anything peculiar w h e n she paid Gregor her
usual brief visit. She thought that he was lying there so still on purpose, pretending
that his feelings were hurt; she considered h i m to be very clever. As she happened to
be holding a long broom, she tried to tickle Gregor with it from the doorway. W h e n
this too had n o effect, she became annoyed and jabbed it into Gregor a little, and it
was only when she shoved h i m from his place without meeting resistance that she began to take notice. Quickly realizing how things stood, she opened her eyes wide,
gave a soft whistle, and without wasting any time she tore open the bedroom door
and yelled at the top of her lungs into the darkness: "Come and look, it's had it, it's
lying there, dead and done for."
Mr. and Mrs. Samsa sat up in their marriage bed, trying to absorb t h e shock
t h e cleaning w o m a n had given t h e m and yet at first unable t o c o m p r e h e n d the
m e a n i n g of her words. T h e n they quickly climbed out of bed, Mr. Samsa o n one
side, Mrs. Samsa o n t h e other. Mr. Samsa threw a blanket over his shoulders, Mrs.
Samsa wore only her nightgown; dressed in this fashion they entered Gregor's room.
Meanwhile the door to the living room, where Grete had been sleeping since the
boarders' arrival, opened as well. Grete was fully dressed, as if she'd never gone to bed,
and the pallor of her face seemed to confirm this. "Dead?" asked Mrs. Samsa and
looked inquiring at the cleaning woman, although she could h a v e checked for herself, or guessed at t h e truth without having to investigate. "That's for sure," said the
cleaning woman, and to prove it she pushed Gregor's corpse a good way to one side
with her broom. Mrs. Samsa made a move as if to stop her, t h e n let it go. "Well," said
Mr. Samsa, "now thanks be to God." H e crossed himself, and t h e three women followed his example. Grete, who never took her eyes off the corpse, said, "Just look how
t h i n h e was. It's been a long time since he's eaten anything. T h e food came out just as
it was when it came in." Indeed, Gregor's body was completely flat and dry; this was
only now obvious because the body was n o longer raised on its little legs and nothing
else distracted the eye.
" C o m e to our room with us for a little while, Grete," said Mrs. Samsa with a
sad smile, and Grete, n o t without a look back at the corpse, followed her parents
into t h e bedroom. T h e cleaning w o m a n shut the door and opened the windows
wide. A l t h o u g h it was early in t h e morning, there was a certain mildness in the
fresh air. After all, these were the last days of March.
T h e three boarders came out of their rooms and looked around in amazement for
their breakfast; they had been forgotten. "Where's our breakfast?" the middle gentlem a n asked the cleaning woman in a sour tone. But she put her finger to her lips, and
t h e n quickly and quietly beckoned to the gentlemen to enter Gregor's room. So they
did, and, with their hands in the pockets of their somewhat threadbare jackets, they
stood in a circle around Gregor's corpse in the now sunlit room.
90
A t that point the bedroom door opened and Mr. Samsa, wearing his uniform, appeared with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other. T h e y all looked a little tearful; from time to time Grete would press her face against her father's sleeve.
"Leave my home at once," Mr. Samsa told the three gentlemen, pointing to the
door without letting go of t h e women. " W h a t do you mean?" said the middle gentleman, who, somewhat taken aback, smiled a sugary smile. T h e other two held their
hands behind their backs, and kept rubbing t h e m together as if cheerfully anticipating a major argument which they were bound to win. "I mean just what 1 say,"
replied Mr. Samsa, and advanced in a line with his two companions directly on t h e
middle boarder. A t first this gentleman stood still, looking at the floor as if t h e
thoughts inside his head were arranging themselves in a new pattern. "Well, so we'll
be off," h e t h e n said, looking up at Mr. Samsa as if, suddenly overcome with humility, h e was asking permission for even this decision. Mr. Samsa, his eyes glowering,
merely gave him a few brief nods. W i t h that the gentleman, taking long strides, actually set off in the direction of the hall; his two friends, who had been listening for
some time with their hands quite still, now went hopping right along after him, as if
they were afraid that Mr. Samsa might reach the hall before t h e m and cut t h e m off
from their leader. O n c e in the hall the three of t h e m took their hats from the coat
rack, pulled their canes from the umbrella stand, bowed silently, and left the apartment. Impelled by a suspicion that would turn out to be utterly groundless,
Mr. Samsa led the two women out o n t o the landing; leaning against the banister
railing they watched t h e three gentlemen as they marched slowly but steadily down
the long staircase, disappearing at every floor w h e n the staircase made a turn and
t h e n after a few m o m e n t s reappearing once again. T h e lower they descended the
more the Samsas' interest in t h e m waned; and w h e n a butcher's boy with a basket
on his head came proudly up the stairs towards the gentlemen and t h e n swept o n
past them, Mr. Samsa and the women quickly left the banister and, as if relieved, returned to the apartment.
T h e y decided to spend this day resting and going for a walk; n o t only did they
deserve this break from work, they absolutely needed it. A n d so they sat down at the
table to write their three letters excusing themselves, Mr. Samsa to the bank manager, Mrs. Samsa to h e r employer, and G r e t e to the store's owner. W h i l e they were
writing, the cleaning w o m a n came by to say that she was leaving now, since her
morning's work was done. A t first the three letter writers merely nodded without
looking up, but when the cleaning w o m a n made n o move to go, they looked up at
her, annoyed. "Well?" asked Mr. Samsa. T h e cleaning w o m a n stood in t h e doorway,
smiling as if she had some wonderful news for the family, news she wasn't about to
share until they came right out and asked her to. T h e little ostrich feathers in her
hat, which stood up nearly straight in t h e air and which had irritated Mr. Samsa the
entire time she had worked for them, swayed gently in every direction. " W h a t can
we do for you?" asked Mrs. Samsa, w h o m the cleaning w o m a n respected the most.
"Well," the cleaning w o m a n replied, with such good-humored laughter that she had
to pause before continuing, "you don't have to worry about getting rid of that thing
in the next room. It's already been taken care of." Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent over
their letters as if they intended to keep o n writing; Mr. Samsa, who realized that the
cleaning woman was about to go into the details, stopped her firmly with an outstretched h a n d . Seeing that she wasn't going to be allowed to tell her story, she suddenly remembered that she was in a great hurry; clearly insulted, she called out,
"Bye, everybody," whirled around wildly, and left t h e apartment with a terrible slamming of doors.
"Shell be dismissed tonight," said Mr. Samsa, but without getting a reply from his
wife or his daughter, for the cleaning woman seemed to have ruined their tenuous peace
of mind. They got up, went to the window, and remained there holding each other
tightly. Mr. Samsa turned around in his chair toward them and watched them quietly
for some time. T h e n he called out, "Come on now, come over here. Let those old troubles alone. A n d have a little consideration for me, too." T h e two women promptly
obeyed him, hun'ied over to him, caressed him, and quickly finished their letters.
T h e n all three of t h e m left the apartment together, something they hadn't done
in months, and took a streetcar out to the open country o n the outskirts of the city.
T h e i r car, which they had all to themselves, was completely bathed in warm sunlight. Leaning comfortably back in their seats they discussed their prospects for the
future, which on closer inspection seemed to be not so bad, since ail three of them
had jobs w h i c h t h o u g h they'd never asked one another about t h e m in any detail
were in each case very advantageous and promising. Of course the greatest immediate improvement in their situation would quickly come about w h e n they found a new
apartment, one that was smaller, cheaper, and in every way easier to maintain t h a n
their current one, which Gregor had chosen for them. As they were talking on in this
way, it occurred to both Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, almost simultaneously, as they watched
their daughter become more and more vivacious, that in spite of all the recent troubles that had turned her cheeks pale, she had blossomed into a pretty and shapely
girl. Growing quieter now, communicating almost unconsciously through glances,
they reflected that soon it would be time to find her a good husband. A n d it was as if
in confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions that at the end of their ride
their daughter got up first and stretched her young body.
QUESTIONS
1. What was Gregor's occupation before his transformation? How did he come to his particular job? What keeps him working for his firm?
2. When Gregor wakes to discover he has become a gigantic insect, he is mostly intent on
the practical implications of his metamorphosishow to get out of bed, how to get to his
job, and so on. He never wonders why or how he has been changed. What does this odd
reaction suggest about Gregor?
3. When Gregor's parents first see the gigantic insect (paragraph 25), do they recognize it as
their son? What do their initial reactions suggest about their attitude toward their son?
4- How does each family member react to Gregor after his transformation? How do these
reactions differ from one another? What do they have in common?
5. What things about Gregor have been changed? What seems to have remained the same?
List specific qualities.
6. The Metamorphosis takes place almost entirely in the Samsa family apartment. How does
the story's setting shape its themes?
7. What family member first decides lliat he or she must "get rid of" the insect? What
rationale is given? In what specific ways does the family's decision affect Gregor?
8. How does the family react to Gregor's death?
9. Does Grete change in the course of the story? If so, how does she change?
10. In what ways is Gregor's metamorphosis symbolic?
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WRITING
Franz Kafka
Discussing The
Metamorphosis
C. 1 9 2 0
My friend Alfred Kampf . . . admired Kafka's
story The Metamorphosis. He described the
author as "a new, more profound and therefore more significant Edgar Allan Poe."
During a walk with Franz Kafka o n the
Altstadter Ring 0 I told h i m about this new
admirer of his, but aroused neither interest
nor understanding. O n the contrary, Kafka's
expression showed that any discussion of his
book was distasteful to him. I, however, was
filled with a zeal for discoveries, and so I was
tactless.
"The hero of the story is called Samsa,"
I said. "It sounds like a cryptogram for Kafka.
Five letters in each word. T h e S in t h e word
Samsa has the same position as the K in the
word Kafka. T h e A . . . "
FRANZ K A F K A
Kafka interrupted me.
"It is n o t a cryptogram. Samsa is n o t merely Kafka, and nothing else. The Metamorphosis is not a confession, although it isin a certain sensean indiscretion."
"I know n o t h i n g about that."
"Is it perhaps delicate and discreet to talk about the bugs in one's own family?"
"It isn't usual in good society."
"You see what bad manners I have."
Kafka smiled. H e wished to dismiss the subject. But I did n o t wish to.
"It seems to me that the distinction between good and bad manners hardly applies here," I said. "The Metamorphosis is a terrible dream, a terrible conception."
Kafka stood still.
"The dream reveals the reality, which conception lags behind. T h a t is the horror
of lifethe terror of art. But now I must go home."
From Conversations with Kaflca by Gustav Janouch
Altstadter Ring: a major street in Prague.
WRITING
ABOUT
LONG
STORIES
AND
NOVELS
Knowing What to Leave Out
Facing t h e b l a n k page, waiting for inspiration, you may despair of ever having
e n o u g h to say to fill the assigned pages. A t o t h e r times, with luck and careful
reading, you may find yourself with a n enviable alternative problem: h a v i n g too
m u c h to say.
Studied closely, a first-rate short story will yield a wealth of interconnections of
language, images, actions, and ideas. You may often uncover more interconnections
t h a n you can use. This is especially the case w h e n writing about a longer work of fiction. T h e r e may be times you see so many things unfolding at once that you get
slightly dizzy in t h e excitement of discovery.
Sometimes, the great frustration in writing a paper is realizing that you must
leave out much of what you have discovered. N o t every observationno matter how
true or usefulwill fit into the final piece. T o o m u c h information can blur your essay's focus. Every writer needs to learn that w h a t is omitted is nearly as important as
what is included.
A rough outline can provide direction and can help you to decide which ideas to
leave out. As you see how much material you have to work into your final paper, you
may even be relieved to see what you h a v e excluded. Finally, remember that even if
you didn't get to work every detail into your paper, you still had the private joy of
noticing it in the first place.
CHECKLIST
Organizing Your Ideas for a Research Paper
S Establish what you want to discuss. Leave out the observations that are n o t
necessary to your argument.
S Begin with a rough outline of your main ideas. G r o u p individual observations under the major points in your argument.
S Create a special list for ideas that don't fit your paper's focus. Getting them
down o n paper will make it easier for you to leave t h e m out.
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
FOR A R E S E A R C H
PAPER
This challenging assignment for a research paper comes from Professor Michael Cass of Mercer
University. He asked his students to select the fiction writer on their reading list whose work
impressed them most. Each student had to write a paper defending that author's claim to literary greatness and research the author using at least five critical sources. The student had to
present clear reasons why the author was a major writer and to support the argument with both
examples from the writer's work and statements from critics. Choose an author from this book
whose greatness you would defend. Here is a short research paper by a student in Professor
Cass's class, Stephanie Crowe, who discussed why she believed that Franz Kafka was a great
writer.
SAMPLE
STUDENT
RESEARCH
PAPER
Crowe 1
Stephanie Crowe
Professor Cass
English 120
21 November 2 006
First paragraph
introduces
essay's topic
Citation of
secondary
source of
information
Kafka's Greatness
Although most of his major works remained unfinished
and unpublished at his untimely death in 1924, Franz
Kafka has gradually come to be considered one of the
great writers of the twentieth century. By 1977, well
over ten thousand works of commentary had appeared on
Kafka, and many more have been written since then
Quotation from
secondary
source
integrated into
sentence and
acknowledged.
} Topic sentence
j on Kafka as
influence
(Goodden 2). According to critic Peter Heller, Kafka
represents the "mainstream of German literary and
intellectual tradition," a nihilistic tradition which
extends from Goethe and Lessing to the present (289).
Not only is Kafka generally considered one of the
greatest fiction writers of the modern era, he is also
indisputably one of the most influential. In his 1989
study, After Kafka, Shimon Sandbank discusses Kafka's
influence on a dozen modern writers, including Sartre,
Camus, Beckett, Borges, and Ionesco. His effects on these
writers differ. Some borrow his understated, almost
passive prose style while others adopt his recurrent
images and themes. Whatever the specific elements they
use, however, Kafka's ability to influence these writers
is another measure of his stature.
Great literature often gives us the stories and
images to understand our own age, a process that
necessarily includes understanding our deepest problems.
The twentieth century, to borrow a phrase from W.H.
Assumptions
explained
Auden, was mostly an "Age of Anxiety. " Most modern people
are no longer bound to follow the occupations, behaviors,
and beliefs of their parents, but they gain this newfound
freedom at the expense of a constant, difficult search
for identity. The personal quest for meaningful identity
often leads to despair. This "existential crisis" is the
Crowe 2
basis for many contemporary problems including the
decline of religion, the rise of totalitarianism, the
breakdown of social identity, and the decay of
traditional family structure.
Kafka's works dramatize these problems memorably
because they provide us with myths, images, stories, and
situations that describe the particular dilemmas of the
j Topic sentence
1 on Kafka's
| relationship to
! his time
early twentieth century. When faced with the modern
challenge of not having a predetermined social or
religious identity, Kafka's characters desperately
attempt to find certainty. The problem, however, is that
they are usually afraid to do anything decisive because
everything is uncertain. Auden observed:
Far from being confident of success, the Kafka
hero is convinced from the start that he is
doomed to fail, as he is also doomed, being who
he is, to make prodigious and unending efforts
to reach it [the goal]. Indeed, the mere desire
to reach the goal is itself a proof, not that
Quotation from
secondary
source, set off
from text
he is one of the elect, but that he is under a
special curse. (162)
One way that Kafka memorably dramatizes the modern
struggle for identity is by reversing the traditional
quest story. In a quest story, the hero knows the goal
that he wants to achieve and has some confidence that he
Topic sentence
elaborates on
how Kafka's
work reflects his
time
will be able to achieve it. As he tries to reach the
goals, he must overcome various enemies and obstacles.
"In a typical Kafka story, on the other hand, the goal is
peculiar to the hero himself: he has no competitors"
(Auden 162). His question then becomes not a practical
"Can I succeed?" but instead a vague and problematic
"What should I do?" Unable to answer this question
satisfactorily, the hero becomes increasingly alienated
from his own surroundings. This alienation is yet another
symptom of "the inhumanity of modern society" that Kafka
so memorably portrayed (Kuna 62).
verbatim
quotation from
secondary
i source
Crowe 3
Topic sentence
on relationship
j between Kafka's
! era and his style
Kafka also distinguishes himself as a great writer
because he created a distinctive style that effectively
dramatizes modern problems. Although Kafka's fiction
often describes extreme situations, his prose usually
seems strangely calm and detached. He uses "clear and
simple language" that paints "concrete pictures of human
beings, pictures that, in a sense, have to speak for
themselves" (Cooper 19). These haunting images (the
unreachable castle, the unknown laws, the unspecified
trial) dramatize the mysterious struggles of the
characters.
Topic sentence
on Kafka's style
incorporates
critical view
Kafka also uses his style to separate himself from
his characters, a technique that develops a contrast
between the calmness of his style and the nervous
desperation of his characters (Heller 237). For example,
the opening of Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis, which
is perhaps the most famous first sentence in modern
fiction, describes an outrageous eventa young man who
wakes up transformed into a giant bug--in a strangely
matter-of-fact tone. This contrast is important because
it reminds us of the desperation of modern man imprisoned
in a world he can neither understand nor control.
Topic sentence
on Kafka's style
of ambiguity
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Kafka's
style is his ability to create works that cannot be
explained by a single interpretation. Because he allows
his pictures to "speak for themselves," "Kafka's texts
have been subject to a variety of widely divergent
approaches" (Heller 236). Therefore, no single
interpretation of Kafka's texts can adequately explain
an entire work. Most interpretations may illuminate
particular moments in a work, but inevitably they lead to
a dead end when pressed to explain the whole narrative.
Whether one is reading on a social, moral, psychological,
metaphysical, theological, or existential level, Kafka
"tends to suspend all distinction and thus to revert to
total ambiguity" (Heller 285). According to Heller, this
Crowe 4
characteristic mysteriousness becomes "the epitome of his
art" (230) .
Auden believed that the impossibility of
interpreting Kafka's work is essential in defining him as
an important and influential writer. He says that "Kafka
Topic sentence j
! on Kafka's
complexity
is a great, perhaps the greatest, master of the pure
parable, a literary genre about which a critic can say
very little worth saying" (159). Since the meaning of
parables is different for each individual, critics cannot
explain them without revealing their own visions and
values. Kafka develops stories with important symbols
that are easily identified; attempting to interpret these
symbols, however, only leads to frustration.
The frustration that comes from trying to interpret
Kafka's works exemplifies his recurrent, and particularly
twentieth-century, theme, which Peter Heller has
described as man's "ever frustrated, ever defeated
striving for self-realization in an inhuman human
| Topic sentence J
I on Kafka's
| central theme
j incorporates
j quotation from
j secondary
i source
universe in which he is alienated from himself and
from the world he lives in" (305). Kafka uses his
characteristic difficult symbolism and ambiguity, along
with his theme of hopelessness and despair, as a common
thread that binds all of his works together.
Kafka's book The Great Wall of China contains
several short pieces which have a slightly less desperate
j Topic sentence
1 on tone
tone than the despair of The Metamorphosis. Many of the
stories in The Great Wall of China, however, still
present the theme of hopelessness. In the reflection
entitled "The Problem of Our Laws," Kafka examines the
origins and legitimacy of law. This parable begins with
the narrator stating, "Our laws are not generally known;
they are kept secret by the small group of nobles who
rule us" (147). Next the narrator goes through a
laborious process of rationally questioning why only the
nobility knows the laws, if the laws really exist, and if
it will ever be possible for common men to know the laws.
Quotation from
primary source
Crowe 5
He finally concludes that the only way to know the law
would be a quiet revolution that ends nobility. But even
this solution, he realizes, is futile. The nobility
cannot be eliminated because they provide the only order
that exists. While this parable makes several interesting
points, its structure is essentially static. The narrator
ends where he began--trapped in an unknowable world.
j Topic sentence j
? on theme
One of Kafka's unfinished novels, The Trial, also
concentrates on the unknown symbol of the Law. In the
novel, Joseph K. is arrested for a crime that no one ever
knows. Joseph, like most of Kafka's characters, is a
common man with an uneventful life who admits that he
knows little of the Law. The drama of the novel is the
protagonist's hopeless attempts to master an impossible
and unknown situation. Joseph K.'s life itself becomes a
trial, although he is never sentenced. Finally, one year
after his arrest, two men come and murder him. Instead of
trying to understand the Law, "In the end he appears to
accept the verdict as a release from the condition of
despair," and "dies like an animal, without comprehending
the rationale of the Law which condemns him" (Heller 28081). Like many men, before his death K. is struggling to
discover his identity in relation to the Law that governs
him; however, K.'s hopeless life ends with a pointless
murder.
Topic sentence
on theme
Kafka's other great, unfinished novel, The Castle,
also concentrates on the theme of unknowability and
despair. Instead of trying to understand the Law, K. in
The Castle has another impossible quest, his attempt to
enter the castle of the local ruler to report for duty as
a land surveyor. His constant efforts, however, prove
futile. Only when K. lies on his deathbed does a call
from the castle come, giving him permission to live in
the town. Once again, K. suffers hopelessly and dies in
despair.
Crowe 6
While The Trial emphasizes political and
psychological themes characteristic of the twentieth
century, The Castle focuses on the religious identity
crisis. The Metamorphosis examines similar themes of
identity on a personal and family level. All of these
works focus on modern humanity's difficult struggle to
define its place in existence.
Kafka, through his works, accurately describes the
modern condition of many by using memorable images and a
Conclusion sumsl
up argument
distinctive style. This characteristic style influenced
many twentieth-century writers and readers. While
difficult and somewhat bleak, Kafka's often ambiguous,
yet understated dramatizations of man's condition, along
with his lasting influence, form the foundation of his
greatness.
| Thesis sentence j
| makes
I debatable claim j
Crowe 7
Works Cited
Auden, W. H. "The I Without a Self." The Dyer7 s Hand.
New York: Random, 1989. 159-70.
Cooper, Gabriele Bon Natzmer. Kafka and Lancruacre: In the
Stream of Thoughts and Life. Riverside, CA:
Ariadne, 1991.
Goodden, Christina. "Points of Departure." The Kafka
Debate: New Perspectives for Our Time. Ed. Angel
Flores. New York: Gordian, 1988. 2-9.
Heller, Peter. "Kafka: The Futility of Striving."
Dialectics and Nihilism. Amherst: U of
Massachusetts P, 1966. 227-306.
Kafka, Franz. "The Problem of Our Laws." The Great Wall
of China. New York: Schocken, 1946. 147-49.
Kuna, Franz. Franz Kafka: Literature as Corrective
Punishment. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1974.
Sandbank, Shimon. After Kafka: The Influence of Kafka's
Fiction. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1989.
M O RE T O P I C S T o R W RI T I IS! G
1. What do Ivan Ilych and Gregor Samsa have in common? In what ways are their lives and
deaths dissimilar?
2. Choose a thematic concern of either The Death of Ivan Ilych or The Metamorphosis; some
possibilities are work, romantic love, and the family. Develop a thesis about what your
story has to say on your chosen theme. Now choose three key moments from the story to
back up your argument. Make your case in a medium-length paper (600 to 1,000 words);
be sure to quote as needed from the text.
.3. In one carefully thought-out paragraph, sum up what you believe Tolstoy is saying in The
Death of Ivan Ilych.
4. Compare Tolstoy's short novel with another story of spiritual awakening: Flannery
O'Connor's "Revelation" or "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." In each, what brings about
the enlightenment of the central character?
5. Is The Metamorphosis a horror story? What elements does Kafka's story share with horror
fiction or films you have known? How does The Metamorphosis differ?
6. Compare and contrast Gregor Samsa's relationships with the people in his life to Miss
Emily's relationships with those around her in " A Rose for Emily."
7. Explore how Gregor Samsa's metamorphosis into a giant insect is symbolic of his earlier
life and relations with his family. (For a discussion of literary symbols, see Chapter 7,
"Symbol.")
8. Write a metamorphosis story of your own. Imagine a character who turns overnight into
something quite other than himself or herself. As you describe that character's struggles,
try for a mix of tragedy and grotesque comedy, as found in The Metamorphosis.
Critical
10
Flannery O'Connor
The main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery
as it is incarnated in real life.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Flannery O'Connor
Mar)' Flannery O ' C o n n o r (1925-1964)
was
born in Savannah, Georgia, but spent most of
her life in the small town of Milledgeville. While
attending Georgia State College for Women,
she won a local reputation for her fledgling stories and satiric cartoons. After graduating in
1945, she went on to study at the University of
Iowa, where she earned an M . F . A . in 1947.
Diagnosed in 1950 with disseminated lupus, the
same incurable illness that had killed her father,
O'Connor returned home and spent the last
decade of her life living with her mother in
Milledgeville. Back on the family dairy farm,
she wrote, maintained an extensive literary correspondence, raised peacocks, and underwent
medical treatment. When her illness occasionFLANNERY O'CONNOR
ally went into a period of remission, she made
trips to lecture and read her stories to college audiences. Her health declined rapidly after
surgery early in 1964 for an unrelated complaint. She died at thirty-nine.
O'Connor is unusual among modern American writers in the depth of her Christian
vision. A devout Roman Catholic, she attended mass daily while growing up and living in
the largely Protestant South. As a latter-day satirist in the manner of Jonathan Swift,
O'Connor levels the eye of an uncompromising moralist on the violence and spiritual disorder
of the modern world, focusing on what she calls "the action of grace in territory held largely
by the devil." She is sometimes called a "Southern Gothic" writer because of her fascination
with grotesque incidents and characters. Throughout her career she depicted the South as a
troubled region in which the social, racial, and religious status quo that had existed since before
the Civil War was coming to a violent end. Despite the inherent seriousness of her religious
and social themes, O ' C o n n o r ' s mordant and frequently outrageous humor is everywhere
apparent. Her combination of profound vision and dark comedy is the distinguishing charac- teristic of her literary sensibilities.
O'Connor's published work includes two short novels, Wise Blood (1952) and T h e
Violent Bear It Away (1960), and two collections of short stories, A G o o d M a n Is Hard
to Find (1955) and Everything T h a t Rises Must Converge, published posthumously in
1965. A collection of essays and miscellaneous prose, Mystery and Manners (1969), and
her selected letters, T h e Habit of Being (1979), reveal an innate cheerfulness and engaging personal ivarmth that are not akvays apparent in her fiction. T h e C o m p l e t e Stories of
Flannery O ' C o n n o r was posthumously awarded the National Book Award in 1971.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
1955
T h e grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind.
Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. H e was sitting o n the edge of his chair at
the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal "Now look here, Bailey,"
she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one h a n d o n her thin hip and the other
rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself T h e Misfit is
aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he
did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a
criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."
Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around t h e n and faced t h e
children's mother, a young w o m a n in slacks, whose face was as broad and i n n o c e n t as
a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief t h a t had two points o n the
top like rabbit's ears. S h e was sitting o n t h e sofa, feeding t h e baby his apricots out of
a jar. " T h e children h a v e b e e n to Florida before," t h e old lady said. "You all ought to
take t h e m somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of t h e world
and be broad. T h e y never have been to east Tennessee."
T h e children's m o t h e r didn't seem to hear her but t h e eight-year-old boy, J o h n
Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why
dontcha stay at home?" H e and t h e little girl, June Star, were reading t h e funny papers
o n the floor.
"She wouldn't stay at h o m e to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising
her yellow head.
"Yes and w h a t would you do if this fellow, T h e Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother said.
"I'd smack his face," J o h n Wesley said.
"She wouldn't stay at h o m e for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd
miss something. She has to go everywhere we go."
"All right, Miss," t h e grandmother said. "Just remember t h a t t h e next time you
want me to curl your hair."
June Star said her hair was naturally curly.
T h e next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She
had her big black valise that looked like t h e head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and
underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend
for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too
much and she was afraid he might brush against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of the back seat with J o h n Wesley and June Star o n either
side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left
A t l a n t a at eight forty-five with t h e mileage o n the car at 55890. T h e grandmother
wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles
they bad been when they got back. It took t h e m twenty minutes to reach the outskirts
of the city.
T h e old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and
putting t h e m up with her purse on the shelf in front, of the back window. T h e children's mother still had on slacks and still had her hair tied up in a green kerchief, but
the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor h a t with a b u n c h of white violets on
t h e brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and
cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a
purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing
her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.
She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot
nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an
hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of
trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out
interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some
places came up to b o t h sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly
streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the
ground. T h e trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them
sparkled. T h e children were reading comic magazines and their mother had gone
back to sleep.
"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley
said.
"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native
state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills."
"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia
is a lousy state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children
were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right t h e n . O h look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a
Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?"
she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window.
H e waved.
"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little niggers in the
country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said.
T h e children exchanged comic books.
T h e grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him
over the front seat to her. She set h i m on her knee and bounced him and told h i m
about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and
stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle
15
20
. mm
mm I
WWW;
of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it
out. "That was the old family burying ground. T h a t belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the plantation?" J o h n Wesley asked.
"Gone W i t h the W i n d , " said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."
W h e n t h e children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened
the lunch and ate it. T h e grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and
would n o t let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out t h e window.
W h e n there was n o t h i n g else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. J o h n Wesley took one the shape of a
cow and June Star guessed a cow and J o h n Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June
Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother.
T h e grandmother said she would tell t h e m a story if they would keep quiet.
W h e n she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic.
She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar
Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said h e was a very good-looking m a n
and a gentleman and that h e brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon
with his initials cut in it, E. A. T . Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden
brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on t h e front
porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said,
because a nigger boy ate it w h e n he saw the initials, E. A . T.!
This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and h e giggled and giggled but June
Star didn't think it was any good. S h e said she wouldn't marry a m a n that just
brought her a watermelon on Saturday. T h e grandmother said she would have done
well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola
stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy
man.
T h e y stopped at T h e Tower for barbecued sandwiches. T h e Tower was a part
stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat m a n named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and
there o n the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED
25
SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY
WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN!
Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside T h e Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree,
chattered nearby. T h e monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb
as soon as h e saw the children jump out of t h e car and run toward him.
Inside, T h e Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at
the other and dancing space in the middle. T h e y all sat down at a board table next to
the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown w o m a n with hair and eyes
lighter t h a n her skin, came and took their order. T h e children's mother put a dime in
the machine and played " T h e Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said that tune
always made her want to dance. S h e asked Bailey if he would like to dance but h e
only glared at her. H e didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips
made h i m nervous. T h e grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her
head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play
something she could tap to so the children's mother put in another dime and played
a fast number and June Star stepped out o n t o the dance floor and did her tap routine.
"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like
to come be my little girl?"
30
" N o I certainly wouldn't/' June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down
place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the table.
"Ain't she cute?" t h e woman repeated, stretching her m o u t h politely.
" A m ' t you ashamed?" hissed t h e grandmother.
Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up
with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his
stomach h u n g over t h e m like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. H e came over
and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't
win," h e said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray
handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the
truth?"
"People are certainly n o t nice like they used to be," said the grandmother.
"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It
was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said
they worked at the mill and you know I let t h e m fellers charge the gas they bought?
N o w why did I do that?"
"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.
"Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if h e were struck with this answer.
His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray,
two in each h a n d and o n e balanced o n h e r arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world
of God's t h a t you can trust," she said. " A n d I d o n ' t c o u n t nobody out of that, n o t
nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.
"Did you read about that criminal, T h e Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if h e didn't attact this place right here," said the
woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be n o n e surprised to see him. If
h e hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a-tall surprised if he . . ."
"That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the
woman went off to get the rest of the order.
"A good m a n is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I
remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. N o t no
more."
H e and t h e grandmother discussed better times. T h e old lady said that in her
opinion Europe was entirely to blame for t h e way things were now. S h e said the way
Europe acted you would t h i n k we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no
use talking about it, she was exactly right. T h e children ran outside into the white
sunlight and looked at t h e monkey in t h e lacy chinaberry tree. H e was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a
delicacy.
They drove off again into the h o t afternoon. T h e grandmother took cat naps and
woke up every five minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke
up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once
when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front
and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the
garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey
would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked
about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors
were still standing. "There was a secret panel in this house," she said craftily, not
35
40
45
telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family
silver was hidden in it when Sherman 0 came through but it was never found . . . "
"Hey!" J o h n Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! W h o lives there? W h e r e do you turn off at? Hey, Pop, can't we turn
off there?"
" W e never have seen a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go
to t h e house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the
secret panel!"
"It's n o t far from here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over
twenty minutes."
Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said.
T h e children began to yell and scream t h a t they wanted to see the house with
the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung
over her mother's shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had
any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do.
T h e baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that
his father could feel the blows in his kidney.
"All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will
you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we
won't go anywhere."
"It would be very educational for them," the grandmother murmured.
"All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for
anything like this. This is the one and only time."
"The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it when we passed."
"A dirt road," Bailey groaned.
After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and t h e candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was
probably in the fireplace.
"You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives there."
"While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a
window," John Wesley suggested.
"We'll all stay in t h e car," his mother said.
They turned o n t o the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink
dust. T h e grandmother recalled t h e times w h e n there were n o paved roads and thirty
miles was a day's journey. T h e dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it
and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill,
looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, t h e n the next minute, they
would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.
"This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn
around."
T h e road looked as if no one had traveled on it for months.
"It's not much farther," t h e grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible
thought came to her. T h e thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in t h e
face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner.
She)Tnan: General William Tecumseh Sherman, Union commander, whose troops burned Atlanta in
1864, then made a devastating march to the sea.
50
55
60
T h e instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it
rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang o n t o Bailey's shoulder.
T h e children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was
thrown out t h e door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat.
T h e car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road.
Bailey remained in t h e driver's seat with the catgray-striped with a broad white
face and an orange noseclinging to his neck like a caterpillar.
As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled
out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" T h e grandmother was curled up
under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come
down on her all at once. T h e horrible thought she had had before the accident was
that the house she had remembered so vividly was n o t in Georgia but in Tennessee.
Bailey removed the cat from his neck with b o t h hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. T h e n he got out of the car and started looking for
the children's mother. S h e was sitting against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder.
"We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.
"But nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother
limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off t h e side. T h e y all sat down in
the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all shaking.
"Maybe a car will come along," said the children's m o t h e r hoarsely.
"1 believe I have injured an organ," said the grandmother, pressing her side, but
n o one answered her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt
with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as t h e shirt. T h e
grandmother decided that she would n o t m e n t i o n that the house was in Tennessee.
T h e road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees
on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods,
tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of
a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. T h e grandmother
stood up and waved b o t h her arms dramatically to attract their attention. T h e car
continued to come o n slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving
even slower, o n top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearselike automobile. T h e r e were three m e n in it.
It came to a stop just over t h e m and for some minutes, the driver looked down
with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak. T h e n
he turned his head and muttered something to t h e other two and they got out. O n e
was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on
the front of it. He moved around on t h e right side of t h e m and stood staring, his
mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. T h e other had on khaki pants and a blue
striped coat and a gray h a t pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. H e came
around slowly on t h e left side. N e i t h e r spoke.
T h e driver got out of the car and stood by t h e side of it, looking down at
t h e m . H e was an older m a n t h a n t h e o t h e r two. His hair was just beginning to
gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles t h a t gave h i m a scholarly look. H e h a d
a long creased face and d i d n ' t h a v e o n any shirt or undershirt. H e had o n blue
jeans t h a t were too tight for h i m and was holding a black h a t a n d a gun. T h e two
boys also had guns.
"We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed.
65
70
T h e grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled m a n was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had k n o w n h i m all her life but she could n o t recall who h e was. H e moved away from the car and began to come
down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn't slip. H e had o n
tan and white shoes and n o socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good afternoon," he said. "I see you all had you a little spill."
" W e turned over twice!" said the grandmother.
"Oncet," h e corrected. " W e seen it h a p p e n . Try their car and see will it run,
Hiram," h e said quietly to t h e boy with the gray hat.
" W h a t you got that gun for?" John Wesley asked. " W h a t c h a gonna do with that
gun?"
"Lady," the man said to the children's mother, "would you mind calling them
children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. 1 want all you all to sit down
right together there where you're at."
" W h a t are you telling U S what to do for?" June Star asked.
Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here," said
their mother.
"Look here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a predicament! W e ' r e in . . ."
T h e grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're
T h e Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!"
"Yes'm," the m a n said, smiling slightly as if h e were pleased in spite of himself
to be known, "but it would h a v e been better for all of you, lady, if you h a d n ' t of
reckernized me."
Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked
even t h e children. T h e old lady began to cry and T h e Misfit reddened.
"Lady," h e said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a m a n says things he don't
mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you thataway."
"You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a
clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.
T h e Misfit pointed t h e toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and
t h e n covered it up again. "I would hate to have to," he said.
"Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I know you're a good man. You don't
look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!"
"Yes mam," he said, "finest people in the world." W h e n he smiled he showed a row
of strong white teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy's
heart was pure gold," he said. T h e boy with the red sweat shirt had come around behind
them and was standing with his gun at his hip. T h e Misfit squatted down on the
ground. "Watch them children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they make me nervous." H e looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to
be embarrassed as if h e couldn't think of anything to say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," h e
remarked, looking up at it. "Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither."
"Yes, it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said, "you shouldn't
call yourself T h e Misfit because 1 know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at
you and tell."
"Hush!" Bailey yelled. "Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!" H e
was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but h e didn't move.
"I pre-chate that, lady," T h e Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground
with the butt of his gun.
"It'll take a half a hour to fix this here car," Hiram called, looking over the raised
h o o d of it.
"Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder 95
with you," T h e Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and J o h n Wesley. "The boys want to
ast you something," h e said to Bailey. "Would you mind stepping back in them woods
there with them?"
"Listen," Bailey began, "we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what
this is," and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his
shirt and he remained perfectly still.
T h e grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the
woods with him but it came off in her hand. S h e stood staring at it and after a second
she let it fall o n the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting
an old man. J o h n Wesley caught hold of his father's h a n d and Bobby Lee followed.
T h e y went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned
and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, h e shouted, "I'll be back in a
minute, Mamma, wait on me!"
"Come back this instant!" his m o t h e r shrilled but they all disappeared into the
woods.
"Bailey Boy!" the grandmother called in a tragic voice but she found she was
looking at T h e Misfit squatting o n t h e ground in front of her. "I just know you're a
good man," she said desperately. "You're not a bit common!"
"Nome, I ain't a good man," T h e Misfit said after a second as if h e had consid- 100
ered her statement carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy
said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy
said, 'it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into
everything!'" He put o n his black hat and looked up suddenly and t h e n away deep
into the woods as if h e were embarrassed again. "I'm sorry I don't have on a shirt before you ladies," h e said, hunching his shoulders slightly. "We buried our clothes that
we had on w h e n we escaped and we're just making do until we can get better. W e
borrowed these from some folks we met," h e explained.
"That's perfectly all right," the grandmother said. "Maybe Bailey has an extra
shirt in his suitcase."
"I'll look and see terrectly," T h e Misfit said.
"Where are they taking him?" the children's m o t h e r screamed.
"Daddy was a card himself," T h e Misfit said. "You couldn't put anything over
on him. H e never got in trouble with t h e Authorities though. Just had the knack of
handling them."
"You could be honest too if you'd only try," said the grandmother. " T h i n k how 105
wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to
think about somebody chasing you all the time."
T h e Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if h e were
thinking about it. "Yes'm, somebody is always after you," h e murmured.
T h e grandmother noticed h o w t h i n his shoulder blades were just b e h i n d his
h a t because she was standing up looking down o n him. " D o you ever pray?" she
asked.
H e shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder
blades. "Nome," he said.
mm
f| p , , ,
*
*
y< * * *
'
'
There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. T h e n silence.
T h e old lady's head jerked around. She could hear the wind move through the tree tops .
like a long satisfied insuck of breath. "Bailey Boy!" she called.
"I was a gospel singer for a while," T h e Misfit said. "I been most everything. Been
in the arm service, both land and sea, at h o m e and abroad, been twict married, been
an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed M o t h e r Earth, been in a tornado, seen
a m a n burnt alive oncet," and h e looked up at the children's mother and the little
girl who were sitting close together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I evenseen a woman flogged," h e said.
"Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ."
"I never was a bad boy t h a t I remember of," T h e Misfit said in an almost dreamy
voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the
penitentiary. I was buried alive," and he looked up and held her a t t e n t i o n to him by a
steady stare.
"That's when you should have started to pray," she said. " W h a t did you do to get
sent to the penitentiary that first time?"
"Turn to the right, it was a wall," T h e Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a
floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it
was I done and I ain't recalled it to this day. O n c e t in a while, I would think it was
coming to me, but it never come."
"Maybe they put you in by mistake," the old lady said vaguely.
"Nome," he said. "It wasn't n o mistake. T h e y had the papers on me."
"You must have stolen something," she said.
T h e Misfit sneered slightly. "Nobody had n o t h i n g I wanted," h e said. "It was a
head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I k n o w n
that for a lie. My daddy died in n i n e t e e n ought n i n e t e e n of the epidemic flu and I
never had a thing to do with it. H e was buried in the M o u n t Hopewell Baptist
churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself"
"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you."
"That's right," T h e Misfit said.
"Well then, why don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly.
"I don't want n o hep," h e said. "I'm doing all right by myself."
Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the woods. Bobby Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with bright blue parrots in it.
"Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee," T h e Misfit said. T h e shirt came flying at h i m
and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. T h e grandmother couldn't n a m e what
the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," T h e Misfit said while h e was buttoning it up, "I
found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a
m a n or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it
was you done and just be punished for it."
T h e children's mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get
her breath. "Lady," h e asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off yonder
with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?"
"Yes, thank you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and she
was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady up, Hiram,"
T h e Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold
onto that little girl's hand."
110
115
120
125
"I don't want to hold hands with him," June Star said. "He reminds me of a pig."
T h e fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off
into the woods after Hiram and her mother.
A l o n e with T h e Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice.
T h e r e was n o t a cloud in the sky n o r any sun. T h e r e was n o t h i n g around her but
woods. She wanted to tell h i m t h a t h e must pray. S h e opened and closed her
m o u t h several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying,
"Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded
as if she might be cursing.
"Yes'm," T h e Misfit said as if h e agreed. "Jesus t h o w n everything off balance. It 1.30
was the same case with H i m as with me except H e h a d n ' t committed any crime and
they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of
course," h e said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I
said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do arid keep a copy of
it. T h e n you'll know7 what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishm e n t and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't
been treated right. I call myself T h e Misfit," h e said, "because I can't make what all I
done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
T h e r e was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report.
"Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a
lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought n o t to shoot a lady.
I'll give you all the money I've got!"
"Lady," T h e Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was
a body that give the undertaker a tip."
T h e r e were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a
parched old turkey h e n crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her
heart would break.
"Jesus was the only O n e that ever raised the dead," T h e Misfit continued, "and He 135
shouldn't have done it. H e thown everything off balance. If H e did what Fie said, then
it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if H e didn't,
then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you
canby killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to
him. N o pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
"Maybe Fie didn't raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, n o t knowing what she
was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted
under her.
"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," T h e Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been
there," h e said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if
I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of
been there I would of k n o w n and I wouldn't be like I am now." Flis voice seemed
about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for a n instant. S h e saw the man's
face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're
one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him
on the shoulder. T h e Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three
times through the chest. T h e n h e put his gun down o n the ground and took off his
glasses and began to clean them.
Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking
down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs
crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.
W i t h o u t his glasses, T h e Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenselesslooking. "Take her off and thow her where you t h o w n the others," h e said, picking up
the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.
"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.
"She would of been a good woman," T h e Misfit said, "if it had been somebody
there to shoot her every minute of her life."
"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.
"Shut up, Bobby Lee," T h e Misfit said. "It's n o real pleasure in life."
QUESTIONS
1. How early in the story does O'Connor foreshadow what will happen in the end? What
further hints does she give us along the way? How does the scene at Red Sammy's Barbecue advance the story toward its conclusion?
2. When we first meet the grandmother, what kind of person is she? What do her various remarks reveal about her? Does she remain a static character, or does she in any way change
as the story goes on?
.3. W h e n the grandmother's head clears for an instant (paragraph 137), what does she suddenly understand? Reread this passage carefully and prepare to discuss what it means.
4. What do we learn from the conversation between The Misfit and the grandmother while
the others go out to the woods? How would you describe T h e Misfit's outlook on the
world? Compare it with the author's, from whatever you know about Flannery O'Connor
and from the story itself.
5. How would you respond to a reader who complained, "The title of this story is just an obvious platitude"?
Revelation
1965
T h e doctor's waiting room, which was very small, was almost full when the
Turpins entered and Mrs. Turpin, who was very large, made it look even smaller by her
presence. She stood looming at the head of the magazine table set in the center of it, a
living demonstration that the room was inadequate and ridiculous. Her little bright
black eyes took in ail the patients as she sized up the seating situation. There was one
vacant chair and a place on a sofa occupied by a blond child in a dirty blue romper
who should have been told to move over and make room for the lady. He was five or
six, but Mrs. T u r p i n saw at once that n o one was going to tell him to move over. H e
was slumped down in the seat, his arms idle at his sides and his eyes idle in his head;
his nose ran unchecked.
Mrs. T u r p i n put a firm h a n d on Claud's shoulder and said in a voice that included anyone who wanted to listen, "Claud, you sit in that chair there," and gave
him a push down into the vacant one. Claud was florid and bald and sturdy, somewhat shorter t h a n Mrs. Turpin, but he sat down as if he were accustomed to doing
what she told h i m to.
Mrs. Turpin remained standing. T h e only m a n in the room besides Claud was a
lean stringy old fellow with a rusty h a n d spread out on each knee, whose eyes were
closed as if he were asleep or dead or pretending to be so as n o t to get up and offer her
his seat. Her gaze settled agreeably o n a well-dressed grey-haired lady whose eyes met
hers arid whose expression said: if that child belonged to me, he would have some
manners and move overthere's plenty of room there for you and h i m too.
Claud looked up with a sigh and made as if to rise.
"Sit down," Mrs. Turpin said. "You know you're n o t supposed to stand o n that
leg. H e has a n ulcer o n his leg," she explained.
Claud lifted his foot onto the magazine table and rolled his trouser leg up to reveal a purple swelling on a plump marble-white calf.
"My!" the pleasant lady said. "How did you do that?"
"A cow kicked him," Mrs. Turpin said.
"Goodness!" said the lady.
Claud rolled his trouser leg down.
"Maybe the little boy would move over," the lady suggested, but the child did
n o t stir.
"Somebody will be leaving in a minute," Mrs. Turpin said. She could not understand why a doctorwith as much money as they made charging five dollars a day to
just stick their head in the hospital door and look at youcouldn't afford a decent-sized
waiting room. This one was hardly bigger than a garage. T h e table was cluttered with
limp-looking magazines and at one end of it there was a big green glass ash tray full of
cigaret butts and cotton wads with little blood spots on them. If she had had anything to
do with the running of the place, that would have been emptied every so often. There
were no chairs against the wall at the head of the room. It had a rectangular-shaped
panel in it that permitted a view of the office where the nurse came and went and the
secretary listened to the radio. A plastic fern in a gold pot sat in the opening and trailed
its fronds down almost to the floor. T h e radio was softly playing gospel music.
Just t h e n the inner door opened and a nurse with the highest stack of yellow hair
Mrs. T u r p i n had ever seen put her face in the crack and called for the next patient.
T h e woman sitting beside Claud grasped the two arms of her chair and hoisted herself up; she pulled her dress free from her legs and lumbered through the door where
the nurse had disappeared.
Mrs. T u r p i n eased into the vacant chair, which held her tight as a corset. "I wish
I could reduce," she said, and rolled her eyes and gave a comic sigh.
"Oh, you aren't fat," the stylish lady said.
"Ooooo I am too," Mrs. T u r p i n said. "Claud h e eats all he wants to and never
weighs over one hundred and seventy-five pounds, but me I just look at something
good to eat and I gain some weight," and her stomach and shoulders shook with
laughter. "You can eat all you want to, can't you, Claud?" she asked, turning to him.
Claud only grinned.
"Well, as long as you have such a good disposition," the stylish lady said, "I don't
t h i n k it makes a bit of difference w h a t size you are. You just can't beat a good
disposition."
N e x t to her was a fat girl of eighteen or nineteen, scowling into a thick blue
book which Mrs. T u r p i n saw was entitled Human Development. T h e girl raised her
head and directed her scowl at Mrs. T u r p i n as if she did n o t like her looks. She appeared annoyed that anyone should speak while she tried to read. T h e poor girl's face
was blue with acne and Mrs. Turpin thought how pitiful it was to have a face like that
at that age. She gave the girl a friendly smile but the girl only scowled the harder.
Mrs. T u r p i n herself was fat but she had always had good skin, and, though she was
forty-seven years old, there was n o t a wrinkle in her face except around her eyes from
laughing too much.
N e x t to the ugly girl was the child, still in exactly the same position, and n e x t 20
to h i m was a t h i n leathery old w o m a n in a c o t t o n print dress. S h e and Claud h a d .
three sacks of chicken feed in their pump house that was in the same print. She had
seen from t h e first that the child belonged with the old woman. She could tell by
the way they satkind of vacant and white-trashy, as if they would sit there until
Doomsday if nobody called and told t h e m to get up. A n d at right angles but next to
the well-dressed pleasant lady was a lank-faced woman who was certainly the child's
mother. She had 011 a yellow sweat shirt and wine-colored slacks, both gritty-looking,
and the rims of her lips were stained with snuff. Her dirty yellow hair wras tied behind
with a little piece of red paper ribbon. Worse t h a n niggers any day, Mrs. Turpin
thought.
T h e gospel h y m n playing was, " W h e n I looked up and H e looked down," and
Mrs. Turpin, who knew it, supplied the last line mentally, " A n d wona these days I
know I'll we-eara crown."
W i t h o u t appearing to, Mrs. T u r p i n always noticed people's feet. T h e welldressed lady had o n red and grey suede shoes to m a t c h her dress. Mrs. T u r p i n had on
her good black p a t e n t leather pumps. T h e ugly girl had on Girl Scout shoes and
heavy socks. T h e old woman had o n tennis shoes and the white-trashy mother had
on what appeared to be bedroom slippers, black straw with gold braid threaded
through themexactly what you would have expected her to have on.
Sometimes at night w h e n she couldn't go to sleep, Mrs. Turpin would occupy
herself w i t h the question of who she would have chosen to be if she couldn't have
been herself. If Jesus had said to her before h e made her, "There's only two places
available for you. You can either be a nigger or white-trash," what would she have
said? "Please, Jesus, please," she would have said, "just let me wait until there's another place available," and h e would have said, "No, you have to go right now and I
have only those two places so make up your mind." S h e would have wiggled and
squirmed and begged and pleaded but it would have been no use and finally she
would have said, "All right, make me a nigger t h e n b u t that don't mean a trashy
one." A n d h e would have made her a neat clean respectable Negro woman, herself
but black.
N e x t to the child's mother was a red-headed youngish woman, reading one of
the magazines and working a piece of chewing gum, hell for leather, as Claud would
say. Mrs. T u r p i n could n o t see t h e woman's feet. S h e was n o t white-trash, just common. Sometimes Mrs. T u r p i n occupied herself at night naming the classes of people.
O n the bottom of the h e a p were most colored people, n o t the kind she would have
been if she had been one, but most of them; t h e n next to t h e m n o t above, just
away fromwere the white-trash; t h e n above t h e m were the home-owners, and
above t h e m the home-and-land owners, to w h i c h she and Claud belonged. A b o v e
she and Claud were people with a lot of money and m u c h bigger houses and m u c h
more land. But here the complexity of it would begin to bear in on her, for some of
t h e people with a lot of money were c o m m o n and ought to be below she and Claud
and some of the people who had good blood had lost their money and had to rent
and t h e n there were colored people who owned their homes and land as well. T h e r e
was a colored dentist in town who had two red Lincolns and a swimming pool and a
farm with registered white-face cattle o n it. Usually by the time she h a d fallen
asleep all the classes of people were moiling and roiling around in her head, and she
would dream they were all crammed in together in a box car, being ridden off to be
put in a gas oven.
WwM
P
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Mat*
WW-. m
4m
Flannery O'Connor
"That's a beautiful clock," she said and nodded to her right. It was a big wall 25
clock, the face encased in a brass sunburst.
"Yes, it's very pretty," the stylish lady said agreeably. " A n d right on the dot too,"
she added, glancing at her watch.
T h e ugly girl beside her cast an eye upward at the clock, smirked, t h e n looked directly at Mrs. Turpin and smirked again. T h e n she returned her eyes to her book. She
was obviously the lady's daughter because, although they didn't look anything alike
as to disposition, they b o t h had the same shape of face and t h e same blue eyes. O n
the lady they sparkled pleasantly but in the girl's seared face they appeared alternately to smolder and to blaze.
W h a t if Jesus had said, "All right, you can be white-trash or a nigger or ugly"!
Mrs. T u r p i n felt an awful pity for the girl, though she thought it was one thing to
be ugly and another to act ugly.
T h e woman with the snuff-stained lips turned around in her chair and looked up at 30
the clock. T h e n she turned back and appeared to look a little to the side of Mrs. Tuipin.
T h e r e was a cast in one of her eyes. "You want to know wher you can get you one of
them ther clocks?" she asked in a loud voice.
"No, I already have a nice clock," Mrs. T u r p i n said. O n c e somebody like her got
a leg in t h e conversation, she would be all over it.
"You can get you one with green stamps," the woman said. "That's most likely wher
he got hisn. Save you up enough, you can get you most anythang. 1 got me some joo'ry."
Ought to have got you a wash rag and some soap, Mrs. Turpin thought.
"I get contour sheets with mine," the pleasant lady said.
T h e daughter slammed her book shut. S h e looked straight in front of her, directly 35
through Mrs. Turpin and o n through the yellow curtain and the plate glass window
which made t h e wall behind her. T h e girl's eyes seemed lit all of a sudden with a peculiar light, a n unnatural light like night road signs give. Mrs. Turpin turned her head
to see if there was anything going on outside that she should see, but she could not see
anything. Figures passing cast only a pale shadow through the curtain. There was n o
reason the girl should single her out for her ugly looks.
"Miss Finley," the nurse said, cracking the door. T h e gum-chewing woman got
up and passed in front of her and Claud and went into the office. S h e had on red
high-heeled shoes.
Directly across the table, the ugly girl's eyes were fixed on Mrs. T u r p i n as if she
had some very special reason for disliking her.
"This is wonderful weather, isn't it?" t h e girl's mother said.
"It's good weather for cotton if you can get the niggers to pick it," Mrs. Turpin
said, "but niggers don't want to pick cotton any more. You can't get the white folks to
pick it and now you can't get the niggersbecause they got to be right up there with
the white folks."
"They gonna try anyways," the white-trash woman said, leaning forward.
40
"Do you have one of those cotton-picking machines?" the pleasant lady asked.
"No," Mrs. Turpin said, "they leave half the cotton in the field. W e don't have
much cotton anyway. If you want to make ir farming now, you have to have a little of
everything. W e got a couple of acres of cotton and a few hogs and chickens and just
enough white-face t h a t Claud can look after t h e m himself."
" O n e t h a n g I don't want," the white-trash woman said, wiping her m o u t h with
the back of her hands. "Hogs. Nasty stinking things, a-gruntin and a-rootin all over
the place."
Mrs. Turpin gave her the merest edge o f her attention. "Our hogs are n o t dirty
and they don't stink," she said. "They're cleaner than some children I've seen. T h e i r
feet never touch the ground. W e have a pig-parlorthat's where you raise them on
concrete," she explained to the pleasant lady, "and Claud scoots them down with the
hose every afternoon and washes off the floor." C l e a n e r by far than that child right
there, she thought. Poor nasty little thing. H e had not moved except to put the
thumb of his dirty hand into his mouth.
T h e woman turned her face away from Mrs. Turpin. "I know I wouldn't scoot
down no hog with no hose," she said to the wall.
You wouldn't have no hog to scoot down, Mrs. Turpin said to herself.
"A-gruntin and a-rootin and a-groanin," the woman muttered.
" W e got a little of everything," Mrs. Turpin said to the pleasant lady. "It's n o use
in having more than you can handle yourself with help like it is. W e found enough
niggers to pick our cotton this year but Claud he has to go after them and take t h e m
home again in the evening. T h e y can't walk that half a mile. N o they can't. I tell
you," she said and laughed merrily, "I sure am tired of buttering up niggers, but you
got to love em if you want em to work for you. W h e n they come in the morning, I
run out and I say, 'Hi yawl this morning?' and when Claud drives them off to the field
I just wave to beat the band and they just wave back." A n d she waved her hand
rapidly to illustrate.
"Like you read out of the same book," the lady said, showing she understood
perfectly.
"Child, yes," Mrs. Turpin said. " A n d when they come in from the field, I run out
with a bucket of icewater. T h a t ' s the way it's going to be from now o n , " she said.
"You may as well face it."
" O n e thang I know," the white-trash woman said. " T w o thangs I ain't going to
do: love n o niggers or scoot down n o hog with no hose." A n d she let out a bark of
contempt.
T h e look that Mrs. Turpin and the pleasant lady exchanged indicated they both
understood that you had to have certain things before you could know certain things.
But every time Mrs. Turpin exchanged a look with the lady, she was aware that the
ugly girl's peculiar eyes were still on her, and she had trouble bringing her attention
back to the conversation.
" W h e n you got something," she said, "you got to look after it." A n d when you
ain't got a thing but breath and britches, she added to herself, you can afford to come
to town every morning and just sit on the Court House coping and spit.
A grotesque revolving shadow passed across the curtain behind her and was
thrown palely on the opposite wall. T h e n a bicycle clattered down against the outside
of the building. T h e door opened and a colored boy glided in with a tray from the drug
store. It had two large red and white paper cups on it with tops on them. H e was a tall,
very black boy in discolored white pants and a green nylon shirt. He was chewing gum
slowly, as if to music. H e set the tray down in the office opening n e x t to the fern and
stuck his head through to look for the secretary. S h e was not in there. He rested his
arms on the ledge and waited, his narrow bottom stuck out, swaying slowly to the left
and right. H e raised a hand over his head and scratched the base of his skull.
"You see that button there, boy?" Mrs. Turpin said. "You can punch that and
she'll come. She's probably in the back somewhere."
"Is thas right?" the boy said agreeably, as if he had never seen the button before.
He leaned to the right and put his finger on it. " S h e sometime out," h e said and
twisted around to face his audience, his elbows behind him on the counter. T h e
nurse appeared and h e twisted back again. S h e handed him a dollar and he rooted in
his pocket and made the change and counted it out to her. S h e gave him fifteen cents
for a tip and h e went out with the empty tray. T h e heavy door swung to slowly and
closed at length with the sound of suction. For a moment no one spoke.
" T h e y ought to send all them niggers back to Africa," the white-trash woman
said. " T h a t ' s wher they come from in the first place."
" O h , I couldn't do without my good colored friends," the pleasant lady said.
"There's a heap of things worse than a nigger," Mrs. Turpin agreed. "It's all kinds
of t h e m just like it's all kinds of us."
"Yes, and it takes all kinds to make the world go round," the lady said in her
musical voice.
60
As she said it, the raw-complexioned girl snapped her teeth together. Her lower lip
turned downwards and inside out, revealing the pale pink inside of her mouth. After a
second it roiled back up. It was the ugliest face Mrs. Turpin had ever seen anyone make
and for a moment she was certain that the girl had made it at her. S h e was looking at her
as if she had known and disliked her all her lifeall of Mrs. Turpin's life, it seemed too,
not just all the girl's life. W h y , girl, I don't even know you, Mrs. Turpin said silently.
S h e forced her attention back to the discussion. "It wouldn't be practical to send
them back to Africa," she said. " T h e y wouldn't want to go. T h e y got it too good here."
"Wouldn't be what they w a n t e d i f I had anythang to do with it," the woman
said.
"It wouldn't be a way in the world you could get all the niggers back over there,"
Mrs. Turpin said. "They'd be hiding out and lying down and turning sick on you and
wailing and hollering and raring and pitching. It wouldn't be a way in the world to
get them over there."
" T h e y got over here," the trashy woman said. " G e t back like they got over."
"It wasn't so many of them t h e n , " Mrs. Turpin explained.
T h e woman looked at Mrs. Turpin as if here was an idiot indeed but Mrs. Turpin
was n o t bothered by t h e look, considering where it came from.
" N o o o , " she said, "they're going to stay here where they can go to New York and
marry white folks and improve their color. T h a t ' s what they all want to do, every one
of them, improve their color."
"You know what comes of that, don't you?" Claud asked.
"No, Claud, what?" Mrs. Turpin said.
Claud's eyes twinkled. " W h i t e - f a c e d niggers," h e said with never a smile.
Everybody in the office laughed except the white-trash and the ugly girl. T h e girl
gripped the book in her lap with white fingers. T h e trashy woman looked around her
from face to face as if she thought they were all idiots. T h e old woman in the feed sack
dress continued to gaze expressionless across the floor at the hightop shoes of the man
opposite her, the one who had been pretending to be asleep when the Turpins came
in. H e was laughing heartily, his hands still spread out on his knees. T h e child had
fallen to the side and was lying now almost face down in the old woman's lap.
W h i l e they recovered from their laughter, the nasal chorus on the radio kept the
room from silence.
"You go to blank blank
And rilgo to mine
But we'll all blank along
65
70
T o-geth-ther,
And all along the blank
We'll hep each other out
Smile-ling in any kind of
Weath-ther!"
Mrs. Turpin didn't catch every word but she caught enough to agree with the
spirit of the song and it turned her thoughts sober. T o help anybody out that needed
it was her philosophy of life. S h e never spared herself when she found somebody in
need, whether they were white or black, trash or decent. A n d of all she had to be
thankful for, she was most thankful that this was so. If Jesus had said, "You can be
high society and have all the money you want and be thin and svelte-like, but you
can't be a good woman with it," she would have had to say, " W e l l don't make me
that then. M a k e me a good woman and it don't matter what else, how fat or how ugly
or how poor!" Her heart rose. H e had n o t made her a nigger or white-trash or ugly!
He had made her herself and given her a little of everything. Jesus, thank you! she
said. T h a n k you thank you thank you! W h e n e v e r she counted her blessings she felt
as buoyant as if she weighed o n e hundred and twenty-five pounds instead of o n e
hundred and eighty.
75
" W h a t ' s wrong with your little boy?" the pleasant lady asked the white-trashy
woman.
"He has a ulcer," the woman said proudly. " H e ain't give me a minute's peace
since he was born. Him and her are just alike," she said, nodding at the old woman,
who was running her leathery fingers through the child's pale hair. "Look like I can't
get nothing down them two but C o ' C o l a and candy."
T h a t ' s all you try to get down em, Mrs. Turpin said to herself. T o o lazy to light
the fire. T h e r e was nothing you could tell her about people like them that she didn't
know already. A n d it was n o t just that they didn't have anything. Because if you gave
them everything, in two weeks it would all be broken or filthy or they would have
chopped it up for lightwood. S h e knew all this from her own experience. Help them
you must, but help them you couldn't.
A l l at once the ugly girl turned her lips inside out again. Her eyes were fixed like
two drills on Mrs. Turpin. This time there was n o mistaking that there was something urgent behind them.
Girl, Mrs. Turpin exclaimed silently, I haven't done a thing to you! T h e girl
might be confusing her with somebody else. T h e r e was no need to sit by and let herself be intimidated. "You must be in college," she said boldly, looking directly at the
girl. "I see you reading a book there."
80
T h e girl continued to stare and pointedly did n o t answer.
Her mother blushed at this rudeness. " T h e lady asked you a question, Mary
G r a c e , " she said under her breath.
"I have ears," Mary G r a c e said.
T h e poor mother blushed again. "Mary G r a c e goes to Wellesley College," she
explained. S h e twisted one of the buttons o n her dress. " I n Massachusetts," she added
with a grimace. " A n d in the summer she just keeps right on studying. Just reads all
the time, a real book worm. She's done real well at Wellesley; she's taking English
and M a t h and History and Psychology and Social Studies," she rattled on, "and I
think it's too much. I think she ought to get out and have fun."
T h e girl looked as if she would like to hurl t h e m all through t h e plate glass
window.
85
Piannprv un'rnrinnr
biannery
Lonnor
" W a y up n o r t h , " Mrs. Turpin murmured and thought, well, it hasn't done much
for her manners.
"I'd almost rather to have him sick," the white-trash woman said, wrenching the
attention back to herself. "He's so mean when he ain't. Look like some children just
take natural to meanness. It's some gets bad when they get sick but he was the opposite. T o o k sick and turned good. H e don't give me no trouble now. It's me waitin to
see the doctor," she said.
If I was going to send anybody back to Africa, Mrs. Turpin thought, it would be
your kind, woman. "Yes, indeed," she said aloud, but looking up at the ceiling, "it's a
heap of things worse than a nigger." A n d dirtier than a hog, she added to herself.
"I think people with bad dispositions are more to be pitied than anyone on
earth," the pleasant lady said in a voice that was decidedly thin.
"I thank the Lord he has blessed me with a good o n e , " Mrs. Turpin said. " T h e
day has never dawned that I couldn't find something to laugh at."
" N o t since she married me anyways," Claud said with a comical straight face.
Everybody laughed except the girl and the white-trash.
Mrs. Tropin's stomach shook. "He's such a caution," she said, "that I can't help
but laugh at h i m . "
T h e girl made a loud ugly noise through her teeth.
Her mother's mouth grew7 thin and straight. "I think the worst thing in the
world," she said, "is an ungrateful person. T o have everything and not appreciate it. I
know a girl," she said, "who has parents who would give her anything, a little brother
who loves her dearly, who is getting a good education, who wears the best clothes,
but who can never say a kind word to anyone, who never smiles, who just criticizes
and complains all day long."
90
95
"Is she too old to paddle?" Claud asked.
T h e girl's face was almost purple.
"Yes," the lady said, "I'm afraid there's nothing to do but leave her to her folly.
S o m e day she'll wake up and it'll be too late."
"It never hurt anyone to smile," Mrs. Turpin said. "It just makes you feel better
all over."
" O f course," the lady said sadly, "but there are just some people you can't tell
anything to. T h e y can't take criticism."
"If it's one thing I am," Mrs. Turpin said with feeling, "it's grateful. W h e n I think
who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a
good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, T h a n k you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!' It could have been different!" For one thing, somebody else could
have got Claud. A t the thought of this, she was flooded with gratitude and a terrible
pang of joy ran through her. " O h thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank, you!" she cried aloud.
T h e book struck her directly over her left eye. It struck almost at the same instant that she realized the girl was about to hurl it. Before she could utter a sound, the
raw face came crashing across the table toward her, howling. T h e girl's fingers sank
like clamps into the soft flesh of her neck. S h e heard the mother cry out and Claud
shout, " W h o a ! " T h e r e was an instant when she was certain that she was about to be
in an earthquake.
A l l at once her vision narrowed and she saw everything as if it were happening
in a small room far away, or as if she were looking at it through the wrong end of a
telescope. Claud's face crumpled and fell out of sight. T h e nurse ran in, then out,
then in again. T h e n the gangling figure of the doctor rushed out of the inner door.
Magazines flew this way and that as the table turned over. T h e girl fell with a thud
ioo
and Mrs. Turpin's vision suddenly reversed itself and she saw everything large instead
of small. T h e eyes of the white-trashy woman were staring hugely at the floor. T h e r e .
the girl, held down on one side by the nurse and on the other by her mother, was
wrenching and turning in their grasp. T h e doctor was kneeling astride her, trying to
hold her arm down. H e managed after a second to sink a long needle into it.
Mrs. Turpin felt entirely hollow except for her heart which swung from side to
side as if it were agitated in a great empty drum of flesh.
"Somebody that's not busy call for the ambulance," the doctor said in the off- 105
hand voice young doctors adopt for terrible occasions.
Mrs. Turpin could n o t have moved a finger. T h e old man who had been sitting
next to her skipped nimbly into the office and made the call, for the secretary still
seemed to be gone.
" C l a u d ! " Mrs. Turpin called.
H e was not in his chair. S h e knew she must jump up and find him but she felt
like some one trying to c a t c h a train in a dream, when everything moves in slow
motion and the faster you try to run the slower you go.
"Here I am," a suffocated voice, very unlike Claud's, said.
He was doubled up in the corner on the floor, pale as paper, holding his leg. S h e
wanted to get up and go to him but she could not move. Instead, her gaze was drawn
slowly downward to the churning face on the floor, which she could see over t h e
doctor's shoulder.
110
T h e girl's eyes stopped rolling and focused on her. T h e y seemed a much lighter
blue than before, as if a door that had been tightly closed behind t h e m was now open
to admit light and air.
Mrs. Turpin's head cleared and her power of m o t i o n returned. S h e leaned forward until she was looking directly into the fierce brilliant eyes. T h e r e was n o doubt
in her mind that the girl did know her, knew her in some intense and personal way,
beyond time and place and condition. " W h a t you got to say to me?" she asked
hoarsely and held her breath, waiting, as for a revelation.
T h e girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin's. " G o back to hell
where you came from, you old wart hog," she whispered. Her voice was low but clear.
Her eyes burned for a m o m e n t as if she saw with pleasure that her message had struck
its target.
Mrs. Turpin sank back in her chair.
After a moment the girl's eyes closed and she turned her head wearily to the side. 115
T h e doctor rose and handed the nurse the empty syringe. H e leaned over and
put both hands for a m o m e n t on the mother's shoulders, which were shaking. S h e
was sitting on the floor, her lips pressed together, holding Mary Grace's hand in her
lap. T h e girl's fingers were gripped like a baby's around her thumb. " G o on to the hospital," he said. "I'll call and make the arrangements."
"Now let's see that n e c k , " he said in
inspect her n e c k with his first two fingers.
bones were indented over her windpipe.
swelling above her eye. His fingers passed
a jovial voice to Mrs. Turpin. H e began to
T w o little moon-shaped lines like pink fish
T h e r e was the beginning of an angry red
over this also.
"Lea'me be," she said thickly and shook him off. " S e e about Claud. S h e kicked
him."
"I'll see about him in a minute," he said and felt her pulse. H e was a thin grayhaired man, given to pleasantries. " G o h o m e and have yourself a vacation the rest of
the day," he said and patted her o n the shoulder.
Mm\i
MM
'4 :
Quit your pattin me, Mrs. Turpin growled to herself.
120
" A n d put an ice pack over that eye," he said. T h e n h e went and squatted down
beside Claud and looked at his leg. After a m o m e n t he pulled him up and Claud
limped after him into the office.
U n t i l the ambulance came, the only sounds in the room were the tremulous
moans of the girl's mother, who continued to sit on the floor. T h e white-trash
woman did not take her eyes off the girl. Mrs. Turpin looked straight ahead at nothing. Presently the ambulance drew up, a long dark shadow, behind the curtain. T h e
attendants came in and set the stretcher down beside the girl and lifted her expertly
o n t o it and carried her out. T h e nurse helped the mother gather up her things. T h e
shadow of the ambulance moved silently away and the nurse came back in the office.
" T h a t ther girl is going to be a lunatic, ain't she?" the white-trash woman asked
the nurse, but the nurse kept on to the back and never answered her.
"Yes, she's going to be a lunatic," the white-trash woman said to the rest of them.
"Po' critter," the old woman murmured. T h e child's face was still in her lap. His 125
eyes looked idly out over her knees. H e had n o t moved during the disturbance except
to draw one leg up under him.
"I thank Gawd," the white-trash woman said fervently, "I ain't a lunatic."
Claud came limping out and the Turpins went home.
A s their pick-up truck turned into their own dirt road and made the crest of the
hill, Mrs. Turpin gripped the window ledge and looked out suspiciously. T h e land
sloped gracefully down through a field dotted with lavender weeds and at the start of
the rise their small yellow frame house, with its little flower beds spread out around it
like a fancy apron, sat primly in its accustomed place between two giant hickory
trees. S h e would not have been startled to see a burnt wound between two blackened
chimneys.
Neither of them felt like eating so they put 011 their house clothes and lowered
the shade in the bedroom and lay down, Claud with his leg on a pillow and herself
with a damp washcloth over her eye. T h e instant she was flat on her back, the image
of a razor-backed hog with warts on its face and horns coming out behind its ears
snorted into her head. S h e moaned, a low quiet moan.
"I am n o t , " she said tearfully, "a wart hog. From hell." But the denial had no 130
force. T h e girl's eyes and her words, even the tone of her voice, low but clear, directed only to her, brooked n o repudiation. S h e had been singled out for the message,
though there was trash in the room to whom it might justly have been applied. T h e
full force of this fact struck her only now. T h e r e was a woman there who was neglecting her own child but she had been overlooked. T h e message had been given to Ruby
Turpin, a respectable, hard-working, church-going woman. T h e tears dried. Her eyes
began to b u m instead with wrath.
S h e rose on her elbow and the washcloth fell into her hand. Claud was lying on
his back, snoring. S h e wanted to tell him what the girl had said. A t the same time,
she did n o t wish to put the image of herself as a wart hog from hell into his mind.
"Hey, Claud," she muttered and pushed his shoulder.
Claud opened one pale baby blue eye.
S h e looked into it warily. H e did not think about anything. He just went his
way.
" W h a , whasit?" he said and closed the eye again.
" N o t h i n g , " she said. "Does your leg pain you?"
"Hurts like hell," Claud said.
135
"It'll quit terreckly," she said and lay back down. In a m o m e n t Claud was snoring
again. For the rest of the afternoon they lay there. Claud slept. She scowled at t h e .
ceiling. Occasionally she raised her fist and made a small stabbing motion over her
chest as if she was defending her innocence to invisible guests who were like the
comforters of Job, reasonable-seeming but wrong.
About five-thirty Claud stirred. "Got to go after those niggers," h e sighed, n o t
moving.
She was looking straight up as if there were unintelligible handwriting o n the
ceiling. T h e protuberance over her eye had turned a greenish-blue. "Listen here," she
said.
"What?"
"Kiss me."
Claud leaned over and kissed her loudly o n the mouth. H e pinched her side and
their hands interlocked. Her expression of ferocious concentration did n o t change.
Claud got up, groaning and growling, and limped off. She continued to study the
ceiling.
S h e did n o t get up until she heard t h e pick-up truck coming back with the
Negroes. T h e n she rose and thrust her feet in her brown oxfords, which she did not
bother to lace, and stumped out o n t o the back porch and got her red plastic bucket.
She emptied a tray of ice cubes into it and filled it half full of water and went out into
the back yard. Every afternoon after Claud brought the hands in, one of the boys
helped h i m put out hay and the rest waited in the back of the truck until he was
ready to take t h e m home. T h e truck was parked in the shade under one of t h e hickory trees.
"Hi yawl this evening?" Mrs. Turpin asked grimly, appearing with the bucket
and the clipper. T h e r e were three women and a boy in the truck.
"Us doin nicely," the oldest woman said. "Hi you doin?" and her gaze stuck immediately o n the dark lump on Mrs. Turpin's forehead. "You done fell down, ain't you?"
she asked in a solicitous voice. T h e old woman was dark and almost toothless. She had
011 an old felt hat of Claud's set back o n her head. T h e other two women were younger
and lighter and they both had new bright green sun hats. O n e of t h e m had hers on her
head; the other had taken hers off and the boy was grinning beneath it.
Mrs. T u r p i n set the bucket down o n the floor of t h e truck. "Yawl hep yourselves," she said. She looked around to make sure Claud had gone. "No. I didn't fall
down," she said, folding her arms. "It was something worse t h a n that."
"Ain't n o t h i n g bad h a p p e n to you!" the old w o m a n said. She said it as if they all
knew Mrs. Turpin was protected in some special way by Divine Providence. "You just
had you a little fall."
"We were in town at the doctor's office for where the cow kicked Mr. Turpin,"
Mrs. Turpin said in a flat tone that indicated they could leave off their foolishness.
" A n d there was this girl there. A big fat girl with her face all broke out. I could look
at that girl and tell she was peculiar but I couldn't tell how. A n d me and her mama
were just talking and going along and all of a sudden W H A M ! She throws this big book
she was reading at me and . . . "
"Naw!" the old woman cried out.
"And t h e n she jumps over the table and commences to choke me."
"Naw!" they all exclaimed, "naw!"
"Hi come she do that?" the old woman asked. " W h a t ail her?"
Mrs. Turpin only glared in f r o n t of her.
"Somethin ail her," the old w o m a n said.
"They carried h e r off in a n ambulance," Mrs. T u r p i n c o n t i n u e d , "but before
she w e n t she was rolling o n t h e floor and they were trying to hold her d o w n to
give her a shot and she said s o m e t h i n g to me." S h e paused. "You k n o w what she
said to me?"
" W h a t she say?" they asked.
"She said," Mrs. Turpin began, and stopped, her face very dark and heavy. T h e
sun was getting whiter and whiter, blanching the sky overhead so that the leaves of
the hickory tree were black in the face of it. She could n o t bring forth the words.
"Something real ugly," she muttered.
"She sho shouldn't said n o thin ugly to you," the old woman said. "You so sweet.
You the sweetest lady I know."
"She pretty too," the one with the h a t o n said.
" A n d stout," the other one said. "1 never knowed n o sweeter white lady."
"That's the truth befo' Jesus," the old woman said. " A m e n ! You des as sweet and
pretty as you can be."
Mrs. T u r p i n knew just exactly how m u c h Negro flattery was worth and it added
to her rage. "She said," she began again and finished this time with a fierce rush of
breath, "that I was an old wart hog from hell."
There was a n astounded silence.
"Where she at?" the youngest w o m a n cried in a piercing voice.
"Lemme see her. I'll kill her!"
"I'll kill her with you!" the other one cried.
"She b'long in t h e sylum," the old w o m a n said emphatically. "You the sweetest
white lady I know."
"She pretty too," the other two said. "Stout as she can be and sweet. Jesus satisfied
with her!"
"Deed he is," the old woman declared.
Idiots! Mrs. T u r p i n growled to herself. You could never say anything intelligent
to a nigger. You could talk at t h e m but n o t with them. "Yawl ain't drunk your water,"
she said shortly. "Leave the bucket in the truck when you're finished with it. I got
more to do t h a n just stand around and pass the time of day," and she moved off and
into the house.
She stood for a m o m e n t in the middle of the kitchen. T h e dark protuberance
over her eye looked like a miniature tornado cloud which might any m o m e n t sweep
across the horizon of her brow. Her lower lip protruded dangerously. She squared her
massive shoulders. T h e n she marched into the front of the house and out the side
door and started down the road to the pig parlor. She had the look of a woman going
single-handed, weaponless, into battle.
T h e sun was a deep yellow now like a harvest moon and was riding westward
very fast over the far tree line.as if it meant to reach the hogs before she did. T h e road
was rutted and she kicked several good-sized stones out of her path as she strode
along. T h e pig parlor was on a little knoll at the end of a lane that ran off from the
side of the b a m . It was a square of concrete as large as a small room, with a board
fence about four feet high around it. T h e concrete floor sloped slightly so that t h e
hog wash could drain off into a trench where it was carried to the field for fertilizer.
Claud was standing on t h e outside, on t h e edge of the concrete, hanging o n t o the top
board, hosing down the floor inside. T h e hose was connected to the faucet of a water
trough nearby.
Mrs. T u r p i n climbed up beside him and glowered down at the hogs inside.
T h e r e were seven long-snouted bristly shoats in i t t a n with liver-colored s p o t s .
and an old sow a few weeks off from farrowing. S h e was lying o n her side grunting.
T h e shoats were r u n n i n g about shaking themselves like idiot children, their little
slit pig eyes searching the floor for anything left. S h e had read that pigs were t h e
most intelligent animal. She doubted it. T h e y were supposed to be smarter t h a n
dogs. T h e r e had even been a pig astronaut. H e h a d performed his assignment perfectly but died of a heart attack afterwards because they left h i m in his electric suit,
sitting upright throughout his examination w h e n naturally a hog should be on all
fours.
A-gruntin and a-rootin and a-groanin.
175
"Gimme that hose," she said, yanking it away from Claud. "Go on and carry
them niggers h o m e and t h e n get off that leg."
"You look like you might have swallowed a mad dog," Claud observed, but he
got down and limped off. H e paid no a t t e n t i o n to her humors.
U n t i l he was out of earshot, Mrs. T u r p i n stood on the side of the pen, holding
the hose and pointing the stream of water at the hind quarters of any shoat that
looked as if it might try to lie down. W h e n h e had had time to get over the hill, she
turned her head slightly and her wrathful eyes scanned the path. H e was nowhere in
sight. She turned back again and seemed to gather herself up. Her shoulders rose and
she drew in her breath.
"What do you send me a message like that for?" she said in a low fierce voice,
barely above a whisper but with the force of a shout in its concentrated fury. "How
am I a hog and me both? H o w am I saved and from hell too?" Her free fist was knotted and with the other she gripped t h e hose, blindly pointing the stream of water in
and out of the eye of the old sow whose outraged squeal she did n o t hear.
T h e pig parlor commanded a view of the back pasture where their twenty beef iso
cows were gathered around the hay-bales Claud and the boy had put out. T h e freshly
cut pasture sloped down to the highway. Across it was their cotton field and beyond
that a dark green dusty wood which they owned as well. T h e sun was behind t h e
wood, very red, looking over the paling of trees like a farmer inspecting his own hogs.
" W h y me?" she rumbled. "It's no trash around here, black or white, that I
haven't given to. A n d break my back to the bone every day working. A n d do for t h e
church."
S h e appeared to be t h e right size w o m a n to c o m m a n d t h e arena before her.
"How am I a hog?" she demanded. "Exactly how am I like them?" and she jabbed
the stream of water at the shoats. " T h e r e was plenty of trash there. It didn't h a v e to
be me."
"If you like trash better, go get yourself some trash then," she railed. "You could
have made me trash. O r a nigger. If trash is what you wanted why didn't you make me
trash?" She shook her fist with the hose in it and a watery snake appeared momentarily in the air. "I could quit working and take it easy and be filthy," she growled.
"Lounge about the sidewalks all day drinking root beer. Dip snuff and spit in every
puddle and have it all over my face. I could be nasty.
"Or you could have made me a nigger. It's too late for me to be a nigger," she said
with deep sarcasm, "but I could act like one. Lay down in the middle of the road and
stop traffic. Roll o n the ground."
In the deepening light everything was taking on a mysterious hue. T h e pasture 185
was growing a peculiar glassy green and the streak of highway had turned lavender.
Vto<%
She braced herself for a final assault and this time her voice rolled out over the pasture. "Go on," she yelled, "call me a hog! Call me a hog again. From hell. Call me a
wart hog from hell. Put that bottom rail on top. There'll still be a top and bottom!"
A garbled echo returned to her.
A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, " W h o do you think you are?"
T h e color of everything, field and crimson sky, burned for a m o m e n t with a transparent intensity. T h e question carried over the pasture and across the highway and
the cotton field and returned to her clearly like an answer from beyond the wood.
She opened her mouth but n o sound came out of it.
A tiny truck, Claud's, appeared o n the highway, heading rapidly out of sight. Its 190
gears scraped thinly. It looked like a child's toy. A t any m o m e n t a bigger truck might
smash into it and scatter Claud's and the niggers' brains all over the road.
Mrs. T u r p i n stood there, her gaze fixed on the highway, all her muscles rigid,
until in five or six minutes the truck reappeared, returning. She waited until it had
had time to turn into their own road. T h e n like a m o n u m e n t a l statue coming to life,
she bent her head slowly and gazed, as if through the very heart of mystery, down
into the pig parlor at the hogs. T h e y had settled all in one corner around the old
sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suffused them. They appeared to pant with
a secret life.
U n t i l the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. T u r p i n remained there
with her gaze bent to t h e m as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving
knowledge. A t last she lifted her head. T h e r e was only a purple streak in the sky,
cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway,
into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from t h e side of the p e n in a gesture
hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a
vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire.
U p o n it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. T h e r e were whole
companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black
niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping
and leaping like frogs. A n d bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of
people w h o m she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always h a d a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned
forward to observe t h e m closer. T h e y were marching b e h i n d the others with great
dignity, accountable as they had always b e e n for good order and c o m m o n sense
and respectable behavior. T h e y alone were o n key. Yet she could see by their
shocked and altered faces t h a t e v e n their virtues were being burned away. She
lowered her h a n d s and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly o n w h a t lay ahead. In a m o m e n t the vision faded but she remained
where she was, immobile.
A t length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the
darkening path to the house. In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses
had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into
the starry field and shouting hallelujah.
QUESTIONS
1. How does Mrs. Turpin see herself before Mary Grace calls her a wart hog?
2. What is the narrator's attitude toward Mrs. Turpin in the beginning of the story? How
can you tell? Does this attitude change, or stay the same, at the end?
,< .
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382 Critical Casebook
3. Describe the relationship between Mary Grace and her mother. What annoying platitudes does the mother mouth? Which of Mrs. Turpin's opinions seem especially to anger
Mary Grace?
4. Sketch the plot of the story. What moment or event do you take to be the crisis, or turning point? What is the climax? What is the conclusion?
5. What do you infer from Mrs. Turpin's conversation with the black farm workers? Is she
their friend? Why does she now find their flattery unacceptable ("Jesus satisfied with
her")?
6. When, near the end of the story, Mrs. Turpin roars, " W h o do you think you are?" an echo
"returned to her clearly like an answer from beyond the wood" (paragraph 188). Explain.
7. What is the final revelation given to Mrs. Turpin? (To state it is to state the theme of the
story.) What new attitude does the revelation impart? (How is Mrs. Turpin left with a
new vision of humanity?)
8. Other stories in this book contain revelations: "Young Goodman Brown," "The Gospel
According to Mark." If you have read them, try to sum up the supernatural revelation
made to the central character in each story. In each, is the revelation the same as a statement of the story's main theme?
Parker's Back1
1965
Parker's wife was sitting o n the front porch floor, snapping beans. Parker was sitting on t h e step, some distance away, watching her sullenly. She was plain, plain.
T h e skin on her face was thin and drawn as tight as the skin on an onion and her
eyes were gray and sharp like the points of two icepicks. Parker understood why he
had married h e r h e couldn't have got her any other waybut he couldn't understand why he stayed with her now. S h e was pregnant and pregnant women were n o t
his favorite kind. Nevertheless, h e stayed as if she had him conjured. H e was puzzled
and ashamed of himself.
T h e house they rented sat alone save for a single tall pecan tree o n a high emb a n k m e n t overlooking a highway. A t intervals a car would shoot past below and his
wife's eyes would swerve suspiciously after the sound of it and t h e n come back to rest
on the newspaper full of beans in her lap. O n e of the things she did not approve of
was automobiles. In addition to her other bad qualities, she was forever sniffing up
sin. She did not smoke or dip, drink whiskey, use bad language or paint her face, and
God knew some paint would have improved it, Parker thought. Her being against
color, it was the more remarkable she had married him. Sometimes he supposed that
she had married him because she meant to save him. A t other times he had a suspicion that she actually liked everything she said she didn't. H e could account for her
one way or another; it was himself h e could n o t understand.
She turned her head in his direction and said, "It's n o reason you can't work for a
man. It don't have to be a woman."
"Aw shut your m o u t h for a change," Parker muttered.
If h e h a d been certain she was jealous of the woman h e worked for h e would
have been pleased but more likely she was concerned with the sin that would result if
h e and the woman took a liking to each other. H e had told her that the woman was a
^"Parker's Back" was the last story Flannery O'Connor wrote, and was published the year after her
death.
f': ' ^ # iff
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hefty young blonde; in fact she was nearly seventy years old and too dried up to have
an interest in anything except getting as m u c h work out of him as she could. N o t that
an old woman didn't sometimes get a n interest in a young man, particularly if he was
as attractive as Parker felt h e was, but this old woman looked at him the same way she
looked at her old tractoras if she had to put up with it because it was all she had.
T h e tractor had broken down the second day Parker was on it and she had set him at
once to cutting bushes, saying out of the side of her mouth to the nigger, "Everything
he touches, he breaks." She also asked him to wear his shirt w h e n he worked; Parker
had removed it even though the day was n o t sultry; he put it back on reluctantly.
This ugly woman Parker married was his first wife. H e h a d had other women but
h e had planned never to get himself tied up legally. H e had first seen her one morning w h e n his truck broke down o n the highway. H e had managed to pull it off the
road into a neatly swept yard o n which sat a peeling two-room house. He got out and
opened the hood of the truck and began to study the motor. Parker had an extra
sense that told h i m w h e n there was a woman nearby watching him. After he had
leaned over the motor a few minutes, his neck began to prickle. H e cast his eye over
the empty yard and porch of the house. A woman he could n o t see was either nearby
beyond a clump of honeysuckle or in the house, watching h i m out the window.
Suddenly Parker began to jump up and down and fling his h a n d about as if he
had mashed it in the machinery. He doubled over and held his h a n d close to his
chest. "God dammit!" he hollered, "Jesus Christ in hell! Jesus G o d Almighty damm!
G o d dammit to hell!" h e went on, flinging out the same few oaths over and over as
loud as h e could.
W i t h o u t warning a terrible bristly claw slammed the side of his face and he fell
backwards on the hood of t h e truck. "You don't talk no filth here!" a voice close to
him shrilled.
Parker's vision was so blurred that for a n instant he thought he had been attacked by some creature from above, a giant hawk-eyed angel wielding a hoary
weapon. As his sight cleared, h e saw before h i m a tall raw-boned girl with a broom.
"I hurt my hand," h e said. "I H U R T my hand." H e was so incensed that h e forgot
that h e h a d n ' t h u r t his hand. "My h a n d may be broke," he growled although his
voice was still unsteady.
"Lemme see it," the girl demanded.
Parker stuck out his h a n d and she came closer and looked at it. T h e r e was no
mark on the palm and she took the h a n d and turned it over. Her own hand was dry
and h o t and rough and Parker felt himself jolted back to life by her touch. H e looked
more closely at her. I don't want n o t h i n g to do with this one, he thought.
T h e girl's sharp eyes peered at the back of the stubby reddish hand she held. There
emblazoned in red and blue was a tattooed eagle perched on a cannon. Parker's sleeve
was rolled to the elbow. Above the eagle a serpent was coiled about a shield and in the
spaces between the eagle and the serpent there were hearts, some with arrows through
them. Above the serpent there was a spread hand of cards. Every space on the skin of
Parker's arm, from wrist to elbow, was covered in some loud design. T h e girl gazed at
this with an almost stupefied smile of shock, as if she had accidentally grasped a poisonous snake; she dropped the hand.
"I got most of my other ones in foreign parts," Parker said. "These here I mostly
got in t h e U n i t e d States. I got my first one when I was only fifteen year old."
"Don't tell me," the girl said, "I don't like it. I ain't got any use for it."
"You ought to see the ones you can't see," Parker said and winked.
10
15
Two circles of red appeared like apples o n the girl's cheeks and softened her appearance. Parker was intrigued. H e did n o t for a minute think that she didn't like the .
tattoos. H e had never yet met a woman who was n o t attracted to them.
Parker was fourteen w h e n he saw a m a n in a fair, tattooed from head to foot. Except for his loins which were girded with a p a n t h e r hide, the man's skin was patterned in what seemed from Parker's distancehe was near the back of the tent,
standing o n a b e n c h a single intricate design of brilliant color. T h e man, who was
small and sturdy, moved about on the platform, flexing his muscles so that the
arabesque of m e n and beasts and flowers on his skin appeared to have a subtle motion
of its own. Parker was filled with emotion, lifted up as some people are w h e n the flag
passes. H e was a boy whose m o u t h habitually h u n g open. H e was heavy and earnest,
as ordinary as a loaf of bread. W h e n the show was over, he had remained standing on
the bench, staring where the tattooed m a n had been, until t h e tent was almost
empty.
Parker had never before felt the least motion of wonder in himself. U n t i l h e saw
the m a n at the fair, it did n o t enter his head that there was anything out of the ordinary about the fact that h e existed. Even t h e n it did n o t enter his head, but a peculiar
unease settled in him. It was as if a blind boy had been turned so gently in a different
direction t h a t he did not know his destination had been changed.
He had his first tattoo some time afterthe eagle perched on the cannon. It was 20
done by a local artist. It h u r t very little, just enough to make it appear to Parker to be
worth doing. This was peculiar too for before h e had thought that only what did not
hurt was worth doing. T h e next year h e quit school because he was sixteen and
could. H e went to the trade school for a while, t h e n h e quit the trade school and
worked for six months in a garage. T h e only reason he worked at all was to pay for
more tattoos. His mother worked in a laundry and could support him, but she would
not pay for any tattoo except her n a m e on a heart, which h e had put on, grumbling.
However, her name was Betty Jean and nobody had to know it was his mother. He
found out that the tattoos were attractive to the kind of girls h e liked but who had
never liked h i m before. H e began to drink beer and get in fights. His mother wept
over what was becoming of him. O n e night she dragged him off to a revival with her,
not telling him where they were going. W h e n h e saw the big lighted church, he
jerked out of her grasp and ran. T h e next day h e lied about his age and joined the
navy.
Parker was large for the tight sailor's pants but the silly white cap, sitting low on
his forehead, made his face by contrast look thoughtful and almost intense. After a
m o n t h or two in the navy, his m o u t h ceased to h a n g open. His features hardened
into the features of a man. H e stayed in the navy five years and seemed a natural part
of the gray mechanical ship, except for his eyes, which were the same pale slate-color
as the ocean and reflected the immense spaces around h i m as if they were a microcosm of the mysterious sea. In port Parker wandered about comparing the run-down
places he was in to Birmingham, Alabama. Everywhere h e went h e picked up more
tattoos.
He had stopped having lifeless ones like anchors and crossed rifles. H e had a
tiger and a panther o n each shoulder, a cobra coiled about a torch on his chest,
hawks on his thighs, Elizabeth II and Philip over where his stomach and liver were
respectively. H e did n o t care m u c h what the subject was so long as it was colorful; on
his abdomen h e had a few obscenities but only because that seemed the proper place
for them. Parker would be satisfied with each tattoo about a m o n t h , t h e n something
about it that had attracted h i m would wear off. W h e n e v e r a decent-sized mirror was
available, h e would get in front of it and study his overall look. T h e effect was n o t of
one intricate arabesque of colors but of something haphazard and botched. A huge
dissatisfaction would come over him and h e would go off and find another tattooist
and have another space filled up. T h e front of Parker was almost completely covered
but there were n o tattoos on his back. H e had no desire for one anywhere h e could
n o t readily see it himself. As the space on the front of him for tattoos decreased, his
dissatisfaction grew and became general.
A f t e r one of his furloughs, h e didn't go back to the navy but remained away
without official leave, drunk, in a rooming house in a city he did not know. His dissatisfaction, from being chronic and latent, had suddenly become acute and raged in
him. It was as if the panther and the lion and the serpents and the eagles and the
hawks had penetrated his skin and lived inside h i m in a raging warfare. T h e navy
caught up with him, put h i m in the brig for nine m o n t h s and t h e n gave h i m a
dishonorable discharge.
After that Parker decided that country air was the only kind fit to breathe. H e
rented the shack o n the e m b a n k m e n t and bought the old truck and took various jobs
which h e kept as long as it suited him. A t the time h e met his future wife, he was
buying apples by t h e bushel and selling t h e m for the same price by t h e pound to
isolated homesteaders o n back country roads.
"All that there," the woman said, pointing to his arm, "is n o better t h a n what a
fool Indian would do. It's a heap of vanity." She seemed to h a v e found the word she
wanted. "Vanity of vanities," she said.
Well what the hell do I care what she thinks of it? Parker asked himself, but h e
was plainly bewildered. "I reckon you like one of these better t h a n another anyway,"
h e said, dallying until he thought of something that would impress her. H e thrust the
arm back at her. " W h i c h you like best?"
"None of them," she said, "but the chicken is n o t as bad as t h e rest."
" W h a t chicken?" Parker almost yelled.
S h e pointed to the eagle.
"That's an eagle," Parker said. " W h a t fool would waste their time having a
chicken put on themself?"
" W h a t fool would have any of it?" the girl said and turned away. She went slowly
back to the house and left h i m there to get going. Parker remained for almost five
minutes, looking agape at the dark door she had entered.
T h e n e x t day h e returned w i t h a bushel of apples. H e was n o t one to be outd o n e by anything t h a t looked like her. H e liked w o m e n with meat on them, so you
didn't feel their muscles, m u c h less their old bones. W h e n he arrived, she was sitting o n t h e top step and t h e yard was full of children, all as t h i n and poor as herself;
Parker remembered it was Saturday. H e hated to be making up to a w o m a n w h e n
there were children around, but it was f o r t u n a t e h e had brought the bushel of apples off t h e truck. As the children approached h i m to see w h a t h e carried, h e gave
each child an apple and told it to get lost; in t h a t way h e cleared out t h e whole
crowd.
T h e girl did nothing to acknowledge his presence. H e might have been a stray
pig or goat that had wandered into the yard and she too tired to take up the broom
and send it off. H e set the bushel of apples down next to her on the step. He sat down
o n a lower step.
"Hep yourself," h e said, nodding at the basket; t h e n h e lapsed into silence.
She took a n apple quickly as if t h e basket might disappear if she didn't make
haste. Hungry people made Parker nervous. H e had always had plenty to eat himself.
H e grew very uncomfortable. H e reasoned he had n o t h i n g to say so why should h e
say it? H e could n o t think now why h e h a d come or why h e didn't go before h e
wasted another bushel of apples on the crowd of children. H e supposed they were her
brothers and sisters.
She chewed the apple slowly but with a kind of relish of concentration, bent
slightly but looking out ahead. T h e view from the porch stretched off across a long incline studded with iron weed and across the highway to a vast vista of hills and one
small mountain. Long views depressed Parker. You look out into space like that and
you begin to feel as if someone were after you, the navy or the government or religion.
" W h o t h e m children belong to, you?" he said at length.
"I ain't married yet," she said. "They belong to momma." She said it as if it were
only a matter of time before she would be married.
W h o in God's n a m e would marry her? Parker thought.
A large barefooted woman with a wide gap-toothed face appeared in t h e door
behind Parker. She had apparently been there for several minutes.
"Good evening," Parker said.
T h e w o m a n crossed the porch and picked up what was left of the bushel of
apples. " W e t h a n k you," she said and returned with it into the house.
"That your old woman?" Parker muttered.
T h e girl nodded. Parker knew a lot of sharp things he could have said like "You
got my sympathy," but he was gloomily silent. H e just sat there, looking at the view.
H e thought h e must be coming down with something.
"If I pick up some peaches tomorrow I'll bring you some," he said.
"I'll be much obliged to you," the girl said.
Parker had no intention of taking any basket of peaches back there but the n e x t
day h e found himself doing it. H e and the girl had almost n o t h i n g to say to each
other. O n e thing he did say was, "I ain't got any tattoo o n my back."
" W h a t you got on it?" the girl said.
"My shirt," Parker said. "Haw."
"Haw, haw," the girl said politely.
Parker thought h e was losing his mind. H e could n o t believe for a minute that h e
was attracted to a woman like this. She showed n o t the least interest in anything but
what h e brought until h e appeared the third time with two cantaloups. "What's your
name?" she asked.
"O. E. Parker," he said.
" W h a t does t h e O . E. stand for?"
"You can just call me O. E.," Parker said. "Or Parker. D o n ' t nobody call me by
my name."
"What's it stand for?" she persisted.
"Never mind," Parker said. "What's yours?"
"I'll tell you w h e n you tell me what t h e m letters are the short of," she said. T h e r e
was just a h i n t of flirtatiousness in her tone and it went rapidly to Parker's head. He
had never revealed the n a m e to any m a n or woman, only to the files of the navy and
the government, and it was on his baptismal record which h e got at the age of a
month; his mother was a Methodist. W h e n the n a m e leaked out of the navy files,
Parker narrowly missed killing the man who used it.
(fw4w\
'WM'^'-A wwsm
^ml i l
"You'll go blab it around," he said.
"I'll swear I'll never tell nobody," she said. " O n God's holy word I swear it."
Parker sat for a few minutes in silence. T h e n he reached for the girl's neck, drew 60
her ear close to his m o u t h and revealed the n a m e in a low voice.
"Obadiah," she whispered. Her face slowly brightened as if the n a m e came as a
sign to her. "Obadiah," she said.
T h e name still stank in Parker's estimation.
"Obadiah Elihue," she said in a reverent voice.
"If you call me that aloud, I'll bust your head open," Parker said. "What's yours?"
"Sarah R u t h Cates," she said.
65
"Glad to meet you, Sarah Ruth," Parker said.
Sarah Ruth's father was a Straight Gospel preacher but h e was away, spreading it
in Florida. Her mother did n o t seem to mind his a t t e n t i o n to the girl so long as h e
brought a basket of something with h i m w h e n he came. As for Sarah R u t h herself, it
was plain to Parker after h e had visited three times that she was crazy about him. She
liked him even though she insisted that pictures on the skin were vanity of vanities
and even after hearing h i m curse, and even after she had asked h i m if h e was saved
and h e had replied t h a t h e didn't see it was anything in particular to save him from.
After that, inspired, Parker had said, "I'd be saved enough if you was to kiss me."
She scowled. " T h a t ain't being saved," she said.
N o t long after that she agreed to take a ride in his truck. Parker parked it on a
deserted road and suggested to her that they lie down together in the back of it.
"Not until after we're married," she saidjust like that.
70
" O h that ain't necessary," Parker said and as he reached for her, she thrust h i m
away with such force that the door of the truck came off and h e found himself flat on
his back on the ground. H e made up his mind t h e n and there to have nothing further
to do with her.
They were married in t h e County Ordinary's office because Sarah Ruth thought
churches were idolatrous. Parker had n o opinion about that one way or the other.
T h e Ordinary's office was lined with cardboard file boxes and record books with dusty
yellow slips of paper hanging on out of them. T h e Ordinary was an old woman with
red hair who had held office for forty years and looked as dusty as her books. She married them from behind the iron-grill of a stand-up desk and when she finished, she
said with a flourish, "Three dollars and fifty cents and till d e a t h do you part!" and
yanked some forms out of a machine.
Marriage did n o t change Sarah R u t h a jot and it made Parker gloomier t h a n
ever. Every morning h e decided h e had had enough and would n o t return that night;
every night he returned. W h e n e v e r Parker couldn't stand the way he felt, he would
have another tattoo, but the only surface left o n him now was his back. T o see a tattoo on his own back h e would have to get two mirrors and stand between t h e m in
just the correct position and this seemed to Parker a good way to make an idiot of
himself. Sarah R u t h who, if she had had better sense, could have enjoyed a tattoo on
his back, would n o t even look at the ones he had elsewhere. W h e n he attempted to
point out especial details of them, she would shut her eyes tight and turn her back as
well. Except in total darkness, she preferred Parker dressed and with his sleeves rolled
down.
" A t t h e judgement seat of G o d , Jesus is going to say to you, ' W h a t you been
doing all your life besides have pictures drawn all over you?'" she said.
"You don't fool me none," Parker said, "you're just afraid that hefty girl I work
for'll like me so m u c h she'll say, 'Come on, Mr. Parker, let's you and me . . ."'
"You're tempting sin," she said, "and at the judgement seat of God you'll have to
answer for that too. You ought to go back to selling the fruits of the earth."
Parker did n o t h i n g much when h e was at h o m e but listen to what the judgement
seat of G o d would be like for him if h e didn't change his ways. W h e n h e could, he
broke in with tales of the hefty girl h e worked for. "'Mr. Parker,'" he said she said, 'I
hired you for your brains.'" (She had added, "So why don't you use them?")
" A n d you should have seen her face the first time she saw me without my shirt,"
he said. "'Mr. Parker,' she said, 'you're a walking panner-rammer!'" This had, in fact,
been her remark but it had been delivered out of one side of her mouth.
Dissatisfaction began to grow so great in Parker that there was n o containing it
outside of a tattoo. It had to be his back. T h e r e was no help for it. A dim halfformed inspiration began to work in his mind. H e visualized having a tattoo put
there that Sarah R u t h would n o t be able to resista religious subject. H e t h o u g h t of
an open book with HOLY BIBLE tattooed under it and an actual verse printed on the
page. T h i s seemed just the thing for a while; t h e n h e began to hear her say, " A i n ' t I
already got a real Bible? W h a t you t h i n k I want to read the same verse over and over
for w h e n I can read it all?" H e needed something better even t h a n the Bible! H e
thought about it so much that h e began to lose sleep. H e was already losing flesh
Sarah R u t h just threw food in the pot and let it boil. N o t knowing for certain why
he continued to stay with a w o m a n w h o was both ugly and pregnant and n o cook
made him generally nervous and irritable, and h e developed a little tic in the side of
his face.
75
O n c e or twice h e found himself turning around abruptly as if someone were
trailing him. He had had a granddaddy who had ended in the state mental hospital,
although n o t until he was seventy-five, but as urgent as it might be for h i m to get a
tattoo, it was just as urgent t h a t h e get exactly the right one to bring Sarah R u t h to
heel. As he continued to worry over it, his eyes took on a hollow preoccupied expression. T h e old w o m a n he worked for told h i m that if h e couldn't keep his mind
on what h e was doing, she knew where she could find a fourteen-year-old colored
boy who could. Parker was too preoccupied even to be offended. A t any time previous, h e would h a v e left her t h e n and there, saying drily, "Well, you go ahead on and
get him then."
T w o or three mornings later he was baling hay with t h e old woman's sorry baler
and her broken down tractor in a large field, cleared save for one enormous old tree
standing in the middle of it. T h e old w o m a n was the kind who would n o t cut down a
large old tree because it was a large old tree. She had pointed it out to Parker as if h e
didn't have eyes and told h i m to be careful n o t to hit it as the machine picked up hay
near it. Parker began at the outside of the field and made circles inward toward it. H e
had to get off the tractor every now and t h e n and untangle the baling cord or kick a
rock out of the way. T h e old w o m a n had told h i m to carry the rocks to the edge of
the field, which he did when she was there watching. W h e n h e thought he could
make it, h e ran over them. As he circled the field his mind was o n a suitable design
for his back. T h e sun, the size of a golf ball, began to switch regularly from in front to
behind him, but he appeared to see it b o t h places as if h e had eyes in the back of his
head. All at once he saw the tree reaching out to grasp him. A ferocious thud propelled him into the air, and h e heard himself yelling in a n unbelievably loud voice,
80
"GOD ABOVE!"
wwm
H e landed on his back while the tractor crashed upside dow7n into the tree and
burst into flame. T h e first thing Parker saw were his shoes, quickly being eaten by the
fire; one was caught under the tractor, the other was some distance away, burning by
itself. H e was not in them. H e could feel t h e h o t breath of the burning tree on his
face. H e scrambled backwards, still sitting, his eyes cavernous, and if h e had known
how to cross himself h e would have done it.
His truck was on a dirt road at the edge of t h e field. H e moved toward it, still sitting, still backwards, but faster and faster; halfway to it h e got up and began a kind of
forward-bent run from which h e collapsed on his knees twice. His legs felt like two
old rusted rain gutters. He reached the truck finally and took off in it, zigzagging up
the road. H e drove past his house on the e m b a n k m e n t and straight for the city, fifty
miles distant.
Parker did not allow himself to think o n the way to the city. He only knew that
there had been a great change in his life, a leap forward into a worse unknown, and
that there was nothing he could do about it. It was for all intents accomplished.
T h e artist had two large cluttered rooms over a chiropodist's office on a back
street. Parker, still barefooted, burst silently in on him at a little after three in the afternoon. T h e artist, who was about Parker's own agetwenty-eightbut thin and
bald, was behind a small drawing table, tracing a design in green ink. H e looked up
with an annoyed glance and did not seem to recognize Parker in the hollow-eyed
creature before him.
85
" L e t me see the book you got with all the pictures of G o d in it," Parker said
breathlessly. " T h e religious o n e . "
T h e artist continued to look at him with his intellectual, superior stare. "I don't
put tattoos on drunks," he said.
"You know m e ! " Parker cried indignantly. "I'm O . E. Parker! You done work for
me before and I always paid!"
T h e artist looked at him another m o m e n t as if he were not altogether sure.
"You've fallen off some," he said. "You must have been in jail."
"Married," Parker said.
" O h , " said the artist. W i t h the aid of mirrors the artist had tattooed on the top of
his head a miniature owl, perfect in every detail. It was about the size of a half-dollar
and served him as a show piece. T h e r e were cheaper artists in town but Parker had
never w7anted anything but the best. T h e artist went over to a cabinet at the back of
the room and began to look over some art books. " W h o are you interested in?" he
said, "saints, angels, Christs or what?"
" G o d , " Parker said.
"Father, S o n or Spirit?"
"Just G o d , " Parker said impatiently. "Christ. I don't care. Just so it's G o d . "
T h e artist returned with a book. H e moved some papers off another table and
put the book down o n it and told Parker to sit down and see what he liked. " T h e
up-to-date ones are in the back," he said.
Parker sat down with the book and wet his thumb. H e began to go through it, beginning at the back where the up-to-date pictures were. S o m e of them he recognized
T h e Good Shepherd, Forbid T h e m Not, T h e Smiling Jesus, Jesus the Physician's
Friend, but he kept turning rapidly backwards and the pictures became less and less reassuring. O n e showed a gaunt green dead face streaked with blood. O n e was yellow
with sagging purple eyes. Parker's heart began to beat faster and faster until it appeared
t o be roaring inside him like a great generator. H e flipped the pages quickly, feeling that
90
95
when he reached the one ordained, a sign would come. H e continued to flip through
until he had almost reached the front of the book. O n one of the pages a pair of eyes
glanced at him swiftly. Parker sped on, then stopped. His heart too appeared to cut off;
there was absolute silence. It said as plainly as if silence were a language itself, GO BACK.
Parker returned to the picturethe haloed head of a flat stern Byzantine Christ
with all-demanding eyes. H e sat there trembling; his heart began slowly to beat again
as if it were being brought to life by a subtle power.
"You found w h a t you want?" t h e artist asked.
Parker's throat was too dry to speak. H e got up and thrust the book at the artist,
opened at the picture.
"That'll cost you plenty," the artist said. "You d o n ' t w a n t all those little blocks 100
though, just the outline and some better features."
"Just like it is," Parker said, "just like it is or nothing."
"It's your funeral," the artist said, "but I don't do that kind of work for nothing."
"How much?" Parker asked.
"It'll take maybe two days work."
"How much?" Parker said.
105
" O n time or cash?" the artist asked. Parker's other jobs had been o n time, but he
had paid.
" T e n down and t e n for every day it takes," the artist said.
Parker drew ten dollar bills out of his wallet; h e had three left in.
"You come back in the morning," the artist said, putting the money in his own
pocket. "First I'll have to trace that out of the book."
"No no!" Parker said. "Trace it now or gimme my money back," and his eyes 110
blared as if h e were ready for a fight.
T h e artist agreed. A n y one stupid enough to want a Christ on his back, he reasoned, would be just as likely as n o t to change his mind the next minute, but once
the work was begun he could hardly do so.
W h i l e h e worked o n the tracing, h e told Parker to go wash his back at t h e sink
with the special soap he used there. Parker did it and returned to pace back and
forth across t h e room, nervously flexing his shoulders. H e wanted to go look at t h e
picture again but at t h e same time h e did n o t w a n t to. T h e artist got up finally and
h a d Parker lie down o n t h e table. H e swabbed his back with ethyl chloride and
t h e n began to outline t h e head o n it with his iodine pencil. A n o t h e r hour passed
before h e took up his electric instrument. Parker felt n o particular pain. In Japan
h e h a d had a tattoo of t h e Buddha d o n e o n his upper arm with ivory needles; in
Burma, a little brown root of a m a n h a d made a peacock o n each of his knees using
t h i n pointed sticks, two feet long; amateurs h a d worked o n h i m w i t h pins and soot.
Parker was usually so relaxed and easy under t h e h a n d of t h e artist t h a t h e o f t e n
went to sleep, but this time h e remained awake, every muscle taut.
A t midnight the artist said he was ready to quit. H e propped one mirror, four feet
square, on a table by the wall and took a smaller mirror off the lavatory wall and put
it in Parker's hands. Parker stood with his back to t h e one o n the table and moved
the other until h e saw a flashing burst of color reflected from his back. It was almost
completely covered with little red and blue and ivory and saffron squares; from t h e m
h e made out the lineaments of the facea mouth, t h e beginning of heavy brows, a
straight nose, but the face was empty; the eyes had n o t yet been put in. T h e impression for the m o m e n t was almost as if t h e artist h a d tricked h i m and done the Physician's Friend.
"It don't h a v e eyes/' Parker cried out.
" T h a t ' l l c o m e , " the artist said, "in due time. W e have another day to go on it yet." 115
Parker spent t h e n i g h t on a c o t at t h e H a v e n o f L i g h t C h r i s t i a n Mission. H e
found these the best places to stay in t h e city because they were free and included a
meal o f sorts. H e got t h e last available c o t and because he was still barefooted, h e
a c c e p t e d a pair o f s e c o n d - h a n d shoes w h i c h , in his confusion, h e put o n to go t o
bed; h e was still s h o c k e d from all t h a t had h a p p e n e d to h i m . A l l n i g h t h e lay awake
in t h e long dormitory o f cots with lumpy figures o n t h e m . T h e only light was from
a p h o s p h o r e s c e n t cross glowing at t h e end o f the room. T h e tree r e a c h e d out to
grasp h i m again, t h e n burst i n t o flame; t h e shoe burned quietly by itself; t h e eyes in
the b o o k said to h i m distinctly GO BACK and at t h e same t i m e did n o t utter a sound.
H e wished t h a t h e were n o t in this city, n o t in this H a v e n of L i g h t Mission, n o t in
a bed by himself. H e longed miserably for S a r a h R u t h . H e r sharp tongue and
icepick eyes were the only c o m f o r t h e could bring to mind. H e decided he was losing it. Her eyes appeared soft and dilatory compared w i t h t h e eyes in t h e b o o k , for
e v e n t h o u g h h e could n o t s u m m o n up t h e e x a c t look o f those eyes, h e could still
feel their p e n e t r a t i o n . H e felt as though, under their gaze, h e was as transparent as
t h e wing o f a fly.
T h e tattooist had told h i m n o t to c o m e until ten in the morning, but w h e n h e
arrived at that hour, Parker was sitting in the dark hallway on the floor, waiting for
h i m . H e had decided upon getting up that, o n c e the t a t t o o was on him, h e would n o t
look at it, t h a t all his sensations of the day and n i g h t before were those o f a crazy m a n
and that he would return to doing things according to his own sound judgement.
T h e artist began where h e left off. " O n e thing I want to know," h e said presently
as he worked over Parker's back, "why do you want this on you? H a v e you gone and
got religion? A r e you saved?" h e asked in a m o c k i n g voice.
Parker's throat felt salty and dry. " N a w , " he said, "I ain't got n o use for n o n e of
that. A m a n c a n ' t save his self from whatever it is h e don't deserve n o n e of my sympathy." T h e s e words seemed to leave his m o u t h like wraiths and to evaporate at o n c e
as if he had never uttered them.
" T h e n why . . ."
"I married this woman that's saved," Parker said. "I never should have done it. I
ought to leave her. S h e ' s done gone and got pregnant."
120
" T h a t ' s too bad," the artist said. " T h e n it's h e r making you have this t a t t o o . "
" N a w , " Parker said, "she don't k n o w n o t h i n g about it. It's a surprise for h e r . "
"You t h i n k she'll like it and lay off you a while?"
" S h e c a n ' t h e p herself," Parker said. " S h e c a n ' t say she don't like the looks of 125
G o d . " H e decided h e had told the artist enough o f his business. Artists were all right
in their place but he didn't like t h e m poking their noses into t h e affairs o f regular
people. "I didn't get n o sleep last n i g h t , " h e said. "I t h i n k I'll get some n o w . "
T h a t closed the mouth of the artist but it did n o t bring h i m any sleep. He lay
there, imagining h o w S a r a h R u t h would be struck speechless by the face o n his b a c k
and every now and t h e n this would be interrupted by a vision of the tree o f fire and
his empty shoe burning b e n e a t h it.
T h e artist worked steadily until nearly four o'clock, n o t stopping to have lunch,
hardly pausing with the electric instrument e x c e p t to wipe the dripping dye off
Parker's back as h e went along. Finally he finished. "You c a n get up and look at it
n o w , " h e said.
Parker sat up but h e remained o n the edge o f the table.
T h e artist was pleased with his work and wanted Parker to look at it at once. Instead Parker continued to sit on the edge of the table, bent forward slightly but with
a vacant look. " W h a t ails you?" the artist said. " G o look at it."
"Ain't nothing ail me," Parker said in a sudden belligerent voice. " T h a t tattoo
ain't going nowhere. It'll be there w h e n I get there." H e reached for his shirt and
began gingerly to put it on.
T h e artist took h i m roughly by the arm and propelled h i m between the two mirrors. "Now look," he said, angry at having his work ignored.
Parker looked, turned white and moved away. T h e eyes in the reflected face continued to look at himstill, straight, all-demanding, enclosed in silence.
"It was your idea, remember," the artist said. "I would have advised something
else."
Parker said nothing. H e put on his shirt and went out the door while the artist
shouted, "I'll expect all of my money!"
Parker headed toward a package shop o n the corner. H e bought a pint of whiskey
and took it into a nearby alley and drank it all in five minutes. T h e n he moved on to
a pool hall nearby which h e frequented when he came to the city. It was a welllighted bam-like place with a bar up one side and gambling machines o n the other
and pool tables in the back. As soon as Parker entered, a large m a n in a red and black
checkered shirt hailed h i m by slapping h i m on t h e back and yelling, "Yeyyyyyy boy!
O.E.Parker!"
Parker was n o t yet ready to be struck on the back. "Lay off," h e said, "I got a fresh
tattoo there."
" W h a t you got this time?" the m a n asked and t h e n yelled to a few at the machines. "O.E.'s got h i m another tattoo."
"Nothing special this time," Parker said and slunk over to a machine that was
n o t being used.
"Come on," the big m a n said, "let's have a look at O. E.'s tattoo," and while Parker
squirmed in their hands, they pulled up his shirt. Parker felt all the hands drop away instantly and his shirt fell again like a veil over the face. There was a silence in the pool
room which seemed to Parker to grow from the circle around him until it extended to
the foundations under the building and upward through the beams in the roof.
Finally some one said, "Christ!" T h e n they all broke into noise at once. Parker
turned around, an uncertain grin on his face.
"Leave it to O. E.!" the m a n in the checkered shirt said. " T h a t boy's a real card!"
"Maybe he's gone and got religion," some one yelled.
"Not o n your life," Parker said.
"O. E.'s got religion and is witnessing for Jesus, ain't you, O . E.?" a little m a n
with a piece of cigar in his mouth said wryly. " A n o-riginal way to do it if I ever saw
one."
"Leave it to Parker to think of a new one!" the fat m a n said.
"Yyeeeeeeyyyyyyy boy!" someone yelled and they all began to whistle and curse
in compliment until Parker said, "Aaa shut up."
"What'd you do it for?" somebody asked.
"For laughs," Parker said. "What's it to you?"
" W h y ain't you laughing then?" somebody yelled. Parker lunged into the midst
of t h e m and like a whirlwind on a summer's day there began a fight t h a t raged amid
overturned tables and swinging fists until two of t h e m grabbed h i m and ran to the
door with h i m and threw h i m out. T h e n a calm descended o n the pool hall as nerve
shattering as if the long barn-like room were t h e ship from which Jonah had been
cast into the sea.
Parker sat for a long time on the ground in the alley behind the pool hall, examining his soul. H e saw it as a spider web of facts and lies that was n o t at all important
to h i m but which appeared to be necessary in spite of his opinion. T h e eyes that were
now forever on his back were eyes to be obeyed. H e was as certain of it as he had ever
been of anything. Throughout his life, grumbling and sometimes cursing, often afraid,
once in rapture, Parker had obeyed whatever instinct of this kind had come to h i m
in rapture when his spirit had lifted at the sight of t h e tattooed m a n at the fair, afraid
when h e had joined the navy, grumbling w h e n he had married Sarah Ruth.
T h e t h o u g h t of her brought h i m slowly to his feet. S h e would k n o w what h e
had to do. S h e would clear up t h e rest of it, and she would at least be pleased. It
seemed to h i m that, all along, that was w h a t h e wanted, to please her. His truck was
still parked in front of the building where the artist had his place, but it was n o t far
away. H e got in it and drove out of the city and into the country night. His head was
almost clear of liquor and h e observed that his dissatisfaction was gone, but he felt
not quite like himself. It was as if h e were himself but a stranger to himself, driving
into a new country though everything he saw was familiar to him, even at night.
H e arrived finally at the house o n t h e e m b a n k m e n t , pulled the truck under t h e
pecan tree and got out. H e made as much noise as possible to assert that he was still
in charge here, that his leaving her for a night without word m e a n t n o t h i n g except it
was the way he did things. H e slammed the car door, stamped up t h e two steps and
across the porch and rattled the door knob. It did n o t respond to his touch. "Sarah
Ruth!" he yelled, "let me in."
T h e r e was n o lock o n the door and she had evidently placed t h e back of a chair
against the knob. H e began to beat o n the door and rattle t h e k n o b at the same
time.
H e heard the bed springs screak and bent down and put his head to the keyhole,
but it was stopped up with paper. "Let me in!" h e hollered, bamming on the door
again. " W h a t you got me locked out for?
A shaip voice close to the door said, "Who's there?"
"Me," Parker said, "O. E."
H e waited a moment.
"Me," he said impatiently, "O. E."
Still no sound from inside.
H e tried once more. "O. E.," h e said, bamming the door two or three more times.
"O. E. Parker. You know me."
T h e r e was a silence. T h e n the voice said slowly, "I don't know n o O. E."
"Quit fooling," Parker pleaded. "You ain't got any business doing me this way.
It's me, old O . E., I'm back. You ain't afraid of me."
"Who's there?" the same unfeeling voice said.
Parker turned his h e a d as if h e expected s o m e o n e b e h i n d h i m to give h i m t h e
answer. T h e sky had lightened slightly a n d t h e r e were twro or t h r e e streaks of yellow floating above t h e horizon. T h e n as h e stood there, a tree of light burst over
t h e skyline.
Parker fell back against the door as if h e had been pinned there by a lance.
"Who's there?" the voice from inside said and there was a quality about it now
that seemed final. T h e k n o b rattled and the voice said peremptorily, "Who's there, I
ast you?"
Parker bent down and put his m o u t h near the stuffed keyhole. "Obadiah," he
whispered and all at once h e felt the light pouring through him, turning his spider
web soul into a perfect arabesque of colors, a garden of trees and birds and beasts.
"Obadiah Elihue!" h e whispered.
T h e door opened and he stumbled in. Sarah R u t h loomed there, hands on her
hips. She began at once, "That was n o hefty blonde woman you was working for and
you'll have to pay her every penny on her tractor you busted up. She don't keep insurance on it. She came here and her and me had us a long talk and I . . ."
Trembling, Parker set about lighting the kerosene lamp.
"What's the matter with you, wasting that kerosene this near daylight?" she demanded. "I ain't got to look at you."
A yellow glow enveloped them. Parker put t h e m a t c h down and began to unbutton his shirt.
"And you ain't going to have n o n e of me this near morning," she said.
"Shut your mouth," he said quietly. "Look at this and t h e n I don't want to hear
no more out of you." H e removed the shirt and turned his back to her.
" A n o t h e r picture," Sarah R u t h growled. "I might have known you was off after
putting some more trash on yourself."
Parker's knees went hollow under him. H e wheeled around and cried, "Look at
it! D o n ' t just say that! Look at it!"
"1 done looked," she said.
"Don't you know who it is?" he cried in anguish.
"No, who is it?" Sarah R u t h said. "It ain't anybody I know."
"It's him," Parker said.
"Him who?"
"God!" Parker cried.
"God? G o d don't look like that!"
" W h a t do you know how h e looks?" Parker moaned. "You ain't seen him."
"He don't look" Sarah R u t h said. "He's a spirit. N o m a n shall see his face."
"Aw listen," Parker groaned, "this is just a picture of him."
"Idolatry!" Sarah R u t h screamed. "Idolatry! Enflaming yourself with idols under
every green tree! I c a n put up with lies and vanity but I don't want n o idolator in this
house!" and she grabbed up the broom and began to thrash h i m across the shoulders
w r ith it.
Parker was too stunned to resist. H e sat there and let her beat h i m until she had
nearly knocked h i m senseless and large welts had formed on the face of the tattooed
Christ. T h e n h e staggered up and made for the door.
S h e stamped the broom two or three times o n the floor and went to t h e window
and shook it out to get the taint of h i m off it. Still gripping it, she looked toward the
pecan tree and her eyes hardened still more. T h e r e h e waswho called himself Obadiah Elihueleaning against the tree, crying like a baby.
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Flannery G'
QUESTIONS
1. Why, in your judgment, did Parker marry Sarah Ruth? Why did she marry him?
2. A t the end of the second paragraph, the author says of Parker and Sarah Ruth: u He could
account for her one way or another; it was himself he could not understand." How accurate is each part of this assumption?
3. What does Parker's employer think of him? How valid is her estimation?
4. What is the basis of Parker's fascination with tattooing? What kinds of feelings usually
prompt him to get a new tattoo?
5. "Long views depressed Parker. You look out into space like that and you begin to feel as if
someone were after you, the navy or the government or religion" (paragraph 36). What
insights does this statement give us into Parker's characterand, consequently, into his
behavior?
6. What motivates Parker to get the tattoo on his back? How does he expect Sarah Ruth to
respond to it?
7. While waiting for the "artist" to finish the "God" tattoo, Parker feels that "his sensations of
the day and night before were those of a crazy man and that he would return to doing
things according to his own sound judgement" (paragraph 117). How much self-awareness
does this observation demonstrate?
8. W h e n the artist asks him if he's "gone and got religion," Parker says, "1 ain't got no use for
none of that. A man can't save his self from whatever it is he don't deserve none of my
sympathy" (paragraph 119). What does this attitude illustrate about Parker's personality?
By his own standard, how much of his own sympathy does he deserve?
9. Why does Sarah Ruth refuse to recognize Parker by his initials? W h a t is the significance
of his whispering his name through the keyhole, and what effect does doing so have on
him?
FLANNERY O'CONNOR ON WRITING
Flannery O'Connor at her mother's Georgia farm where she raised peacocks; c. 1962
Excerpt from "On Her Own Work": The Element of
Suspense in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
1963
A story really isn't any good unless it successfully resists paraphrase, unless it hangs
o n and expands in t h e mind. Properly, you analyze to enjoy, hut it's equally true
t h a t to analyze with any discrimination, you h a v e to h a v e enjoyed already, and I
think that the best reason to hear a story read is that it should stimulate that primary
enjoyment.
1 don't have any pretensions to being an Aeschylus or Sophocles and providing
you in this story with a cathartic experience out of your mythic background, though
this story I'm going to read certainly calls up a good deal of t h e South's mythic background, and it should elicit from you a degree of pity and terror, even though its way
of being serious is a comic one. I do think, though, that like the Greeks you should
know what is going to h a p p e n in this story so that any element of suspense in it will
be transferred from its surface to its interior.
I would be most happy if you h a d already read it, happier still if you knew it well,
but since experience has taught me to keep my expectations along these lines modest, I'll tell you that this is the story of a family of six which, on its way driving to
Florida, gets wiped out by an escaped convict who calls himself the Misfit. T h e family
is made up of the G r a n d m o t h e r and her son, Bailey, and his children, John Wesley
and June Star and the baby, and there is also the cat and the children's mother. T h e
cat is n a m e d Pitty Sing, and the G r a n d m o t h e r is taking him with them, hidden in a
basket.
N o w I think it behooves me to try to establish with you t h e basis o n which reason operates in this story. M u c h of my fiction takes its character from a reasonable
use of the unreasonable, though the reasonableness of my use of it may n o t always be
apparent. T h e assumptions that underlie this use of it, however, are those of the central Christian mysteries. These are assumptions to which a large part of the m o d e m
audience takes exception. A b o u t this I can only say that there are perhaps other ways
t h a n my own in w h i c h this story could be read, but n o n e other by which it could
have been written. Belief, in my own case anyway, is the engine that makes perception operate.
T h e heroine of this story, the G r a n d m o t h e r , is in the most significant position
life offers t h e Christian. She is facing death. A n d to all appearances she, like the rest
of us, is n o t too well prepared for it. She would like to see the event postponed. Indefinitely.
I've talked to a number of teachers who use this story in class and who tell their
students that the Grandmother is evil, that in fact, she's a witch, even down to the cat.
O n e of these teachers told me that his students, and particularly his Southern students,
resisted this interpretation with a certain bemused vigor, and he didn't understand
why. I had to tell h i m that they resisted it because they all had grandmothers or greataunts just like her at home, and they knew, from personal experience, that the old
lady lacked comprehension, but that she had a good heart. T h e Southerner is usually
tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence, and he knows that a taste
for self-preservation can be readily combined with the missionary spirit.
This same teacher was telling his students that morally the Misfit was several
cuts above the G r a n d m o t h e r . H e had a really sentimental a t t a c h m e n t to the Misfit.
But t h e n a prophet gone wrong is almost always more interesting t h a n your grandmother, and you have to let people take their pleasures where they find them.
It is true that t h e old lady is a hypocritical old soul; her wits are n o m a t c h for the
Misfit's, nor is h e r capacity for grace equal to his; yet I think the unprejudiced reader
will feel that the G r a n d m o t h e r has a special kind of triumph in this story which instinctively we do not allow to someone altogether bad.
I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story,
and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is
unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies.
This would have to be a n action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally
unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character;
it would have to suggest both the world and eternity. T h e action or gesture I'm talking
about would have to be on the anagogical level, that is, the level which has to do with
the Divine life and our participation in it. It would be a gesture that transcended any
neat allegory that might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could
make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with mystery.
There is a point in this story where such a gesture occurs. T h e Grandmother is at
last alone, facing the Misfit. Her head clears for an instant and she realizes, even in her
limited way, that she is responsible for the man before her and joined to him by ties of
kinship which have their roots deep in the mystery she has been merely prattling
about so far. A n d at this point, she does the right thing, she makes the right gesture.
'iiMW.
I find that students are often puzzled by what she says and does here, but I think
myself that if I took out this gesture and w h a t she says with it, I would have no story.
W h a t was left would n o t be worth your attention. O u r age n o t only does not have a
very sharp eye for t h e almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it n o longer has m u c h
feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them. T h e devil's
greatest wile, Baudelaire has said, is to convince us t h a t he does n o t exist.
I suppose the reasons for the use of so m u c h violence in modern fiction will differ
with each writer who uses it, but in my own stories I have found that violence is
strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing t h e m to accept
their m o m e n t of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost n o t h i n g else will do the
work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which
is implicit in the Christian view of the world.
I don't want to equate t h e Misfit with the devil. I prefer to think that, however
unlikely this may seem, the old lady's gesture, like the mustard-seed, will grow to be a
great crow-filled tree in the Misfit's heart, and will be enough of a pain to him there
to turn h i m into the prophet h e was m e a n t to become. But that's another story.
This story has been called grotesque, but I prefer to call it literal. A good story is
literal in the same sense that a child's drawing is literal. W h e n a child draws, h e doesn't intend to distort but to set down exactly what h e sees, and as his gaze is direct, h e
sees the lines that create motion. N o w t h e lines of motion that interest the writer are
usually invisible. T h e y are lines of spiritual motion. A n d in this story you should be
011 the lookout for such things as the action of grace in the Grandmother's soul, and
n o t for the dead bodies.
W e hear many complaints about the prevalence of violence in m o d e r n fiction,
and it is always assumed t h a t this violence is a bad thing and m e a n t to be an e n d in
itself. W i t h t h e serious writer, violence is never a n end in itself. It is t h e extreme
situation that best reveals what we are essentially, and I believe these are times when
writers are more interested in what we are essentially t h a n in the tenor of our daily
lives. Violence is a force w h i c h can be used for good or evil, and among other things
taken by it is the kingdom of heaven. But regardless of what can be taken by it, the
man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all h e will have to take into eternity with him; and
since the characters in this story are ail on t h e verge of eternity, it is appropriate to
think of what they take with them. In any case, I hope that if you consider these
points in connection with the story, you will come to see it as something more t h a n
an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.
From " O n Her O w n W o r k "
On Her Catholic Faith
1955
I write t h e way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic. This is a fact and n o t h i n g
covers it like the bald statement. How y ever, I am a Catholic peculiarly possessed of
the modern consciousness, the thing Jung describes as unhistorical, solitary, and
guilty. T o possess this within the C h u r c h is to bear a burden, the necessary burden for
the conscious Catholic. It's to feel the contemporary situation at the ultimate level. I
think that the C h u r c h is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we
are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the C h u r c h endurable is that it is
Flannery O'Connor on Writing,' 39?
somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you
suffer as m u c h from the C h u r c h as for it but if you believe in t h e divinity of Christ,
you have to cherish the world at t h e same time that you struggle to endure it. This
may explain the lack of bitterness in the stories.
From a letter (July 20, 1955) in The Habit of Being
Excerpt from "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction":
The Serious Writer and the Tired Reader
i960
T h o s e writers who speak for and with their age are able to do so with a great deal
more ease and grace t h a n those w h o speak counter to prevailing attitudes. I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me t h a t w h e n the tired
reader comes h o m e at night, h e wishes to read something t h a t will lift up his heart.
A n d it seems her heart had n o t been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I
think t h a t if her heart had been in t h e right place, it would have been lifted up.
You may say that t h e serious writer doesn't have to bother about the tired reader,
but h e does, because they are all tired. O n e old lady who wants her heart lifted up
wouldn't be so bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times and
what you get is a book club. I used to think it should be possible to write for some
supposed elite, for the people who attend the universities and sometimes know how
to read, but I have since found that though you may publish your stories in Botteghe
Oscureif
they are any good at all, you are eventually going to get a letter from some
old lady in California, or some inmate of the Federal Penitentiary or the state insane
asylum or the local poorhouse, telling you where you have failed to meet his needs.
A n d his need, of course, is to be lifted up. T h e r e is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that
what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. T h e reader of today looks for
this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of
evil is diluted or lacking altogether and so h e has forgotten the price of restoration.
W h e n he reads a novel, h e wants either his senses tormented or his spirits raised. H e
wants to be transported, instantly, either to a mock damnation or a mock innocence.
I am often told that the model of balance for the novelist should be Dante, who
divided his territory up pretty evenly between hell, purgatory, and paradise. T h e r e
can be n o objection to this, but also there can be no reason to assume that the result
of doing it in these times will give us the balanced picture t h a t it gave in Dante's.
Dante lived in the 13th century when that balance was achieved in the faith of his
age. W e live now in an age which doubts b o t h fact and value, which is swept this way
and that by momentary convictions. Instead of reflecting a balance from the world
around him, the novelist now has to achieve one from a felt balance inside himself.
T h e r e are ages when it is possible to woo the reader; there are others when something
more drastic is necessary.
T h e r e is n o literary orthodoxy that can be prescribed as settled for the fiction
writer, n o t even that of Henry James who balanced the elements of traditional realism and romance so admirably within each of his novels. But this much can be said.
Botteghe Oscure: a distinguished and expensive literary magazine published in Rome from 1949 to 1960
by the Princess Marguerite Caetani for a small, sophisticated audience.
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: .
T h e great novels we get in the future are not going to he those t h a t the public thinks
it wants, or those that critics demand. T h e y are going to be the kind of novels that
interest the novelist. A n d the novels that interest the novelist are those that have
not already been written. T h e y are those that put the greatest demands on him, that
require him to operate at the maximum of his intelligence and his talents, and to be
true to the particularities of his own vocation. T h e direction of many of us will be toward concentration and the distortion that is necessary to get our vision across; it
will be more toward poetry t h a n toward the traditional novel.
T h e problem for such a novelist will be to know how far h e can distort without
destroying, and in order n o t to destroy, h e will have to descend far enough into himself to reach those underground springs that give life to his work. This descent into
himself will, at the same time, be a descent into his region. It will be a descent
through the darkness of the familiar into a world where, like the blind m a n cured in
the gospels, he sees m e n as if they were trees, but walking. This is t h e beginning of vision, and I feel it is a vision which we in the South must at least try to understand if
we want to participate in t h e continuance of a vital Southern literature. I h a t e to
think that in twenty years Southern writers too may be writing about m e n in grey
flannel suits and may have lost their ability to see that these gentlemen are even
greater freaks t h a n what we are writing about now. I hate to think of the day when
the Southern writer will satisfy the tired reader.
From "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction"
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Yearbook Cartoons
Untitled linoleum block cartoons by O'Connor for the yearbook at Georgia State College
1944
CRITICS ON FLAWWERY O'CONNOR
Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr. (b. 1951)
Flannery O'Connor and Her Readers
1989
As her letters and essays clearly indicate, O ' C o n n o r was very m u c h concerned with
her reading audience. Her comments on her audience and how it affected her as an
artist, however, were n o t entirely consistent, and it seems clear that O ' C o n n o r wras of
two minds on t h e subject. O n e part of O ' C o n n o r downplayed t h e significance of t h e
audience, saying that artists should be concerned with one thingtheir artand
that they bear n o responsibility to the audience. By this line of thinking writers concentrate o n making their fictionthe characters and their worldscome alive, and
they make sure that the story works as a story and n o t as a medium for expressing an
abstract statement. T h e meaning of a piece of fiction, O ' C o n n o r insisted, was t h e entire experience one has with it and was not a statement imposed o n it that could t h e n
later be extracted and held up as its "message." Such thinking was central to the advice she wrote (December 11, 1956) to A . about writing fiction. O ' C o n n o r wrote
that a writer should merely "start simply with a character or anything that you can
make come alive." She continued, " W h e n you have a character h e will create his
own situation and his situation will suggest some kind of resolution as you get into it.
W o u l d n ' t it be better to discover a meaning in what you write t h a n to impose one?"
(HB, 188).
Catholic writers, in O ' C o n n o r ' s eyes, were particularly prone to distort their fiction for utilitarian purposesto make it do something rather t h a n be something.
Particularly disturbing to her were those writers, in part goaded by the Catholic press,
who wrote in pious language about the pieties of the C h u r c h . O ' C o n n o r ' s attitude toward this type of fiction was sharp: "As for the fiction," she wrote (February 19, 1956)
to John Lynch, "the motto of the Catholic press should be: W e guarantee to corrupt
nothing but your taste" (HB, 138). In ignoring the realities of the here and now outside t h e C h u r c h , such fiction was for O ' C o n n o r little more t h a n religious propaganda, the stuff one expects to find in the vestibules of churches but n o t in bookstores. These writers, she believed, were too concerned with presenting the C h u r c h
in a favorable light and tending to their readership's spiritual needs; O ' C o n n o r ' s answer to t h e m was that in writing fiction the Catholic writer "does n o t decide what
would be good for the Christian body and proceed to deliver it" (MM, 183). Instead,
as we have seen O ' C o n n o r stressing, writers must work within the limitations of their
vocation to create the best storynot tractpossible. "The writer is only free w h e n
h e can tell t h e reader to go jump in the lake," O ' C o n n o r said in one of her interviews, stressing the artist's independence from t h e audience. She added that though
the writer of course wants to communicate a personal vision, "whether [the reader]
likes it or n o t is n o concern of the writer" ( C F O , 39).
If in this way O ' C o n n o r downplayed the significance of the audience, she also
frequently said something quite different. She argued that the audience played a crucial role in artistic creation and that writers always had to be aware of, and to take account of, their audience. She spoke of this connection in "Catholic Novelists and
Their Readers," saying that "it takes readers as well as writers to make literature," and
she added in "The Catholic Novelist in t h e Protestant South" that "it is what writer,
character, and reader share that makes it possible to write fiction at a l l " Elsewhere
(in "Novelist and Believer") O ' C o n n o r wrote that fiction was ultimately a n attempt
at communication; successful writing, she added, was n o t merely a rendering of the
artist's vision but a rendering of it in such a way that the reader could understand it.
"The novelist doesn't write to express himself, h e doesn't write simply to render a vision h e believes true, rather he renders his vision so it can be transferred, as nearly
whole as possible, to his reader," she wrote. "You can safely ignore the reader's taste,
but you can't ignore his nature, you can't ignore his limited patience. Your problem is
going to be difficult in direct proportion as your beliefs depart from his." She echoes
this observation in "Some Aspects of t h e Grotesque in S o u t h e r n Fiction," saying that
the writer's vision "has to be transmitted and that the limitations and blind spots of
his audience will very definitely affect t h e way h e is able to show what h e sees" (MM,
182, 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 , 1 6 2 , 47).
W h e n speaking of her own audience, O ' C o n n o r almost always stressed the great
distance she felt between herself and her readers and pointed to the ways this gulf
pressured and limited her as a writer. She believed that she and other American
Catholic writers lacked a significant and responsive audience, and that this situation
stifled imaginative growth and artistic expression. O ' C o n n o r found several reasons
for this development. Central to the Catholic writer's plight, O ' C o n n o r believed,
was the fact that in America Catholic writers lacked a distinctive social and cultural
heritage based o n religious identity. In " T h e Catholic Novelist in the Protestant
South" she asserts that "the writer whose themes are religious particularly needs a region where these themes find a response in the life of the people." S h e t h e n adds:
" T h e American Catholic is short on places t h a t reflect his particular religious life and
his particular problems. This country isn't exactly cut in his image." She goes on to
say that even in areas where there are large numbers of Catholics, Catholic life there
lacks "the significant features that result in a high degree of regional self-consciousness" and so offers the Catholic writer few "exploitable benefits." O ' C o n n o r ' s analysis
of Catholic writers continues: "They have no great geographical extent, they have n o
particularly significant history, certainly n o history of defeat; they have no real peasant class, and n o cultural unity of the kind you find in the South." She adds that
Catholics usually "blend almost imperceptively into the general materialistic background." This lack of a strong cultural tradition and a supportive audience greatly
burdens Catholic writers, impoverishing their imaginative life and art. "If the
Catholic faith were central to life in America, Catholic fiction would fare better, but
the C h u r c h is n o t central to this society." O ' C o n n o r continues: " T h e things that
bind us together as Catholics are k n o w n only to ourselves. A secular society understands us less and less. It becomes more and more difficult in America to make belief
believable" ( M M , 200, 201).
G i v e n these trends and developments, O ' C o n n o r saw her own position, as well
as that of almost all American Catholic writers, as being particularly precarious in
terms of communicating with her readership. O ' C o n n o r frequently asserted in her
letters that she could consistently count o n only a handful of informed readersan
assertion largely borne out by t h e number of vicious and misinformed readings her
work received, particularly early o n a n d that she had to make these readers go a
long way in her life as a n author. O ' C o n n o r knew hers was n o t the type of fiction
that most Catholic readers yearned to readnot, in other words, fiction that was
thoroughly positive and that w e n t out of its way to celebrate the life of the C h u r c h .
S h e characterized the general Catholic reader as unthinking, and she said that this
reader "is so busy looking for something that fits his needs, and shows him in the best
possible light, that h e will find suspect anything that doesn't serve such purpose"
(MM, 182). Elsewhere, in a letter (May 4, 1963) to Sister Mariella Gable, she wrote
that those Catholic readers who demand that t h e writer make Christianity look desirable are asking the writer to describe Christianity's essence and n o t what the writer
actually sees. "Ideal Christianity doesn't exist, because anything the h u m a n being
touches, even Christian truth, he deforms slightly in his own image," she wrote,
adding a bit later that the tendency of the Catholic readers she had been discussing
"is always toward the abstract and therefore toward allegory, thinness, and ultimately
what they are looking for is apologetic fiction. T h e best of t h e m think: make it look
desirable because it is desirable. A n d the rest of them think: make it look desirable so
I won't look like a fool for holding it" (HB, 516). Such readers would find little to
like in O ' C o n n o r ' s fiction and in all likelihood would see it as a good deal more than
suspectsubversive, probably.
O ' C o n n o r of course felt a n even greater distance from what she saw as the thoroughly secular and unbelieving general reader, t h e reader to w h o m she claimed she
primarily wrote. In "The Catholic Novelists and Their Readers" she said that
Catholic readers make a great mistake in supposing that Catholic writers write exclusively for them. "Occasionally this may happen," she wrote, "but generally it is nothappening today" ( M M , 185), and O ' C o n n o r made it clear elsewhere that it was n o t
happening in her fiction. T o A., O ' C o n n o r wrote (August 2, 1955) of the audience
she perceived, saying that "one of the awful things about writing when you are a
Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is t h e Incarnation, the present reality is
the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people w h o t h i n k G o d is dead. A t least these are the
people I am conscious of writing for" (HB, 92). Trying to bridge this gap between believing author and unbelieving audience was a terrible burden for O ' C o n n o r , and
one that haunted her throughout her career.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations of works by Flannery O ' C o n n o r used in the Brinkmeyer text refer to:
CFO
HB
MM
Conversations with Flannery O'Connor. Edited by Rosemary M. Magee. Jackson, Miss., 1987.
The Habit of Being: Letters. Edited by Sally Fitzgerald. N e w York, 1969.
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Edited by Sally Fitzgerald and Robert
Fitzgerald. N e w York, 1969.
From "Flannery O ' C o n n o r and Her Readers"
J. O. Tate
A Good Source Is Not So Hard to Find: The Real Life Misfit 1980
T h e mounting evidence of O ' C o n n o r ' s use of items from the Miiledgeville and A t lanta newspapers will interest those who realize that these sources, in and of themselves, have nothing to do with the Gothic, the grotesque, the American Romance
tradition, Southwestern humor, Southern literature, adolescent aggression, the N e w
Hermeneutics, the anxiety of influence, structuralism, pentecostal Gnosticism, medieval theology, Christian humanism, existentialism, or the R o m a n Catholic Church.
I. O n "The Misfit" as Name and Word
T h e text of an A t l a n t a Constitution article of N o v e m b e r 6, 1952, p. 29, identifies
for us the source of a celebrated sobriquet. This newspaper reference was reprinted in
The Fiannery O'Connor Bulletin, Volume III, A u t u m n 1974. T h e headline says
enough: " T h e Misfit' Robs Office, Escapes W i t h $150." Fiannery O ' C o n n o r took a
forgotten criminal's alias and used it for larger purposes: her Misfit was out of place in
a grander way t h a n the original. But we should n o t forget O ' C o n n o r ' s credentials as
"a literalist of the imagination." T h e r e is always "a little lower layer." S h e meant to
mock pop psychology by exploiting t h e original Misfit's exploitation of a socio-psychological "excuse" for aberrant behavior. But even a little lower: the original meaning of the word "misfit" has to do with clothing. W e should n o t fail, therefore, to
n o t e that T h e Misfit's "borrowed" blue jeans are too tight. H e leaves the story, of
course, wearing Bailey's shirt.
IL On the Identity and Destiny of the Original Misfit
By November 15, 1952, T h e Misfit had been apprehended; he had also advanced
himself to page three of the A t l a n t a Journal. T h e Misfit was a twenty-five-year old
named James C . Yancey. H e "was found to be of unsound mind" and committed to
the state mental hospital atMilledgeville. W h e r e else?
III. On The Misfit's Notoriety, Peregrinations,
panions , and Mental Hygiene
Good Manners, Eye-glasses,
Com-
T h e original Misfit was, as criminals go, small potatoes. Fie was an unambitious
thief, n o more. O ' C o n n o r took n o t h i n g from h i m but his imposing signature. But it
just so happens that there was another well-publicized criminal aloose in Tennessee
and Georgia just before the time that O ' C o n n o r appropriated the Misfit's name. T h i s
other hold-up artist had four important qualities in c o m m o n with her Misfit. First, h e
inspired a certain amount of terror through several states. Second, h e had, or claimed
to have, a certain politesse. Third, h e wore spectacles. Fourth, he had two accomplices, in more t h a n one account.
James Francis ("Three-Gun") Hill, the sinister celebrity of the front pages, much more
closely resembles the object of the grandmother's warnings than the original Misfit. Various
articles tell of "a fantastic record of 26 kidnappings in four states, as many robberies, 10 car
thefts, and a climactic freeing of four Florida convicts from a prison gangail in two
The Misfit' Rohs Office, Escapes With $150
A bandit who told his vie tints he
w a s " T h e Misfit," held up the Atlanta F e d e r a l Savings and Loan
Association office at 22 Marietta
St.. N. W.. and escaped with $150
cash in a daring daylight raid Wednesday afternoon.
The m a n was described as being
30 y e a r s old, six feet tall and 175
pounds in. weight. He carried a
nickel-steel .32-caliber revolver, according to J . F . C l e m m e r . assistant
vice-president of the company.
C l e m m e r told Det. Y. H. Allen
the m a n
shoved an
envelope
Ihrough the w i n d o w w h e r e a
cashier. Mrs. Beverly B r a d s h a w
of 1919 Sylvan Ridge Dr., S. W..
The article in the Atlanta Constitution,
criminal nickname "The Misfit."
w a s at work. A crudely lettered
m e s s a g e on the envelope r e a d :
" P u t 5150 in here and don't say
anything. I h a v e a gun. and 1 a m
'The Misfit.' "
Mrs. Bradshaw ducked behind
the counter. C l e m m e r said. Clemr \ e r told another cashier to "do
w h a t e v e r the m a n w a n t e d . " Then
he told the robber he'd " b e t t e r go
we're protected by the F B I . " The
bandit then fled on M a r i e t t a St.
Detectives said the description
of the man tallied with that of one
who Tuesday night held up a hotel
clerk at $7 H a r r i s St.. N. W., and
fled with $50. FBI agents joined
Atlanta police in a search.
November 6,1952, provided Fiannery O'Connor with the
kaleidoscopic weeks." He had advanced "from an obscure hoodlum to top billing as a public
enemy" (The Atlanta Constitution, November 1, p. 1). Such headlines as the grandmother
had in mind screamed of Hill (though not in the sports section that Bailey was reading):
"Maniac's Gang Ten*orizes Hills" (Constitution, October 24, p. 2, from Sparta, Tenn.);
"Search for Kidnap-Robbery Trio Centers in Atlanta and Vicinity" (October 25, p. 1,
from Atlanta); "Chattanooga Is Focal Point for M a n h u n t " (October 27, p. 26); "2nd of
Terror Gang Seized In Florida/Pal Said Still In Atlanta Area" (October 29, p. 32); "SelfStyled 3 - G u n Maniac Frees 4 Road Gang Convicts at Gunpoint" (October 31, p. 1,
from Bartow, Florida). It is quite clear that O'Connor, imagining through the grandmother's point of view, was, like the newspapers, assuming an Atlanta locale and orientation. T h e southward trip was in the same direction as Hill's last run.
T h e article of October 24 gives us a bit of color: "A fantastic band of highwaymen, led by a self-styled 'maniac' who laughed weirdly while h e looted his victims,
spread terror through the Cumberland hills today. . . . [The leader] boasted that h e
had escaped from the U t a h State Prison and 'killed two people' . . . T h e y call me a
three-gun maniac, and brother, they got the picture straight,' the head bandit was
quoted by victims." T h e October 31 article hints at the rustic setting of O ' C o n n o r ' s
story: " T h e escapees and Hill . . . drove up a dead-end road and abandoned the car.
They fled into thick woods on foot. . . . "
T h e Constitution of November 1 speaks of Hill on the front page as "the bespectacled, shrunken-cheeked highwayman." A later article gives us, as it gave O ' C o n n o r , a
clue to her Misfit's respectful modes of address ("Good afternoon . . . I pre-chate that,
lady . . . N o m e . . . I'm sorry I don't have on a shirt before you ladies . . . Yes'm . . ."):
W e read of the trial of "Accused kidnapper, James Francis (Three-Gun) Hill, who says
he's a 'gentleman-bandit' because 'I didn't cuss in front of ladies. . . ."' This Associated
Press wire story' from Chattanooga was on page 26 of the November 13 Atlanta Journal.
T h e Constitution of the same date says "Hearing Delayed for 'Maniac' Hill and 2
Cronies," and goes on to m e n t i o n "James Francis Hill, self-styled 'three-gun
maniac.'" W e may observe that both Yancey and Hill were referred to in the newspapers as "self-styled," an arresting phrase perhaps to an author attuned to extravagances
of self. I think we may also recognize here the genesis of Hiram and Bobby Lee.
T h e result of Hill's plea of guilty was perhaps n o t as forthright as his intention:
"'Maniac' Hill Is Adjudged Incompetent" (Constitution, November 18). Like Yancey,
T h e Misfit, Hill was sent to a mental institutionin Tennessee, this time. (His
cronies were sentenced to jail.) T h e diagnosis of b o t h Yancey and Hill as mentally ill
may have suggested O ' C o n n o r ' s Misfit's experiences with the "head-doctor."
IV. O n the Misfit, Memory, and Guilt
T h e fictional Misfit was n o t easily freudened: h e knew perfectly well that he had
n o t killed his daddy. Yet h e insisted there was n o balance between guilt and punishmentif memory served.
T h e issues of accuracy of memory, consciousness of guilt, and conscience were
also raised in an odd "human-interest" story that was published in those same days
w h e n O ' C o n n o r wras gathering so m u c h material from the. newspapers. T h e Misfit's
claim that h e was punished for crimes h e did n o t remember may have been inspired
by this account of a m a n w h o was not punished for a crime h e did r e m e m b e r b u t
remembered wrongly.
T h e Journal of November 5, 1952 carried t h e article, written from Brookhaven,
N e w York, on page 12: "'Murder' Didn't Happen, House Painter Free." Louis Roberts
h a d shot a policeman in 1928; he assumed h e h a d killed him. Over twenty years
later, his conscience finally forced h i m to confess. W h e n his tale was investigated, it
was discovered t h a t the policeman had survived after all. T h e r e was no prosecution
for, as a n authority was quoted as saying, "His conscience has punished him enough."
From "A Good Source Is N o t So Hard to Find"
Mary Jane Schenck (b. 1944)
Deconstructing "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
1988
"A Good M a n Is Hard to Find" presents a masterful portrait of a woman who creates
a self and a world through language. From the outset, the grandmother relies on
"texts" to structure her reality. T h e newspaper article about T h e Misfit mentioned in
the opening paragraph of the story is a written text which has a particular status in
the narrative. It refers to events outside and prior to the primary recit, but it stands as
a n unrecognized prophecy of the events which occur at the end. For Bailey, the
newspaper story is n o t important or meaningful, and for the grandmother it does n o t
represent a real threat but is part of a ploy to get her own way. It is thus the first one
of her "fictions," one which ironically comes true. T h e grandmother's whole personality is built upon the fictions she tells herself and her family. A l t h o u g h she knows
Bailey would object if she brought her cat on the trip, the grandmother sneaks the
cat into the car, justifying her behavior by imagining "he would miss her too much
and she was afraid he might brush himself against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself." She also carefully cultivates a fiction about the past when
people were good and w h e n "children were more respectful of their native states and
their parents and everything else." As she tells Red Sam at the Tower w h e n they stop
to eat, "People are certainly n o t nice like they used to be."
T h e grandmother reads fictional stories to the children, tells them ostensibly true
stories, and provides a continual gloss on the physical world they are passing. "Little niggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture."
Lacking that skill, the grandmother nevertheless verbally "creates" a whole universe as
they ride along. '"Look at the graveyard! 3 the grandmother said, pointing it out. 'That
was the old family burying ground. T h a t belonged to the plantation.'" She creates the
stories behind the visual phenomena she sees and explains relationships between events
or her own actions which have n o logic other than that which she lends them.
Her most important fiction is, of course, the story of t h e old plantation house
which becomes more of a n imperative as she tells it. T h e more she talks about it, the
more she wants to see it again, so she does n o t hesitate to self-consciously lie about it.
" T h e r e was a secret panel in this house,' she said craftily, n o t telling the truth but
wishing she were." A t this point we see clearly the performative quality of the grandmother's language. A t first it motivates her own desire, t h e n spills over o n t o the children, finally culminating in their violent outburst of screaming and kicking to get
their father to stop the car. T h e performative quality of her language becomes even
more crucial w h e n she realizes that she has fantasized the location of the house. S h e
does n o t admit it, but her thoughts manifest themselves physically: " T h e thought was
so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet
jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner." Of course, it is her physical action
which frees the cat and causes the accident. After the accident, she again fictionalizes
about her condition, hoping she is injured so she can deflect Bailey's anger, and she
cannot even manage to tell the truth about the details of the accident.
T h e scene with T h e Misfit is t h e apogee of the grandmother's use of "fictions" to
explain and control reality, attempts that are thwarted by her encounter with a character who understands there is n o reality behind her words. W h e n the grandmother
recognizes T h e Misfit, he tells her it would have been better if she hadn't, but she has
named him, thus forcing h i m to become what is behind his self-selected name. In a
desperate attempt to cope with the threat posed by the murderer, the grandmother
runs through her litany of c o n v e n i e n t fictions. She believes that there are class distinctions ("I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have c o m m o n
blood"), that appearance reflects reality ("You shouldn't call yourself T h e Misfit because I know you're a good m a n at heart. I can just look at you and tell"), that redemption can be achieved through work ("You could be honest too if you'd only try.
. . . T h i n k how wonderful it would be to settle down . . ."), and finally, that prayer
will change him ("Tray, pray,' she commanded him").
From "Deconstructing Meaning in T w o Short Stories by Flannery O ' C o n n o r "
Kathleen Feeley (b. 1929)
The Mystery of Divine Direction: "Parker's Back"
1972
In the last story O ' C o n n o r wrote, "Parker's Back," she explores the mystery of divine
direction. Unlikely candidate for God's election though h e is, O. E. Parker is "chosen," and the story illuminates the communication of that choice and the effect that
it has on his life. G o d leads Parker to understand his destiny through a strange combination of circumstances: his attraction to tattoos and his marriage to a woman who
abhors them. This story achieves a goal set by a statement which O ' C o n n o r marked
in her copy of Emmanuel Mounier's The Character of Man: "To draw mystery into the
light of day, without losing its strength and fascination, is the highest achievement
either of art or of thought." T h e "light of day" is the absolute credibility of this story;
the "mystery" is God's way with man.
A "peculiar unease" which settles in Parker when h e is fourteen years old is the
first indication of God's designs upon him. A t a fair h e sees a m a n tattooed from head
to foot; when the m a n flexes his muscles, the pattern of m e n and beasts and flowers
o n his skin appears to have a subtle motion of its own. After this vision fills his eyes,
Parker is never the same; the "unease" in h i m can be satisfied only by tattoos, which
h e gets, one after the other, all over his body, for the next fourteen years. But the "unease" remains. Each tattoo dispels it for a time, but always it returns. He longs to see
on his own body the "moving arabesque of color" that fills his imagination, but w h e n
he examines himself in a mirror, he sees only "something haphazard and blotched." It
seems as if his desire can never be satisfied, for, when the story opens, h e has only one
body-space left, and t h a t a place h e c a n n o t seehis back.
o
O n e can see in Parker's openness to life's mystery and in Sarah Ruth's certainty
about life the difference between the many who are "called" and the few who are
"chosen." Trusting exclusively in a literal interpretation of Scripture, Sarah R u t h
follows the narrow path to salvation which excludes any other means of apprehending
God. Her eyes, "gray and shaip like the points of two icepicks," reveal her determined
character. Parker's mind bends toward mystery. Since the time h e was initially
drawn to the mystery of moving color o n the body of the tattooed man, he has been
responsive to the inner promptings of his spirit, even if h e does n o t understand
them. From that time, his life has had a mysterious orientation; "it was as if a blind
boy had been turned so gently in a different direction that h e did n o t know his destination had been changed." This openness to mystery is reflected in his eyes, "which
were the same pale slate-color as the ocean and reflected the immense spaces around
him as if they were a microcosm of t h e mysterious sea." Parker, aware of mystery, is
open to the power of grace. Confronted with mystery, Sarah R u t h closes her heart.
After raising welts on the face of the Christ tattooed on her husband's back and driving h i m out of the house, she looks out of the window at h i m sobbing against a tree,
and "her eyes hardened still more." Parker had thought that his wife would like his
tattoo because "she can't say she don't like the looks of God." But his wife has a narrow conception of Divinity. W i t h her enraged assertion that "God don't look like
that! . . . Fie don't look.... He's a spirit. N o m a n shall see his face," she cuts herself off
from grace.
Searing illness may have been the catalyst which effected the transmutation of
various sources into a work of fiction. Caroline G o r d o n tells of seeing Fiannery working o n "Parker's Back" during her last illness. Miss G o r d o n writes:
I had the privilege of visiting Fiannery O ' C o n n o r in a hospital a few weeks
before her death. She told me that the doctor had forbidden her to do any
work. H e said that it was all right to write a little fiction, though, she added
with a grin and drew a notebook out from under her pillow. She kept it
there, she told me, and was trying to finish a story which she hoped to include in the volume which we b o t h knew would be published posthumously.
It seems strangely fitting that the story of a m a n led by mysterious ways to incarnate
the Redeemer o n his own body should be the final story of an author led by equally
mysterious ways to make Redemption a reality in her fiction.
From Fiannery O'Connor:
Voice of the Peacock
M fM % ' fl
WmWM. W-
.>
' * ,' ; * >, ^
^ ^ ' '*' - ^ *^ ^' - ' - * - ' ' '
r^
, * , 4 ' , , - ' " > ' ' * ' ' r >: ' - ' ' ' f . ;
410 Critical Casebook
/t f 1
WRITING
f mk % M W - f ^ j - te?
WRITING
ABOUT
AN
EFFECTIVELY
AUTHOR
How One Story illuminates Another
T h e more time we spend with someone, t h e better we k n o w t h e person. It takes
more t h a n one meeting to get a clear sense of how a person's m i n d operates. O u r
experience with authors is similar; the more stories we read by a given author, the
better we will understand t h a t author's work. W e begin to see connectionssome
obvious, others subtleamong t h e different stories. W e see h o w o n e story speaks
to another. O f t e n a writer we find challenging o n the first e n c o u n t e r (such as Joyce
or Borges) grows more accessible as we read more widely in his or her work. C h a r acteristic themes emerge. C e n t r a l ideas become evident. T h e writer's style grows
familiar.
It always helps to read an author in depth before writing o n his or her work.
Look for recurring themes and ideas. Notice whether your author seems drawn to a
particular type of character, perhaps a domineering mother or a weak husband. Pay
attention to setting; it may change from one work to the next or remain more or less
constant.
As you read deeply in an author's work, be sure to pay attention to any growth
that might take place from the start of his or her career to its end. A n author's style
might evolve. His or her attitude toward characteristic themes or ideas might change
over time.
Finally, learn what you can about your author's life. Knowing a thing or two
about biographical details can shed some light on the sources of the writer's interests
and preoccupations. T h e Internet is an excellent source of brief author biographies.
For any of the authors in this book, be sure to read the biographical information presented before each story.
As you think about an author's work, you need not reflect on all these issues, but
considering some of them will help clarify your ideas about a writer and also help define a useful topic for your paper.
CHECKLIST
Reading an Author In Depth
S Do similar or identical themes reappear in different stories?
S Do certain ideas emerge repeatedly in the work?
S Do the different stories contain characters that seem similar in type?
^ Does the setting change or remain constant from story to story?
S Does the author's style change from one story to the next, or does it remain
fairly constant?
S How does the author's attitude toward his or her characteristic themes and
ideas evolve over time?
S Does the author have an identifiable literary personality? Does he or she
have a characteristic tone, style, subject, or thematic concerns?
S Look for some basic biographical information. Does knowing a bit about the
author's life shed any light on the work?
Writing Effectively 411
WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
ON
AN
AUTHOR
Read three stories by Flannery O'Connor, or any one of the writers who appears in this book.
Identify a theme or idea common to all three stories. Write an essay describing how your chosen author treats this theme. Support your argument with evidence from all three stories.
MORE
TOPICS
FOR
WRITING
1. Compare and contrast a pair of characters from two different stories who feel conceptually related. Good choices might be Sarah Ruth from "Parker's Back/' Mary Grace or Mrs. Turpin
from "Revelation," and the grandmother in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Do these
characters play similar roles in their respective stories?
2. All three stories are about revelations of one kind or another. How do these three revelations relate to each other? Back up your argument with evidence from the three stories.
3. In the exceipt from "On Her Own Work," O'Connor writes:
I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story,
and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that
is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the
story lies. This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right
and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity. . . . It would be
a gesture which somehow made contact with mystery.
While O'Connor is speaking specifically about "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," her words
can be applied to her other stories. Choose a gesture from "Revelation" or "Parker's Back"
that fits this description, and explain your choice.
4. In 750
to 1,000 words, comment on O'Connor's use of humor. How does comedy help her
say what she has to say?
11
Critical Casebook
Three Stories in Depth
Edgar AS!am Poe ^TheTell-Tale Heart
Charlotte Perkins Gilman ^ The Yellow Wallpaper
ASsce Walker Everyday Use
Edgar Afllan Poe
Edgar Poe was born in Boston in January 1809,
the second son of actors Eliza and David Poe.
Edgar inherited his family's legacy of artistic talent, financial instability, and social inferiority
(actors were not considered respectable people in
the nineteenth century). Although Poe later
demonstrated both his mother's expressive gifts
and his father s problems with alcohol, he never
really knew his parents. His father abandoned
the family after the birth of Edgar's little sister,
Rosalie, and his mother died of tuberculosis in a
Richmond} Virginia, boarding house before
Edgar turned three.
Eliza Poe's brilliance on stage had earned
her many fans and their compassion saved her
EDGAR ALLAN POE
children. Edgar was taken in by the wealthy John
and Frances Allan of Richmond, whose name he added to his own. John Allan educated his
foster son at first-rate schools, where the boy excelled in all subjects. Edgar, however, grew
from a precocious and charming child into a moody adolescent, and his relationship with his
foster father deteriorated. His first year at the University of Virginia was marked by scholastic success as well as alcoholic binges and gambling debts. Disgraced, Poe fled to Boston,
where he joined the army under the name Edgar Perry. He performed well as an enlisted
man and published his first collection of poetry, Tamerlane and O t h e r Poems, at the age of
eighteen.
After an abortive stint at West Point led to a final break with his foster father, Edgar
Allan Poe became a full-time writer and editor. Morbidly sensitive to criticism at anytime,
and paranoid and belligerent when drunk, Poe left or was fired from every post he held.
Nevertheless, he was a respected literary critic and editor and sharply improved both the
content and circulation of every magazine with which he was associated. Unfortunately, he
was never paid well for his work, either as an editor or a freelance writer. Works such as
"The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Raven," both of which made him famous,
earned him almost nothing in his lifetime.
After the break with his foster family, Poe rediscovered his own. From 1831 on, Poe
lived with his father s widowed sister, Maria Clemm, and her daughter Virginia. In 1836
Poe married this thirteen-year-old first cousin, and these women provided Poe with muchneeded emotional stability. However, like his mother, Virginia died of tuberculosis at age
twenty-four, her demise doubtless hastened by poverty.
Poes life came apart after his wife's death; his drinking intensified, as did his self-destructive tendencies. In October 1849 Edgar Allan Poe died in mysterious circumstances, a
few days after being found sick and incoherent on a Baltimore street.
The Tell-Tale Heart
(1843) 1850
True!nervousvery, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will
you say that I am mad? T h e disease had sharpened my sensesnot destroyednot
dulled them. A b o v e all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the
h e a v e n and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthilyhow calmly, I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it
haunted m e day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved
the old man. H e had never wronged me. H e had never given me insult. For his gold I
had n o desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! O n e of his eyes resembled that of
a vulturea pale blue eye, with a film over it. W h e n e v e r it fell upon me, my blood
ran cold; and so by degreesvery graduallyI made up my mind to take the life of
the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Nowr this is the point. You fancy me mad. M a d m e n know nothing. But you
should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceededwith what cautionwith what foresightwith what dissimulation I went to work! I was never
kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. A n d every
night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened itoh, so gently!
A n d then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern,
all closed, closed, so that n o light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. O h , you
would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowlyvery, very
slowly, so that I might n o t disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my
whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.
Ha!w r ould a madman have been so wise as this? A n d then, w r hen my head was well
in the room, I undid the lantern cautiouslyoh, so cautiouslycautiously (for the
hinges creaked)I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture
eye. A n d this I did for seven long nightsevery night just at midnightbut I found
the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old
m a n who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. A n d every morning, when the day broke, I went
boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by n a m e in a
hearty tone, and inquiring how h e had passed the night. So you see he would have
been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I
looked in upon h i m while h e slept.
U p o n the eighth night I was more t h a n usually cautious in opening the door. A
watch's minute h a n d moves more quickly t h a n did mine. N e v e r before that night had I felt the extent of my own powersof my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my
feelings of triumph. T o think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and
he n o t even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at t h e idea;
and perhaps he heard me; for h e moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. N o w you
may think that I drew backbut no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick
darkness (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers), and so I knew
that he could n o t see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily,
steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped
upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying o u t "Who's
there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and
in the meantime I did n o t hear h i m lie down. H e was still sitting up in t h e bed, listening;just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches 0 in
the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It
was not a groan of pain or of griefoh, no!it was the low stifled sound that arises
from the bottom of the soul w h e n overcharged with awe. I knew the sound very well.
Many a night, just at midnight, w7hen all the world slept, it has welled up from my own
bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it
well. I knew what the old m a n felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I
knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when h e had
turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. H e had been trying to fancy t h e m causeless, but could not. H e had been saying to himself "It is
nothing but the wind in the chimneyit is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "it is
merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort
himself with these suppositions; but h e had found all in vain. All in vain; because
Death, in approaching him, had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. A n d it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow
that caused him to feelalthough he neither saw nor heardto feel the presence of
my head within the room.
W h e n I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing h i m lie down,
I resolved to o p e n a littlea very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened
ityou c a n n o t imagine how stealthily, stealthilyuntil, at length, a single dim
ray, like t h e thread of the spider, shot from out of t h e crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.
It was o p e n w i d e , wide o p e n a n d I grew furious as I gazed u p o n it. I saw it
with perfect distinctnessall a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it t h a t chilled
the very marrow in my bones; but I could see n o t h i n g else of t h e old man's face or
person: for I h a d directed t h e ray as if by instinct, precisely u p o n t h e d a m n e d spot.
A n d now have I n o t told you that what you mistake for madness is but overacuteness of t h e senses? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound,
such as a watch makes w h e n enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was
t h e beating of t h e old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
death ivatches: beetles that infest timbers. Their clicking sound was thought to be an omen of death.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the
hellish tattoo of t h e heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and
louder every instant. T h e old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I
say, louder every moment!do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so
I am. A n d now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old
house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought
the heart must burst. A n d now a new anxiety seized m e t h e sound would be heard by
a neighbor! T h e old man's hour had come! W i t h a loud yell, I threw open the lantern
and leaped into the room. H e shrieked onceonce only. In an instant I dragged him to
the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I t h e n smiled gaily, to find the deed so far
done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however,
did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. A t length it ceased. T h e old
man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone
dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes.
If still you think me mad, you will think so n o longer w h e n I describe the wise
precautions I took for the concealment of the body. T h e night waned, and I worked
hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the
arms and the legs.
I t h e n took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all
between the scantlings. I t h e n replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no
h u m a n eyenot even hiscould h a v e detected anything wrong. T h e r e was n o t h i n g
to wash o u t n o stain of any k i n d n o blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for
that. A tub had caught allha! ha!
W h e n I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clockstill dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went
down to open it with a light heart,for what had I now to fear? T h e r e entered three
men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A
shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night; suspicion of foul play had been
aroused, information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had
been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled,for what had I to fear? I bade t h e gentlemen welcome. T h e shriek, I
said, was my own in a dream. T h e old man, 1 mentioned, was absent in the country. I
took my visitors all over the house. I bade them searchsearch well I led them, at
length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest
from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed
my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
T h e officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at
ease. T h e y sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere
long, I felt myself getting pale and wished t h e m gone. My head ached, and I fancied a
ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. T h e ringing became more distinct:it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the
feeling: but it continued and gained definitivenessuntil, at length, I found that the
noise was not within my ears.
N o doubt I now grew very pale:but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet t h e sound increasedand what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick
soundmuch such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for
15
breathand yet t h e officers heard it not. I talked more quicklymore vehemently;
but the noise steadily increased. 1 arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. W h y would they n o t be
gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the m e n b u t the noise steadily increased. O h God! what could I do? I
foamedI ravedI swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and
grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It
grew louderlouderlouder! A n d still the m e n chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was
it possible they heard not? Almighty G o d ! n o , no! T h e y heard!they suspected!
they knew!they were making a mockery of my horror!this I thought, and this I
think. But anything was better t h a n this agony! A n y t h i n g was more tolerable t h a n
this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles n o longer! I felt t h a t I must
scream or die!and nowagain!hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble n o more! I admit the deed!tear up the
planks!here, here!it is the beating of his hideous heart!"
QUESTIONS
1. From what point of view is Poe's story told? Why is this point of view particularly effective
for "The Tell-Tale Heart"?
2. Point to details in the story that identify its speaker as an unreliable narrator.
3. What do we know about the old man in the story? What motivates the narrator to kill him?
4. In spite of all his precautions, the narrator does not commit the perfect crime. What trips
him up?
5. How do you account for the police officers' chatting calmly with the murderer instead of
reacting to the sound that stirs the murderer into a frenzy?
6. See the student essays on this story in the chapter "Writing About a Story" later in the
book. What do they point out that enlarges your own appreciation of Poe's art?
EDGAR ALLAN POE ON WRITING
The Tale and Its Effect
1842
W e r e we called upon, however, to designate that class of composition which, next
to [a short lyric poem], should best fulfill the demands of high geniusshould offer
it t h e most advantageous field of exertionwe should unhesitatingly speak of the
prose tale, as Mr. H a w t h o r n e has here exemplified it. W e allude to the short prose
narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal. T h e ordinary
novel is objectionable, from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. As it
c a n n o t be read at o n e sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal,
modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book.
But simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true
unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the fullness of his
intention, be it what it may. During t h e hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at
t h e writer's control. T h e r e are n o external or extrinsic influencesresulting from
weariness or interruption.
A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, h e has n o t fashioned his
thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care,
a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, h e t h e n invents such incidents
h e t h e n combines such events as may best aid h i m in establishing this preconceived
effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the out-bringing of this effect, t h e n he
has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be n o word written,
of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is n o t to t h e one pre-established design.
A n d by such means, writh such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which
leaves in the mind of h i m who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the
fullest satisfaction. T h e idea of t h e tale has been presented unblemished, because
undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable by t h e novel. U n d u e brevity is just as
exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.
From a review of Tivice-Told Tales by N a t h a n i e l H a w t h o r n e
"The Tell-Tale Heart" scene from The Acting Company's 2003
production of Murder by Poe
On Imagination
1849
T h e pure Imagination chooses, from either Beauty or Deformity, only the most combinable things hitherto uncombined; the compound, as a general rule, partaking, in character, of beauty, or sublimity, in the ratio of the respective beauty or sublimity of the
things combinedwhich are themselves still to be considered as atomicthat is to
say, as previous combinations. But, as often analogously happens in physical chemistry, so not infrequently does it occur in this chemistry of the intellect, that the admixture of two elements results in a something that has nothing of the qualities of one
of them, or even nothing of the qualities of either. . . Thus, the range of Imagination
is unlimited. Its materials extend throughout the universe. Even out of deformities it
fabricates that Beauty which is at once its sole object and its inevitable test. But, in
general, the richness or force of the matters combined; the facility for discovering
combinable novelties worth combining; and, especially the absolute "chemical combination" of the completed massare the particulars to be regarded in our estimate of
Imagination. It is this thorough harmony of an imaginative work which so often
causes it to be undervalued by the thoughtless, through the character of obviousness
which is superinduced. W e are apt to find ourselves asking why it is that these combinations have never been imagined before.
From "Marginalia," Southern Literary Messenger
The Philosophy of Composition
1846
N o t h i n g is more clear t h a n that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its
denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with t h e denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence,
or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to
the development of the intention.
T h e r e is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. Either
history affords a thesisor one is suggested by an incident of the dayor, at best, the
author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the
basis of his narrativedesigning, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or
autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent.
I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in viewfor h e is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and
so easily attainable a source of interestI say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, t h e intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best
wrought by incident or t o n e w h e t h e r by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or
the converse, or by peculiarity b o t h of incident and toneafterward looking about
me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in
the construction of the effect.
From " T h e Philosophy of Composition"
CRITICS ON "THE TELL-TALE HEART"
Illustration for "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Arthur Rackham from
Poe's Tales of Mystery & Imagination (1935)
Damsel Hoffman (b. 1923)
The Father-Figure In "The Tell-Tale Heart"
1972
T h e r e are no parents in the tales of Edgar Poe, nary a M u m nor a Dad. Instead all is
symbol. A n d what does this total repression of b o t h sonhood and parenthood signify
but that to acknowledge such relationships is to venture into territory too dangerous,
too terrifying, for specificity. Desire and hatred are alike insatiable and unallayed. But
the terrible war of superego upon the id, the endless battle between conscience and
impulse, the unsleeping enmity of t h e self and its Imp of the Perversethese struggles are enacted and reenacted in Poe's work, but always in disguise.
Take " T h e Tell-Tale Heart," surely one of his nearly perfect tales. It's only four
pages long, a triumph of the art of economy:
How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthilyhow calmly I
can tell you the whole story.
W h e n a narrator commences in this vein, we know h i m to be mad already. But we
also know his author to be sane. For with such precision to portray the methodicalness of a m a d m a n is the work n o t of a madman but of a m a n who truly understands
what it is to be mad. Artistic control is the warrant of auctorial sanity. It is axiomatic
in the psychiatric practice of our century that self-knowledge is a necessary condition
for the therapeutic process. Never using t h e language of t h e modern diagnostician
which was unavailable to him in the first place, and which in any case h e didn't
needPoe demonstrates the extent of his self-knowledge in his manipulation of
symbolic objects and actions toward ends which his tales embody.
T h e events are few, the action brief. "I" (in the story) believes himself sane because he is so calm, so methodical, so fully aware and in control of his purpose. Of
course his knowledge of that purpose is limited, while his recital thereof endows the
reader with a greater knowledge t h a n his own. "The disease," h e says right at the start,
"had sharpened my senses. . . . Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all
things in the heavens and in the earth. I heard many things in hell." N o w of whom
can this be said but a delusional person? A t the same time, mad as he is, this narrator
is the hero of sensibility. His heightened senses bring close both heaven and hell.
His plot is motiveless. "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved
the old man. He had never wronged me. H e had never given me insult. For his gold I
had no desire." T h e crime h e is about to commit will be all t h e more terrible because
apparently gratuitous. But let us n o t be lulled by this narrator's lack of admitted motive. H e may have a m o t i v e o n e w h i c h h e c a n n o t admit, even to himself.
Nowhere does this narrator explain what relationship, if any, exists between h i m
and the possessor of the Evil Eye. W e do, however, learn from his tale that he and the
old man live under the same roofapparently alone together, for there's n o evidence
of anyone else's being in the house. Is the young m a n the old man's servant? O d d
that h e would n o t say so. Perhaps the youth is the old man's son. Quite natural that
he should n o t say so. "I loved the old man. H e had never wronged me. . . . I was never
kinder to the old m a n t h a n during the whole week before I killed him." Such the aggressive revulsion caused by t h e old man's Evil Eye!
W h a t can this be all about? T h e Evil Eye is a belief as old and as dire as any in man's
superstitious memory, and it usually signifies the attribution to another of a power
wished for by the self. In this particular case there are other vibrations emanating from
the vulture-like eye of the benign old man. Insofar as we have warrantwhich I
think we d o t o take h i m as a father-figure, his Eye becomes t h e all-seeing surveillance of the child by the father, even by T h e Father. This surveillance is of course the
origin of the child's conscience, the inculcation into his soul of the paternal principles of right and wrong. A s such, the old man's eye becomes a ray to be feared. For if
the boy deviates ever so little from the strict paths of rectitude, it will find him out
Could he but rid himself of its all-seeing scrutiny, h e would t h e n be free of his
subjection to time.
All the more so if the father-figure in this tale be, in one of his aspects, a FatherFigure. As, to an infant, his own natural father doubtless is. As, to the baby Eddie, his
foster-father may have been. Perhaps he had even a subliminal memory of his natural
father, who so early deserted him, eye and all, to the hard knocks experience held in
store. So, the evil in that Evil Eye is likely a mingling of the stern reproaches of conscience with the reminder of his own subjection to time, age, and death.
From Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe
Scott PeepSes
(b.1963)
"The Tell-Tale Heart" as a Love Story
1998
It might seem strange to classify u T h e Tell-Tale Heart" and " T h e Black Cat," two of
Poe's infamous "tales of terror/' as love stories. Certainly neither treats love as a goal
or an answer to its main character's problems; rather, love itself is the problem. "I
loved the old man," the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" explains early in the story,
and yet he kills him. Does he kill him even though h e loves him, or because h e loves
him? T h e narrator does n o t divulge his legal relationship to the old m a n h e could
be his landlord, his uncle, a friendbut most readers seem to agree with Daniel Hoffman's claim that h e is a "father figure" if n o t literally his father. T h e narrator knows
h i m very well, or at least believes he does, for h e identifies the old man's thoughts as
his own, even as h e awaits his opportunity to kill him:
Presently I h e a r d a slight groan, a n d I k n e w it was t h e groan of mortal
terror. . . . it was t h e low stifled sound t h a t arises from the b o t t o m of t h e
soul w h e n overcharged w i t h awe. I k n e w t h e sound very well. Many a
n i g h t , just at m i d n i g h t , w h e n all t h e world slept, it has welled up from
my o w n bosom, d e e p e n i n g , with its dreadful echo, t h e terrors t h a t distracted me. I say I k n e w it well. I k n e w w h a t t h e old m a n felt, and pitied
h i m , a l t h o u g h I c h u c k l e d at h e a r t .
T h e ability to duplicate the thought processes of another person becomes a valuable
skill for Monsieur Dupin in Poe's detective tales, but here the narrator's knowledge of
what the old m a n thinks and feels is n o t so m u c h an ability as the inevitable result of
their intimacy. Here is a rather commonplace instance of doubling: h e feels the old
m a n in himself, as sons often feel the presence of their fathers.
T h e narrator kills t h e old man, h e says, because of his Evil Eye. Superstitions and
folklore notwithstanding, this explanation is proof of what almost every reader intuits from the story's opening: t h e narrator is insane. But the story invites us to find a
method to the narrator's madness, to locate t h e logic b e n e a t h the insanity. A f t e r all,
the narrator fulfills his promise to tell the story "healthily" and "calmly" (at least until the last two paragraphs), and h e does have t h e presence of mind to engineer the
perfect crime, although h e lacks the self-restraint to keep quiet about it. T h e keys to
his mad logic are two obsessions: although h e names t h e Evil Eye as his motive, h e is
equally obsessed with time-keeping. H e makes a point of looking in on the old m a n
"just at twelve" and notes that "[i]t took me an hour to place my whole head within
the opening," and that on the fatal eighth night, "[a] watch's minute h a n d moves
more quickly t h a n did mine." Twice h e compares the sound t h a t haunts h i m t h e
beating of a h e a r t t o the sound "a watch makes w h e n enveloped in cotton." O n
the night of the murder, he believes t h a t the old m a n is "listening;just as I have
done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall." This last
detail is particularly ripe with implications. T h e "death watch" is a n insect that, as
part of its mating ritual, rhythmically strikes its head against the wood to which it has.
attached itself. T h e n a m e emphasizes the double meaning of watch: b o t h a timepiece
(enveloped in cotton) and a period of watching, specifically anticipating deathprecisely what the narrator, and perhaps the old man, is doing. A n d although love is
probably n o t a c o m p o n e n t of the mating practices of bugs, the h u m a n association between love and mating makes the death watch a n uncanny figure for the narrator's
relationship with the old man: h e loves him but wishes for his death.
From Edgar Allan Poe Revisited
John Chua
The Figure of the Double in Poe
1998
A salient feature in many of Edgar Allan Poe's stories is the concept of a nemesis appearing as a doppelganger. A doppelganger is a doublean apparitional twin or counterpart to another living person. In Poe's stories involving a doppelganger, the protagonist identifies closely with the antagonist and vice versa. T h e double appears in
such stories as "The Purloined Letter," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The
Tell-Tale Heart." T h e idea of the protagonist fighting a counterpart occurs so often
in Poe's works that critics often suggest that it indicates Poe's attempts to work out,
through his writings, his own inner conflicts and psychological struggles.
T h e identification of the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" with the old m a n is a
primary motif in the story. Many times throughout the story, the narrator says that h e
knows how the old man feels. H e claims to know the groans of the old man, and that
he too had experienced t h e same m o a n s n o t of pain or sadness but of mortal terror.
It is a terror which "arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe."
T h e narrator says: "I knew the sound very well. Many a night, just at midnight, when
all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful
echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old m a n
felt." T h e narrator knows such fearful restlessness first hand: "Fie [the old man] was
still sitting up in the bed, listening;just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall." T h u s the narrator and the old m a n are on such
equal footing that they seem almost like the same person.
Ostensibly, the protagonist has n o rational reason for wanting to kill the old
man. Indeed, h e claims t h e old m a n has never done him wrong and that he loves h i m
and does n o t want his money. W h y , then, is there a need for murder? "Object there
was none. Passion there was none," says the narrator. N e i t h e r does the narrator explain how or why exactly the old man's "pale blue eye, with a film over it" bothers
him so greatly. In fact h e only thinks it was the eye that first prompted h i m with murderous thoughts: "I think it was his eye! yes, it was this!" Critic Charles E. May, however, interprets the "eye" not as a n organ of vision but as the h o m o n y m of "I." Thus,
what the narrator ultimately wants to destroy is the self, and h e succumbs to this urge
when he could n o longer contain his overwhelming sense of guilt.
In Poe's works involving protagonists and doppelgangers, the characters exist in a
moral vacuum. Poe's concerns with aesthetics, style, and effect o n the reader override
concerns with moral issues.... Poe rejected the position of many of his contemporaries
Critics on
who valued the utilitarian nature of literature and who also believed that literature
should be instructive and provide moral guidance. Poe called their ideological position "the heresy of t h e didactic." Poe's writing aims at a concentrated effect on or
emotional response from the reader; the moral positions of the protagonist, antagonist, or other characters do n o t play a prominent role in the stories. Morally, therefore, the protagonist and his double are identical. T h e elimination of the doppelganger
becomes a destruction of a moral twinsometimes a self-destructive act.
[In] " T h e T e l l - T a l e H e a r t , " o n e c a n thus argue t h a t t h e murder becomes an act of
suicide a n d t h a t t h e protagonist and t h e a n t a g o n i s t are moral equals. T a k i n g this
a r g u m e n t o n e step f u r t h e r , o n e c a n suggest t h a t t h e two characters could well be
t h e same person. Ostensibly, t h e police find n o trace of a n old m a n in t h e house.
T h e n a r r a t o r h a s h i d d e n h i m so well t h a t t h e old m a n may exist only in t h e narrator's m i n d . S o m e critics imply t h a t t h e beating h e a r t is really t h e sound of t h e
narrator's o w n h e a r t b e a t . A s his e x c i t e m e n t , nervousness, and guilt m o u n t , his
h e a r t b e a t seems to grow louder to his overly acute senses. In t h e end, t h e narrator tells t h e police t h a t h e was t h e o n e w h o shrieked, waking himself up f r o m a
n i g h t m a r e and a dreamlike logic as well as destroying a n e n e m y w h i c h might n o t
h a v e existed.
Critics who have studied Poe sometimes suggest that his characters resemble h i m
b o t h physically and temperamentally. Similarities can be seen between physical descriptions of Roderick Usherparticularly his pale face and large luminous eyes
and of photographs (daguerreotypes) of Poe. Parallels can also be drawn between the
conflicts between the protagonists and antagonists in Poe's works and Poe's difficult
financial and emotional relationship with his foster father, J o h n Allan. Such conflicts in his writings as the struggles of t h e protagonist against the doppelganger and
overwhelming inexplicable natural forces represent a therapeutic banishment of
Poe's own inner demons and psychological struggles.
From " T h e T w i n and the Doppelganger
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
was
born in Hartford, Connecticut. Her father was
the writer Frederick Beecher Perkins (a nephew
of reformer-novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of U n c l e Tom's Cabin, and abolitionist
minister Henry Ward Beecher), but he abandoned the family shortly after his daughter s birth.
Raised in meager surroundings, the young
Gilman adopted her intellectual Beecher aunts as
role models. Because she and her mother moved
from one relation to another, Gilman s early education was neglectedat fifteen, she had had
only four years of schooling. In 1878 she studied
commercial art at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1884 she married Walter Stetson, an
artist. After the birth of her one daughter, she experienced a severe depression. The rest cure her doctor prescribed became the basis of her
most famous story, "The Yellow Wallpaper." This tale combines standard elements of
Gothic fiction (the isolated country mansion, the brooding atmosphere of the room, the aloof
but dominating husband) with the fresh clarity of Gilman s feminist perspective. Gilman s
first marriage ended in an amicable divorce. A celebrated essayist and public speaker,
She became an important early figure in American feminism. Her study W o m e n and
Economics (1898) stressed the importance of both sexes having a place in the working
world. Her feminist-Utopian novel Herland (1915) describes a thriving nation of women
without men. In 1900 Gilman married a second timethis time, more happilyto her
cousin George Houghton Gilman. Following his sudden death in 1934, Gilman discovered
she had inoperable breast cancer. After finishing her autobiography, she killed herself with
chloroform in Pasadena, California.
The Yellow Wallpaper
1892
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like J o h n and myself secure ancestral
halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a h a u n t e d house and reach
the height of romantic felicitybut that would be asking too m u c h of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? A n d why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that.
John is practical in the extreme. H e has n o patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and h e scoffs openly at any talk of things n o t to be felt and seen
and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps(I would n o t say it to a living soul, of course,
but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)perhaps that is one reason I do
n o t get well faster.
You see, h e does n o t believe I am sick! A n d what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really n o t h i n g the matter with one but temporary nervous depressiona slight hysterical tendencywhat is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same
thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphiteswhichever it isand tonics, and air and
exercise, and journeys, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would
do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good dealhaving to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that in my condition, if I had less opposition and more society
and stimulusbut J o h n says t h e very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about the house.
T h e most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road,
quite three miles from t h e village. It makes me think of English places that you read
about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little
houses for the gardeners and people.
T h e r e is a delicious garden! I never saw such a gardenlarge and shady, full of
box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.
T h e r e were greenhouses, but they are all broken now.
T h e r e was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and co-heirs;
anyhow, the place has been empty for years.
T h a t spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't carethere is something
strange about the houseI can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but h e said what I felt was a
draught, and shut the window.
I get unreasonably angry with J o h n sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.
But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myselfbefore him, at least, and that makes me very tired.
I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened o n t o the piazza
and had roses all over t h e window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings!
But John would n o t hear of it.
H e said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and n o near
room for h i m if he took another.
H e is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in t h e day; he takes all care from
me, and so I feel basely ungrateful n o t to value it more.
H e said he came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and
all t h e air I could get. "Your cxcrcisc depends on your strength, my dear," said he,
"and your food somewhat o n your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." So
we took the nursery at the top of t h e house.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways,
and air and sunshine galore. It was a nursery first, and t h e n playroom and gymnasium,
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I should judge, for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and
things in the walls.
T h e paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped o f f t h e
paperin great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach,
and in a great place o n t h e other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. O n e of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly
to irritate and provoke study, and w h e n you follow the lame uncertain curves for a
little distance they suddenly commit suicideplunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.
T h e color is repellent, almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely
faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly
sulphur tint in others.
N o wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this
room long.
There comes John, and I must put this awayhe hates to have me write a word.
W e h a v e been here two weeks, and I h a v e n ' t felt like writing before, since that
first day.
I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is n o t h ing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.
John is away all day, and even some nights w h e n his cases are serious.
I am glad my case is n o t serious!
But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.
John does not know how much I really suffer. H e knows there is n o reason to suffer,
and that satisfies him.
Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so n o t to do my duty in any
way!
I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a
comparative burden already!
Nobody would believe what a n effort it is to do what little I am ableto dress
and entertain, and order things.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!
A n d yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.
I suppose J o h n never was nervous in his life. H e laughs at m e so about this
wallpaper!
A t first he meant to repaper the room, but afterward he said that I was letting it
get the better of me, and that n o t h i n g was worse for a nervous patient than to give
way to such fancies.
H e said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead,
and t h e n the barred windows, and t h e n t h a t gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.
"You know the place is doing you good," h e said, "and really, dear, I don't care to
renovate the house just for a three months' r e n t a l "
" T h e n do let us go downstairs," I said. "There are such pretty rooms there."
T h e n h e took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he
would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and h a v e it whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about t h e beds and windows and things.
It is as airy and comfortable a room as anyone need wish, and, of course, 1 would
n o t be so silly as to make h i m uncomfortable just for a whim.
PHI really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.
O u t of one window I can see the gardenthose mysterious deep-shaded arbors,
t h e riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.
O u t of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to
the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always
fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned
me not to give way to fancy in the least. H e says that with my imaginative power and
habit of storymaking, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited
fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.
I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve
t h e press of ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired w h e n I try.
It is so discouraging n o t to have any advice and companionship about my work.
W h e n I get really well, J o h n says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long
visit; but he says h e would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have
those stimulating people about now.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must n o t think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!
T h e r e is a recurrent spot where t h e pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.
I get positively angry with t h e impertinence of it and the everlastingness. U p
and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd unblinking eyes are everywhere.
T h e r e is one place where two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down
the line, one a little higher t h a n the other.
I never saw so m u c h expression in an inanimate thing before, and we ail know
how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entert a i n m e n t and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture t h a n most children could
find in a toy-store.
I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and
there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.
I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always h o p
into that chair and be safe.
T h e furniture in this room is n o worse t h a n inharmonious, however, for we had
to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose w h e n this was used as a playroom they had
to take the nursery things out, and n o wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.
T h e wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer t h a n a
brotherthey must have h a d perseverance as well as hatred.
T h e n the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out
here and there, and this great heavy bed, which is all we found in the room, looks as
if it had been through the wars.
But I don't mind it a bitonly the paper.
T h e r e comcs John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so carcful of me! I must
n o t let her find me writing.
She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession.
I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!
But I can write w h e n she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.
There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just
looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.
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This wallpaper has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just soI can see a
strange, provoking, formless sort of figure t h a t seems to skulk about behind that silly
and conspicuous front design.
There's sister o n the stairs!
Well, the Fourth of July is over! T h e people are all gone, and I am tired out. John
thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had Mother and Nellie
and the children down for a week.
Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.
But it tired me ail the same.
John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell 0 in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and
she says h e is just like John and my brother, only more so!
Besides, it is such a n undertaking to go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worthwhile to turn my h a n d over for anything, and I'm
getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
Of course I don't w h e n J o h n is here, or anybody else, but w h e n I am alone.
A n d I am alone a good deal just now. J o h n is kept in town very often by serious
cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone w h e n I want her to.
So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit 011 the porch under
the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.
I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of
the wallpaper.
It dwells in my mind so!
I lie here on this great immovable bedit is nailed down, I believeand follow
that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll
say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has n o t been touched, and
I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some
sort of a conclusion.
I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged
on any laws of radiation, 0 or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else
that I ever heard of.
It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but n o t otherwise.
Looked at in one way, each breadth stands alone; the bloated curves and flourishesa kind of "debased Romanesque" w7ith delirium tremensgo waddling up and
down in isolated columns of fatuity.
But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off
in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing sea-weeds in full chase.
T h e whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself
trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.
Weir Mitchell (1829-1914): famed nerve specialist who actually treated the author, Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, for nervous prostration with his well-known ''rest cure." (The cure was not successful.) Also
the author of Diseases of the Nervous System, Especially of Women (1881).
laws of radiation: a principle of design in which all elements are arranged in some circular pattern
around a center.
flHHMHHHHEHHP
^'
T h e y have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to
the confusion.
T h e r e is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, w h e n the 100
crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation
after allthe interminable grotesque seems to form around a c o m m o n center and
rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.
It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap, I guess.
I don't know why I should write this.
I don't want to.
I don't feel able.
A n d I know J o h n would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in 105
some wayit is such a relief!
But the effort is getting to be greater t h a n the relief.
Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much. J o h n says I
mustn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things,
to say n o t h i n g of ale and wines and rare meat.
Dear John! H e loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a
real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish h e would
let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did n o t
make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had. finished.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weak- 110
ness, I suppose.
A n d dear J o h n gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid
me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.
H e said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take
care of myself for his sake, and keep well.
H e says n o one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and selfcontrol and n o t let any silly fancies run away with me.
There's one c o m f o r t t h e baby is well and happy, and does n o t have to occupy
this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.
If we had n o t used it, that blessed child would have! W h a t a fortunate escape! 115
Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a
room for worlds.
I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that J o h n kept me here after all; I can
stand it so much easier t h a n a baby, you see.
Of course I never m e n t i o n it to t h e m any moreI am too wisebut I keep
watch for it all the same.
T h e r e are things in the wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern t h e dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
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A n d it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I
don't like it a bit. I wonder- I begin to t h i n k I wish John would take me away from
here!
It is so hard to talk with J o h n about my case, because h e is so wise, and because
he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. T h e moon shines in all around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy.
T h e faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.
I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came
back John w7as awake.
" W h a t is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like thatyou'll get
cold."
I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was n o t gaining
here, and that I washed he would take me away.
"Why, darling!" said he. "Our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can't see how
to leave before.
"The repairs are n o t done at home, and I c a n n o t possibly leave town just now.
Of course, if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better,
dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining
flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really m u c h easier about you."
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my appetite may be better in
the evening when you are here but it is worse in the morning when you are away!"
"Bless her little heart!" said h e with a big hug. "She shall be as sick as she
pleases! But now let's improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it
in the morning!"
" A n d you won't go away?" I asked gloomily.
"Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and t h e n we will take a nice
little trip for a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really, dear, you are
better!"
"Better in body perhaps" I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and
looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could n o t say another word.
"My darling," said he, "I beg you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as wrell as
for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! T h e r e
is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and
foolish fancy. C a n you trust me as a physician w h e n I tell you so?"
So of course I said n o more o n that score, and we went to sleep before long. H e
thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there for hours trying to decide
whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.
O n a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law,
that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.
T h e color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but
the pattern is torturing.
You t h i n k you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following,
it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in t h e face, knocks you
down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.
T h e outside pattern is a florid arabesque, 0 reminding one of a fungus. If you can
imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and
sprouting in endless convolutionswhy, that is something like it.
arabesque: a type of ornamental style (Arabic in origin) that uses flowers, foliage, fruit, or other figures to create an intricate pattern of interlocking shapes and lines.
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T h a t is, sometimes!
T h e r e is o n e marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice
but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.
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W h e n the sun shoots in through t h e east w i n d o w I always watch for t h a t first
long, straight r a y i t changes so quickly t h a t I never c a n quite believe it.
T h a t is why I watch it always.
By m o o n l i g h t t h e m o o n shines in all night w h e n there is a m o o n I wouldn't
k n o w it was the same paper.
A t night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all
by moonlight, it becomes bars! T h e outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind
it is as plain as c a n be.
I didn't realize for a long time what the thing wyas that showed behind, t h a t dim
subpattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.
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By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern t h a t keeps her so still. It
is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.
I lie down ever so m u c h now. J o h n says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.
Indeed he started the habit by making m e lie down for an hour after each meal.
It is a very bad habit, I am c o n v i n c e d , for you see, I don't sleep.
A n d that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell t h e m I'm a w a k e o h , 110!
T h e fact is I am getting a little afraid of J o h n .
H e seems very queer sometimes, and even J e n n i e has an inexplicable look.
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It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that perhaps it is the paper!
I have watched J o h n w h e n h e did n o t know I was looking, and c o m e into the
room suddenly o n the most i n n o c e n t excuses, and I've caught h i m several times
looking at the paper! A n d J e n n i e too. I caught J e n n i e with h e r hand on it o n c e .
S h e didn't know I was in the room, and w h e n I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet 160
voice, with the most restrained m a n n e r possible, what she was doing with the paper,
she turned around as if she had b e e n caught stealing, and looked quite angryasked
me why I should frighten her so!
T h e n she said that the paper stained everything it touched, t h a t she had found
yellow smooches 0 on all my clothes and J o h n ' s and she wTished we would be more
careful!
Did n o t that sound i n n o c e n t ? But I know she was studying t h a t pattern, and I am
determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!
Life is very m u c h more exciting now t h a n it used to be. You see, I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am
more quiet t h a n I was.
J o h n is so pleased to see me improve! H e laughed a little the other day, and said
I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper.
I turned it off with a laugh. I h a d n o i n t e n t i o n of telling h i m it was because of the
wallpaperhe would make fun of me. H e might e v e n want to take m e away.
I don't want to leave now until I h a v e found it out. T h e r e is a week more, and I
t h i n k t h a t will be enough.
I'm feeling so m u c h better!
I don't sleep m u c h at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I
sleep a good deal during the daytime.
smooclies: smudges or smears.
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In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.
T h e r e are always new shoots on t h e fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it..
I c a n n o t keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.
It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all t h e yellow
things I ever sawnot beautiful ones like buttercups, but old, foul, bad yellow things.
But there is something else about that paperthe smell! I noticed it the moment
we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was n o t bad. N o w we have had
a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.
It creeps all over the house.
I find it hovering in t h e dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in t h e hall,
lying in wait for me o n the stairs.
It gets into my hair.
Even w h e n I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise itthere is that
smell!
Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what
it smelled like.
It is n o t b a d a t firstand very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring
odor I ever met.
In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.
It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the houseto reach
the smell.
But now I am used to it. T h e only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of
the paper! A yellow smell.
T h e r e is a very f u n n y mark o n this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak
that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a
long, straight, even smooc/i, as if it had been rubbed over and over.
I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and
round and roundround and round and roundit makes me dizzy!
I really have discovered something at last.
T h r o u g h watching so much at night, w h e n it changes so, I have finally found out.
T h e front pattern does m o v e a n d n o wonder! T h e woman behind shakes it!
Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only
one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.
T h e n in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just
takes hold of the bars and shakes t h e m hard.
A n d she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through
that patternit strangles so; I think t h a t is why it has so many heads.
T h e y get through and t h e n the pattern strangles them off and turns t h e m upside
dowTn, and makes their eyes white!
If those heads were covered or taken off it would n o t be half so bad.
I think that woman gets out in the daytime!
A n d I'll tell you whyprivatelyI've seen her!
I can see her out of every one of my windows!
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do n o t
creep by daylight.
I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark
grape arbors, creeping all round the garden.
I see her on that long road under t h e trees, creeping along, and when a carriage
comes she hides under the blackberry vines.
I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!
I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know
J o h n would suspect something at o n c e .
A n d J o h n is so queer now that I don't want to irritate h i m . I wish h e would take 200
another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but
myself.
I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.
A n d though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster t h a n I c a n turn! I
have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud
shadow in a wind.
If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it,
little by little.
I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do 205
to trust people too much.
T h e r e are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe J o h n is beginning to notice. I don't like the look in his eyes.
A n d I heard h i m ask J e n n i e a lot of professional questions about me. S h e had a
very good report to give.
S h e said I slept a good deal in the daytime.
J o h n knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I ' m so quiet!
H e asked me all sorts of questions too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. 210
A s if I couldn't see through h i m !
Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months.
It only interests me, but I feel sure J o h n and J e n n i e are affected by it.
Hurrah! T h i s is the last day, but it is enough. J o h n is to stay in town over night,
and won't be out until this evening.
J e n n i e wanted to sleep with m e t h e sly thing; but I told her I should undoubt- 215
edly rest better for a night all alone.
T h a t was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As soon as it was m o o n l i g h t
and that poor thing began to crawl and shake t h e pattern, I got up and ran to h e l p
her.
I pulled and she shook. I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had
peeled off yards of that paper.
A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.
A n d then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it today!
W e go away tomorrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave 220
things as they were before.
J e n n i e looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of
pure spite at the vicious thing.
S h e laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.
How she betrayed herself that time!
But I am here, and n o person touches this paper but M e n o t alive!
S h e tried to get me out of the r o o m i t was too patent! But I said, it was so quiet 225
and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could,
and not to wake me even for d i n n e r I would call when I woke.
So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there
is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we
found on it.
We shall sleep downstairs tonight, and take the boat home tomorrow.
I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.
How those children did tear about here!
This bedstead is fairly gnawed!
But I must get to work.
I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.
I don't wrant to go out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till John comes.
I w7ant to astonish him.
I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out,
and tries to get away, I can tie her!
But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!
This bed will not move!
I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little
piece at one comerbut it hurt my teeth.
Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and
waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!
1 am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.
Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that
is improper and might be misconstrued.
I don't like to look out of the windows eventhere are so many of those creeping
women, and they creep so fast.
I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did!
But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden ropeyou don't get me out in
the road there!
I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and
that is hard!
It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!
I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to.
For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of
yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long
smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.
Why, there's John at the door!
It is no use, young man, you can't open it!
How he does call and pound!
Now he's crying to Jennie for an axe.
It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!
"John, dear!" said I in the gentlest voice. "The key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said, very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't," said L "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!" And
then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he
had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.
"What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing!"
I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.
260
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off
most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my
path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!
QUESTIONS
1. Several times at the beginning of the story, the narrator says such things as "What is one
to do?" and "What can one do?" What do these comments refer to? What, if anything, do
they suggest about women's roles at the time the story was written?
2. The narrator says, "I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes" (paragraph 24). How
unreasonable is her anger at him? What does the fact that she feels it is unreasonable say
about her?
3. W h a t do her changing feelings about the wallpaper tell us about the changes in her
condition?
4- "It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves
me so" (paragraph 122). His wisdom is, to say the least, open to question, but what about
his love? Do you think he suffers merely from a failure of perception, or is there a failure of
affection as well? Explain your response.
5. Where precisely in the story do you think it becomes clear that she has begun to hallucinate?
6. What does the woman behind the wallpaper represent? Why does the narrator come to
identify7 with her?
7. How ill does the narrator seem at the beginning of the story? How ill does she seem at the
end? How do you account for the change in her condition?
C H A R L O T T E P E R K I N S GSLIV5AN ON W R I T I N G
Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"
1913
Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New
England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript.
Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to
read it.
Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description
of incipient insanity he had ever seen, andbegging my pardonhad I been there?
Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and
continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholiaand beyond. During about
the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a
noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man
put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so
promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent
me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have
but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil
again" as long as 1 lived. This was in 1887.
A Massachusetts hospital for the insane in the era of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The
Yellow Wallpaper"
I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so
near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.
Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend,
I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went, to wrork againwork, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy arid growth and service, without
which one is a pauper and a parasiteultimately recovering some measure of power.
Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote "The Yellow
Wallpaper," with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never
had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the
physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.
The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fateso terrifying
her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.
But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had
admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since
reading "The Yellow Wallpaper."
It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven
crazy, and it worked.
From The Forerunner, October 1913
Whatever Is
Whatever is we only know
As in our minds we find it so;
No staring fact is half so clear
As one dim, preconceived idea
No matter how7 the fact may glow.
1903
Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Writing 437
Vainly may Truth her trumpet blow
T o stir our minds; like heavy dough
They stick to what they thinkwon't hear
Whatever is.
Our ancient myths in solid row
Stand upwe simply have to go
And choke each fiction old and dear
Before the modest facts appear;
Then we may grasp, reluctant, slow,
Whatever is.
10
15
The Nervous Breakdown of Women
1916
[A]s a hindrance they [women] have to meet something which men have never
metthe cold and cruel opposition of the other sex. In every step of their long upward path men have had women with them, never against them. In hardship, in privation, in danger, in the last test of religious martyrdom, in the pains and terrors of
warfare, in rebellions and revolutions, men have had women with them. Individual
women have no doubt been a hindrance to individual men, and the economic dependence of women is a drag upon men's freedom of action; but at no step of man's
difficult advance has he had to meet the scorn, the neglect, the open vilification of
massed womanhood.
No one has seemed to notice the cost of this great artificial barrier to the advance of women, the effect upon her nervous system of opposition and abuse
from the quarter where nature and tradition had taught her to expect aid and
comfort. She has had to keep pace with him in meeting the demands of our
swiftly changing times. She has had to meet the additional demands of her own
even more swiftly changing conditions. And she has had to do this in the face
not only of the organized opposition of the other sex, entrenched in secure possession of all the advantageous positions of church and state, buttressed by law
and custom, fully trained and experienced, and holding all the ammunitionthe
"sinews of war"the whole money power of the world; but besides this her slow,
difficult, conscientious efforts to make the changes she knew were right, or which
were forced upon her by conditions, have too often cost her man's love, respect
and good will.
This is a heavy price to pay for progress.
We should be more than gentle with the many women who cannot yet meet it.
We should be more than grateful for those strong men who are more human
than male, who can feel, think and act above the limitations of their sex, and who
have helped women in their difficult advance.
Also we should deeply honor those great women of the last century, who met all
demands, paid every exaction, faced all opposition and made the way easier for us
now.
But we should not be surprised at the "nervous breakdown" of some women, nor
attribute it to weakness.
Only the measureless strength of the mother sex could have enabled women to
survive the sufferings of yesterday and to meet the exactions of today.
From The Forerunner, July-August 1916
CRITICS ON "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER"
JySiaoii Fleenor (b. 1942)
Gender and Pathology in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
1983
Although it is not generally known, Gilman wrote at least two other Gothic stories
around the same time as "The Yellow Wallpaper." All three were published in the
New England Magazine. At the time that "The Rocking Chair" and "The Giant Wistaria" were written, Gilman and her young daughter, Katherine, were living in the
warmth of Pasadena, separated from her husband, Charles Walter Stetson. Gilman
later noted in her papers: " ' T h e Yellow Wallpaper' was written in two days, with the
thermometer at one hundred and three in Pasadena, Ca." Her husband was living on
the east coast, and, perhaps coincidentally, all three stories appear to be set in a
nameless eastern setting, one urban and two rural. All three display similar themes,
and all three are evidence that the conflict, central to Gilman's Gothic fiction and
later to her autobiography, was a conflict with the mother, with motherhood, and
with creation.
In all three stories women are confined within the home; it is their prison, their
insane asylum, even their tomb. A sense of the female isolation which Gilman felt,
of exclusion from the public world of work and of men, is contained in the anecdote
related by Zona Gale in her introduction to Gilman's autobiography. After watching the approach of several locomotives to a train platform in a small town in Wisconsin, Gilman said, " 'All that, . . . and women have no part in it. Everything done
by men, working together, while women worked on alone within their four walls!'"
Female exclusion, women denied the opportunity to work, or their imprisonment
behind four walls, led to madness. Her image, interestingly, does not suggest a female subculture of women working together; Gilman was working against her own
culture's definition of women, and her primary antagonists were women like her
own mother.
Diseased maternity is explicit in Gilman's third Gothic story. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes more than confinement, victimization, and the inability to write.
It suggests a disease within the female self. When the narrator peels the wallpaper
off, "It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and
bulbous eyes and the waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision." This passage describes more than the peeling of wallpaper: the "strangled heads and bulbous
eyes and waddling fungus" imply something strange and terrible about birth and
death conjoined, about female procreation, and about female physiology. Nature is
perverted here, too. The narrator thinks of "old, foul, bad yellow things." The smell
"creeps all over the house." She finds it "hovering in the dining-room, skulking in
the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs." Finally, "it gets into
my hair."
The paper stains the house in a way that suggests the effect of afterbirth. The
house, specifically this room, becomes more than a symbol of a repressive society; it
represents the physical self of the narrator as well. She is disgusted, perhaps awed,
perhaps frightened of her ow7n bodily processes. The story establishes a sense of fear
and disgust, the skin crawls and grows clammy with the sense of physiological fear
that Ellen Moers refers to as the Female Gothic.
My contention is that one of the major themes in the story, punishment for
becoming a mother (as well as punishment for being female), is supported by the
Critics on "The Yellow Wallpaper" 439
absence of the child. T h e child is taken away from the mother, almost in punishment, as was the child in "The Giant Wistaria." This differs from Oilman's experience; she had been told to keep her child with her at all times. In both the story
and in Gilman's life, a breakdown occurs directly after the birth of a child. T h e
narrator is confined as if she had committed a crime. Maternitythe creation of a
childis combined with writingthe creation of writingin a way that suggests
they are interrelated and perhaps symbiotic, as are the strange toadstools behind
the wrallpaper.
The pathological nature of both experiences is not surprising, given the treatment Gilman received, and given the fact that maternity reduced women to mothers
and not writers. Childbirth has long been a rite of passage for women. But the question is, where does that passage lead? Becoming a mother leads to a child-like state.
T h e narrator becomes the absent child.
From "The Gothic Prism"
Sandra M. GsBbert (b. 1936)
and Susan Gubar (b. 1944)
Imprisonment and Escape: The Psychology of Confinement
1979
Dramatizations of imprisonment and escape are so all-pervasive in nineteenth-century literature by women that we believe they represent a uniquely female tradition
in this period. Interestingly, though works in this tradition generally begin by using
houses as primary symbols of female imprisonment, they also use much of the other
paraphernalia of "woman's place" to enact their central symbolic drama of enclosure
and escape. Ladylike veils and costumes, mirrors, paintings, statues, locked cabinets,
drawers, trunks, strong-boxes, and other domestic furnishing appear and reappear in
female novels and poems throughout the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth to signify the woman writer's sense that, as Emily Dickinson put it, her "life" has
been "shaven and fitted to a frame," a confinement she can only tolerate by believing
that "The soul has moments of Escape / When bursting all the doors / She dances like
a Bomb abroad."1 Significantly, too, the explosive violence of these "moments of escape" that women writers continually imagine for themselves returns us to the phenomenon of the mad double so many of these women have projected into their
w7orks. For it is, after all, through the violence of the double that the female author
enacts her own raging desire to escape male houses and male texts, while at the same
time it is through the double's violence that this anxious author articulates for herself
the costly destructiveness of anger repressed until it can no longer be contained.
o
["The Yellow Wallpaper" is a] striking story of female confinement and escape, a
paradigmatic tale which (like Jane Eyre) seems to tell the story that all literary women
would tell if they could speak their "speechless woe." "The Yellow Wallpaper," which
Gilman herself called "a description of a case of nervous breakdown," recounts in the
first person the experiences of a woman who is evidently suffering from a severe postpartum psychosis. Her husband, a censorious and paternalistic physician, is treating her
la The
Soul has Bandaged moments - The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas Johnson, .3 vols. (Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1955).
according to methods by which S. Weir Mitchell, a famous "nerve specialist," treated
Gilman herself for a similar problem. He has confined her to a large garret room in an
"ancestral hall" he has rented, and he has forbidden her to touch pen to paper until she
is well again, for he feels, says the narrator, "that with my imaginative power and habit
of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited
fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency."
The cure, of course, is worse than the disease, for the sick woman's mental condition deteriorates rapidly. "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to
write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me," she remarks, but literally
confined in a room she thinks is a one-time nursery because it has "rings and things"
in the walls, she is literally locked away from creativity. The "rings and things," although reminiscent of children's gymnastic equipment, are really the paraphernalia
of confinement, like the gate at the head of the stairs, instruments that definitively
indicate her imprisonment. Even more tormenting, however, is the room's wallpaper:
a sulfurous yellow paper, torn off in spots, and patterned with "lame uncertain
curves" that "plunge off at outrageous angles" and "destroy themselves in unheard of
contradictions." Ancient, smoldering, "unclean" as the oppressive structures of the society in which she finds herself, this paper surrounds the narrator like an inexplicable
text, censorious and overwhelming as her physician husband, haunting as the "hereditary estate" in which she is trying to survive. Inevitably she studies its suicidal implicationsand inevitably, because of her "imaginative power and habit of story-making,"
she revises it, projecting her own passion for escape into its otherwise incomprehensible hieroglyphics. "This wallpaper," she decides, at a key point in her story,
has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for
you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just soI can
see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about
behind that silly and conspicuous front design.
As time passes, this figure concealed behind what corresponds (in terms of what
we have been discussing) to the facade of the patriarchal text becomes clearer and
clearer. By moonlight the pattern of the wallpaper "becomes bars! T h e outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be." And eventually, as the
narrator sinks more deeply into what the world calls madness, the terrifying implications of both the paper and the figure imprisoned behind the paper begin to permeatethat is, to hauntthe rented ancestral mansion in which she and her husband
are immured. The "yellow smell" of the paper "creeps all over the house," drenching
every room in its subtle aroma of decay. And the woman creeps toothrough the
house, in the house, and out of the house, in the garden and "on that long road under
the trees." Sometimes, indeed, the narrator confesses, "I think there are a great many
women" both behind the paper and creeping in the garden,
and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling
shakes [the paper] all over. . . . And she is all the time trying to climb
through. But nobody could climb through thai patternit strangles so; I
think that is why it has so many heads.
Eventually it becomes obvious to both reader and narrator that the figure creeping through and behind the wallpaper is both the narrator and the narrator's double.
By the end of the story, moreover, the narrator has enabled this double to escape from
Critics on "The Yellow wallpaper" 441
her textual/architectural confinement: "I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled,
and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper." Is the message of the tale's
conclusion mere madness? Certainly the righteous Doctor Johnwhose name links
him to the anti-hero of Charlotte Bronte's Villettehas been temporarily defeated, or
at least momentarily stunned. "Now why should that man have fainted?" the narrator
ironically asks as she creeps around her attic. But John's unmasculine swoon of surprise
is the least of the triumphs Gilman imagines for her madwoman. More significant are
the madwoman's own imaginings and creations, mirages of health and freedom with
which her author endows her like a fairy godmother showering gold on a sleeping heroine. The woman from behind the wallpaper creeps away, for instance, creeps fast and
far on the long road, in broad daylight. "I have watched her sometimes away off in the
open country," says the narrator, "creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind."
Indistinct and yet rapid, barely perceptible but inexorable, the progress of that
cloud shadow is not unlike the progress of nineteenth-century literary women out of
the texts defined by patriarchal poetics into the open spaces of their own authority.
That such an escape from the numb world behind the patterned walls of the text was
a flight from disease into health was quite clear to Gilman herself. When "The Yellow Wallpaper" was published she sent it to Weir Mitchell, whose strictures had kept
her from attempting the pen during her own breakdown, thereby aggravating her illness, and she was delighted to learn, years later, that "he had changed his treatment
of nervous prostration since reading" her story. "If that is a fact," she declared, "I
have not lived in vain." Because she was a rebellious feminist besides being a medical
iconoclast, we can be sure that Gilman did not think of this triumph of hers in narrowly therapeutic terms. Because she knew, with Emily Dickinson, that "Infection in
the sentence breeds," she knew that the cure for female despair must be spiritual as
well as physical, aesthetic as well as social. What "The Yellow Wallpaper" shows she
knew, too, is that even when a supposedly "mad" woman has been sentenced to imprisonment in the "infected" house of her own body, she may discover that, as Sylvia
Plath was to put it seventy years later, she has "a self to recover, a queen." 2
From The Madwoman
in the Attic
Elizabeth Amnions
Biographical Echoes in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
1991
"The Yellow Wallpaper" probably had deep roots in Gilman's childhood. In her autobiography, the account she gives of her growing up focuses on the misery of her
mother, a woman who adored her husband and loved having babies, only to have her
husband leave and her babies grow up. Deserted, Gilman's motherin the daughter's
tellinggrew bitter and fiercely repressed, deciding not to show any affection for her
daughter in order to toughen the child. Life, as Gilman's mother had come to know
it, brought women terrible disappointment and denial. Only in the dead of night
would she allow herself to hug her daughter.
As a story about her mother, the early portions of Gilman's autobiography construct a family drama in which sexual desire in a woman leads to babies and death.
(According to Gilman, her mother was warned that one more pregnancy would kill
her, at which point the father left the family.) On the other hand, denial of sexual
2"Stings," Ariel (New York: Harper, 1966), 62.
desire, the celibate life that Mary Fitch Perkins knew when her husband left, resulted
in furious repression and frustration. Either way, female sexual desire, motherhood,
and masculine power were bitterly entangled for Gilman's mother, who even after
years of separation and rejection remained her husband's prisoner, calling for him on
her deathbed. Looked at from the child's point of view, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
clearly both admired and hated her father. Frederick Beecher Perkins's power over his
wife was so strong that she had to stamp out all that was free and physical and warm in
herself, and try to do the same to her daughter. In a sense the woman on her knees at
the end of "The Yellow Wallpaper," the prisoner of a charming man and an ugly
empty domestic life that she cannot escape, is Gilman's mother as the child experienced her while growing uphumiliated, angry, crushed.
Even more salient, the alienation of women from each other and from their
own bodies that Gilman learned in her childhood is deeply written on "The Yellow
Wallpaper." It shows a powerful male figure designing the emotional misery of his "little girl" (in the story the wife, in Gilman's childhood the daughter), which is then carried out for him by an unbending, mature woman (in the story Jennie, in Gilman's life
her mother). Indeed, the narrator's emotional torture probably reflects the pain that
Gilman felt not only as an adult but also as a child. Certainly the secret nocturnal relief achieved in the story by the narrator's surreptitious writing and secret connection
with the women creeping around behind the wallpaper echoes Gilman's desperate, secret strategies for escaping the emotional and physical amputation from her mother
that she felt as a child during the daytime. Gilman describes how she waited in the
dark to connect with her mother: "She would not let me caress her, and would not caress me, unless I was asleep. This I discovered at last, and then did my best to keep
awake till she came to bed, even using pins to prevent dropping off, and sometimes
succeeding. Then how carefully I pretended to be sound asleep, and how rapturously I
enjoyed being gathered into her arms, held close and kissed." Escaping only at night
and in secret into the female arms that promised refuge from the emotional prison she
knew during daylight hours, the plotting child clearly anticipates the fictitious grown
woman's furtive nocturnal escapes into a female world of intimate bonds and wild
physical abandon. The narrator waiting to get into the wallpaper's embrace and the
child waiting to get into her mother's arms flee the same thing, a spiritually killing
world created by a man who supposedly loves themand run by a woman who acts as
his enforcer. And they seek the same thing: a world where women rebel, unite, touch.
The importance of this echo is that it lays out in biographical terms what is also
obvious in the story, the scope of Gilman's subject. The drama of patriarchal control
in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the same one that Charlotte Perkins Gilman felt as a
child, saw in her mother's life, and then experienced again herself as a young wife
and mother. The story is not limited to just one stage of her life as a woman, but applies potentially to all stages, from childhood to old age. It is not, moreover, simply a
story about the desire for escape from male control. It is also a story about the desire
to escape to a female world, a desire to unite with the mother, indeed with all women
creeping and struggling in growing numbers, through the paper, behind the wall.
From Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers
at the Turn into the Twentieth Century
Alice walker
Alice Walker, a leading black writer and social activist, was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia,
the youngest of eight children. Her father, a sharecropper and dairy farmer, usually earned about
$300 a year; her mother helped by working as a
maid. Both entertained their children by telling
stories. When Alice Walker was eight, she was
accidentally struck by a pellet from a brother s BB
gun. She lost the sight of one eye because the
Walkers had no car to rush her to the hospital.
Later she attended Spelman College in Atlanta
and finished college at Sarah Lawrence College on
a scholarship. While working for the civil rights
movement in Mississippi, she met a young
lawyer, Melvyn Leventhal. In 1967 they settled
ALICE WALKER
in Jackson, Mississippi, the first legally married
interracial couple in toivn. They returned to New York in 1974 and were later divorced.
First known as a poet, Walker has published seven books of her verse. She also has edited a
collection of the work of the then-neglected black writer Z ora Neale Hurston, and has written
a study of Langston Hughes. In a collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens:
Womanist Prose (1983), she recalls her mother and addresses her own daughter. (By wornanist she means "black feminist.") But the largest part of Wallter's reading audience knows
her fiction: three story collections, In Love and Trouble (1973), from which "Everyday
Use" is taken, You Can t Keep a Good Woman Down (1981), and The Way Forward
Is with a Broken Heart (2000); and her novels, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
(1970) and Meridian (1976). tier best-known novel, The Color Purple (1982), won a
Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. Her recent novels include The Temple of My Familiar (1989), Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), By the
Light of My Father's Smile (1998) and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004).
Walker now lives in Northern California.
Everyday Use
1973
FOR YOUR GRANDMAMA
I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not
just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a
floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves anyone can
come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come
inside the house.
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in
corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing
her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word the world never learned to say
to her.
You've no doubt seen those T V shows where the child who has "made it" is confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant surprise, of course: What would they do if parent and child came
on the show only to curse out and insult each other?) On T V mother and child embrace and smile into each other's faces. Sometimes the mother and father weep, the
child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how she would not
have made it without their help. I have seen these programs.0
Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together
on a T V program of this sort. Out of a dark and soft-seated limousine I am ushered
into a bright room filled with many people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man
like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. Then
we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes. She pins on my
dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks orchids are
tacky flowers.
In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In
the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill
and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can
work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing. I can eat pork liver
cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I
knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and
had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does not show on
television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter,
my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights.
Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.
But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson
with a quick tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the
eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with
my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature.
"How do I look, Mama?" Maggie says, showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she's there, almost hidden by
the door.
"Come out into the yard," I say.
Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person
rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to
him? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on
ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.
Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She's a woman
now, though sometimes I forget. How long ago was it that the other house burned?
Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes.
Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them. And
Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look
of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall
in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd
wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.
these programs: On the NBC television show This Is Your Life, people were publicly and often tearfully reunited with friends, relatives, and teachers they had not seen in years.
I used to think she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised the money,
the church and me, to send her to Augusta to school. She used to read to us without
pity; forcing words, lies, other folks5 habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped
and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned
us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with
the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we
seemed about to understand.
Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from
high school; black pumps to match a green suit she'd made from an old suit somebody
gave me. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids
would not flicker for minutes at a time. Often I fought off the temptation to shake
her. At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style was.
I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down.
Don't ask me why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now. Sometimes
Maggie reads to me. She stumbles along good-naturedly but can't see well. She knows
she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passed her by. She will marry
John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest face) and then I'll be free to sit here
and I guess just sing church songs to myself. Although I never was a good singer.
Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man's job. I used to love to milk till
I was hoofed in the side in '49. Cows are soothing and slow and don't bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way.
I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just like the
one that burned, except the roof is tin; they don't make shingle roofs any more. There
are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but
not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. This
house is in a pasture, too, like the other one. No doubt wrhen Dee sees it she will want
to tear it down. She wrote me once that no matter where we "choose" to live, she will
manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends. Maggie and I thought
about this and Maggie asked me, "Mama, when did Dee ever have any friends?"
She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging about on washday after
school. Nervous girls who never laughed. Impressed with her they worshiped the
well-turned phrase, the cute shape, the scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in
lye. She read to them.
When she was courting Jimmy T she didn't have much time to pay to us, but
turned all her faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from a
family of ignorant flashy people. She hardly had time to recompose herself.
When she comes I will meetbut there they are!
Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I stay her
with my hand. "Come back here," I say. And she stops and tries to dig a well in the
sand with her toe.
It is hard to see them clearly through the strong sun. But even the first glimpse of leg
out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat-looking, as if God himself had
shaped them with a certain style. From the other side of the car comes a short, stocky
man. Hair is all over his head a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule
tail. I hear Maggie suck in her breath. "Uhnnnh," is what it sounds like. Like when you
see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your foot on the road. "Uhnnnh."
Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts
my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel
15
20
my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings, too, gold and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her
arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and
as she walks closer, I like it. I hear Maggie go "Uhnnnh" again. It is her sister's hair. It
stands straight up like the wool on a sheep. It is black as night and around the edges are
two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards disappearing behind her ears.
"Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!" she says, coming on in that gliding way the dress makes her
move. The short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows
up with "Asalamalakim, 0 my mother and sister!" He moves to hug Maggie but she
falls back, right up against the back of my chair. I feel her trembling there and when
I look up I see the perspiration falling off her chin.
"Don't get up," says Dee. Since I am stout it takes something of a push. You can
see me trying to move a second or two before I make it. She turns, showing white
heels through her sandals, and goes back to the car. Out she peeks next with a Polaroid. She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there
in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge
of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. Then she puts the Polaroid
in the back seat of the car, and comes up and kisses me on the forehead.
Meanwhile Asalamalakim is going through the motions with Maggie's hand.
Maggie's hand is as limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and she
keeps trying to pull it back. It looks like Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but
wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don't know how people shake hands. Anyhow, he
soon gives up on Maggie.
"Well," I say. "Dee."
"No, Mama," she says. "Not 'Dee,' Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!"
"What happened to 'Dee'?" I wanted to know.
"She's dead," Wangero said. "I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the
people who oppress me."
"You know as well as me you was named after your aunt Dicie," I said. Dicie is
my sister. She named Dee. We called her "Big Dee" after Dee was born.
"But who was she named after?" asked Wangero.
"I guess after Grandma Dee," I said.
"And who was she named after?" asked Wangero.
"Her mother," I said, and saw Wangero was getting tired. "That's about as far
back as I can trace it," I said. Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back
beyond the Civil War through the branches.
"Well," said Asalamalakim, "there you are."
"Uhnnnh," I heard Maggie say.
"There I was not," I said, "before ( Dicie' cropped up in our family, so why should
I try to trace it that far back?"
He just stood there grinning, looking down on me like somebody inspecting a
Model A car. Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head.
"How do you pronounce this name?" I asked.
"You don't have to call me by it if you don't want to," said Wangero.
Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!: salutation in Swahili, an African language. Notice that Dee has to sound it out,
syllable by syllable. Asalamalakim: salutation in Arabic: "Peace be upon you." Model A car: popular low-priced automobile introduced by the Ford Motor Company in 1927.
"Why shouldn't I?" I asked. "If that's what you want us to call you, we'll call
you."
"I know it might sound awkward at first," said Wangero.
40
"I'll get used to it," I said. "Ream it out again."
Well, soon we got the name out of the way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as
long and three times as hard. After I tripped over it two or three times he told me to
just call him Hakim-a-barber. I wanted to ask him was he a barber, but I didn't really
think he was, so I didn't ask.
"You must belong to those beef-cattle peoples down the road," I said. They said
"Asalamalakim" when they met you, too, but they didn't shake hands. Always too
busy: feeding the cattle, fixing the fences, putting up salt-lick shelters, throwing
down hay. When the white folks poisoned some of the herd the men stayed up all
night with rifles in their hands. I walked a mile and a half just to see the sight.
Hakim-a-barber said, "I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising
cattle is not my style." (They didn't tell me, and I didn't ask, whether Wangero
(Dee) had really gone and married him.)
We sat dowTn to eat and right away he said he didn't eat collards and pork was 45
unclean. Wangero, though, went on through the chitlins and corn bread, the greens
and everything else. She talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the table
when we couldn't afford to buy chairs.
"Oh, Mama!" she cried. Then turned to Hakim-a-barber. "I never knew howlovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints," she said, running her hands
underneath her and along the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over
Grandma Dee's butter dish. "That's it!" she said. "I knew there was something I
wanted to ask you if I could have." She jumped up from the table and went over in
the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it clabber 0 by now. She looked at the
churn and looked at it.
"This churn top is what I need," she said. "Didn't Uncle Buddy whittle it out of a
tree you all used to have?"
"Yes," I said.
"Uh huh," she said happily. "And I want the dasher, too."
"Uncle Buddy whittle that, too?" asked the barber.
50
Dee (Wangero) looked up at me.
"Aunt Dee's first husband whittled the dash," said Maggie so low you almost
couldn't hear her. "His name was Henry, but they called him Stash."
"Maggie's brain is like an elephant's," Wangero said, laughing. "I can use the
churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table," she said, sliding a plate over the
churn, "and I'll think of something artistic to do with the dasher."
When she finished wrapping the dasher the handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in my hands. You didn't even have to look close to see where hands pushing
the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact,
there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into
the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where
Big Dee and Stash had lived.
After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started 55
rifling through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came
clabber: sour milk or buttermilk.
Wangero with two quilts. They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee
and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One.
was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both of
them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and
pieces of Grandpa JarrelPs paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the
piece of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he
wore in the Civil War.
"Mama," Wangero said sweet as a bird. "Can I have these old quilts?"
I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later die kitchen door slammed.
"Why don't you take one or two of the others?" I asked. "These old things was
just done by me and Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced before she died."
"No," said Wangero. "I don't want those. They are stitched around the borders
by machine."
"That'll make them last better," I said.
"That's not the point," said Wangero. "These are all pieces of dresses Grandma
used to wear. She did all this stitching by hand. Imagine!" She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking them.
"Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old clothes her mother
handed down to her," I said, moving up to touch the quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved
back just enough so that I couldn't reach the quilts. They already belonged to her.
"Imagine!" she breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom.
"The truth is," I said, "I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she
marries John Thomas."
She gasped like a bee had stung her.
"Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!" she said. "She'd probably be backward
enough to put them to everyday use."
"I reckon she would," I said. "God knows I been saving 'em for long enough with
nobody using 'em. I hope she will!" I didn't want to bring up how I had offered Dee
(Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were
old-fashioned, out of style.
"But they're pricelessJ" she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. "Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags. Less than that!"
"She can always make some more," I said. "Maggie knows how to quilt."
Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. "You just will not understand. The
point is these quilts, these quilts!"
"Well," I said, stumped. "What would you do with them?"
"Hang them," she said. As if that was the only thing you could do with quilts.
Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet
made as they scraped over each other.
"She can have them, Mama," she said, like somebody used to never winning
anything, or having anything reserved for her. "I can 'member Grandma Dee without
the quilts."
I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and it
gave her face a kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who
taught her how to quilt herself. She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in the
folds of her skirt. She looked at her sister with something like fear but she wasn't mad
at her. This was Maggie's portion. This was the way she knew God to work.
When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran
down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I'm in church and the spirit of God
touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never had done before:
hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of
Miss Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap. Maggie just sat there on
my bed with her mouth open.
"Take one or two of the others," I said to Dee.
But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim-a-barber.
"You just don't understand," she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car.
"What don't I understand?" I wanted to know.
"Your heritage," she said. And then she turned to Maggie, kissed her, and said,
"You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It's really a new day for
us. But from the way you and Mama still live you'd never know it."
She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and her
chin.
Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses. But a real smile, not scared. After we
watched the car dust settle I asked Maggie to bring me a dip of snuff. And then the
two of us sat there just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the basic conflict in "Everyday Use"?
2. What is the tone of Walker's story? By what means does the author communicate it?
3. From whose point of view is "Everyday Use" told? What does the story gain from this
point of viewinstead of, say, from the point of view of Dee (Wangero)?
4. What does the narrator of the story feel toward Dee? What seems to be Dee's present attitude toward her mother and sister?
5. What do you take to be the author's attitude toward each of her characters? How does she
convey it?
6. What levels of meaning do you find in the story's title?
7. Contrast Dee's attitude toward her heritage with the attitudes of her mother and sister.
Flow much truth is there in Dee's accusation that her mother and sister don't understand
their heritage?
8. Does the knowledge that "Everyday Use" was written by a black writer in any way influence your reactions to it? Explain.
ALICE WALKER ON WRITING
The Black Woman Writer in America
1973
INTERVIEW BY JOHN O'BRIEN
INTERVIEWER: Why do you think that the black woman writer has been so ignored in
America? Does she have even more difficulty than the black male writer, who perhaps has just begun to gain recognition?
WALKER: There are two reasons why the black woman writer is not taken as seriously
as the black male writer. One is that she's a woman. Critics seem unusually illequipped to intelligently discuss and analyze the works of black women. Generally,
they do not even make the attempt; they prefer, rather, to talk about the lives of
black women writers, not about what they write. And, since black women writers are
notit would seemvery likableuntil recently they were the least willing worshipers of male supremacycomments about them tend to be cruel.
In Nathan Muggins's very readable book, Harlem Renaissance, he hardly refers to
Zora Neale Hurston's work, except negatively. He quotes from Wallace Thurman's
novel, Infants of the Spring, at length, giving us the words of a character, "Sweetie
Mae Carr," who is allegedly based on Zora Neale Hurston. "Sweetie Mae" is a writer
noted more "for her ribald wit and personal effervescence than for any actual literary
work. She was a great favorite among those whites who went in for Negro prodigies."
Mr. Huggins goes on for several pages, never quoting Zora Neale Hurston herself, but
rather the opinions of others about her character. He does say that she was "a master
of dialect," but adds that "Her greatest weakness was carelessness or indifference to
her art."
Having taught Zora Neale Hurston, and of course, having read her work myself,
I am stunned. Personally, I do not care if Zora Hurston was fond of her white women
friends. When she was a child in Florida, working for nickels and dimes, two white
women helped her escape. Perhaps this explains it. But even if it doesn't, so what?
Her work, far from being done carelessly, is done (especially in Their Eyes Were
Watching God) almost too perfectly. She took the trouble to capture the beauty of
rural black expression. She saw poetry where other writers merely saw failure to cope
with English. She was so at ease with her blackness it never occurred to her that she
should act one way among blacks and another among whites (as her more sophisticated black critics apparently did).
It seems to me that black writing has suffered, because even black critics have assumed that a book that deals with the relationships between members of a black familyor between a man and a womanis less important than one that has white people as a primary antagonist. The consequences of this is that many of our books by
"major" writers (always male) tell us little about the culture, history, or future, imagination, fantasies, etc. of black people, and a lot about isolated (often improbable) or
limited encounters with a nonspecific white world. Where is the book, by an American black person (aside from Cane), that equals Elechi Amadi's The Concubine, for
example? A book that exposes the subconscious of a people, because the people's
dreams, imaginings, rituals, legends, etc. are known to be important, are known to
contain the accumulated collective reality of the people themselves. Or, in The Radiance of the King, the white person is shown to be the outsider he is, because the culture he enters into in Africa itself [expels] him. Without malice, but as nature expels
what does not suit. The white man is mysterious, a force to be reckoned with, but he
is not glorified to such an extent that the Africans turn their attention away from
themselves and their own imagination and culture. Which is what often happens
with "protest literature." The superficial becomesfor a timethe deepest reality,
and replaces the still waters of the collective subconscious.
When my own novel was published, a leading black monthly admitted (the editor did) that the book itself was never read; but the magazine ran an item stating that
a white reviewer had praised the book (which was, in itself, an indication that the
book was no goodsuch went the logic) and then hinted that the reviewer had liked
my book because of my life-style. When I wrote to the editor to complain, he wrote
me a small sermon on the importance of my "image," of what is "good" for others to
see. Needless to say, what others "see" of me is the least of my worries, and I assumed
that "others" are intelligent enough to recover from whatever shocks my presence
might cause.
Women writers are supposed to be intimidated by male disapprobation. What
they write is not important enough to be read. How they live, however, their "image," they owe to the race. Read the reason Zora Neale Hurston gave for giving up
her writing. See what "image" the Negro press gave her, innocent as she was. I no
longer read articles or reviews unless they are totally about the work. I trust that
someday a generation of men and women will arise who will forgive me for such
wrong as I do not agree I do, and will read my work because it is a true account of my
feelings, my perceptions, and my imagination, and because it will reveal something
to them of their own selves. They will also be free to toss itand meout of a high
window. They can do what they like.
From Interviews itnth Black Writers
Reflections on Writing
(mid-1990s) 2004
INTERVIEW BY WILLIAM R. FERRIS
My friendship with Alice Walker began in the fall of 1970 when I taught in the English department of Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. At that time Alice lived in Jackson and had just finished her manuscript of The Third Life of Grange
Copeland. She shared with me encouraging comments that Ernest Gaines had written
about the manuscript. During that time Alice also published her impressive volume
of poetry Revolutionary Petunias and did an important interview with Eudora Welty
that was published in the Harvard Advocate.
When I taught at Yale in the mid-seventies, Alice visited the campus and gave a
moving seminar with faculty and students. Our lives crossed again when I served as a
consultant on her film The Color Purple. When I worked at the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Alice wrote me that she was coming for a visit. We arranged a reading and book party for her at Square Books in Oxford and a tour of the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi during that visit
in the mid-1990s. We also met in my home, where I recorded these reflections about
Alice's work as a writer . . .
., -
t .
......
r*
:.. m
On Women's Lives
If you think of the early stories, it's true that the women end badly, but it's because
they belong to the generation of my mother and grandmother, when they were suspended because they had nowhere to go. All of them couldn't be Bessie Smith or Billie Holliday, so they ended up doing all kinds of destructive things. Most of that generation didn't have any fame or glory. But notice that all of those women are much
older than I am. They exist in an historical place that is removed from my generation
of women. . . . I wrote about these women in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. The
women who have not had anything, have been, almost of necessity, self-destructive.
They've just been driven insane. And the ones who have managed have been the
ones who could focus their enormous energies on art forms that were not necessarily
recognized as art formson quilting, on flowers, on making things. It's a very human
need, to make things, to create. T o think that women didn't need thatthat by having a baby you fulfill your whole functionis absurd and demeaning.
On Choosing the Writing Life (excerpt)
I wanted to play the piano and I think I would have been good at it. But piano
lessons were fifty cents, and I tried very hard, but I couldn't raise it every week. Then
I wanted to draw, but I wasn't that good. I think writing was just all that was left. I
became really interested because of my oldest sister, Molly, who left Eatonton when I
was an infant. There was no high school for black people, so she had to go away.
She's twelve years older than I am. When she was thirteen, she left to go to Macon
High School. And she was a great reader. I was an infant, but she would come back,
especially after she went off to college. She went off to Morris Brown in Atlanta, and
when she came home in the summers, she would read to us. She would tell us stories.
She introduced us to a new kind of aesthetic. My mother was Cherokee, and she had
that real Indian belief that basically you let things live where they grow. When you
grow them, you don't cut them; you just let them be. But my sister, who actually
looks very much like my mother's grandmother, very Cherokee looking, had gone to
school. She knew that there were people who actually cut flowers and brought them
into the house. This was a different way of looking at things.
From Southern
Cultures
C R I T I C S ON " E V E R Y D A Y
USE"
Lone Star quilt pattern: "Out came Wangeroo with t w o
quilts
One was in the Lone Star pattern" (paragraph 55).
B a r b a r a T. C h r i s t i a n (1943-2000)
"Everyday Use" and the Black Power Movement
1994
"Everyday Use" is, in part, Alice Walker's response to the concept of heritage as articulated by the black movements of the 1960s. In that period, many African Americans, disappointed by the failure of integration, gravitated to the philosophy of cultural nationalism as the means to achieve liberation. In contrast to the veneration of
Western ideas and ideals by many integrationists of the 1950s, Black Power ideologues emphasized the African cultural past as the true heritage of African Americans. The acknowledgment and appreciation of that heritage, which had too often
been denigrated by African Americans themselves as well as by Euro-Americans, was
a major tenet of the revolutionary movements of the period. Many blacks affirmed
their African roots by changing their "slave names" to African names, and by wearing
Afro styles and African clothing. Yet, ideologues of the period also lambasted older
African Americans, opposing them to the lofty mythical models of the ancient past.
These older men and women, they claimed, had become Uncle Toms and Aunt
Jemimas who displayed little awareness of their culture and who, as a result of their
slave past, had internalized the white man's view of blacks. So while these 1960s ideologues extolled an unknown ancient history, they denigrated the known and recent
past. The tendency to idealize an ancient African past while ignoring the recent
African American past still persists in the Acrocentric movements of the 1990s.
In contrast to that tendency, Walker's "Everyday Use" is dedicated to "your
grandmama." And the story is told by a woman many African Americans would recognize as their grandmama, that supposedly backward Southern ancestor the cultural
nationalists of the North probably visited during the summers of their youth and
probably considered behind the times. Walker stresses those physical qualities which
suggest such a person, qualities often demeaned by cultural nationalists. For this
grandmama, like the stereotypical mammy of slavery, is "a large big-boned woman with
rough, man-working hands," who wears "flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during
the day," and whose "fat keeps [her] hot in zero weather." Nor is this grandmama politically conscious according to the fashion of the day; she never had an education after
the second grade, she knows nothing about African names, and she eats pork. In having the grandmama tell this story, Walker gives voice to an entire maternal ancestry often silenced by the political rhetoric of the period. Indeed, Walker tells us in "In
Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" that her writing is part of her mother's legacy to her,
that many of her stories are based on stories her mother told her. Thus, Walker's writing
is her way of breaking silences and stereotypes about her grandmothers', mothers', sisters' lives. In effect, her work is a literary continuation of a distinctly oral tradition in
which African American women have been and still are pivotal participants.
Alice Walker is well aware of the restrictions of the African American Southern
past, for she is the eighth child of Georgia sharecroppers. Born in 1944, she grew up
during the period when, as she put it, apartheid existed in America. For in the 1940s
and 1950s, when segregation was the law of the South, opportunities for economic
and social advancement were legally denied to Southern blacks. Walker was fortunate to come to adulthood during the social and political movements of the late
fifties and sixties. Of her siblings, only she, and a slightly older sister, Molly, were
able even to imagine the possibility of moving beyond the poverty of their parents. It
is unlikely that Alice Walker would have been able to go to collegefirst at Spelman, the African American women's college in Atlanta, and then at Sarah
Lawrence, the white women's college near New York Cityif it had not been for the
changes that came about as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. Nor is it likely
that she, a Southern black woman from a poor family, would have been able to become the writer that she did without the changes resulting from the ferment of the
Black and Women's Movements of the 1960s and early 1970s.
While Walker was a participant in these movements, she was also one of their
most astute critics. As a Southerner, she was aware of the ways in which black Southern culture was often thought of as backward by predominantly Northern Black
Power ideologues, even as they proclaimed their love for black people. She was also
acutely aware of the ways in which women were oppressed within the Black Power
Movement itself, even as the very culture its participants revered was so often passed
on by women. Walker had also visited Africa during her junior year of college and
had personally experienced the gap between the Black Power advocates' idealization
of Africa and the reality of the African societies she visited.
O0
Names are extremely important in African and African American culture as a
means of indicating a person's spirit. During the 1960s Walker criticized the tendency among some African Americans to give up the names their parents gave
themnames which embodied the history of their recent pastfor African names
that did not relate to a single person they knew. Hence the grandmama in "Everyday
Use" is amazed that Dee would give up her name for the name Wangero. For Dee was
the name of her great-grandmother, a woman who had kept her family together
against great odds. Wangero might have sounded authentically African but it had no
relationship to a person she knew, nor to the personal history that had sustained her.
In "Everyday Use," by contrasting a sister who has the opportunity to go to
college with a sister who stays at home, Walker reminds us of the challenges that
contemporary African American women face as they discover what it means to be
truly educated. T h e same concern appears in many of her works. For example, in "For
My Sister Molly Who in the Fifties," she explores the conflicts that can result
from an education that takes a woman away from her cultural source. Like Molly,
Dee/Wangero in "Everyday Use" is embarrassed by her folk. She has been to the
North, wears an Afro, and knows the correct political rhetoric of the 1960s, but
she has little regard for her relatives who have helped to create that heritage.
Thus, she does not know how to quilt and can only conceive of her family's quilts
as priceless artifacts, as things, which she intends to hang on her wall as a means
of demonstrating to others that she has "heritage." On the other hand, Maggie,
the supposedly uneducated sister, who has been nowhere beyond the supposedly
uneducated black South, loves and understands her family and can appreciate its
history. She knows how to quilt and would put the precious quilts to "everyday
use," which is precisely what, Walker suggests, one needs to do with one's heritage. For Maggie, the quilts are an embodiment of the spirit her folks have passed
on to her.
Because Walker came from a background of poverty and social restriction, she
also experienced first hand those values through which the grandmama and Maggie
transformed the little they had into much more, so that they might survive. As important, Walker understood that poor people needed beauty in their lives and went
to great lengths to create it. Although Walker's mother worked long hours in the
fields and as a domestic, she cultivated beautiful gardens, artfully told stories, and created beautiful, functional quilts out of scraps. In creating beauty in the media available to them, Walker's mother and other "ordinary" African American women not
usually considered artists were, in fact, models of creativity for young African American women who now have the opportunity to become artists.
From introduction to Everyday Use
H o u s t o n A, B a k e r (b. 1943)
a n d C h a r l o t t e P i e r c e - B a k e r (b 1943)
Stylish vs. Sacred in "Everyday Use"
1985
T h e Johnson women, who populate the generations represented in Walker's short
story "Everyday Use," are inhabitants of southern cabins who have always worked
with "scraps" and seen what they could make of them. The result of their labor has
been a succession of mothers and daughters surviving the ignominies of Jim Crow
life and passing on ancestral blessings to descendants. The guardians of the Johnson
homestead when the story commences are the mother "a large, big-boned woman
with rough, man-working hands"and her daughter Maggie, who has remained
w7ith her "chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that
burned the other house to the ground" ten or twelve years ago. T h e mood at the
- story's beginning is one of ritualistic "waiting": "I will wait for her in the yard that
Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon." T h e subject awaited is
the other daughter, Dee. Not only has the yard (as ritual ground) been prepared for
the arrival of a goddess, but the sensibilities and costumes of Maggie and her mother
have been appropriately attuned for the occasion. The mother daydreams of television shows where parents and children are suddenlyand pleasantlyreunited, banal shows where chatty hosts oversee tearful reunions. In her fantasy, she weighs a
hundred pounds less, is several shades brighter in complexion, and possesses a devastatingly quick tongue. She returns abruptly to real life meditation, reflecting on her
own heroic, agrarian accomplishments in slaughtering hogs and cattle and preparing
their meat for winter nourishment. She is a robust provider who has gone to the
people of her church and raised money to send her light-complexioned, lithe-figured, and ever-dissatisfied daughter Dee to college. Today, as she waits in the purified yard, she notes the stark differences between Maggie and Dee and recalls how
the "last dingy gray board of the house [fell] in toward the red-hot brick chimney"
when her former domicile burned. Maggie was scarred horribly by the fire, but Dee,
who had hated the house with an intense fury, stood "off under the sweet gum tree
. . . a look of concentration on her face." A scarred and dull Maggie, who has been
kept at home and confined to everyday offices, has but one reaction to the fiery and
vivacious arrival of her sister: "I hear Maggie suck in her breath. 'Uhnnnh,' is what
it sounds like. Like when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your
foot on the road. TJhnnnh.'"
Indeed, the question raised by Dee's energetic arrival is whether there are words
adequate to her flair, her brightness, her intense colorfulness of style which veritably
blocks the sun. She wears "a dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face warming from
the heat waves it throws out." Dee is both serpent and fire introduced with bursting
esprit into the calm pasture that contains the Johnsons' tin-roofed, three-room,
windowless shack and grazing cows. She has joined the radical, black nationalists of
the 1960s and 1970s, changing her name from Dee to Wangero and cultivating a
suddenly fashionable, or stylish, interest in what she passionately describes as her
"heritage." If there is one quality that Dee (Wangero) possesses in abundance, it is
"style": "At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style was."
But in her stylishness, Dee is not an example of the indigenous rapping and
styling out of Afro-America. Rather, she is manipulated by the style-makers, the
fashion designers whose semiotics the French writer Roland Barthes has so aptly
characterized. "Style" for Dee is the latest voguethe most recent fantasy perpetuated by American media. When she left for college, her mother had tried to give her
a quilt whose making began with her grandmother Dee, but the bright daughter felt
such patched coverings were "old-fashioned and out of style." She has returned at the
commencement of "Everyday Use," however, as one who now purports to know the
value of the work of black women as holy patchers.
The dramatic conflict of the story surrounds the definition of holiness. The ritual
purification of earth and expectant atmosphere akin to that of Beckett's famous drama
("I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon.") prepare us for the narrator's epiphanic experience at the story's conclusion.
Near the end of "Everyday Use," the mother (who is the tale's narrator) realizes
that Dee (a.k.a. Wangero) is a fantasy child, a perpetrator and victim of: "words, lies,
other folks's habits." The energetic daughter is as frivolously careless of other people's
lives as the fiery conflagration that she had watched ten years previously. Assured by
the makers of American fashion that "black" is currently "beautiful," she has conformed
her own "style" to that notion. Hers is a trendy "blackness" cultivated as "art" and
costume. She wears "a dress down to the ground . . . bracelets dangling and making
noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her armpits."
And she says of quilts she has removed from a trunk at the foot of her mother's bed:
"Maggie can't appreciate these quilts! She'd probably be backward enough to put
them to everyday use." "Art" is, thus, juxtaposed wTith "everyday use" in Walker's
short story, and the fire goddess Dee, who has achieved literacy only to burn "us with a
lot of knowledge wre didn't necessarily need to know," is revealed as a peipetuator of institutional theories of aesthetics.
Strikingly, the quilts whose tops have been stitched by her grandmother from
fragments of outgrown family garments and quilted after the grandmother's death by
Aunt Dee and her sister (the mother who narrates the story) are perceived in Dee's
Polaroid sensibility as merely "priceless" works of an institutionally, or stylishly, defined "art world." In a reversal of perception tantamount to the acquisition of sacred
knowledge by initiates in a rite of passage, the mother/narrator realizes that she has always worshipped at the altars of a "false" goddess. As her alter ego, Dee has always expressed that longing for the "other" that characterizes inhabitants of oppressed, "minority" cultures. Situated in an indisputably black and big-boned skin, the mother has
secretly admired the "good hair," full figure, and well-turned (i.e., "whitely trim") ankle of Dee (Wangero). Sacrifices and sanctity have seemed in order. But in her
epiphanic moment of recognition, she perceives the fire-scarred Maggiethe stay-athome victim of southern scarificationsin a revised light. When Dee grows belligerent about possessing the quilts, Maggie emerges from the kitchen and says with a contemptuous gesture of dismissal: "She can have them, Mama. . . . I can 'member
Grandma Dee without quilts." The mother's response to what she wrongly interprets
as Maggie's hang-dog resignation before Dee is a radical awakening to godhead:
When I looked at her . . . something hit me in the top of my head and ran
down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I'm in church and the spirit of
God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never had done
before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched
the quilts out of Miss Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap.
Maggie is the arisen goddess of Walker's story; she is the sacred figure who bears the
scarifications of experience and knows how to convert patches into robustly patterned
and beautifully quilted wholes. As an earth-rooted and quotidian goddess, she stands
in dramatic contrast to the stylishly fiery and other-oriented Wangero. The mother
says in response to Dee's earlier cited accusation that Maggie would reduce quilts to
rags by putting them to everyday use: "'She can always make some more,' I said.
'Maggie knows how to quilt.'" And, indeed, Maggie, the emergent goddess of New
World improvisation and long ancestral memory, does know how to quilt. Her mind
and imagination are capable of preserving the wisdom of grandmothers and aunts
without material prompts: "I can 'member . . . without the quilts," she says. The secret to employing beautiful quilts as items of everyday use is the secret of crafty dues.
In order to comprehend the transient nature of all wholes, one must first become
accustomed to living and working with fragments. Maggie has learned the craft of
fragment weaving from her women ancestors: "It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who
taught her how to quilt herself." The conjunction of "quilt" and "self" in Walker's
syntax may be simply a serendipitous accident of style. Nonetheless, the conjunction
works magnificently to capture the force of black women's quilting in "Everyday
Use." Finally, it is the "self," or a version of humanness that one calls the Afro-American self, that must, in fact, be crafted from fragments on the basis of wisdom gained
from preceding generations.
Quilts designed for everyday use, pieced wholes defying symmetry and pattern, are
signs of the scarred generations of women who have always been alien to a world of
literate words and stylish fantasies. The crafted fabric of Walker's story is the very
weave of blues and jazz traditions in the Afro-American community, daringly improvisational modes that confront breaks in the continuity of melody (or theme) by riffing.
The asymmetrical quilts of southern black women are like the off-centered stomping
of the jazz solo or the innovative musical showmanship of the blues interlude. They
speak a world in which the deceptively shuffling Maggie is capable of a quick change
into goddess, an unlikely holy figure whose dues are paid in full. Dee's anger at her
mother is occasioned principally by the mother's insistence that paid dues make
Maggie a more likely bearer of sacredness, tradition, and true value than the "brighter"
sister. "You just don't understand," she says to her mother. Her assessment is surely
correct where institutional theories and systems of "art" are concerned. The mother's
cognition contains no categories for framed art. The mother works according to an
entirely different scale of use and value, finally assigning proper weight to the virtues
of Maggie and to the ancestral importance of the pieced quilts that she has kept out of
use for so many years. Smarting, perhaps, from Dee's designation of the quilts as "oldfashioned," the mother has buried the covers away in a trunk. At the end of Walker's
story, however, she has become aware of her own mistaken value judgments, and she
pays homage that is due to Maggie. The unlikely daughter is a griot of the vernacular
who remembers actors and events in a distinctively black "historical" drama.
Before Dee departs, she "put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the
tip of her nose and her chin." Maggie smiles at the crude symbolism implicit in this
act, for she has always known that her sister saw "through a glass darkly." But it is the
mother's conferral of an ancestral blessing (signaled by her deposit of the quilts in
Maggie's lap) that constitutes the occasion for the daughter's first "real smile." Maggie knows that it is only communal recognition by elders of the tribe that confers ancestral privileges on succeeding generations. T h e mother's holy recognition of the
scarred daughter's sacred status as quilter is the best gift of a hard-pressed womankind
to the fragmented goddess of the present.
At the conclusion of "Everyday Use," which is surely a fitting precursor to The
Color Purple, with its sewing protagonist and its scenes of sisterly quilting, Maggie
and her mother relax in the ritual yard after the dust of Dee's departing car has settled. They dip snuff in the manner of African confreres sharing cola nuts. The moment is past when a putatively "new" generation has confronted scenes of black,
everyday life. A change has taken place, but it is a change best described by Amiri
Baraka's designation for Afro-American music's various styles and discontinuities.
The change in Walker's story is the "changing same." What has been reaffirmed at
the story's conclusion is the value of the quiltmaker's motion and strategy in the
precincts of a continuously undemocratic South.
From "Patches: Quilts and Community in
Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'"
griot: African storyteller, guardian of the peoples' history [authors' note].
Elaine Showalter (b. 1941)
Quilt as Metaphor in "Everyday Use"
1991
Houston and Charlotte Baker have argued that the patchwork quilt is "a trope for understanding black women's creativity in the United States." Piecing represents "a signal
instance of a patterned wholeness in the African diaspora. As the Bakers conclude,
In order to comprehend the transient nature of all wholes, one must first become accustomed to living and working with fragments. . . . Finally it is the
"self," or a version of humanness that one calls the Afro-American self, that
must, in fact, be crafted from fragments on the basis of wisdom gained from
preceding generations. 3
The patchwork quilt appealed not only to black women artists but also to a
new generation of African-American intellectuals, artists, and critics seeking powerful and moving symbols of racial identity. In the context of the Black Aesthetic
movement, blues and jazz had been posited as the definitive Afro-American art
forms; by the late 1970s scholars began to argue that quilts too incorporated the
improvisational techniques important to African-American music. In 1979 Maude
Wahlman and John Scully organized an exhibition of "Black Quilters" which emphasized analogies between piecing and the blues. Elements of spontaneity and novelty in the work of twentieth-century black quiltmakers were cited as crucial to
"Afro-Atlantic aesthetics," just as "fresh" was the "all-purpose encomium on the
streets of black and Puerto Rican New York." 4
For Alice Walker, piecing and quilting have come to represent both the aesthetic
heritage of Afro-American women and the model for what she calls a "Womanist," or
black feminist, writing of reconciliation and connection; in her essay "In Search of Our
Mothers' Gardens," Walker identified the quilt as a major form of creative expression
for black women in the South. "In the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C.," Walker writes,
there hangs a quilt unlike another in the world. In fanciful, inspired, and yet
simple and identifiable figures, it portrays the story of the Crucifixion . . .
Though it follows no known pattern of quiltmaking, and though it is made of
bits and pieces of worthless rags, it is obviously the work of a person of powerful imagination and deep spiritual feeling. Below this quilt I saw a note that
says it was made by "an anonymous Black woman in Alabama a hundred
years ago."
The quilt Walker is describing from memory is in fact one of two extant narrative
quilts by Harriet Powers (1836-1911), born a slave in Georgia. T h e Powrers quilt at
the Smithsonian illustrates Bible stories, while the one in the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts mingles Bible tales with folklore and astronomical events such as shooting stars
and meteor showers.5 For Walker, genuine imagination and feeling can be recognized
^Houston A. Baker and Charlotte Pierce-Baker, "Patches: Quilts and Community in Alice Walker's
'Everyday Use.1" Southern Review 21:3 (Summer 1985) 718.
^Robert Ferris Thompson, preface, "From the First to the Final Thunder: African American Quilts, Monuments
of Culture Assertion," in Eli Leon, ed. Who'd A Thought It: Improvisation in African-American Quiltmaking (San
-Francisco: San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum, 1987) 13, 17.
5See
Marie Jean Adams, "The Harriet Powers Pictorial Quilts," Black Art 3 (1982) 12-28.
ililllllB
Ml
IM:
Mm
Mizi
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iff
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y, /':
without the legitimacy conferred by the labels of "art" or the approval of museums.
Paradoxically this heritage survives because it has been preserved in museums; but it
can be a living art only if it is practiced.
The theme of Walker's quilt aesthetic is most explicitly presented in her early
story "Everyday Use." Like much of her work, it uses a contrast between two sisters
to get at the meaning of the concept of "heritage": a privileged one who escapes
from Southern black culture, and a suffering one who stays or is left behind. T h e
younger daughter, Maggie, has stayed at home since she was horribly scarred in a
house fire ten years before. Dee is the bright and confident sister, the one with
"faultfinding power." Dee has learned fast how to produce herself: "At sixteen she
had a style of her own: and knew what style was." Now having chosen the style of
radical black nationalism, her name changed to "Wangero," and spouting Swahili,
Dee returns to claim her heritage from her mother in the form of "folk art": the
worn benches made by her father, the butter churn whittled by an uncle, and especially the quilts pieced by her grandmother. "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts,"
Dee exclaims. "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use."
Walker thus establishes a contrast between "everyday use" and "institutional theories of aesthetics." 6 In a moment of epiphanic insight, the mother, who has always
been intimidated by Dee's intelligence and sophistication, decides to give the
quilts to Maggie. "She can always make some more," the mother responds. "Maggie
knows how to quilt." Maggie cannot speak glibly about her "heritage" or about
"priceless" artifacts, but, unlike Dee, she understands the quilt as a process rather
than as a commodity; she can read its meaning in a way Dee never will, because she
knows the contexts of its pieces, and loves the women who have made it. The
meaning of an aesthetic heritage, according to Walker's story, lies in continual renewal rather than in the rhetoric of nostalgia or appreciation. In writing The Color
Purple, Walker herself took up quilt-making as well as using it as a central
metaphor in the novel.
From Sister's Choice: Tradition and Change
in American Women's Writing
6Baker
and Pierce-Balcer, "Patches," 716.
TOPICS
FOR W R I T I N G
ABOUT
"THE
TELL-TALE
HEART"
1. Consider the first-person narration of "The Tell-Tale Heart." Explore how this stylistic
choice serves to underscore meaning.
2. In his essay "The Tale and Its Effect," Poe claims that an author's very first sentence must
bring out the effect he is trying to produce on the reader, otherwise "he has failed in his
first step." Consider the opening of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and judge the author by his
own criteria.
3. Edgar Allan Poe never knew his real father and had a conflicted relationship with his foster father, John Allan. Father-son relationships underlie many of Poe's stories, although
in disguised form. Discerning the father-son connection in his tales gives them added
meaning. How do vou think Poe feels about the relationship of fathers and sons based on
"The Tell-Tale Heart"?
4- Choose any one of Poe's stories, and write a two-page imitation. Then write a two-page explanation of which aspects of Poe's style and thematic concerns you were trying to reproduce.
TOPICS
FOR W R I T I N G
ABOUT
"THE YELLOW
WALLPAPER"
1. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is cast in the form of the journal written by its central character.
Consider how the use of this narrative device enrichesor impoverishesthe story.
2. Thomas L. Erskine and Connie L. Richards have written of "the aesthetic problem with
much of Gilman's literary work; often her sociopolitical agenda overwhelms the characters, who become one-dimensional mouthpieces for different ideas. Propaganda all too often threatens art." Discuss whether or not you think these concerns apply to "The Yellow
Wallpaper."
3. Think of a contemporary issue that involves women's feelings of being confined or
thwarted by the male power structure. Then write a brief treatment of that issue in the
style of "The Yellow Wallpaper."
4. Discuss the larger implications of the conclusion of "The Yellow Wallpaper." In the end,
has the narrator triumphed by escaping her oppression, or has she been defeated and
crushed by it?
TOPICS
FOR
WRITING
ABOUT
"EVERYDAY
USE"
1. Write a brief version of the encounter in "Everyday Use" from Dee's point of view. Is it
possible to present a nonironic affirmation of her values over those of her mother and sister? Why or why not?
2. Have you grown apart from a friend or relative with whom you once had a close relationship? Imagine an encounter with that person, and write a first-person description of it
from the other person's point of view*.
3. Alice Walker has suggested that one of her principal intentions in her writing is "nurturing
and healing the reader." Is "nurturing and healing" one of the primary aims of "Everyday Use"?
4. How does the use of a first-person narrator function in "Everyday Use"? Are there places
in which the reader is expected to understand more than the narrator does, or is everything that she says and sees to be accepted at face value?
12
Stories for Further Readin
The novel tends to tell us everything, whereas the short
story tells us only one thing and that intensely.
V. S. PRITCHETT
Chinua Achebe
Dead Men's Path
(1953) 1972
Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi, a village in
eastern Nigeria, in 1930. His father was a missionary schoolteacher, and Achebe had a devout
Christian upbringing. A member of the Ibo
tribe, the future ivriter grew up speaking Igbo,
but at the age of eight, he began learning English., He went abroad to study at London University but returned to Africa to complete his B.A.
at the University College of Ibadan in 1953.
Achebe worked for years in Nigerian radio.
Shortly after Nigeria's independence from Great
Britain in 1963, civil war broke out, and the
new nation split in two. Achebe left his job to
join the Ministry of Information for Biafra, the
CHINUA ACHEBE
new country created from eastern Nigeria. It
was not until 1970 that the bloody civil war ended. Approximately one million Ibos lay
dead from war, disease, and starvation as the defeated Biafrans reunited with Nigeria.
Achebe is often considered Africa's premier novelist. His novels include Things Fall
Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1962), A Man of the People (1966), and
Anthills of the Savannah (1987). His short stories have been collected in Girls At War
(1972). He has also published poetry, children's stories, and several volumes of essays, the
most recent of which is Home and Exile ( 2 0 0 0 ) . In 1990 Achebe suffered massive
injuries in a car accident outside Lagos that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He
currently teaches at Bard College in upstate New York. In 1999 he visited Nigeria again
after a deliberate nine-year absence to protest government dictatorship, and his homecoming became a national event.
Michael Obi's hopes were fulfilled much earlier than he had expected. He was
appointed headmaster of Ndume Central School in January 1949. It had always been
an unprogressive school, so the Mission authorities decided to send a young and energetic man to run it. Obi accepted this responsibility with enthusiasm. He had many
wonderful ideas and this was an opportunity to put them into practice. He had had
sound secondary school education which designated him a "pivotal teacher" in the
official records and set him apart from the other headmasters in the mission field. He
was outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these older and often lesseducated ones.
"We shall make a good job of it, shan't we?" he asked his young wife when they
first heard the joyful news of his promotion.
"We shall do our best," she replied. "We shall have such beautiful gardens and
everything will be just modern and delightful . . ." In their two years of married life
she had become completely infected by his passion for "modern methods" and his
denigration of "these old and superannuated people in the teaching field who would
be better employed as traders in the Onitsha market." She began to see herself
already as the admired wife of the young headmaster, the queen of the school.
The wives of the other teachers would envy her position. She would set the
fashion in everything . . . Then, suddenly, it occurred to her that there might not be
other wives. Wavering between hope and fear, she asked her husband, looking
anxiously at him.
"All our colleagues are young and unmarried," he said with enthusiasm which for
once she did not share. "Which is a good thing," he continued.
"Why?"
"Why? They will give all their time and energy to the school."
Nancy was downcast. For a few minutes she became skeptical about the new
school; but it was only for a few minutes. Her little personal misfortune could not
blind her to her husband's happy prospects. She looked at him as he sat folded up in a
chair. He was stoop-shouldered and looked frail. But he sometimes surprised people
with sudden bursts of physical energy. In his present posture, however, all his bodily
strength seemed to have retired behind his deep-set eyes, giving them an extraordinary power of penetration. He was only twenty-six, but looked thirty or more. On the
whole, he was not unhandsome.
"A penny for your thoughts, Mike," said Nancy after a while, imitating the
woman's magazine she read.
"I was thinking what a grand opportunity we've got at last to show these people
how a school should be run."
Ndume School was backward in every sense of the word. Mr. Obi put his whole
life into the work, and his wife hers too. He had two aims. A high standard of teaching was insisted upon, and the school compound was to be turned into a place of
beauty. Nancy's dream-gardens came to life with the coming of the rains, and blossomed. Beautiful hibiscus and allamanda hedges in brilliant red and yellow marked
out the carefully tended school compound from the rank neighborhood bushes.
One evening as Obi was admiring his work he was scandalized to see an old
woman from the village hobble right across the compound, through a marigold
flower-bed and the hedges. On going up there he found faint signs of an almost
disused path from the village across the school compound to the bush on the
- other side.
10
"It amazes me," said Obi to one of his teachers who had been three years in the
school, "that you people allowed the villagers to make use of this footpath. It is
simply incredible." He shook his head.
"The path," said the teacher apologetically, "appears to be very important to
them. Although it is hardly used, it connects the village shrine with their place of
burial."
"And what has that got to do with the school?" asked the headmaster.
"Well, I don't know," replied the other with a shrug of the shoulders. "But I
remember there was a big row some time ago when we attempted to close it."
"That was some time ago. But it will not be used now," said Obi as he walked
away. "What will the Government Education Officer think of this when he comes to
inspect the school next week? The villagers might, for all I know, decide to use the
schoolroom for pagan ritual during the inspection."
Heavy sticks were planted closely across the path at the two places where it
entered and left the school premises. These were further strengthened with barbed
wire.
Three days later the village priest of Ani called on the headmaster. He was an old
man and walked with a slight stoop. He carried a stout walking-stick which he usually
tapped on the floor, by way of emphasis, each time he made a new point in his argument.
"I have heard," he said after the usual exchange of cordialities, "that our ancestral
footpath has recently been closed . . . "
"Yes," replied Mr. Obi. "We cannot allow people to make a highway of our
school compound."
"Look here, my son," said the priest bringing down his walking-stick, "this path
was here before you were bom and before your father was born. The whole life of this
village depends on it. Our dead relatives depart by it and our ancestors visit us by it.
But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born . . ."
Mr. Obi listened with a satisfied smile on his face.
"The whole purpose of our school," he said finally, "is to eradicate just such beliefs as that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic. Our
duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas."
"What you say may be true," replied the priest, "but we follow the practices of
our fathers. If you reopen the path we shall have nothing to quarrel about. What I
always say is: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch." He rose to go.
"I am sorry," said the young headmaster. "But the school compound cannot be a
thoroughfare. It is against our regulations. I would suggest your constructing another
path, skirting our premises. We can even get our boys to help in building it. I don't
suppose the ancestors will find the little detour too burdensome."
"I have no more words to say," said the old priest, already outside.
Two days later a young woman in the village died in childbed. A diviner was
immediately consulted and he prescribed heavy sacrifices to propitiate ancestors
insulted by the fence.
Obi woke up next morning among the ruins of his work. T h e beautiful hedges
were torn up not just near the path but right round the school, the flowers trampled to death and one of the school buildings pulled down . . . That day, the white
Supervisor came to inspect the school and wrote a nasty report on the state of the
premises but more seriously about the "tribal-war situation developing between
the school and the village, arising in part from the misguided zeal of the new
headmaster."
Anjana Appachana
The Prophecy
1991
Anjana Appachana was born in Mercaray India,
in 1956. Her father was an army officer and her
mother a schoolteacher. Appachana received her
B.A. from Delhi University in 1976 and, two
years later, an M.A. from Jawaharal Nehru
University. She held several nonliterary jobs in
New Delhi, and then moved with her husband
and daughter to the United States in the mid1980s. She taught at Pennsylvania State University and later at Arizona State University in
Tempe, where she now lives and writes. Despite
her move to the West, her creative focus remains
India, and its rich, although never romanticized,
culture pervades her fiction.
Prior to the publication of her first book, a
collection of short stories entitled Incantations
(1991), Appachana's story "Her Mother" won the O. Henry Festival Award in 1989.
In this piece, she revealed the intimate relationship between mother and daughter through
the mother s act of writing a letter from India to her daughter in the United States. Despite the superficial differences in their lives, the mother comes to realize that the two are
more alike in their womanhood than dissimilar in situation. The stories in Incantations
are all markedly realistic, with no hint of the magical realism or fantasy found in many
postcolonial writers. Appachana's characters are plagued by very real concerns, such as
the impossible social and moral quandary caused by one mans rape of his brother s bride.
The bond between women and their common oppression in the patriarchal Indian society are recurrent themes in both Appachana's stories and her novel Listening Now (1998).
The book is told through the narrative voices of six women, and encompasses a love story in
which a pregnant young woman is cruelly abandoned by her lover. Appachana acknowledges that the men in her novel are seen almost exclusively through the eyes of women: "I
can't write from a man's point of view. I don't understand how their minds work. But I
didn't reason any of this out when I wrote the book. I wrote what came to me and what
came to me were the voices of these women. I could barely hear the men's voices!" The
women's voices began to "haunt" her in the 1980s, and in 1990 she began to write Listening
Now, using the voices as inspiration. As she told an interviewer for the Hindu newspaper,
"I've probably listened to these stories all my life. I've listened to the stories of my women
friends, the stories of their mothers, my mother, her sisters and their friends."
In addition to the O. Henry Festival prize, Appachana has been awarded a National
Endowment for the Arts fellowship and has twice won the Haivthornden Castle fellowship,
which awards a writing residency in a manor house in Scotland.
In the end we decided to visit the astrologer before going to the gynecologist.
After an hour's wait in the relentless afternoon sun, a scooter finally stopped for us.
When we told the scooterwalla0 where we wanted to go, he snorted and spat out a
copious stream of paan.
scooterwalla: the driver of a motor-scooter taxi,
paan: a green leaf chewed in India.
"I don't go such short distances," he said contemptuously. We turned away
wearily. "It will be ten rupees!" he shouted.
"Go to hell," said Amrita. "You scooterwallas are all the same."
I dragged her back. "Forget your principles today. We'll both collapse in this
heat."
We sat inside the scooter. T o the scooterwalia's left was a picture of Goddess
Lakshmi with a tinsel garland around it, to his right, one of a film actress, barebosomed and smiling. Surveying us through the rear view mirror, the scooterwalla
grinned. He lit a beedi with a flourish and started the scooter. Loudly and at breakneck speed, the scooter weaved its way through the traffic. We clung to the sides and
helplessly tried to hold our sarees down.
"Maybe I'll be lucky and have a miscarriage now," gasped Amrita.
"Slow down," I shouted above the noise of the scooter. He accelerated. "Slow
down will you!"
He turned to me, grinning. "What did you say?"
I screamed, "Look at the road, don't look at me! Slow down!"
He missed a car by an inch, swerved violently, threw back his head and laughed.
"Which college are you from?" We did not answer. He accelerated.
"Slow down! Do you want us to die!"
"Memsahib," 0 he said, "death is neither in your hands nor in mine. If we have to
die, we will die. It is all written down."
"You die if you want to. At the rate you're going you'll kill us too."
He bounced up and down in his seat gleefully. "Who cares," he sang, "Who cares
if I die, who cares if you die, what difference does it make!"
"Stop talking to him," Amrita told me, "he's enjoying it."
The scooterwalla accelerated again and looked at me hopefully in the rear view
mirror. I looked out at the road. We had passed our destination. "Stop, stop!"
He turned to me again and winked. "What is there to be so scared about? People
die all the time."
"Will you please stop, we've passed the place!"
He braked immediately and we almost fell over him. He leered at our bosoms
and said, "Madam, you should have warned me. This is how accidents happen."
I thrust a ten rupee note into his outstretched hand. He took it, caressing my
hands as he did, smiled slowly and drove off. Shakily we began walking to Chachaji's
house. Chachaji, as the astrologer was called, was very popular with the girls in our
college. His prophecies came true and he was cheaper than the rest. He could read
your mind. One look at you and he knew everythingyour past, your present, your
future.
His wife opened the door to us and led us to the living room. I could hear the
pressure cooker in the kitchen and the house was redolent with the smell of chicken
curry. Somewhere inside a baby cried. The smell of incense wafted in and Chachaji
entered. Spotless white pyjama-kurta, soft white beard, frail frame, startling eyes . . .
mystic . . . ethereal. We stared at him dumbstruck.
He sat opposite us and gazed into our faces. He smiled. "Yes, my children?"
I looked at Amrita. It had been her idea to come here. When she didn't say
anything, I spoke. "We wanted to consult you."
beedi: a flavored cigarette.
Memsahib: a title of respect used for a woman.
"Yes, yes, they all want to consult me." How soft his voice was.
I looked again at Amrita. Her eyes were deep with tears. I knew how she felt. I
could have confessed anything to him.
He turned to Amrita. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. "Beti, you are in
a forest, lost, wandering. You do not know where to go." Dumbly, Amrita nodded. He
sighed and closed his eyes. "I see a boy." We started. "I see trouble. It all began with
this boy. What is the date, time and place of your birth?" She told him. On a piece of
paper he did some rapid calculations. He shook his head. "The stars are not good.
The shadow of Shani is falling on you. It is a very unlucky year for you."
Amrita whispered. "Chachaji, what will happen?"
"Happen? Has it not already happened?"
She flinched and lowered her eyes. Her fingers gathered and ungathered her
pleats. "What will I do, Chachaji, what will I do?"
He closed his eyes once again. I was sweating profusely and there were beads of
perspiration above Amrita's mouth.
His wife entered with two glasses of water for us. We drank thirstily. She smiled
at us. "You are both so pretty." We smiled gratefully. "But you don't know how to
wear sarees," she said, clicking her tongue. "Stand up for a moment." We stood up
obediently. She bent and pulled our sarees down. "Always wear your sandals before
wearing sarees. Or else it'll ride high," she adjusted our pleats, then stood up and
surveyed her work with satisfaction.
"Champa's mother," sighed Chachaji, "they have not come here to talk of
sarees."
"Oh you," she dismissed him with a gesture. "Don't frighten these children with
all your talk." She picked up the glasses, gave us another sunny smile and walked out
of the room, her payals tinkling softly.
Apologetically, we looked at Chachaji. He smiled indulgently. "Yes, children,
what else do you want to know?"
"What should I do?" asked Amrita.
"I will do a puja for you. It will negate the bad influence of Shani. After six
months I will perform a second puja. Your stars will change. The shadow of Shani
will no longer envelop you." Worshipfully, we nodded. "For the puja," he continued,
his eyes fixed at the wall behind us, "you will have to give a donation."
"How much?" Amrita asked, fumbling in her purse.
"Whatever you wish, beti, whatever you wish. With the blessings of God all will
be well. I will do a special puja for you."
Amrita gave him twenty rupees. He took it and fingered the notes meditatively.
"My child, this will suffice only for a small puja. For you I will have to perform a big
puja. Or else the trouble may become worse."
"Chachaji, I have very little money."
He shrugged his shoulders. "If that is your wash, then. This may not suffice to
negate the evil influence of Shani." I took out ten rupees from my bag and gave it to
him. "Chachaji, this is all we have."
He smiled, took the money with one hand, and patted my cheek with the other.
"You are a true friend, beti. You are a loyal friend. Your stars are good. You will do an
M.A. It is possible that you will work. You will marry a handsome man and have one
son, one daughter."
- puja: a religious ritual.
25
30
35
40
"When will I get married, Chachaji?"
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen."
"In six, seven years, beti."
"Will it be arranged?"
"It will be love. You will have a love marriage."
"Will I go abroad, Chachaji?"
"Many times, many, many times."
"Thank you, Chachaji," I said, quietly ecstatic.
He turned to Amrita. "After I perform the puja, your stars will change. You will
marry a handsome, fair, rich, influential man. You will have two sons who will rise to
powerful positions in the government. They will bring you power, fame, respect. And
you will also travel abroad, many, many times."
He rose. We folded our hands.
T h e heat hit us as we stepped out of the house. We walked towards the bus stop.
"Oh no, Patram!" I gasped and pulled Amrita back from the road. In silence,
breathing heavily, we stood where we were. A khaki-clad man walked past us. He
was not Patram. Feeling foolish, we continued walking.
Patram was the omnipresent, omniscient peon-cum-bodyguard-cum-regulatorof-rules, employed by our college, who watched the boarders like a hawk and reported
all our goings-on to the superintendent. He knew who sneaked out of the gates before
the rules permitted, who returned after 8 p.m., who smoked, who had a boyfriend.
Just last month two girls had been expelled from the hostel after Patram smelt cigarette
smoke in the corridor outside their room and informed the superintendent. The case
went up to the principal. The girls pleaded with her but she would not budge. She
said that she would not have girls of such loose character in her college. They had to
leave. If someone decided to sneak out of the college gates and see a 1:30 film show,
Patram was sure to know. He was everywherein the markets, cinema, theatres,
Connaught Place. We lived in dread of the famous khaki dress and cap and the
permanent grin on his face. That morning we had walked out of the college before
official going-out time, and there had been no sign of Patram. Dressed in sarees for
the first time in an effort to look older, we had walked out of the gates, awkwardly
and with trepidation. Still no Patram.
And now, weak with relief at the false alarm, we waited for the bus that would take
us to the gynecologist. It arrived almost immediately, and for once, it was not crowded.
"Forty rupees," Amrita said as the bus began to move. "We've spent forty rupees today."
I said nothing. We had just a hundred between us. We had no idea how much the
gynecologist would take. The previous day, in a desperate bid to make some money,
we had gone around the hostel collecting old newspapers, empty jars and bottles. We
had fitted these into six polythene bags and trudged to the nearby market, trying to
appear oblivious to the noise they made as we walked, praying that the polythene bags
would not fall apart. In the market we had squatted before the kabadiwalla0 and bargained at length. He had said he would give us twenty rupees for the whole lot. We
had asked for thirty. He had refused. We walked away and he had called us back.
Twenty-five, he had said. So we struck the bargain. On the way back, overcome by the
sight of pastries in the bakery, we had spent most of it on black forests, lemon tarts,
kabadiwalla: player of an Indian stick game (here he is also a junk dealer).
c h o c o l a t e eclairs and c h i c k e n patties. A n d now we had barely enough for the gynecologist, let alone t h e abortion. Maybe, I thought, she isn't pregnant after all.
T h e c l i n i c was plush, beautiful and smelt rich. O u r hearts sank. W e sat at the rec e p t i o n and waited A m r i t a ' s turn. T h e r e was just o n e other person there, in a bright
pink chiffon saree. S h e stared at us. W e t h u m b e d unseeingly through the magazines.
S h e c o n t i n u e d staring.
" S h e ' s going to ask questions," A m r i t a murmured.
60
"Lie."
"What?"
" S o , " said t h e woman, "you h a v e c o m e to visit Dr. Kumar?"
W e nodded distantly and w e n t b a c k to our magazines.
" H o w old are you b o t h ? "
65
" T w e n t y , " I lied. B e n e a t h my saree my legs began to tremble.
" A c h a ? You look younger."
A m r i t a smiled. " T h a t ' s good."
S h e c o n t i n u e d surveying us and h e r face grew grim. S h e drew h e r palla over h e r
shoulders. " A r e you married?"
" Y e s , " I said.
70
" N o , " said A m r i t a .
" A c h a ? " S h e turned a shocked face towards A m r i t a . " T h e n w h a t are you doing
here?"
"Period problems," said A m r i t a and went back to h e r magazine.
" W h a t problems?"
"Irregular," I said.
75
" T o o frequent," said A m r i t a .
S h e smiled knowingly. " T h e r e seems to be s o m e confusion about t h e problem,
yes?" W e did n o t reply. S h e turned h e r gaze o n me. " S o are you t h e married o n e ? "
"Yes."
" Y o u d o n ' t look married. H o w old are you?"
"Twenty."
80
" S o what is your problem?"
" I ' m accompanying my friend."
" A c h a ! S o t h e married friend is a c c o m p a n y i n g t h e unmarried friend to t h e gynec o l o g i s t ! " S h e knew, she knew. S h e fingered h e r mangalsutra. 0 " I t seems to m e that
n e i t h e r o f you is married." S h e waited. " A n d if t h a t is so, G o d knows what you are
doing h e r e . "
T h e nurse called, "Mrs. M e h t a , your turn please."
S h e rose, exuding a strong whiff o f I n t i m a t e as she did, and walked in.
85
" B i t c h , " said A m r i t a .
T e n minutes later, Mrs. M e h t a emerged, gave us a meaningful look and left.
W e went in, sat opposite Dr. K u m a r and began to cry.
S h e was wonderful. S h e spoke to us in low, c o m f o r t i n g tones, gave us tissues, got
us cold water and h a d t h e nurse serve us tea. Finally, red-nosed and swollen-eyed, we
were quiet.
S h e turned to A m r i t a . "You're pregnant?"
"I t h i n k so."
" L e t m e c h e c k you."
palla: veil,
mangalsutra: a bridal necklace given by the groom at a wedding.
90
I sat in the room while she and Amrita went into the adjoining room. When
they emerged, I knew it was confirmed. Amrita sat next to me. She was trembling. I.
put my hand on her knee.
Dr. Kumar's eyes, brown and gentle, looked troubled. She reminded me of my
mother. But I could not tell my mother if I were pregnant.
"How much will an abortion cost?" asked Amrita.
Dr. Kumar rested her face against her hand. "Does the boy know?"
"No. There's no need for him to know."
"So, you don't intend marrying him?"
"No. How much will it cost?"
Dr. Kumar was silent. Finally she said, "It's a thousand rupees in this clinic."
Amrita and I looked at each other in despair. We didn't even have a hundred. Dr.
Kumar, her eyes full of compassion, suggested that there were government hospitals
where it could be done for about a hundred rupees. She would give us the addresses.
Sensing my apprehension, she assured me that they were perfectly safe. As for the
abortionpeople were having it all the time. She paused, then said, "Amrita, would
you like to take your parents into your confidence?" Seeing Amrita's face, she gently
continued, "Sometimes, beti, we tend to misjudge our parents. Often they're the best
people to turn to at such times."
"Last year," Amrita whispered, "our neighbor's daughter got pregnant. She threw
herself in front of a passing train. Her parents refused to claim her body. And my
father said, that is how it should be."
"Your mother?"
"What could she say? She cried for days. And Ma can't keep anything to herself.
She'll tell my father."
Dr. Kumar seemed lost in thought. After some time she sighed and said, "Are
you both in the hostel?" We nodded. "So, your parents are not in Delhi?" We shook
our heads. "I see." She wrote down a few addresses and gave them to us. We rose to
leave. "Wait," she said, and proceeded to give us a fifteen-minute talk on contraception. Wide-eyed and quivering with embarrassment, I listened. I could barely look
Dr. Kumar in the eye as she systematically went through it all. How did people
ever buy these things? How did they look chemists in the eye? How did they ever
get down to it? Amrita looked tired but unembarrassed, nodding from time to
time. After Dr. Kumar finished, she said, "Don't be so foolish next time." We got
up. She said, "Amrita, you're already two months gone. Don't wait much longer."
Amrita nodded.
Dr. Kumar refused to take any money.
It was five when we reached the hostel. We changed out of our sarees and looked
at each other.
"Marry him, Amrita," I said tentatively.
"Please," Amrita replied, "you'll never understand."
I didn't. I didn't understand at all. I liked Rakesh; he was handsome, bright, fun
to be with. He smelt wonderfully of aftershave and had given us our first motorcycle
rides. He's so nice, I had often told Amrita, so nice. But she said he had no aesthetic
sense. She didn't want nice. She didn't want to get married after college. She didn't
want to end up like her parents. She wanted adventure. I, half in love with Rakesh,
his aftershave and his motorcycle, was sure he would provide adventure. She scoffed
at the very idea.
O f t e n I wondered why A m r i t a h a d gone into this strange, loveless relationship.
N o r m a l l y so c o m m u n i c a t i v e with me, she was unusually r e t i c e n t about her affair
with R a k e s h . W a s it just the sex? M y mind recoiled at t h e thought. Nevertheless, I
wondered. It's n o t h i n g so great, she told m e o n c e , and I tried to school my expression
at this unexpected revelation. S h e had d o n e it! H o w often? S h e looked t h e same. O n
our o c c a s i o n a l outings together, 1 w a t c h e d t h e m covertly. T h e y laughed, talked, ate,
drank. I could see 110 hidden fire in R a k e s h ' s eyes, n o answering flame in Amrita's. I n
my own fantasies, I was beautiful but enigmatic, virginal, but willing to surrender it
all to t h e m a n I married. If it h a p p e n e d before marriage h e would n o t respect me. I
would t a m e t h e beast in h i m . Did R a k e s h respect A m r i t a ? Did she drive h i m crazy
with desire? I waited to hear more, but she said n o t h i n g . I c o n t i n u e d feeding my fantasies o f h a n d s o m e m e n o n motorcycles, smelling o f aftershave, with deep voices and
British a c c e n t s . I would happily h a v e settled for o n e after college, happily married
one. H e would never tire o f me, n o r I of h i m . Marriage would be that wondrous path
of rapid heartbeats and unending, i n t i m a t e discoveries.
A m r i t a spent t h e weekends with R a k e s h in his hostel. " T h i s bloody college and
those frustrated spinsters make m e sick," she wTould tell m e every Sunday evening, referring to the superintendent and the principal. "I'll be glad to get out o f this h o l e . "
R a k e s h never seemed to figure in h e r plans for t h e future. S h e wanted to be a journalist and I h a d n o doubt that she would succeed. N o t only did she write expressively,
but had strong feelings and a strange kind o f courage, a n indifference to what people
t h o u g h t of her. W h i l e I seemed to spend my life looking over my shoulder to see who
was watching, starting, for fear s o m e o n e was listening, always fearful that " t h e y "
would know, A m r i t a , as long as I h a d k n o w n her, had done exactly what she wanted.
N o w , o n A m r i t a ' s behalf, it was I w h o was guilty, scared o f discovery, c e r t a i n that
retribution was i m m i n e n t .
W e could n o t use the hostel p h o n e to fix up the appointment as it was out of order.
W e began walking towards the gate again since t h e taxi-stand outside the college had
a public p h o n e . But Nemesis in the form of Patram was just b e h i n d us. G r i n n i n g , he
led us to t h e superintendent's office. H e h a d seen us outside the college gates t h a t
morning, h e said. T h e superintendent, sullen, but with a predatory gleam in her eyes,
lectured us o n our dishonesty, t h e wickedness o f our actions and o n our parents' inability to i n c u l c a t e in us the virtues o f restraint and politeness. A s she t o o k a deep
breath to renew her attack, A m r i t a told her t h a t she was an ignorant, power-hungry,
naiTow-minded, perverse w o m a n and stormed out o f t h e room. W e a k with s h o c k and
fear, I gave t h e superintendent an ingratiating smile and followed A m r i t a .
B a c k in our room, A m r i t a raged. S h e d a m n e d t h e college and the authorities.
" O n e day," she fumed, " I ' m going to expose this place for wThat it is. I'll write about it
and publish it. N o o n e will want to a t t e n d this wretched p l a c e . " I replied, "It'll have
exactly t h e opposite e f f e c t y o u r article will reassure every middle-class parent like
yours and m i n e . "
W e were gated for two weeks. B u t t h e n e x t week we sneaked out and waited for
a scooter or bus t h a t would take us to o n e of t h e c l i n i c s Dr. K u m a r h a d suggested.
Patram's v o i c e called us from across t h e road, precipitating a n o t h e r return. O n c e
again h e escorted us to the superintendent's office. O u r gating was e x t e n d e d to four
weeks. T w o weeks passed, t h e n three weeks. O n e day s o m e o n e casually m e n t i o n e d
t h a t h e r sister had had a miscarriage after eating pickles. T h a t e v e n i n g I made A m rita eat h a l f a b o t t l e of mango pickle. T h e room smelled o f it for days and she was violently sick, but n o t h i n g happened. S h e said, " I f I starve myself maybe it'll die," and
110
didn't eat for three days. S h e almost collapsed, but n o t h i n g happened. I said, "Eat,
you'll need your strength for t h e a b o r t i o n . " " W h e n , " she whispered, " w h e n ? " A s t h e .
days passed I felt A m r i t a ' s rising fear. T h e more fearful she was, t h e quieter she bec a m e . Daily I murmured reassurances while unobtrusively e x a m i n i n g her s t o m a c h . It
seemed to grow n o bigger. W o u l d an abortion at this stage kill her? I imagined A m rita's prolonged, bloody death at the clinic, with m e left b e h i n d to break t h e news to
her parents, to the superintendent, to t h e principal, to my parents. T h e horror.
W o u l d they hold m e responsible? A n d t h e n I was ridden with guilt for t h i n k i n g such
thoughts, for feeling n o t sorrow, but terror for the seemingly endless repercussions o f
such a death. M y fantasies turned to nightmares.
A s our gating entered t h e fourth week, A m r i t a fell ill. S h e refused to let m e call
a doctor for fear h e would find out that she was pregnant. A t midnight h e r temperature rose to 1 0 4 degrees. T h e superintendent did n o t take kindly to my k n o c k at her
door at that hour, urging her to call a doctor. T h i s was n o time to c o m e k n o c k i n g at
her door, she snapped, h a n d i n g m e two aspirins and banging t h e door o n my face. I
stood outside h e r door for a long time. T h e n I went back to ours.
A m r i t a ' s temperature remained t h e same t h e n e x t day. T h e
superintendent
called a doctor. T h e diagnosismeasles.
" O h my G o d , o h my G o d , " said t h e superintendent wringing h e r hands. " N o w
everyone in the hostel will get it. S h e had b e t t e r leave the h o s t e l . "
" S h e has nowhere to go," I said.
S h e gave m e a look of pure hatred and left t h e room hurriedly. H a l f an hour later
I was s u m m o n e d to h e r office where t h e principal had j o i n e d her. " W h a t is all this I
hear?" t h e principal asked me.
" A l l what?"
T h e principal looked at m e in a m a z e m e n t and t h e n spoke to m e for t e n m i n u t e s
o n t h e s u b j e c t o f respect for elders. S u b s e q u e n t l y she expressed h e r outrage t h a t
A m r i t a h a d n o local guardians in D e l h i w h o could take h e r away, a n d h e r deeper
outrage t h a t I c o u l d n ' t ask my local guardians to look after her. S h e ordered t h e sup e r i n t e n d e n t to send a telegram to A m r i t a ' s parents in B a n g a l o r e . In t h e m e a n t i m e
A m r i t a and I were to h a v e our meals in our room. O n n o a c c o u n t were we to e n t e r
the dining-hall. T o attend classes, we were to use the back door o f t h e hostel. It
would be opened especially for us.
T h e superintendent placed a call to A m r i t a ' s parents but could n o t get through.
S h e sent a telegram but there was n o response. For a week A m r i t a stayed confined to
our room. I c o n t i n u e d attending classes, leaving through the b a c k door of the hostel.
For some u n a c c o u n t a b l e reason, it did n o t matter to t h e m if I infected t h e others in
class, but t h e dining-room was taboo. A m r i t a wept silently throughout, and w h e n she
was asleep, I did. O f t e n I would wake up at n i g h t to find A m r i t a awake, gazing at the
ceiling, h e r face now full of spots, h e r large eyes swollen and red. W e hardly spoke.
Finally t h e superintendent got through to A m r i t a ' s parents. T h e y said they would fly
to D e l h i the n e x t day. T u r n i n g to t h e wall, A m r i t a said, " T h i s is the end. M y father
will h a v e n o t h i n g to do with me. W h e r e will I go? W h e r e will I go?" I could offer n o
comfort, n o sanctuary, I kept saying, " H e w o n ' t do that, h e w o n ' t do t h a t . " T h e n I
said, " R a k e s h is there, he'll see you through, h e ' l l h a v e t o . " S h e was silent and t h e n
said, " C a l l h i m , tell h i m . "
T h e hostel p h o n e was out o f order again. I asked the superintendent if I could
use hers. S h e refused. In t h e end I walked out o f t h e college gates, my p o c k e t full o f
fifty paisa coins, while Patram followed me, calling, " H e r n i a t h a j i , c o m e back, c o m e
back, I'll report you to the superintendent, I'll tell the principal, you will see what I
will do, you will see what happens." He followed me to the gate and watched me
walk to the taxi-stand. The taxiwallas stared at me while I dialed Rakesh's number at
his engineering college. I got a wrong number the first time. T h e second time the call
got disconnected. The third time I got through. Rakesh was out, I was told, but would
be back in ten minutes. I waited, while the taxiwallas eyed me. One lay down on the
charpoi 0 next to me. "It is so hot," he groaned. He removed his banyan, 0 lowered his
pyjamas and looked at me. I looked away.
It was growing dark and every emerging shadow seemed khaki-clad and wore a
wide grin. I walked down the road slowly. Five minutes. A cyclist swerved towards
me and I stepped back. He groaned and cycled away rapidly. I walked back and tried
the number again. I got through. Rakesh was back. I told him what I could and he
said he would be there immediately. I walked a slight distance away from the taxistand and waited. "Madam," said a voice behind me. I shuddered and looked back. It
was the same taxiwalla. He looked me over and scratched his groin. "Can I help you
in any way?" "No," I said and turned away. He remained where he was. "Do you need
any fifty paisa coins?" "No," I said, "No." I walked further away. He followed me. I
crossed the road. He stood opposite, staring at me. Ten minutes later Rakesh's motorcycle came to a halt beside me. The taxiwalla walked back.
Rakesh was in a state of shock and incomprehension. He would sell his motorcy- 125
cle and pay for the abortion, he declared hoarsely. He would protect her from her
parents. He would leave college. As I tried to calm him down, a familiar khaki-clad
apparition emerged silently from the shadows and stood before us, grinning.
For the third time Patram escorted me back to the superintendent's office. The
principal was there too. It was girls like me who ruined the reputation of the collegebreaking rules, making boyfriends, smoking, she said. I didn't smoke, I replied.
The principal snorted. Next I would say I didn't have a boyfriend. She pulled the
telephone towards her. She was going to phone my local guardians to take me away. I
could start packing my things.
I wish I could say at this point that I had let her phone them. I wish I could say
that I had walked out of the room with an appropriate remark. I wish I could say that
I had told them what I thought of them. Even today I relive that scene and say all
that I did not at that time. I wish I didn't have to say that I began to cry hysterically
while they watched me with satisfaction. That I begged them to give me another
chance. That I told them my parents would never understand. That I kept repeating,
please, please don't expel me, I'll never repeat my mistakes. That the superintendent
said she wanted all this in writing. That I gave her a written apology, still sobbing,
still begging. They both smiled and shook their heads. And the principal asked the
superintendent, "So you think she has realized?" And the superintendent replied,
"Who knows with these girls, they are such good actresses." And I said, (oh God), I
said, "I will do anything you want me to do, but please don't expel me, please forgive
me, please forgive me." And they said, "We cannot give you an answer now, we shall
have to think about it. We will watch your behavior and then we will decide." And I
thanked them.
The next morning, from our first floor window, I saw Rakesh's figure next to his
motorcycle, waiting outside the gate. I sent him a note through my next-door neighbor, explaining the situation, but he continued waiting in the afternoon sun while I
charpoi: traditional Indian woven bed, made of rough string webbing,
banyan: vest.
helped Amrita pack her belongings. Her parents arrived in the evening. Her father
waited in the superintendent's office while her mother came up to our room and sat next to her daughter, stroking her hair. "My poor baby," she said, "my poor, poor
child." And she smiled at me and said, "Hemu, beti, thank you for looking after her
all this time. My daughter is lucky to have such a friend." She continued stroking
Amrita's hair. "Ma," Amrita said, "Ma, I'm pregnant." Her mother's hands stopped.
"Ma," Amrita said, grasping her thigh, "I'm three months pregnant Ma. Ma, where
will I go? Where will I go?" Her mother w7as still, so still. She closed her eyes and
whispered, "Bhagwan, hai Bhagwan." 0
In the distance a clock struck six. From my position at the window I could see
Rakesh outside the gate, waiting.
"Ma/"
We started. Amrita's voice sounded strange.
"Ma, I think I'm bleeding."
She was. Slowly, the white sheets were staining. Amrita began to cry, loud,
harsh sounds. Fascinated, I watched the white sheets turning red while the room
filled with the horrible sound, till I thought it would have to burst open to let out
what at could not possibly contain. And then there was a knock on the door and the
superintendent entered. I threw a bedcover over Amrita and her sounds stopped
abruptly. The superintendent's eyes bulged. "What is the matter?"
Amrita's mother began stroking her hair again. "My daughter is tired. It has been
a strain. Please call a taxi. We must leave now." The superintendent eyed us suspiciously. She came closer to Amrita and whipped the bedcover away. Amrita's mother
gasped. The superintendent gave a strangled scream. Amrita closed her eyes and the
superintendent said, "I should have known."
"Please call a taxi," her mother said.
"Taxinothing doing, I'm calling the principal." She rushed out of the room
and we heard her heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor.
"Beti," her mother's face was distorted, "Please call a taxi."
"I can't, I can't, I'll be expelled. You call one from outside the gate, I'll stay with her."
"Ma, don't leave me," Amrita moaned.
I held her hands tightly. "I'm here."
Small, incoherent sounds escaped her mother's throat. She looked at us and
then went out rapidly.
I was with Amrita for fifteen minutes while she continued bleeding. I used up all
the sheets we had to use below and between her. The blood soaked through them all,
right down to the mattress, and the room was heavy with its smell. Amrita moaned
and twisted and turned and held on to my hand until I felt I could no longer bear the
pain of it all. Then the superintendent entered the room with the principal. The
principal took the scene in and hit her forehead with her hand.
"Tell her parents to take her away," she told me. "Tell them she cannot come
back to this college. Where are they?"
"Her mother's gone to get a taxi." I was shivering violently.
I heard footsteps in the corridor and her mother entered the room, panting. She
ignored the superintendent and the principal. "Beti," she told me, "help me carry her
down."
Bhagwan, hai Bhagwan: a Hindi exclamation equivalent to "Oh, my God!"
"And don't bring her back," the principal said, tight-lipped. "We don't want
such girls here."
"Madam, madam," the superintendent said hysterically, "it isn't my faultshe
broke the rules and got into this mess."
They called Patram to carry her suitcases down, while her mother and I carried
Amrita downstairs to the waiting taxi, past the superintendent's room, past her
amazed father, followed by the principal and the superintendent. We laid Amrita
down on the back seat of the taxi and her mother said to me, "Come with me, beti,
please come with me."
"Nothing doing," the principal said, holding my arm. "This girl is going
nowhere. We have had enough trouble. Now Amrita is your responsibility." I stood
between them, helpless.
"Will someone tell me what is happening?" her father asked.
150
"Yes, I will tell you," the principal said. "Your daughter is pregnant and at this
moment she is aborting. You do what you want with her and don't bring her back to
this college."
Her father's face seemed to shrink. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. Her
mother took his arm gently and opened the door of the taxi. "Get inside," she said, "we
have to go to die hospital." She sat at the back with Amrita. Slowly, the taxi drove away.
"So, Hemlathaji," said the superintendent, but I walked away, away from her,
away from the hostel, away from it all, towards the college building. I climbed up the
stairs to the first floor and sat there, against the wail.
Much later I looked at my watch. It was 9:45 P.M. They would lock the hostel
door at 10:00. I walked back slowly and went upstairs to our room. The stench of
blood greeted me, and on the bed, an accumulation of sheets, all red and white. I
bolted the door and walked to the window. He was still there. I drew the curtains.
The rest, I heard from my mother's sister in Bangalore, who is a good friend of 155
Amrita's mother. She stayed with us for a week and, in the strictest of confidence,
gave us a blow-by-blow account of everything. Amrita was in hospital for a day and
then flew back with her parents to Bangalore. The following month she was married
off. "That is luck," my aunt said. "Such a nice boy, you cannot imagine. So fair, so
handsome and on top of that, the only son. And the wedding . . . what a wedding!
She wore a lahenga 0 studded with real pearls." I asked, "Isn't she going to complete
her B.A.?" My aunt replied, "What will she do wTith a B.A. now? And anyway, her father forbade it. He was a broken man. Do you know, his hair turned grey overnight?
Poor man," she sighed. My mother turned to me. She said, "I cannot believe you were
friendly with a girl like that. You act as though she did nothing wrong. I hope she
hasn't influenced, you. You'll never understand what a mother goes through till you
become a mother. It is my only prayer to God these days, that you make the correct
decisions, that you know right from wrong, that you do not go astray."
Rakesh came to visit me the following term. I told him about Amrita. At the
end he said, "I see." That is all.
The rules in the hostel became stricter. Patram kepi a strict eye on me. Like the
Cheshire cat his grin followed me everywhere.
The year I graduated, Amrita wrote. She had no time for letter-writing, she said,
at least not for the kind she wished to write to me. There had been too much to cope
lahenga: a wide dance skirt.
with that first yearthe abortion, her marriage, her first child. And the second year,
her second child. So much for Dr. Kumar's advice on contraception! she said. Her father began speaking to her after her son was born. Her mother never referred to what
happened. But she stood by her.
Of course, her husband knew nothing. He's nice, she said, and also tall and fair
and by that definition, they say, handsome. He's all set to groom our sons to be good
IAS officers like him, extending his dreary dreams of all that is proper, permanent
and powerful. Work was taking her husband abroad the following year. She would
probably accompany him. She asked if I could come and stay with her for a while, for
more than a while, whenever possible. She longed to talk to me, letters were so difficult. And all the interruptions, babies crying, meals to be cooked . . . you know how
it can be, she said. Oh, Hemu, no, you cannot know. Not yet, not yet. She asked, remember Chachaji? He got it all right, didn't he? He will always get it right, won't he?
For this is how it will always be, yes, this is how it will always be. Oh, Hemu, Hemu,
my stars have changed, haven't they?
And mine, Amrita, and mine.
Margaret Atwood
Happy Endings
1983
Born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939, Margaret Eleanor
Atwood was the daughter of an entomologist and spent
her childhood summers in the forests of northern Quebec, where her father carried out research. Atwood began writing at the age of five and had already seriously
entertained thoughts of becoming a professional writer
before she finished high school. She graduated from the
University of Toronto in 1961, and later did graduate
work at Radcliffe and Harvard. Atwood first gained
prominence as a poet. Her first full-length collection of
poems, The Circle Game (1966), was awarded a
Governor Generals Award, Canada's most prestigious
literary honor, and she has published nearly twenty volumes of verse. Atwood also began to write fiction seriously in graduate school, and her short stories were first
MARGARET ATWOOD
collected in Dancing Girls (1977), followed by Bluebeard's Egg (1983), Murder in the Dark (1983),
Wilderness Tips (1991), Good Bones (1992), and Moral Disorder (2006). Among her
other influential books is Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972),
in which she argued that Canadian writers should turn from British and American models to
a fuller utilization of their own cultural heritage.
A dedicated feminist, Atwood chose the title of Dancing Girls urith care, alluding to
women who are forced to move in patterns determined by a patriarchal society. In her later
works of fiction She has continued to explore the complex relations between the sexes,
most incisively in The Handmaid's Tale ( 1 9 8 6 ) , a futuristic novel about a world in which
gender roles are ruthlessly enforced by a society based on religious fundamentalism. In the
same year that The Handmaid's Tale appeared, Atwood was named Woman of the Year by
Ms. magazine. Subsequent novels include Cat's Eye (1988), The Robber Bride (1993),
The Blind Assassin (2000), Oryx and Crake (2003), and The Penelopiad (2005). Atwood has served as writer-in-residence at universities in Canada, the United States, and
Europe, and she has been widely in demand for appearances at symposia devoted to literature and women's issues. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002) and
Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005 (2005) are recent
collections of her nonfiction.
John and Mary meet.
What happens next?
If you want a happy ending, try A.
A
John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming
house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they
have twro children, to whom they are devoted. The children turn out well. John and
Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends. They go on
fun vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.
B
Mary falls in love with John but John doesn't fall in love with Mary. He merely
uses her body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind. He comes to
her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you'll notice that he doesn't
even consider her worth the price of a dinner out, and after he's eaten the dinner he
fucks her and after that he falls asleep, while she does the dishes so he won't think
she's untidy, having all those dirty dishes lying around, and puts on fresh lipstick so
she'll look good when he wakes up, but when he wakes up he doesn't even notice,
he puts on his socks and his shorts and his pants and his shirt and his tie and his
shoes, the reverse order from the one in which he took them off. He doesn't take off
Mary's clothes, she takes them off herself, she acts as if she's dying for it every time,
not because she likes sex exactly, she doesn't, but she wants John to think she does
because if they do it often enough surely he'll get used to her, he'll come to depend
on her and they will get married, but John goes out the door with hardly so much as
a good-night and three days later he turns up at six o'clock and they do the whole
thing over again.
Mary gets run-down. Crying is bad for your face, everyone knows that and so
does Mary but she can't stop. People at work notice. Her friends tell her John is a rat,
a pig, a dog, he isn't good enough for her, but she can't believe it. Inside John, she
thinks, is another John, who is much nicer. This other John will emerge like a butterfly
from a cocoon, a Jack from a box, a pit from a prune, if the first John is only squeezed
enough.
One evening John complains about the food. He has never complained about
the food before. Mary is hurt.
Her friends tell her they've seen him in a restaurant with another woman, whose
name is Madge. It's not even Madge that finally gets to Mary; it's the restaurant. John
has never taken Mary to a restaurant. Mary collects all the sleeping pills and aspirins
she can find, and takes them and a half a bottle of sherry. You can see what kind of a
woman she is by the fact that it's not even whiskey. She leaves a note for John. She hopes he'll discover her and get her to the hospital in time and repent and then they
can get married, but this fails to happen and she dies.
John marries Madge and everything continues as in A.
c
John, who is an older man, falls in love with Mary, and Mary, who is only twentytwo, feels sorry for him because he's worried about his hair falling out. She sleeps with
him even though she's not in love with him. She met him at work. She's in love with
someone called James, who is twenty-two also and not yet ready to settle down.
John on the contrary settled down long ago: this is what is bothering him. John
has a steady, respectable job and is getting ahead in his field, but Mary isn't impressed
by him, she's impressed by James, who has a motorcycle and a fabulous record collection. But James is often away on his motorcycle, being free. Freedom isn't the same
for girls, so in the meantime Mary spends Thursday evenings with John. Thursdays
are the only days John can get away.
John is married to a woman called Madge and they have two children, a charming
house which they bought just before the real estate values went up, and hobbies which
they find stimulating and challenging, when they have the time. John tells Mary how
important she is to him, but of course, he can't leave his wife because a commitment is
a commitment. He goes on about this more than is necessary and Mary finds it boring,
but older men can keep it up longer so on the whole she has a fairly good time.
One day James breezes in on his motorcycle with some top-grade California hybrid
and James and Mary get higher than you'd believe possible and they climb into bed.
Everything becomes very undenvater, but along comes John, who has a key to Mary's
apartment. He finds them stoned and entwined. He's hardly in any position to be
jealous, considering Madge, but nevertheless he's overcome with despair. Finally he's
middle-aged, in two years he'll be bald as an egg and he can't stand it. He purchases a
handgun, saying he needs it for target practicethis is the thin part of the plot, but it
can be dealt with laterand shoots the two of them and himself.
Madge, after a suitable period of mourning, marries an understanding man called
Fred and everything continues as in A, but under different names.
D
Fred and Madge have no problems. They get along exceptionally well and are
good at working out any little difficulties that may arise. But their charming house is
by the seashore and one day a giant tidal wave approaches. Real estate values go
down. The rest of the story is about what caused the tidal wave and how they escape
from it. They do, though thousands drown, but Fred and Madge are virtuous and
lucky. Finally on high ground they clasp each other, wet and dripping and grateful,
and continue as in A.
E
Yes, but Fred has a bad heart. The rest of the story is about how kind and understanding they both are until Fred dies. Then Madge devotes herself to charity work
until the end of A. If you like, it can be "Madge," "cancer," "guilty and confused,"
and "bird watching."
F
If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a
counterespionage agent and see how far that gets you. Remember, this is Canada.
You'll still end up with A, though in between you may get a lustful brawling saga of
passionate involvement, a chronicle of our times, sort of.
15
You'll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent
to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality.
The only authentic ending is the one provided here:
John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.
So much for endings. Beginnings are almost more fun. True connoisseurs, however,
are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with.
That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after
another, a wrhat and a what and a what.
Now try How and Why.
Ambrose Bteree
Ari Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
1891
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
was born in
Horse Cave Creek, Ohio, the youngest child of
nine in an impoverished farm family. A year at
Kentucky Military Academy was his only formal
schooling. Enlisting as a drummer boy in the
Union Army, Bierce saw action at Shiloh and
Chickamauga, took part in Sherman s March to
the Sea, and came out of the army a brevet major.
Then he became a writer, later an editor, for San
Francisco newspapers. For a while Bierce thrived.
He and his wife, on her ample dowry, lived five
years in London, where Bierce wrote for London
papers, honed his style, and cultivated his wit.
But his wife left him, his two sons died (one of
gunfire and the other of alcoholism), and late in
AMBROSE BIERCE
life Bierce came to deserve his nickname "Bitter
BierceIn
1913, at seventy-one, he trekked off to Mexico and vanished without a trace,
although one report had him riding with the forces of revolutionist Pancho Villa. (A 1989
moviey Old Gringo, imagines Bierce's last days.) Bierce, who regarded the novel as ua
short story paddedfavored
shorter lengths: short story, fable, newspaper column, aphorism. Sardonically, in The Devil's Dictionary (1911), he defines diplomacy as "the patriotic art of lying for one's countryand
saint as "a dead sinner revised and edited." Master
of both realism and the ghost story, he collected his best Civil War fiction, including "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgein
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), later retitled In
' the Midst of Life.
20
i
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the
swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists
bound w7ith a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout crosstimber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards
laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him
and his executionerstwo private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant
who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same
temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as
"support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on
the forearm thrown straight across the chesta formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two
men to know7 what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded
the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away
into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was
an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open grounda gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the
bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectatorsa single
company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the
barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon
the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the
ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center
of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to
adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his
subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced
is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar
with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five
years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a
planter. His features were gooda straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from
which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock-coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no
whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one
would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was
no vulgar assassin. T h e liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds
of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and
each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to
the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn
moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant
standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of
the bridge. T h e end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a
fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now
held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside,
the plank would tilt and t h e c o n d e m n e d m a n go down b e t w e e n two ties. T h e
arrangement c o m m e n d e d itself to his j u d g m e n t as simple and effective. His face had
n o t b e e n covered nor his eyes bandaged. H e looked a m o m e n t at his "unsteadfast
f o o t i n g , " t h e n let his gaze wander to t h e swirling water o f t h e stream racing madly ben e a t h his feet. A piece o f d a n c i n g driftwood caught his a t t e n t i o n and his eyes followed it down the current. H o w slowly it appeared to m o v e ! W h a t a sluggish stream!
H e closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children.
T h e water, t o u c h e d to gold by t h e early sun, t h e brooding mists under the banks at
some distance down the stream, t h e fort, t h e soldiers, the piece of driftall had distracted h i m . A n d n o w h e b e c a m e conscious o f a new disturbance. S t r i k i n g through
the t h o u g h t of his dear ones was a sound w h i c h h e could n e i t h e r ignore n o r understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's h a m m e r
upon t h e anvil; it had t h e same ringing quality. H e wondered w h a t it was, and
w h e t h e r immeasurably distant or near b y i t seemed b o t h . Its recurrence was regular,
but as slow as t h e tolling of a death k n e l l . H e awaited e a c h stroke with impatience
a n d h e k n e w n o t w h y a p p r e h e n s i o n . T h e intervals of silence grew progressively
longer; t h e delays b e c a m e maddening. W i t h t h e i r greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. T h e y hurt his ear like t h e thrust o f a knife; he
feared h e would shriek. W h a t h e heard was t h e ticking o f his watch.
H e unclosed his eyes and saw again t h e water below h i m . " I f I could free my
hands," h e thought, "I might throw off t h e noose and spring into t h e stream. By diving I could evade t h e bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the
woods and get away h o m e . M y h o m e , t h a n k G o d , is as yet outside their lines; my wife
and little ones are still beyond t h e invader's farthest a d v a n c e . "
A s these thoughts, w h i c h h a v e here to be set down in words, were flashed into
t h e doomed man's brain rather t h a n evolved from it the captain nodded to the
sergeant. T h e sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected A l a b a m a
family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an
original secessionist and ardently devoted to the S o u t h e r n cause. Circumstances of an
imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented h i m from taking
service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the
fall of C o r i n t h , and h e chafed under t h e inglorious restraint, longing for the release of
his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. T h a t opportunity, h e felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. M e a n w h i l e he did what h e
could. N o service was too humble to h i m to perform in aid of the S o u t h , n o adventure
too perilous for h i m to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian w h o was
at heart a soldier, and w h o in good faith and without too m u c h qualification assented to
at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
O n e e v e n i n g while Farquhar and his wife were sitting o n a rustic b e n c h near the
e n t r a n c e to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up t o t h e gate and asked for a drink
o f water. Mrs. Farquhar was only t o o happy to serve h i m with her own white hands.
W h i l e she was f e t c h i n g the water h e r husband approached t h e dusty h o r s e m a n and
inquired eagerly for news from the front.
" T h e Yanks are repairing the railroads," said t h e m a n , "and are getting ready for
a n o t h e r advance. T h e y h a v e r e a c h e d t h e O w l C r e e k bridge, put it in order and built
10
a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted
everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this
end of the bridge."
"Suppose a mana civilian and student of hangingshould elude the picket
post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could
he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the
flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier
at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her
ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall,
he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had
come. He was a Federal scout.
h i
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness
and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakenedages later, it seemed to
himby the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation.
Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of
his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of
pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious
of nothing but a feeling of fulnessof congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied
by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to
feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous
cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung
through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with
tenible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a
frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was
restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There
was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him
and kept the water from his lungs. T o die of hanging at the bottom of a river!the idea
seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam
of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became
fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and
he knew that he was rising toward the surfaceknew it with reluctance, for he was now
very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do
not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him
that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler
might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid
effort!what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor!
Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen
on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one
and t h e n the o t h e r p o u n c e d upon t h e n o o s e at his n e c k . T h e y tore it away and thrust
it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. " P u t it back, put it
b a c k ! " H e t h o u g h t h e shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing o f the noose
had b e e n succeeded by t h e direst pang t h a t h e had yet experienced. His n e c k ached
horribly; his brain was o n fire; his heart, w h i c h had b e e n fluttering faintly, gave a
great leap, trying to force itself out at his m o u t h . His whole body was racked and
w r e n c h e d with an insupportable anguish! B u t his disobedient hands gave n o heed to
t h e c o m m a n d . T h e y b e a t t h e water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing
h i m to t h e surface. H e felt his h e a d emerge; his eyes were blinded by t h e sunlight;
his c h e s t e x p a n d e d convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs
engulfed a great draught o f air, w h i c h instantly h e expelled in a shriek!
H e was now in full possession of his physical senses. T h e y were, indeed, preternatu-
20
rally keen and alert. S o m e t h i n g in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined t h e m that they made record of things never before perceived. H e felt
the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. H e looked at the
forest o n the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of
each leafsaw the very insects upon them: t h e locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the
gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. H e noted the prismatic colors in all
the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. T h e humming of the gnats that danced
above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the
water-spiders' legs, like oars w h i c h had lifted their b o a t a l l these made audible music.
A fish slid along beneath his eyes and h e heard the rush of its body parting the water.
H e had c o m e to the surface facing down t h e stream; in a m o m e n t t h e visible
world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and h e saw the bridge,
the fort, t h e soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his
executioners. T h e y were i n silhouette against the blue sky. T h e y shouted and gesticulated, pointing at h i m . T h e captain had drawn his pistol, but did n o t fire; t h e others
were unarmed. T h e i r m o v e m e n t s were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly h e heard a sharp report a n d s o m e t h i n g struck t h e water smartly within
a few inches o f his head, spattering his face with spray. H e heard a second report, and
saw o n e o f the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from t h e muzzle. T h e m a n in t h e water saw t h e eye of the m a n o n t h e bridge gazing into his own through t h e sights o f the rifle. H e observed that it was a gray eye and
remembered having read t h a t gray eyes were keenest, and t h a t all famous marksmen
had t h e m . Nevertheless, this o n e h a d missed.
A counter-swirl h a d caught Farquhar and turned h i m h a l f round; h e was again
looking into the forest o n t h e b a n k opposite t h e fort. T h e sound of a clear, high voice
in a m o n o t o n o u s singsong n o w rang out b e h i n d h i m and c a m e across the water with
a distinctness t h a t pierced and subdued all o t h e r sounds, e v e n the beating of t h e ripples in his ears. A l t h o u g h n o soldier, h e had frequented camps enough to k n o w the
dread significance of t h a t deliberate, drawling, aspirated c h a n t ; t h e lieutenant o n
shore was taking a part in t h e morning's work. H o w coldly and pitilesslywith w h a t
an even, c a l m i n t o n a t i o n , presaging, and enforcing tranquility in t h e m e n w i t h
w h a t accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words:
" A t t e n t i o n , c o m p a n y ! . . . S h o u l d e r arms! . . . Ready! . . . A i m ! . . . F i r e ! "
Farquhar d i v e d d i v e d as deeply as h e could. T h e water roared in his ears like
t h e v o i c e of Niagara, yet h e heard t h e dulled thunder o f t h e volley and, rising again
toward t h e surface, m e t shining bits o f metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly
downward. S o m e of t h e m t o u c h e d h i m o n t h e face and hands, t h e n fell away,
25
continuing their descent. O n e lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably
warm and h e snatched it out.
A s h e rose to t h e surface, gasping for breath, h e saw t h a t h e h a d b e e n a long time
under water; he was perceptibly farther down s t r e a m n e a r e r to safety. T h e soldiers
had almost finished reloading; t h e metal ramrods flashed all at o n c e in t h e sunshine
as they were drawn from t h e barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets.
T h e two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.
T h e hunted m a n saw all this over his shoulder; h e was now swimming vigorously
with t h e current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; h e t h o u g h t with t h e
rapidity o f lightning.
" T h e officer," h e reasoned, "will n o t m a k e t h a t martinet's error a second time. It
is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. H e has probably already given the c o m m a n d to fire at will. G o d help me, I c a n n o t dodge t h e m a l l ! "
A n appalling plash w i t h i n two yards of h i m was followed by a loud, rushing
sound, diminuendowhich
seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died
in an explosion w h i c h stirred t h e very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water
curved over him, fell down upon h i m , blinded him, strangled h i m ! T h e c a n n o n had
taken a h a n d in the game. A s h e s h o o k his head free from the c o m m o t i o n o f t h e
smitten water h e heard t h e deflected shot h u m m i n g through t h e air ahead, and in an
instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
" T h e y will n o t do t h a t again," h e thought; " t h e n e x t time t h e y will use a charge
of grape. I must keep my eye upon t h e gun; t h e smoke will apprise m e t h e report arrives too late; it lags b e h i n d t h e missile. T h a t is a good gun."
Suddenly h e felt himself whirled round and roundspinning like a top. T h e water,
t h e banks, the forests, t h e n o w distant bridge, fort and m e n a l l were c o m m i n g l e d
and blurred. O b j e c t s were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks
o f c o l o r t h a t was all h e saw. H e had b e e n caught in a v o r t e x and was being whirled
o n with a velocity o f advance and gyration that made h i m giddy and sick. In a few
m o m e n t s h e was flung upon the gravel at t h e foot o f t h e left b a n k o f t h e s t r e a m t h e
southern b a n k a n d b e h i n d a projecting point w h i c h c o n c e a l e d h i m from his e n e mies. T h e sudden arrest o f his m o t i o n , the abrasion of o n e o f his hands o n t h e gravel,
restored h i m , and h e wept with delight. H e dug his fingers i n t o t h e sand, threw it
over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could t h i n k of n o t h i n g beautiful w h i c h it did n o t resemble. T h e trees upon
t h e b a n k were giant garden plants; h e n o t e d a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance o f their blooms. A strange, roseate light s h o n e through t h e spaces
among their trunks and t h e wind made in their branches t h e music of aeolian harps.
H e had n o wish to perfect his escapewas c o n t e n t to remain in t h a t e n c h a n t i n g spot
until retaken.
A whiz and rattle o f grapeshot among t h e b r a n c h e s h i g h above his head roused
h i m from his dream. T h e baffled c a n n o n e e r h a d fired h i m a random farewell. H e
sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged i n t o t h e forest.
A l l t h a t day h e traveled, laying his course by t h e rounding sun. T h e forest
seemed interminable; n o w h e r e did he discover a break in it, n o t e v e n a woodman's
road. H e h a d n o t k n o w n t h a t h e lived in so wild a r e g i o n . T h e r e was s o m e t h i n g
u n c a n n y in the revelation.
diminuendo: diminishing (Italian); a term from music indicating a gradual decrease in loudness or
force.
30
By nightfall h e was fatigued, footsore, famishing. T h e t h o u g h t o f his wife and
c h i l d r e n urged h i m o n . A t last h e found a road w h i c h led h i m in w h a t h e k n e w to be
t h e right d i r e c t i o n . It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it s e e m e d untraveled. N o fields bordered it, n o dwelling anywhere. N o t so m u c h as t h e barking o f a
dog suggested h u m a n h a b i t a t i o n . T h e b l a c k bodies o f t h e trees formed a straight wall
o n b o t h sides, t e r m i n a t i n g o n t h e horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. O v e r h e a d , as h e l o o k e d up through this rift in t h e wood, s h o n e great golden
stars l o o k i n g unfamiliar and grouped in strange c o n s t e l l a t i o n s . H e was sure they were
arranged in s o m e order w h i c h had a secret a n d m a l i g n significance. T h e wood o n eit h e r side was full o f singular noises, a m o n g w h i c h o n c e , twice, and a g a i n h e dist i n c t l y heard whispers in an u n k n o w n tongue.
His n e c k was in pain and lifting his h a n d to it h e found it horribly swollen. H e
k n e w t h a t it h a d a circle of b l a c k where t h e rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested;
h e could 110 longer close t h e m . His tongue was swollen with thirst; h e relieved its fever
by thrusting it forward from b e t w e e n his t e e t h into t h e cold air. H o w softly t h e turf had
carpeted t h e untraveled a v e n u e h e could n o longer feel t h e roadway b e n e a t h his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, h e had fallen asleep while walking, for n o w h e
sees a n o t h e r s c e n e p e r h a p s h e has merely r e c o v e r e d from a delirium. H e stands at
t h e gate o f his o w n h o m e . A l l is as h e left it, a n d all bright and beautiful in t h e m o r n ing sunshine. H e must h a v e traveled t h e e n t i r e n i g h t . A s h e pushes o p e n t h e gate
and passes up t h e wide w h i t e walk, h e sees a flutter o f f e m a l e garments; his wife, looking fresh and c o o l and sweet, steps down from t h e veranda to m e e t h i m . A t t h e b o t t o m o f t h e steps she stands waiting, w i t h a smile o f ineffable joy, a n attitude of
m a t c h l e s s grace and dignity. A h , h o w beautiful she is! H e springs forward w i t h ext e n d e d arms. A s h e is about to clasp h e r h e feels a s t u n n i n g blow u p o n t h e b a c k of
t h e n e c k ; a blinding w h i t e light blazes all a b o u t h i m w i t h a sound like t h e s h o c k o f a
c a n n o n t h e n all is darkness and s i l e n c e !
P e y t o n Farquhar was dead; h i s body, w i t h a b r o k e n n e c k , swung gently from side
to side b e n e a t h t h e timbers o f t h e O w l C r e e k bridge.
Jorge Luis Borges
The Gospel According to Mark
1970
TRANSLATED BY ANDREW HURLEY
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986),
an outstanding
modern writer of Latin America, was born in
Buenos Aires into a family prominent in Argentine history. Borges grew up bilingual, learning
English from his English grandmother and receiving
his early education from an English tutor. Caught
in Europe by the outbreak of World War I, Borges
lived in Switzerland and later Spain, where he
joined the Ultraists, a group of experimental
poets who renounced realism. On returning to
Argentina, he edited a poetry magazine printed
in the form of a poster and affixed to city walls.
For his opposition to the regime of Colonel Juan
Peron, Borges ivas forced to resign his post as a
JORGE LUIS BORGES
35
librarian and was mockingly offered a job as a chicken inspector. In 1955, after Per on was
deposed, Borges became director of the National Library and professor of English literature
at the University of Buenos Aires. A sufferer since childhood from poor eyesight, Borges
eventually went blind. His eye problems may have encouraged him to work mainly in short,
highly crafted forms: stories, essays, fables, and lyric poems full of elaborate music. His
short stories, in Ficciones (1944), El hacedor (1960; translated as Dreamtigers, 1964),
and Labyrinths (1962), have been admired worldwide.
The incident took place on the Los Alamos ranch, south of the small town of
Jumn, in late March of 1928. Its protagonist was a medical student named Baltasar
Espinosa. We might define him for the moment as a Buenos Aires youth much like
many others, with no traits worthier of note than the gift for public speaking that had
won him more than one prize at the English school 0 in Ramos Mejia and an almost
unlimited goodness. He didn't like to argue; he preferred that his interlocutor rather
than he himself be right. And though he found the chance twists and turns of gambling interesting, he was a poor gambler, because he didn't like to win. He was intelligent and open to learning, but he was lazy; at thirty-three he had not yet completed
the last requirements for his degree. (The work he still owed, incidentally, was for his
favorite class.) His father, like all the gentlemen of his day a freethinker, 0 had instructed Espinosa in the doctrines of Herbert Spericer, 0 but once, before he set off on a
trip to Montevideo, his mother had asked him to say the Lord's Prayer every night
and make the sign of the cross, and never in all the years that followed did he break
that promise. He did not lack courage; one morning, with more indifference than
wrath, he had traded two or three blows with some of his classmates that were trying
to force him to join a strike at the university. He abounded in debatable habits and
opinions, out of a spirit of acquiescence: his country mattered less to him than the
danger that people in other countries might think the Argentines still wore feathers;
he venerated France but had contempt for the French; he had little respect for
Americans but took pride in the fact that there were skyscrapers in Buenos Aires;
he thought that the gauchos 0 of the plains were better horsemen than the gauchos
of the mountains. When his cousin Daniel invited him to spend the summer at
Los Alamos, he immediately acceptednot because he liked the country but out of a
natural desire to please, and because he could find no good reason for saying no.
T h e main house at the ranch was large and a bit run-down; the quarters for
the foreman, a man named Gutre, stood nearby. There were three members of the
Gutre family: the father, the son (who was singularly rough and unpolished), and a
girl of uncertain paternity. They were tall, strong, and bony, with reddish hair and
Indian features. They rarely spoke. The foreman's wife had died years before.
In the country, Espinosa came to learn things he hadn't known, had never even
suspected; for example, that when you're approaching a house there's no reason to
gallop and that nobody goes out on a horse unless there's a job to be done. As the
summer wore on, he learned to distinguish birds by their call.
Within a few days, Daniel had to go to Buenos Aires to close a deal on some
livestock. At the most, he said, the trip would take a week. Espinosa, who was already a little tired of his cousin's bonnes fortunes and his indefatigable interest in the
English school: a prep school that emphasized English (well-to-do Argentineans of this era wanted
their children to learn English), freethinker: person who rejects traditional beliefs, especially religious dogma, in favor of rational inquiry. Herbert Spencer: a British philosopher (1820-1903) who
championed the theory of evolution, gaucho: a South American cowboy
vagaries of men's tailoring, stayed behind on the ranch with his textbooks. The heat
was oppressive, and not even nightfall brought relief. Then one morning toward
dawn, he was awakened by thunder. Wind lashed the casuarina trees. Espinosa heard
the first drops of rain and gave thanks to God. Suddenly the wind blew cold. That
afternoon, the Salado overflowed.
The next morning, as he stood on the porch looking out over the flooded plains,
Baltasar Espinosa realized that the metaphor equating the pampas with the sea was not,
at least that morning, an altogether false one, though Hudson0 had noted that the sea
seems the grander of the two because we view it not from horseback or our own height,
but from the deck of a ship. The rain did not let up; the Gutres, helped (or hindered) by
the city dweller, saved a good part of the livestock, though many animals were drowned.
There were four roads leading to the ranch; all were under water. On the third day,
when a leaking roof threatened the foreman's house, Espinosa gave the Gutres a room at
the back of the main house, alongside the toolshed. The move brought Espinosa and the
Gutres closer, and they began to eat together in the large dining room. Conversation
was not easy; the Gutres, who knew so much about things in the country, did not know
how to explain them. One night Espinosa asked them if people still remembered anything about the Indian raids, back when the military command for the frontier had been
in Junin. They told him they did, but they would have given the same answer if he had
asked them about the day Charles 1 had been beheaded. Espinosa recalled that his father used to say that all the cases of longevity that occur in the country are the result of
either poor memory or a vague notion of datesgauchos quite often know neither the
year they were bom in nor the name of the man that fathered them.
In the entire house, the only reading material to be found were several copies of a
fanning magazine, a manual of veterinary medicine, a deluxe edition of the romantic
verse drama Tabare, a copy of The History of the Shorthorn in Argentina, several erotic
and detective stories, and a recent novel that Espinosa had not readDon Segundo
Somfoa, by Ricardo Guiraldes. In order to put some life into the inevitable after-dinner
attempt at conversation, Espinosa read a couple of chapters of the novel to the Gutres,
who did not know how to read or write. Unfortunately, the foreman had been a cattle
drover himself, and he could not be interested in the adventures of another such a one.
It was easy work, he said; they always carried along a pack mule with everything they
might need. If he had not been a cattle drover, he announced, he'd never have seen
Lake Gomez, or the Bragado River, or even the Nunez ranch, in Chacabuco
In the kitchen there was a guitar; before the incident I am narrating, the laborers
would sit in a circle and someone would pick up the guitar and strum it, though never
managing actually to play it. That was called "giving it a strum."
Espinosa, who was letting his beard grow out, would stop before the mirror to look
at his changed face; he smiled to think that he'd soon be boring the fellows in Buenos
Aires with his stories about the Salado overrunning its banks. Curiously, he missed
places in the city he never went, and would never go: a street comer on Cabrera where a
mailbox stood; two cement lions on a porch on Calle Jujuy a few blocks from the Plaza
del Once; a tile-floored comer grocery-store-and-bar (whose location he couldn't quite
remember). As for his father and his brothers, by now Daniel would have told them
that he had been isolatedthe word was etymologically preciseby the floodwaters.
Exploring the house still cut off by the high water, he came upon a Bible printed
in English. On its last pages the Guthries (for that was their real name) had kept
W. H. Hudson: an English naturalist and author (1841-1922) who wrote extensively about South
America. Charles I: King of England, beheaded in 1649.
their family history. T h e y had c o m e originally from Inverness 0 and had arrived in the
N e w Worlddoubtlessly as peasant laborersin the early n i n e t e e n t h century; they hadintenmarried with Indians. T h e chronicle came to an end in the eighteen-seventies;
they n o longer k n e w h o w to write. W i t h i n a few generations they h a d forgotten their
English; by t h e time Espinosa m e t t h e m , e v e n S p a n i s h gave t h e m some difficulty.
T h e y had n o faith, though in their veins, alongside the superstitions o f t h e pampas,
there still ran a dim current of the Calvinisms harsh fanaticism. Espinosa m e n t i o n e d
his find to them, but t h e y hardly seemed to hear h i m .
H e leafed through t h e book, and his fingers opened it to t h e first verses o f t h e
Gospel A c c o r d i n g to S t . M a r k . T o try his h a n d at translating, and perhaps to see if
they might understand a little of it, h e decided t h a t t h a t would be the t e x t h e read
the Gutres after dinner. H e was surprised that they listened first attentively and t h e n
with mute fascination. T h e presence of gold letters o n the binding may have given it
increased authority. "It's in their blood," h e thought. It also occurred to h i m t h a t
throughout history, h u m a n k i n d has told two stories: t h e story o f a lost ship sailing t h e
M e d i t e r r a n e a n seas in quest o f a beloved isle, and t h e story o f a god who allows h i m self to be crucified o n G o l g o t h a . H e recalled his e l o c u t i o n classes in R a m o s M e j i a ,
and h e rose to his feet to preach t h e parables.
In t h e following days, t h e G u t r e s would wolf down the spitted b e e f and c a n n e d
sardines in order to arrive sooner at t h e Gospel.
T h e girl had a little lamb; it was her pet, and she prettied it with a sky blue ribbon.
O n e day it cut itself on a piece of barbed wire; to stanch the blood, the Gutres were
about to put spiderwebs on the wound, but Espinosa treated it with pills. T h e gratitude
awakened by that cure amazed him. A t first, h e had n o t trusted the Gutres and had
hidden aw7ay in one of his books the two hundred forty pesos he'd brought; now, with
Daniel gone, h e had taken the master's place and begun to give timid orders, which wrere
immediately followed. T h e Gutres would trail h i m through the rooms and along the
hallway, as though they were lost. A s h e read, h e noticed diat they would sweep away
the crumbs h e had left o n the table. O n e afternoon, h e surprised t h e m as they were
discussing h i m in brief, respectful words. W h e n h e c a m e to the end o f t h e G o s p e l
A c c o r d i n g to S t . Mark, h e started to read another of the three remaining gospels, but
the father asked h i m to reread the one he'd just finished, so they could understand it
better. Espinosa felt they were like children, who prefer repetition to variety or novelty.
O n e night h e dreamed of the Flood (wThich is n o t surprising) and was awakened by the
hammering of the building of the Ark, but h e told himself it was thunder. A n d in fact
the rain, which had let up for a while, had begun again; it was very cold. T h e Gutres told
h i m the rain had broken through the roof o f the toolshed; w h e n they got the beams
repaired, they said, they'd show h i m where. H e was n o longer a stranger, a foreigner, and
they all treated h i m with respect; h e was almost spoiled. N o n e of t h e m liked coffee, but
there was always a little cup for him, with spoonfuls of sugar stirred in.
T h a t second storm took place on a Tuesday. Thursday night there was a soft k n o c k
on his door; because of his doubts about the Gutres h e always locked it. H e got up and
opened the door; it was the girl. In the darkness h e couldn't see her, but h e could tell by
her footsteps that she was barefoot, and afterward, in the bed, that she was n a k e d t h a t
in fact she had c o m e from the back of the house that way. S h e did n o t embrace him, or
speak a word; she lay down beside him and she was shivering. It was the first time she had
lain with a man. W h e n she left, she did n o t kiss him; Espinosa realized that h e didn't
Inverness: a county in Scotland.
10
e v e n k n o w h e r n a m e . Impelled by some s e n t i m e n t h e did n o t attempt to understand, h e
swore that w h e n h e returned to B u e n o s Aires, he'd tell n o o n e o f t h e incident.
T h e n e x t day b e g a n like all t h e others, e x c e p t t h a t t h e f a t h e r spoke to Espinosa
to ask w h e t h e r C h r i s t had allowed h i m s e l f to be killed in order to save all m a n k i n d .
Espinosa, w h o was a f r e e t h i n k e r like his father but felt obliged t o defend w h a t h e had
read t h e m , paused.
" Y e s , " h e finally replied. " T o save all m a n k i n d from h e l l . "
15
" W h a t is h e l l ? " G u t r e t h e n asked h i m .
" A p l a c e underground w h e r e souls will burn in fire f o r e v e r . "
" A n d those t h a t drove t h e nails will also b e saved?"
" Y e s , " replied Espinosa, whose t h e o l o g y was a b i t shaky. ( H e had worried t h a t
t h e f o r e m a n w a n t e d to h a v e a word with h i m a b o u t w h a t h a d h a p p e n e d last n i g h t
w i t h his daughter.)
A f t e r l u n c h t h e y asked h i m t o read t h e last chapters again.
20
Espinosa h a d a long siesta t h a t a f t e r n o o n , a l t h o u g h it was a light sleep, interrupted by persistent h a m m e r i n g and vague p r e m o n i t i o n s . T o w a r d e v e n i n g h e got up
and w e n t out i n t o t h e h a l l .
" T h e water's going d o w n , " h e said, as t h o u g h t h i n k i n g out loud. " I t w o n ' t be
long n o w . "
" N o t long n o w , " repeated G u t r e , like a n e c h o .
T h e three of t h e m had followed h i m . K n e e l i n g on t h e floor, they asked his blessing.
T h e n they cursed h i m , spat o n him, and drove h i m to the back o f t h e house. T h e girl
was weeping. Espinosa realized what awaited h i m o n t h e o t h e r side of t h e door. W h e n
they opened it, h e saw the sky. A bird screamed; it's a goldfinch, Espinosa thought. T h e r e
was n o roof o n the shed; they had torn down t h e roof beams to build t h e Cross.
Paul's Case
1905
Willa Cather (1876-1947)
was born in Gore,
Virginia, but at nine moved to Webster County,
Nebraska, where pioneer sod houses still clung to
the windswept plains. There, mainly in the town
of Red Cloud, she grew up among Scandinavians, Czechs, Bohemians, and other immigrant
settlers, for whom she felt a quick kinship: they
too had been displaced from their childhood
homes. After graduation from the University of
Nebraska, Cather went east to spend ten years in
Pittsburgh, where the story "Paul's Case" opens.
(When she wrote the story, she was a high school
teacher of Latin and English and a music critic
for a newspaper.) Then, because her early stories had attracted notice, New York beckoned. A
job on the staff of McClure's led to her becoming
WILLA CATHER
managing editor of that popular magazine. Her
early novels of Nebraska won immense popularity: O P i o n e e r s ! (1913), M y A n t o n i a
(1918), and A Lost Lady (1923). In her later novels Cather explores other regions of the
North American past: in Death Comes to the Archbishop (1927), frontier New Mexico;
in Shadows on the Rock (1931), seventeenth-century Quebec. She does not romanticize,
the rugged lives of farm people on the plains, or glamorize village life. Often, as in The
Song of the Lark (1915), the story of a Colorado girl who becomes an opera singer, she depicts a small town as stifling. With remarkable skill, she may tell a story from a mans point
of view, but her favorite characters are likely to be women of strong will who triumph over
obstacles.
It was Paul's afternoon to appear before the faculty of the Pittsburgh High
School to account for his various misdemeanors. He had been suspended a week ago,
and his father had called at the Principal's office and confessed his perplexity about
his son. Paul entered the faculty room suave and smiling. His clothes were a trifle
outgrown and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn;
but for all that there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin
in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole. This
latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of the contrite
spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension.
Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shoulders and a narrow chest. His eyes were remarkable for a certain hysterical brilliancy and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort of way, peculiarly offensive in a boy.
The pupils were abnormally large, as though he were addicted to belladonna, but
there was a glassy glitter about them which that drug does not produce.
When questioned by the Principal as to why he was there, Paul stated, politely
enough, that he wanted to come back to school. This was a lie, but Paul was quite accustomed to lying; found it, indeed, indispensable for overcoming friction. His teachers were asked to state their respective charges against him, which they did with such
a rancor and aggrievedness as evinced that this was not a usual case. Disorder and impertinence were among the offenses named, yet each of his instructors felt that it was
scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble, which lay in a sort of
hysterically defiant manner of the boy's; in the contempt which they all knew he felt
for them, and which he seemingly made not the least effort to conceal. Once, when
he had been making a synopsis of a paragraph at the blackboard, his English teacher
had stepped to his side and attempted to guide his hand. Paul had started back with a
shudder and thrust his hands violently behind him. The astonished woman could
scarcely have been more hurt and embarrassed had he struck at her. The insult was so
involuntary and definitely personal as to be unforgettable. In one way and another,
he had made all his teachers, men and women alike, conscious of the same feeling of
physical aversion. In one class he habitually sat with his hand shading his eyes; in another he always looked out of the window during the recitation; in another he made
a running commentary on the lecture, with humorous intention.
His teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized by his
shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell upon him without mercy,
his English teacher leading the pack. He stood through it smiling, his pale lips parted
over his white teeth. (His lips were continually twitching, and he had a habit of raising his eyebrows that was contemptuous and irritating to the last degree.) Older boys
than Paul had broken down and shed tears under that baptism of fire, but his set
smile did not once desert him, and his only sign of discomfort was the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of his overcoat, and an occasional
jerking of the other hand that held his hat. Paul was always smiling, always glancing
about h i m , seeming t o feel t h a t people might be watching h i m and trying to d e t e c t
something. T h i s conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish
mirthfulness, wras usually attributed to insolence or "smartness."
A s the inquisition proceeded, o n e o f his instructors repeated an i m p e r t i n e n t re-
mark o f t h e boy's, and t h e Principal asked h i m w h e t h e r h e t h o u g h t t h a t a courteous
speech to have made a w o m a n . Paul shrugged his shoulders slightly and his eyebrows
twitched.
"I don't k n o w , " h e replied. "I didn't m e a n to be polite or impolite, either. I guess
it's a sort o f way I h a v e of saying things regardless."
T h e Principal, w h o was a sympathetic man, asked h i m w h e t h e r h e didn't t h i n k
t h a t a way it would be well to get rid of. Paul grinned and said h e guessed so. W h e n
h e was told that h e could go, h e bowed gracefully and went out. His bow was but a
repetition o f t h e scandalous red c a r n a t i o n .
His teachers were in despair, and his drawing master voiced t h e feeling of t h e m
all w h e n h e declared there was something about t h e boy w h i c h n o n e of t h e m understood. H e added: "I don't really b e l i e v e t h a t smile o f his c o m e s altogether from insolence; there's s o m e t h i n g sort of h a u n t e d about it. T h e boy is n o t strong, for o n e
thing. I h a p p e n to k n o w t h a t h e was born in C o l o r a d o , only a few m o n t h s before his
m o t h e r died out there of a long illness. T h e r e is something wrong about the fellow."
T h e drawing master had c o m e to realize that, in looking at Paul, o n e saw only
his white t e e t h and the forced a n i m a t i o n of his eyes. O n e warm a f t e r n o o n t h e boy
had gone to sleep at his drawing-board, and his master h a d noted with amazement
what a white, blue-veined face it was; drawn and wrinkled like an old man's about
the eyes, t h e lips twitching e v e n in his sleep, and stiff with a nervous tension t h a t
drew t h e m b a c k from his t e e t h .
His teachers left t h e building dissatisfied and unhappy; humiliated to have felt so
vindictive toward a mere boy, to have uttered this feeling in cutting terms, and to
have set e a c h o t h e r on, as it were, in t h e gruesome game o f intemperate reproach.
S o m e o f t h e m remembered having seen a miserable street cat set at bay by a ring of
tormentors.
A s for Paul, h e ran down t h e hill whistling t h e Soldiers' C h o r u s from
Faust
looking wildly b e h i n d h i m n o w and t h e n to see w h e t h e r some of his teachers were
n o t there t o writhe under his light-heartedness. A s it was now late in t h e afternoon
and Paul was o n duty t h a t e v e n i n g as usher at C a r n e g i e H a l l , h e decided that h e
would n o t go h o m e to supper. W h e n h e reached t h e c o n c e r t hall the doors were n o t
yet open and, as it was chilly outside, h e decided to go up into the picture g a l l e r y
always deserted at this h o u r w h e r e there were some of Raffaelli's 0 gay studies of
Paris streets and an airy blue V e n e t i a n scene or two t h a t always exhilarated h i m . H e
was delighted to find n o o n e in the gallery but t h e old guard, w h o sat in o n e corner, a
newspaper o n his k n e e , a b l a c k p a t c h over o n e eye and t h e o t h e r closed. Paul possessed h i m s e l f o f the place and walked confidently up and down, whistling under his
breath. A f t e r a while h e sat down before a blue R i c o and lost himself. W h e n h e
b e t h o u g h t h i m to look at his w a t c h , it was after seven o ' c l o c k , and h e rose with a
Faust: tragic grand opera (1859) by French composer Charles Gounod. Carnegie Hall: concert hall
endowed by Pittsburgh steel manufacturer Andrew Carnegie, not to be confused with the betterknown Carnegie Hall in New York City. Raffaelli: Jean-Francois Raffaelli (18.50-1921), painter
and graphic artist, native and lifelong resident of Paris, attained great popularity for his paintings
and drawings of that city. Rico: (flourished 1500-1550), painter of the Byzantine school, a native
of Crete.
10
start and ran downstairs, making a face at Augustus, peering out from the cast-room,
and an evil gesture at the Venus of Milo as he passed her on the stairway.
When Paul reached the ushers' dressing-room half-a-dozen boys were there already, and he began excitedly to tumble into his uniform. It was one of the few that at
all approached fitting, and Paul thought it very becomingthough he knew that the
tight, straight coat accentuated his narrow chest, about which he was exceedingly sensitive. He was always considerably excited while he dressed, twanging all over to the
tuning of the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the music-room;
but tonight he seemed quite beside himself, and he teased and plagued the boys until,
telling him that he was crazy, they put him down on the floor and sat on him.
Somewhat calmed by his suppression, Paul dashed out to the front of the house
to seat the early comers. He was a model usher; gracious and smiling he ran up and
dowrn the aisles; nothing was too much trouble for him; he carried messages and
brought programmes as though it were his greatest pleasure in life, and all the people
in his section thought him a charming boy, feeling that he remembered and admired
them. As the house filled, he grew more and more vivacious and animated, and the
color came to his cheeks and lips. It was very much as though this were a great reception and Paul were the host. Just as the musicians came out to take their places, his
English teacher arrived with checks for the seats which a prominent manufacturer
had taken for the season. She betrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul
the tickets, and a hauteur 0 which subsequently made her feel very foolish. Paul w7as
startled for a moment, and had the feeling of wanting to put her out; what business
had she here among all these fine people and gay colors? He looked her over and decided that she was not appropriately dressed and must be a fool to sit downstairs in
such togs. T h e tickets had probably been sent her out of kindness, he reflected as he
put down a seat for her, and she had about as much right to sit there as he had.
When the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a long sigh
of relief, and lost himself as he had done before the Rico. It was not that symphonies,
as such, meant anything in particular to Paul, but the first sigh of the instruments
seemed to free some hilarious and potent spirit within him; something that struggled
there like the Genius 0 in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman. He felt a sudden
zest of life; the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor. W h e n the soprano soloist came on, Paul forgot even the nastiness of
his teacher's being there and gave himself up to the peculiar stimulus such personages
always had for him. T h e soloist chanced to be a German woman, by no means in her
first youth, and the mother of many children; but she wore an elaborate gown and a
tiara, and above all she had that indefinable air of achievement, that world-shine
upon her, which, in Paul's eyes, made her a veritable queen of Romance.
After a concert was over Paul was always irritable and wretched until he got to
sleep, and tonight he was even more than usually restless. He had the feeling of not
being able to let down, of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement
which was the only thing that could be called living at all. During the last number he
withdrew and, after hastily changing his clothes in the dressing-room, slipped out to
the side door where the soprano's carriage stood. Here he began pacing rapidly up
and down the walk, waiting to see her come out.
Augustus . . . cast-room: Paul mocks a plaster cast of the Vatican Museum's famous statue of the first
Roman emperor (63 B.C.-A.D. 14), whom an unknown sculptor posed sternly pointing an index finger
at his beholders, hauteur: haughtiness. Genius: genie in a tale from The Arabian Nights.
Over yonder the Schenley, in its vacant stretch, loomed big and square through
the fine rain, the windows of its twelve stories glowing like those of a lighted cardboard house under a Christmas tree. All the actors and singers of the better class
stayed there when they wrere in the city, and a number of the big manufacturers of
the place lived there in the winter. Paul had often hung about the hotel, watching
the people go in and out, longing to enter and leave schoolmasters and dull care behind him forever.
At last the singer came out, accompanied by the conductor, who helped her into
her carriage and closed the door with a cordial auf wiedersehen0 which set Paul to
wondering whether she were not an old sweetheart of his. Paul followed the carriage
over to the hotel, walking so rapidly as not to be far from the entrance when the
singer alighted and disappeared behind the swinging glass doors that were opened by
a negro in a tall hat and a long coat. In the moment that the door was ajar it seemed
to Paul that he, too, entered. He seemed to feel himself go after her up the steps, into
the warm, lighted building, into an exotic, a tropical world of shiny, glistening surfaces and basking ease. He reflected upon the mysterious dishes that were brought
into the dining-room, the green bottles in buckets of ice, as he had seen them in the
supper party pictures of the Sunday World supplement. A quick gust of wind brought
the rain down with sudden vehemence, and Paul was startled to find that he was still
outside in the slush of the gravel driveway; that his boots were letting in the water
and his scanty overcoat was clinging wet about him; that the lights in front of the
concert hall were out, and that the rain was driving in sheets between him and the
orange glow of the windows above him. There it was, what he wantedtangibly before him, like the fairy world of a Christmas pantomime, but mocking spirits stood
guard at the doors, and, as the rain beat in his face, Paul wondered whether he were
destined always to shiver in the black night outside, looking up at it.
He turned and walked reluctantly toward the car tracks. The end had to come
sometime; his father in his night-clothes at the top of the stairs, explanations that did
not explain, hastily improvised fictions that were forever tripping him up, his upstairs
room and its horrible yellow w7all-paper, the creaking bureau with the greasy plush
collar-box, and over his painted wooden bed the pictures of George Washington and
John Calvin, 0 and the framed motto, "Feed my Lambs," which had been worked in
red worsted by his mother.
Half an hour later, Paul alighted from his car and went slowly down one of the
side streets off the main thoroughfare. It was a highly respectable street, where all the
houses were exactly alike, and where businessmen of moderate means begot and
reared large families of children, all of whom went to Sabbath-school and learned the
shorter catechism, and were interested in arithmetic; all of whom were as exactly
alike as their homes, and of a piece with the monotony in which they lived. Paul
never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing. His home was next to
the house of the Cumberland 0 minister. He approached it tonight with the nerveless
sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home. The moment he turned into
Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above his head. After each of these orgies of
auf wiedersehen: German equivalent of au revoir, or "here's to seeing you again/' John Calvin:
French Protestant theologian of the Reformation (1509-1564) whose teachings are the basis of
Presbyterianism. Cumberland: The minister, a Cumberland Presbyterian, belongs to a frontier
denomination that had splintered away from the Presbyterian Church and whose ministers were
ordained after a briefer training.
living, he experienced all the physical depression which follows a debauch; the
loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a house penetrated by kitchen
odors; a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of every-day existence;
a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers.
The nearer he approached the house, the more absolutely unequal Paul felt to
the sight of it all; his ugly sleeping chamber; the cold bathroom with the grimy zinc
tub, the cracked mirror, the dripping spigots; his father, at the top of the stairs, his
hairy legs sticking out from his night-shirt, his feet thrust into carpet slippers. He was
so much later than usual that there would certainly be inquiries and reproaches. Paul
stopped short before the door. He felt that he could not be accosted by his father
tonight; that he could not toss again on that miserable bed. He would not go in. He
would tell his father that he had no car fare, and it was raining so hard he had gone
home with one of the boys and stayed all night.
Meanwhile, he was wet and cold. He went around to the back of the house and
tried one of the basement windows, found it open, raised it cautiously, and scrambled
down the cellar wall to the floor. There he stood, holding his breath, terrified by the
noise he had made, but the floor above him was silent, and there was no creak on the
stairs. He found a soap-box, and carried it over to the soft ring of light that streamed
from the furnace door, and sat down. He was horribly afraid of rats, so he did not try
to sleep, but sat looking distrustfully at the dark, still terrified lest he might have
awakened his father. In such reactions, after one of the experiences which made days
and nights out of the dreary blanks of the calendar, when his senses were deadened,
Paul's head was always singularly clear. Suppose his father had heard him getting in
at the window and had come down and shot him for a burglar? Then, again, suppose
his father had come down, pistol in hand, and he had cried out in time to save himself, and his father had been horrified to think how nearly he had killed him? Then,
again, suppose a day should come when his father would remember that night, and
wish there had been no warning cry to stay his hand? With this last supposition Paul
entertained himself until daybreak.
The following Sunday was fine; the sodden November chill was broken by the
last flash of autumnal summer. In the morning Paul had to go to church and Sabbathschool, as always. On seasonable Sunday afternoons the burghers of Cordelia Street
always sat out on their front "stoops," and talked to their neighbors on the next
stoop, or called to those across the street in neighborly fashion. The men usually sat
on gay cushions placed upon the steps that led down to the sidewalk, while the
women, in their Sunday "waists," sat in rockers on the cramped porches, pretending
to be greatly at their ease. T h e children played in the streets; there were so many of
them that the place resembled the recreation grounds of a kindergarten. The men
on the stepsall in their shirt sleeves, their vests unbuttonedsat with their legs
well apart, their stomachs comfortably protruding, and talked of the prices of
things, or told anecdotes of the sagacity of their various chiefs and overlords. They
occasionally looked over the multitude of squabbling children, listened affectionately to their high-pitched, nasal voices, smiling to see their own proclivities reproduced in their offspring, and interspersed their legends of the iron kings with remarks
about their sons' progress at school, their grades in arithmetic, and the amounts they
had saved in their toy banks.
On this last Sunday of November, Paul sat all the afternoon on the lowest step of
his "stoop," staring into the street, while his sisters, in their rockers, were talking to
the minister's daughters next door about how many shirt-waists they had made in the
last week, and how many waffles some one had eaten at the last church supper.
When the weather was warm, and his father was in a particularly jovial frame of
mind, the girls made lemonade, which was always brought out in a red-glass pitcher,
ornamented with forget-me-nots in blue enamel. This the girls thought very fine, and
the neighbors always joked about the suspicious color of the pitcher.
Today Paul's father sat on the top step, talking to a young man who shifted a
restless baby from knee to knee. He happened to be the young man who was daily
held up to Paul as a model, and after whom it was his father's dearest hope that he
would pattern. This young man was of a ruddy complexion, with a compressed, red
mouth, and faded, near-sighted eyes, over which he wore thick spectacles, with gold
bows that curved about his ears. He was clerk to one of the magnates of a great steel
corporation, and was looked upon in Cordelia Street as a young man with a future.
There was a story that, some five years agohe was now barely twenty-sixhe had
been a trifle dissipated but in order to curb his appetites and save the loss of time and
strength that a sowing of wild oats might have entailed, he had taken his chief s advice oft reiterated to his employees, and at twenty-one had married the first woman
whom he could persuade to share his fortunes. She happened to be an angular
school-mistress, much older than he, who also wore thick glasses, and who had now
borne him four children, all near-sighted, like herself.
The young man w7as relating how his chief, now cruising in the Mediterranean, 25
kept in touch with all the details of the business, arranging his office hours on his
yacht just as though he were at home, and "knocking off work enough to keep two
stenographers busy." His father told, in turn, the plan his corporation was considering, of putting in an electric railway plant at Cairo. Paul snapped his teeth; he had an
awful apprehension that they might spoil it all before he got there. Yet he rather
liked to hear these legends of the iron kings, that were told and retold on Sundays
and holidays; these stories of palaces in Venice, yachts on the Mediterranean, and
high play at Monte Carlo appealed to his fancy, and he was interested in the triumphs of these cash boys who had become famous, though he had no mind for the
cash-boy stage.
After supper was over, and he had helped to dry the dishes, Paul nervously asked
his father whether he could go to George's to get some help in his geometry, and still
more nervously asked for car fare. This latter request he had to repeat, as his father, on
principle, did not like to hear requests for money, whether much or little. He asked
Paul whether he could not go to some boy who lived nearer, and told him that he
ought not to leave his school work until Sunday; but he gave him the dime. He was
not a poor man, but he had a worthy ambition to come up in the world. His only reason for allowing Paul to usher was, that he thought a boy ought to be earning a little.
Paul bounded upstairs, scrubbed the greasy odor of the dish-water from his hands
with the ill-smelling soap he hated, and then shook over his fingers a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden in his drawer. He left the house with his
geometry conspicuously under his arm, and the moment he got out of Cordelia Street
and boarded a downtown car, he shook off the lethargy of two deadening clays, and
began to live again.
The leading juvenile of the permanent stock company which played at one of the
downtown theatres was an acquaintance of Paul's, and the boy had been invited to
drop in at the Sunday-night rehearsals whenever he could. For more than a year Paul
had spent every available moment loitering about Charley Edwards's dressing-room.
He had won a place among Edward's following not only because the young actor, who
could not afford to employ a dresser, often found him useful, but because he recognized
in Paul something akin to what churchmen term "vocation."
It was at the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but
a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love. The moment he inhaled the gassy, painty, dusty odor behind
the scenes, he breathed like a prisoner set free, and felt within him the possibility of
doing or saying splendid, brilliant, poetic things. T h e moment the cracked orchestra
beat out the overture from Martha, 0 or jerked at the serenade from Rigolettoall
stupid and ugly things slid from him, and his senses were deliriously, yet delicately fired.
Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise
of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty.
Perhaps it was because his experience of life elsewhere was so full of Sabbath-school
picnics, petty economies, wholesome advice as to how to succeed in life, and the
unescapable odors of cooking, that he found this existence so alluring, these smartly-clad
men and women so attractive, that he was so moved by these starry apple orchards
that bloomed perennially under the limelight.
It would be difficult to put it strongly enough how convincingly the stage entrance of that theatre was for Paul the actual portal of Romance. Certainly none of
the company ever suspected it, least of all Charley Edwards. It was very like the old
stories that used to float about London of fabulously rich Jews, who had subterranean
halls there, with palms, and fountains, and soft lamps and richly apparelled women
who never saw the disenchanting light of London day. So, in the midst of that
smoke-palled city, enamored of figures and grimy toil, Paul had his secret temple, his
wishing carpet, his bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore bathed in perpetual
sunshine.
Several of Paul's teachers had a theory that his imagination had been perverted
by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely ever read at all. The books at
home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a youthful mind, and as for
reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon himwell, he got what he
wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own. It
was equally true that he was not stage strucknot, at any rate, in the usual acceptation of that expression. He had no desire to become an actor, any more than he had
to become a musician. He felt no necessity to do any of these things; what he wanted
was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue
league after blue league, away from everything.
After a night behind the scenes, Paul found the school-room more than ever
repulsive; the bare floors and naked walls; the prosy men who never wore frock
coats, or violets in their buttonholes; the women with their dull gowns, shrill
voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative. He could
not bear to have the other pupils think, for a moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial, and was there only by
way of a jest, anyway. He had autographed pictures of all the members of the stock
company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories of
his familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance wTith the soloists who came to
Martha: grand opera about romance among English aristocrats (1847) by German composer
Friedrich von Flotow. Rigoletto: tragic grand opera (1851) by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.
Carnegie Hall, his suppers with them and the flowers he sent them. When these stories
lost their effect, and his audience grew listless, he became desperate and would bid all
the boys good-bye, announcing that he was going to travel for a while; going to Naples,
to Venice, to Egypt. Then, next Monday, he would slip back, conscious and nervously
smiling; his sister was ill, and he should have to defer his voyage until spring.
Matters went steadilv worse with Paul at school. In the itch to let his instructors
know how heartily he despised them and their homilies, and how thoroughly he was
appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or twice that he had no time to fool with
theorems; addingwith a twitch of the eyebrows and a touch of that nervous
bravado which so perplexed themthat he was helping the people down at the stock
company; they were old friends of his.
T h e upshot of the matter was that the Principal went to Paul's father, and Paul
was taken out of school and put to work. The manager at Carnegie Hall was told to
get another usher in his stead; the door-keeper at the theatre was warned not to admit him to the house; and Charley Edwards remorsefully promised the boy's father
not to see him again.
The members of the stock company were vastly amused when some of Paul's stories reached themespecially the women. They were hardworking women, most of
them supporting indigent husbands or brothers, and they laughed rather bitterly at
having stirred the boy to such fervid and florid inventions. They agreed with the
faculty and with his father that Paul's was a bad case.
/
The east-bound train was ploughing through a January snow-storm; the dull
dawn was beginning to show gray when the engine whistled a mile out of Newark.
Paul started up from the seat where he had lain curled in uneasy slumber, rubbed the
breath-misted window glass with his hand, and peered out. The snow was whirling in
curling eddies above the white bottom lands, and the drifts lay already deep in the
fields and along the fences, while here and there the long dead grass and dried weed
stalks protruded black above it. Lights shone from the scattered houses, and a gang of
laborers who stood beside the track waved their lanterns.
Paul had slept very little, and he felt grimy and uncomfortable. He had made the
all-night journey in a day coach, partly because he was ashamed, dressed as he was, to go
into a Pullman, and partly because he was afraid of being seen there by some Pittsburgh
businessmen, who might have noticed him in Denny & Carson's office. When the
whistle awoke him, he clutched quickly at his breast pocket, glancing about him with
an uncertain smile. But the little, clay-bespattered Italians were still sleeping, the
slatternly women across the aisle were in open-mouthed oblivion, and even the
crumby, crying babies were for the nonce stilled. Paul settled back to struggle with his
impatience as best as he could.
When he arrived at the Jersey City station, he hurried through his breakfast,
manifestly ill at ease and keeping a sharp eye about him. After he reached the
Twenty-third Street station, 0 he consulted a cabman, and had himself driven to a
men's furnishing establishment that was just opening for the day. He spent upward of
two hours there, buying with endless reconsidering and great care. His new street suit
he put on in the fitting-room; the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundled into
the cab with his linen. Then he drove to a hatter's and a shoe house. His next errand
was at Tiffany's, where he selected his silver and a new scarf-pin. He would not wait
Twenty-third Street station: The scene is now New York City.
35
to have his silver marked, he said. Lastly, he stopped at a trunk shop on Broadway,
and had his purchases packed into various travelling bags.
It was a little after one-o'clock when he drove up to the Waldorf, and after
settling with the cabman, went into the office. He registered from Washington; said
his mother and father had been abroad, and that he had come down to await the
arrival of their steamer. He told his story plausibly and had no trouble, since he
volunteered to pay for them in advance, in engaging his rooms; a sleeping-room,
sitting-room and bath.
Not once, but a hundred times Paul had planned this entry into New York. He
had gone over every detail of it with Charley Edwards, and in his scrap book at home
there were pages of description about New York hotels, cut from the Sunday papers.
When he was shown to his sitting-room on the eighth floor, he saw at a glance that
everything was as it should be; there was but one detail in his mental picture that the
place did not realize, so he rang for the bell boy and sent him down for flowers. He
moved about nervously until the boy returned, putting away his new linen and fingering it delightedly as he did so. When the flowers came, he put them hastily into
water, and then tumbled into a hot bath. Presently he came out of his white bathroom, resplendent in his new silk underwear, and playing with the tassels of his red
robe. The snow was whirling so fiercely outside his windows that he could scarcely
see across the street, but within the air was deliciously soft and fragrant. He put the
violets and jonquils on the taboret beside the couch, and threw himself down, with a
long sigh, covering himself with a Roman blanket. He was thoroughly tired; he had
been in such haste, he had stood up to such a strain, covered so much ground in the
last twenty-four hours, that he wanted to think how it had all come about. Lulled by
the sound of the wind, the warm air, and the cool fragrance of the flowers, he sank
into deep, drowsy retrospection.
It had been wonderfully simple; when they had shut him out of the theatre and
concert hall, when they had taken away his bone, the whole thing was virtually determined. The rest was a mere matter of opportunity. The only thing that at all surprised
him was his own couragefor he realized well enough that he had always been tormented by fear, a sort of apprehensive dread that, of late years, as the meshes of the
lies he had told closed about him, had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and
tighter. Until now, he could not remember the time when he had not been dreading
something. Even when he was a little boy, it was always therebehind him, or before,
or on either side. There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place into
which he dared not look, but from which something seemed always to be watching
himand Paul had done things that were not pretty to watch, he knew.
But now he had a curious sense of relief, as though he had at last thrown down
the gauntlet to the thing in the corner.
Yet it was but a day since he had been sulking in the traces; but yesterday afternoon that he had been sent to the bank with Denny & Carson's deposit, as usual
but this time he was instructed to leave the book to be balanced. There was above
two thousand dollars in checks, and nearly a thousand in the bank notes which he
had taken from the book and quietly transferred to his pocket. At the bank he had
made out a new deposit slip. His nerves had been steady enough to permit of his returning to the office, where he had finished his work and asked for a full day's holiday
tomorrow, Saturday, giving a perfectly reasonable pretext. The bank book, he knew,
would not be returned before Monday or Tuesday, and his father would be out of
town for the next week. From the time he slipped the bank notes into his pocket until he boarded the night train for New York, he had not known a moment's hesitation. It was not the first time Paul had steered through treacherous waters.
How astonishingly easy it had all been; here he was, the thing done; and this 45
time there would be no awakening, no figure at the top of the stairs. He watched the
snow flakes whirling by his window until he fell asleep.
When he awoke, it was three o'clock in the afternoon. He bounded up with a
start; half of one of his precious days gone already! He spent more than an hour in
dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefully in the mirror. Everything was
quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be.
When he went downstairs, Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth Avenue toward the Park. The snow had somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen's wagons
were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter twilight; boys in woollen mufflers
were shovelling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of color against
the white street. Here and there on the corners were stands, with whole flower gardens blooming under glass cases, against the sides of which the snow flakes stuck and
melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valleysomewhat vastly more lovely
and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow. The Park itself was a
wonderful stage winter-piece.
When he returned, the pause of the twilight had ceased, and the tune of the
streets had changed. The snow was falling faster, lights streamed from the hotels that
reared their dozen stories fearlessly up into the storm, defying the raging Atlantic
winds. A long, black stream of carriages poured down the avenue, intersected here
and there by other streams, tending horizontally. There were a score of cabs about
the entrance of his hotel, and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery were running in
and out of the awning stretched across the sidewalk, up and down the red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street. Above, about, within it all was the rumble and
roar, the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings as hot for pleasure as himself,
and on even'' side of him towered the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence of
wealth.
The boy set his teeth and drew his shoulders together in a spasm of realization:
the plot of all dramas, the text of all romances, the nerve-stuff of all sensations was
whirling about him like the snow flakes. He burnt like a faggot in a tempest.
When Paul went down to dinner, the music of the orchestra came floating up 50
the elevator shaft to greet him. His head whirled as he stepped into the thronged
corridor, and he sank back into one of the chairs against the wall to get his breath.
The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, the bewildering medley of colorhe had,
for a moment, the feeling of not being able to stand it. But only for a moment;
these were his own people, he told himself. He went slowly about the corridors,
through the writing-rooms, smoking-rooms, reception-rooms, as though he were
exploring the chambers of an enchanted palace, built and peopled for him alone.
When he reached the dining-room he sat down at a table near a window. The
flowers, the white linen, the many-colored wine glasses, the gay toilettes of the
women, the low popping of corks, the undulating repetitions of the Blue Danube from
the orchestra, all flooded Paul's dream with bewildering radiance. When the roseate
tinge of his champagne was addedthat cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed
and foamed in his glassPaul wondered that there were honest men in the world at
all. This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the
struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever known a place
called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged-looking businessmen got on the early car;.
mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paulsickening men, with combings of
children's hair always hanging to their coats, and the smell of cooking in their
clothes. Cordelia StreetAh! that belonged to another time and country; had he
not always been thus, had he not sat here night after night, from as far back as he
could remember, looking pensively over just such shimmering textures, and slowly
twirling the stem of a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger? He
rather thought he had.
He was not in the least abashed or lonely. He had no especial desire to meet or to
know any of these people; all he demanded was the right to look on and conjecture, to
watch the pageant. The mere stage properties were all he contended for. Nor was he
lonely later in the evening, in his loge at the Metropolitan. He was now entirely rid of
his nervous misgivings, of his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desire to show
himself different from his surroundings. He felt now that his surroundings explained
him. Nobody questioned the purple; he had only to wear it passively. He had only to
glance down at his attire to reassure himself that here it would be impossible for anyone
to humiliate him.
He found it hard to leave his beautiful sitting-room to go to bed that night, and
sat long watching the raging storm from his turret window. When he went to sleep it
was with the lights turned on in his bedroom; partly because of his old timidity, and
partly so that, if he should wake in the night, there would be no wretched moment of
doubt, no horrible suspicion of yellow wall-paper, or of Washington and Calvin
above his bed.
Sunday morning the city was practically snow-bound. Paul breakfasted late, and
in the afternoon he fell in with a wild San Francisco boy, a freshman at Yale, who
said he had run down for a "little flyer" over Sunday. The young man offered to show
Paul the night side of the town, and the two boys went out together after dinner, not
returning to the hotel until seven o'clock the next morning. They had started out in
the confiding warmth of a champagne friendship, but their parting in the elevator
was singularly cool. The freshman pulled himself together to make his train, and Paul
went to bed. He awoke at two o'clock in the afternoon, very thirsty and dizzy, and
rang for ice-water, coffee, and the Pittsburgh papers.
On the part of the hotel management, Paul excited no suspicion. There was this
to be said for him, that he wore his spoils with dignity and in no way made himself
conspicuous. Even under the glow of his wine he was never boisterous, though he
found the stuff like a magician's wand for wonder-building. His chief greediness lay in
his ears and eyes, and his excesses were not offensive ones. His dearest pleasures were
the gray winter twilights in his sitting-room; his quiet enjoyment of his flowers, his
clothes, his wide divan, his cigarette, and his sense of power. He could not remember
a time when he had felt so at peace with himself. The mere release from the necessity
of petty lying, lying every day and every day, restored his self-respect. He had never
lied for pleasure, even at school; but to be noticed and admired, to assert his difference from other Cordelia Street boys; and he felt a good deal more manly, more honest, even, now that he had no need for boastful pretensions, now that he could, as his
actor friends used to say, "dress the part." It was characteristic that remorse did not
occur to him. His golden days went by without a shadow, and he made each as perfect
as he could.
On the eighth day after his arrival in New York, he found the whole affair exploited in the Pittsburgh papers, exploited with a wealth of detail which indicated
that local news of a sensational nature was at a low ebb. The firm of Denny & Carson
announced that the boy's father had refunded the full amount of the theft, and that
they had no intention of prosecuting. The Cumberland minister had been interviewed, and expressed his hope of yet reclaiming the motherless lad, and his Sabbath-school teacher declared that she would spare no effort to that end. The rumor
had reached Pittsburgh that the boy had been seen in a New York hotel, and his father
had gone East to find him and bring him home.
Paul had just come in to dress for dinner; he sank into a chair, weak to the
knees, and clasped his head in his hands. It was to be worse than jail, even; the
tepid waters of Cordelia Street were to close over him finally and forever. T h e
gray monotony stretched before him in hopeless, unrelieved years; Sabbathschool, Young People's Meeting, the yellow-papered room, the damp dish-towels;
it all rushed back upon him with a sickening vividness. He had the old feeling
that the orchestra had suddenly stopped, the sinking sensation that the play was
over. The sweat broke out on his face, and he sprang to his feet, looked about him
with his white, conscious smile, and winked at himself in the mirror. With something of the old childish belief in miracles with which he had so often gone to class,
all his lessons unlearned, Paul dressed and dashed whistling down the corridor to
the elevator.
He had no sooner entered the dining-room and caught the measure of the music
than his remembrance was lightened by his old elastic power of claiming the moment,
mounting with it, and finding it all sufficient. The glare and glitter about him, the
mere scenic accessories had again, and for the last time, their old potency. He would
show himself that he was game, he would finish the thing splendidly. He doubted,
more than ever, the existence of Cordelia Street, and for the first time he drank his
wine recklessly. Was he not, after all, one of those fortunate beings born to the purple, was he not still himself and in his own place? He drummed a nervous accompaniment to the Pagliacci music and looked about him, telling himself over and over
that it had paid.
He reflected drowsily, to the swell of the music and the chill sweetness of his
wine, that he might have done it more wisely. He might have caught an outbound
steamer and been well out of their clutches before now. But the other side of the
world had seemed too far away and too uncertain then; he could not have waited for
it; his need had been too sharp. If he had to choose over again, he would do the same
thing tomorrow. He looked affectionately about the dining-room, now gilded with a
soft mist. Ah, it had paid indeed!
Paul was awakened next morning by a painful throbbing in his head and feet.
He had thrown himself across the bed without undressing, and had slept with his
shoes on. His limbs and hands were lead heavy, and his tongue and throat were
parched and burnt. There came upon him one of those fateful attacks of clearheadedness that never occurred except when he was physically exhausted and his
nerves hung loose. He lay still and closed his eyes and let the tide of things wash
over him.
His father was in New York; "stopping at some joint or other," he told himself.
The memory of successive summers on the front stoop fell upon him like a weight of
black water. He had not a hundred dollars left; and he knew now, more than ever,
60
that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he
wanted. The thing was winding itself up; he had thought of that on his first glorious
day in New York, and had even provided a way to snap the thread. It lay on his
dressing-table now; he had got it out last night when he came blindly up from dinner,
but the shiny metal hurt his eyes, and he disliked the looks of it.
He rose and moved about with a painful effort, succumbing now and again to attacks of nausea. It was the old depression exaggerated; all the world had become
Cordelia Street. Yet somehow he was not afraid of anything, was absolutely calm;
perhaps because he had looked into the dark corner at last and knew. It was bad
enough, what he saw there, but somehow not so bad as his long fear of it had been.
He saw everything clearly now. He had a feeling that he had made the best of it, that
he had lived the sort of life he was meant to live, and for half an hour he sat staring at
the revolver. But he told himself that was not the way, so he went downstairs and
took a cab to the ferry.
When Paul arrived at Newark, he got off the train and took another cab, directing the driver to follow the Pennsylvania tracks out of the town. T h e snow lay heavy
on the roadways and had drifted deep in the open fields. Only here and there the
dead grass or dried weed stalks projected, singularly black, above it. Once well into
the country, Paul dismissed the carriage and walked, floundering along the tracks, his
mind a medley of irrelevant things. He seemed to hold in his brain an actual picture
of everything he had seen that morning. He remembered every feature of both his
drivers, of the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the red flowers in his
coat, the agent from whom he had got his ticket, and ail of his fellow-passengers on
the ferry. His mind, unable to cope with vital matters near at hand, worked feverishly
and deftly at sorting and grouping these images. They made for him a part of the ugliness of the world, of the ache in his head, and the bitter burning on his tongue. He
stooped and put a handful of snow into his mouth as he walked, but that, too, seemed
hot. When he reached a little hillside, where the tracks ran through a cut some
twenty feet below him, he stopped and sat down.
The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed; their red
glory all over. It occurred to him that all the flowers he had seen in the glass cases
that first night must have gone the same way, long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass;
and it wras a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by
which the world is run. Paul took one of the blossoms carefully from his coat and
scooped a little hole in the snow, where he covered it up. Then he dozed a while,
from his weak condition, seemingly insensible to the cold.
T h e sound of an approaching train awoke him, and he started to his feet, remembering only his resolution, and afraid lest he should be too late. He stood watching the approaching locomotive, his teeth chattering, his lips drawn away from them
in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced nervously sidewise, as though he were
being watched. When the right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his
haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone. There flashed through his brain, clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic
water, the yellow of Algerian sands.
He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown swiftly
through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs were gently relaxed. Then, because the picture making mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul dropped back into the immense design of things.
John Cheever
The Five-Forty-Eight
John Cheever (1912-1982) ivas born in Quincy,
Massachusetts. His parents had been modestly
prosperous, but their livelihood declined substantially and was finally dashed by the 1929 stock
market crash. Cheever ivas sent away to Thayer
Academy, a prep school, where he was a poor
student. When he was expelled at eighteen, he
wrote a story about the incident that was published in the New Republic (1930).
Cheever
never finished high school or attended college,
dedicating himself instead to writing. For years he
lived in poverty in one tiny room, sustaining himself on "a bread and buttermilk diet." Gradually
he became a celebrated writer. Once
famous,
however, Cheever hid the financial problems of
his parents and his youthful poverty with fanciful tales of an aristocratic
background.
1954
JOHN CHEEVER
Cheever s stories, most of which appeared in the New Yorker, often deal with the
ordinary lives of middle-class characters living in Manhattan or its suburbs. Although his
stories are realistic in plot and setting, they also often contain an underlying religious vision
exploring themes of guilt, grace, and redemption. Cheever s novels include The Wapshot
Chronicle (1957), which won the National Book Award; Bullet Park (1969); arid Falconer
(1977). T h e Stories of John Cheever (1978), selected works from his five volumes of
short fiction, not only won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, it
also became the first book of short stories in decades to make the best-seller list. After
Cheever s death, his notebooks and letters revealed how tortured his life had been by sex and
alcohol. While some early reviewers regarded Cheever s popular stories as "New Yorker
fiction" (satiric views of middle-class life), critics now see the psychological and religious vision underlying his work. Once undervalued, Cheever is now generally regarded as one of
the finest American short-story writers of the twentieth century.
When Blake stepped out of the elevator, he saw her. A few people, mostly men waiting for girls, stood in the lobby watching the elevator doors. She was among them. As he
saw her, her face took on a look of such loathing and purpose that he realized she had
been waiting for him. He did not approach her. She had no legitimate business with him.
They had nothing to say. He turned and walked toward the glass doors at the end of the
lobby, feeling that faint guilt and bewilderment we experience when we bypass some old
friend or classmate who seems threadbare, or sick, or miserable in some other way. It was
five-eighteen by the clock in the Western Union office. He could catch the express. As
he waited his turn at the revolving doors, he saw that it was still raining. It had been raining all day, and he noticed now how much louder the rain made the noises of the street.
Outside, he started walking briskly east toward Madison Avenue. Traffic was tied up, and
horns were blowing urgently on a crosstown street in the distance. The sidewalk was
crowded. He wondered what she had hoped to gain by a glimpse of him coming out of the
office building at the end of the day. Then he wondered if she was following him.
Walking in the city, we seldom turn and look back. The habit restrained Blake.
He listened for a minutefoolishlyas he walked, as if he could distinguish her foot-,
steps from the worlds of sound in the city at the end of a rainy day. Then he noticed,
ahead of him on the other side of the street, a break in the wall of buildings. Something had been torn down; something was being put up, but the steel structure had
only just risen above the sidewalk fence and daylight poured through the gap. Blake
stopped opposite here and looked into a store window. It was a decorator's or an auctioneer's. The window was arranged like a room in which people live and entertain
their friends. There were cups on the coffee table, magazines to read, and flowers in
the vases, but the flowers were dead and the cups were empty and the guests had not
come. In the plate glass, Blake saw a clear reflection of himself and the crowds that
were passing, like shadows, at his back. Then he saw her imageso close to him that
it shocked him. She was standing only a foot or two behind him. He could have
turned then and asked her what she wanted, but instead of recognizing her, he shied
away abruptly from the reflection of her contorted face and went along the street. She
might be meaning to do him harmshe might be meaning to kill him.
The suddenness with which he moved when he saw the reflection of her face
tipped the water out of his hat brim in such a way that some of it ran down his neck. It
felt unpleasantly like the sweat of fear. Then the cold water falling into his face and
onto his bare hands, the rancid smell of the wet gutters and paving, the knowledge
that his feet were beginning to get wet and that he might catch coldall the common
discomforts of walking in the rainseemed to heighten the menace of his pursuer and
to give him a morbid consciousness of his own physicalness and of the ease with which
he could be hurt. He could see ahead of him the corner of Madison Avenue, where
the lights were brighter. He felt that if he could get to Madison Avenue he would be
all right. At the corner, there was a bakery shop with two entrances, and he went in by
the door on the crosstown street, bought a coffee ring,0 like any other commuter, and
went out the Madison Avenue door. As he started down Madison Avenue, he saw her
waiting for him by a hut w7here newspapers were sold.
She was not clever. She would be easy to shake. He could get into a taxi by one
door and leave by the other. He could speak to a policeman. He could runalthough
he was afraid that if he did run, it might precipitate the violence he now felt sure she
had planned. He was approaching a part of the city that he knew well and where the
maze of street-level and underground passages, elevator banks, and crowded lobbies
made it easy for a man to lose a pursuer. The thought of this, and a whiff of sugary
warmth from the coffee ring, cheered him. It was absurd to imagine being harmed on
a crowded street. She was foolish, misled, lonely perhapsthat was all it could
amount to. He was an insignificant man, and there was no point in anyone's following him from his office to the station. He knew no secrets of any consequence. The
reports in his briefcase had no bearing on war, peace, the dope traffic, the hydrogen
bomb, or any of the other international skulduggeries that he associated with pursuers, men in trench coats, and wet sidewalks. Then he saw ahead of him the door of
a men's bar. Oh, it was so simple!
He ordered a Gibson 0 and shouldered his way in between two other men at the
bar, so that if she should be watching from the window she would lose sight of him.
The place was crowded with commuters putting down a drink before the ride home.
coffee ring: a sweet roll.
Gibson: a dry martini with a small pickled onion instead of an olive.
They had brought in on their clotheson their shoes and umbrellasthe rancid
smell of the wet dusk outside, but Blake began to relax as soon as he tasted his Gibson
and looked around at the common, mostly not-young faces that surrounded him and
that were worried, if they were worried at all, about tax rates and who would be put in
charge of merchandising. He tried to remember her nameMiss Dent, Miss Bent,
Miss Lentand he was surprised to find that he could not remember it, although he
was proud of the retentiveness and reach of his memory and it had only been six
months ago.
Personnel had sent her up one afternoonhe was looking for a secretary. He saw
a dark womanin her twenties, perhapswho was slender and shy. Her dress was
simple, her figure was not much, one of her stockings was crooked, but her voice was
soft and he had been willing to try her out. After she had been working for him a few
days, she told him that she had been in the hospital for eight months and that it had
been hard after this for her to find work, and she wanted to thank him for giving her a
chance. Her hair was dark, her eyes were dark; she left with him a pleasant impression
of darkness. As he got to know her better, he felt that she was oversensitive and, as a
consequence, lonely. Once, when she was speaking to him of what she imagined his
life to befull of friendships, money, and a large and loving familyhe had thought
he recognized a peculiar feeling of deprivation. She seemed to imagine the lives of
the rest of the world to be more brilliant than they were. Once, she had put a rose on
his desk, and he had dropped it into the wastebasket. "I don't like roses," he told her.
She had been competent, punctual, and a good typist, and he had found only one
thing in her that he could object toher handwriting. He could not associate the crudeness of her handwriting with her appearance. He would have expected her to write a
rounded backhand, and in her writing there were intermittent traces of this, mixed with
clumsy printing. Her writing gave him the feeling that she had been the victim of some
innersome emotionalconflict that had in its violence broken the continuity of the
lines she was able to make on paper. When she had been working for him three weeks
no longerthey stayed late one night and he offered, after work, to buy her a drink. "If
you really want a drink," she said. "I have some whiskey at my place."
She lived in a room that seemed to him like a closet. There were suit boxes and
hatboxes piled in a comer, and although the room seemed hardly big enough to hold
the bed, the dresser, and the chair he sat in, there was an upright piano against one
wall, with a book of Beethoven sonatas on the rack. She gave him a drink and said
that she was going to put on something more comfortable. He urged her to; that was,
after all, what he had come for. If he had any qualms, they would have been practical.
Her diffidence, the feeling of deprivation in her point of view, promised to protect
him from any consequences. Most of the many women he had known had been
picked for their lack of self-esteem.
When he put on his clothes again, an hour or so later, she was weeping. He felt
too contented and warm and sleepy to worry much about her tears. As he was dressing, he noticed on the dresser a note she had wrritten to a cleaning woman. The only
light came from the bathroomthe door was ajarand in this half light the
hideously scrawled letters again seemed entirely wrong for her, and as if they must be
the handwriting of some other and very gross woman. The next day, he did what he
felt was the only sensible thing. When she was out for lunch, he called personnel and
asked them to fire her. Then he took the afternoon off. A few days later, she came to
the office, asking to see him. He told the switchboard girl not to let her in. He had
not seen her again until this evening.
Biake drank a second Gibson and saw by the clock that he had missed the express. He would get the localthe five-forty-eight. When he left the bar the sky was
still light; it was still raining. He looked carefully up and down the street and saw that
the poor woman had gone. Once or twice, he looked over his shoulder, walking to
the station, but he seemed to be safe. He was still not quite himself, he realized, because he had left his coffee ring at the bar, and he was not a man who forgot things.
This lapse of memory pained him.
He bought a paper. The local was only half full when he boarded it, and he got
a seat on the river side and took off his raincoat. He was a slender man with brown
hairundistinguished in every way, unless you could have divined in his pallor or
his gray eyes his unpleasant tastes. He dressedlike the rest of usas if he admitted the existence of sumptuary laws.0 His raincoat was the pale buff color of a
mushroom. His hat was dark brown; so was his suit. Except for the few bright
threads in his necktie, there was a scrupulous lack of color in his clothing that
seemed protective.
He looked around the car for neighbors. Mrs. Compton was several seats in front
of him, to the right. She smiled, but her smile was fleeting. It died swiftly and horribly. Mr. Watkins was directly in front of Blake. Mr. Watkins needed a haircut, and
he had broken the sumptuary laws; he was wearing a corduroy jacket. He and Blake
had quarreled, so they did not speak.
The swift death of Mrs. Compton's smile did not affect Blake at all. The
Comptons lived in the house next to the Blakes, and Mrs. Compton had never understood the importance of minding her own business. Louise Blake took her troubles to Mrs. Compton, Blake knew, and instead of discouraging her crying jags,
Mrs. Compton had come to imagine herself a sort of confessor and had developed a
lively curiosity about the Blakes' intimate affairs. She had probably been given an
account of their most recent quarrel. Blake had come home one night, overworked
and tired, and had found that Louise had done nothing about getting supper. He
had gone into the kitchen, followed by Louise, and had pointed out to her that the
date was the fifth. He had drawn a circle around the date on the kitchen calendar.
"One week is the twelfth," he had said. "Two weeks will be the nineteenth." He
drew7 a circle around the nineteenth. "Fm not going to speak to you for two weeks,"
he had said. "That will be the nineteenth." She had wept, she had protested, but it
had been eight or ten years since she had been able to touch him with her entreaties. Louise had got old. Now the lines in her face were ineradicable, and when
she clapped her glasses onto her nose to read the evening paper, she looked to him
like an unpleasant stranger. T h e physical charms that had been her only attraction
were gone. It had been nine years since Blake had built a bookshelf in the doorway
that connected their rooms and had fitted into the bookshelf wooden doors that
could be locked, since he did not want the children to see his books. But their prolonged estrangement didn't seem remarkable to Blake. He had quarreled with his
wife, but so did every other man born of woman. It was human nature. In any place
where you can hear their voicesa hotel courtyard, an air shaft, a street on a summer
eveningyou will hear harsh words.
sumptuary laws: originally, Roman laws regulating the expenditures for clothes that could be worn in
public. Cheever uses this term to suggest that most people wear conventional clothes that will not
make them appear different from others.
The hard feeling between Blake and Mr. Watkins also had to do with Blake's
family, but it was not as serious or as troublesome as what lay behind Mrs. Compton's
fleeting smile. The Watkinses rented. Mr. Watkins broke the sumptuary lawrs day after
dayhe once went to the eight-fourteen in a pair of sandalsand he made his living
as a commercial artist. Blake's oldest sonCharlie was fourteenhad made friends
with the Watkins boy. He had spent a lot of time in the sloppy rented house where
the Watkinses lived. T h e friendship had affected his manners and his neatness. Then
he had begun to take some meals with the Watkinses, and to spend Saturday nights
there. When he had moved most of his possessions over to the Watkinses' and had
begun to spend more than half his nights there, Blake had been forced to act. He had
spoken not to Charlie but to Mr. Watkins, and had, of necessity, said a number of
things that must have sounded critical. Mr. Watkins' long and dirty hair and his corduroy jacket reassured Blake that he had been in the right.
But Mrs. Compton's dying smile and Mr. Watkins' dirty hair did not lessen the
pleasure Blake took in setting himself in an uncomfortable seat on the five-fortyeight deep underground. The coach was old and smelled oddly like a bomb shelter in
which whole families had spent the night. T h e light that spread from the ceiling
down onto their heads and shoulders was dim. T h e filth on the window glass was
streaked with rain from some other journey, and clouds of rank pipe and cigarette
smoke had begun to rise from behind each newspaper, but it was a scene that meant to
Blake that he was on a safe path, and after his brush with danger he even felt a little
warmth toward Mrs. Compton and Mr. Watkins.
The train traveled up from underground into the weak daylight, and the slums
and the city reminded Blake vaguely of the woman who had followed him. To avoid
speculation or remorse about her, he turned his attention to the evening paper. Out
of the comer of his eye he could see the landscape. It was industrial and, at that hour,
sad. There were machine sheds and warehouses, and above these he saw a break in
the cloudsa piece of yellow light. "Mr. Blake," someone said. He looked up. It was
she. She was standing there holding one hand on the back of the seat to steady herself in the swaying coach. He remembered her name thenMiss Dent. "Hello, Miss
Dent," he said.
"Do you mind if I sit here?"
"I guess not."
"Thank you. It's very kind of you. I don't like to inconvenience you like this. I
don't want to . . ." He had been frightened when he looked up and saw her, but her
timid voice rapidly reassured him. He shifted his hamsthat futile and reflexive gesture of hospitalityand she sat down. She sighed. He smelled her wet clothing. She
wore a formless black hat with a cheap crest stitched onto it. Her coat was thin cloth,
he saw, and she wore gloves and carried a large pocketbook.
"Are you living out in this direction now, Miss Dent?"
"No."
She opened her purse and reached for her handkerchief. She had begun to cry.
He turned his head to see if anyone in the car was looking, but no one was. He had sat
beside a thousand passengers on the evening train. He had noticcd their clothes, the
holes in their gloves; and if they fell asleep and mumbled he had wondered what their
worries were. He had classified almost all of them briefly before he buried his nose in
the paper. He had marked them as rich, poor, brilliant or dull, neighbors or strangers,
but no one of the thousand had ever wept. When she opened her purse, he remembered her perfume. It had clung to his skin the night he went to her place for a drink.
15
20
"I've been very sick/' she said. "This is the first time I've been out of bed in two
weeks. I've been terribly sick."
"I'm sorry that youVe been sick, Miss Dent," he said in a voice loud enough to be
heard by Mr. Watkins and Mrs. Compton. "Where are you working now?"
"What?"
"Where are you working now7?"
"Oh, don't make me laugh," she said softly.
"I don't understand."
"You poisoned their minds."
He straightened his neck and braced his shoulders. These wrenching movements
expressed a briefand hopelesslonging to be in some other place. She meant trouble. He took a breath. He looked with deep feeling at the half-filled, half-lighted
coach to affirm his sense of actuality, of a world in which there was not very much
bad trouble after all. He was conscious of her heavy breathing and the smell of her
rain-soaked coat. The train stopped. A nun and a man in overalls got off. When it
started again, Blake put on his hat and reached for his raincoat.
"Where are you going?" she said.
"I'm going to the next car."
"Oh, no," she said. "No, no, no." She put her white face so close to his ear that
he could feel her wrarm breath on his cheek. "Don't do that," she whispered. "Don't
try and escape me. I have a pistol and I'll have to kill you and I don't want to. All I
want to do is to talk with you. Don't move or I'll kill you. Don't, don't, don't!"
Blake sat back abruptly in his seat. If he had wanted to stand and shout for
help, he would not have been able to. His tongue had swelled to twice its size, and
when he tried to move it, it stuck horribly to the roof of his mouth. His legs were
limp. All he could think of to do then was to wait for his heart to stop its hysterical
beating, so that he could judge the extent of his danger. She was sitting a little
sidewise, and in her poclcetbook was the pistol, aimed at his belly.
"You understand me now, don't you?" she said. "You understand that I'm serious?"
He tried to speak but he was still mute. He nodded his head. "Now we'll sit quietly
for a little while," she said. "I got so excited that my thoughts are all confused. We'll
sit quietly for a little while, until I can get my thoughts in order again."
Help would come, Blake thought. It was only a question of minutes. Someone,
noticing the look on his face or her peculiar posture, would stop and interfere, and it
would all be over. All he had to do was to wait until someone noticed his predicament. Out of the window he saw the river and the sky. The rain clouds were rolling
down like a shutter, and while he watched, a streak of orange light on the horizon became brilliant. Its brilliance spreadhe could see it moveacross the waves until it
raked the banks of the river with a dim firelight. Then it was put out. Help would
come in a minute, he thought. Help would come before they stopped again; but the
train stopped, there were some comings and goings, and Blake still lived on, at the
mercy of the woman beside him. The possibility that help might not come was one
that he could not face. The possibility that his predicament was not noticeable, that
Mrs. Compton would guess that he was taking a poor relation out to dinner at Shady
Hill, was something he would think about later. Then the saliva came back into his
mouth and he was able to speak.
"Miss Dent?"
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
25
30
35
"I want to talk to you."
40
"You can come to my office."
"Oh, no. I went there every day for two weeks."
"You could make an appointment."
"No," she said. "I think we can talk here. I wrote you a letter but I've been too
sick to go out and mail it. I've put down all my thoughts. I like to travel. I like trains.
One of my troubles has always been that I could never afford to travel. I suppose you
see this scenery every night and don't notice it any more, but it's nice for someone
who's been in bed a long time. They say that He's not in the river and the hills but I
think He is. 'Where shall wisdom be found?' it says. 'Where is the place of understanding? The depth saith it is not in me; the sea saith it is not with me. Destruction
and death say we have heard the force with our ears.'
"Oh, I know what you're thinking," she said. "You're thinking that I'm crazy, 45
and I have been very sick again but I'm going to be better. It's going to make me better to talk with you. I was in the hospital all the time before I came to work for you
but they never tried to cure me, they only wanted to take away my self-respect. I
haven't had any work now for three months. Even if I did have to kill you, they
wouldn't be able to do anything to me except put me back in the hospital, so you see
I'm not afraid. But let's sit quietly for a little while longer. I have to be calm."
The train continued its halting progress up the bank of the river, and Blake tried
to force himself to make some plans for escape, but the immediate threat to his life
made this difficult, and instead of planning sensibly, he thought of the many ways in
which he could have avoided her in the first place. As soon as he had felt these regrets, he realized their futility. It was like regretting his lack of suspicion when she
first mentioned her months in the hospital. It was like regretting his failure to have
been warned by her shyness, her diffidence, and the handwriting that looked like the
marks of a claw. There was no way of rectifying his mistakes, and he feltfor perhaps
the first time in his mature lifethe full force of regret. Out of the window, he saw
some men fishing on the nearly dark river, and then a ramshackle boat club that
seemed to have been nailed together out of scraps of wood that had been washed up
on the shore.
Mr. Watkins had fallen asleep. He was snoring. Mrs. Compton read her paper.
The train creaked, slowed, and halted infirmly at another station. Blake could see the
southbound platform, where a few passengers were waiting to go into the city. There
was a workman with a lunch pail, a dressed-up woman, and a woman with a suitcase.
They stood apart from one another. Some advertisements were posted on the wall
behind them. There was a picture of a couple drinking a toast in wine, a picture of a
Cat's Paw rubber heel, and a picture of a Hawaiian dancer. Their cheerful intent
seemed to go no farther than the puddles of water on the platform and to expire
there. The platform and the people on it looked lonely. The train drew away from
the station into the scattered lights of a slum and then into the darkness of the
country and the river.
"I want you to read my letter before we get to Shady Hill," she said. "It's on the
seat. Pick it up. I would have mailed it to you, but I've been too sick to go out. I
"Where shall wisdom be found?" it says . . . "the force with our ears.": die it being die Bible. Miss Dent
is remembering parts of the Book of Job (28:12-22). In the Old Testament text, Job, who has suffered terribly, asks where he shall find understanding of God's ways, but he does not find it in the
natural world.
haven't gone out for two weeks. I haven't had any work for three months. I haven't
spoken to anybody but the landlady. Please read my letter."
He picked up the letter from the seat where she had put it. T h e cheap paper felt
abhorrent and filthy to his fingers. It was folded and refolded. "Dear Husband," she
had written, in that crazy, wandering hand, "they say that human love leads us to divine love, but is this true? I dream about you every night. I have such terrible desires.
I have always had a gift for dreams. I dreamed on Tuesday of a volcano erupting with
blood. When I was in the hospital they said they wanted to cure me but they only
wanted to take away my self-respect. They only wanted me to dream about sewing
and basketwork but I protected my gift for dreams. I'm clairvoyant. 0 I can tell when
the telephone is going to ring. I've never had a true friend in my whole life. . . ."
The train stopped again. There was another platform, another picture of the
couple drinking a toast, the rubber heel, and the Hawaiian dancer. Suddenly she
pressed her face close to Blake's again and whispered in his ear. "I know what you're
thinking. I can see it in your face. You're thinking you can get away from me in
Shady Hill, aren't you? Oh, I've been planning this for weeks. It's all I've had to
think about. I won't harm you if you'll let me talk. I've been thinking about devils. I
mean, if there are devils in the world, if there are people in the world who represent
evil, is it our duty to exterminate them? I know that you always prey on weak people.
I can tell. Oh, sometimes I think I ought to kill you. Sometimes I think you're the
only obstacle between me and my happiness. Sometimes . . ."
She touched Blake with the pistol. He felt the muzzle against his belly. T h e bullet, at that distance, would make a small hole where it entered, but it would rip out of
his back a place as big as a soccer ball. He remembered the unburied dead he had
seen in the war. The memory came in a rush; entrails, eyes, shattered bone, ordure,
and other filth.
"All I've ever wanted in life is a little love," she said. She lightened the pressure
of the gun. Mr. Watkins still slept. Mrs. Compton was sitting calmly with her hands
folded in her lap. The coach rocked gently, and the coats and mushroom-colored
raincoats that hung between the windows swayed a little as the car moved. Blake's
elbow was on the window sill and his left shoe was on the guard above the steampipe.
The car smelled like some dismal classroom. The passengers seemed asleep and apart,
and Blake felt that he might never escape the smell of heat and wet clothing and
the dimness of the light. He tried to summon the calculated self-deceptions with
which he sometimes cheered himself, but he was left without any energy for hope of
self-deception.
The conductor put his head in the door and said, "Shady Hill, next, Shady Hill."
"Now," she said. "Now you get out ahead of me."
Mr. Watkins waked suddenly, put on his coat and hat, and smiled at Mrs. Compton, who was gathering her parcels to her in a series of maternal gestures. They went
to the door. Blake joined them, but neither of them spoke to him or seemed to notice
the woman at his back. The conductor threw open the door, and Blake saw on the
platform of the next car a few other neighbors who had missed the express, waiting
patiently and tiredly in the wan light for their trip to end. He raised bis head to see
through the open door the abandoned mansion out of town, a NO TRESPASSING sign
nailed to a tree, and then the oil tanks. T h e concrete abutments of the bridge passed,
so close to the open door that he could have touched them. Then he saw the first of
clairvoyant: a person who can see die future.
the lampposts on the northbound platform, the sign SHADY HILL in black and gold,
and the little lawn and flower bed kept up by the Improvement Association, and
then the cab stand and a corner of the old-fashioned depot. It was raining again; it
was pouring. He could hear the splash of water and see the lights reflected in puddles
and in the shining pavement, and the idle sound of splashing and dripping formed in
his mind a conception of shelter, so light and strange that it seemed to belong to a
time of his life that he could not remember.
He went down the steps with her at his back. A dozen or so cars were waiting by
the station with their motors running. A few people got off from each of the other
coaches; he recognized most of them, but none of them offered to give him a ride.
They walked separately or in pairspurposefully out of the rain to the shelter of the
platform, where the car horns called to them. It was time to go home, time for a
drink, time for love, time for supper, and he could see the lights on the hilllights by
which children were being bathed, meat cooked, dishes washedshining in the rain.
One by one, the cars picked up the heads of families, until there were only four left.
Two of the stranded passengers drove off in the only taxi the village had. "I'm sorry,
darling," a woman said tenderly to her husband when she drove up a few minutes
later. "All our clocks are slow." The last man looked at his watch, looked at the rain,
and then walked off into it, and Blake saw him go as if they had some reason to say
goodbyenot as we say goodbye to friends after a party but as we say goodbye when
we are faced with an inexorable and unwanted parting of the spirit and the heart.
The man's footsteps sounded as he crossed the parking lot to the sidewalk, and then
they were lost. In the station, a telephone began to ring. The ringing was loud,
evenly spaced, and unanswered. Someone wanted to know about the next train to
Albany, but Mr. Flanagan, the stationmaster, had gone home an hour ago. He had
turned on all his lights before he went away. They burned in the empty waiting room.
They burned, tin-shaded, at intervals up and down the platform and with the peculiar sadness of dim and purposeless lights. They lighted the Hawaiian dancer, the
couple drinking a toast, the rubber heel.
"I've never been here before," she said. "I thought it would look different. I didn't
think it would look so shabby. Let's get out of the light. Go over there."
His legs felt sore. All his strength was gone. "Go on," she said.
North of the station there were a freight house and a coalyard and an inlet where
the butcher and the baker and the man who ran the service station moored the
dinghies, from which they fished on Sundays, sunk now to the gunwales with the
rain. As he walked toward the freight house, he saw a movement on the ground and
heard a scraping sound, and then he saw a rat take its head out of a paper bag and
regard him. The rat seized the bag in its teeth and dragged it into a culvert.
"Stop," she said. "Turn around. Oh, I ought to feel sorry for you. Look at your
poor face. But you don't know what I've been through. I'm afraid to go out in the
daylight. I'm afraid the blue sky will fall down on me. I'm like poor Chicken-Licken.
I only feel like myself when it begins to get dark. But still and all I'm better than you.
I still have good dreams sometimes. I dream about picnics and heaven and the brotherhood of man, and about castles in the moonlight and a river with willow trees all
along the edge of it and foreign cities, and after all I know more about love than you."
He heard from off the dark river the drone of an outboard motor, a sound that
drew slowly behind it across the dark water such a burden of clear, sweet memories of
gone summers and gone pleasures that it made his flesh crawl, and he thought of dark
in the mountains and the children singing. "They never wanted to cure me," she said.
60
"They . . The noise of a train coming down from the north drowned out her voice,
but she went on talking. The noise filled his ears, and the windows where people ate,,
drank, slept, and read flew past. When the train had passed beyond the bridge, the
noise grew distant, and he heard her screaming at him, "Kneel down! Kneel down! Do
what I say. Kneel down!"
He got to his knees. He bent his head. "There," she said. "You see, if you do what
I say, I won't harm you, because I really don't want to harm you, I want to help you,
but when I see your face it sometimes seems to me that I can't help you. Sometimes it
seems to me that if I were good and loving and saneoh, much better than I a m
sometimes it seems to me that if I were all these things and young and beautiful, too,
and if I called to show you the right way, you wouldn't heed me. Oh, I'm better than
you, I'm better than you, and I shouldn't waste my time or spoil my life like this. Put
your face in the dirt. Put your face in the dirt! Do what I say. Put your face in the dirt."
He fell forward in the filth. T h e coal skinned his face. He stretched out on the
ground, weeping. "Now I feel better," she said. "Now I can wash my hands of you, I
can wash my hands of all this, because you see there is some kindness, some saneness
in me that I can find and use. I can wash my hands." Then he heard her footsteps go
away from him, over the rubble. He heard the clearer and more distant sound they
made on the hard surface of the platform. He heard them diminish. He raised his
head. He saw her climb the stairs of the wooden footbridge and cross it and go down
to the other platform, where her figure in the dim light looked small, common, and
harmless. He raised himself out of the dustwarily at first, until he saw by her attitude, her looks, that she had forgotten him; that she had completed what she had
wanted to do, and that he was safe. He got to his feet and picked up his hat from the
ground where it had fallen and walked home.
Anton Chekhov
The Lady with the Pet Dog
T R A N S L A T E D BY A V R A H M Y A R M O L I N S K Y
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904),
one of the
Russian writers who helped shape modern fiction,
is remembered especially for his plays and short
stories. Born in the provincial town of Taganrog,
the grandson of a serf who had bought his own
freedom, Chekhov as a boy worked in his father's
general store, a hangout for
vodka-drinking
storytellers. As a young man, he studied at
Moscow University and became a doctor of
medicine. To earn money while a medical student,
he wrote his first stories for magazines. By 1886
his work had become so celebrated that he gave
up medicine for writingy though continuing to
treat sick peasants at his home without fee and to
work in clinics during times of famine and
epidemic. From 1896 to 1904 Chekhov wrote
ANTON CHEKHOV
his great plays for the Moscoiv Art Theater, where they were directed by the influential
director Konstantin Stanislavsky: T h e Seagull, T h e Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya,
and T h e Three Sisters. Chekhov's last years were brightened by his marriage to Olga
Knipper, a star of the theater company. He died at forty-four, after a long struggle against
tuberculosis.
i
A new person, it was said, had appeared on the esplanade0: a lady with a pet dog.
Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, who had spent a fortnight at Yalta 0 and had got used to the
place, had also begun to take an interest in new arrivals. As he sat in Vernet's confectionery shop, he saw, walking on the esplanade, a fair-haired young woman of
medium height, wearing a beret; a white Pomeranian was trotting behind her.
And afterwards he met her in the public garden and in the square several times
a day. She walked alone, always wearing the same beret and always with the white
dog; no one knew who she was and everyone called her simply "the lady with the
pet dog."
"If she is here alone without husband or friends," Gurov reflected, "it wouldn't
be a bad thing to make her acquaintance."
He was under forty, but he already had a daughter twelve years old, and two sons
at school. They had found a wife for him when he was very young, a student in his
second year, and by now she seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect
woman with dark eyebrows, stately and dignified and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used simplified spelling in her letters, called her husband,
not Dmitry, but Dimitry, while he privately considered, her of limited intelligence,
narrow-minded, dowdy, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long agohad been unfaithful to her often and, probably
for that reason, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked of in
his presence used to call them "the inferior race."
It seemed to him that he had been sufficiently tutored by bitter experience to
call them what he pleased, and yet he could not have lived without "the inferior
race" for two days together. In the company of men he was bored and ill at ease, he
was chilly and uncommunicative with them; but when he was among women he felt
free, and knew what to speak to them about and how to comport himself; and even to
be silent with them was no strain on him. In his appearance, in his character, in his
whole make-up there was something attractive and elusive that disposed women in
his favor and allured them. He knew that, and some force seemed to draw him to
them, too.
Oft-repeated and really bitter experience had taught him long ago that with decent peopleparticularly Moscow peoplewho are irresolute and slow to move,
every affair which at first seems a light and charming adventure inevitably grows into
a whole problem of extreme complexity, and in the end a painful situation is created.
But at every new meeting with an interesting woman this lesson of experience
seemed to slip from his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed so
simple and diverting.
One evening while he was dining in the public garden the lady in the beret
walked up without haste to take the next table. Her expression, her gait, her dress,
esplanade: a walkway or promenade along the shore.
seaside resort for wealthy Russians.
Yalta: a port city on the Black Sea, a popular
and the way she did her hair told him that she belonged to the upper class, that she
was married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and that she was bored
there. The stories told of the immorality in Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew that such stories were made up for the most part by persons
who would have been glad to sin themselves if they had had the chance; but when
the lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he recalled these stories of
easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought of a swift, fleeting liaison, a romance with an unknown woman of whose very name he was ignorant
suddenly took hold of him.
He beckoned invitingly to the Pomeranian, and. when the dog approached him,
shook his finger at it. The Pomeranian growled; Gurov threatened it again.
The lady glanced at him and at once dropped her eyes.
"He doesn't bite," she said and blushed.
"May I give him a bone?" he asked; and when she nodded he inquired affably,
"Have you been in Yalta long?"
"About five days."
"And I am dragging out the second week here."
There was a short silence.
"Time passes quickly, and yet it is so dull here!" she said, not looking at him.
"It's only the fashion to say it's dull here. A provincial will live in Belyov or
Zhizdra and not be bored, but when he comes here it's c Oh, the dullness! Oh, the
dust!' One would think he came from Granada."
She laughed. Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers, but after dinner they walked together and there sprang up between them the light banter of people
who are free and contented, to whom it does not matter where they go or what they
talk about. They walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was a
soft, warm, lilac color, and there was a golden band of moonlight upon it. They talked
of how sultry it was after a hot day. Gurov told her that he was a native of Moscow,
that he had studied languages and literature at the university, but had a post in a bank;
that at one time he had trained to become an opera singer but had given it up, that he
owned two houses in Moscow. And he learned from her that she had grown up in Petersburg, but had lived in S
since her marriage two years previously, that she was
going to stay in Yalta for about another month, and that her husband, who needed a
rest, too, might perhaps come to fetch her. She was not certain whether her husband
was a member of a Government Board or served on a Zemstvo Council, 0 and this
amused her. And Gurov learned that her name was Anna Sergeyevna.
Afterwards in his room at the hotel he thought about herand was certain that
he would meet her the next day. It was bound to happen. Getting into bed he recalled that she had been a schoolgirl only recently, doing lessons like his own daughter; he thought how much timidity and angularity there was still in her laugh and her
manner of talking with a stranger. It must have been the first time in her life that she
was alone in a setting in which she was followed, looked at, and spoken to for one
secret purpose alone, which she could hardly fail to guess. He thought of her slim,
delicate throat, her lovely gray eyes.
"There's something pathetic about her, though," he thought, and dropped off.
Zemstvo Council: die elected council for local administration in Czarist Russia, the equivalent of a
county administration.
II
A week had passed since they had struck up an acquaintance. It was a holiday. It
was close indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust about and blew people's hats off. One was thirsty all day, and Gurov often went into the restaurant and
offered Anna Sergeyevna a soft drink or ice cream. One did not know what to do
with oneself.
In the evening when the wind had abated they went out on the pier to watch
the steamer come in. There were a great many people walking about the dock; they
had come to welcome someone and they were carrying bunches of flowers. And two
peculiarities of a festive Yalta crowd stood out: the elderly ladies were dressed like
young ones and there were many generals.
Owing to the choppy sea, the steamer arrived late, after sunset, and it was a long
time tacking about before it put in at the pier. Anna Sergeyevna peered at the
steamer and the passengers through her lorgnette as though looking for acquaintances, and whenever she turned to Gurov her eyes were shining. She talked a great
deal and asked questions jerkily, forgetting the next moment what she had asked;
then she lost her lorgnette in the crush.
The festive crowd began to disperse; it was now too dark to see people's faces;
there was no wind any more, but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna still stood as though
waiting to see someone else come off the steamer. Anna Sergeyevna was silent now,
and sniffed her flowers without looking at Gurov.
"The weather has improved this evening," he said. "Where shall we go now?
Shall we drive somewhere?"
She did not reply.
Then he looked at her intently, and suddenly embraced her and kissed her on
the lips, and the moist fragrance of her flowers enveloped him; and at once he looked
round him anxiously, wondering if anyone had seen them.
"Let us go to your place," he said softly. And they walked off together rapidly.
The air in her room was close and there was the smell of the perfume she had
bought at the Japanese shop. Looking at her, Gurov thought: "What encounters life
offers!" From the past he preserved the memory of carefree, good-natured women
whom love made gay and who were grateful to him for the happiness he gave them,
however brief it might be; and of women like his wife who loved without sincerity,
with too many words, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that it was not love
or passion that engaged them but something more significant; and of two or three
others, very beautiful, frigid women, across whose faces would suddenly flit a rapacious expressionan obstinate desire to take from life more than it could give, and
these were women no longer young, capricious, unreflecting, domineering, unintelligent, and when Gurov grew cold to them their beauty aroused his hatred, and the
lace on their lingerie seemed to him to resemble scales.
But here there was the timidity, the angularity of inexperienced youth, a feeling
of awkwardness; and there was a sense of embarrassment, as though someone had
suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, "the lady with the pet dog," treated
what had happened in a peculiar way, very seriously, as though it were her fallso it
seemed, and this was odd and inappropriate. Her features drooped and faded, and her
long hair hung down sadly on either side of her face; she grew pensive and her dejected
pose was that of a Magdalene in a picture by an old master.
"It's not right," she said. "You don't respect me now, you first of all."
20
25
30
There was a watermelon on the table. Gurov cut himself a slice and began eating
it without haste. They were silent for at least half an hour.
There was something touching about Anna Sergeyevna; she had the purity of a
well-bred, naive woman who has seen little of life. The single candle burning on the
table barely illuminated her face, yet it was clear that she was unhappy.
"Why should I stop respecting you, darling?" asked Gurov. "You don't know
what you're saying."
"God forgive me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It's terrible."
"It's as though you were trying to exonerate yourself."
"How can I exonerate myself? No. I am a bad, low woman; I despise myself and I
have no thought of exonerating myself. It's not my husband but myself I have deceived. And not only just now; I have been deceiving myself for a long time. My husband may be a good, honest man, but he is a flunkey! I don't know what he does,
what his work is, but I know he is a flunkey! I was twenty when I married him. I was
tormented by curiosity; I wanted something better. T h e r e must be a different sort of
life,' I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live! Curiosity kept eating at m e
you don't understand, but I swear to God I could no longer control myself; something
was going on in me; I could not be held back. I told my husband I was ill, and came
here. And here I have been walking about as though in a daze, as though I were mad;
and now I have become a vulgar, vile woman whom anyone may despise."
Gurov was already bored with her; he was irritated by her naive tone, by her repentance, so unexpected and so out of place, but for the tears in her eyes he might
have thought she was joking or play-acting.
"I don't understand, my dear," he said softly. "What do you want?"
She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.
"Believe me, believe me, I beg you," she said, "I love honesty and purity, and sin
is loathsome to me; 1 don't know what I'm doing. Simple people say, T h e Evil One
has led me astray.' And I may say of myself now that the Evil One has led me astray."
"Quiet, quiet," he murmured.
He looked into her fixed, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke to her softly and affectionately, and by degrees she calmed down, and her gaiety returned; both began
laughing.
Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the esplanade. The town
with its cypresses looked quite dead, but the sea was still sounding as it broke upon
the beach; a single launch was rocking on the waves and on it a lantern was blinking
sleepily.
They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.
"I found out your surname in the hall just now; it was written on the boardvon
Dideritz," said Gurov. "Is your husband German?"
"No; I believe his grandfather was German, but he is Greek Orthodox himself."
At Oreanda they sat on a bench not far from the church, looked down at the sea,
and were silent. Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist; white clouds
rested motionlessly on the mountaintops. The leaves did not stir on the trees, cicadas
twanged, and the monotonous muffled sound of the sea that rose from below spoke of
the peace, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it rumbled below when there was no
Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it rumbles now, and it will rumble as indifferently and as
hollowly when we are no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference
to the life and death of each of us, there lies, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing advance of life upon earth, of unceasing movement towards
perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, Gurov,
soothed and spellbound by these magical surroundingsthe sea, the mountains, the
clouds, the wide skythought how everything is really beautiful in this world when
one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget the
higher aims of life and our own human dignity.
A man strolled up to themprobably a guardlooked at them and walked
away. And this detail, too, seemed so mysterious and beautiful. They saw a steamer
arrive from Feodosia, its lights extinguished in the glow of dawn.
"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergevevna, after a silence.
"Yes, it's time to go home."
They returned to the city.
Then they met every day at twelve o'clock on the esplanade, lunched and dined
together, took walks, admired the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that she
had palpitations, asked the same questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the
fear that he did not respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or the public garden, when there was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her
passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight exchanged furtively in
dread of someone's seeing them, the heat, the smell of the sea, and the continual flitting before his eyes of idle, well-dressed, well-fed people, worked a complete change in
him; he kept telling Anna Sergeyevna how beautiful she was, how seductive, was urgently passionate; he would not move a step away from her, while she was often pensive and continually pressed him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love
her in the least, and saw in her nothing but a common woman. Almost every evening
rather late they drove somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the
excursion was always a success, the scenery invariably impressed them as beautiful and
magnificent.
They were expecting her husband, but a letter came from him saying that he had
eye-trouble, and begging his wife to return home as soon as possible. Anna
Sergeyevna made haste to go.
"It's a good thing I am leaving," she said to Gurov. "It's the hand of Fate!"
She took a carriage to the railway station, and he went with her. They were
driving the whole day. When she had taken her place in the express, and when the
second bell had rung, she said, "Let me look at you once morelet me look at you
again. Like this."
She was not crying but was so sad that she seemed ill and her face was quivering.
"I shall be thinking of youremembering you," she said. "God bless you; be
happy. Don't remember evil against me. We are parting foreverit has to be, for we
ought never to have met. Well, God bless you."
The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished, and a minute later there
was no sound of it, as though everything had conspired to end as quickly as possible
that sweet trance, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark
distance, Gurov listened to the twang of the grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had just waked up. And he reflected, musing, that
there had now been another episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an
end, and nothing was left of it but a memory. He was moved, sad, and slightly remorseful: this young woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy
with him; he had been warm and affectionate with her, but yet in his manner, his
tone, and his caresses there had been a shade of light irony, the slightly coarse arrogance of a happy male who was, besides, almost twice her age. She had constantly
50
55
called him kind, exceptional, high-minded; obviously he had seemed to her different
from what he really was, so he had involuntarily deceived her.
Here at the station there was already a scent of autumn in the air; it was a chilly
evening.
"It is time for me to go north, too," thought Gurov as he left the platform. "High
time!"
Ill
At home in Moscow the winter routine was already established; the stoves were
heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast
and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time.
There were frosts already. When the first snow falls, on the first day the sleighs are
out, it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs; one draws easy, delicious
breaths, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and
birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured look; they are closer to one's
heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one no longer wants to think of
mountains and the sea.
Gurov, a native of Moscow, arrived there on a fine frosty day, and when he put
on his fur coat and warm gloves and took a walk along Petrovka, and when on Saturday night he heard the bells ringing, his recent trip and the places he had visited lost
all charm for him. Little by little he became immersed in Moscow life, greedily read
three newspapers a day, and declared that he did not read the Moscow papers on
principle. He already felt a longing for restaurants, clubs, formal dinners, anniversary
celebrations, and it flattered him to entertain distinguished lawyers and actors, and to
play cards with a professor at the physicians' club. He could eat a whole portion of
meat stewed with pickled cabbage and served in a pan, Moscow style.
A month or so would pass and the image of Anna Sergeyevna, it seemed to him,
would become misty in his memory, and only from time to time he would dream of her
with her touching smile as he dreamed of others. But more than a month went by,
winter came into its own, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he
had parted from Anna Sergeyevna only yesterday. And his memories glowed more
and more vividly. When in the evening stillness the voices of his children preparing
their lessons reached his study, or when he listened to a song or to an organ playing in
a restaurant, or when the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything would
rise up in his memory; what had happened on the pier and the early morning with the
mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming from Feodosia, and the kisses. He
would pace about his room a long time, remembering and smiling; then his memories
passed into reveries, and in his imagination the past would mingle with what was to
come. He did not dream of Anna Sergeyevna, but she followed him about everywhere and watched him. When he shut his eyes he saw her before him as though she
were there in the flesh, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she
had been, and he imagined himself a finer man than he had been in Yalta. Of
evenings she peered out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the
cornerhe heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her clothes. In the street he
followed the women with his eyes, looking for someone who resembled her.
Already he was tormented by a strong desire to share his memories with someone. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one to talk
to outside; certainly he could not confide in his tenants or in anyone at the bank.
And what was there to talk about? He hadn't loved her then, had he? Had there been
anything beautiful, poetical, edifying, or simply interesting in his relations with
Anna Sergeyevna? And he was forced to talk vaguely of love, of women, and no one
guessed what he meant; only his wife would twitch her black eyebrows and say, "The
part of a philanderer does not suit you at all, Dimitry."
One evening, coming out of the physicians' club with an official with whom he 65
had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:
"If you only knew what a fascinating woman I became acquainted with at Yalta!"
The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and
shouted:
"Dmitry Dmitrich!"
"What is it?"
"You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit high."
70
These words, so commonplace, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and
struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what mugs! What stupid
nights, what dull, humdrum days! Frenzied gambling, gluttony, drunkenness, continual talk always about the same thing! Futile pursuits and conversations always about
the same topics take up the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength,
and in the end there is left a life clipped and wingless, an absurd mess, and there is no
escaping or getting away from itjust as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.
Gurov, boiling with indignation, did not sleep all night. And he had a headache
all the next day. And the following nights too he slept badly; he sat up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. ITe was fed up with his children, fed up with the
bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk of anything.
In December during the holidays he prepared to take a trip and told his wife he
was going to Petersburg to do what he could, for a young friendand he set off for
S
. What for? He did not know, himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna
and talk with her, to arrange a rendezvous if possible.
He arrived at S
in the morning, and at the hotel took the best room, in
which the floor was covered with gray army cloth, and on the table there was an inkstand, gray with dust and topped by a figure on horseback, its hat in its raised hand
and its head broken off. The porter gave him the necessary information: von Dideritz
lived in a house of his own on Staro-Goncharnaya Street, not far from the hotel: he
was rich and lived well and kept his own horses; everyone in the town knew him.
The porter pronounced the name: "Dridiritz."
Without haste Gurov made his way to Staro-Goncharnaya Street and found the 75
house. Directly opposite the house stretched a long gray fence studded with nails.
"A fence like that would make one run away," thought Gurov, looking now at
the fence, now at the windows of the house.
He reflected: this was a holiday, and the husband was apt to be at home. And
in any case, it would be tactless to go into the house and disturb her. If he were to
send her a note, it might fall into her husband's hands, and that might spoil everything. T h e best thing was to rely on chance. And he kept walking up and down the
street and along the fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate
and heard the dogs attack him; then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sound
came to him faintly and indistinctly. Probably it was Anna Sergeyevna playing.
The front door opened suddenly, and an old woman came out, followed by the familiar white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog, but his
heart began beating violently, and in his excitement he could not remember the
Pomeranian's name.
He kept walking up and down, and hated the gray fence more and more, and by
now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was perhaps
already diverting herself with another man, and that that was very natural in a young
woman who from morning till night had to look at that damn fence. He went back to
his hotel room and sat on the couch for a long while, not knowing what to do, then
he had dinner and a long nap.
"How stupid and annoying all this is!" he thought when he woke and looked at
the dark windows: it was already evening. "Here I've had a good sleep for some reason.
What am I going to do at night?"
He sat on the bed, which was covered with a cheap gray blanket of the kind seen
in hospitals, and he twitted himself in his vexation:
"So there's your lady with the pet dog. There's your adventure. A nice place to
cool your heels in."
That morning at the station a playbill in large letters had caught his eye. The
Geisha was to be given for the first time. He thought of this and drove to the theater.
"It's quite possible that she goes to first nights," he thought.
The theater was full. As in all provincial theaters, there was a haze above the
chandelier, the gallery was noisy and restless; in the front row, before the beginning of
the performance the local dandies were standing with their hands clasped behind their
backs; in the Governor's box the Governor's daughter, wearing a boa, occupied the
front seat, while the Governor himself hid modestly behind the portiere and only his
hands were visible; the curtain swayed; the orchestra was a long time tuning up. While
the audience was coming in and taking their seats, Gurov scanned the faces eagerly.
Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and wrhen Gurov
looked at her his heart contracted, and he understood clearly that in the whole world
there was no human being so near, so precious, and so important to him; she, this little, undistinguished woman, lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her
hand, filled his whole life now, was his sorrow7 and his joy, the only happiness that he
now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the bad orchestra, of the miserable local
violins, he thought how lovely she was. He thought and dreamed.
A young man with small side-whiskers, very tall and stooped, came in with
Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he nodded his head at every step and
seemed to be bowing continually. Probably this was the husband whom at Yalta, in
an access of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey. And there really was in his lanky
figure, his side-whiskers, his small bald patch, something of a flunkey's retiring manner; his smile was mawkish, and in his buttonhole there was an academic badge like a
waiter's number.
During the first intermission the husband went out to have a smoke; she remained
in her seat. Gurov, who was also sitting in the orchestra, went up to her and said in a
shaky voice, with a forced smile:
"Good evening!"
She glanced at him and turned pale, then looked at him again in horror, unable
to believe her eyes, and gripped the fan and the lorgnette tightly together in her
hands, evidently trying to keep herself from fainting. Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her distress and not daring to take a seat beside
her. The violins and the flute that were being tuned up sang out. He suddenly felt
frightened: it seemed as if all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got
up and went hurriedly to the exit; he followed her, and both of them walked blindly
along the corridors and up and down stairs, and figures in the uniforms prescribed for
magistrates, teachers, and officials of the Department of Crown Lands, all wearing
badges, flitted before their eyes, as did also ladies, and fur coats on hangers; they were
conscious of drafts and the smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov, whose heart was beating violently, thought:
"Oh, Lord! Why are these people here and this orchestra!"
90
And at that instant he suddenly recalled how when he had seen Anna
Sergeyevna off at the station he had said to himself that all was over between them
and that they would never meet again. But how distant the end still was!
On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which it said "To the Amphitheatre," she
stopped.
"How you frightened me!" she said, breathing hard, still pale and stunned. "Oh,
how you frightened me! I am barely alive. Why did you come? Why?"
"But do understand, Anna, do understand" he said hurriedly, under his breath.
"I implore you, do understand"
She looked at him with fear, with entreaty, with love; she looked at him intently, 95
to keep his features more distinctly in her memory,
"I suffer so," she went on, not listening to him. "All this time I have been thinking of nothing but you; I live only by the thought of you. And I wanted to forget, to
forget; but why, oh, why have you come?"
On the landing above them two high school boys were looking down and smoking, but it was all the same to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him and began
kissing her face and hands.
"What are you doing, what are you doing!" she was saying in horror, pushing
him away. "We have lost our senses. Go away today; go away at onceI conjure you
by all that is sacred, I implore youPeople are coming this way!"
Someone was walking up the stairs.
"You must leave," Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear, Dmitry 100
Dmitrich? I will come and see you in Moscow. I have never been happy; I am unhappy
now, and I never, never shall be happy, never! So don't make me suffer still more! I
swear I'll come to Moscow. But now let us part. My dear, good, precious one, let us part!"
She pressed his hand and walked rapidly downstairs, turning to look round at
him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy. Gurov stood for a
while, listening, then when all grew quiet, he found his coat and left the theater.
IV
And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once every two or
three months she left S
telling her husband that she was going to consult a
doctor about a woman's ailment from which she was sufferingand her husband did
and did not believe her. When she arrived in Moscow she would stop at the Slavyansky Bazar Hotel, and at once send a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov came to see
her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.
Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the messenger
had come the evening before and not found him in). With him walked his daughter,
whom he wanted to take to school; it was on the way. Snow was coming down in big
wet flakes.
"It's three degrees above zero,0 and yet it's snowing," Gurov was saying to his
daughter. "But this temperature prevails only on the surface of the earth; in the upper
layers of the atmosphere there is quite a different temperature."
* three degrees above zero: the Russian temperature is measured in Celsius degrees; the Fahrenheit
equivalent would be about thirty-seven degrees.
"And why doesn't it thunder in winter, papa?"
He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was on his way
to a rendezvous, and no living soul knew of it, and probably no one would ever know.
He had two lives, an open one, seen and known by all who needed to know it, full of
conventional truth and conventional falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends
and acquaintances; and another life that went on in secret. And through some
strange, perhaps accidental, combination of circumstances, everything that was of interest and importance to him, everything that was essential to him, everything about
which he felt sincerely and did not deceive himself, everything that constituted the
core of his life, was going on concealed from others; while all that was false, the shell
in which he hid to cover the truthhis work at the bank, for instance, his discussions at the club, his references to the "inferior race," his appearances at anniversary
celebrations with his wifeall that went on in the open. Judging others by himself,
he did not believe what he saw, and always fancied that every man led his real, most
interesting life under cover of secrecy as under cover of night. The personal life of
every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.
Having taken his daughter to school, Gurov went on to the Slavyansky Bazar Hotel. He took off his fur coat in the lobby, went upstairs, and knocked gently at the door.
Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favorite gray dress, exhausted by the journey and by waiting, had been expecting him since the previous evening. She was pale, and looked at
him without a smile, and had hardly entered when she flung herself on his breast. That
kiss was a long, lingering one, as though they had not seen one another for two years.
"Well, darling, how are you getting on there?" he asked. "What news?"
"Wait; I'll tell you in a momentI can't speak."
She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and pressed her
handkerchief to her eyes.
"Let her have her cry; meanwhile I'll sit down," he thought, and he seated himself in an armchair.
Then he rang and ordered tea, and while he was having his tea she remained
standing at the window with her back to him. She was crying out of sheer agitation,
in the sorrowful consciousness that their life was so sad; that they could only see each
other in secret and had to hide from people like thieves! Was it not a broken life?
"Come, stop now, dear!" he said.
It was plain to him that this love of theirs would not be over soon, that the end
of it was not in sight. Anna Sergeyevna was growing more and more attached to him.
She adored him, and it was unthinkable to tell her that their love was bound to come
to an end some day; besides, she would not have believed it!
He went up to her and took her by the shoulders, to fondle her and say something diverting, and at that moment he caught sight of himself in the mirror.
His hair was already beginning to turn gray. And it seemed odd to him that he
had grown so much older in the last few years, and lost his looks. The shoulders on
which his hands rested were warm and heaving. He felt compassion for this life, still
so warm and lovely, but probably already about to begin to fade and wither like his
own. Why did she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from
what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man whom their imagination created and whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards,
when they saw their mistake, they loved him nevertheless. And not one of them had
been happy with him. In the past he had met women, come together with them,
parted from them, but he had never once loved; it was anything you please, but not
love. And only now when his head was gray he had fallen in love, really, trulyfor
the first time in his life.
Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other as people do who are very close and
intimate, like man and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that Fate itself had
meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and
she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair of migratory birds, male and female, caught and forced to live in different cages. They forgave each other what they
were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that
this love of theirs had altered them both.
Formerly in moments of sadness he had soothed himself with whatever logical
arguments came into his head, but now he no longer cared for logic; he felt profound
compassion, he wanted to be sincere and tender.
"Give it up now, my darling," he said. "You've had your cry; that's enough. Let us
have a talk now, we'll think up something."
Then they spent a long time taking counsel together, they talked of how to 120
avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different cities, and not
seeing one another for long stretches of time. How could they free themselves from
these intolerable fetters?
"How? How?" he asked, clutching his head. "How?"
And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then
a new and glorious life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that the end was
still far off, and that what was to be most complicated and difficult for them was only
just beginning.
Kate Cliopsn
The Story of an Hour
1894
Kate Chopin (1851-1904) demonstrates again, as in "The Storm" in Chapter 4, her ability
to write short stories of compressed intensity. For a brief biography and a portrait see page 115.
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was
taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It w7as her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences, veiled hints that
revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It
was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only
taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened
to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed
inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to
her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this
she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed
to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all
aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the
street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one
was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that
had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child w7ho has
cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a
certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed
away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection,
but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What
was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that
filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this
thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with
her willas powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted
lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "Free, free, free!" The vacant stare and
the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright.
Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and
exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands
folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and
gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to
come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out
to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for
herself. There would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with
which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime
as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved himsometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of
self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being.
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the dooryou will make
yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of
life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer
that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life
might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was
a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of
Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs.
Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
10
15
20
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard
who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his gripsack and umbrella.
He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had
been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to
screen him from the view of his wife.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart diseaseof joy that kills.
Sandra Cisneros
The House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954.
The child of a Mexican father and a Mexican
American mother, she was the only daughter in
a family of seven children. She attended Loyola
University of Chicago and then received a master's degree from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has instructed high-school
dropouts, but more recently she has taught as a
visiting writer at numerous universities, including the University of California at Irvine and at
Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. Her
honors include fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur
Foundation. Cisneros's first published work was
poetry: Bad Boys (1980), My Wicked Wicked
Ways (1987), and Loose Woman
(1994).
tier fiction collections, The House on Mango
1984
SANDRA CISNEROS
Street (1984) and Women Hollering Creek (1991), however, earned her a broader
audience. She has also published a bilingual children's book, Hairs: Pelitos (1994), and a
novel, Caramelo (2002). Cisneros currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.
We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the
third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it
seemed there'd be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six
Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny, and me.
The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to pay rent to anybody, or
share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise,
and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it's not
the house we'd thought we'd get.
We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave fast. We were
using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That's
why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that's why we moved into the house on
Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town.
They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that
would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would
have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not
hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And we'd have a basement and
at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody.
Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and
this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.
But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It's small and
red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding
their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have
to push hard to get in. There is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by
the curb. Out back is a small garage for the car we don't own yet and a small yard that
looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our house,
but they're ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only one washroom. Everybody
has to share a bedroomMama and Papa, Carlos and Kilci, me and Nenny.
Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed by and saw
me playing out front. The laundromat downstairs had been boarded up because it had
been robbed two days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE'RE OPEN
so as not to lose business.
Where do you live? she asked.
There, I said pointing up to the third floor.
You live there?
There. I had to look to where she pointedthe third floor, the paint peeling,
wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. You live there?
The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded.
I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this
isn't it. T h e house on Mango Street isn't it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go.
Ralph Ellison
Battle Royal
Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)
was born in Oklahoma City. His father, a small business owner
who sold ice and coal, died when the future author was only three. Ellison s mother, a religious
woman of strong convictions, worked as a maid
to support her two sons. She also stressed the
importance of education. Planning to be a composer, Ellison entered the Tuskegee Institute in
1933. Reading T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste
Land, however, helped focus his interests on literature. In 1936 he moved to New York to find
a summer job to pay for his senior year's tuition.
He never left. In Harlem Ellison met many
black writers, including Langs ton Hughes and
Richard Wright, and he soon began publishing
1952
RALPH ELLISON
short stories, poems, and reviews. In 1952 Ellison published his only novel, Invisible Man,
which won the National Book Award for fiction and has gradually come to be recognized as
a contemporary American masterpiece. Over the next forty years Ellison tried to finish a
second novel, a project that was delayed by both disaster and the author s obsessive drive for
perfection. At one point Ellison s house burned down, destroying the draft of the novel. He
eventually published eight sections of the novel-in-progress, but it remained unfinished. Ellison completed two books of essays, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory
(1986). For years he taught at New York University. Ellison published "Battle Royal" as a
short story in 1948. He later revised it as the first chapter of Invisible Man (where it is preceded by a short preface).
It goes a long way back, some twenty years- All my life I had been looking for
something, and everywhere 1 turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted
their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.
I wras naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions
which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful
boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to
have been bom with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I
am an invisible man!
And yet I am no freak of nature, nor of history. I was in the cards, other things
having been equal (or unequal) eighty-five years ago. I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time
been ashamed. About eighty-five years ago they were told they were free, united with
others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand. And they believed it. They exulted
in it. They stayed in their place, worked hard, and brought up my father to do the
same. But my grandfather is the one. He was an odd old guy, my grandfather, and I
am told I take after him. It was he who caused the trouble. On his deathbed he called
my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight.
I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy
in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live
with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they
vomit or bust wide open." They thought the old man had gone out of his mind. He
had been the meekest of men. The younger children were rushed from the room, the
shades drawn and the flame of the lamp turned so low that it sputtered on the wick
like the old man's breathing. "Learn it to the younguns," he whispered fiercely; then
he died.
But my folks were more alarmed over his last words than over his dying. It was as
though he had not died at all, his words caused so much anxiety. I was warned emphatically to forget what he had said and, indeed, this is the first time it has been
mentioned outside the family circle. It had a tremendous effect upon me, however. I
could never be sure of what he meant. Grandfather had been a quiet old man who
never made any trouble, yet on his deathbed be had called himself a traitor and. a spy,
and he had spoken of his meekness as a dangerous activity. It became a constant puzzle which lay unanswered in the back of my mind. And whenever things went well for
me I remembered my grandfather and felt guilty and uncomfortable. It was as though I
was carrying out his advice in spite of myself. And to make it worse, everyone loved me
for it. I was praised by the most lily-white men in town. I was considered an example of
desirable conductjust as my grandfather had been. And what puzzled me was that
the old man had defined it as treachery. When I was praised for my conduct I felt a
guilt that in some way I was doing something that was really against the wishes of
the white folks, that if they had understood they would have desired me to act just
the opposite, that I should have been sulky and mean, and that that really would
have been what they wanted, even though they were fooled and thought they
wanted me to act as I did. It made me afraid that some day they would look upon me
as a traitor and I would be lost. Still I was more afraid to act any other way because
they didn't like that at all. The old man's words were like a curse. On my graduation
day I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the
very essence of progress. (Not that I believed thishow could I, remembering my
grandfather?I only believed that it w7orked.) It was a great success. Everyone
praised me and I was invited to give the speech at a gathering of the town's leading
white citizens. It was a triumph for the whole community.
It was in the main ballroom of the leading hotel. When I got there I discovered
that it was on the occasion of a smoker, and I was told that since I was to be there
anyway I might as well take part in the battle royal to be fought by some of my
schoolmates as part of the entertainment. T h e battle royal came first.
All of the town's big shots were there in their tuxedoes, wolfing down the buffet foods, drinking beer and whiskey and smoking black cigars. It was a large room
with a high ceiling. Chairs were arranged in neat rows around three sides of a
portable boxing ring. T h e fourth side was clear, revealing a gleaming space of polished floor. I had some misgivings over the battle royal, by the way. Not from a distaste for fighting but because I didn't care too much for the other fellows who were
to take part. They were tough guys who seemed to have no grandfather's curse worrying their minds. No one could mistake their toughness. And besides, I suspected
that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. In those
pre-invisible days I visualized myself as a potential Booker T . Washington. But the
other fellows didn't care too much for me either, and there were nine of them. I felt
superior to them in my way, and I didn't like the manner in which we were all
crowded together in the servants' elevator. Nor did they like my being there. In
fact, as the warmly lighted floors flashed past the elevator we had words over the
fact that I, by taking part in the fight, had knocked one of their friends out of a
night's work.
We were led out of the elevator through a rococo hall into an anteroom and told
to get into our fighting togs. Each of us was issued a pair of boxing gloves and ushered
out into the big mirrored hall, which we entered looking cautiously about us and
whispering, lest we might accidentally be heard above the noise of the room. It was
foggy w7ith cigar smoke. And already the whiskey was taking effect. I was shocked to
see some of the most important men of the town quite tipsy. They were all there
bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants. Even one of the
more fashionable pastors. Something we could not see was going on up front. A
clarinet was vibrating sensuously and the men were standing up and moving eagerly
forward. We were a small tight group, clustered together, our bare upper bodies
touching and shining with anticipatory sweat: while up front the big shots were becoming increasingly excited over something we still could not see. Suddenly I heard
the school superintendent, who had told me to come, yell, "Bring up the shines,
gentlemen! Bring up the little shines!"
We were rushed up to the front of the ballroom, where it smelled even more
strongly of tobacco and whiskey. Then we were pushed into place. I almost wet my
pants. A sea of faces, some hostile, some amused, ringed around us, and in the center,
facing us, stood a magnificent blondestark naked. There was dead silence. I felt a
blast of cold air chill me. I tried to back away, but they were behind me and around
me. Some of the boys stood with lowered heads, trembling. I felt a wave of irrational
guilt and fear. My teeth chattered, my skin turned to goose flesh, my knees knocked.
Yet I was strongly attracted and looked in spite of myself. Had the price of looking
been blindness, I would have looked. The hair was yellow like that of a circus kewpie
doll, the face heavily powdered and rouged, as though to form an abstract mask, the
eyes hollow and smeared a cool blue, the color of a baboon's butt. I felt a desire to spit
upon her as my eyes brushed slowly over her body. Her breasts were firm and round as
the domes of East Indian temples, and I stood so close as to see the fine skin texture
and beads of pearly perspiration glistening like dew around the pink and erected buds
of her nipples. I wanted at one and the same time to run from the room, to sink
through the floor, or go to her and cover her from my eyes and the eyes of the others
with my body; to feel the soft thighs, to caress her and destroy her, to love her and to
murder her, to hide from her, and yet to stroke where below the small American flag
tattooed upon her belly her thighs formed a capital V. I had a notion that of all in the
room she saw only me with her impersonal eyes.
And then she began to dance, a slow sensuous movement; the smoke of a hundred cigars clinging to her like the thinnest of veils. She seemed like a fair bird-girl
girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea.
I was transported. Then I became aware of the clarinet playing and the big shots
yelling at us. Some threatened us if we looked and others if we did not. On my right I
saw one boy faint. And now a man grabbed a silver pitcher from a table and stepped
close as he dashed ice water upon him and stood him up and forced two of us to support him as his head hung and moans issued from his thick bluish lips. Another boy
began to plead to go home. He was the largest of the group, wearing dark red fighting
trunks much too small to conceal the erection which projected from him as though
in answer to the insinuating low-registered moaning of the clarinet. He tried to hide
himself with his boxing gloves.
And all the while the blonde continued dancing, smiling faintly at the big shots
who watched her with fascination, and faintly smiling at our fear. I noticed a certain
merchant who followed her hungrily, his lips loose and drooling. He was a large man
who wore diamond studs in a shirtfront which swelled with the ample paunch underneath, and each time the blonde swayed her undulating hips he ran his hand through
the thin hair of his bald head and, with his arms upheld, his posture clumsy like that
of an intoxicated panda, wound his belly in a slow and obscene grind. This creature
was completely hypnotized. The music had quickened. As the dancer flung herself
about with a detached expression on her face, the men began reaching out to touch
her. I could see their beefy fingers sink into her soft flesh. Some of the others tried to
stop them and she began to move around the floor in graceful circles, as they gave
chase, slipping and sliding over the polished floor. It was mad. Chairs went crashing,
drinks were spilt, as they ran laughing and howling after her. They caught her just as
she reached a door, raised her from the floor, and tossed her as college boys are tossed
at a hazing, and above her red, fixed-smiling lips I saw the terror and disgust in her
eyes, almost like my own terror and that which I saw in some of the other boys. As I
watched, they tossed her twice and her soft breasts seemed to flatten against the air
and her legs flung wildly as she spun. Some of the more sober ones helped her to escape. And I started off the floor, heading for the anteroom with the rest of the boys.
Some were still crying and in hysteria. But as we tried to leave we were stopped
and ordered to get into the ring. There was nothing to do but what we were told. All.
ten of us climbed under the ropes and allowed ourselves to be blindfolded with broad
bands of white cloth. One of the men seemed to feel a bit sympathetic and tried to
cheer us up as we stood with our backs against the ropes. Some of us tried to grin.
"See that boy over there?" one of the men said. "I want you to run across at the bell
and give it to him right in the belly. If you don't get him, I'm going to get you. I don't
like his looks." Each of us was told the same. The blindfolds were put on. Yet even
then I had been going over my speech. In my mind each word was as bright as a
flame. I felt the cloth pressed into place, and frowned so that it would be loosened
when I relaxed.
But now I felt a sudden fit of blind terror. I was unused to darkness, it was as
though I had suddenly found myself in a dark room filled with poisonous cottonmouths. I coulcl hear the bleary voices yelling insistently for the battle royal to begin.
"Get going in there!"
"Let me at that big nigger!"
I strained to pick up the school superintendent's voice, as though to squeeze
some security out of that slightly more familiar sound.
"Let me at those black sonsabitches!" someone yelled.
"No, Jackson, no!" another voice yelled. "Here, somebody, help me hold Jack."
"I want to get at that ginger-colored nigger. Tear him limb from limb," the first
voice yelled.
I stood against the ropes trembling. For in those days I was what they called ginger-colored, and he sounded as though he might crunch me between his teeth like a
crisp ginger cookie.
Quite a struggle was going on. Chairs were being kicked about and I could hear
voices grunting as with terrific effort. I wanted to see, to see more desperately than
ever before. But the blindfold was as tight as a thick skin-puckering scab and when I
raised my gloved hands to push the layers of white aside a voice yelled, "Oh, no you
don't, black bastard! Leave that alone!"
"Ring the bell before Jackson kills him a coon!" someone boomed in the sudden
silence. And I heard the bell clang and the sound of the feet scuffling forward.
A glove smacked against my head. I pivoted, striking out stiffly as someone went
past, and felt the jar ripple along the length of my arm to my shoulder. Then it
seemed as though all nine of the boys had turned upon me at once. Blows pounded
me from all sides while I struck out as best I could. So many blows landed upon me
that I wondered if I were not the only blindfolded fighter in the ring, or if the man
called Jackson hadn't succeeded in getting me after all.
Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity. I stumbled
about like a baby or a drunken man. The smoke had become thicker and with each
new blow it seemed to sear and further restrict my lungs. My saliva became like hot
bitter glue. A glove connected with my head, filling my mouth with warm blood. It
was everywhere. I could not tell if the moisture I felt upon my body was sweat or
blood. A blow landed hard against the nape of my neck. I felt myself going over, my
head hitting the floor. Streaks of blue light filled the black world behind the blindfold. I lay prone, pretending that I was knocked out, but felt myself seized by hands
and yanked to my feet. "Get going, black boy! Mix it up!" My arms were like lead, my
head smarting from blows. I managed to feel my way to the ropes and held on, trying
to catch my breath. A glove landed in my midsection and I went over again, feeling
as though the smoke had become a knife jabbed into my guts. Pushed this way and
that by the legs milling around me, I finally pulled erect and discovered that I could
see the black, sweat-washed forms weaving in the smoky-blue atmosphere like
drunken dancers weaving to the rapid drum-like thuds of blows.
Everyone fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for long. Two, three, four, fought one, then
turned to fight each other, were themselves attacked. Blows landed below the belt
and in the kidney, with the gloves open as well as closed, and with my eye partly
opened now there was not so much terror. I moved carefully, avoiding blows, although not too many to attract attention, fighting group to group. The boys groped
about like blind, cautious crabs crouching to protect their midsections, their heads
pulled in short against their shoulders, their arms stretched nervously before them,
with their fists testing the smoke-filled air like the knobbed feelers of hypersensitive
snails. In one corner I glimpsed a boy violently punching the air and heard him
scream in pain as he smashed his hand against a ring post. For a second I saw him
bent over holding his hand, then going down as a blow caught his unprotected head.
I played one group against the other, slipping in and throwing a punch then stepping
out of range while pushing the others into the melee to take the blows blindly aimed
at me. The smoke was agonizing and there were no rounds, no bells at three minute
intervals to relieve our exhaustion. The room spun round me, a swirl of lights, smoke,
sweating bodies surrounded by tense white faces. I bled from both nose and mouth,
the blood spattering upon my chest.
The men kept yelling, "Slug him, black boy! Knock his guts out!"
"Uppercut him! Kill him! Kill that big boy!"
Taking a fake fall, I saw a boy going down heavily beside me as though we were
felled by a single blow7, saw a sneaker-clad foot shoot into his groin as the two who
had knocked him down stumbled upon him. I rolled out of range, feeling a twinge of
nausea.
The harder we fought the more threatening the men became. And yet, I had begun to worry about my speech again. How would it go? Would they recognize my
ability? What would they give me?
I was fighting automatically when suddenly I noticed that one after another of
the boys was leaving the ring. I was surprised, filled with panic, as though I had been
left alone with an unknown danger. Then I understood. The boys had arranged it
among themselves. It was the custom for the two men left in the ring to slug it out for
the winner's prize. I discovered this too late. When the bell sounded two men in
tuxedoes leaped into the ring and removed the blindfold. I found myself facing Tatlock, the biggest of the gang. I felt sick at my stomach. Hardly had the bell stopped
ringing in my ears than it clanged again and I saw him moving swiftly toward me.
Thinking of nothing else to do I hit him smash on the nose. He kept coming, bringing the rank sharp violence of stale sweat. His face was a black blank of a face, only
his eyes alivewith hate of me and aglow with a feverish terror from what had happened to us all. I became anxious. I wanted to deliver my speech and he came at me
as though he meant to beat it out of me. I smashed him again and again, taking his
blows as they came. Then on a sudden impulse I struck him lightly and we clinched.
I whispered, "Fake like I knocked you out, you can have the prize."
"I'll break your behind," he whispered hoarsely.
"For them?"
"For me, sonafabitch!"
25
30
They were yelling for us to break it up and Tatlock spun me half around with a
blow, and as a joggled camera sweeps in a reeling scene, I saw the howling red faces
crouching tense beneath the cloud of blue-gray smoke. For a moment the world wavered, unraveled, flowed, then my head cleared and Tatlock bounced before me.
That fluttering shadow before my eyes was his jabbing left hand. Then falling forward,
my head against his damp shoulder, I whispered.
"Pll make it five dollars more."
"Go to hell!"
But his muscles relaxed a trifle beneath my pressure and I breathed, "Seven?"
"Give it to your ma," he said, ripping me beneath the heart.
And while I still held him I butted him and moved away. I felt myself bombarded
with punches. I fought back with hopeless desperation. I wanted to deliver my speech
more than anything else in the world, because I felt that only these men could judge
truly my ability, and now this stupid clown was ruining my chances. I began fighting
carefully now, moving in to punch him and out again with my greater speed. A lucky
blow to his chin and I had him going toountil I heard a loud voice yell, "I got my
money on the big boy."
Hearing this, I almost dropped my guard. I was confused: Should I try to win
against the voice out there? Would not this go against my speech, and was not this a
moment for humility, for nonresistance? A blow to my head as I danced about sent
my right eye popping like a jack-in-the-box and settled my dilemma. The room went
red as 1 fell. It was a dream fall, my body languid and fastidious as to where to land,
until the floor became impatient and smashed up to meet me. A moment later I came
to. An hypnotic voice said FIVE emphatically. And I lay there, hazily watching a dark
red spot of my own blood shaping itself into a butterfly, glistening and soaking into
the soiled gray world of the canvas.
When the voice drawled TEN I was lifted up and dragged to a chair. I sat dazed.
My eye pained and swelled with each throb of my pounding heart and I wondered
if now I would be allowed to speak. I was wringing wet, my mouth still bleeding.
W e were grouped along the wall now. The other boys ignored me as they congratulated Tatlock and speculated as to how much they would be paid. One boy whimpered over his smashed hand. Looking up front, I saw attendants in white jackets
rolling the portable ring away and placing a small square rug in the vacant space
surrounded by chairs. Perhaps, I thought, I will stand on the rug to deliver my
speech.
Then the M.C. called to us. "Come on up here boys and get your money."
We ran forward to where the men laughed and talked in their chairs, waiting.
Everyone seemed friendly now.
"There it is on the rug," the man said. I saw the rug covered with coins of all dimensions and a few crumpled bills. But what excited me, scattered here and there,
were the gold pieces.
"Boys, it's all yours," the man said. "You get all you grab."
"That's right, Sambo," a blond man said, winking at me confidentially.
I trembled with excitement, forgetting my pain. I would get the gold and the
bills. I thought. I would use both hands. I would throw my body against the boys
nearest me to block them from the gold.
"Get down around the rug now," the man commanded, "and don't anyone touch
it until I give the signal."
"This ought to be good," I heard.
35
40
45
As told, we got around the square rug on our knees. Slowly the man raised his
freckled hand as we followed it upward with our eyes.
I heard, "These niggers look like they're about to pray!"
Then, "Ready," the man said. "Go!"
50
I lunged for a yellow coin lying on the blue design of the carpet, touching it and
sending a surprised shriek to join those around me. I tried frantically to remove my
hand but could not let go. A hot, violent force tore through my body, shaking me
like a wet rat. The rug was electrified. The hair bristled up on my head as I shook myself free. My muscles jumped, my nerves jangled, writhed. But I saw that this was not
stopping the other boys. Laughing in fear and embarrassment, some were holding
back and scooping up the coins knocked off by the painful contortions of others. The
men roared above us as we struggled.
"Pick it up, goddamnit, pick it up!" someone called like a bass-voiced parrot.
"Go on, get it!"
I crawled rapidly around the floor, picking up the coins, trying to avoid the coppers
and to get greenbacks and the gold. Ignoring the shock by laughing, as I brushed the
coins off quickly, I discovered that I could contain the electricitya contradiction but
it works. Then the men began to push us onto the rug. Laughing embarrassedly, we
struggled out of their hands and kept after the coins. We were all wet and slippery
and hard to hold. Suddenly I saw a boy lifted into the air, glistening with sweat like a
circus seal, and dropped, his wet back landing flush upon the charged rug, heard him
yell and saw him literally dance upon his back, his elbows beating a frenzied tattoo
upon the floor, his muscles twitching like the flesh of a horse stung by many flies.
When he finally rolled off, his face was gray and no one stopped him when he ran
from the floor amid booming laughter.
"Get the money," the M.C. called. "That's good hard American cash!"
And we snatched and grabbed, snatched and grabbed. I was careful not to come 55
too close to the rug now, and when I felt the hot whiskey breath descend upon me
like a cloud of foul air I reached out and grabbed the leg of a chair. It was occupied
and I held on desperately.
"Leggo, nigger! Leggo!"
The huge face wavered down to mine as he tried to push me free. But my body
was slippery and he was too drunk. It was Mr. Colcord, who owned a chain of movie
houses and "entertainment palaces." Each time he grabbed me I slipped out of his
hands. It became a real struggle. I feared the rug more than I did the drunk, so I held
on, surprising myself for a moment by trying to topple him upon the rug. It was such
an enormous idea that I found myself actually carrying it out. I tried not to be obvious, yet when I grabbed his leg, trying to tumble him out of the chair, he raised up
roaring with laughter, and, looking at me with soberness dead in the eye, kicked me
viciously in the chest. The chair leg flew out of my hand and I felt myself going and
rolled. It was as though I had rolled through a bed of hot coals. It seemed a whole
century would pass before I would roll free, a century in which I was seared through
the deepest levels of my body to the fearful breath within me and the breath seared
and heated to the point of explosion. It'll all be over in a flash, I thought as I rolled
clear. It'll all be over in a flash.
But not yet, the men on the other side were waiting, red faces swollen as though
from apoplexy as they bent forward in their chairs. Seeing their fingers coming toward me I rolled away as a fumbled football rolls off the receiver's fingertips, back
into the coals. That time I luckily sent the rug sliding out of place and heard the
coins ringing against the floor and the boys scuffling to pick them up and the M.C.
calling, "All right, boys, that's all. Go get dressed and get your money."
I was limp as a dish rag. My back felt as though it had been beaten with wires.
When we had dressed the M.C. came in and gave us each five dollars, except
Tatlock, who got ten for being the last in the ring. Then he told us to leave. I was not
to get a chance to deliver my speech, I thought. I was going out into the dim alley in
despair when I was stopped and told to go back. I returned to the ballroom, where the
men were pushing back their chairs and gathering in small groups to talk.
The M.C. knocked on a table for quiet. "Gentlemen," he said, "we almost forgot
an important part of the program. A most serious part, gentlemen. This boy was
brought here to deliver a speech which he made at his graduation yesterday . . ."
"Bravo!"
"I'm told that he is the smartest boy we've got out there in Greenwood. I'm told
that he knows more big words than a pocket-sized dictionary."
Much applause and laughter.
"So now, gentlemen, I want you to give him your attention."
There was still laughter as I faced them, my mouth dry, my eyes throbbing. I began slowly, but evidently my throat was tense, because they began shouting. "Louder!
Louder!"
"We of the younger generation extol the wisdom of that great leader and educator," I shouted, "who first spoke these flaming words of wisdom: 'A ship lost at sea for
many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel
was seen a signal: "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel came back: "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed
vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of
fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.' And like him I say, and
in his words, T o those of my race who depend upon bettering their condition in a
foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations
with the Southern white man, who is his next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast
down your bucket where you are"cast it down in making friends in every manly
way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded . . ."'
60
65
I spoke automatically and with such fervor that I did not realize that the men
were still talking and laughing until my dry mouth, filling up with blood from the cut,
almost strangled me. I coughed, wanting to stop and go to one of the tall brass, sandfilled spittoons to relieve myself, but a few of the men, especially the superintendent,
were listening and I was afraid. So I gulped it down, blood, saliva and all, and continued. (What powers of endurance I had during those days! What enthusiasm! What a
belief in the rightness of things!) I spoke even louder in spite of the pain. But still
they talked and still they laughed, as though deaf with cotton in dirty ears. So I spoke
with greater emotional emphasis. I closed my ears and swallowed blood until I was
nauseated. The speech seemed a hundred times as long as before, but I could not
leave out a single word. All had to be said, each memorized nuance considered, rendered. Nor w7as that all. Whenever I uttered a word of three or more syllables a group
of voices would yell for me to repeat it. I used the phrase "social responsibility" and
they yelled:
"What's that word you say, boy?"
"Social responsibility," I said.
"What?"
"Social. . ."
"Louder."
70
. . responsibility."
"More!"
"Respon"
"Repeat!"
sibility."
The room filled with the uproar of laughter until, no doubt, distracted by having
to gulp down my blood, I made a mistake and yelled a phrase 1 had often seen denounced in newspaper editorials, heard debated in private.
" S o c i a l . . ."
"What?" they yelled.
. . equality"
The laughter hung smokelike in the sudden stillness. I opened my eyes, puzzled.
Sounds of displeasure filled the room. The M.C. rushed forward. They shouted hostile phrases at me. But I did not understand.
A small dry mustached man in the front row blared out, "Say that slowly, son!"
"What, sir?"
"What you just said!"
"Social responsibility, sir," I said.
"You weren't being smart, were you, boy?" he said, not unkindly.
"No, sir!"
"You sure that about 'equality' was a mistake?"
"Oh, yes, sir," I said. "I was swallowing blood."
"Well, you had better speak more slowly so we can understand. We mean to do
right by you, but you've got to know your place at all times. All right, now, go on
with your speech."
I was afraid. I wanted to leave but I wanted also to speak and I was afraid they'd
snatch me down.
"Thank you, sir," I said, beginning where I had left off, and having them ignore
me as before.
Yet when I finished there was a thunderous applause. I was surprised to see the
superintendent come forth with a package wrapped in white tissue paper, and, gesturing for quiet, address the men.
"Gentlemen, you see that I did not overpraise the boy. He makes a good speech
and some day he'll lead his people in the proper paths. And I don't have to tell you
that this is important in these days and times. This is a good, smart boy, and so to encourage him in the right direction, in the name of the Board of Education I wish to
present him a prize in the form of this . . ."
He paused, removing the tissue paper and revealing a gleaming calfskin
briefcase.
". . . in the form of this first-class article from Shad Whitmore's shop."
"Boy," he said, addressing me, "take this prize and keep it well. Consider it a
badge of office. Prize it. Keep developing as you are and some day it will be filled with
important papers that will help shape the destiny of your people."
I was so moved that I could hardly express my thanks. A rope of bloody saliva
forming a shape like an undiscovered continent drooled upon the leather and I wiped
it quickly away. I felt an importance that I had never dreamed.
"Open it and see what's inside," I was told.
My lingers a-tremble, I complied, smelling fresh leather and finding an officiallooking document inside. It was a scholarship to the state college for Negroes. My
eyes filled with tears and I ran awkwardly off the floor.
I was overjoyed; I did not even mind when I discovered the gold pieces I had
scrambled for were brass pocket tokens advertising a certain make of automobile.
When I reached home everyone was excited. Next day the neighbors came to
congratulate me. I even felt safe from grandfather, whose deathbed curse usually
spoiled my triumphs. I stood beneath his photograph with my briefcase in hand and
smiled triumphantly into his stolid black peasant's face. It was a face that fascinated
me. The eyes seemed to follow everywhere I went.
That night I dreamed I was at a circus w7ith him and that he refused to laugh at
the clowns no matter what they did. Then later he told me to open my briefcase and
read what was inside and I did, finding an official envelope stamped with the state
seal: and inside the envelope I found another and another, endlessly, and I thought I
would fall of weariness. "Them's years/' he said. "Now open that one." And I did and
in it I found an engraved stamp containing a short message in letters of gold. "Read
it," my grandfather said. "Out loud."
"To Whom It May Concern," I intoned. "Keep This Nigger-Boy Running."
I awoke with the old man's laughter ringing in my ears.
Gabriel Garcia fVSarquez
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
1968
TRANSLATED BY GREGORY RABASSA
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among the most eminent of living Latin American writers, was born
in 1928 in Aracataca, a Caribbean port in
Colombia, one of sixteen children of an impoverished telegraph operator. For a time he studied
law in Bogota, then became a newspaper reporter. Although he never joined the Communist
Party, Garcia Marquez outspokenly advocated
many left-wing proposals for reform. In 1954,
despairing of any prospect for political change,
he left Colombia to live in Mexico City. Though
at nineteen he had already completed a book of
short stories, La hojorasca (Leaf Storm), he
waited until 1955 to publish it. Soon he began to
build a towering reputation among readers of
Spanish. His celebrated novel Cien anos de
soledad ( J 9 6 7 ) , published in English as One
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
Hundred Years of Solitude (1969), traces the
history of a Colombian family through six generations. Called by Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda 11 the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since Don Quixote," the book has
sold more than twelve million copies in thirty languages. In 1982 Garcia Marquez was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His fiction, rich in myth and invention, has reminded American readers of the work of William Faulkner, another explorer of his 'native
ground; indeed, Garcia Marquez has called Faulkner "my masterHis
later novels include
Love in the Time of Cholera (1988), The General in His Labyrinth (1990), Of Love
and Other Demons (1995), and Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2005). His
Collected Stories was published in 1994. Garcia Marquez returned to his journalistic roots
with News of a Kidnapping (1997), a vivid account of a Colombian drug lord who abducted ten leading journalists and politicians to prevent his extradition to the United States.
A Country for Children (1998) explores Colombia's potential for a positive future. Living to Tell the Tale (2003), the first volume of an autobiographical trilogy, traces the author1 s life up to the beginning of his journalistic career, and offers many insights into the
sources and techniques of his works of fiction. Garcia Marquez, still lives in Mexico City.
A TALE FOR CHILDREN
The first children who saw the dark and slinky bulge approaching through the
sea let themselves think it was an empty ship. Then they saw it had no flags or masts
and they thought it was a whale. But when it washed up on the beach, they removed
the clumps of seaweed, the jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam,
and only then did they see that it was a drowned man.
They had been playing with him all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging him up again, when someone chanced to see them and spread the alarm in the
village. The men who carried him to the nearest house noticed that he weighed more
than any dead man they had ever known, almost as much as a horse, and they said to
each other that maybe he'd been floating too long and the water had got into his
bones. When they laid him on the floor they said he'd been taller than all the other
men because there was barely enough room for him in the house, but they thought
that maybe the ability to keep on growing after death was part of the nature of certain drowned men. He had the smell of the sea about him and only his shape gave
one to suppose that it was the corpse of a human being, because the skin was covered
with a crust of mud and scales.
They did not even have to clean off his face to know that the dead man was a
stranger. The village was made up of only twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone
courtyards with no flowers and which were spread about on the end of a desertlike
cape. There was so little land that mothers always went about with the fear that the
wind would carry off their children and the few dead that the years had caused among
them had to be thrown off the cliffs. But the sea was calm and bountiful and all the
men fit into seven boats. So when they found the drowned man they simply had to
look at one another to see that they were all there. That night they did not go out to
work at sea. While the men went to find out if anyone was missing in neighboring
villages, the women stayed behind to care for the drowned man. They took the mud
off with grass swabs, they removed the underwater stones entangled in his hair, and
they scraped the crust off with tools used for scaling fish. As they were doing that
they noticed that the vegetation on him came from faraway oceans and deep water
and that his clothes were in tatters, as if he had sailed through labyrinths of coral.
They noticed too that he bore his death with pride, for he did not have the lonely
look of other drowned men who came out of the sea or that haggard, needy look of
men who drowned in rivers. But only when they finished cleaning him off did they
become aware of the kind of man he was and it left them breathless. Not only was he
the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen, but even
though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination.
They could not find a bed in the village large enough to lay him on nor was there
a table solid enough to use for his wake. The tallest men's holiday pants would not fit
him, nor the fattest ones' Sunday shirts, nor the shoes of the one with the biggest
feet. Fascinated by his huge size and his beauty, the women then decided to make him some pants from a large piece of sail and a shirt from some bridal brabant linen
so that he could continue through his death with dignity. As they sewed, sitting in a
circle and gazing at the corpse between stitches, it seemed to them that the wind had
never been so steady nor the sea so restless as on that night and they supposed that
the change had something to do with the dead man. They thought that if that magnificent man had lived in the village, his house would have had the widest doors, the
highest ceiling, and the strongest floor, his bedstead would have been made from a
midship frame held together by iron bolts, and his wife would have been the happiest
woman. They thought that he would have had so much authority that he could have
drawn fish out of the sea simply by calling their names and that he would have put so
much work into his land that springs would have burst forth from among the rocks so
that he would have been able to plant flowers on the cliffs. They secretly compared
him to their own men, thinking that for all their lives theirs were incapable of doing
what he could do in one night, and they ended up dismissing them deep in their
hearts as the weakest, meanest, and most useless creatures on earth. They were wandering through the maze of fantasy when the oldest woman, who as the oldest had
looked upon the drowned man with more compassion than passion, sighed:
"He has the face of someone called Esteban."
It was true. Most of them had only to take another look at him to see that he
could not have any other name. The more stubborn among them, who were the
youngest., still lived for a few hours with the illusion that when they put his clothes
on and he lay among the flowers in patent leather shoes his name might be Lautaro.
But it was a vain illusion. There had not been enough canvas, the poorly cut and
worse sewn pants were too tight, and the hidden strength of his heart popped the
buttons on his shirt. After midnight the whistling of the wind died down and the sea
fell into its Wednesday drowsiness. The silence put an end to any last doubts: he was
Esteban. The women who had dressed him, who had combed his hair, had cut his
nails and shaved him were unable to hold back a shudder of pity when they had to resign themselves to his being dragged along the ground. It was then that they understood how unhappy he must have been with that huge body since it bothered him
even after death. They could see him in life, condemned to going through doors sideways, cracking his head on crossbeams, remaining on his feet during visits, not knowing what to do with his soft, pink, sea lion hands while the lady of the house looked
for her most resistant chair and begged him, frightened to death, sit here, Esteban,
please, and he, leaning against the wall, smiling, don't bother, ma'am, I'm fine where
I am, his heels raw and his back roasted from having done the same thing so many
times whenever he paid a visit, don't bother, ma'am, I'm fine where I am, just to
avoid the embarrassment of breaking up the chair, and never knowing perhaps that
the ones who said don't go, Esteban, at least wait till the coffee's ready, were the ones
who later on would whisper the big boob finally left, how7 nice, the handsome fool
has gone. That was what the women were thinking beside the body a little before
dawn. Later, when they covered his face with a handkerchief so that the light would
not bother him, he looked so forever dead, so defenseless, so much like their men
that the first furrows of tears opened in their hearts. It was one of the younger ones
who began the weeping. The others, coming to, went from sighs to wails, and the
more they sobbed the more they felt like weeping, because the drowned man was becoming all the more Esteban for them, and so they wept so much, for he was the most
destitute, most peaceful, and most obliging man on earth, poor Esteban. So when the
men returned with the news that the drowned man was not from the neighboring villages either, the women felt an opening of jubilation in the midst of their tears.
"Praise the Lord," they sighed, "he's ours!"
T h e men thought the fuss was only womanish frivolity. Fatigued because of the
difficult nighttime inquiries, all they wanted was to get rid of the bother of the newcomer once and for all before the sun grew strong on that arid, windless day. They
improvised a litter with the remains of foremasts and gaffs, tying it together with rigging so that it would bear the weight of the body until they reached the cliffs. They
wanted to tie the anchor from a cargo ship to him so that he would sink easily into
the deepest waves, where fish are blind and divers die of nostalgia, and bad currents
would not bring him back to shore, as had happened with other bodies. But the
more they hurried, the more the women thought of ways to waste time. They walked
about like startled hens, pecking with the sea charms on their breasts, some interfering on one side to put a scapular of the good wind on the drowned man, some on the
other side to put a wrist compass on him, and after a great deal of get away from
there, woman, stay out of the way, look, you almost made me fall on top of the dead man,
the men began to feel mistrust in their livers and started grumbling about why so
many main-altar decorations for a stranger, because no matter how many nails and
holy-water jars he had on him, the sharks would chew him all the same, but the
women kept piling on their junk relics, running back and forth, stumbling, while
they released in sighs what they did not in tears, so that the men finally exploded
with since when has there ever been such a fuss over a drifting corpse, a drowned nobody,
a piece of cold Wednesday meat. One of the women, mortified by so much lack of care,
then removed the handkerchief from the dead man's face and the men were left
breathless too.
He was Esteban. It was not necessary to repeat it for them to recognize him. If
they had been told Sir Walter Raleigh, 0 even they might have been impressed with
his gringo accent, the macaw on his shoulder, his cannibal-killing blunderbuss, but
there could be only one Esteban in the world and there he was, stretched out like a
sperm whale, shoeless, wearing the pants of an undersized child, and with those stony
nails that had to be cut with a knife. They only had to take the handkerchief off his
face to see that he was ashamed, that it was not his fault that he was so big or so
heavy or so handsome, and if he had known that this was going to happen, he would
have looked for a more discreet place to drown in, seriously, I even would have tied
the anchor off a galleon around my neck and staggered off a cliff like someone who
doesn't like things in order not to be upsetting people now with this Wednesday dead
body, as you people say, in order not to be bothering anyone with this filthy piece of
cold meat that doesn't have anything to do with me. There was so much truth in his
manner that even the most mistrustful men, the ones who felt the bitterness of endless nights at sea fearing that their women would tire of dreaming about them and begin to dream of drowned men, even they and others who were harder still shuddered
in the marrow of their bones at Esteban's sincerity.
That was how they came lo hold the most splendid funeral they could conceive
of for an abandoned drowned man. Some women who had gone to get flowers in the
neighboring villages returned with other women who could not believe what they
had been told, and those women went back for more flowers when they saw the dead
Sir Walter Raleigh: Elizabethan explorer and statesman (1552-1618).
10
man, and they brought more and more until there were so many flowers and so many
people that it was hard to walk about. At the final moment it pained them to return,
him to the wraters as an orphan and they chose a father and mother from among the
best people, and aunts and uncles and cousins, so that through him all the inhabitants of the village became kinsmen. Some sailors who heard weeping from a distance went off course and people heard of one who had himself tied to the mainmast,
remembering ancient fables about sirens. While they fought for the privilege of carrying him on their shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women
became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their
courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of
their drowned man. They let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if
he wished and whenever he wished, and they all held their breath for the fraction of
centuries the body took to fall into the abyss. They did not need to look at one another
to realize that they were no longer all present, that they would never be. But they also
knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have
wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban's memory could go
everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare
whisper the big boob finally died, too bad, the handsome fool has finally died, because
they were going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make Esteban's memory eternal and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and
planting flowers on the cliffs so that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas, and the captain
would have to come down from the bridge in his dress uniform, with his astrolabe, his
pole star, and his row of war medals and, pointing to the promontory of roses on the
horizon, he would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the wind is so peaceful
now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so bright that
the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, that's Esteban's village.
Bagoberto Glib
Look on the Bright Side
Dagoberto Gilb was bom in 1950 in Los Angeles.
His mother was an illegal immigrant from Mexico
City, and his father was a former Marine. His
parents did not stay together for long, and Gilb
grew up in a tough working-class neighborhood.
Putting himself through college with a variety of
part-time jobs, he studied philosophy and religion
at the University of California at Santa Barbara,
earning a bachelor s degree in 1973 and a
master's in 1976. He then spent sixteen years
working as a carpenter in Los Angeles and in El
Paso, Texas. The terse, plainspoken cadences
and Hispanic working-class milieu of Gilb's stories draw heavily on his labor experiences. One
advantage of carpentry, he later observed, was
that he could work regularly for several months
DAGOBERTO GILB
and then take time off to write. His first success as a writer came in 1982 when one of his stories was accepted by the prestigious West Coast quarterly the Threepenny Review (which
first published "Look on the Bright Side"). His first collection of stories, Winners on the Pass
Line (J 985), was the first publication of the Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso. In 1992, Glib received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, which enabled him to buy the
house that he and his family were about to be evicted from. His second collection, The Magic
of Blood (1991), was a great critical success and won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Critics
praised Gilb's stories for their honesty, lack of sentimentality, and acute language. His novel
The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuna (1994) was selected by the New York
Times Book Review as one of its "Notable Books" of that year. His more recent books are
Woodcuts of Women (2001), stories, and Gritos (2003), essays. His uratingwhich reflects his hard-edged background, his assertive personality, and his ironic sense of humorhas
recently appeared in such venues as Harper's and the New Yorker. He lives in Austin,
Texas, and teaches at Texas State University-San Marcos.
The way I see it, a man can have all the money in the world but if he can't keep
his self-respect, he don't have shit. A man has to stand up for things even when it
may not be very practical. A man can't have pride and give up his rights.
This is exactly what I told my wife when Mrs. Kevovian raised our rent illegally.
I say illegally because, well aside from it being obviously unfriendly and greedy whenever a landlord or lady wants money above the exceptional amount she wanted when
you moved in not so long ago, here in this enlightened city of Los Angeles it's against
the law to raise it above a certain percentage and then only once every twelve
months, which is often enough. Now the wife argued that since Mrs. Kevovian was a
little ignorant, nasty, and hard to communicate with, we should have gone ahead and
paid the increaseadded up it was only sixty some-odd bones, a figure the landlady'd
come up with getting the percentage right, but this time she tried to get it two
months too early. My wife told me to pay it and not have the hassle. She knew me
better than this. We'd already put up with the cucarachas and rodents, I fixed the
plumbing myself, and our back porch was screaming to become dust and probably
would just when one of our little why notswe have three of themsnuck onto it.
People don't turn into dust on the way down, they splat first. One time I tried to explain this to Mrs. Kevovian, without success. You think I was going to pay more rent
when I shouldn't have to?
My wife offered the check for the right amount to the landlady when she came
to our door for her money and wouldn't take it. My wife tried to explain how there
was a mistake, but when I got home from work the check was still on the mantle
where it sat waiting. Should I have called her and talked it over? Not me. This was
her problem and she could call. In the meantime, I could leave the money in the
bank and feel that much richer for that much longer, and if she was so stupid I could
leave it in the savings and let it earn interest. And the truth was that she was stupid
enough, and stubborn, and mean. I'd talked to the other tenants, and I'd talked to
tenants that'd left before us, so I wasn't at all surprised about the Pay or Quit notice
we finally got. To me, it all seemed kind of fun. This lady wasn't nice, as God Himself
would witness, and maybe, since I learned it would take about three months before
we'd go to court, maybe we'd get three free months. We hadn't stopped talking about
moving out since we unpacked.
You'd probably say that this is how things always go, and you'd probably be right.
"Yeah, about this same time I got laid off. I'd been laid off lots of times so it was no big
deal, but the circumstanceswell, the company I was working for went bankrupt and a
couple of my paychecks bounced and it wasn't the best season of the year in what werenot the best years for working people. Which could have really set me off, made me
pretty unhappy, but that's not the kind of man I am. I believe in making whatever you
have the right situation for you at the right moment for you. And look, besides the extra
money from not paying rent, I was going to get a big tax return, and we also get unemployment compensation in this great country. It was a good time for a vacation, so I
bunched the kids in the car with the old lady and drove to Baja. I deserved it, we all did.
Like my wife said, I should have figured how things were when we crossed back to
come home. I think we were in the slowest line on the border. Cars next to us would
pull up and within minutes be at that red-light green-light signal. You know how it is
when you pick the worst line to wait in. I was going nuts. A poor dude in front of us
idled so long that his radiator overheated and he had to push the old heap forward by
himself. My wife told me to settle down and wait because if we changed lanes then it
would stop moving. I turned the ignition off then on again when we moved a spot.
When we did get there I felt a lot better, cheerful even. There's no prettier place for a
vacation than Baja and we really had a good time. I smiled forgivingly at the customs
guy who looked as kind as Captain Stubbing on the T V show "Love Boat."
"Pm American," I said, prepared like the sign told us to be. My wife said the
same thing. I said, "The kids are American too. Though I haven't checked out the
backseat for a while."
Captain Stubbing didn't think that was very funny. "What do you have to
declare?"
"Let's see. A six-pack of Bohemia beer. A blanket. Some shells we found. A
couple holy pictures. Puppets for the kids. Well, two blankets."
"No other liquor? No fruits? Vegetables? No animal life?"
I shook my head to each of them.
"So what were you doing in Mexico?"
"Sleeping on the beach, swimming in the ocean. Eating the rich folk's lobster."
It seemed like he didn't understand what I meant. "Vacation. We took a vacation."
"How long were you in Mexico?" He made himself comfortable on the stool
outside his booth after he'd run a license plate check through the computer.
"Just a few days," I said, starting to lose my good humor.
"How many days?"
"You mean exactly?"
"Exactly."
"Five days. Six. Five nights and six days."
"Did you spend a lot of money in Mexico?"
I couldn't believe this, and someone else in a car behind us couldn't either because he blasted the horn. Captain Stubbing made a mental note of him. "We spent
some good money there. Not that much though. Why?" My wife grabbed my knee.
"Where exactly did you stay?"
"On the beach. Near Estero Beach."
"Don't you work?"
I looked at my wife. She was telling me to go along with it without saying so. "Of
course I work."
"Why aren't you at work now?"
"Cuz I got laid off, man!"
"Did you do something wrong?"
"I said I got laid o f f ; not fired!"
"What do you do?"
"Laborer!"
"What kind of laborer?"
"Construction!"
"And there's no other work? Where do you live?"
"No! Los Angeles!"
"Shouldn't you be looking for a job? Isn't that more important than taking a
vacation?"
1 was so hot I think my hair was turning red. I just glared at this guy.
"Are you receiving unemployment benefits?"
"Yeah I am."
"You're receiving unemployment and you took a vacation?"
"That's it! I ain't listening to this shit no more!"
"You watch your language, sir." He filled out a slip of paper and slid it under my
windshield wiper. "Pull over there."
My wife was a little worried about the two smokes I never did and still had
stashed in my wallet. She was wanting to tell me to take it easy as they went through
the car, but that was hard for her because our oldest baby was crying. All I wanted to
do was put in a complaint about that jerk to somebody higher up. As a matter of fact
I wanted him fired, but anything to make him some trouble. I felt like they would've
listened better if they hadn't found those four bottles of rum I was trying to sneak
over. At that point I lost some confidence, though not my sense of being right. When
this other customs man suggested that I might be detained further if I pressed the situation, I paid the penalty charges for the confiscated liquor and shut up. It wasn't
worth a strip search, or finding out what kind of crime it was crossing the border with
some B-grade marijuana.
Time passed back home and there was still nothing coming out of the union
hall. There were a lot of men worried but at least I felt like I had the unpaid rent
money to wait it out. I was fortunate to have a landlady like Mrs. Kevovian helping
us through these bad times. She'd gotten a real smart lawyer for me too. He'd attached papers on his Unlawful Detainer to prove my case, which seemed so ridiculous that I called the city housing department just to make sure I couldn't be wrong
about it all. I wasn't. I rested a lot easier without a rent payment, even took some
guys out for some cold ones when I got the document with the official court date
stamped on it, still more than a month away.
I really hadn't started out with any plan. But now that I was unemployed there
were all these complications. I didn't have all the money it took to get into another
place, and our rent, as much as it had been, was in comparison to lots still cheap, and
rodents and roaches weren't that bad a problem to me. Still, I took a few ugly pictures
like I was told to and had the city inspect the hazardous back porch and went to court
on the assigned day hoping for something to ease our bills.
Her lawyer was Yassir Arafat without the bedsheet. He wore this suit with a vest
that was supposed to make him look cool, but I've seen enough Ziedler & Ziedler commercials to recognize discount fashion. Mrs. Kevovian sat on that hard varnished
bench with that wrinkled forehead of hers. Her daughter translated whatever she didn't
understand when the lawyer discussed the process. I could hear every word even
though there were all these other people because the lawyer's voice carried in the long
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white hall and polished floor of justice. He talked as confidently as a dude with a sharp
blade.
"You're the defendant?" he asked five minutes before court was to be in session.
"That's me, and that's my wife," I pointed. "We're both defendants."
"I'm Mr. Villalobos, attorney representing the plaintiff."
"All right! Law school, huh? You did the people proud, eh? So how come you're
working for the wrong side? That ain't a nice lady you're helping to evict us, man."
"You're the one who refuses to pay the rent."
"I'm disappointed in you, compa. You should know I been trying to pay the rent.
You think I should beg her to take it? She wrants more money than she's supposed to
get, and because I wanna pay her what's right, she's trying to throw us onto the
streets."
Yassir Villalobos scowled over my defense papers while I gloated. I swore it was
the first time he saw them or the ones he turned in. "Well, I'll do this. Reimburse
Mrs. Kevovian for the back rent and I'll drop the charges."
"You'll drop the charges? Are you making a joke, man? You talk like I'm the one
who done something wrong. I'm here now. Unless you wanna say drop what I owe
her, something like that, then 1 won't let the judge see how you people tried to harass
me unlawfully."
Villalobos didn't like what I was saying, and he didn't like my attitude one bit.
"I'm the one who's right," I emphasized. "I know it, and you know it too." He
was squirming mad. I figured he was womed about looking like a fool in the court.
"Unless you offer me something better, I'd just as soon see what that judge has to
say."
"There's no free rent," he said finally. "I'll just drop these charges and re-serve
you." He said that as an ultimatum, real pissed.
I smiled. "You think I can't wait another three months?"
That did it. He stir-armed the swinging door and made arrangements with the
court secretary, and my old lady and me picked the kids up from the babysitter's a lot
earlier than we'd planned. T h e truth was I was relieved. I did have the money, but
now that I'd been out of work so long it was getting close. If I didn't get some work
soon we wouldn't have enough to pay it all. I'd been counting on that big income tax
check, and when the government decided to take ail of it except nine dollars and
some change, what remained of a debt from some other year and the penalties it included, I was almost worried. I wasn't happy with the U S Govt and I tried to explain
to it on the phone how hard I worked and how it was only that I didn't understand
those letters they sent me and couldn't they show some kindness to the unemployed,
to a family that obviously hadn't planned to run with that tax advantage down to
Costa Rica and hire bodyguards to watch over an estate. The thing is, it's no use being right when the U S Govt thinks it's not wrong.
Fortunately, we still had Mrs. Kevovian as our landlady. I don't know how we'd
have lived without her. Unemployment money covers things when you don't have
to pay rent. And I didn't want to for as long as possible. The business agent at the
union hall said there was supposed to be a lot of work breaking soon, but in the
meantime I told everyone in our home who talked and didn't crawl to lay low and
not answer any doors to strangers with summonses. My wife didn't like peeking
around corners when she walked the oldest to school, though the oldest liked it a
mess. We waited and waited but nobody came. Instead it got nailed to the front
door very impolitely.
So another few months had passed and what fool would complain about that?
Not this one. Still, I wanted justice. I wanted The Law to hand down fair punishment to these evil people who were conspiring to take away my family's home. Man,
I wanted that judge to be so pissed that he'd pound that gavel and it'd ring in my ears
like a Vegas jackpot. I didn't want to pay any money back. And not because I didn't
have the money, or I didn't have a job, or that pretty soon they'd be cutting off my
unemployment. I'm not denying their influence on my thinking, but mostly it was
the principle of the thing. It seemed to me if I had so much to lose for being wrong, I
should have something equal to win for being right.
"There's no free rent," Villalobos told me again five minutes before we were supposed to swing through those doors and please rise. "You don't have the money, do
you?"
"Of course I have the money. But I don't see why I should settle this with you
now and get nothing out of it. Seems like I had to go outa my way to come down
here. It ain't easy finding a babysitter for our kids, who you wanna throw on the
streets, and we didn't, and we had to pay that expensive parking across the street.
This has been a mess of trouble for me to go, sure, I'll pay what I owe without the
mistaken rent increase, no problem."
"The judge isn't going to offer you free rent."
"I'd rather hear what he has to say."
Villalobos was some brother, but I guess that's what happens with some educations and a couple of cheap suits and ties. I swore right then that if I ever worked
again I wasn't paying for my kid's college education.
The judge turned out to be a sister whose people hadn't gotten much justice either and that gave me hope. And I was real pleased we were the first case because the
kids were fidgeting like crazy and my wife was miserable trying to keep them settled
down. I wanted the judge to see what a big happy family we were so I brought them
right up to our assigned "defendant" table.
"I think it would be much easier if your wife took your children out to the corridor,"
the judge told me.
"She's one of the named defendants, your honor."
"I'm sure you can represent your case adequately without the baby crying in your
wife's arms."
"Yes ma'am, your honor."
The first witness for the plaintiff was this black guy who looked like they pulled a
bottle away from the night before, who claimed to have come by my place to serve
me all these times but I wouldn't answer the door. The sleaze was all lie up until
when he said he attached it to my door, which was a generous exaggeration. Then
Mrs. Kevovian took the witness stand. Villalobos asked her a couple of unimportant
questions, and then I got to ask questions. I've watched enough lawyer shows and I
was ready.
I heard the gavel but it didn't tinkle like a line of cherries.
"You can state your case in the witness stand at the proper moment," the judge
said.
"But your honor, I just wanna show how this landlady . . . "
"You don't have to try your case through this witness."
"Yes ma'am, your honor."
So when that moment came all I could do was show her those polaroids of how
bad things got and tell her about roaches and rats and fire hazards and answer oh yes,
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your honor, I've been putting that money away, something which concerned the
judge more than anything else did.
I suppose that's the way of swift justice. Back at home, my wife, pessimistic as always, started packing the valuable stuff into the best boxes. She couldn't believe that
anything good was going to come from the verdict in the mail. T h e business agent at
the hall was still telling us about all the work about to break any day now, but I went
ahead and started reading the help wanted ads in the newspaper.
A couple of weeks later the judgment came in an envelope. We won. The judge
figured up all the debt and then cut it by twenty percent. Victory is sweet, probably,
when there's a lot of coins clinking around the pants' pockets, but I couldn't let up.
Now that I was proven right I figured we could do some serious negotiating over payment. A little now and a little later and a little bit now and again. That's what I'd offer when Mrs. Kevovian came for the money, which she was supposed to do the next
night by 5 p.m., according to the legal document. "The money to be collected by the
usual procedure," were the words, which meant Mrs. Kevovian was supposed to
knock on the door and, knowing her, at five o'clock exactly.
Maybe I was a tiny bit worried. What if she wouldn't take anything less than all
of it? Then I'd threaten to give her nothing and to disappear into the mounds of
other uncollected debts. Mrs. Kevovian needed this money, I knew that. Better all of
it over a long period than none of it over a longer one, right? That's what I'd tell her,
and I'd be standing there with my self confidence more muscled-up than ever.
Except she never came. There was no knock on the door. A touch nervous, I
started calling lawyers. I had a stack of junk mail letters from all these legal experts
advising me that for a small fee they'd help me with my eviction procedure. None of
them seemed to understand my problem over the phone, though maybe if I came by
their office. One of them did seem to catch enough though. He said if the money
wasn't, collected by that time then the plaintiff had the right to reclaim the premises.
Actually the lawyer didn't say that, the judgment paper did, and I'd read it to him
over the phone. All the lawyer said was, "The marshal will physically evict you in ten
days." He didn't charge a fee for the information.
We had a garage sale. You know, miscellaneous things, things easy to replace,
that you could buy anywhere when the time was right again, like beds and lamps and
furniture. We stashed the valuables in the trunk of the cara perfect fitand Greyhound was having a special sale which made it an ideal moment for a visit to the
abuelitos back home, who hadn't been able to see their grandkids and daughter in
such a long time. You have to look on the bright side. I wouldn't have to pay any of
that money back, and there was the chance to start a new career, just like they say,
arid I'd been finding lots of opportunities from reading the newspaper. Probably any
day I'd be going back to work at one of those jobs about to break. Meanwhile, we left
a mattress in the apartment for me to sleep on so I could have the place until a marshal beat on the door. Or soon I'd send back for the family from a house with a front
and backyard I promised I'd find and rent. However it worked out. Or there was always the car with that big backseat.
One of those jobs I read about in the want ads was as a painter for the city. I applied, listed all this made-up experience I had, but I still had to pass some test. So I
went down to the library to look over one of those books on the subject. I guess I didn't
think much about the hours libraries keep, and I guess I was a few hours early, and so
I took a seat next to this pile of newspapers on this cement bench not that far from
the front doors. The bench smelled like piss, but since I was feeling pretty open
so
minded about things I didn't let it bother me. I wanted to enjoy all the scenery,
which was nice for the big city, with all the trees and dewy grass, though the other
early risers weren't so involved with the love of nature. One guy not so far away was
rolling from one side of his body to the other, back and forth like that, from under a
tree. He just went on and on. This other man, or maybe womanwearing a sweater
on top that was too baggy to make chest impressions on and another sweater below
that, wrapped around like a skirt, and pants under that, cords, and unisex homemade
sandals made out of old tennis shoes and leather, and finally, on the head, long
braided hair which wasn't braided too goodthis person was foraging off the cement
path, digging through the trash for something. I thought aluminum too but there
were about five empty beer cans nearby and the person kicked those away. It was
something that this person knew by smell, because that's how he or she tested
whether it was the right thing or not. I figured this was someone to keep my eye on.
Then without warning came a monster howl, and those pigeons bundled-up on the
lawn scattered to the trees. I swore somebody took a shot at me. "Traitor! You can't get
away with it!" Those were the words I got out of the loud speech from this dude who
came out of nowhere, who looked pretty normal, hip even if it weren't for the clothes.
He had one of those great, long graying beards and hair, like some wise man, some
Einstein. I was sure a photographer would be along to take his picture if they hadn't already. You know how7 Indians and winos make the most interesting photographs. His
clothes were bad though, took away from his cool. Like he'd done caca and spilled his
spaghetti and rolled around in the slime for a lot of years since mama'd washed a bagful
of the dirties. The guy really had some voice, and just when it seemed like he'd settled
back into a stroll like anyone else, just when those pigeons trickled back down onto the
lawn into a coo-cooing lump, he cut loose again. It was pretty hard to understand, even
with his volume so high, but I figured it out to be about patriotism, justice, and fidelity.
"That guy's gone," John said when he came up to me with a bag of groceries he
dropped next to me. He'd told me his name right off. "John. John. The name's John,
they call me John." He pulled out a loaf of white bread and started tearing up the slices
into big and little chunks and throwing them onto the grass. The pigeons picked up
on this quick. "Look at 'em, they act like they ain't eaten in weeks, they're eatin like
vultures, like they're starvin, like vultures, good thing I bought three loafs of bread,
they're so hungry, but they'll calm down, they'll calm down after they eat some." John
was blond and could almost claim to have a perm if you'd asked me. He'd shaven some
days ago so the stubble on his face wasn't so bad. He'd never have much of a beard
anyway. "They can't get enough, look at 'em, look at 'em, good thing I bought three
loafs, I usually buy two." He moved like he talkednervously, in jerks, and without
pausingand, when someone passed by, his conversation didn't break up. "Hey good
morning, got any spare change for some food? No? So how ya gonna get to Heaven?"
A man in a business suit turned his head with a smile, but didn't change direction. "I'll
bury you deeper in Hell then, I'll dig ya deeper!" John went back to feeding the birds,
who couldn't get enough. "That's how ya gotta talk to 'em," he told me. "Ya gotta talk
to 'em like that and like ya can back it up, like ya can back it up."
I sort of got to liking John. He reminded me of a hippie, and it was sort of nice to
see hippies again. He had his problems, of course, and he told me about them too,
about how a dude at the hotel he stayed at kept his SSI check, how he called the police but they wouldn't pay attention, that his hotel was just a hangout for winos and
hypes and pimps and he was gonna move out, turn that guy in and go to court and
testify or maybe he'd get a gun and blow the fucker away, surprise him. He had those
kind of troubles but seemed pretty intelligent otherwise to me. Even if he was a little
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wired, he wasn't like the guy who was still rolling around under the tree or the one
screaming at the top of his lungs.
While we both sat at the bench watching those pigeons clean up what became
only visible to them in the grass, one of the things John said before he took off was this:
"Animals are good people. They're not like people, people are no good, they don't care
about nobody. People won't do nothing for ya. That's the age we live in, that's how it
is. Hitler had that plan. I think it was Hitler, maybe it was somebody else, it coulda
been somebody else." We were both staring at this pigeon with only one foot, the other
foot being a balled-up red stump, hopping around, pecking at the lawn. "I didn't think
much of him getting rid of the cripples and the mentals and the old people. That was
no good, that was no good. It musta been Hitler, or Preacher Jobe. It was him, or it
musta been somebody else I heard. Who was I thinkin of? Hey you got any change?
How ya gonna get to Heaven? I wish I could remember who it was I was thinkin of."
I sure didn't know, but I promised John that if I thought of it, or if something
else came up I'd look him up at the address he gave me and filed in my pocket. I had
to show him a couple of times it was still there. I was getting a little tired from such a
long morning already, and I wished that library would hurry up and open so I could
study for the test. I didn't have the slightest idea what they could ask me on a test for
painting either. But then jobs at the hall were bound to break and probably I wouldn't
have to worry too much anyway.
I was really sleepy by now, and I was getting used to the bench, even when I did
catch that whiff of piss. I leaned back and closed the tired eyes and it wasn't so bad. I
thought I'd give it a tryyou know, why not?and I scooted over and nuzzled my
head into that stack of newspapers and tucked my legs into my chest. I shut them
good this time and yawned. I didn't see why I should fight it, and it was just until the
library opened.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
was born
in the clipper-ship seaport of Salem, Massachusetts, son of a merchant captain and grandson of
a judge at the notorious Salem witchcraft trials.
Hawthorne takes a keen interest in New England's sin-and-brimstone Puritan past in this and
many other of his stories and in The Scarlet
Letter (1850), that enduring novel of a woman
taken in adultery. After college, Hawthorne
lived at home and trained to be a writer. Only
when his first collection, Twice-Told Tales
(1837), made money, did he feel secure enough
to marry Sophia Peabody and settle in the Old
Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. Three more
novels followed The Scarlet Letter: T h e House
of the Seven Gables (1851, a story tinged with
nightmarish humor), The Blithedale Romance (1852,
(1829-35)
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
drawn from his short, irritating
stay at a Utopian commune, Brook Farm), and The Marble Faun (I860, inspired by a stay
in Italy). Hawthorne wrote for children, too, retelling classic legends in A Wonder Book
(1851) and Tanglewood Tales (1853). At Bowdoin College, he had been a classmate of
Franklin Pierce; later, when Pierce ran for president of the United States, Hawthorne wrote
his campaign biography. The victorious Pierce appointed his old friend American consul at
Liverpool, England. With his contemporary Edgar Allan Poe, Hawthorne sped the transformation of the American short story from popular magazine filler into a form of art.
Young Goodman 0 Brown came forth, at sunset, into the street of Salem village,0
but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his
young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into
the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to
Goodman Brown.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to
his ear, "pray thee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night.
A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afraid of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year!"
"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the
year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth
and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty
wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married!"
"Then, God bless you!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons, "and may you find all
well, when you come back."
"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at
dusk, and no harm will come to thee."
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way, until, being about to turn
the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back, and saw the head of Faith still
peeping after him, with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I, to
leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she spoke, there
was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But, no, no! 'twould kill her to think it. Well; she's a blessed angel on earth;
and after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven."
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified
in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could
be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who
may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that,
with lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.
"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown, to
himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him, as he added, "What if the devil himself
should be at my very elbow!"
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and looking forward
again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old
tree. He arose, at Goodman Brown's approach, and walked onward, side by side with him.
Goodman: title given by Puritans to a male head of a household; a farmer or other ordinary citizen.
Salem village: in England's Massachusetts Bay Colony.
io
"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston; and that is full fifteen minutes agone."
"Faith kept me back awhile," replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice,
caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two
were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty
years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still,
they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was
as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable
air of one who knew the world, and would not have felt abashed at the governor's
dinner-table, or in King William's court, 0 were it possible that his affairs should call
him thither. But the only thing about him, that could be fixed upon as remarkable,
was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought,
that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself, like a living serpent. This, of
course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
"Come, Goodman Browyn!" cried his fellow-traveller, "this is dull pace for the
beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary."
"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept
covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have
scruples, touching the matter thou wot'st 0 of."
"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go, and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn back. We are
but a little way in the forest, yet."
"Too far, too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk.
"My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before
him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians, since the days of
the martyrs. 0 And shall I be the first of the name of Brown, that ever took this
path, and kept"
"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person, interpreting his
pause. "Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family
as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the
streets of Salem. And it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at
my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war. They were my
good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you, for their sake."
"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of
these matters. Or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would
full fifteen minutes agone: Apparently this mystery man has traveled in a flash from Boston's Old
South Church all the way to the woods beyond Salemas the crow flies, a good sixteen miles.
King William's court: back in England, where William III reigned from 1689 to 1702. wot'st:
know, days of the martyrs: a time when many forebears of the New England Puritans had given
their lives for religious convictionswhen Mary I (Mary Tudor, nicknamed "Bloody Mary"),
queen of England from 1553 to 1558, briefly reestablished the Roman Catholic Church in England and launched a campaign of persecution against Protestants. King Philip's war: Metacomet,
or King Philip (as the English called him), chief of the Wampanoag Indians, had led a bitter, widespread uprising of several New7 England tribes (1675-78). Metacomet died in the war, as did one out
of every ten white male colonists.
have driven them from New England. We are a people of prayer, and good works, to
boot, and abide no such wickedness."
"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff, "I have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk
the communion wine with me; the selectmen, of divers towns, make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, toobut these are state-secrets."
"Can this be so!" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council;
they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman, like me. But,
were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble, both Sabbath-day and
lecture-day!"
Thus far, the elder traveller had listened with due gravity, but now burst into a
fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently, that his snake-like staff actually
seemed to wriggle in sympathy.
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he, again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go
on, Goodman Brown, go on; but pray thee, don't kill me with laughing!"
"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably
nettled, "there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather
break my own!"
"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy ways, Goodman
Brown. I would not, for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us, that Faith
should come to any harm."
As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his
catechism, in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the
minister and Deacon Gookin.
"A marvel, truly, that Goody 0 Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness, at nightfall!" said he. "But, with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods, until
we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask
whom I was consorting with, and whither I was going."
"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep
the path."
Accordingly, the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who advanced softly along the road, until he had come within a staffs length of
the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular speed
for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words, a prayer, doubtless, as she
went. T h e traveller put forth his staff, and touched her withered neck with what
seemed the serpent's tail.
"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller, confronting
her, and leaning on his writhing stick.
lecture-day: a weekday when everyone had to go to church to hear a sermon or Bible-reading.
Goody: short for Goodwife, title for a married woman of ordinary station. In his story, Hawthorne
borrows from history the names of two "Goodys"Goody Cloyse and Goody Coryand one unmarried woman, Martha Carrier. In 1692 Hawthorne's great-grandfather, John Hawthorne, a judge
in the Salem witchcraft trials, had condemned all three to be hanged.
20
25
30
"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship, indeed?" cried the good dame. "Yea, truly is
it, and in the very image of my old gossip,0 Goodman Brown, the grandfather of thesilly fellow that now is. Butwould your worship believe it?my broomstick hath
strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and
that, too, wrhen I was all anointed with the juice of smallage and cinquefoil and wolfs
bane" 0
"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the shape of old
Goodman Brown.
"Ah, your worship knows the receipt," 0 cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as
I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my
mind to foot it; for they tell me, there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be
there in a twinkling."
"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you my arm, Goody
Cloyse, but here is my staff, if you will."
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being
one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian Magi. Of this fact,
however, Goodman Brown could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing
had happened.
"That old woman taught me my catechism!" said the young man; and there was
a world of meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly, that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor, than to be suggested by
himself. As they went, he plucked a branch of maple, to serve for a walking-stick, and
began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew.
The moment his fingers touched them, they became strangely withered and dried up,
as with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the
stump of a tree, and refused to go any farther.
"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another step will I
budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil,
wrhen I thought she was going to Heaven! Is that any reason why I should quit my
dear Faith, and go after her?"
"You will think better of this, by-and-by," said his acquaintance, composedly.
"Sit here and rest yourself awhile; and when you feel like moving again, there is my
staff to help you along."
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight, as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. T h e young man sat a
few moments, by the road-side, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how
clear a conscience he should meet the minister, in his morning-walk, nor shrink from
the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his, that very
gossip: friend or kinsman, smallage and cinquefoil and wolf's bane: wild plantshere, ingredients for
a witch's brew, receipt: recipe Egyptian Magi: In the Bible, Pharaoh's wise men and sorcerers who
by their magical powers changed their rods into live serpents. (This incident, part of the story of
Moses and Aaron, is related in Exodus 7:8-12.)
night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but purely and sweetly now, in the
arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman
Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal
himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had
brought him thither, though now so happily turned from it.
On came the hoof-tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices,
conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass
along the road, within a few yards of the young man's hiding-place; but owing,
doubtless, to the depth of the gloom, at that particular spot, neither the travellers
nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the
way-side, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint
gleam from the strip of bright sky, athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tip-toe, pulling aside the branches,
and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst, without discerning so much as a
shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn, were such a thing
possible, that he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a
switch.
"Of the two, reverend Sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss an
ordination-dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our community
are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode
Island; besides several of the Indian powows,0 who, after their fashion, know almost
as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be
taken into communion."
"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the minister.
"Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the
ground."
The hoofs clattered again, and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty
air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered, nor
solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying, so
deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree,
for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburdened with
the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there
really was a Heaven above him. Yet, there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.
"With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!"
cried Goodman Brown.
While he still gazed upward, into the deep arch of the firmament, and had lifted
his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith, and
hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead,
where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if
from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once, the
listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of town's-people of his own, men
and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communiontable, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were
powows: Indian priests or medicine men.
45
the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest,
whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard .
daily in the sunshine, at Salem village, but never, until now, from a cloud of night.
There was one voice, of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain. And all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her
onward.
"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the
echoes of the forest mocked him, crying"Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches
were seeking her, all through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror, was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy
husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in
a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away,
leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered
lightly down through the air, and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man
seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on
earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given."
And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman
Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate, that he seemed to fly along
the forest-path, rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier, and
more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark
wilderness, still rushing onward, with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil.
The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds; the creaking of the trees, the
howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while, sometimes, the wind tolled like
a distant church-bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all
Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene,
and shrank not from its other horrors.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown, when the wind laughed at him. "Let us
hear which will laugh loudest! Think not to frighten me with your deviltry! Come
witch, come wizard, come Indian powow, come devil himself! and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you!"
In truth, all through the haunted forest, there could be nothing more frightful
than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew, among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid
blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. T h e fiend in his own shape is less hideous,
than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course,
until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled
trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid
blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest
that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling
solemnly from a distance, with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it
was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. T h e verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the
sounds of the benighted wilderness, pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman
Brown cried out; and his cry was lost to his own ear, by its unison with the cry of
the desert.
In the interval of silence, he stole forward, until the light glared full upon his
eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wail of the forest,
arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit,
and surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like
candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage, that had overgrown the summit
of the rock, was all on fire, blazing high into the night, and fitfully illuminating the
whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose
and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in
shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
"A grave and dark-clad company!" quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering to-and-fro, between gloom
and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen, next day, at the council-board of
the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land.
Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there. A t least, there were high dames
well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude,
and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled, lest
their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light, flashing over the
obscure field, bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the churchmembers of Salem village, famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon
Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these
elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy
vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see, that the good shrank
not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered, also,
among their pale-faced enemies, were the Indian priests, or powows, who had often
scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English
witchcraft.
"But, where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his
heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious
love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin,
and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.
Verse after verse was sung, and still the chorus of the desert swelled between, like
the deepest tone of a mighty organ. And, with the final peal of that dreadful anthem, there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling
beasts, and every other voice of the unconverted wilderness, were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man, in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of
horror on the smoke-wreaths, above the impious assembly. At the same moment,
the fire on the rock shot redly forth, and formed a glowing arch above its base,
wThere now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight
similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the New England
churches.
"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice, that echoed through the field and
rolled into the forest.
55
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees, and
approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood, by the sym-.
pathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He could have well nigh sworn, that the
shape of his own dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a
smoke-wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to
warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor to
resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his
arms, and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled
female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha
Carrier, who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was
she! And there stood the proselytes,0 beneath the canopy of fire.
"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race!
Ye have found, thus young, your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind
you!"
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend-worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth.
Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it
with their lives of righteousness, and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet, here are
they all, in my worshipping assembly! This night it shall be granted you to know
their secret deeds; how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton
words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widow's
weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime, and let him sleep his last sleep in
her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth;
and how fair damselsblush not, sweet ones!have dug little graves in the garden,
and bidden me, the sole guest, to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human
hearts for sin, ye shall scent out all the placeswhether in church, bed-chamber,
street, field, or forestwhere crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold
the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty bloodspot. Far more than this! It shall
be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all
wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human
powerthan my power, at its utmost!can make manifest in deeds. And now, my
children, look upon each other."
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn
for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped,
that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of
mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the
communion of your race!"
"Welcome!" repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the
verge of wickedness, in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock.
Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a
proselytes: new converts.
liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark
of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin,
more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they
could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at
him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband. "Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked one!"
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found
himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died
heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the rock and felt it chill and
damp, while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the
coldest dew.
T h e next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of
Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. T h e good old minister
was taking a walk along the grave-yard, to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, 011 Goodman Brown. He
shrank from the venerable saint, as if to avoid an anathema. 0 Old Deacon Goodkin
was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the
open window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown.
Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at her own
lattice, catechizing a little girl, who had brought her a pint of morning's milk.
Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself.
Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink
ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him, that she
skipt along the street, and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But,
Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a
greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream
of a witch-meeting?
Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman
Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did
he become, from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath-day, when the
congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of
sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from, the pulpit, with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on
the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman
Brown turn pale, dreading, lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awakening suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the
bosom of Faith, and at morning or even-tide, when the family knelt down at prayer,
he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away.
And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by
Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides
neighbors, not a few, they carvcd no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying
hour was gloom.
anathema: an official curse, a decree that casts one out of a church and bans him from receiving the
sacraments.
70
Zora Neale Hurston
Sweat
1926
Zora Neale Hurston (19011-1960) was born in
Eatonville, Florida, but no record of her actual
date of birth exists (best guesses range from.
1891 to 1901). Hurston was one of eight children. Her father, a carpenter and Baptist
preacher, was also the three-term mayor of
Eatonville, the first all-black town incorporated
in the United States. When Hurston s mother
died in 1912, the father moved the children from
one relative to another. Consequently, Hurston
never finished grammar school, although in
1918 she began taking classes at Howard University , paying her way through school by working as a manicurist and maid. While at Howard,
i!i:
she published her first story. In early 1925 she
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
moved to New York, arriving with "$1.50, no
job, no friends, and a lot of hope." She soon became an important member of the Harlem Renaissance, a group of young black artists
(including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay) who
sought "spiritual emancipation' for African Americans by exploring black heritage and identity in the arts. Hurston eventually became, according to critic Laura Zaidman, "the most
prolific black American woman writer of her time." In 1925 she became the first black student at Barnard College, where she completed a B.A. in anthropology. Hurston s most famous story, "Sweat," appeared in the only issue of Fire!!, a 1926 avant-garde Harlem Renaissance magazine edited by Hurston, Hughes, and Wallace Thurman. This powerful story
of an unhappy marriage turned murderous was particularly noteworthy for having the characters speak in the black country dialect of Hurston s native Florida. Hurston achieved only
modest success during her lifetime, despite the publication of her memorable novel Their Eyes
Were Watching God (1937) and her many contributions to the study of African American
folklore. She died, poor and neglected, in a Florida welfare home and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1973 novelist Alice Walker erected a gravestone for her carved with the
words:
Zora Neale Hurston
" A Genius of the South"
1901-1960
Novelist, Folklorist
Anthropologist
i
It was eleven o'clock of a Spring night in Florida. It was Sunday. Any other
night, Delia Jones would have been in bed for two hours by this time. But she was a
washwoman, and Monday morning meant a great deal to her. So she collected the
soiled clothes on Saturday when she returned the clean things. Sunday night after
church, she sorted and put the white things to soak. It saved her almost a half-day's
start. A great hamper in the bedroom held the clothes that she brought home. It was
so much neater than a number of bundles lying around.
She squatted 011 the kitchen floor beside the great pile of clothes, sorting them into
small heaps according to color, and humming a song in a mournful key, but wondering
through it all where Sykes, her husband, had gone with her horse and buckboard.0
Just then something long, round, limp, and black fell upon her shoulders and
slithered to the floor beside her. A great terror took hold of her. It softened her knees
and dried her mouth so that it was a full minute before she could cry out or move.
Then she saw that it was the big bull whip her husband liked to carry when he drove.
She lifted her eyes to the door and saw him standing there bent over with
laughter at her fright. She screamed at him.
"Sykes, what you throw dat whip on me like dat? You know it would skeer m e
looks just like a snake, an' you knows how skeered Ah is of snakes."
"Course Ah know7ed it! That's how come Ah done it." He slapped his leg with
his hand and almost rolled on the ground in his mirth. "If you such a big fool dat you
got to have a fit over a earth worm or a string, Ah don't keer how bad Ah skeer you."
"You ain't got no business doing it. Gawd knows it's a sin. Some day Ah'm gointuh drop dead from some of yo' foolishness. 'Nother thing, where you been wid mah
rig? Ah feeds dat pony. He ain't fuh you to be drivin' wid 110 bull whip."
"You sho' is one aggravatin' nigger woman!" he declared and stepped into the
room. She resumed her work and did not answer him at once. "Ah done tole you
time and again to keep them white folks' clothes outa dis house."
He picked up the whip and glared at her. Delia went on with her work. She went
out into the yard and returned with a galvanized tub and set it 011 the wash-bench.
She saw that Sykes had kicked all of the clothes together again, and now stood in her
wray truculently, his whole manner hoping, praying, for an argument. But she walked
calmly around him and commenced to re-sort the things.
"Next time, Ah'm gointer kick 'em outdoors," he threatened as he struck a
match along the leg of his corduroy breeches.
Delia never looked up from her work, and her thin, stooped shoulders sagged
further.
"Ah ain't for no fuss t'night Sykes. Ah just come from taking sacrament at the
church house."
He snorted scornfully. "Yeah, you just come from de church house on a Sunday
night, but heah you is gone to work on them clothes. You ain't nothing but a hypocrite. One of them amen-corner Christianssing, whoop, and shout, then come
home and wash white folks' clothes on the Sabbath."
He stepped roughly upon the whitest pile of things, kicking them helter-skelter
as he crossed the room. His wife gave a little scream of dismay, and quickly gathered
them together again..
"Sykes, you quit grind in' dirt into these clothes! How can Ah git through by
Sat'day if Ah don't start 011 Sunday?"
"Ah don't keer if you never git through. Anyhow, Ah done promised Gawd and
a couple of other men, Ah ain't gointer have it in mah house. Don't gimme no lip
neither, else Ah'll throw 'em out and put mah fist up side yo' head to boot."
buckboard: a four-wheeled open carriage with the seat resting on a spring platform.
10
15
Delia's habitual meekness seemed to slip from her shoulders like a blown scarf.
She was on her feet; her poor little body, her bare knuckly hands bravely defying the.
strapping hulk before her.
"Looka heah, Sykes, you done gone too fur. Ah been married to you fur fifteen
years, and Ah been takin' in wash in' fur fifteen years. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and
sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!"
"What's that got to do with me?" he asked brutally.
"What's it got to do with you, Sykes? Mah tub of suds is filled yo' belly with vitties more times than yo' hands is filled it. Mah sweat is done paid for this house and
Ah reckon Ah kin keep on sweatin' in it."
She seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act
surprised him greatly, coming from her. It cowed him and he did not strike her as he
usually did.
"Naw you won't," she panted, "that ole snaggle-toothed black woman you runnin'
with ain't comin' heah to pile up on mah sweat and blood. You ain't paid for nothin'
on this place, and Ah'm gointer stay right heah till Ah'm toted out foot foremost."
"Well, you better quit gittin' me riled up, else they'll be totin' you out sooner
than you expect. Ah'm so tired of you Ah don't know whut to do. Gawd! How Ah
hates skinny wimmen!"
A little awed by this new Delia, he sidled out of the door and slammed the back
gate after him. He did not say where he had gone, but she knew too well. She knew
very well that he would not return until nearly daybreak also. Her work over, she
went on to bed but not to sleep at once. Things had come to a pretty pass!
She lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not
an image left standing along the way. Anything like flowers had long ago been
drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart. Her tears, her
sweat, her blood. She had brought love to the union and he had brought a longing after the flesh. Two months after the wedding, he had given her the first brutal beating.
She had the memory of his numerous trips to Orlando with all of his wages when he
had returned to her penniless, even before the first year had passed. She was young
and soft then, but now she thought of her knotty, muscled limbs, her harsh knuckly
hands, and drew herself up into an unhappy little ball in the middle of the big feather
bed. Too late now to hope for love, even if it were not Bertha it would be someone
else. This case differed from the others only in that she was bolder than the others.
Too late for everything except her little home. She had built it for her old days, and
planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely to her, lovely.
Somehow, before sleep came, she found herself saying aloud: "Oh well, whatever
goes over the Devil's back, is got to come under his belly. Sometime or ruther, Sykes,
like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing." After that she was able to build a spiritual earthworks0 against her husband. His shells could no longer reach her. AMEN.
She went to sleep and slept until he announced his presence in bed by kicking her
feet and rudely snatching the covers away.
"Gimme some kivah heah, an' git yo' damn foots over on yo' own side! Ah
oughter mash you in yo' mouf fuh drawing dat skillet on me."
Delia went clear to the rail without answering him. A triumphant indifference
to all that he was or did.
spiritual earthworks: earthworks are military fortifications made of earth; here Hurston uses it
metaphorically to mean Delia's emotional defenses.
II
The week was full of work for Delia as all other weeks, and Saturday found her
behind her little pony, collecting and delivering clothes.
It was a hot, hot day near the end of July. The village men on Joe Clarke's porch
even chewed cane listlessly. They did not hurl the cane-knots as usual They let them
dribble over the edge of the porch. Even conversation had collapsed under the heat.
"Heah come Delia Jones," Jim Merchant said, as the shaggy pony came 'round
the bend of the road toward them. The rusty buckboard was heaped with baskets of
crisp, clean laundry.
"Yep," Joe Lindsay agreed. "Hot or coP, rain or shine, jes'ez reg'lar ez de weeks
rool roun' Delia carries 'em an' fetches 'em on Sat'day."
"She better if she wanter eat," said Moss. "Syke Jones ain't wuth de shot an' powder hit would tek tuh kill 'im. Not to huh he ain't."
"He sho' ain't," Walter Thomas chimed in. "It's too bad, too, cause she wuz a
right pretty li'l trick when he got huh. Ah'd uh mah'ied huh mahself if he hadnter
beat me to it."
Delia nodded briefly at the men as she drove past.
"Too much knockin' will ruin any 'oman. He done beat huh 'nough tuh kill
three women, let 'lone change they looks," said Elijah Moseley. "How Syke kin stommuclc dat big black greasy Mogul he's layin' roun' wid, gits me. Ah swear dat eightrock couldn't kiss a sardine can Ah done thowed out de back do' 'way las' yeah."
"Aw, she's fat, thass how come. He's alius been crazy 'bout fat women," put in
Merchant. "He'd a' been tied up wid one long time ago if he could a' found one tuh
have him. Did Ah tell yuh 'bout him come sidlin' roun' mah wifebringin' her a basket uh peecans outa his yard fuh a present? Yessir, mah wife! She toP him tuh take
'em right straight back home, 'cause Delia works so hard ovah dat washtub she
reckon everything on de place taste lak sweat an' soapsuds. Ah jus' wisht Ah'd a'
caught 'im 'roun' dere! Ah'd a' made his hips ketch on fiah down dat shell road."
"Ah know he done it, too. Ah sees 'im grinnin' at every 'oman dat passes," Walter Thomas said. "But even so, he useter eat some mighty big hunks uh humble pie
tuh git dat li'l 'oman he got. She wuz ez pritty ez a speckled pup! Dat wuz fifteen years
ago. He useter be so skeered uh losin' huh, she could make him do some parts of a
husband's duty. Dey never wuz de same in de mind."
"There oughter be a law about him," said Lindsay. "He ain't fit tuh carry guts tuh
a bear."
Clarke spoke for the first time. "Tain't no law on earth dat kin make a man be
decent if it ain't in 'im. There's plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh
sugar-cane. It's round, juicy, an' sweet when dey gits it. But dey squeeze an' grind,
squeeze an' grind an' wring tell dey wring every drop uh pleasure dat's in 'em out.
When dey's satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats 'em jes' lak dey do a cane-chew.
Dey thows 'em away. Dey knows whut dey is doin' while dey is at it, an' hates theirselves fuh it but they keeps on hangin' after huh tell she's empty. Den dey hates huh
fuh bein' a cane-chew an' in de way."
"We oughter take Syke an' dat stray 'oman uh his'n down in Lake Howell swamp
an' lay on de rawhide till they cain't say Lawd a' mussy. He alius wuz uh ovahbearin
niggah, but since dat white 'oman from up north done teached 'im how to run a automobile, he done got too beggety to livean' we oughter kill 'im," Old Man Anderson
advised.
30
35
40
A grunt of approval went around the porch. But the heat was melting their civic
virtue and Elijah Moseley began to bait Joe Clarke.
"Come on, Joe, git a melon outa dere an' slice it up for yo' customers. We'se all
sufferin' wid de heat. De bear's done got me!"
"Thass right, Joe, a watermelon is jes' whut Ah needs tuh cure de eppizu-dicks," Walter Thomas joined forces with Moseley. "Come on dere, Joe. We all is steady customers
an' you ain't set us up in a long time. Ah chooses dat long, bowlegged Floridy favorite."
"A god, an' be dough. You all gimme twenty cents and slice away," Clarke retorted. "Ah needs a col' slice m'self Heah, everybody chip in. Ah'll lend y'all mah
meat knife."
The money was all quickly subscribed and the huge melon brought forth. At that
moment, Sykes and Bertha arrived. A determined silence fell on the porch and the
melon was put away again.
Merchant, snapped down the blade of his jackknife and moved toward the store
door.
"Come on in, Joe, an' gimme a slab uh sow belly an' uh pound uh coffeealmost
fuhgot 'twas Sat'day. Got to git on home." Most of the men left also.
Just then Delia drove past on her way home, as Sykes was ordering magnificently
for Bertha. It pleased him for Delia to see.
"Git whutsoever yo' heart desires, Honey. Wait a minute, Joe. Give huh two
bottles uh strawberry soda-water, uh quart parched ground-peas, an' a block uh
chewin' gum."
With all this they left the store, with Sykes reminding Bertha that this was his
town and she could have it if she wanted it.
The men returned soon after they left, and held their watermelon feast.
"Where did Syke Jones git da 'oman from nohow?" Lindsay asked.
"Ovah Apopka. Guess dey musta been cleanin' out de town when she lef'. She
don't look lak a thing but a hunk uh liver wid hair on it."
"Well, she sho' kin squall," Dave Carter contributed. "When she gits ready tuh
laff, she jes' opens huh mouf an' latches it back tuh de las' notch. No ole granpa
alligator down in Lake Bell ain't got nothin' on huh."
HI
Bertha had been in town three months now. Sykes was still paying her roomrent at Delia Lewis'the only house in town that would have taken her in. Sykes
took her frequently to Winter Park to "stomps." He still assured her that he was the
swellest man in the state.
"Sho' you kin have dat li'l ole house soon's Ah git dat 'oman outadere. Everything b'longs tuh me an' you sho' kin have it. Ah sho' 'bominates uh skinny 'oman.
Lawdy, you sho' is got one portly shape on you! You kin git anything you wants. Dis is
mah town an' you sho' kin have it."
Delia's work-worn knees crawled over the earth in Gethsemane 0 and up the
rocks of Calvary 0 many, many times during these months. She avoided the villagers
and meeting places in her efforts to be blind and deaf. But Bertha nullified this to a
degree, by coming to Delia's house to call Sykes out to her at the gate.
Gethsemane: the garden outside Jerusalem that was the scene of Jesus' agony and arrest (see
Matthew 26:36-57); hence, a scene of great suffering. Calvary: the hill outside Jerusalem where
Jesus was crucified.
Delia and Sykes fought all the time now with no peaceful interludes. They slept
and ate in silence. Two or three times Delia had attempted a timid friendliness, but
she was repulsed each time. It was plain that the breaches must remain agape.
The sun had burned July to August. T h e heat streamed down like a million hot
aiTows, smiting all things living upon the earth. Grass withered, leaves browned,
snakes went blind in shedding, and men and dogs went mad. Dog days!
Delia came home one day and found Sykes there before her. She wondered, but
started to go on into the house without speaking, even though he was standing in the
kitchen door and she must either stoop under his arm or ask him to move. He made
no room for her. She noticed a soap box beside the steps, but paid no particular attention to it, knowing that he must have brought it there. As she was stooping to
pass under his outstretched arm, he suddenly pushed her backward, laughingly.
"Look in de box dere, Delia, A h done brung yuh some thin'!"
She nearly fell upon the box in her stumbling, and when she saw what it held,
she all but fainted outright.
"Syke! Syke, mah Gawd! You take dat rattlesnake 'way from heah! You gottuh.
Oh, Jesus, have mussy!"
"Ah ain't got tuh do nuthin' uh de kin'fact is A h ain't got tuh do nothin'
but die. Tain't no use uh you puttin' on airs malcin' out lak you skeered uh dat
snakehe's gointer stay right heah tell he die. He wouldn't bite me cause A h
knows how tuh handle 'im. Nohow he wouldn't risk breakin' out his fangs 'gin yo
skinny laigs."
"Naw, now Syke, don't keep dat thing 'round tryin' tuh skeer me tuh death. You
knows Ah'm even feared uh earth worms. Thass de biggest snake A h evah did see.
Kill 'im, Syke, please."
"Doan ast me tuh do nothin' fuh yuh. Goin' 'round tryin' tuh be so damn asterperious.0 Naw, A h ain't gonna kill it. Ah think uh damn sight mo' uh him dan you!
Dat's a nice snake an' anybody doan lak 'im kin jes' hit de grit."
T h e village soon heard that Sykes had the snake, and came to see and ask
questions.
"How de hen-fire did you ketch dat six-foot rattler, Syke?" Thomas asked.
"He's full uh frogs so he cain't hardly move, thass how Ah eased up on 'im. But
Ah'm a snake charmer an' knows how tuh handle 'em. Shux, dat ain't nothin'. A h
could ketch one eve'y day if Ah so wanted tuh."
"Whut he needs is a heavy hick'ry club leaned real heavy 011 his head. Dat's de
bes' way tuh charm a rattlesnake."
"Naw, Walt, y'all jes' don't understand dese diamon' backs lak A h do," said
Sykes in a superior tone of voice.
The village agreed with Walter, but the snake stayed 011. His box remained by
the kitchen door with its screen wire covering. Two or three days later it had digested its meal of frogs and literally came to life. It rattled at every movement in the
kitchen or the yard. One day as Delia came down the kitchen steps she saw his
chalky-white fangs curved like scimitars hung in the wire meshes. This time she did
not run away with averted eyes as usual. She stood for a long time in the doorway in
a red fury that grew bloodier for every second that she regarded the creature that was
her torment.
That night she broached the subject as soon as Sykes sat down to the table.
' asterperious: haughty.
60
65
70
"Syke, Ah wants you tuh take dat snake 'way fum heah. You done starved me an'
Ah put up widcher, you done beat me an Ah took dat, but you done kilt all mah insides.
bringin' dat varmint heah."
Sykes poured out a saucer full of coffee and drank it deliberately before he
answered her.
"A whole lot Ah lceer 'bout how you feels inside uh out. Dat snake ain't goin' no
damn wheah till Ah gits ready fuh 'im tuh go. So fur as beatin' is concerned, yuh ain't
took near all dat you gointer take ef yuh stay 'round me."
Delia pushed back her plate and got up from the table. "Ah hates you, Sykes," she
said calmly. "Ah hates you tuh de same degree dat Ah useter love yuh. Ah done took an'
took till mah belly is full up tuh mah neck. Dat's de reason Ah got mah letter fum de
church an' moved mah membership tuh Woodbridgeso Ah don't haftuh take no sacrament wid yuh. Ah don't, wantuh see yuh 'round me atall. Lay 'round wid dat 'oman ail
yuh wants tuh, but gwan 'way fum me an' mah house. Ah hates yuh lak uh suck-egg dog."
Sykes almost let the huge wyad of corn bread and collard greens he was chewing
fall out of his mouth in amazement. He had a hard time whipping himself up to the
proper fury to try to answer Delia.
"Well, Ah'm glad you does hate me. Ah'm sho' tiahed uh you hangin' ontuh me.
Ah don't want yuh. Look at yuh stringey ole neck! Yo' rawbony laigs an' arms is
enough tuh cut uh man tuh death. You looks jes' lak de devvul's doll-baby tuh me.
You cain't hate me no worse dan Ah hates you. Ah been hatin' you fuh years."
"Yo' ole black hide don't look lak nothin' tuh me, but uh passle uh wrinkled up
rubber, wid yo' big ole yeahs flappin' on each side lak uh paih uh buzzard wings. Don't
think Ah'm gointuh be run 'way fum mah house neither. Ah'm goin' tuh de white
folks 'bout you, mah young man, de very nex' time you lay yo' han's on me. Mah cup
is done run ovah." Delia said this with no signs of fear and Sykes departed from the
house, threatening her, but made not the slightest move to carry out any of them.
That night he did not return at all, and the next day being Sunday, Delia was
glad she did not have to quarrel before she hitched up her pony and drove the four
miles to Woodbridge.
She stayed to the night service"love feast"which was very warm and full of
spirit. In the emotional winds her domestic trials were borne far and wide so that she
sang as she drove homeward,
Jurden waterblack
an col
Chills de body, not de soul
An Ah ivantah cross Jurden in uh calm time.
She came from the barn to the kitchen door and stopped.
"Whut's de mattah, oF Satan, you ain't kickin' up yo' racket?" She addressed the
snake's box. Complete silence. She went on into the house with a new hope in its
birth struggles. Perhaps her threat to go to the white folks had frightened Sykes! Perhaps he was sorry! Fifteen years of misery and suppression had brought Delia to the
place where she would hope anything that looked towards a way over or through her
wall of inhibitions.
She felt in the match-safe behind the stove at once for a match. There was only
one there.
Jurden water: black Southern dialect for the River Jordan, which represents the last boundary before
entering heaven. It comes from the Old Testament, when the Jews had to cross the River Jordan to
reach the Promised Land.
"Dat niggah wouldn't fetch nothin' heah tuh save his rotten neck, but he kin run
thew whut Ah brings quick enough. Now he done toted off nigh on tuh haff uh box
uh matches. He done had dat 'oman heah in mah house, too."
Nobody but a woman could tell how she knew this even before she struck the
match. But she did and it put her into a new fury.
Presently she brought in the tubs to put the white things to soak. This time she
decided she need not bring the hamper out of the bedroom; she would go in there
and do the sorting. She picked up the pot-bellied lamp and went in. The room was
small and the hamper stood hard by the foot of the white iron bed. She could sit and
reach through the bedpostsresting as she worked.
"Ah wantah cross Jurden in uh calm time." She was singing again. The mood of the
"love feast" had returned. She threw back the lid of the basket almost gaily. Then,
moved by both horror and terror, she sprang back toward the door. There lay the snake
in the basket! He moved sluggishly at first, but even as she turned round and round,
jumped up and dow7n in an insanity of fear, he began to stir vigorously. She saw him
pouring his awful beauty from the basket upon the bed, then she seized the lamp and
ran as fast as she could to the kitchen. The wind from the open door blew out the
light and the darkness added to her terror. She spec! to the darkness of the yard, slamming the door after her before she thought to set down the lamp. She clid not feel safe
even on the ground, so she climbed up in the hay barn.
There for an hour or more she lay sprawled upon the hay a gibbering wreck.
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Finally she grew quiet, and after that came coherent thought. With this stalked
through her a cold, bloody rage. Hours of this. A period of introspection, a space of
retrospection, then a mixture of both. Out of this an awful calm.
"Well, Ah done de bes' Ah could. If things ain't right, Gawd knows tain't mah
fault."
She went to sleepa twitch sleepand woke up to a faint gray sky. There was a
loud hollow sound below. She peered out. Sykes was at the wood-pile, demolishing a
wire-covered box.
He hurried to the kitchen door, but hung outside there some minutes before he
entered, and stood some minutes more inside before he closed it after him.
The gray in the sky was spreading. Delia descended without fear now, and 95
crouched beneath the low bedroom window. The drawn shade shut out the dawn,
shut in the night. But the thin walls held back no sound.
"Dat ol' scratch 0 is woke up now!" She mused at the tremendous whirr inside,
which every woodsman knows, is one of the sound illusions. The rattler is a ventriloquist. His whiiT sounds to the right, to the left, straight ahead, behind, close under
footeverywhere but where it is. Woe to him who guesses wrong unless he is prepared
to hold up his end of the argument! Sometimes he strikes without rattling at all.
Inside, Sykes heard nothing until he knocked a pot lid off the stove while trying
to reach the match-safe in the dark. He had emptied his pockets at Bertha's.
The snake seemed to wake up under the stove and Sykes made a quick leap into
the bedroom. In spite of the gin he had had, his head was clearing now.
"Mah Gawd!" he chattcrcd, "cf Ah could on'y strack uh light!"
The rattling ceased for a moment as he stood paralyzed. He waited. It seemed 100
that the snake waited also.
"Oh, fuh de light! Ah thought he'd be too sick"Sykes was muttering to himself
when the whirr began again, closer, right underfoot this time. Long before this,
scratch: a folk expression for the devil.
Sykes' ability to think had been flattened down to primitive instinct and he leaped
onto the bed.
Outside Delia heard a cry that might have come from a maddened chimpanzee, a
stricken gorilla. All the terror, all the horror, all the rage that man possibly could express, without a recognizable human sound.
A tremendous stir inside there, another series of animal screams, the intermittent whirr of the reptile. T h e shade torn violently down from the window, letting in
the red dawn, a huge brown hand seizing the window stick, great dull blows upon the
wooden floor punctuating the gibberish of sound long after the rattle of the snake had
abruptly subsided. All this Delia could see and hear from her place beneath the window, and it made her ill. She crept over to the four o'clocks and stretched herself on
the cool earth to recover.
She lay there. "Delia, Delia!" She could hear Sykes calling in a most despairing
tone as one who expected no answer. The sun crept on up, and he called. Delia could
not moveher legs had gone flabby. She never moved, he called, and the sun kept
rising.
"Mah Gawd!" She heard him moan, "Mah Gawd fum ITeben!" She heard
him stumbling about and got up from her flower-bed. T h e sun was growing warm.
As she approached the door she heard him call out hopefully, "Delia, is dat you
Ahheah?"
She saw him on his hands and knees as soon as she reached the door. He crept
an inch or two toward herall that he was able, and she saw his horribly swollen
neck and his one open eye shining with hope. A surge of pity too strong to support
bore her away from that eye that must, could not, fail to see the tubs. He would see
the lamp. Orlando with its doctors was too far. She could scarcely reach the chinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she knew the cold
river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that
she knew.
Kazuo Ishiguro
A Family Supper
Born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, Kazuo
Ishiguro moved to England in I960, while still a
child. He completed his education there, graduating from the University of Kent and then receiving an M.A. in creative writing from the
University of East Anglia. In his late teens he
had the unusual job of grouse-beating for the
Queen Mother at Balmoral Castle in Scotland,
but after university went on to hone his skill for
social observation more directly, as a social
worker, first in Scotland and later in West
London. Ishiguro became a full-time writer in
1983, following the successful reception of his
first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982). The
book won the Royal Society of Literature's
KAZUO ISHIGURO
Winifred Holtby Award for the best first novel of the year, and it was soon translated into
more than ten languages. It is written in the voice of a Japanese woman living in England,
who had given birth to a daughter in Nagasaki following the war. Her recollections of this
period are tinged with the bleakness of the postwar years and with the understanding that her
own choices and the tragedies attending war were responsible for her daughter s suicide. In a
comment that could be applied equally well to Ishiguro's later work, the critic Edith Milton
noted, "In this book . . . what is stated is often less important than what is left unsaid."
Ishiguro's second novel, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), received a more significant prize, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award (Britain s largest cash prize for literature), but his greatest success came with The Remains of the Day, which in 1989 won
Great Britain's most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize, and ivas made into an
Academy Award-winning film in 1993, from a screenplay by Ishiguro, who has also written
the scripts for the films The Saddest Music in the World (2003) and The White Countess
(2005). His more recent novels are The Unconsoled (1995), When We Were Orphans
(2000), and Never Let Me Go (2005).
Ishiguro is not a prolific writer. He has written only six novels in twenty-five years,
along with a handful of short stories, most notably "A Family Supper," which like An
Artist of the Floating World, is set in Japan. "I had very strong emotional relationships
in Japan that were broken at a formative age," he has confided. "There's this other life I
might have had."
Fugu is a fish caught off the Pacific shores of Japan. The fish has held a special
significance for me ever since my mother died through eating one. T h e poison resides
in the sexual glands of the fish, inside two fragile bags. When preparing the fish, these
bags must be removed with caution, for any clumsiness will result in the poison leaking into the veins. Regrettably, it is not easy to tell whether or not this operation has
been carried out successfully. The proof is, as it were, in the eating.
Fugu poisoning is hideously painful and almost always fatal. If the fish has been
eaten during the evening, the victim is usually overtaken by pain during his sleep. He
rolls about in agony for a few hours and is dead by morning. The fish became extremely popular in Japan after the war. Until stricter regulations were imposed, it was
all the rage to perform the hazardous gutting operation in one's own kitchen, then to
invite neighbors and friends round for the feast.
At the time of my mother's death, I was living in California. My relationship
with my parents had become somewhat strained around that period, and consequently I did not learn of the circumstances surrounding her death until I returned to
Tokyo two years later. Apparently, my mother had always refused to eat fugu, but on
this particular occasion she had made an exception, having been invited by an old
schoolfriend whom she was anxious not to offend. It was my father who supplied me
with the details as we drove from the airport to his home in the Kamakura district.
When we finally arrived, it was nearing the end of a sunny autumn day.
"Did you eat on the plane?" my father asked. We were sitting on the tatami floor
of his tea-room.
"They gave me a light snack.":
"You must be hungry. We'll eat as soon as Kikuko arrives."
My father was a formidable-looking man with a large stony jaw and furious
black eyebrows. I think now in retrospect that he much resembled Chou En-lai, although he would not have cherished such a comparison, being particularly proud of
the pure samurai blood that ran in the family. His general presence was not one
which encouraged relaxed conversation; neither were things helped much by his odd
way of stating each remark as if it were the concluding one. In fact, as I sat opposite,
him that afternoon, a boyhood memory came back to me of the time he had struck
me several times around the head for "chattering like an old woman." Inevitably, our
conversation since my arrival at the airport had been punctuated by long pauses.
"I'm sorry to hear about the firm," I said when neither of us had spoken for some
time. He nodded gravely.
"In fact the story didn't end there," he said. "After the firm's collapse, Watanabe
killed himself. He didn't wish to live with the disgrace."
"I see."
"We were partners for seventeen years. A man of principle and honor. I respected
him very much."
"Will you go into business again?" I said.
"I amin retirement. I'm too old to involve myself in new ventures now. Business these days has become so different. Dealing with foreigners. Doing things their
way. I don't understand how we've come to this. Neither did Watanabe." He sighed.
"A fine man. A man of principle."
The tea-room looked out over the garden. From where I sat I could make out the
ancient well which as a child I had believed haunted. It was just visible now through
the thick foliage. The sun had sunk low and much of the garden had fallen into
shadow.
"I'm glad in any case that you've decided to come back," my father said. "More
than a short visit, I hope."
"I'm not sure what my plans will be."
"I for one am prepared to forget the past. Your mother too was always ready to
welcome you backupset as she was by your behavior."
"1 appreciate your sympathy. As I say, I'm not sure what my plans are."
"I've come to believe now that there were no evil intentions in your mind," my
father continued. "You were swayed by certaininfluences. Like so many others."
"Perhaps we should forget it, as you suggest."
"As you will. More tea?"
Just then, a girl's voice came echoing through the house.
"At last." My father rose to his feet. "Kikuko has arrived."
Despite our difference in years, my sister and I had always been close. Seeing me
again seemed to make her excessively excited and for a while she did nothing but giggle nervously. But she calmed down somewhat when my father started to question
her about Osaka and the university. She answered him with short formal replies. She
in turn asked me a few questions, but she seemed inhibited by the fear that her questions might lead to awkward topics. After a while, the conversation had become even
sparser than prior to Kilcuko's arrival. Then my father stood up, saying: "I must attend
to supper. Please excuse me for being burdened down by such matters. Kikuko will
look after you."
My sister relaxed quite visibly once he had left the room. Within a few minutes,
she was chatting freely about her friends in Osaka and about her classes at university.
Then quite suddenly she decided we should walk in the garden and went striding out
onto the veranda. We put on some straw sandals that had been left along the veranda
rail and stepped out into the garden. The daylight had almost gone.
"I've been dying for a smoke for the last half-hour," she said, lighting a cigarette.
"Then why didn't you smoke?"
She made a furtive gesture back toward the house, then grinned mischievously.
"Oh I see," I said.
"Guess what? I've got a boyfriend now."
"Oh yes?"
"Except I'm wondering what to do. I haven't made up my mind yet."
"Quite understandable."
"You see, he's making plans to go to America. He wants me to go with him as
soon as I finish studying."
"I see. And you want to go to America?"
"If we go, we're going to hitch-hike." Kikuko waved a thumb in front of my face.
"People say it's dangerous, but I've done it in Osaka and it's fine."
"I see. So what is it you're unsure about?"
We were following a narrow path that wound through the shrubs and finished by
the old well. As we walked, Kikuko persisted in taking unnecessarily theatrical puffs
on her cigarette.
"Well. I've got lots of friends now in Osaka. I like it there. I'm not sure I want to
leave them all behind just yet. And SuichiI like him, but I'm not sure I want to
spend so much time with him. Do you understand?"
"Oh perfectly."
She grinned again, then skipped on ahead of me until she reached the well. "Do
you remember," she said, as I came walking up to her, "how you used to say this well
was haunted?"
"Yes, I remember."
We both peered over the side.
"Mother always told me it was the old woman from the vegetable store you'd
seen that night," she said. "But I never believed her and never came out here
alone."
"Mother used to tell me that too. She even told me once the old woman had
confessed to being the ghost. Apparently she'd been taking a short cut through our
garden. I imagine she had some trouble clambering over these walls."
Kikuko gave a giggle. She then turned her back to the well, casting her gaze
about the garden.
"Mother never really blamed you, you know," she said, in a new voice. I remained silent. "She always used to say to me how it was their fault, hers and Father's,
for not bringing you up correctly. She used to tell me how much more careful they'd
been with me, and that's why I was so good." She looked up and the mischievous grin
had returned to her face. "Poor Mother," she said.
"Yes. Poor Mother."
"Are you going back to California?"
"I don't know. I'll have to see."
"What happened toto her? T o Vicki?"
"That's all finished with," I said. "There's nothing much left for me now in
California."
"Do you think I ought to go there?"
"Why not? I don't know. You'll probably like it." I glanced toward the house.
"Perhaps we'd better go in soon. Father might need a hand with the supper."
But my sister was once more peering down into the well. "I can't see any ghosts,"
she said. Her voice echoed a little.
"Is Father very upset about his firm collapsing?"
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"Don't know. You can never tell with Father." Then suddenly she straightened
up and turned to me. "Did he tell you about old Watanabe? What he did?"
"I heard he committed suicide."
"Well, that wasn't all. He took his whole family with him. His wife and his two
little girls."
"Oh, yes?"
"Those two beautiful little girls. He turned on the gas while they were all asleep.
Then he cut his stomach with a meat knife."
"Yes, Father was just telling me how Watanabe was a man of principle."
"Sick." My sister turned back to the well.
"Careful. You'll fall right in."
"I can't see any ghost," she said. "You were lying to me all that time."
"But I never said it lived down the well."
"Where is it, then?"
We both looked around at the trees and shrubs. The light in the garden had
grown very dim. Eventually I pointed to a small clearing some ten yards away.
"Just there I saw it. Just there."
We stared at the spot.
"What did it look like?"
"I couldn't see very well. It was dark."
"But you must have seen something."
"It was an old woman. She was just standing there, watching me."
We kept staring at the spot as if mesmerized.
"She was wearing a white kimono," I said. "Some of her hair had come undone.
It was blowing around a little."
Kikuko pushed her elbow against my arm. "Oh be quiet. You're trying to frighten
me all over again." She trod on the remains of her cigarette, then for a brief moment
stood regarding it with a perplexed expression. She kicked some pine needles over it,
then once more displayed her grin. "Let's see if supper's ready," she said.
We found my father in the kitchen. He gave us a quick glance, then carried on
with what he was doing.
"Father's become quite a chef since he's had to manage on his own," Kikuko said
with a laugh. He turned and looked at my sister coldly.
"Hardly a skill I'm proud of," he said. "Kikuko, come here and help."
For some moments my sister did not move. Then she stepped forward and took
an apron hanging from a drawer.
"Just these vegetables need cooking now," he said to her. "The rest just needs
watching." Then he looked up and regarded me strangely for some seconds. "I expect
you w7ant to look around the house," he said eventually. He put down the chopsticks
he had been holding. "It's a long time since you've seen it."
As we left the kitchen I glanced back toward Kikuko, but her back was turned.
"She's a good girl," my father said quietly.
I followed my father from room to room. I had forgotten how large the house
was. A panel would slide open and another room would appear. But the rooms were
all startlingly empty. In one of the rooms the lights did not come on, and we stared at
the stark walls and tatami in the pale light that came from the windows.
"This house is too large for a man to live in alone," my father said. "I don't have
much use for most of these rooms now."
But eventually my father opened the door to a room packed full of books and papers. There were flowers in vases and pictures on the walls. Then I noticed something
on a low table in the comer of the room. I came nearer and saw it was a plastic model
of a battleship, the kind constructed by children. It had been placed on some newspaper; scattered around it were assorted pieces of grey plastic.
My father gave a laugh. He came up to the table and picked up the model.
"Since the firm folded," he said, "I have a little more time on my hands." He
laughed again, rather strangely. For a moment his face looked almost gentle. "A little
more time."
"That seems odd," I said. "You were always so busy."
"Too busy perhaps." He looked at me with a small smile. "Perhaps I should have
been a more attentive father."
I laughed. He went on contemplating his battleship. Then he looked up. "I hadn't
meant to tell you this, but perhaps it's best that I do. It's my belief that your mother's
death was no accident. She had many worries. And some disappointments."
We both gazed at the plastic battleship.
"Surely," I said eventually, "my mother didn't expect me to live here for ever."
"Obviously you don't see. You don't see how it is for some parents. Not only
must they lose their children, they must lose them to things they don't understand."
He spun the battleship in his fingers. "These little gunboats here could have been
better glued, don't you think?"
"Perhaps. I think it looks fine."
"During the war I spent some time on a ship rather like this. But my ambition
was always the air force. I figured it like this. If your ship was struck by the enemy, all
you could do was struggle in the water hoping for a lifeline. But in an aeroplane
wellthere was always the final weapon." He put the model back onto the table. "I
don't suppose you believe in war."
"Not particularly."
He cast an eye around the room. "Supper should be ready by now," he said. "You
must be hungry."
Supper was waiting in a dimly lit room next to the kitchen. The only source of
light was a big lantern that hung over the table, casting the rest of the room into
shadow. We bowred to each other before starting the meal.
There was little conversation. When I made some polite comment about the
food, Kikuko giggled a little. Her earlier nervousness seemed to have returned to her.
My father did not speak for several minutes. Finally he said:
"It must feel strange for you, being back in Japan."
"Yes, it is a little strange."
"Already, perhaps, you regret leaving America."
"A little. Not so much. I didn't leave behind much. Just some empty rooms."
"I see."
I glanced across the table. My father's face looked stony and forbidding in the
half-light. We ate on in silence.
Then my eye caught something at the back of the room. At first I continued eating,
then my hands became still. The others noticed and looked at me. I went on gazing
into the darkness past my father's shoulder.
"Who is that? In that photograph there?"
"Which photograph?" My father turned slightly, trying to follow my gaze.
"The lowest one. The old woman in the white kimono."
My father put down his chopsticks. He looked first at the photograph, then at me.
"Your mother." His voice had become very hard. "Can't you recognize your own
mother?"
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"My mother. You see, it's dark. I can't see it very well."
No one spoke for a few seconds, then Kikulco rose to her feet. She took the.
photograph down from the wall, came back to the table and gave it to me.
"She looks a lot older," I said.
"It was taken shortly before her death," said my father.
"It was the dark. I couldn't see very well."
I looked up and noticed my father holding out a hand. I gave him the photograph. He looked at it intently, then held it toward Kikuko. Obediently, my sister
rose to her feet once more and returned the picture to the wall.
There was a large pot left unopened at the center of the table. When Kikuko
had seated herself again, my father reached forward and lifted the lid. A cloud of
steam rose up and curled toward the lantern. He pushed the pot a little toward me.
"You must be hungry," he said. One side of his face had fallen into shadow.
"Thank you." I reached forward with my chopsticks. The steam was almost
scalding. "What is it?"
"Fish."
"It smells very good."
In amidst soup were strips of fish that had curled almost into balls. I picked one
out and brought it to my bowl.
"Help yourself. There's plenty."
"Thank you." I took a little more, then pushed the pot toward my father. I
watched him take several pieces to his bowl. Then we both watched as Kikuko served
herself.
My father bowed slightly. "You must be hungry," he said again. He took some
fish to his mouth and started to eat. Then I too chose a piece and put it in my mouth.
It felt soft, quite fleshy against my tongue.
"Very good," I said. "What is it?"
"Just fish."
"It's very good."
The three of us ate on in silence. Several minutes went by.
"Some more?"
"Is there enough?"
"There's plenty for all of us." My father lifted the lid and once more steam rose
up. We all reached forward and helped ourselves.
"Here," I said to my father, "you have the last piece."
"Thank you."
When we had finished the meal, my father stretched out his arms and yawned
with an air of satisfaction. "Kikulco," he said. "Prepare a pot of tea, please."
My sister looked at him, then left the room without comment. My father stood up.
"Let's retire to the other room. It's rather warm in here."
I got to my feet and followed him into the tea-room. T h e large sliding windows had been left open, bringing in a breeze from the garden. For a while we sat
in silence.
"Father," I said, finally.
"Yes?"
"Kikuko tells me Watanabe-San took his whole family with him."
My father lowered his eyes and nodded. For some moments he seemed deep in
thought. "Watanabe was very devoted to his work." He said at last. "The collapse of
the firm was a great blow to him. I fear it must have weakened his judgment."
"You think what he didit was a mistake?"
"Why, of course. Do you see it otherwise?"
"No, no. Of course not."
"There are other things besides work."
"Yes."
We fell silent again. T h e sound of locusts came in from the garden. I looked out
into the darkness. T h e well was no longer visible.
"What do you think you will do now?" my father asked. "Will you stay in Japan
for a while?"
"To be honest, I hadn't thought that far ahead."
"If you wish to stay here, I mean here in this house, you would be very welcome.
That is, if you don't mind living with an old man."
"Thank you. I'll have to think about it."
I gazed out once more into the darkness.
"But of course," said my father, "this house is so dreary now. You'll no doubt return to America before long."
"Perhaps. I don't know yet."
"No doubt you will."
For some time my father seemed to be studying the back of his hands. Then he
looked up and sighed.
"Kikuko is due to complete her studies next spring," he said. "Perhaps she will
want to come home then. She's a good girl."
"Perhaps she will."
"Things will improve then."
"Yes, I'm sure they will."
We fell silent once more, waiting for Kikuko to bring the tea.
James Joyce
James Joyce (1882-1941)
quit Ireland at
twenty to spend his mature life in voluntary exile
on the continent, writing of nothing but Dublin,
where he was born. In Trieste, Zurich, and
Paris, he supported his family with difficulty,
sometimes teaching in Berlitz language schools,
until his writing won him fame and wealthy patrons. At first Joyce met diffictdty in getting his
work printed and circulated. Publication of
Dubliners (1914), the collection of stories that
includes "Arabywas
delayed seven years because its prospective Irish publisher feared libel
suits. (The book depicts local citizens, some of
them recognizable, and views Dubliners mostly
as a thwarted, self-deceived lot.) A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a novel of
JAMES JOYCE
thinly veiled autobiography, recounts a young intellectual's breaking away from country,
church, and home. Joyce's immense comic novel Ulysses (1922), a parody of the Odyssey,
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spans eighteen hours in the life of a wandering Jew, a Dublin seller of advertising. Frank
about sex but untitillating, the book was banned at one time by the U.S. Post Office
Joyce's later work stepped up its demands on readers. The challenging Finnegans Wake
(1939), if read aloud, sounds as though a learned comic poet were sleep-talking, jumbling
several languages. Joyce was an innovator whose bold experiments showed many other writers possibilities in fiction that had not earlier been imagined.
North Richmond Street, being blind, 0 was a quiet street except at the hour
when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two
stories stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground. The
other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another
with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room.
Air, musty from having long been enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste
room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a
few paper-coverecl books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by
Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs ofVidocq.0 I liked the last
best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a
central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found the late
tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest: in his will he had
left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown somber. The space of sky
above us was the color of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street
lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.
Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the
dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gantlet of the rough tribes
from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odors arose
from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and
combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to
the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen
turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if
Mangan's sister0 came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea we
watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether
she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to
Mangan's steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from
the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by
the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope
of her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door. The
blind was pulled down within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When
she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and
being blind: being a dead-end street. The Abbot . . . Vidocq: a popular historical romance (1820); a
book of pious meditations by an eighteenth-century English Franciscan, Pacificus Baker; and the autobiography of Franco is-Jules Vidocq (1775-1857), a criminal who later turned detective.
Mangan's sister: an actual young woman in this story, but the phrase recalls Irish poet James
Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) and his best-known poem, "Dark Rosaleen," which personifies Ireland as a beautiful woman for whom the poet yeams.
followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the
point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual
words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We
walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid
the curses of laborers, the shrill litanies of shopboys who stood on guard by the barrels of
pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in
a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through the
throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises
which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why)
and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought
little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke
to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and
her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It
was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the
broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of
water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil
themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my
hands together until they trembled, murmuring: O love! O love! many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused
that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forget whether
I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said; she would love to go.
And why can't you? I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She
could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. 0
Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the
railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the
lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested
there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress
and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
It's well for you, she said.
I f I go, I said, I will bring you something.
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that
evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the
work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came
between me and the page I strove to read. T h e syllables of the word Araby were
called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt
come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa: the street singers earned their living by singing timely songs that
usually began, "Come all you gallant Irishmen / And listen to my song." Their subject, also called Dynamite Rossa, was a popular hero jailed by the British for advocating violent rebellion, a retreat . . .
in her convent: a week devoted to religious observances more intense than usual, at the convent
school Miss Mangan attends; probably she will have to listen to a number of hellfire sermons.
was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason 0 affair. I answered few questions
in class. I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was.
not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly
any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and
my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in
the evening. Fie was fussing at the hall-stand, looking for the hatbrush, and answered
me curtly:
Yes, boy, I know.
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlor and lie at the window. I
left the house in bad humor and walked slowly towards the school. The air was
pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early.
I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I
left the room. I mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The
high cold empty gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing.
From the front window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries
reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass,
I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour,
seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly
by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border
below the dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs. Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an
old garrulous woman, a pawnbroker's widow, who collected used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs. Mercer stood up to go: she was
sorry she couldn't wait any longer, but it was after eight o'clock and she did not like
to be out late, as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up
and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:
I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.
At nine o'clock I heard my uncle's latchkey in the halldoor. I heard him talking
to himself and heard the hall-stand rocking when it had received the weight of his
overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was midway through his dinner I
asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.
T h e people are in bed and after their first sleep now, he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
Can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late enough
as it is.
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old
saying: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. He asked me where I was going and,
when I had told him a second time he asked me did I know The Arab's Farewell to His
Steed.0 When I left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece
to my aunt.
Freemason: Catholics in Ireland viewed the Masonic order as a Protestant conspiracy against them.
The Arab's Farewell to His Steed: This sentimental ballad by a popular poet, Caroline Norton
(1808-1877), tells the story of a nomad of the desert who, in a fit of greed, sells his beloved horse,
then regrets the loss, flings away the gold he had received, and takes back his horse. Notice the echo
of "Araby" in the song title.
I held a florin tightly in my hands as I strode down Buckingham Street towards
the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a
deserted train. After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly.
It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. At Westland
Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved
them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the
bare carriage. In a few minutes the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was
ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical
name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be
closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking
man. I found myself in a big hall girdled at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the
stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the center of
the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which were still
open. Before a curtain, over which the words Cafe Chantant0 were written in colored lamps, two men were counting money on a salver. 0 I listened to the fall of the
coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to one of the stalls
and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young
lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English
accents and listened vaguely to their conversation.
O , I never said such a thing!
O , but you did!
O , but I didn't!
Didn't she say that?
Yes. I heard her.
O , there's a . . . fib!
Observing me the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me
out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards
at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:
No, thank you.
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the
two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young
lady glanced at me over her shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wrares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the
middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the six-pence in my
pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The
upper part of the hall was now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity;
and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
Cafe Chantant: name for a Paris nightspot featuring topical songs,
serving Holy Communion.
salver: a tray like that used in
25
30
35
Jamaica Kiricaid
Jamaica Kiricaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in 1949 in St. John's, capital of the West Indian island nation of Antigua (she adopted the
name Jamaica Kincaid in 1973 because of her family's disapproval of her writing). In 1965 she was
sent to Westchester County, Neu> York, to work as
an au pair (or "servant," as she prefers to describe
it). She attended Franconia College in New Hampshire, but did not complete a degree. Kincaid
worked as a staff writer for the New Yorker for
nearly twenty years; Talk Stories (2001) is a collection of seventy-seven short pieces that she wrote
for the magazine. She won wide attention for At the
/
Bottom of the River (1983), the volume of her
stories that includes "Girl." In 1985 she published
JAMAICA KINCAID
Annie John, an interlocking cycle of short stories
about groiving up in Antigua. Lucy (1990) was her first novel; it was followed by The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) and Mr. Potter (2002), novels inspired by the lives of her
parents. Kincaid is also the author of A Small Place (1988), a memoir of her homeland and
meditation on the destructiveness of colonialism, and My Brother (1997), a reminiscence of
her brother Devon, who died of AIDS at thirty-three. Her most recent tvorks are Among
Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya (2005), a travel book, and My Favorite Tool (2006),
a novel. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Kincaid has said of her adopted country: "It's given me a
place to be myselfbut myself as I was formed somewhere else." She lives in Vermont.
Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the
color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothes-line to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little
cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice
blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well
after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna
in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone
else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent
on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharf-rat boys,
not even to give directions; don't eat fruits on the streetflies will follow you; but I
don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a
button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this
is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself
from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron
your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease; this is how you iron your
father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease; this is how you grow olcrafar
benna: Kincaid defined this word, for two editors who inquired, as meaning "songs of the sort your
parents didn't want you to sing, at first calypso and later rock and roll" (quoted by Sylvan Barnet and
Marcia Stubbs, The Little Brown Reader, 2nd ed. [Boston: Little, 1980] 74).
from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen,
make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating
it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how
you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is
how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you
like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set
a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the
presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize
immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day,
even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marblesyou are not a boy,
you know; don't pick people's flowersyou might catch something; don't throw
stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a
bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is
how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to
throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is
how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on
you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a
man, and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel
too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is
how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker wont let me feel the
bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman
who the baker won't let near the bread?
Jhumpa Lahiri
Interpreter of Maladies
1999
Jhumpa Lahiri was bom in London in 1967 and
grew up in Rhode Island. Her father, a librarian, and her mother, a teacher, had emigrated
from their native India, to which Lahiri has
made a number of extended visits. After writing
a great deal of fiction as a child and teenager, she
wrote none at all during her college years. She
graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in
English literature, and after all her graduate
school applications had been rejected, she went
to work as a research assistant for a nonprofit
organization. She began staying late after work
to use her office computer to write short stories,
on the strength of which she was accepted into the
creative writing program at Boston University.
JHUMPA LAHIRI
Earning an M.A. in creative writing, Lahiri
stayed on to complete an M.A. in English, an M.A. in comparative literature and the arts,
and a Ph.D. in Renaissance studies. "In the process," she has said, "it became clear to me
that I was not meant to be a scholar. It was something I did out of a sense of duty and
practicality, but it was never something I loved. . . . The ^ear I finished my dissertation,
I was also accepted to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and that changed
everythingDuring
her seven-month residency at the center, she found an agent, had a
story published in the New Yorker, and sold a collection of her stories to a publisher. That
volume, Interpreter of Maladies, appeared in 1999 to excellent reviews and was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Its title story was also selected for both an O .
Henry Award and publication in The Best American Short Stories. Her second book
and first novel, The Namesake (2003), was made into a film (2006) directed by Mira
Nair. Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School
of Design. She lives in New York.
At the tea stall Mr. and Mrs. Das bickered about who should take Tina to the toilet.
Eventually Mrs. Das relented when Mr. Das pointed out that he had given the girl her
bath the night before. In the rearview mirror Mr. Kapasi watched as Mrs. Das emerged
slowly from his bulky white Ambassador, dragging her shaved, largely bare legs across
the back seat. She did not hold the little girl's hand as they walked to the rest room.
They were on their way to see the Sun Temple at Konarak. It was a dry, bright
Saturday, the mid-July heat tempered by a steady ocean breeze, ideal weather for
sightseeing. Ordinarily Mr. Kapasi would not have stopped so soon along the way,
but less than five minutes after he'd picked up the family that morning in front of
Hotel Sandy Villa, the little girl had complained. The first thing Mr. Kapasi had noticed when he saw Mr. and Mrs. Das, standing with their children under the portico
of the hotel, was that they were very young, perhaps not even thirty. In addition to
Tina they had two boys, Ronny and Bobby, who appeared very close in age and had
teeth covered in a network of flashing silver wires. The family looked Indian but
dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with
translucent visors. Mr. Kapasi was accustomed to foreign tourists; he was assigned to
them regularly because he could speak English. Yesterday he had driven an elderly
couple from Scotland, both with spotted faces and fluffy white hair so thin it exposed
their sunburnt scalps. In comparison, the tanned, youthful faces of Mr. and Mrs. Das
were all the more striking. When he'd introduced himself, Mr. Kapasi had pressed
his palms together in greeting, but Mr. Das squeezed hands like an American so that
Mr. Kapasi felt it in his elbow. Mrs. Das, for her part, had flexed one side of her
mouth, smiling dutifully at Mr. Kapasi, without displaying any interest in him.
As they waited at the tea stall, Ronny, who looked like the older of the two
boys, clambered suddenly out of the back seat, intrigued by a goat tied to a stake in
the ground.
"Don't touch it," Mr. Das said. He glanced up from his paperback tour book,
which said "INDIA" in yellow letters and looked as if it had been published abroad.
His voice, somehow tentative and a little shrill, sounded as though it had not yet
settled into maturity.
"I want to give it a piece of gum," the boy called back as he trotted ahead.
Mr. Das stepped out of the car and stretched his legs by squatting briefly to the
ground. A clean-shaven man, be looked exactly like a magnified version of Ronny.
He had a sapphire blue visor, and was dressed in shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt. The
camera slung around his neck, with an impressive telephoto lens and numerous buttons and markings, was the only complicated thing he wore. He frowned, watching as
Ronny rushed toward the goat, but appeared to have no intention of intervening.
"Bobby, make sure that your brother doesn't do anything stupid."
"I don't feel like it," Bobby said, not moving. He was sitting in the front seat beside
Mr. Kapasi, studying a picture of the elephant god taped to the glove compartment.
"No need to worry," Mr. Kapasi said. "They are quite tame." Mr. Kapasi was
forty-six years old, with receding hair that had gone completely silver, but his
butterscotch complexion and his unlined brow, which he treated in spare moments to dabs of lotus-oil balm, made it easy to imagine what he must have
looked like at an earlier age. He wore gray trousers and a matching jacket-style
shirt, tapered at the waist, with short sleeves and a large pointed collar, made of a
thin but durable synthetic material. He had specified both the cut and the fabric to
his tailorit was his preferred uniform for giving tours because it did not get crushed
during his long hours behind the wheel. Through the windshield he watched as
Ronny circled around the goat, touched it quickly on its side, then trotted back to
the car.
"You left India as a child?" Mr. Kapasi asked when Mr. Das had settled once
again into the passenger seat.
"Oh, Mina and I were both bom in America," Mr. Das announced with an air of
sudden confidence. "Born and raised. Our parents live here now, in Assansol. 0 They
retired. We visit them every couple years." He turned to watch as the little girl ran
toward the car, the wide purple bows of her sundress flopping on her narrow brown
shoulders. She was holding to her chest a doll with yellow hair that looked as if it had
been chopped, as a punitive measure, with a pair of dull scissors. "This is Tina's first
trip to India, isn't it, Tina?"
"I don't have to go to the bathroom anymore," Tina announced.
"Where's Mina?" Mr. Das asked.
Mr. Kapasi found it strange that Mr. Das should refer to his wife by her first name
when speaking to the little girl. Tina pointed to where Mrs. Das was purchasing
something from one of the shirtless men who worked at the tea stall. Mr. Kapasi
heard one of the shirtless men sing a phrase from a popular Hindi love song as Mrs.
Das walked back to the car, but she did not appear to understand the words of the
song, for she did not express irritation, or embarrassment, or react in any other way to
the man's declarations.
He observed her. She wore a red-and-white-checkered skirt that stopped
above her knees, slip-on shoes with a square wooden heel, and a close-fitting
blouse styled like a man's undershirt. T h e blouse was decorated at chest-level with
a calico applique in the shape of a strawberry. She was a short woman, with small
hands like paws, her frosty pink fingernails painted to match her lips, and was slightly
plump in her figure. Her hair, shorn only a little longer than her husband's, was
parted far to one side. She was wearing large dark brown sunglasses with a pinkish
tint to them, and carried a big straw bag, almost as big as her torso, shaped like a
bowl, with a water bottle poking out of it. She walked slowly, carrying some puffed
rice tossed with peanuts and chili peppers in a large packet made from newspapers.
Mr. Kapasi turned to Mr. Das.
"Where in America do you live?"
"New Brunswick, New Jersey."
"Next to New York?"
"Exactly. I teach middle school there."
"What subject?"
Assansol: a city in the state of West Bengal in northeastern India.
"Science. In fact, every year I take my students on a trip to the Museum of
Natural History in New York City. In a way we have a lot in common, you could say,
you and L How long have you been a tour guide, Mr. Kapasi?"
"Five years."
Mrs. Das reached the car. "How long's the trip?" she asked, shutting the door.
"About two and a half hours," Mr. Kapasi replied.
At this Mrs. Das gave an impatient sigh, as if she had been traveling her whole life
without pause. She fanned herself with a folded Bombay film magazine written in English.
"I thought that the Sun Temple is only eighteen miles north of Puri," Mr. Das
said, tapping on the tour book.
"The roads to Konarak are poor. Actually it is a distance of fifty-two miles,"
Mr. Kapasi explained.
Mr. Das nodded, readjusting the camera strap where it had begun to chafe the
back of his neck.
Before starting the ignition, Mr. Kapasi reached back to make sure the cranklike
locks on the inside of each of the back doors were secured. As soon as the car began
to move the little girl began to play with the lock on her side, clicking it with some
effort forward and backward, but Mrs. Das said nothing to stop her. She sat a bit
slouched at one end of the back seat, not offering her puffed rice to anyone. Ronny
and Tina sat on either side of her, both snapping bright green gum.
"Look," Bobby said as the car began to gather speed. He pointed with his finger
to the tall trees that lined the road. "Look."
"Monkeys!" Ronny shrieked. "Wow!"
They were seated in groups along the branches, with shining black faces, silver
bodies, horizontal eyebrows, and crested heads. Their long gray tails dangled like a
series of ropes among the leaves. A few scratched themselves with black leathery
hands, or swung their feet, staring as the car passed.
"We call them the hanuman," Mr. Kapasi said. "They are quite common in
the area."
As soon as he spoke, one of the monkeys leaped into the middle of the road,
causing Mr. Kapasi to brake suddenly. Another bounced onto the hood of the car,
then sprang away. Mr. Kapasi beeped his horn. The children began to get excited,
sucking in their breath and covering their faces partly with their hands. They had
never seen monkeys outside of a zoo, Mr. Das explained. He asked Mr. Kapasi to stop
the car so that he could take a picture.
While Mr. Das adjusted his telephoto lens, Mrs. Das reached into her straw bag
and pulled out a bottle of colorless nail polish, which she proceeded to stroke on the
tip of her index finger.
The little girl stuck out a hand. "Mine too. Mommy, do mine too."
"Leave me alone," Mrs. Das said, blowing on her nail and turning her body
slightly. "You're making me mess up."
T h e little girl occupied herself by buttoning and unbuttoning a pinafore on the
doll's plastic body.
"All set," Mr. Das said, replacing the lens cap.
The car rattled considerably as it raced along the dusty road, causing them all to
pop up from their seats every now and then, but Mrs. Das continued to polish her
nails. Mr. Kapasi eased up on the accelerator, hoping to produce a smoother ride.
When he reached for the gearshift the boy in front accommodated him by swinging
his hairless knees out of the way. Mr. Kapasi noted that this boy was slightly paler
than the other children. "Daddy, why is the driver sitting on the wrong side in this
car, too?" the boy asked.
"They all do that here, dummy," Ronny said.
40
"Don't call your brother a dummy," Mr. Das said. He turned to Mr. Kapasi. "In
America, you know . . . it confuses them."
"Oh yes, I am well aware," Mr. Kapasi said. As delicately as he could, he shifted
gears again, accelerating as they approached a hill in the road. "I see it on Dallas the
steering wheels are on the left-hand side."
"What's Dallas?" Tina asked, banging her now naked doll on the seat behind
Mr. Kapasi.
"It went off the air," Mr. Das explained. "It's a television show."
They were all like siblings, Mr. Kapasi thought as they passed a row of date trees. 45
Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an older brother and sister, not parents. It seemed
that they were in charge of the children only for the day; it was hard to believe they
were regularly responsible for anything other than themselves. Mr. Das tapped on his
lens cap, and his tour book, dragging his thumbnail occasionally across the pages so
that they made a scraping sound. Mrs. Das continued to polish her nails. She had still
not removed her sunglasses. Every now and then Tina renewed her plea that she
wanted her nails done, too, and so at one point Mrs. Das flicked a drop of polish on
the little girl's finger before depositing the bottle back inside her straw bag.
"Isn't this an air-conditioned car?" she asked, still blowing on her hand. The
window on Tina's side was broken and could not be rolled down.
"Quit complaining," Mr. Das said. "It isn't so hot."
"I told you to get a car with air-conditioning," Mrs. Das continued. "Why do you
do this, Raj, just to save a few stupid rupees. What are you saving us, fifty cents?"
Their accents sounded just like the ones Mr. Kapasi heard on American television programs, though not like the ones on Dallas.
"Doesn't it get tiresome, Mr. Kapasi, showing people the same thing every day?" 50
Mr. Das asked, rolling down his own window all the way. "Hey, do you mind stopping the car? I just want to get a shot of this guy."
Mr. Kapasi pulled over to the side of the road as Mr. Das took a picture of a barefoot man, his head wrapped in a dirty turban, seated on top of a cart of grain sacks
pulled by a pair of bullocks. 0 Both the man and the bullocks were emaciated. In the
back seat Mrs. Das gazed out another window, at the sky, where nearly transparent
clouds passed quickly in front of one another.
"I look forward to it, actually," Mr. Kapasi said as they continued on their way.
"The Sun Temple is one of my favorite places. In that way it is a reward for me. I give
tours on Fridays and Saturdays only. 1 have another job during the week."
"Oh? Where?" Mr. Das asked.
"I work in a doctor's office."
"You're a doctor?"
.
55
"I am not a doctor. I work wTith one. As an interpreter."
"What does a doctor need an interpreter for?"
"He has a number of Gujarati patients. My father was Gujarati, but many people
do not speak Gujarati in this area, including the doctor. And so the doctor asked me
to work in his office, interpreting what the patients say."
Dallas: extremely popular 1980s television drama centered on the professional and romantic affairs
of unscrupulous oil baron J. R. Ewing and his family, bullocks: young or castrated bulls; steer.
"Interesting. I've n e v e r heard o f a n y t h i n g like t h a t , " M r . Das said.
Mr. Kapasi shrugged. " I t is a j o b like any o t h e r . "
" B u t so r o m a n t i c , " Mrs. Das said dreamily, breaking h e r e x t e n d e d silence. S h e
lifted h e r pinkish brown sunglasses and arranged t h e m 011 top o f h e r head like a tiara.
For t h e first time, her eyes m e t M r . Kapasi's in t h e rearview mirror: pale, a bit small,
their gaze fixed but drowsy.
Mr. Das craned to look at her. " W h a t ' s so r o m a n t i c about it?"
"I d o n ' t know. S o m e t h i n g . " S h e shrugged, k n i t t i n g h e r brows together for an instant. " W o u l d you like a piece o f gum, M r . Kapasi?" she asked brightly. S h e reached
into her straw bag and h a n d e d h i m a small square wrapped in green-and-whitestriped paper. A s soon as M r . Kapasi put t h e gum in his m o u t h a t h i c k sweet liquid
burst o n t o his tongue.
" T e l l us more about your j o b , Mr. Kapasi," Mrs. Das said.
" W h a t would you like to know, madame?"
"I don't k n o w , " she shrugged, m u n c h i n g o n some puffed rice and licking t h e
mustard oil from the corners o f h e r m o u t h . " T e l l us a typical situation." S h e settled
b a c k in h e r seat, her h e a d tilted in a p a t c h of sun, and closed her eyes. "I w a n t to picture what h a p p e n s . "
" V e r y well. T h e o t h e r day a m a n c a m e in with a pain in his t h r o a t . "
" D i d h e smoke cigarettes?"
" N o . It was very curious. H e c o m p l a i n e d t h a t h e felt as if there were long pieces
of straw stuck in his throat. W h e n I told the d o c t o r h e was able t o prescribe t h e
proper m e d i c a t i o n . "
" T h a t ' s so n e a t . "
" Y e s , " Mr. Kapasi agreed after some hesitation.
" S o these patients are totally dependent on you," Mrs. Das said. S h e spoke slowly,
as if she were thinking aloud. "In a way, more dependent o n you t h a n the doctor."
" H o w do you m e a n ? H o w could it be?"
" W e l l , for e x a m p l e , you could tell t h e d o c t o r t h a t t h e pain felt like a burning,
n o t straw. T h e p a t i e n t would n e v e r k n o w w h a t you h a d told t h e doctor, a n d t h e
d o c t o r wouldn't k n o w t h a t you h a d told t h e wrong thing. It's a big responsibility."
"Yes, a big responsibility you h a v e there, Mr. Kapasi," M r . Das agreed.
Mr. Kapasi had n e v e r t h o u g h t of his j o b in such c o m p l i m e n t a r y terms. T o h i m it
was a thankless o c c u p a t i o n . H e found n o t h i n g n o b l e in interpreting people's maladies, assiduously translating the symptoms of so m a n y swollen bones, countless
cramps of bellies a n d bowels, spots o n people's palms t h a t c h a n g e d color, shape, or
size. T h e doctor, nearly h a l f his age, h a d a n affinity for b e l l - b o t t o m trousers and made
humorless jokes about the Congress party. 0 T o g e t h e r they worked in a stale little infirmary where Mr. Kapasi's smartly tailored c l o t h e s clung to h i m in the h e a t , in spite
of the b l a c k e n e d blades of a ceiling fan c h u r n i n g over their heads.
T h e j o b was a sign of his failings. In his youth h e ' d b e e n a d e v o t e d scholar o f
foreign languages, t h e owner o f a n impressive c o l l e c t i o n of dictionaries. H e h a d
dreamed o f being a n interpreter for diplomats and dignitaries, resolving conflicts bet w e e n people and n a t i o n s , settling disputes of w h i c h h e a l o n e could understand
b o t h sides. H e wras a self-educated m a n . I n a series of n o t e b o o k s , in t h e evenings before his parents settled his marriage, h e h a d listed t h e c o m m o n etymologies o f
words, and at o n e p o i n t in his life h e was confident t h a t h e could converse, if given
the Congress party: India's governing party for five decades after independence in 1947, widely
perceived as corrupt.
t h e opportunity, in English, F r e n c h , Russian, Portuguese, and Italian, n o t to m e n t i o n
H i n d i , Bengali, Orissi, and G u j a r a t i . N o w only a handful o f European phrases rem a i n e d in his memory, scattered words for things like saucers and chairs. English was
t h e only n o n - I n d i a n language h e spoke fluently anymore. Mr. Kapasi k n e w it was n o t
a remarkable talent. S o m e t i m e s h e feared t h a t his children knew better English t h a n
h e did, just from watching television. Still, it c a m e in handy for t h e tours.
H e h a d t a k e n the j o b as an interpreter after his first son, at the age of seven, c o n tracted t y p h o i d t h a t was h o w h e h a d first made t h e a c q u a i n t a n c e of t h e doctor. A t
the time M r . Kapasi had b e e n t e a c h i n g English in a grammar school, and h e bartered
his skills as an interpreter to pay the increasingly e x o r b i t a n t medical bills. In the end
t h e boy h a d died one e v e n i n g in his mother's arms, his limbs burning with fever, but
t h e n there was t h e funeral to pay for, and the other children w h o were b o r n soon
enough, and t h e newer, bigger house, and t h e good schools and tutors, and the fine
shoes and the television, and t h e countless o t h e r ways h e tried to console his wife
and to k e e p h e r from crying in h e r sleep, and so w h e n t h e doctor offered to pay h i m
twice as m u c h as h e earned at the grammar school, h e accepted. M r . Kapasi knew
t h a t his wife h a d little regard for his career as an interpreter. H e k n e w it reminded
h e r of t h e son she'd lost, and t h a t she resented the o t h e r lives h e helped, in his own
small way, to save. If ever she referred to his position, she used t h e phrase "doctor's
assistant," as if the process of interpretation were equal to taking s o m e o n e ' s temperature, or changing a bedpan. S h e never asked h i m about the patients w h o c a m e to the
doctor's office, or said t h a t his j o b was a big responsibility.
For this reason it flattered Mr. Kapasi t h a t Mrs. Das was so intrigued by his j o b .
U n l i k e his wife, she had reminded h i m o f its intellectual challenges. S h e had also
used t h e wrord " r o m a n t i c . " S h e did n o t b e h a v e in a r o m a n t i c way toward h e r husband, and yet she h a d used the word to describe h i m . H e wondered if Mr. and Mrs.
Das were a bad m a t c h , just as h e and his wife were. Perhaps they, too, h a d little in
c o m m o n apart from three children and a decade o f their lives. T h e signs h e recognized from his own marriage were t h e r e t h e bickering, t h e indifference, the protracted silences. Fler sudden interest in h i m , an interest she did n o t express in either
h e r husband or h e r children, was mildly i n t o x i c a t i n g . W h e n M r . Kapasi thought
o n c e again about h o w she had said " r o m a n t i c , " t h e feeling o f i n t o x i c a t i o n grew.
H e began to c h e c k his reflection in t h e rearview mirror as h e drove, feeling
grateful t h a t h e had c h o s e n t h e gray suit t h a t morning and n o t t h e brown one, w h i c h
tended to sag a little in t h e knees. From time to time h e glanced through t h e mirror
at Mrs. Das. I n addition to glancing at h e r face h e glanced at the strawberry b e t w e e n
h e r breasts, and t h e golden brown hollow in h e r throat. H e decided to tell Mrs. Das
about a n o t h e r patient, and a n o t h e r : the young w o m a n w h o had c o m p l a i n e d o f a sensation o f raindrops in h e r spine, t h e g e n t l e m a n whose birthmark h a d begun to sprout
hairs. Mrs. Das listened attentively, stroking her hair with a small plastic brush t h a t resembled an oval bed of nails, asking more questions, for yet a n o t h e r example. T h e children were quiet, intent o n spotting more monkeys in the trees, and Mr. Das was absorbed by his tour book, so it seemed like a private conversation between Mr. Kapasi
and Mrs. Das. In this m a n n e r t h e n e x t h a l f hour passed, and w h e n they stopped for
l u n c h at a roadside restaurant t h a t sold fritters and o m e l e t t e sandwiches, usually
s o m e t h i n g Mr. Kapasi looked forward to o n his tours so t h a t h e could sit in peace and
e n j o y some h o t tea, h e was disappointed. A s the Das family settled together under a
m a g e n t a umbrella fringed with white and orange tassels, and placed their orders with
o n e o f the waiters wrho m a r c h e d about in tricornered caps, M r . Kapasi reluctantly
headed toward a neighboring table.
80
" M r . Kapasi, wait. T h e r e ' s room h e r e , " Mrs. Das called out. S h e gathered T i n a
o n t o her lap, insisting that h e a c c o m p a n y t h e m . A n d so, together, they had bottled
mango j u i c e and sandwiches and plates of o n i o n s and potatoes deep-fried in grahamflour batter. A f t e r finishing two o m e l e t t e sandwiches Mr. Das took more pictures of
t h e group as they ate.
" H o w m u c h longer?" h e asked Mr. Kapasi as h e paused t o load a new roll o f film
in t h e camera.
" A b o u t h a l f an hour m o r e . "
By n o w t h e c h i l d r e n h a d g o t t e n up from t h e table to l o o k at more monkeys
perched in a nearby tree, so there was a considerable space b e t w e e n Mrs. Das and
Mr. Kapasi. Mr. Das placed t h e c a m e r a to his face and squeezed o n e eye shut, his
tongue exposed at o n e c o r n e r o f his m o u t h . " T h i s looks funny. M i n a , you n e e d to
lean in closer to Mr. Kapasi."
S h e did. H e could smell a s c e n t o n h e r skin, like a mixture of whiskey and rosewater. H e worried suddenly t h a t she could smell his perspiration, w h i c h h e k n e w h a d
c o l l e c t e d b e n e a t h t h e s y n t h e t i c material o f his shirt. H e polished off his mango j u i c e
in one gulp and s m o o t h e d his silver hair with his hands. A bit of the juice dripped
o n t o his c h i n . H e wondered if Mrs. Das had n o t i c e d .
S h e had not. " W h a t ' s your address, M r . Kapasi?" she inquired, fishing for something inside her straw bag.
" Y o u would like my address?"
" S o we c a n send you copies," she said. " O f t h e pictures." S h e h a n d e d h i m a scrap
of paper w h i c h she had hastily ripped from a page of her film magazine. T h e b l a n k
portion was limited, for the narrow strip was crowded by lines o f t e x t and a tiny picture of a h e r o and h e r o i n e embracing under a eucalyptus tree.
T h e paper curled as Mr. Kapasi wrote his address in clear, careful letters. S h e would
write to him, asking about his days interpreting at the doctor's office, and h e would respond eloquently, choosing only the most entertaining anecdotes, ones that would make
her laugh out loud as she read them in her house in N e w Jersey. In time she would reveal
the disappointment of her marriage, and h e his. In this way their friendship would grow,
and flourish. H e would possess a picture of the two o f them, eating fried onions under a
magenta umbrella, which he would keep, h e decided, safely tucked between the pages of
his Russian grammar. A s his mind raced, Mr. Kapasi experienced a mild and pleasant
shock. It was similar to a feeling h e used to experience long ago when, after months of
translating with the aid of a dictionary, h e would finally read a passage from a French
novel, or an Italian sonnet, and understand the words, one after another, unencumbered
by his own efforts. In those moments Mr. Kapasi used to believe that all was right w7ith
die world, that all struggles were rewarded, that all of life's mistakes made sense in the
end. T h e promise that h e would hear from Mrs. Das now filled h i m with the same belief.
W h e n h e finished writing his address Mr. Kapasi handed her the paper, but as
soon as h e did so h e worried t h a t h e h a d e i t h e r misspelled his n a m e , or accidentally
reversed t h e numbers o f his postal code. H e dreaded t h e possibility of a lost letter, t h e
photograph never reaching h i m , hovering somewhere in Orissa, 0 close but ultimately
u n a t t a i n a b l e . H e t h o u g h t o f asking for the. slip o f paper again, just to make sure h e
had written his address accurately, but Mrs. Das h a d already dropped it into the
j u m b l e o f her bag.
Orissa: a state on the southwest border of West Bengal.
T h e y r e a c h e d Koriarak at two-thirty. T h e temple, made of sandstone, was a massive pyramid-like structure in t h e shape of a chariot. It was dedicated to t h e great
master of life, t h e sun, w h i c h struck three sides of t h e edifice as it made its journey
e a c h day across t h e sky. T w e n t y - f o u r giant wheels were carved o n t h e n o r t h and
south sides o f t h e plinth. T h e whole thing was drawn by a team o f seven horses,
speeding as if through t h e h e a v e n s . A s they approached, Mr. Kapasi explained t h a t
the temple h a d b e e n built b e t w e e n A.D. 1 2 4 3 and 1 2 5 5 , with t h e efforts of twelve
hundred artisans, by t h e great ruler of t h e G a n g a dynasty, King Narasimhadeva the
First, to c o m m e m o r a t e his victory against t h e Muslim army.
" I t says t h e temple occupies about a hundred and seventy acres of land," Mr. Das
said, reading from his b o o k .
"It's like a desert," R o n n y said, his eyes wandering across t h e sand that stretched
o n all sides beyond the temple.
" T h e C h a n d r a b h a g a R i v e r o n c e flowed o n e mile n o r t h o f here. It is dry n o w , "
M r . Kapasi said, turning off t h e engine.
T h e y got out and walked toward t h e temple, posing first for pictures by t h e pair
of lions t h a t flanked t h e steps. Mr. Kapasi led t h e m n e x t to o n e o f t h e wheels of the
chariot, h i g h e r t h a n any h u m a n being, n i n e feet in diameter.
" T h e wheels are supposed to symbolize t h e wheel o f life,'" Mr. Das read. " T h e y
depict t h e cycle of creation, preservation, a n d a c h i e v e m e n t of realization.' C o o l . " H e
turned the page o f his book. " ' E a c h wheel is divided into eight t h i c k and t h i n spokes,
dividing the day into eight equal parts. T h e rims are carved with designs of birds and
animals, whereas t h e medallions in t h e spokes are carved with w o m e n in luxurious
poses, largely erotic in n a t u r e . " '
W h a t h e referred to were t h e countless friezes of e n t w i n e d n a k e d bodies, making
love in various positions, w o m e n clinging to the n e c k s of m e n , their k n e e s wrapped
eternally around their lovers' thighs. In addition to these were assorted scenes from
daily life, of h u n t i n g and trading, o f deer being killed with bows and arrows and
m a r c h i n g warriors holding swords in their hands.
It was n o longer possible to enter t h e temple, for it had filled with rubble years
ago, but t h e y admired t h e exterior, as did all the tourists M r . Kapasi brought there,
slowly strolling along e a c h of its sides. M r . Das trailed b e h i n d , taking pictures. T h e
c h i l d r e n ran ahead, pointing t o figures o f naked people, intrigued in particular by the
N a g a m i t h u n a s , t h e h a l f - h u m a n , half-serpentine couples who were said, Mr. Kapasi
told t h e m , t o live in t h e deepest waters o f t h e sea. M r . K a p a s i was pleased t h a t
t h e y liked t h e t e m p l e , pleased e s p e c i a l l y t h a t it a p p e a l e d t o Mrs. D a s .
She
stopped every t h r e e or four p a c e s , staring s i l e n t l y at t h e carved lovers, a n d t h e
p r o c e s s i o n s o f e l e p h a n t s , a n d t h e topless f e m a l e musicians b e a t i n g o n two-sided
drums.
T h o u g h M r . Kapasi h a d b e e n to t h e temple countless times, it occurred to h i m ,
as h e , too, gazed at t h e topless w o m e n , t h a t h e had n e v e r seen his own wife fully
naked. E v e n w h e n they h a d made love she kept the panels o f her blouse h o o k e d together, the string of her p e t t i c o a t k n o t t e d around h e r waist. H e had n e v e r admired
the backs of his wife's legs t h e way h e n o w admired those of Mrs. Das, walking as if
for his benefit alone. H e had, of course, seen plenty of bare limbs before, belonging to
the A m e r i c a n and European ladies w h o t o o k his tours. B u t Mrs. Das was different.
U n l i k e t h e o t h e r w o m e n , who had a n interest only in t h e temple, and kept their
noses buried in a guidebook, or their eyes b e h i n d t h e lens o f a camera, Mrs. Das had
t a k e n an interest in h i m .
95
Mr. Kapasi was anxious to be a l o n e with her, to c o n t i n u e their private conversation, yet h e felt nervous to walk at h e r side. S h e was lost b e h i n d her sunglasses, ignoring h e r husband's requests t h a t she pose for a n o t h e r picture, walking past h e r
children as if they were strangers. W o r r i e d that h e might disturb her, M r . Kapasi
walked ahead, to admire, as h e always did, the three life-sized bronze avatars o f Surya,
the sun god, e a c h emerging from its own n i c h e o n t h e temple facade to greet t h e sun
at dawn, n o o n , and evening. T h e y wore elaborate headdresses, their languid, elongated eyes closed, their bare chests draped with carved c h a i n s and amulets. Hibiscus
petals, offerings from previous visitors, were strewn at their gray-green feet. T h e last
statue, o n the n o r t h e r n wall o f t h e temple, was Mr. Kapasi's favorite. T h i s Surya had
a tired expression, weary after a hard day o f work, sitting astride a horse with folded
legs. E v e n his horse's eyes were drowsy. A r o u n d his body were smaller sculptures o f
w o m e n in pairs, their hips thrust t o o n e side.
" W h o ' s t h a t ? " Mrs. Das asked. H e was startled to see t h a t she was standing beside h i m .
" H e is t h e A s t a c h a l a - S u r y a , " M r . Kapasi said. " T h e setting sun."
" S o in a couple o f hours t h e sun will set right here?" S h e slipped a foot out o f o n e
of her square-heeled shoes, rubbed h e r toes o n t h e b a c k of h e r o t h e r leg.
" T h a t is c o r r e c t . "
S h e raised h e r sunglasses for a m o m e n t , t h e n put t h e m back o n again. " N e a t . "
M r . Kapasi was n o t certain exactly what the word suggested, but he had a feeling
it was a favorable response. H e hoped t h a t Mrs. Das h a d understood Surya's beauty,
his power. Perhaps they would discuss it further i n their letters. H e would explain
things to her, things about India, and she would explain things to h i m about A m e r i c a .
In its own way this correspondence would fulfill his dream, o f serving as an interpreter b e t w e e n nations. H e looked at h e r straw bag, delighted that his address lay
nestled among its c o n t e n t s . W h e n h e pictured h e r so m a n y thousands o f miles away
h e plummeted, so m u c h so t h a t h e had a n o v e r w h e l m i n g urge to wyrap his arms
around her, to freeze with her, e v e n for an instant, in a n e m b r a c e witnessed by his
favorite Surya. B u t Mrs. Das had already started walking.
" W h e n do you return to A m e r i c a ? " h e asked, trying to sound placid.
" I n t e n days."
H e calculated: A week to settle in, a week to develop t h e pictures, a few days to
compose her letter, two weeks to get to India by air. A c c o r d i n g to his schedule, allowing room for delays, h e would h e a r from Mrs. Das in approximately six weeks' time.
T h e family was silent as Mr. Kapasi drove t h e m back, a little past four-thirty, t o
H o t e l S a n d y Villa. T h e c h i l d r e n h a d bought miniature granite versions o f t h e chariot's wheels at a souvenir stand, and they turned t h e m round in their hands. Mr. Das
c o n t i n u e d t o read his book. Mrs. Das untangled T i n a ' s hair with her brush and divided it into two little ponytails.
M r . Kapasi was beginning to dread the t h o u g h t o f dropping t h e m off. H e was n o t
prepared to begin his six-week wait to h e a r from Mrs. Das. A s h e stole glances at h e r
in t h e rearview mirror, wrapping elastic bands around T i n a ' s hair, h e wondered h o w
h e might make the tour last a little longer. Ordinarily h e sped b a c k to Puri using a
shortcut, eager to return h o m e , scrub his feet and hands with sandalwood soap, and
e n j o y the e v e n i n g newspaper and a cup of tea t h a t his wife would serve h i m in sil e n c e . T h e t h o u g h t o f t h a t silence, something to w h i c h h e ' d long b e e n resigned, now
oppressed h i m . It was t h e n t h a t h e suggested visiting t h e hills at Udayagiri and
Khandagiri, where a n u m b e r o f m o n a s t i c dwellings were h e w n out of t h e ground,
facing o n e a n o t h e r across a defile. It was s o m e miles away, but well worth seeing,
M r . Kapasi told t h e m .
" O h yeah, there's something m e n t i o n e d about it in this b o o k , " M r . Das said.
" B u i l t by a J a i n king or s o m e t h i n g . "
" S h a l l we go t h e n ? " M r . Kapasi asked. H e paused at a turn in the road. "It's to
t h e left."
Mr. Das turned to look at Mrs. Das. B o t h of t h e m shrugged.
"Left, left," t h e c h i l d r e n c h a n t e d .
115
Mr. Kapasi turned the wheel, almost delirious with relief. H e did n o t know w h a t
h e would do or say to Mrs. Das o n c e they arrived at t h e hills. Perhaps h e would tell
her what a pleasing smile she had. Perhaps h e would c o m p l i m e n t h e r strawberry
shirt, w h i c h h e found irresistibly b e c o m i n g . Perhaps, w h e n M r . Das was busy taking a
picture, h e would take her hand.
H e did n o t h a v e to worry. W h e n they got to the hills, divided by a steep path
t h i c k with trees, Mrs. Das refused to get out o f t h e car. A l l along the path, dozens o f
monkeys were seated o n stones, as well as on t h e b r a n c h e s of the trees. T h e i r hind
legs were stretched out in front and raised to shoulder level, their arms resting on
their knees.
" M y legs are tired," she said, sinking low in her seat. "I'll stay h e r e . "
" W h y did you h a v e to wear those stupid shoes?" M r . Das said. " Y o u won't be in
t h e pictures."
"Pretend Pm there."
120
" B u t we could use one of these pictures for our Christmas card this year. W e didn't
get o n e o f all five o f us at t h e S u n T e m p l e . Mr. Kapasi could take it."
" I ' m n o t c o m i n g . Anyway, those monkeys give m e the creeps."
" B u t they're harmless," M r . Das said. H e turned to Mr. Kapasi. " A r e n ' t they?"
" T h e y are more hungry t h a n dangerous," M r . Kapasi said. " D o n o t provoke t h e m
with food, and they will n o t b o t h e r you."
M r . Das headed up t h e defile with the children, t h e boys at his side, the little girl
o n his shoulders. M r . Kapasi w a t c h e d as they crossed paths with a Japanese m a n and
w o m a n , the only o t h e r tourists there, who paused for a final photograph,
then
stepped into a nearby car and drove away. A s t h e car disappeared out of view some o f
t h e monkeys called out, emitting soft whooping sounds, and t h e n walked o n their flat
b l a c k hands and feet up the path. A t o n e p o i n t a group o f t h e m formed a little ring
around M r . Das and the children. T i n a screamed in delight. R o n n y ran in circles
around his father. B o b b y b e n t down and picked up a fat s t i c k o n t h e ground. W h e n
h e e x t e n d e d it, o n e o f t h e monkeys approached h i m and s n a t c h e d it, t h e n briefly
b e a t t h e ground.
"I'll j o i n t h e m , " Mr. Kapasi said, unlocking t h e door o n his side. " T h e r e is m u c h
to explain about t h e c a v e s . "
" N o . S t a y a m i n u t e , " Mrs. Das said. S h e got out o f t h e b a c k seat and slipped in
beside Mr. Kapasi. " R a j has his dumb b o o k anyway." T o g e t h e r , through t h e windshield, Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi w a t c h e d as B o b b y and the m o n k e y passed t h e stick
back and forth b e t w e e n t h e m .
" A brave little b o y , " Mr. Kapasi c o m m e n t e d .
Jain: an adherent of Jainism, a dualistic, ascetic religion founded in the sixth century B.C. in revolt
against the Hindu caste system.
125
"It's not so surprising," Mrs. Das said.
"No?"
"He's not his."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Raj's. He's not Raj's son."
Mr. Kapasi felt a prickle on his skin. He reached into his shirt pocket for the
small tin of lotus-oil balm he carried with him at all times, and applied it to three
spots on his forehead. He knew that Mrs. Das was watching him, but he did not turn
to face her. Instead he watched as the figures of Mr. Das and the children grew
smaller, climbing up the steep path, pausing every now and then for a picture, surrounded by a growing number of monkeys.
"Are you surprised?" The way she put it made him choose his words with care.
"It's not the type of thing one assumes," Mr. Kapasi replied slowly. He put the tin
of lotus-oil balm back in his pocket.
"No, of course not. And no one knows, of course. No one at all. I've kept it a secret for eight whole years." She looked at Mr. Kapasi, tilting her chin as if to gain a
fresh perspective. "But now I've told you."
Mr. Kapasi nodded. He felt suddenly parched, and his forehead was warm and
slightly numb from the balm. He considered asking Mrs. Das for a sip of water, then
decided against it.
"We met when we were very young," she said. She reached into her straw bag in
search of something, then pulled out a packet of puffed rice. "Want some?"
"No, thank you."
She put a fistful in her mouth, sank into the seat a little, and looked away from
Mr. Kapasi, out the window on her side of the car. "We married when we were still in
college. We were in high school when he proposed. We went to the same college, of
course. Back then we couldn't stand the thought of being separated, not for a day,
not for a minute. Our parents were best friends who lived in the same town. My entire life I saw him every weekend, either at our house or theirs. W e were sent upstairs
to play together while our parents joked about our marriage. Imagine! They never
caught us at anything, though in a way I think it was all more or less a setup. The
things we did those Friday and Saturday nights, while our parents sat downstairs
drinking tea . . . I could tell you stories, Mr. Kapasi."
As a result of spending all her time in college with Raj, she continued, she did
not make many close friends. There was no one to confide in about him at the end of
a difficult day, or to share a passing thought or a worry. Her parents now lived on the
other side of the world, but she had never been very close to them, anyway. After
marrying so young she was overwhelmed by it all, having a child so quickly, and nursing, and warming up bottles of milk and testing their temperature against her wrist
while Raj was at work, dressed in sweaters and corduroy pants, teaching his students
about rocks and dinosaurs. Raj never looked cross or harried, or plump as she had become after the first baby.
Always tired, she declined invitations from her one or two college girlfriends, to
have lunch or shop in Manhattan. Eventually the friends stopped calling her, so that
she was left at home all day with the baby, surrounded by toys that made her trip
when she walked or wince when she sat, always cross and tired. Only occasionally
did they go out after Ronny was born, and even more rarely did they entertain. Raj
didn't mind; he looked forward to coming home from teaching and watching television and bouncing Ronny on his knee. She had been outraged when Raj told her
that a Punjabi 0 friend, someone whom she had once met but did not remember, would
be staying with them for a week for some job interviews in the New Brunswick area.
Bobby was conceived in the afternoon, on a sofa littered with rubber teething
toys, after the friend learned that a London pharmaceutical company had hired him,
while Ronny cried to be freed from his playpen. She made no protest when the friend
touched the small of her back as she was about to make a pot of coffee, then pulled
her against his crisp navy suit. He made love to her swiftly, in silence, with an expertise she had never known, without the meaningful expressions and smiles Raj always
insisted on afterward. The next day Raj drove the friend to JFK. He was married now,
to a Punjabi girl, and they lived in London still, and every year they exchanged
Christmas cards with Raj and Mina, each couple tucking photos of their families into
the envelopes. He did not know that he was Bobby's father. He never would.
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Das, but why have you told me this information?"
Mr. Kapasi asked when she had finally finished speaking, and had turned to face him
once again.
"For God's sake, stop calling me Mrs. Das. I'm twenty-eight. You probably have
children my age."
"Not quite." It disturbed Mr. Kapasi to learn that she thought of him as a parent.
The feeling he had had toward her, that had made him check his reflection in the
rearview mirror as they drove, evaporated a little.
"I told you because of your talents." She put the packet of puffed rice back into
her bag without folding over the top.
"I don't understand," Mr. Kapasi said.
"Don't you see? For eight years I haven't been able to express this to anybody,
not to friends, certainly not to Raj. He doesn't even suspect it. He thinks Pm still in
love with him. Well, don't you have anything to say?"
"About what?"
"About what I've just told you. About my secret, and about how terrible it makes
me feel. I feel terrible looking at my children, and at Raj, always terrible. I have terrible urges, Mr. Kapasi, to throw things away. One day I had the urge to throw everything I own out the window, the television, the children, everything. Don't you
think, it's unhealthy?"
He was silent.
"Mr. Kapasi, don't you have anything to say? I thought that was your job."
"My job is to give tours, Mrs. Das."
"Not that. Your other job. As an interpreter."
"But we do not face a language barrier. What need is there for an interpreter?"
"That's not what I mean. I would never have told you otherwise. Don't you realize what it means for me to tell you?"
"What does it mean?"
"It means that I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi,
I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better, say the right
thing. Suggest some kind of remedy."
He looked at her, in her red plaid skirt and strawberry T-shirt, a woman not yet
thirty, who loved neither her husband nor her children, who had already fallen out of
love with life. Her confession depressed him, depressed him all the more when he
-Punjabi: a native of Punjab, a state in northwest India
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thought of Mr. Das at the top of the path, Tina clinging to his shoulders, taking pictures of ancient monastic cells cut into the hills to show his students in America, unsuspecting and unaware that one of his sons was not his own. Mr. Kapasi felt insulted
that Mrs. Das should ask him to interpret her common, trivial little secret. She did
not resemble the patients in the doctor's office, those who came glassy-eyed and desperate, unable to sleep or breathe or urinate with ease, unable, above all, to give
words to their pains. Still, Mr. Kapasi believed it was his duty to assist Mrs. Das. Perhaps he ought to tell her to confess the truth to Mr. Das. He would explain that honesty was the best policy. Honesty, surely, would help her feel better, as she'd put it.
Perhaps he would offer to preside over the discussion, as a mediator. He decided to
begin with the most obvious question, to get to the heart of the matter, and so he
asked, "Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?"
She turned to him and glared, mustard oil thick on her frosty pink lips. She
opened her mouth to say something, but as she glared at Mr. Kapasi some certain
knowledge seemed to pass before her eyes, and she stopped. It crushed him; he knew
at that moment that he was not even important enough to be properly insulted. She
opened the car door and began walking up the path, wobbling a little on her square
wooden heels, reaching into her straw bag to eat handfuls of puffed rice. It fell
through her fingers, leaving a zigzagging trail, causing a monkey to leap down from a
tree and devour the li ttle white grains. In search of more, the monkey began to follow
Mrs. Das. Others joined him, so that she was soon being followed by about half a
dozen of them, their velvety tails dragging behind.
Mr. Kapasi stepped out of the car. He wanted to holler, to alert her in some way,
but he woiTied that if she knew they were behind her, she would grow nervous. Perhaps she would lose her balance. Perhaps they would pull at her bag or her hair. He
began to jog up the path, taking a fallen branch in his hand to scare away the
monkeys. Mrs. Das continued walking, oblivious, trailing grains of puffed rice.
Near the top of the incline, before a group of cells fronted by a row of squat stone
pillars, Mr. Das was kneeling on the ground focusing the lens of his camera. The
children stood under the arcade, now hiding, now emerging from view.
"Wait for me," Mrs. Das called out. "I'm coming."
Tina jumped up and down. "Here comes Mommy!"
"Great," Mr. Das said without looking up. "Just in time. We'll get Mr. Kapasi to
take a picture of the five of us."
Mr. Kapasi quickened his pace, waving his branch so that the monkeys scampered away, distracted, in another direction.
"Where's Bobby?" Mrs. Das asked when she stopped.
Mr. Das looked up from the camera. "I don't know. Ronny, where's Bobby?"
Ronny shrugged, "I thought he was right here."
"Where is he?" Mrs. Das repeated sharply. "What's wrong with all of you?"
They began calling his name, wandering up and down the path a bit. Because
they were calling, they did not initially hear the boy's screams. When they found
him, a little farther down the path under a tree, he was surrounded by a group of
monkeys, over a dozen of them, pulling at his T-shirt with their long black fingers.
The puffed rice Mrs. Das had spilled was scattered at his feet, raked over by the monkeys' hands. The boy was silent, his body frozen, swift tears running down his startled
face. His bare legs were dusty and red with welts from where one of the monkeys
struck him repeatedly with the stick he had given to it earlier.
"Daddy, the monkey's hurting Bobby," Tina said.
M r . Das wiped his palms o n t h e f r o n t of his shorts. I n h i s nervousness h e a c c i dentally pressed t h e shutter o n his c a m e r a ; t h e whirring noise o f t h e a d v a n c i n g film
e x c i t e d t h e m o n k e y s , and t h e o n e w i t h t h e stick b e g a n to beat B o b b y m o r e i n t e n t l y .
" W h a t are we supposed to do? W h a t if t h e y start a t t a c k i n g ? "
" M r . K a p a s i , " Mrs. Das shrieked, n o t i c i n g him. standing to o n e side. " D o something, for G o d ' s sake, do s o m e t h i n g ! "
M r . Kapasi t o o k his b r a n c h and s h o o e d t h e m away, hissing at t h e o n e s t h a t remained, s t o m p i n g his feet t o scare t h e m . T h e animals retreated slowly, with a measured gait, o b e d i e n t b u t u n i n t i m i d a t e d . M r . Kapasi gathered B o b b y in his arms and
brought h i m b a c k t o w h e r e his parents and siblings were standing. A s h e carried h i m
h e was t e m p t e d to whisper a secret i n t o t h e boy's ear. B u t B o b b y was stunned, and
shivering w i t h fright, his legs b l e e d i n g slightly w h e r e t h e s t i c k h a d b r o k e n t h e skin.
W h e n M r . Kapasi delivered h i m to his parents, M r . Das brushed some dirt off t h e
boy's T - s h i r t and put t h e visor o n h i m t h e right way. Mrs. Das r e a c h e d i n t o h e r straw
bag to find a b a n d a g e w h i c h she taped over t h e cut o n his k n e e . R o n n y offered his
b r o t h e r a fresh p i e c e o f gum. " H e ' s fine. Just a little scared, right, B o b b y ? " M r . Das
said, p a t t i n g t h e top o f his h e a d .
" G o d , let's get out of here," Mrs. Das said. S h e folded her arms across t h e strawberry
o n h e r c h e s t . " T h i s p l a c e gives m e t h e c r e e p s . "
" Y e a h . B a c k to t h e h o t e l , definitely," M r . Das agreed.
" P o o r B o b b y , " Mrs. Das said. " C o m e h e r e a second. L e t M o m m y fix your h a i r . "
A g a i n she r e a c h e d i n t o h e r straw bag, this t i m e for h e r hairbrush, a n d b e g a n to run it
around t h e edges o f t h e t r a n s l u c e n t visor. W h e n she w T hipped out t h e hairbrush, t h e
slip o f paper with M r . Kapasi's address o n it fluttered away in t h e wind. N o o n e but
M r . Kapasi n o t i c e d . H e w a t c h e d as it rose, carried h i g h e r and h i g h e r by t h e breeze,
i n t o t h e trees w h e r e t h e m o n k e y s n o w sat, s o l e m n l y observing t h e s c e n e below.
M r . Kapasi observed it t o o , k n o w i n g t h a t this was t h e p i c t u r e o f t h e Das family h e
would preserve forever in his mind.
D. H. Lawrence
The Rocking-Horse Winner
David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)
was born in
Nottinghamshire, England, child of a coal miner and a
schoolteacher who hated her husband's toil and vowed
that her son should escape it. He took up fiction writing, attaining early success. During World War I}
Lawrence and his wife were unjustly suspected of treason (he because of his pacifism, she because of her
aristocratic German birth). After the armistice they
left England and, seeking a climate healthier for
Laivrence, who suffered from tubercidosis,
wandered in Italy, France, Australia, M e x i c o , and the
American Southwest. Lawrence is an impassioned
spokesman for our unconscious instinctive natures,
which we moderns (he argues) have neglected in favor
of our overweening intellects. In Lady C h a t t e r l e y ' s
D. H. LAWRENCE
175
Lover (1928), he strove to restore explicit sexuality to English fiction. The book, which today seems tame and repetitious, was long banned in Britain and the United States. Deeper.
Lawrence novels include Sons and Lovers (1913), a veiled account of his breaking away
from his fiercely possessive mother; The Rainbow (1915); Women in Love (1921); and
The Plumed Serpent (1926), about a revival of pagan religion in Mexico. Besides fiction,
Lawrence left a rich legacy of poetry, essays, criticism (Studies in Classic American
Literature, 1923, is especially shrewd and funny), and travel writing. Lawrence exerted
deep influence on others, both by the message in his work and by his personal magnetism.
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with ail the advantages, yet
she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny
children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them.
They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she
felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up
she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the
center of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the
more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she
herself knew that at the center of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel
love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She
adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so.
They read it in each other's eyes.
There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the
neighborhood.
Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was
never enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The
father went in to town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these
prospects never materialized. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of
money, though the style was always kept up.
At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not
know where to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but
could not find anything successful. T h e failure made deep lines come into her face.
Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more
money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and
expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better,
and her tastes were just as expensive.
And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be
more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time,
though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and
splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind
the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money!
There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each
one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more
money! There must be more money!"
It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even
the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink
and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking
all the more self-consciously because of it. T h e foolish puppy, too, that took the place
of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but
that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: "There must be more money!"
Yet nobody ever said it aloud. T h e whisper was everywhere, and therefore no
one spoke it. Just as no one ever says: "We are breathing!" in spite of the fact that
breath is coming and going all the time.
"Mother," said the boy Paul one day, "why don't we keep a car of our own? Why
do we always use uncle's, or else a taxi?"
"Because we're the poor members of the family," said the mother.
"But why are we, mother?"
"WellI suppose," she said slowly and bitterly, "it's because your father has
no luck."
The boy was silent for some time.
"Is luck money, mother?" he asked rather timidly.
"No, Paul. Not quite. It's what causes you to have money."
"Oh!" said Paul vaguely. "I thought when Uncle Oscar said filthy lucker, it meant
money."
"Filthy lucre does mean money," said the mother. "But it's lucre, not luck."
"Oh!" said the boy. "Then what is luck, mother?"
"It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That's why
it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if
you're lucky, you will always get more money."
"Oh! Will you? And is father not lucky?"
"Very unlucky, I should say," she said bitterly.
T h e boy watched her with unsure eyes.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know. Nobody ever knows why one person is lucky and another unlucky."
"Don't they? Nobody at all? Does nobody know?"
"Perhaps God. But He never tells."
"He ought to, then. And aren't you lucky either, mother?"
"I can't be, if I married an unlucky husband."
"But by yourself, aren't you?"
"I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I am very unlucky indeed."
"Why?"
"Wellnever mind! Perhaps I'm not really," she said.
The child looked at her, to see if she meant it. But he saw, by the lines of her
mouth, that she was only trying to hide something from him.
"Well, anyhow," he said stoutly, "I'm a lucky person."
"Why?" said his mother, with a sudden laugh.
He stared at her. He didn't even know why he had said it.
"God told me," he asserted, brazening it out.
"I hope He did, dear!" she said, again with a laugh, but rather bitter.
"He did, mother!"
"Excellent!" said the mother, using one of her husband's exclamations.
The boy saw she did not believe him; or, rather, that she paid no attention to his
assertion. This angered him somewhat, and made him want to compel her attention.
He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way, seeking for the clue to
"luck." Absorbed, taking no heed of other people, he went about with a sort of
stealth, seeking inwardly for luck. He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it. When
the two girls were playing dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking-horse,
charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily. Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had
a strange glare in them. The little girls dared not speak to him.
When he had ridden to the end of his mad little journey, he climbed down and
stood in front of his rocking-horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth
was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy-bright.
"Now!" he would silently command the snorting steed. "Now, take me to where
there is luck! Now take me!"
And he would slash the horse on the neck with the little whip he had asked Uncle
Oscar for. He knew the horse could take him to where there was luck, if only he
forced it. So he would mount again, and start on his furious ride, hoping at last to get
there. He knew he could get there.
"You'll break your horse, Paul!" said the nurse.
"He's always riding like that! I wish he'd leave off!" said his elder sister Joan.
But he only glared down on them in silence. Nurse gave him up. She could make
nothing of him. Anyhow he was growing beyond her.
One day his mother and his Uncle Oscar came in when he was on one of his
furious rides. He did not speak to them.
"Hallo, you young jockey! Riding a winner?" said his uncle.
"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse? You're not a very little boy any
longer, you know," said his mother.
But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close-set eyes. He would
speak to nobody when he was in full tilt. His mother watched him with an anxious
expression on her face.
At last he suddenly stopped forcing his horse into the mechanical gallop, and
slid down.
"Well, 1 got there!" he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his
sturdy long legs straddling apart.
"Where did you get to?" asked his mother.
"Where I wanted to go," he flared back at her.
"That's right, son!" said Uncle Oscar. "Don't you stop till you get there. What's
the horse's name?"
"He doesn't have a name," said the boy.
"Gets on without all right?" asked the uncle.
"Well, he has different names. He was called Sansovino last week."
"Sansovino, eh? Won the Ascot. How did you know his name?"
"He always talks about horse-races with Bassett," said Joan.
The uncle was delighted to find that his small nephew was posted with all the
racing news. Bassett, the young gardener, who had been wounded in the left foot in
the war and had got his present job through Oscar Cresswell, whose batman 0 he had
been, was a perfect blade of the "turf." He lived in the racing events, and the small
boy lived with him.
Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.
"Master Paul comes and asks me, so I can't do more than tell him, sir," said Bassett,
his face terribly serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters.
batman: an enlisted man who serves as valet to a cavalry officer.
"And does he ever put anything on a horse he fancies?"
"WellI don't want to give him awayhe's a young sport, a fine sport, sir.
Would you mind asking him himself? He sort of takes a pleasure in it, and perhaps
he'd feel I was giving him away, sir, if you don't mind."
Bassett was serious as a church.
The uncle went back to his nephew and took him off for a ride in the car.
"Say, Paul, old man, do you ever put anything on a horse?" the uncle asked.
The boy watched the handsome man closely.
"Why, do you think I oughtn't to?" he parried.
"Not a bit of it. I thought perhaps you might give me a tip for the Lincoln."
The car sped on into the country, going down to Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire.
"Honor bright?" said the nephew.
"Honor bright, son!" said the uncle.
"Well, then, Daffodil."
"Daffodil! I doubt it, sonny. What about Mirza?"
"I only know the winner," said the boy. "That's Daffodil."
"Daffodil, eh?"
There was a pause. Daffodil was an obscure horse comparatively.
"Uncle!"
"Yes, son?"
"You won't let it go any further, will you? I promised Bassett."
"Bassett be damned, old man! What's he got to do with it?"
"We're partners. We've been partners from the first. Uncle, he lent me my first
five shillings, which I lost. I promised him, honor bright, it was only between me and
him; only you gave me that ten-shilling note I started winning with, so I thought you
were lucky. You won't let it go any further, will you?"
The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue eyes, set rather close together.
The uncle stirred and laughed uneasily.
"Right you are, son! I'll keep your tip private. Daffodil, eh? How much are you
putting on him?"
"All except twenty pounds," said the boy. "I keep that in reserve/'
The uncle thought it a good joke.
"You keep twenty pounds in reserve, do you, you young romancer? What are you
betting, then?"
"I'm betting three hundred," said the boy gravely. "But it's between you and me,
Uncle Oscar! Honor bright?"
The uncle burst into a roar of laughter.
"It's between you and me all right, you young Nat Gould," 0 he said, laughing.
"But where's your three hundred?"
"Bassett keeps it for me. We're partners."
"You are, are you! And what is Bassett putting on Daffodil?"
"He won't go quite as high as I do, I expect. Perhaps he'll go a hundred and fifty."
"What, pennies?" laughed the uncle.
"Pounds," said the child, with a surprised look at his uncle. "Bassett keeps a bigger
reserve than I do."
Between wonder and amusement Uncle Oscar was silent. He pursued the matter
no further, but he determined to take his nephew with him to the Lincoln races.
Nat Gould: celebrated English gambler of the 1920s.
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95
"Now, son," he said, "I'm putting twenty on Mirza, and I'll put five for you on
any horse you fancy. What's your pick?"
"Daffodil, uncle."
"No, not the fiver on Daffodil!"
"I should if it was my own fiver," said the child.
"Good! Good! Right you are! A fiver for me and a fiver for you on Daffodil."
The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire.
He pursed his mouth tight, and watched. A Frenchman just in front had put his
money on Lancelot. Wild with excitement, he flayed his arms up and down, yelling,
"Lancelot! Lancelot/" in his French accent.
Daffodil came in first, Lancelot second, Mirza third. The child, flushed and with
eyes blazing, was curiously serene. His uncle brought him four five-pound notes, four
to one.
"What am I to do with these?" he cried, waving them before the boy's eyes.
"I suppose we'll talk to Bassett," said the boy. "I expect I have fifteen hundred
now; and twenty in reserve; and this twenty."
His uncle studied him for some moments.
"Look here, son!" he said. "You're not serious about Bassett and that fifteen hundred,
are you?"
"Yes, I am. But it's between you and me, uncle. Honor bright!"
"Honor bright all right, son! But I must talk to Bassett."
"If you'cl like to be a partner, uncle, with Bassett and me, we could all be partners. Only, you'd have to promise, honor bright, uncle, not to let it go beyond us
three. Bassett and I are lucky, and you must be lucky, because it was your ten shillings
I started winning with . . . "
Uncle Oscar took both Bassett and Paul into Richmond Park for an afternoon,
and there they talked.
"It's like this, you see, sir," Bassett said. "Master Paul would get me talking about
racing events, spinning yarns, you know, sir. And he was always keen on knowing if
I'd made or if I'd lost. It's about a year since, now, that I put five shillings on Blush of
Dawn for himand we lost. Then the luck turned, and with that ten shillings he had
from you, that we put on Singhalese. And since that time, it's been pretty steady, all
things considering. What do you say, Master Paul?"
"We're all right when we're sure," said Paul. "It's when we're not quite sure that
we go down."
"Oh, but we're careful then," said Bassett.
"But when are you sure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.
"It's Master Paul, sir," said Bassett, in a secret, religious voice. "It's as if he had it
from heaven. Like Daffodil, now, for the Lincoln. That was as sure as eggs."
"Did you put anything on Daffodil?" asked Oscar Cresswell.
"Yes, sir. I made my bit."
"And my nephew?"
Bassett was obstinately silent, looking at Paul.
"I made twelve hundred, didn't I, Bassett? I told uncle I was putting three hundred
on Daffodil."
"That's right," said Bassett, nodding.
"But where's the money?" asked the uncle.
"I keep it safe locked up, sir. Master Paul he can have it any minute he likes to
ask for it."
"What, fifteen hundred pounds?"
"And twenty! And forty, that is, with the twenty he made on the course."
"It's amazing!" said the uncle.
"If Master Paul offers you to be partners, sir, I would, if I were you; if you'll excuse me," said Bassett.
Oscar Cresswell thought about it.
"I'll see the money," he said.
They drove home again, and sure enough, Bassett came round to the gardenhouse with fifteen hundred pounds in notes. The twenty pounds reserve was left with
Joe Glee, in the Turf Commission deposit.
"You see, it's all right, uncle, when I'm sure! Then we go strong, for all we're
worth. Don't we, Bassett!"
"We do that, Master Paul."
"And when are you sure?" said the uncle, laughing.
"Oh, well, sometimes I'm absolutely sure, like about Daffodil," said the boy; "and
sometimes I have an idea; and sometimes I haven't even an idea, have I, Bassett?
Then we're careful, because we mostly go down."
"You do, do you! And when you're sure, like about Daffodil, what makes you
sure, sonny?"
"Oh, well, I don't know," said the boy uneasily. "I'm sure, you know, uncle;
that's all."
"It's as if he had it from heaven, sir," Bassett reiterated.
"I should say so!" said the uncle.
But he became a partner. And when the Leger was coming on, Paul was "sure"
about Lively Spark, which was a quite inconsiderable horse. The boy insisted on
putting a thousand on the horse, Bassett went for five hundred, and Oscar Cresswell
two hundred. Lively Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to one against
him. Paul had made ten thousand.
"You see," he said, "I was absolutely sure of him."
Even Oscar Cresswell had cleared two thousand.
"Look here, son," he said, "this sort of thing makes me nervous."
"It needn't, uncle! Perhaps I shan't be sure again for a long time."
"But what are you going to do with your money?" asked the uncle.
"Of course," said the boy, "I started it for mother. She said she had no luck,
because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."
"What might stop whispering?"
"Our house. I hate our house for whispering."
"What does it whisper?"
"Whywhy"the boy fidgeted"why, I don't know. But it's always short of
money, you know, uncle."
"I know it, son, I know it."
"You know people send mother writs, don't you, uncle?"
"I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.
"And then the house whispers, like people laughing at you behind your back. It's
awful, that is! I thought if I w7as lucky . . ."
"You might stop it," added the uncle.
The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them,
and he said never a word.
"Well, then!" said the uncle. "What are we doing?"
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"I shouldn't like mother to know I was lucky," said the boy.
"Why not, son?"
"She'd stop me."
"I don't think she would."
"Oh!"and the boy writhed in an odd way"I don't want her to know, uncle."
"All right, son! We'll manage it without her knowing."
They managed it very easily. Paul, at the other's suggestion, handed over five
thousand pounds to his uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who was then
to inform Paul's mother that a relative had put five thousand pounds into his hands,
which sum was to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time, on the mother's birthday,
for the next five years.
"So she'll have a birthday present of a thousand pounds for five successive years,"
said Uncle Oscar. "1 hope it won't make it all the harder for her later."
Paul's mother had her birthday in November. The house had been "whispering"
worse than ever lately, and, even in spite of his luck, Paul could not bear up against it.
He was very anxious to see the effect of the birthday letter, telling his mother about
the thousand pounds.
When there were no visitors, Paul now took his meals with his parents, as he was
beyond the nursery control. His mother went into town nearly every day. She had
discovered that she had an odd knack of sketching furs and dress materials, so she
worked secretly in the studio of a friend who was the chief "artist" for the leading
drapers. She drew the figures of ladies in furs and ladies in silk and sequins for the
newspaper advertisements. This young woman artist earned several thousand pounds
a year, but Paul's mother only made several hundreds, and she was again dissatisfied.
She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making
sketches for drapery advertisements.
She was down to breakfast on the morning of her birthday. Paul watched her face
as she read the letters. He knew the lawyer's letter. As his mother read it, her face
hardened and became more expressionless. Then a cold, determined look came on her
mouth. She hid the letter under the pile of others, and said not a word about it.
"Didn't you have anything nice in the post for your birthday, mother?" said Paul.
"Quite moderately nice," she said, her voice cold and absent.
She went away to town without saying more.
But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared. He said Paul's mother had had a
long interview with the lawyer, asking if the whole five thousand could not be advanced
at once, as she was in debt.
"What do you think, uncle?" said the boy.
"I leave it to you, son."
"Oh, let her have it, then! We can get some more with the other," said the boy.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, laddie!" said Uncle Oscar.
"But I'm sure to know for the Grand National; or the Lincolnshire; or else the
Derby. I'm sure to know for one of them," said Paul.
So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's mother touched the whole five
thousand. T h e n something very curious happened. The voices in the house suddenly
went mad, like a chorus of frogs on a spring evening. There were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father's school, in the following autumn. There were flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury
Paul's mother had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of
mimosa and almond blossom, and from under the piles of iridescent cushions, simply
trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: "There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there
must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-wthere must be more money
more than ever! More than ever!"
It frightened Paul terribly. He studied away at his Latin and Greek with his tutors.
But his intense hours were spent with Bassett. The Grand National had gone by: he had
not "known," and had lost a hundred pounds. Summer was at hand. He was in agony for
the Lincoln. But even for the Lincoln he didn't "know," and he lost fifty pounds. He became wild-eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him.
"Let it alone, son! Don't you bother about it!" urged Uncle Oscar. But it was as if
the boy couldn't really hear what his uncle was saying.
"I've got to know for the Derby! I've got to know for the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.
His mother noticed how overwrought he was.
"You'd better go to the seaside. Wouldn't you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think you'd better," she said, looking down at him anxiously, her
heart curiously heavy because of him.
But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.
"I couldn't possibly go before the Derby, mother!" he said. "I couldn't possibly!"
"Why not?" she said, her voice becoming heavy when she was opposed. "Why
not? You can still go from the seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle Oscar, if
that's what you wish. No need for you to wait here. Besides, I think you care too
much about these races. It's a bad sign. My family has been a gambling family, and
you won't know till you grow up how much damage it has done. But it has done damage. I shall have to send Bassett away, and ask Uncle Oscar not to talk racing to you,
unless you promise to be reasonable about it; go away to the seaside and forget it.
You're all nerves!"
"I'll do what you like, mother, so long as you don't send me away till after the
Derby," the boy said.
"Send you away from where? Just from this house?"
"Yes," he said, gazing at her.
"Why, you curious child, what makes you care about this house so much, suddenly?
I never knew you loved it."
He gazed at her without speaking. He had a secret within a secret, something he
had not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.
But his mother, after standing undecided and a little bit sullen for some moments,
said:
"Very well, then! Don't go to the seaside till after the Derby, if you don't wish it.
But promise me you won't let your nerves go to pieces. Promise you won't think so
much about horse-racing and events, as you call them!"
"Oh, no," said the boy casually. "I won't think much about them, mother. You
needn't worry. I wouldn't worry, mother, if I were you."
"If you were me and I were you," said his mother, "I wonder what we should do!"
"But you know you needn't worry, mother, don't you?" the boy repeated.
"I should be awfully glad to know it," she said wearily.
"Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean, you ought to know you needn't worry,"
he insisted.
"Ought I? Then I'll see about it," she said.
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Paul's secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that which had no name. Since he
was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery-governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house.
"Surely, you're too big for a rocking-horse!" his mother had remonstrated.
"Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of
animal about," had been his quaint answer.
"Do you feel he keeps you company?" she laughed.
"Oh, yes! He's very good, he always keeps me company, when Pm there,"
said Paul.
So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested prance in the boy's bedroom.
The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense. He hardly
heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny.
His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for halfan-hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She
wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.
Two nights before the Derby, she was at a big party in town, when one of her
rushes of anxiety about her boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could hardly
speak. She fought with the feeling, might and main, for she believed in commonsense. But it was too strong. She had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the country. T h e children's nursery-governess was terribly surprised and
startled at being rung up in the night.
"Are the children all right, Miss Wiimot?"
"Oh, yes, they are quite all right."
"Master Paul? Is he all right?"
"He went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up and look at him?"
"No," said Paul's mother reluctantly. "No! Don't trouble. It's all right. Don't
sit up. We shall be home fairly soon." She did not want her son's privacy intruded
upon.
"Very good," said the governess.
It was about one-o'clock when Paul's mother and father drove up to their house.
All was still. Paul's mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak. She
had told her maid not to wait up for her. She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a
whisky-arid-soda.
And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart, she stole upstairs to her
son's room. Noiselessly she went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint noise?
What was it?
She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There was a strange,
heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless noise, yet rushing
and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in
God's name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew
what it was.
Yet she could not place it. She couldn't say what it was. And on and on it went,
like a madness.
Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the door-handle.
The room was dark. Yet in the space near the window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She gazed in fear and amazement.
Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pajamas,
madly surging on the rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he
urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale
green and crystal, in the doorway.
"Paul!" she cried. "Whatever are you doing?"
"It's Malabar!" he screamed, in a powerful, strange voice. "It's Malabar!"
His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging
his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented
motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.
But he was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain-fever.
He talked and tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.
"Malabar! It's Malabar! Bassett, Bassett, I know! It's Malabar!"
So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking-horse that gave him his
inspiration.
"What does he mean by Malabar?" asked the heart-frozen mother.
"I don't know," said the father stonily.
"What does he mean by Malabar?" she asked her brother Oscar.
"It's one of the horses running for the Derby," was the answer.
And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to Bassett, and himself put a
thousand on Malabar: at fourteen to one.
The third day of the illness was critical: they were waiting for a change. The boy,
with his rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither slept
nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling
her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.
In the evening, Oscar Cresswell did not come, but Bassett sent a message, saying
could he come up for one moment, just one moment? Paul's mother was very angry at
the intrusion, but on second thought she agreed. The boy was the same. Perhaps Bassett
might bring him to consciousness.
T h e gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache, and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul's mother,
and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes, at the tossing, dying
child.
"Master Paul!" he whispered. "Master Paul! Malabar came in first all right, a
clean win. I did as you told me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds, you
have; you've got over eighty thousand. Malabar came in all right, Master Paul."
"Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother? Did I say Malabar? Do you
think I'm lucky, mother? I knew Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand pounds!
I call that lucky, don't you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn't.
I know I knew? Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse till I'm sure, then I
tell you, Bassett, you can go as high as you like. Did you go for all you were worth,
Bassett?"
"I went a thousand on it, Master Paul."
"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm
absolutely sureoh, absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!"
"No, you never did," said the mother.
But the boy died in the night.
And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother's voice saying to her: "My
God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the
bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rockinghorse to find a winner."
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Bobbie Aon Mason
Shiloh
1982
Bobbie Ann Mason y one of the leading voices in
the new Southern fiction, was born in 1940 in
May field, Kentucky, growing up on a dairy
farm in a region of western Kentucky whose
people often appear in her stories. After her
graduation from the University of Kentucky, she
wrote for popular magazines, including Movie
Life and T V Star Parade, then began teaching
college, taking her Ph.D. at the University of
Connecticut and writing the critical studies
Nabokov's Garden (1974) and The Girl
Sleuth: A Feminist Guide to the Bobbsey
Twins, Nancy Drew, and Their Sisters (1975).
Her other nonfiction books include Clear
Springs (1999), a family memoir, and Elvis
BOBBIE ANN MASON
Presley (2003), a biography in the Penguin
Lives series. Her first fiction collection, Shiloh and Other Stories (1982), received wide
attention; it was followed by Midnight Magic: Selected Stories of Bobbie Ann Mason
(1998), Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail (2001), and Nancy Culpepper (2006). She has
published four novels, In Country (1985), Spence + Lila (1988), Feather Crowns
(1993), and An Atomic Romance (2005). Mason has also supplied many unsigned contributions to the "Talk of the Town' feature in the New Yorker. She is a professor of English
at the University of Kentucky.
Leroy Moffitt's wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals. She lifts threepound dumbbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell. Standing
with her legs apart, she reminds Leroy of Wonder Woman.
"I'd give anything if I could just get these muscles to where they're real hard,"
says Norma Jean. "Feel this arm. It's not as hard as the other one."
"That's 'cause you're right-handed," says Leroy, dodging as she swings the barbell
in an arc.
"Do you think so?"
"Sure."
Leroy is a truckdriver. He injured his leg in a highway accident four months ago,
and his physical therapy, which involves weights and a pulley, prompted Norma Jean
to try building herself up. Now she is attending a body-building class. Leroy has been
collecting temporary disability since his tractor-trailer jack-knifed in Missouri, badly
twisting his left leg in its socket. I le has a steel pin in his hip. I le will probably not be
able to drive his rig again. It sits in the backyard, like a gigantic bird that has flown
home to roost. Leroy has been home in Kentucky for three months, and his leg is almost healed, but the accident frightened him and he does not want to drive any more
long hauls. He is not sure what to do next. In the meantime, he makes things from
craft kits. He started by building a miniature log cabin from notched Popsicle sticks.
He varnished it and placed it on the T V set, where it remains. It reminds him of a
rustic Nativity scene. Then he tried string art (sailing ships on black velvet), a
macrame owl kit, a snap-together B-17 Flying Fortress, and a lamp made out of a
model truck, with a light fixture screwed in the top of the cab. At first the kits were
diversions, something to kill time, but now he is thinking about building a full-scale
log house from a kit. It would be considerably cheaper than building a regular house,
and besides, Leroy has grown to appreciate how things are put together. He has begun to realize that in all the years he was on the road he never took time to examine
anything. He was always flying past scenery.
"They won't let you build a log cabin in any of the new subdivisions," Norma
Jean tells him.
"They will if I tell them it's for you," he says, teasing her. Ever since they were
married, he has promised Norma Jean he would build her a new home one day. They
have always rented, and the house they live in is small and nondescript. It does not
even feel like a home, Leroy realizes now.
Norma Jean works at the Rexall drugstore, and she has acquired an amazing
amount of information about cosmetics. When she explains to Leroy the three
stages of complexion care, involving creams, toners, and moisturizers, he thinks
happily of other petroleum productsaxle grease, diesel fuel. This is a connection
between him and Norma Jean. Since he has been home, he has felt unusually tender about his wife and guilty over his long absences. But he can't tell what she feels
about him. Norma Jean has never complained about his traveling; she has never
made hurt remarks, like calling his truck a "widow-maker." He is reasonably certain
she has been faithful to him, but he wishes she would celebrate his permanent
home-coming more happily. Norma Jean is often startled to find Leroy at home,
and he thinks she seems a little disappointed about it. Perhaps he reminds her too
much of the early days of their marriage, before he went on the road. They had a
child who died as an infant, years ago. They never speak about their memories of
Randy, which have almost faded, but now that Leroy is home all the time, they
sometimes feel awkward around each other, and Leroy wonders if one of them
should mention the child. He has the feeling that they are waking up out of a
dream togetherthat they must create a new marriage, start afresh. They are lucky
they are still married. Leroy has read that for most people losing a child destroys
the marriageor else he heard this on Donahue. He can't always remember where
he learns things anymore.
At Christmas, Leroy bought an electric organ for Norma Jean. She used to play
the piano when she was in high school. "It don't leave you," she told him once. "It's
like riding a bicycle."
The new instrument had so many keys and buttons that she was bewildered by it
at first. She touched the keys tentatively, pushed some buttons, then pecked out
"Chopsticks." It came out in an amplified fox-trot rhythm, with marimba sounds.
"It's an orchestra!" she cried.
T h e organ had a pecan-look finish and eighteen preset chords, with optional
flute, violin, trumpet, clarinet, and banjo accompaniments. Norma Jean mastered the
organ almost immediately. At first she played Christmas songs. Then she bought The
Sixties Songbook and learned every tune in it, adding variations to each with the rows
of brightly colored buttons.
10
"I didn't like these old songs back then," she said. "But I have this crazy feeling I
missed something."
"You didn't miss a thing," said Leroy.
Leroy likes to lie on the couch and smoke a joint and listen to Norma Jean play
"Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and T i l Be Back." He is back again. After fifteen
years on the road, he is finally settling down with the woman he loves. She is still
pretty. Her skin is flawless. Her frosted curls resemble pencil trimmings.
Now that Leroy has come home to stay, he notices how much the town has
changed. Subdivisions are spreading across western Kentucky like an oil slick. The
sign at the edge of town says "Pop: 11,500"only seven hundred more than it said
twenty years before. Leroy can't figure out who is living in all the new houses. The
farmers who used to gather around the courthouse square on Saturday afternoons to
play checkers and spit tobacco juice have gone. It has been years since Leroy has
thought about the farmers, and they have disappeared without his noticing.
Leroy meets a kid named Stevie Hamilton in the parking lot at the new shopping center. While they pretend to be strangers meeting over a stalled car, Stevie
tosses an ounce of marijuana under the front seat of Leroy's car. Stevie is wearing orange jogging shoes and a T-shirt that says CHATTAHOOCHEE SUPER RAT. His father is a
prominent doctor who lives in one of the expensive subdivisions in a new whitecolumned brick house that looks like a funeral parlor. In the phone book under his
name there is a separate number, with the listing "Teenagers."
"Where do you get this stuff?" asks Leroy. "From your pappy?"
"That's for me to know and you to find out," Stevie says. He is slit-eyed and skinny.
"What else you got?"
"What you interested in?"
"Nothing special. Just wondered."
Leroy used to take speed on the road. Now he has to go slowly. He needs to be
mellow. He leans back against the car and says, "I'm aiming to build me a log house,
soon as I get time. My wife, though, I don't think she likes the idea."
"Well, let me know when you want me again," Stevie says. He has a cigarette in
his cupped palm, as though sheltering it from the wind. He takes a long drag, then
stomps it on the asphalt and slouches away.
Stevie's father was two years ahead of Leroy in high school. Leroy is thirty-four.
He married Norma Jean when they were both eighteen, and their child Randy was
born a few months later, but he died at the age of four months and three days. He
would be about Stevie's age now. Norma Jean and Leroy were at the drive-in, watching a double feature (Dr. Strangelove and Lover Come Back), and the baby was sleeping in the back seat. When the first movie ended, the baby was dead. It was the sudden infant death syndrome. Leroy remembers handing Randy to a nurse at the
emergency room, as though he were offering her a large doll as a present. A dead baby
feels like a sack of flour. "It just happens sometimes," said the doctor, in what Leroy
always recalls as a nonchalant tone. Leroy can hardly remember the child anymore,
but he still sees vividly a sccne from Dr. Strangelove0 in which the President of the
United States was talking in a folksy voice on the hot line to the Soviet premier
about the bomber accidentally headed toward Russia. He was in the War Room, and
Dr. Strangelove: Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 suspense comedy film about a mad U.S. general who
launches an unauthorized nuclear attack on Russia.
the world map was lit up. Leroy remembers Norma Jean standing catatonically beside
him in the hospital and himself thinking: Who is this strange girl? He had forgotten
who she was. Now scientists are saying that crib death is caused by a virus. Nobody
knows anything, Leroy thinks. The answers are always changing.
When Leroy gets home from the shopping center, Norma Jean's mother, Mabel
Beasley, is there. Until this year, Leroy has not realized how much time she spends with
Norma Jean. When she visits, she inspects the closets and then the plants, informing
Norma Jean when a plant is droopy or yellow. Mabel calls the plants "flowers," although there are never any blooms. She also notices if Norma Jean's laundry is piling
up. Mabel is a short, overweight woman whose tight, brown-dyed curls look more like a
wig than the actual wig she sometimes wears. Today she has brought Norma Jean an
off-white dust ruffle she made for the bed; Mabel works in a custom upholstery shop.
"This is the tenth one I made this year," Mabel says. "I got started and couldn't stop."
"It's real pretty," says Norma Jean.
"Now we can hide things under the bed," says Leroy, who gets along with his
mother-in-law primarily by joking with her. Mabel has never really forgiven him for
disgracing her by getting Norma Jean pregnant. When the baby died, she said that
fate was mocking her.
"What's that thing?" Mabel says to Leroy in a loud voice, pointing to a tangle of
yarn on a piece of canvas.
Leroy holds it up for Mabel to see. "It's my needlepoint," he explains. "This is a
Star Trek pillow cover."
"That's what a woman would do," says Mabel. "Great day in the morning!"
"All the big football players on T V do it," he says.
"Why, Leroy, you're always trying to fool me. I don't believe you for one minute.
You don't know what to do with yourselfthat's the whole trouble. Sewing!"
"I'm aiming to build us a log house," says Leroy. "Soon as my plans come."
"Like heck you are," says Norma Jean. She takes Leroy's needlepoint and shoves it
into a drawer. "You have to find a job first. Nobody can afford to build now anyway."
Mabel straightens her girdle and says, "I still think before you get tied down y'all
ought to take a little run to Shiloh."
"One of these days, Mama," Norma Jean says impatiently.
Mabel is talking about Shiloh, Tennessee. For the past few years, she has been
urging Leroy and Norma Jean to visit the Civil War battleground there. Mabel went
there on her honeymoonthe only real trip she ever took. Her husband died of a
perforated ulcer when Norma Jean was ten, but Mabel, who was accepted into the
United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1975, is still preoccupied with going back to
Shiloh.
"I've been to kingdom come and back in that truck out yonder," Leroy says to
Mabel, "but we never yet set foot in that battleground. Ain't that something? How
did I miss it?"
"It's not even that far," Mabel says.
After Mabel leaves, Norma Jean reads to Leroy from a list she has made. "Things
you could do," she announces. "You could get a job as a guard at Union Carbide,
where they'd let you set on a stool. You could get one at the lumberyard. You could
do a little carpenter work, if you want to build so bad. You could"
"I can't do something where I'd have to stand up all day."
"You ought to try standing up all day behind a cosmetics counter. It's amazing
that I have strong feet, coming from two parents that never had strong feet at all." At
the moment Norma jean is holding on to the kitchen counter, raising her knees one
at a time as she talks. She is wearing two-pound ankle weights.
"Don't worry," says Leroy. "I'll do something."
"You could truck calves to slaughter for somebody. You wouldn't have to drive
any big old truck for that."
"I'm going to build you this house," says Leroy. "I want to make you a real home."
"I don't want to live in any log cabin."
"It's not a cabin. It's a house."
"I don't care. It looks like a cabin."
"You and me together could lift those logs. It's just like lifting weights."
Norma Jean doesn't answrer. Under her breath, she is counting. Now she is
marching through the kitchen. She is doing goose steps.0
Before his accident, when Leroy came home he used to stay in the house with
Norma Jean, watching T V in bed and playing cards. She would cook fried chicken, picnic ham, chocolate pieall his favorites. Now he is home alone much of the time. In
the mornings, Norma Jean disappears, leaving a cooling place in the bed. She eats a cereal called Body Buddies, and she leaves the bowl on the table, with the soggy tan balls
floating in a milk puddle. He sees things about Norma Jean that he never realized before.
When she chops onions, she stares off into a comer, as if she can't bear to look. She puts
on her house slippers almost precisely at nine o'clock every evening and nudges her jogging shoes under the couch. She saves bread heels for the birds. Leroy watches the birds
at the feeder. He notices the peculiar way goldfinches fly past the window. They close
their wings, then fall, then spread their wings to catch and lift themselves. He wonders if
they close their eyes when they fall. Norma Jean closes her eyes when they are in bed.
She wants the lights turned out. Even then, he is sure she closes her eyes.
He goes for long drives around town. He tends to drive a car rather carelessly.
Power steering and an automatic shift make a car feel so small and inconsequential that
his body is hardly involved in the driving process. His injured leg stretches out comfortably. Once or twice he has almost hit something, but even the prospect of an accident
seems minor in a car. He cruises the new subdivisions, feeling like a criminal rehearsing
for a robbery. Norma Jean is probably right about a log house being inappropriate here
in the new subdivision. All the houses look grand and complicated. They depress him.
One day when Leroy comes home from a drive he finds Norma Jean in tears. She
is in the kitchen making a potato and mushroom-soup casserole, with grated cheese
topping. She is crying because her mother caught her smoking.
"I didn't hear her coming. I was standing here puffing away pretty as you please,"
Norma Jean says, wiping her eyes.
"I knew it would happen sooner or later," says Leroy, putting his arm around her.
"She don't know the meaning of the word 'knock,'" says Norma Jean. "It's a
wonder she hadn't caught me years ago."
"Think of it this way," Leroy says. "What if she caught me with a joint?"
"You better not let her!" Norma Jean shrieks. "I'm warning you, Leroy Moffitt!"
"I'm just kidding. Here, play me a tune. That'll help you relax."
Norma Jean puts the casserole in the oven and sets the timer. Then she plays a
ragtime tune, with horns and banjo, as Leroy lights up a joint and lies on the couch,
laughing to himself about Mabel's catching him at it. He thinks of Stevie Hamilton
goose steps: a stiff-kneed, straight-legged marching step used in military parades. Used here as an exercise routine.
a doctor's son pushing grass. Everything is funny. The whole town seems crazy and
small. He is reminded of Virgil Mathis, a boastful policeman Leroy used to shoot pool
with. Virgil recently led a drug bust in a back room at a bowling alley, where he
seized ten thousand dollars' worth of marijuana. T h e newspaper had a picture of him
holding up the bags of grass and grinning widely. Right now, Leroy can imagine Virgil breaking down the door and arresting him with a lungful of smoke. Virgil would
probably have been alerted to the scene because of all the racket Norma Jean is making. Now she sounds like a hard-rock band. Norma Jean is terrific. When she
switches to a Latin-rhythm version of "Sunshine Superman," Leroy hums along.
Norma Jean's foot goes up and down, up and down.
"Well, what do you think?" Leroy says, when Norma Jean pauses to search
through her music.
"What do I think about what?"
His mind has gone blank. Then he says, T i l sell my rig and build us a house."
That wasn't what he wanted to say. He wanted to know what she thoughtwhat she
really thoughtabout them.
"Don't start in on that again," says Norma Jean. She begins playing "Who'll Be
the Next in Line?"
Leroy used to tell hitchhikers his whole life storyabout his travels, his hometown, the baby. He would end with a question: "Well, what do you think?" It was just
a rhetorical question. In time, he had the feeling that he'd been telling the same story
over and over to the same hitchhikers. He quit talking to hitchhikers when he realized how his voice soundedwhining and self-pitying, like some teenage-tragedy
song. Now Leroy has the sudden impulse to tell Norma Jean about himself, as if he
had just met her. They have known each other so long they have forgotten a lot
about each other. They could become reacquainted. But when the oven timer goes
off and she runs to the kitchen, he forgets why he wants to do this.
The next day, Mabel drops by. It is Saturday and Norma Jean is cleaning. Leroy
is studying the plans of his log house, which have finally come in the mail. He has
them spread out on the tablebig sheets of stiff blue paper, with diagrams and numbers printed in white. While Norma Jean runs the vacuum, Mabel drinks coffee. She
sets her coffee cup on a blueprint.
"I'm just waiting for time to pass," she says to Leroy, drumming her fingers on the
table.
As soon as Norma Jean switches off the vacuum, Mabel says in a loud voice,
"Did you hear about the datsun dog that killed the baby?"
Norma Jean says, "The word is 'dachshund.'"
"They put the dog on trial. It chewed the baby's legs off. The mother was in the
next room all the time." She raises her voice. "They thought it was neglect."
Norma Jean is holding her ears. Leroy manages to open the refrigerator and get some
Diet Pepsi to offer Mabel. Mabel still has some coffee and she waves away the Pepsi.
"Datsuns are like that," Mabel says. "They're jealous dogs. They'll tear a place to
pieccs if you don't keep an eye on them."
"You better watch out what you're saying, Mabel," says Leroy.
"Well, facts is facts."
Leroy looks out the window at his rig. It is like a huge piece of furniture gathering dust in the backyard. Pretty soon it will be an antique. He hears the vacuum
cleaner. Norma Jean seems to be cleaning the living room rug again.
65
70
75
Later, she says to Leroy, "She just said that about the baby because she caught
me smoking. She's trying to pay me back."
"What are you talking about?" Leroy says, nervously shuffling blueprints.
"You know good and well," Norma Jean says. She is sitting in a kitchen chair with
her feet up and her arms wrapped around her knees. She looks small and helpless. She
says, "The very idea, her bringing up a subject like that! Saying it was neglect."
"She didn't mean that," Leroy says.
"She might not have thought she meant it. She always says things like that. You
don't know how she goes on."
"But she didn't really mean it. She was just talking."
Leroy opens a king-sized bottle of beer and pours it into two glasses, dividing it
carefully. He hands a glass to Norma Jean and she takes it from him mechanically.
For a long time, they sit by the kitchen window watching the birds at the feeder.
Something is happening. Norma Jean is going to night school. She has graduated from her six-week body-building course and now she is taking an adult-education course in composition at Paducah Community College. She spends her evenings
outlining paragraphs.
"First, you have a topic sentence," she explains to Leroy. "Then you divide it up.
Your secondary topic has to be connected to your primary topic."
To Leroy, this sounds intimidating. "I never was any good in English," he says.
"It makes a lot of sense."
"What are you doing this for, anyhow?"
She shrugs. "It's something to do." She stands up and lifts her dumbbells a few times.
"Driving a rig, nobody cared about my English."
"I'm not criticizing your English."
Norma Jean used to say, "If I lose ten minutes' sleep, I just drag all day." Now she
stays up late, writing compositions. She got a B on her first papera how-to theme
on soup-based casseroles. Recently Norma Jean has been cooking unusual foods
tacos, lasagna, Bombay chicken. She doesn't play the organ anymore, though her second paper was called "Why Music Is Important to Me." She sits at the kitchen table,
concentrating on her outlines, while Leroy plays with his log house plans, practicing
with a set of Lincoln Logs. T h e thought of getting a truckload of notched, numbered
logs scares him, and he wants to be prepared. As he and Norma Jean work together at
the kitchen table, Leroy has the hopeful thought that they are sharing something,
but he knows he is a fool to think this. Norma Jean is miles away. He knows he is
going to lose her. Like Mabel, he is just waiting for time to pass.
One clay, Mabel is there before Norma Jean gets home from work, and Leroy finds
himself confiding in her. Mabel, he realizes, must know Norma Jean better than he does.
"I don't know what's got into that girl," Mabel says. "She used to go to bed with
the chickens. Now you say she's up all hours. Plus her a-smoking. I like to died."
"I want to make her this beautiful home," Leroy says, indicating the Lincoln
Logs. "I don't think she even wants it. Maybe she was happier with me gone."
"She don't know what to make of you, coming home like this."
"Is that it?"
Mabel takes the roof off his Lincoln Log cabin. "You couldn't get me in a log
cabin," she says. "I was raised in one. It's no picnic, let me tell you."
"They're different now," says Leroy.
"I tell you what," Mabel says, smiling oddly at Leroy.
"What?"
"Take her on down to Shiloh. Y'all need to get out together, stir a little. Her
brain's all balled up over them books."
Leroy can see traces of Norma Jean's features in her mother's face. Mabel's worn face 105
has the texture of crinkled cotton, but suddenly she looks pretty. It occurs to Leroy that
Mabel has been hinting all along that she wants them to take her with them to Shiloh.
"Let's all go to Shiloh," he says. "You and me and her. Come Sunday."
Mabel throws up her hand in protest. "Oh, no, not me. Young folks want to be
by theirselves."
When Norma Jean comes in with groceries, Leroy says excitedly, "Your mama
here's been dying to go to Shiloh for thirty-five years. It's about time we went, don't
you think?"
"I'm not going to butt in on anybody's second honeymoon," Mabel says.
"Who's going on a honeymoon, for Christ's sake?" Norma Jean says loudly.
110
"I never raised no daughter of mine to talk that-a-way," Mabel says.
"You ain't seen nothing yet," says Norma Jean. She starts putting away boxes
and cans, slamming cabinet doors.
"There's a log cabin at Shiloh," Mabel says. "It was there during the battle.
There's bullet holes in it."
"When are you going to shut up about Shiloh, Mama?" asks Norma Jean.
"I always thought Shiloh was the prettiest place, so full of history," Mabel goes 115
on. "I just hoped y'all could see it once before I die, so you could tell me about it."
Later, she whispers to Leroy, "You do what I said. A little change is what she needs."
"Your name means 'the king,'" Norma Jean says to Leroy that evening. He is trying
to get her to go to Shiloh, and she is reading a book about another century.
"Well, I reckon I ought to be right proud."
"I guess so."
"Am I still king around here?"
Norma Jean flexes her biceps and feels them for hardness. "I'm not fooling 120
around with anybody, if that's what you mean," she says.
"Would you tell me if you were?"
"I don't know."
"What does your name mean?"
"It was Marilyn Monroe's real name."
"No kidding!"
125
"Norma comes from the Normans. They were invaders," she says. She closes her
book and looks hard at Leroy. "I'll go to Shiloh with you if you'll stop staring at me."
On Sunday, Norma Jean packs a picnic and they go to Shiloh. T o Leroy's relief
Mabel says she does not want to come with them. Norma Jean drives, and Leroy, sitting beside her, feels like some boring hitchhiker she has picked up. He tries some
conversation, but she answers him in monosyllables. At Shiloh, she drives aimlessly
through the park, past bluffs and trails and steep ravines. Shiloh is an immense place,
and Leroy cannot see it as a battleground. It is not what he expected. He thought it
would look like a golf course. Monuments are everywhere, showing through the thick
clusters of trees. Norma Jean passes the log cabin Mabel mentioned. It is surrounded
by tourists looking for bullet holes.
"That's not the kind of log house I've got in mind," says Leroy apologetically.
"I know that"
"This is a pretty place. Your mama was right."
"It's O.K.," says Norma Jean. "Well, we've seen it. I hope she's satisfied."
They burst out laughing together.
At the park museum, a movie on Shiloh is shown every half hour, but they de- cide that they don't wrant to see it. They buy a souvenir Confederate flag for Mabel,
and then they find a picnic spot near the cemetery. Norma Jean has brought a picnic
cooler, with pimiento sandwiches, soft drinks, and Yodels. Leroy eats a sandwich and
then smokes a joint, hiding it behind the picnic cooler. Norma Jean has quit smoking
altogether. She is picking cake crumbs from the cellophane wrapper, like a fussy bird.
Leroy says, "So the boys in gray ended up in Corinth. The Union soldiers zapped
'em finally. April 7, 1862."
They both know that he doesn't know any history. He is just talking about some 135
of the historical plaques they have read. He feels awkward, like a boy on a date with
an older girl. They are still just making conversation.
"Corinth is where Mama eloped to," says Norma Jean.
They sit in silence and stare at the cemetery for the Union dead and, beyond, at
a tall cluster of trees. Campers are parked nearby, bumper to bumper, and small children in bright clothing are cavorting and squealing. Norma Jean wads up the cake
wrapper and squeezes it tightly in her hand. Without looking at Leroy, she says, "I
want to leave you."
Leroy takes a bottle of Coke out of the cooler and flips off the cap. He holds the
bottle poised near his mouth but cannot remember to take a drink. Finally he says,
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"1 won't let you."
140
"You can't stop me."
"Don't do me that way."
Leroy knows Norma Jean will have her own way. "Didn't I promise to be home
from now on?" he says.
"In some ways, a woman prefers a man who wanders," says Norma Jean. "That
sounds crazy, I know."
"You're not crazy." Leroy remembers to drink from his Coke. Then he says, "Yes, 145
you are crazy. You and me could start all over again. Right back at the beginning."
"We have started all over again," says Norma Jean. "And this is how it turned
out."
"What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Is this one of those women's lib things?" Leroy asks.
"Don't be funny."
150
The cemetery, a green slope dotted with white markers, looks like a subdivision
site. Leroy is trying to comprehend that his marriage is breaking up, but for some reason he is wondering about white slabs in a graveyard.
"Everything was fine till Mama caught me smoking," says Norma Jean, standing
up. "That set something off."
"What are you talking about?"
"She won't leave me aloneyou won't leave me alone." Norma Jean seems to be
crying, but she is looking away from him. "I feel eighteen again. I can't face that all
over again." She starts walking away. "No, it wasn't fine. I don't know what I'm saying. Forget it."
Leroy takes a lungful of smoke and closes his eyes as Norma Jean's words sink in. 155
He tries to focus on the fact that thirty-five hundred soldiers died on the grounds
around him. He can only think of that war as a board game with plastic soldiers.
Leroy almost smiles, as he compares the Confederates' daring attack on the Union
camps and Virgil Mathis's raid on the bowling alley. General Grant, drunk and furious, shoved the Southerners back to Corinth, where Mabel and Jet Beasley were
married years later, when Mabel was still thin and good-looking. The next day,
Mabel and Jet visited the battleground, and then Norma Jean was born, and then
she married Leroy and they had a baby, which they lost, and now Leroy and Norma
Jean are here at the same battleground. Leroy knows he is leaving out a lot. He is
leaving out the insides of history. History was always just names and dates to him.
It occurs to him that building a house of logs is similarly emptytoo simple. And
the real inner workings of a marriage, like most of history, have escaped him. Now
he sees that building a log house is the dumbest idea he could have had. It was
clumsy of him to think Norma Jean would want a log house. It was a crazy idea.
He'll have to think of something else, quickly. He will wad the blueprints into
tight balls and fling them into the lake. Then he'll get moving again. He opens his
eyes. Norma Jean has moved away and is walking through the cemetery, following
a serpentine brick path.
Leroy gets up to follow his wife, but his good leg is asleep and his bad leg still
hurts him. Norma Jean is far away, walking rapidly toward the bluff by the river, and
he tries to hobble toward her. Some children run past him, screaming noisily. Norma
Jean has reached the bluff, and she is looking out over the Tennessee River. Now she
turns toward Leroy and waves her arms. Is she beckoning to him? She seems to be doing an exercise for her chest muscles. The sky is unusually palethe color of the dust
ruffle Mabel made for their bed.
Joyce Carol Oates
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
1970
Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1938 into a bluecollar, Catholic family in Lockport, New York.
As an undergraduate at Syracuse University,
she won a Mademoiselle magazine award for
fiction. After graduating with top honors, she
took a master s degree in English at the University of Wisconsin and went on to teach at several
universities: Detroit, Windsor, and Princeton.
She now lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where,
together with her husband, Raymond Smith, she
directs the Ontario Review Press, a small literary
publisher. A remarkably prolific writer, Oates
has produced more than twenty-five collections
of stories, including High Lonesome: Stories
JOYCE CAROL OATES
1966-2006, and forty novels, including them,
( Jill Krementz, Inc.)
winner of a National Book Award in 1970,
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My
Heart (1990), and more recently, Middle Age: A Romance (2001), The Tattooed
Girl (2003), and Missing Mom (2005). She also writes poetry, plays, and literary criticism. Woman Writer: Occasions & Opportunities (1988), The Faith of a Writer:
Life, Craft, Art (2003), and Uncensored: Views and (Re)views (2005) are books of
varied essays; On Boxing (1987) is a nonfiction memoir and study of fighters and fighting.
Foxfire (1993), her twenty-second novel, is the story of a girl gang in upstate New York. .
Her 1996 Gothic novella, First Love, is a bizarre tale of terror and torture. Violence and
the macabre may inhabit her best stories, but Oates has insisted that these elements in her
work are never gratuitous. The 1985 film Smooth Talk, directed by Joyce Chopra, was
based on "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
FOR BOB D Y L A N
Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick nervous giggling
habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking other people's faces to
make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew
everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always
scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself, who are you? You think you're so
pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar complaints
and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right
at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had
been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now
her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.
"Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair
fixedwhat the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk."
Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was a secretary in
the high school Connie attended, and if that wasn't bad enoughwith her in the
same buildingshe was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her
praised all the time by her mother and her mother's sisters. June did this, June did
that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn't
do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Their father was away at
work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the
newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didn't bother talking much
to them, but around his bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie
wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes
me want to throw up sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high,
breathless, amused voice which made everything she said sound a little forced,
whether it was sincere or not.
There was one good thing: June went places with girl friends of hers, girls w7ho
were just as plain and steady as she, and so when Connie wanted to do that her
mother had no objections. The father of Connie's best girl friend drove the girls the
three miles to town and left them off at a shopping plaza, so that they could walk
through the stores or go to a movie, and when he came to pick them up again at
eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done.
They must have been familiar sights, walking around that shopping plaza in their
shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm
bracelets jingling on their thin wrists; they would lean together to whisper and laugh
secretly if someone passed by who amused or interested them. Connie had long dark
blond hair that drew anyone's eye to it, and she wore part of it pulled up on her head
and puffed out and the rest of it she let fall down her back. She wore a pull-over jersey
blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way when she was
away from home. Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for
anywhere that was not home: her walk that could be childlike and bobbing, or languid
enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head, her mouth which
was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out,
her laugh which was cynical and drawling at home"Ha, ha, very funny"but highpitched and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.
Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across
the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older
kids hung out. The restaurant was shaped like a big bottle, though squatter than a
real bottle, and on its cap was a revolving figure of a grinning boy who held a hamburger aloft. One night in mid-summer they ran across, breathless with daring, and
right away someone leaned out a car window and invited them over, but it was just a
boy from high school they didn't like. It made them feel good to be able to ignore
him. They went up through the maze of parked and cruising cars to the bright-lit, flyinfested restaurant, their faces pleased and expectant as if they were entering a sacred
building that loomed out of the night to give them what haven and what blessing
they yearned for. They sat at the counter and crossed their legs at the ankles, their
thin shoulders rigid with excitement, and listened to the music that made everything
so good: the music was always in the background like music at a church service, it was
something to depend upon.
A boy named Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat backwards on his stool,
turning himself jerkily around in semi-circles and then stopping and turning again,
and after a while he asked Connie if she would like something to eat. She said she did
and so she tapped her friend's arm on her way outher friend pulled her face up into
a brave droll lookand Connie said she would meet her at eleven, across the way. "I
just hate to leave her like that," Connie said earnestly, but the boy said that she
wouldn't be alone for long. So they went out to his car and on the way Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander over the windshields and faces all around her, her
face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it
might have been the music. She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with
the pure pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened to glance at a
face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible
jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie
slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn't help glancing back and there
he was still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, "Gonna get you,
baby," and Connie turned away again without Eddie noticing anything.
She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers
and drank Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a
mile or so away, and when he left her off at five to eleven only the movie house was
still open at the plaza. Her girl friend was there, talking with a boy. When Connie
came up the two girls smiled at each other and Connie said, "How was the movie?"
and the girl said, "You should know." They rode off with the girl's father, sleepy and
pleased, and Connie couldn't help but look at the darkened shopping plaza with its
big empty parking lot and its signs that were faded and ghostly now, and over at the
drive-in restaurant where cars were still circling tirelessly. She couldn't hear the
music at this distance.
Next morning June asked her how the movie was and Connie said, "So-so."
She and that girl and occasionally another girl went out several times a week
that way, and the rest of the time Connie spent around the houseit was summer
vacationgetting in her mother's way and thinking, dreaming, about the boys she
met. But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a
10
face, but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music
and the humid night air of July. Connie's mother kept dragging her back to the daylight by finding things for her to do or saying, suddenly, "What's this about the
Pettinger girl?"
And Connie would say nervously, "Oh, her. That dope." She always drew thick
clear lines between herself and such girls, and her mother was simple and kindly
enough to believe her. Her mother was so simple, Connie thought, that it was maybe
cruel to fool her so much. Her mother went scuffling around the house in old bedroom
slippers and complained over the telephone to one sister about the other, then the
other called up and the two of them complained about the third one. If June's name
was mentioned her mother's tone was approving, and if Connie's name was mentioned it was disapproving. This did not really mean she disliked Connie and actually
Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June because she was prettier, but
the two of them kept up a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and
struggling over something of little value to either of them. Sometimes, over coffee,
they were almost friends, but something would come upsome vexation that was like
a fly buzzing suddenly around their headsand their faces went hard with contempt.
One Sunday Connie got up at elevennone of them bothered with church
and washed her hair so that it could dry all day long, in the sun. Her parents and sister were going to a barbecue at an aunt's house and Connie said no, she wasn't interested, rolling her eyes to let her mother know just what she thought of it. "Stay home
alone then," her mother said sharply. Connie sat out back in a lawn chair and
watched them drive away, her father quiet and bald, hunched around so that he
could back the car out, her mother with a look that was still angry and not at all softened through the windshield, and in the back seat poor old June all dressed up as if
she didn't know what a barbecue was, with all the running yelling kids and the flies.
Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth
about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over
onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had
been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but
sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs; and when she opened
her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the back yard ran off into weeds and a fenceline of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still. The asbestos "ranch
house" that was now three years old startled herit looked small. She shook her
head as if to get awake.
It was too hot. She went inside the house and turned on the radio to drown out
the quiet. She sat on the edge of her bed, barefoot, and listened for an hour and a half
to a program called XYZ Sunday Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast, shrieking
songs she sang along with, interspersed by exclamations from "Bobby King": "An'
look here you girls at Napoleon'sSon and Charley want you to pay real close attention to this song coming up!"
And Connie paid close attention herself, bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that
seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the airless
little room, breathed in and breathed out with each gentle rise and fall of her chest.
After a while she heard a car coming up the drive. She sat up at once, startled,
because it couldn't be her father so soon. The gravel kept crunching all the way in
from the roadthe driveway was longand Connie ran to the window. It was a car
she didn't know. It was an open jalopy, painted a bright gold that caught the sunlight
opaquely. Her heart began to pound and her fingers snatched at her hair, checking it,
15
and she whispered "Christ, Christ," wondering how bad she looked. The car came to
a stop at the side door and the horn sounded four short taps as if this were a signal
Connie knew.
She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the
screen door, her bare toes curling down off the step. There were two boys in the car
and now she recognized the driver: he had shaggy, shabby black hair that looked
crazy as a wig and he was grinning at her.
"I ain't late, am I?" he said.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" Connie said.
"Toldja I'd be out, didn't I?"
"I don't even know who you are."
She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure, and he spoke in a fast
bright monotone. Connie looked past him to the other boy, taking her time. He had
fair brown hair, with a lock that fell onto his forehead. His sideburns gave him a
fierce, embarrassed look, but so far he hadn't even bothered to glance at her. Both
boys wore sunglasses. The driver's glasses were metallic and mirrored everything in
miniature.
"You wanta come for a ride?" he said.
Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder.
"Don'tcha like my car? New paint job," he said. "Hey."
"What?"
"You're cute."
She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.
"Don'tcha believe me, or what?" he said.
"Look, I don't even know who you are," Connie said in disgust.
"Hey, Ellie's got a radio, see. Mine's broke down." He lifted his friend's arm and
showed her the little transistor the boy was holding, and now Connie began to hear
the music. It was the same program that was playing inside the house.
"Bobby King?" she said.
"I listen to him all the time. I think he's great."
"He's kind of great," Connie said reluctantly.
"Listen, that guy's great. He knows where the action is."
Connie blushed a little, because the glasses made it impossible for her to see just
what this boy was looking at. She couldn't decide if she liked him or if he was just a
jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway and wouldn't come down or go back inside.
She said, "What's all that stuff painted on your car?"
"Can'tcha read it?" He opened the door very carefully, as if he was afraid it might
fall off. He slid out just as carefully, planting his feet firmly on the ground, the tiny
metallic world in his glasses slowing down like gelatine hardening arid in the midst of
it Connie's bright green blouse. "This here is my name, to begin with," he said.
ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a drawing of a
round grinning face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except it wore sunglasses. "I
wanta introduce myself, I'm Arnold Friend and that's my real name and I'm gonna be
your friend, honey, and inside the car's Ellie Oscar, he's kinda shy." Ellic brought his
transistor radio up to his shoulder and balanced it there. "Now these numbers are a
secret code, honey," Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers 3.3, 19, 17
and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she didn't think
much of it. The left rear fender had been smashed and around it was written, on the
gleaming gold background: DONE BY CRAZY WOMAN DRIVER. Connie had to laugh at
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that. Arnold Friend was pleased at her laughter and looked up at her. "Around the
other side's a lot moreyou wanta come and see them?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Why should I?"
"Don'tcha wanta see what's on the car? Don'tcha wanta go for a ride?"
"1 don't know."
"Why not?"
"I got things to do."
"Like what?"
"Things."
He laughed as if she had said something funny. He slapped his thighs. He was
standing in a strange way, leaning back against the car as if he w7ere balancing
himself. He wasn't tall, only an inch or so taller than she would be if she came
down to him. Connie liked the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them
dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his
waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pull-over shirt that was a little
soiled and showed the hard small muscles of his arms and shoulders. He looked as
if he probably did hard work, lifting and carrying things. Even his neck looked
muscular. And his face was a familiar face, somehow: the jaw and chin and cheeks
slightly darkened, because he hadn't shaved for a day or two, and the nose long
and hawdolike, sniffing as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up and it was
all a joke.
"Connie, you ain't telling the truth. This is your day set aside for a ride with me
and you know it," he said, still laughing. The way he straightened and recovered from
his fit of laughing showed that it had been all fake.
"How do you know what my name is?" she said suspiciouslv.
"It's Connie."
"Maybe and maybe not."
"I know7 my Connie," he said, wagging his finger. Now she remembered him even
better, back at the restaurant, and her cheeks warmed at the thought of how she
sucked in her breath just at the moment she passed himhow she must have looked
to him. And he had remembered her. "Ellie and I come out here especially for you,"
he said. "Ellie can sit in back. How about it?"
"Where?"
"Where what?"
"Where're we going?"
He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw7 how pale the skin
around his eyes was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light. His eyes
were chips of broken glass that catch the light in an amiable way. He smiled. It was as
if the idea of going for a ride somewhere, to some place, was a new idea to him.
"Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart."
"I never said my name was Connie," she said.
"But I know what it is. I know your name and all about you, lots of things,"
Arnold Friend said. He had not moved yet but stood still leaning back against the
side of his jalopy. "I took a special interest in you, such a pretty girl, and found out all
about you like I know your parents and sister are gone somewheres and I know where
and how long they're going to be gone, and I know who you were with last night, and
your best girl friend's name is Betty. Right?"
He spoke in a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he were reciting the words to a
song. His smile assured her that everything was fine. In the car Ellie turned up the
volume on his radio and did not bother to look around at them.
"Ellie can sit in the back seat," Arnold Friend said. He indicated his friend with
a casual jerk of his chin, as if Ellie did not count and she should not bother with him.
"How'd you find out all that stuff?" Connie said.
"Listen: Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy Pettinger and Nancy Pettinger,"
he said, in a chant. "Raymond Stanley and Bob Hutter"
"Do you know all those kids?"
"I know everybody."
"Look, you're kidding. You're not from around here."
"Sure."
"Buthow come we never saw you before?"
"Sure you saw me before," he said. He looked down at his boots, as if he were a
little offended. "You just don't remember."
"I guess I'd remember you," Connie said.
"Yeah?" He looked up at this, beaming. He was pleased. He began to mark time
with the music from Elbe's radio, tapping his fists lightly together. Connie looked
away from his smile to the car, which was painted so bright it almost hurt her eyes to
look at it. She looked at that name, ARNOLD FRIEND. And up at the front fender was
an expression that was familiarMAN THE FLYING SAUCERS. It was an expression kids
had used the year before, but didn't use this year. She looked at it for a while as if the
words meant something to her that she did not yet know.
"What're you thinking about? Huh?" Arnold Friend demanded. "Not worried
about your hair blowing around in the car, are you?"
"No."
"Think I maybe can't drive good?"
"How do I know?"
"You're a hard girl to handle. How come?" he said. "Don't you know I'm your
friend? Didn't you see me put my sign in the air when vou walked by?"
"What sign?"
"My sign." And he drew an X in the air, leaning out toward her. They were
maybe ten feet apart. After his hand fell back to his side the X was still in the air, almost visible. Connie let the screen door close and stood perfectly still inside it, listening to the music from her radio and the boy's blend together. She stared at Arnold
Friend. He stood there so stiffly relaxed, pretending to be relaxed, with one hand idly
on the door handle as if he were keeping himself up that way and had no intention of
ever moving again. She recognized most things about him, the tight jeans that
showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt,
and even that slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy smile that all the
boys used to get across ideas they didn't want to put into words. She recognized all
this and also the singsong way he talked, slightly mocking, kidding, but serious
and a little melancholy, and she recognized the way he tapped one fist against the
other in homage to the perpetual music behind him. But all these things did not
come together.
She said suddenly, "Hey, how old are you?"
His smile faded. She could see then that he wasn't a kid, he was much older
thirty, maybe more. A t this knowledge her heart began to pound faster.
"That's a crazy thing to ask. Can'tcha see I'm your own age?"
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"Like hell you are."
"Or maybe a coupla years older, I'm eighteen-"
"Eighteen?" she said doubtfully.
He grinned to reassure her and lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. His
teeth were big and white. He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she saw
how thick the lashes were, thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material.
Then he seemed to become embarrassed, abruptly, and looked over his shoulder at
Ellie. "Him, he's crazy," he said. "Ain't he a riot, he's a nut, a real character." Ellie
was still listening to the music. His sunglasses told nothing about what he was thinking. He wore a bright orange shirt unbuttoned halfway to show his chest, which was a
pale, bluish chest and not muscular like Arnold Friend's. His shirt collar was turned
up all around and the very tips of the collar pointed out past his chin as if they were
protecting him. He was pressing the transistor radio up against his ear and sat there
in a kind of daze, right in the sun.
"He's kinda strange," Connie said.
"Hey, she says you're kinda strange! Kinda strange!" Arnold Friend cried. He
pounded on the car to get Elbe's attention. Ellie turned for the first time and Connie
saw with shock that he wasn't a kid eitherhe had a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew too close to the surface of his skin, the face of a
forty-year-old baby. Connie felt a wave of dizziness rise in her at this sight and she
stared at him as if waiting for something to change the shock of the moment, make it
all right again. Elbe's lips kept shaping words, mumbling along, with the words blasting in his ear.
"Maybe you two better go away," Connie said faintly.
"What? How come?" Arnold Friend cried. "We come out here to take you for a
ride. It's Sunday." He had the voice of the man on the radio now. It was the same
voice, Connie thought. "Don'tcha know it's Sunday all day and honey, no matter
who you were with last night today you're with Arnold Friend and don't you forget
it!Maybe you better step out here," he said, and this last was in a different voice. It
was a little flatter, as if the heat was finally getting to him.
"No. I got things to do."
"Hey."
"You two better leave."
"We ain't leaving until you come with us."
"Like hell I am"
"Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean, I mean, don't fool around," he said,
shaking his head. He laughed incredulously. He placed his sunglasses on top of his
head, carefully, as if he were indeed wearing a wig, and brought the stems down behind his ears. Connie stared at him, another wave of dizziness and fear rising in her so
that for a moment he wasn't even in focus but was just a blur, standing there against
his gold car, and she had the idea that he had driven up the driveway all right but
had come from nowhere before that and belonged nowhere and that everything
about him and even about the music that was so familiar to her was only half real.
"If my father comes and sees you"
"He ain't coming. He's at the barbecue."
"How do you know that?"
"Aunt Tillie's. Right now they'reuhthey're drinking. Sitting around," he
said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt
Tillie's backyard. Then the vision seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically.
"Yeah. Sitting around. There's your sister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the
poor sad bitchnothing like you, sweetheart! And your mother's helping some fat
woman with the corn, they're cleaning the cornhusking the c o m "
"What fat woman?" Connie cried.
"How do I know what fat woman. I don't know every goddam fat woman in the
world!" Arnold Friend laughed.
"Oh, that's Mrs. Hornby. . . . Who invited her?" Connie said. She felt a little
light-headed. Her breath was coming quickly.
"She's too fat. I don't like them fat. I like them the way you are, honey," he said,
smiling sleepily at her. They stared at each other for a while, through the screen
door. He said softly, "Now what you're going to do is this: you're going to come out
that door. You're going to sit up front with me and Ellie's going to sit in the back, the
hell with Ellie, right? This isn't Ellie's date. You're my date. I'm your lover, honey."
"What? You're crazy"
"Yes, I'm your lover. You don't know what that is but you will," he said. "I know
that too. I know all about you. But look: it's real nice and you couldn't ask for nobody
better than me, or more polite. I always keep my word. I'll tell you how it is, I'm always nice at first, the first time. I'll hold you so tight you won't think you have to try
to get away or pretend anything because you'll know you can't. And I'll come inside
you where it's all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll love me"
"Shut up! You're crazy!" Connie said. She backed away from the door. She put
her hands against her ears as if she'd heard something terrible, something not meant
for her. "People don't talk like that, you're crazy," she muttered. Her heart was almost
too big now for her chest and its pumping made sweat break out all over her. She
looked out to see Arnold Friend pause and then take a step toward the porch lurching. He almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he managed to catch his balance.
He wobbled in his high boots and grabbed hold of one of the porch posts.
"Honey?" he said. "You still listening?"
"Get the hell out of here!"
"Be nice, honey. Listen."
"I'm going to call the police"
He wobbled again and out of the side of his mouth came a fast spat curse, an
aside not meant for her to hear. But even this "Christ!" sounded forced. Then he began to smile again. She watched this smile come, awkward as if he were smiling from
inside a mask. His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down onto his
throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but had forgotten about his throat.
"Honey? Listen, here's how it is. I always tell the truth and I promise you this:
I ain't coming in that house after you."
"You better not! I'm going to call the police if youif you don't"
"Honey," he said, talking right through her voice, "honey, I'm not coming in
there but you are coming out here. You know why?"
She was panting. The kitchen looked like a place she had never seen before,
some room she had run inside but which wasn't good enough, wasn't going to help
her. The kitchen window had never had a curtain, after three years, and there were
dishes in the sink for her to doprobablyand if you ran your hand across the table
you'd probably feel something sticky there.
"You listening, honey? Hey?"
"going to call the police"
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"Soon as you touch the phone I don't need to keep my promise and can come
inside. You won't want that."
She rushed forward and tried to lock the door. Her fingers were shaking. "But
why lock it," Arnold Friend said gently, talking right into her face. "It's just a screen
door. It's just nothing." One of his boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn't in
it. It pointed out to the left, bent at the ankle. "I mean, anybody can break through a
screen door and glass and wood and iron or anything else if he needs to, anybody at
all and specially Arnold Friend. If the place got lit up with a fire honey you'd come
running out into my arms, right into my arms and safe at homelike you knew I was
your lover and'd stopped fooling around. I don't mind a nice shy girl but I don't like
no fooling around." Part of those words were spoken with a slight rhythmic lilt, and
Connie somehow recognized themthe echo of a song from last year, about a girl
rushing into her boyfriend's arms and coming home again
Connie stood barefoot on the linoleum floor, staring at him. "What do you
want?" she whispered.
"I want you," he said.
"What?"
"Seen you that night and thought, that's the one, yes sir. I never needed to look
any more."
"But my father's coming back. He's coming to get me. I had to wash my hair
first" She spoke in a dry, rapid voice, hardly raising it for him to hear.
"No, your daddy is not coming and yes, you had to wash your hair and you
washed it for me. It's nice and shining and all for me, I thank you, sweetheart," he
said, with a mock bow, but again he almost lost his balance. He had to bend and adjust his boots. Evidently his feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have
been stuffed with something so that he would seem taller. Connie stared out at him
and behind him Ellie in the car, who seemed to be looking off toward Connie's right,
into nothing. This Ellie said, pulling the words out of the air one after another as if
he were just discovering them, "You want me to pull out the phone?"
"Shut your mouth and keep it shut," Arnold Friend said, his face red from bending over or maybe from embarrassment because Connie had seen his boots. "This
ain't none of your business."
"Whatwhat are you doing? What do you want?" Connie said. "If I call the police they'll get you, they'll arrest you"
"Promise was not to come in unless you touch that phone, and I'll keep that
promise," he said. He resumed his erect position and tried to force his shoulders back.
He sounded like a hero in a movie, declaring something important. He spoke too
loudly and it was as if he were speaking to someone behind Connie. "I ain't made
plans for coming in that house where I don't belong but just for you to come out to
me, the way you should. Don't you know who I am?"
"You're crazy," she whispered. She backed away from the door but did not want
to go into another part of the house, as if this would give him permission to come
through the door. "What do you . . . You're crazy, you . . ."
"Huh? What're you saying, honey?"
Her eyes darted everywhere in the kitchen. She could not remember what it was,
this room.
"This is how it is, honey: you come out and we'll drive away, have a nice ride.
But if you don't come out we're gonna wait till your people come home and then
they're all going to get it."
"You want that telephone pulled out?" Ellie said- He held the radio away from
his ear and grimaced, as if without the radio the air was too much for him.
"I toldja shut up, Ellie," Arnold Friend said, "you're deaf, get a hearing aid, right?
Fix yourself up. This little girl's no trouble and's gonna be nice to me, so Ellie keep to
yourself, this ain't your dateright? Don't hem in on me. Don't hog. Don't crush.
Don't bird dog. Don't trail me," he said in a rapid meaningless voice, as if he were
running through all the expressions he'd learned but was no longer sure which one of
them was in style, then rushing on to new ones, making them up with his eyes closed,
"Don't crawl under my fence, don't squeeze in my chipmunk hole, don't sniff my
glue, suck my popsicle, keep your own greasy fingers on yourself!" He shaded his eyes
and peered in at Connie, who was backed against the kitchen table. "Don't mind him
honey he's just a creep. He's a dope. Right? I'm the boy for you and like I said you
come out here nice like a lady and give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I
mean, your nice old bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high
heels. Because listen: why bring them in this?"
"Leave me alone," Connie whispered.
"Hey, you know that old woman down the road, the one with the chickens and 135
stuffyou know her?"
"She's dead!"
"Dead? What? You know her?" Arnold Friend said.
"She's dead"
"Don't you like her?"
"She's deadshe'sshe isn't here any more"
140
"But don't you like her, I mean, you got something against her? Some grudge or
something?" Then his voice dipped as if he were conscious of a rudeness. He touched
the sunglasses perched on top of his head as if to make sure they were still there.
"Now you be a good girl."
"What are you going to do?"
"Just two things, or maybe three," Arnold Friend said. "But I promise it won't
last long and you'll like me that way you get to like people you're close to. You will.
It's all over for you here, so come on out. You don't want your people in any trouble,
do you?"
She turned and bumped against a chair or something, hurting her leg, but
she ran into the back room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in
her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could do nothing
but listen to itthe telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers
groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to scream into
the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her
breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold
Friend were stabbing her with again and again with 110 tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was
locked inside the house.
After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on the floor with her wet 145
back against the wall.
Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That's a good girl. Put the phone
back."
She kicked the phone away from her.
"No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right."
She picked it up and put it back. The dial tone stopped.
"That's a good girl. Now come outside."
She was hollow with what had been fear, but what was now just an emptiness. All that screaming had blasted it out of her. She sat, one leg cramped under her,
and deep inside her brain was something like a pinpoint of light that kept going
and would not let her relax. She thought, I'm not going to see my mother again.
She thought, I'm not going to sleep in my bed again. Her bright green blouse was
all wet.
Arnold Friend said, in a gentle-loud voice that was like a stage voice, "The place
where you came from ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are nowinside your daddy's houseis nothing but a
cardboard box I can knock down any time. You know that and always did know it.
You hear me?"
She thought, I have got to think. I have to know what to do.
"We'll go out to a nice field, out in the country here where it smells so nice
and it's sunny," Arnold Friend said. "I'll have my arms around you so you won't
need to try to get away and I'll show you what love is like, what it does. The hell
with this house! It looks solid all right," he said. He ran a fingernail down the
screen and the noise did not make Connie shiver, as it would have the day before.
"Now put your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that? That feels solid too but we
know better, be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a
girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in?and get away before her
people come back?"
She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the
first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a
pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn't really hers either.
"You don't want them to get hurt," Arnold Friend went on. "Now get up, honey.
Get up all by yourself."
She stood up.
"Now turn this way. That's right. Come over here to meEllie, put that
away, didn't I tell you? You dope. You miserable creepy dope," Arnold Friend said.
His words were not angry but only part of an incantation. T h e incantation was
kindly. "Now come out through the kitchen to me honey and let's see a smile, try
it, you're a brave sweet little girl and now they're eating corn and hotdogs cooked
to bursting over an outdoor fire, and they don't know one thing about you and
never did and honey you're better than them because not a one of them would
have done this for you."
Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed her hair back
out of her eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his arms for
her, his elbows pointing in toward each other and his wrists limp, to show that this
was an embarrassed embrace and a little mocking, he didn't want to make her selfconscious.
She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door
slowly open as if she were safe back somewhere in the other doorway, watching this
body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend
waited.
"My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said, in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to
do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of
the land behind him and on all sides of him, so much land that Connie had never
seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.
Tim O'Brien
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien was born in 1946 in Austin, Minnesota. Immediately after graduating summa
cum laude from Macalester College in 1968, he
was drafted into the U.S. Army. Serving as an
infantryman in Vietnam, O'Brien attained the
rank of sergeant and won a Purple Heart after
being wounded by shrapnel. Upon his discharge
in 1970, he began graduate work at Harvard.
In 1973 he published If I Die in a Combat
Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, a
mixture of memoir and fiction about his
wartime experiences. His 1978 novel Going
After Cacciato won the National
Book
Award, and is considered by some critics to be
1990
T|(Vj 0'BRjEN
the best book of American fiction about the
Vietnam War. "The Things They Carried" was first published in Esquire in 1986, and
later became the title piece in a book of interlocking short stories published in 1990. His
other novels include The Nuclear Age (1985), In the Lake of the Woods (1994),
Tomcat in Love (1998) and July, July (2002). O'Brien currently teaches at Texas State
University-San Marcos.
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior
at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his
hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and
spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips
into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted
Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the
matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at
Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and
midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia
Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say,
Jimmy, take care of yourself. T h e letters weighed 10 ounces. They were signed Love,
Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and
did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move
among his men, checking the perimeter; then at full dark he would return to his hold
and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.
T h e things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets,
packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates,
C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism.
Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of
canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field
hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd
stolen on R & R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April
By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5
pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue
jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle
boots2.1 poundsand Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr.
Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted
Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary.
Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiow7a, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New
Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also
carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting
hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was
SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, w7hich
weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could
die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the
helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons
were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or
groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost
two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender
was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy,
then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.
They wyere called legs or grunts.
To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped
his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to
hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.
Almost everyone humped photographs. In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried
two photographs of Martha. The first was a Kodacolor snapshot signed Love, though
he knew better. She stood against a brick wall. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her
lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at the camera. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the picture, because he knew she had
boyfriends, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow7 of
the picture-taker spreading out against the brick wall. The second photograph had
been clipped from the 1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook. It was an action shot
women's volleyballand Martha was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the
palms of her hands in sharp focus, the tongue taut, the expression frank and competitive. There was no visible sweat. She wore white gym shorts. Her legs, he thought,
were almost certainly the legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left knee cocked
and carrying her entire weight, which was just over one hundred pounds. Lieutenant
R&R: die military abbreviation for "rest and rehabilitation," a brief vacation from active service.
SOP: standard operating procedure. RTO: Radio and Telephone Operator.
Cross remembered touching that left knee. A dark theater, he remembered, and the
movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final
scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way
that made him pull his hand back, but he would always remember the feel of the
tweed skirt and the knee beneath it and the sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie
and Clyde, how embarrassing it wyas, how slow and oppressive. He remembered kissing her good night at the dorm door. Right then, he thought, he shouldVe done
something brave. He should1Ve carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to
the bed and touched that left knee all night long. He shouldVe risked it. Whenever
he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he shouldVe done.
What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty.
As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps,
code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded.
He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men.
As an R T O , Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a killer, 26 pounds with
its battery.
As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma
and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic
must carry, including M&M's for especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly
20 pounds.
As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins carried the M-60,
w7hich weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded. In addition, Dobbins carried between 10 and 15 pounds of ammunition draped in belts
across his chest and shoulders.
As PFCs or Spec 4s, most of them were common grunts and carried the standard VI-16 gas-operated assault rifle. T h e weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded,
8.2 pounds with its full 20-round magazine. Depending on numerous factors, such as
topography and psychology, the riflemen carried anywhere from 12 to 20 magazines,
usually in cloth bandoliers, adding on another 8.4 pounds at minimum, 14 pounds at
maximum. When it was available, they also carried M-16 maintenance gearrods
and steel brushes and swabs and tubes of L S A oilall of which weighed about a
pound. Among the grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reasonably light weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy. A
single round weighed 10 ounces. The typical load was 25 rounds. But Ted Lavender,
who was scared, carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe,
and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the umveighed fear. He was dead weight. There was no
twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall,
or a big sandbag or somethingjust boom, then downnot like the movies where
the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettlenot like
that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. It
was a bright morning in mid-April Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself.
They stripped off Lavender s canteens and ammo, all the heavy things, and Rat Kiley
said the obvious, the guy's dead, and Mitchell Sanders used his radio to report one
U.S. KIA and to request a chopper. Then they wrapped Lavender in his poncho.
" M&MJs: comic slang for medical supplies.
KIA: killed in action.
io
They carried him out to a dry paddy, established security, and sat smoking the dead
man's dope until the chopper came. Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured
Martha's smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than
his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could
not stop thinking about her. When the dustoff arrived, they carried Lavender
aboard. Afterward they burned Than Khe. They marched until dusk, then dug their
holes, and that night Kiowa kept explaining how you had to be there, how fast it
was, how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete. Boom-down, he said.
Like cement.
In addition to the three standard weaponsthe M-60, M-16, and M-79they
carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing
or staying alive. They carried catch-as-catch-can. At various times, in various situations, they carried M-14s and CAR-15s and Swedish Ks and grease guns and captured
AK-47s and Chi-Coms and RPGs and Simonov carbines and black market Uzis and
.38-caliber Smith & Wesson handguns and 66 mm LAWs and shotguns and silencers
and blackjacks and bayonets and C - 4 plastic explosives. Lee Strunk carried a slingshot; a weapon of last resort, he called it. Mitchell Sanders carried brass knuckles.
Kiowa carried his grandfather's feathered hatchet. Every third or fourth man carried a
Claymore antipersonnel mine3.5 pounds with its firing device. They ail carried
fragmentation grenades14 ounces each. They all carried at least one M-18 colored
smoke grenade24 ounces. Some carried C S or tear gas grenades. Some carried
white phosphorus grenades. They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.
In the first week of April, before Lavender died, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross received
a good-luck charm from Martha. It was a simple pebble, an ounce at most. Smooth to
the touch, it was a milky white color with flecks of orange and violet, oval-shaped, like
a miniature egg. In the accompanying letter, Martha wrote that she had found the
pebble on the Jersey shoreline, precisely where the land touched water at high tide,
where things came together but also separated. It was this separate-but-together quality, she wrote, that had inspired her to pick up the pebble and to carry it in her breast
pocket for several days, where it seemed weightless, and then to send it through the
mail, by air, as a token of her truest feelings for him. Lieutenant Cross found this romantic. But he wondered what her truest feelings were, exactly, and what she meant
by separate-but-together. He wondered how the tides and waves had come into play
on that afternoon along the Jersey shoreline when Martha saw the pebble and bent
down to rescue it from geology. He imagined bare feet. Martha was a poet, with the
poet's sensibilities, and her feet would be brown and bare, the toenails unpainted, the
eyes chilly and somber like the ocean in March, and though it was painful, he wondered who had been with her that afternoon. He imagined a pair of shadows moving
along the strip of sand where things came together but also separated. It was phantom
jealousy, he knew, but he couldn't help himself. He loved her so much. On the march,
through the hot days of early April, he carried the pebble in his mouth, turning it with
his tongue, tasting sea salt and moisture. His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the w7ar. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the
column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing. He
would feel himself rising. Sun and waves and gentle winds, all love and lightness.
What they carried varied by mission.
When a mission took them to the mountains, they carried mosquito netting, 15
machetes, canvas tarps, and extra bug juice.
If a mission seemed especially hazardous, or if it involved a place they knew to be
bad, they carried everything they could. In certain heavily mined AOs, 0 where the
land was dense with Toe Poppers and Bouncing Betties, they took turns humping a
28-pound mine detector. With its headphones and big sensing plate, the equipment
was a stress on the lower back and shoulders, awkward to handle, often useless because
of the shrapnel in the earth, but they carried it anyway, partly for safety, partly for the
illusion of safety.
On ambush, or other night missions, they carried peculiar little odds and ends.
Kiowa always took along his New Testament and a pair of moccasins for silence.
Dave Jensen carried night-sight vitamins high in carotene. Lee Strunk carried his
slingshot; ammo, he claimed, would never be a problem. Rat Kiley carried brandy
and M&M's candy. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried the starlight scope,
which weighed 6.3 pounds with its aluminum carrying case. Henry Dobbins carried
his girlfriend's pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a comforter. They all carried
ghosts. When dark came, they would move out single file across the meadows and
paddies to their ambush coordinates, where they would quietly set up the Claymores
and lie down and spend the night waiting.
Other missions were more complicated and required special equipment. In midApril, it was their mission to search out and destroy the elaborate tunnel complexes in
the Than Khe area south of Chu Lai. T o blow the tunnels, they carried one-pound
blocks of pentrite high explosives, four blocks to a man, 68 pounds in all. They carried
wiring, detonators, and battery-powered clackers. Dave Jensen carried earplugs. Most
often, before blowing the tunnels, they were ordered by higher command to search
them, which was considered bad news, but by and large they just shrugged and carried
out orders. Because he was a big man, Henry Dobbins was excused from tunnel duty.
The others would draw numbers. Before Lavender died there were 17 men in the platoon, and whoever drew the number 17 would strip off his gear and crawl in headfirst
with a flashlight and Lieutenant Cross's .45-caliber pistol. The rest of them would fan
out as security. They would sit down or kneel, not facing the hole, listening to the
ground beneath them, imagining cobwebs and ghosts, whatever was down there
the tunnel walls squeezing inhow the flashlight seemed impossibly heavy in the
hand and how it was tunnel vision in the very strictest sense, compression in all ways,
even time, and how you had to wiggle inass and elbowsa swallowed-up feeling
and how you found yourself worrying about odd things: Will your flashlight go dead?
Do rats carry rabies? If you screamed, how far would the sound carry? Would your buddies hear it? Would they have the courage to drag you out? In some respects, though
not many, the waiting was worse than the tunnel itself. Imagination was a killer.
On April 16, when Lee Strunk drew the number 17, he laughed and muttered
something and went down quickly. The morning was hot and very still. Not good,
Kiowa said. He looked at the tunnel opening, then out across a dry paddy toward the
village of Than Khe. Nothing moved. No clouds or birds or people. As they waited,
the men smoked and drank Kool-Aid, not talking much, feeling sympathy for Lee
Strunk but also feeling the luck of the draw. You win some, you lose some, said
AOs: areas of operation.
Mitchell Sanders, and sometimes you settle for a rain check. It was a tired line and no
one laughed.
Henry Dobbins ate a tropical chocolate bar. Ted Lavender popped a tranquilizer
and went off to pee.
After five minutes, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross moved to the tunnel, leaned
down, and examined the darkness. Trouble, he thoughta cave-in maybe. And
then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about Martha. T h e stresses and
fractures, the quick collapse, the two of them buried alive under all that weight.
Dense, crushing love. Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate on Lee
Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin, all at once. He wanted to know
her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes?
Why so alone? Not lonely, just aloneriding her bike across campus or sitting off
by herself in the cafeteriaeven dancing, she danced aloneand it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How
she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the
kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat
and uninvolved.
Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not there. He was buried with
Martha under the white sand at the Jersey shore. They were pressed together, and the
pebble in his mouth was her tongue. He was smiling. Vaguely, he was aware of how
quiet the day was, the sullen paddies, yet he could not bring himself to worry about
matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love. He was
twenty-four years old. He couldn't help it.
A few moments later Lee Strunk crawled out of the tunnel. He came up grinning, filthy but alive. Lieutenant Cross nodded and closed his eyes while the others
clapped Strunk on the back and made jokes about rising from the dead.
Worms, Rat Kiley said. Right out of the grave. Fuckin' zombie.
The men laughed. They all felt great relief.
Spook city, said Mitchell Sanders.
Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning, yet very happy, and
right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went
Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black
bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone. Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guy's
dead. The guy's dead, he kept saying, which seemed profoundthe guy's dead. I
mean really.
The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition. Lieutenant Cross carried his good-luck pebble. Dave Jensen carried a rabbit's foot. Norman Bowker, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders. The thumb was dark brown, rubbery to
the touch, and weighed four ounces at most. It had been cut from a V C corpse, a boy
of fifteen or sixteen. They'd found him at the bottom of an irrigation ditch, badly
burned, flies in his mouth and eyes. The boy wore black shorts and sandals. At the
time of his death he had been carrying a pouch of rice, a rifle, and three magazines of
ammunition.
You want my opinion, Mitchell Sanders said, there's a definite moral here.
He put his hand on the dead boy's wrist. He was quiet for a time, as if counting a
pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost affectionately, and used Kiowa's hunting
hatchet to remove the thumb.
Henry Dobbins asked what the moral was.
Moral?
You know. Moral
Sanders wrapped the thumb in toilet paper and handed it across to Norman
Bowker. There was no blood. Smiling, he kicked the boy's head, watched the flies
scatter, and said, It's like with that old T V showPaladin. Have gun, will travel.
Henry Dobbins thought about it.
Yeah, well, he finally said. I don't see no moral.
There it is, man.
Fuck off.
They carried U S O stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety
pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated
joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and
Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bo los, and much more. Twice a
week, when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot chow in green mermite
cans and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop. They carried plastic
water containers, each with a two-gallon capacity. Mitchell Sanders carried a set of
starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insecticide. Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night for added
protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common.
Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds
with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could
no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried
infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code
of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried
lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itselfVietnam, the place, the soila powdery orange-red dust that
covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. T h e whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink, of fungus and decay, all
of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules. By daylight they took sniper fire, at
night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village
to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the
march. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs, toiling up the
hills and down into the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down, just
humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture
and carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility. Their
principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of
strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not
caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels,
sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then forming up and moving on to the
next village, then other villages, where it would always be the same. They carried
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35
their own lives. T h e pressures were enormous. In the heat of early afternoon, they
would remove their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was dangerous but .
which helped ease the strain. They would often discard things along the route of
march. Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores
and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive
with more of the same, then a day or two later still more, fresh watermelons and
crates of ammunition and sunglasses and woolen sweatersthe resources were stunningsparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for Easterit was the great
American war chestthe fruits of science, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford, the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, the vast fields of corn
and wheatthey carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shouldersand for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there
was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things
to carry.
After the chopper took Lavender away, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross led his men
into the village of Than Khe. They burned everything. They shot chickens and
dogs, they trashed the village well, they called in artillery and watched the wreckage, then they marched for several hours through the hot afternoon, and then at
dusk, while Kiowa explained how Lavender died, Lieutenant Cross found himself
trembling.
He tried not to cry. With his entrenching tool, which weighed five pounds, he
began digging a hole in the earth.
He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and
as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to
carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.
All he could do was dig. He used his entrenching tool like an ax, slashing, feeling both love and hate, and then later, when it was full dark, he sat at the bottom of
his foxhole and wept. It went on for a long while. In part, he was grieving for Ted
Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world, which was not quite real, and because she was a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, a poet and a virgin and uninvolved, and because he realized she did not love him and never would.
Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark. I swear to Godboom, down. Not a
word.
I've heard this, said Norman Bowker.
A pisser, you know? Still zipping himself up. Zapped while zipping.
All right, fine. That's enough.
Yeah, but you had to see it, the guy just
I heard, man. Cement. So why not shut the fuck up?
Kiowa shook his head sadly and glanced over at the hole where Lieutenant
Jimmy Cross sat watching the night. The air was thick and wet. A warm dense fog
had settled over the paddies and there was the stillness that precedes rain.
After a time Kiowa sighed.
One thing for sure, he said. The lieutenant's in some deep hurt. I mean that crying jagthe way he was carrying onit wasn't fake or anything, it was real heavyduty hurt. The man cares.
40
45
50
Sure, Norman Bowker said.
Say what you want, the man does care.
We all got problems.
Not Lavender.
No, I guess not, Bowker said. Do me a favor, though.
Shut up?
That's a smart Indian. Shut up.
Shrugging, Kiowa pulled off his boots. He wanted to say more, just to lighten up
his sleep, but instead he opened his New Testament and arranged it beneath his head
as a pillow. T h e fog made things seem hollow and unattached. He tried not to think
about Ted Lavender, but then he was thinking how fast it was, no drama, down and
dead, and how it was hard to feel anything except surprise. It seemed unchristian. He
wished he could find some great sadness, or even anger, but the emotion wasn't there
and he couldn't make it happen. Mostly he felt pleased to be alive. He liked the smell
of the New Testament under his cheek, the leather and ink and paper and glue,
whatever the chemicals were. He liked hearing the sounds of night. Even his fatigue, it felt fine, the stiff muscles and the prickly awareness of his own body, a floating feeling. He enjoyed not being dead. Lying there, Kiowa admired Lieutenant
Jimmy Cross's capacity for grief. He wanted to share the man's pain, he wanted to
care as Jimmy Cross cared. And yet when he closed his eyes, all he could think was
Boom-down, and all he could feel was the pleasure of having his boots off and the
fog curling in around him and the damp soil and the Bible smells and the plush
comfort of night.
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60
After a moment Norman Bowker sat up in the dark.
What the hell, he said. You want to talk, talk. Tell it to me.
Forget it.
No, man, go on. One thing I hate, it's a silent Indian.
For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now
and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to
squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered
their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their
weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went
wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and
fathers, hoping not to die. In different ways, it happened to all of them. Afterward,
when the firing ended, they would blink and peek up. They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it. They would force themselves to stand. As
if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old logicabsolute
silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices. It was the burden of being alive.
Awkwardly, the men would reassemble themselves, first in private, then in groups,
becoming soldiers again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes. They would
check for casualties, call in dustoffs, light cigarettes, try to smile, clear their throats
and spit and begin cleaning their weapons. After a time someone would shake his
head and say, No lie, I almost shit my pants, and someone else would laugh, which
meant it was bad, yes, but the guy had obviously not shit his pants, it wasn't that
bad, and in any case nobody would ever do such a thing and then go ahead and talk
about it. They would squint into the dense, oppressive sunlight. For a few moments,
perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its passage from man to
65
man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation. Scary stuff, one of them might say. But
then someone else would grin or flick his eyebrows and say, Roger-dodger, almost
cut me a new asshole, almost.
There were numerous such poses. Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful
resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho
zeal. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.
They found jokes to tell.
They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased
they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. W h e n someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a
curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if
to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked corpses. They cut off
thumbs. They talked grunt lingo. They told stories about Ted Lavender's supply
of tranquilizers, how the poor guy didn't feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil
he was.
There's a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders.
They were waiting for Lavender's chopper, smoking the dead man's dope.
The moral's pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No
joke, they'll ruin your day every time.
Cute, said Henry Dobbins.
Mind blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just blood and brains.
They made themselves laugh.
There it is, they'd say. Over and overthere it is, my friend, there it isas if the
repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost crazy, knowing without going, there it is, which meant be cool, let it ride, because Oh yeah, man,
you can't change what can't be changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively
and fucking well is.
They were tough.
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror,
love, longingthese were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and
specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They
carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or
freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could
never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried
their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of
blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what
had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory
or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire.
Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured.
They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was
simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground
and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked
you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry
you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not
courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be
cowards.
By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure. They sneered at sick call They spoke bitterly about guys who had found release
by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they'd say. Candy-asses. It was
fierce, mocking talk, with only a trace of envy or awe, but even so the image played
itself out behind their eyes.
They imagined the muzzle against flesh. So easy: squeeze the trigger and blow
away a toe. They imagined it. They imagined the quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses.
And they dreamed of freedom birds.
At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried away by jumbo jets.
They felt the rush of takeoff. Gone! they yelled. And then velocitywings and enginesa smiling stewardessbut it was more than a plane, it was a real bird, a big
sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching. They were flying. The
weights fell off; there was nothing to bear. They laughed and held on tight, feeling
the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It's over, I'm gone! they were
naked, they were light and freeit was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant,
light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were
taken up over the clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification
and global entanglementsSin loi! they yelled. I'm sorry, mother-fuckers, but I'm out
of it, I'm goofed, I'm on a space cruise, Ym gone! and it was a restful, unencumbered
sensation, just riding the light waves, sailing that big silver freedom bird over the
mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping cities and
cemeteries and highways and the golden arches of McDonald's, it was flight, a kind of
fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth
and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothingGone! they screamed. I'm
sorry but I'm gone!and so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over
to lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne.
On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross
crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters. Then he burned
the two photographs. There was a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he
used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the
photographs over the tight blue flame with the tips of his fingers.
He realized it was only a gesture. Stupid, he thought. Sentimental, too, but
mostly just stupid.
Lavender was dead. You couldn't burn the blame.
Besides, the letters were in his head. And even now, without photographs, Lieutenant Cross could see Martha playing volleyball in her white gym shorts and yellow
T-shirt. He could see her moving in the rain.
When the fire died out, Lieutenant Cross pulled his poncho over his shoulders
and ate breakfast from a can.
There was no great mystery, he decided.
In those burned letters Martha had never mentioned the war, except to say,
Jimmy, take care of yourself. She wasn't involved. She signed the letters Love, but it
wasn't love, and all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter. Virginity was no
Sin loi: Vietnamese for sorry.
80
85
longer an issue. He hated her. Yes, he did. He hated her. Love, too, but it was a hard,
hating kind of love.
The morning came up wet and blurry. Everything seemed part of everything else,
the fog and Martha and the deepening rain.
He was a soldier, after all.
Half smiling, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross took out his maps. He shook his head
hard, as if to clear it, then bent forward and began planning the day's march. In ten
minutes, or maybe twenty, he would rouse the men and they would pack up and head
west, where the maps showed the country to be green and inviting. They would do
what they had always done. T h e rain might add some weight, but otherwise it would
be one more day layered upon all the other days.
He was realistic about it. There was that new hardness in his stomach. He loved
her but he hated her.
No more fantasies, he told himself.
Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian,
it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place
where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity. Kiowa was right. Boomdown, and you were dead, never partly dead.
Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha's gray eyes gazing back at
him.
He understood.
It was very sad, he thought. T h e things men carried inside. The things men did
or felt they had to do.
He almost nodded at her, but didn't.
Instead he went back to his maps. He was now determined to perform his duties
firmly and without negligence. It wouldn't help Lavender, he knew that, but from this
point on he would comport himself as an officer. He would dispose of his good-luck
pebble. Swallow it, maybe, or use Lee Strunk's slingshot, or just drop it along the trail.
On the march he would impose strict field discipline. He would be careful to send out
flank security, to prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at the
proper pace and at the proper interval. He would insist on clean weapons. He would
confiscate the remainder of Lavender's dope. Later in the day, perhaps, he would call
the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what had
happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it. He would look them in the
eyes, keeping his chin level, and he would issue the new SOPs in a calm, impersonal
tone of voice, a lieutenant's voice, leaving no room for argument or discussion. Commencing immediately, he'd tell them, they would no longer abandon equipment along
the route of march. They would police up their acts. They would get their shit together, and keep it together, and maintain it neatly and in good working order.
He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength, distancing himself.
Among the men there would be grumbling, of course, and maybe worse, because
their days would seem longer and their loads heavier, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead. He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor. And if anyone quarreled or complained, he
would simply tighten his lips and arrange his shoulders in the correct command posture. He might give a curt little nod. Or he might not. He might just shrug and say,
Carry on, then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out toward
the villages west of Than Khe.
Tillie Olsen
I Stand Here Ironing
Tillie Olsen was born in Omaha in 1912, into a
family of blue-collar workers who had fled
Czarist Russia to escape persecution. Olsen grew
up in poverty and quit school in eleventh grade to
work. She later declared, "Public libraries were
my collegeAs
a member of the Young Communist League, she strove to organize Kansas
City meat-packers, and was once thrown into
jail. After her first husband deserted her, leaving
her with one child, she married a printer and labor activist, Jack Olsen, with whom she had
three more children. Although in the 1930s she
published fiction in a distinguished little magazine, Partisan Review, the demands of motherhood, political activity, and factory and office jobs
left her scant time to write until 1955. Then her
youngest daughter began school and Olsen was
awarded a creative writing fellowship) at Stanford
1961
TILL,E
0LSEN
University. Long a crusader for causes, she has been active in the feminist movement. "I
Stand Here Ironing " from her first book, Tell Me a Riddle (1961), reads like autobiography. Olsen has since published Yonnondio (1974), an unfinished novel begun at age nineteen, and Silences (1978),, a study of why writersespecially women writersdry up. She
holds several honorary degrees. In 1981 the city of San Francisco designated a Tillie Olsen
day. Olsen currently lives in BerJieley, California.
I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth
with the iron.
"I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your
daughter. I'm sure you can help me understand her. She's a youngster who needs help
and whom I'm deeply interested in helping."
"Who needs help." . . . Even if I came, what good would it do? You think because I
am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived
for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me.
And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I
will start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together
again. Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have
been and what cannot be helped.
She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at
birth. You do not guess how new and uneasy her tenancy in her now-loveliness. You
did not know her all those years she was thought homely, or see her poring over her
baby pictures, making me tell her over and over how beautiful she had beenand
would be, I would tell herand was now, to the seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were
few or nonexistent. Including mine.
I nursed her. They feel that's important nowadays. I nursed all the children, but
with her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did like the books then
said. Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed.
Why do I put that first? I do not even know if it matters, or if it explains anything.
She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion,
loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her blue
overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur. She was
a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with
the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for
work and for Emily's father, who "could no longer endure" (he wrote in his good-bye
note) "sharing want with us."
I was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression. I would
start running as soon as I got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the place
smelling sour, and awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would
break into a clogged weeping that could not be comforted, a weeping I can hear yet.
After a while I found a job hashing at night so I could be with her days, and it
was better. But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her.
It took a long time to raise the money for her fare back. Then she got chicken
pox and I had to wait longer. When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking
quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a
shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pockmarks. All the baby loveliness gone.
She was two. Old enough for nursery school they said, and I did not know then
what I know nowthe fatigue of the long day, and the lacerations of group life in the
kinds of nurseries that are only parking places for children.
Except that it would have made no difference if I had known. It was the only
place there was. It was the only way we could be together, the only way I could hold
a job.
And even without knowing, I knew. I knew the teacher that was evil because all
these years it has curdled into my memory, the little boy hunched in the corner, her
rasp, "why aren't you outside, because Alvin hits you? that's no reason, go out,
scaredy." I knew Emily hated it even if she did not clutch and implore "don't go
Mommy" like the other children, mornings.
She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick.
Momma, I feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren't there today, they're sick. Momma,
we can't go, there was a fire there last night. Momma, it's a holiday today, no school,
they told me.
But never a direct protest, never rebellion. I think of our others in their three-,
four-year-oldnessthe explosions, the tempers, the denunciations, the demands
and I feel suddenly ill. I put the iron down. What in me demanded that goodness in
her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?
The old man living in the back once said in his gentle way: "You should smile at
Emily more when you look at her." What was in my face when I looked at her? I
loved her. There were all the acts of love.
It was only with the others I remembered what he said, and it was the face of joy,
and not of care or tightness or worry I turned to themtoo late for Emily. She does
not smile easily, let alone almost always as her brothers and sisters do. Her face is
closed and somber, but when she wants, how fluid. You must have seen it in her pantomimes, you spoke of her rare gift for comedy on the stage that rouses laughter out of
the audience so dear they applaud and applaud and do not want to let her go.
Where does it come from, that comedy? There was none of it in her when she
came back to me that second time, after I had had to send her away again. She had a
new daddy now to learn to love, and I think perhaps it was a better time.
Except when we left her alone nights, telling ourselves she was old enough.
20
"Can't you go some other time, Mommy, like tomorrow?" she would ask. "Will it
be just a little while you'll be gone? Do you promise?"
The time we came back, the front door open, the clock on the floor in the hall.
She rigid awake. "It wasn't just a little while. I didn't cry. Three times I called you,
just three times, and then I ran downstairs to open the door so you could come faster.
The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked."
She said the clock talked loud again that night I went to the hospital to have Susan. She was delirious with the fever that comes from red measles, but she was fully
conscious all the week I was gone and the week after we were home when she could
not come near the new baby or me.
She did not get well. She stayed skeleton thin, not wanting to eat, and night after
night she had nightmares. She would call for me, and I would rouse from exhaustion
to sleepily call back: "You're all right, darling, go to sleep, it's just a dream," and if she
still called, in a sterner voice, "now go to sleep, Emily, there's nothing to hurt you."
Twice, only twice, when I had to get up for Susan anyhow, I went in to sit with her.
Now when it is too late (as if she would let me hold and comfort her like I do the 25
others) I get up and go to her at once at her moan or restless stirring. "Are you awake,
Emily? Can I get you something?" And the answer is always the same: "No, I'm all
right, go back to sleep, Mother."
They persuaded me at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent home in the
country where "she can have the kind of food and care you can't manage for her, and
you'll be free to concentrate on the new baby." They still send children to that place.
I see pictures on the society page of sleek young women planning affairs to raise
money for it, or dancing at the affairs, or decorating Easter eggs or filling Christmas
stockings for the children.
They never have a picture of the children so I do not know if the girls still
wear those gigantic red bows and the ravaged looks on the every other Sunday
when parents can come to visit "unless otherwise notified"as we were notified
the first six weeks.
Oh it is a handsome place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds.
High up on the balconies of each cottage the children stand, the girls in their red
bows and white dresses, the boys in white suits and giant red ties. T h e parents stand
below shrieking up to be heard and the children shriek down to be heard, and between them the invisible wall: "Not to Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or
Physical Affection."
There was a tiny girl who always stood hand in hand with Emily. Her parents
never came. One visit she was gone. "They moved her to Rose Cottage," Emily
shouted in explanation. "They don't like you to love anybody here."
She wrote once a week, the labored writing of a seven-year-old. "I am fine. How 30
is the baby. If I write my leter nicly 1 will have a star. Love." There never was a star.
We wrote every other day, letters she could never hold or keep but only hear read
once. "We simply do not have room for children to keep any personal possessions,"
they patiently explained when we pieced one Sunday's shrieking together to plead
how much it would mean to Emily, who loved so to keep things, to be allowed to
keep her letters and cards.
Each visit she looked frailer. "She isn't eating," they told us.
(They had runny eggs for breakfast or mush with lumps, Emily said later, I'd hold it in my mouth and not swallow. Nothing ever tasted good, just when they had
chicken.)
It took us eight months to get her released home, and only the fact that she
gained back so little of her seven lost pounds convinced the social worker.
I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay
stiff, and after a while she'd push away. She ate little. Food sickened her, and I think
much of life too. Oh she had physical lightness and brightness, twinkling by on
skates, bouncing like a ball up and down up and down over the jump rope, skimming
over the hill: but these were momentary.
She fretted about her appearance, thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time
when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby
blonde replica of Shirley Temple. The doorbell sometimes rang for her, but no one
seemed to come and play in the house or be a best friend. Maybe because w7e moved
so much.
There was a boy she loved painfully through two school semesters. Months later
she told me how she had taken pennies from my purse to buy him candy. "Licorice
was his favorite arid I brought him some every day, but he still liked Jennifer better n
me. Why, Mommy?" T h e kind of question for which there is no answer.
School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness
and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn. T o her overworked and exasperated teachers she was an overconscientious "slow learner" who kept trying to
catch up and was absent entirely too often.
I let her be absent, though sometimes the illness was imaginary. How different
from my now-strictness about attendance with the others. I wasn't working. We had
a new baby, I was home anyhow. Sometimes, after Susan grew old enough, I would
keep her home from school, too, to have them all together.
Mostly Emily had asthma, and her breathing, harsh and labored, would fill the
house with a curiously tranquil sound. I would bring the two old dresser mirrors and
her boxes of collections to her bed. She would select beads and single earrings, bottle
tops and shells, dried flowers and pebbles, old postcards and scraps, all sorts of oddments; then she and Susan would play Kingdom, setting up landscapes and furniture,
peopling them with action.
Those were the only times of peaceful companionship between her and Susan. I
have edged away from it, that poisonous feeling between them, that terrible balancing
of hurts and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, those earlier years.
Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, demanding, hurting, takingbut only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily toward Susan that corroding resentment. It seems so obvious on the surface, yet it is not obvious. Susan, the second child, Susan, golden- and curly-haired and chubby, quick and
articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not; Susan,
not able to resist Emily's precious things, losing or sometimes clumsily breaking
them; Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for applause while Emily sat silent
(to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I told it to Susan); Susan, who for all
the five years' difference in age was just a year behind Emily in developing physically.
I am glad for that slow physical development that widened the difference between her and her contemporaries, though she suffered over it. She was too vulnerable
for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant
measuring of yourself against every other, of envy, "If I had that copper hair," "If I
had that skin. . . ." She tormented herself enough about not looking like the others,
there was enough of the unsureness, the having to be conscious of words before you
speak, the constant caringwhat are they thinking of me? without having it all magnified by the merciless physical drives.
Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him. It is rare there is such a cry now.
That time of motherhood is almost behind me when the ear is not one's own but must
always be racked and listening for the child cry, the child call. We sit for a while and I
hold him, looking out over the city spread in charcoal with its soft aisles of light.
"Shoogily," he breathes and curls closer. I carry him back to bed, asleep. Shoogily. A
funny word, a family word, inherited from Emily, invented by her to say: comfort.
In this and other ways she leaves her seal, I say aloud. And startle at my saying it.
What do I mean? What did I start to gather together, to try and make coherent? I was
at the terrible, growing years. War years. I do not remember them well. I was working, there were four smaller ones now, there was not time for her. She had to help be
a mother, and housekeeper, and shopper. She had to set her seal. Mornings of crisis
and near hysteria trying to get lunches packed, hair combed, coats and shoes found,
everyone to school or Child Care on time, the baby ready for transportation. And always the paper scribbled on by a smaller one, the book looked at by Susan then mislaid, the homework not done. Running out to that huge school where she was one,
she was lost, she was a drop; suffering over the unpreparedness, stammering and unsure in her classes.
There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded down. She would
struggle over books, always eating (it was in those years she developed her enormous
appetite that is legendary in our family) and I would be ironing, or preparing food for
the next day, or writing V-mail to Bill, or tending the baby. Sometimes, to make me
laugh, or out of her despair, she would imitate happenings or types at school.
I think I said once: "Why don't you do something like this in the school amateur
show?" One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable through the
weeping: "Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; they clapped and
clapped and wouldn't let me go."
Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had
been in anonymity.
She began to be asked to perform at other high schools, even in colleges, then at
city and statewide affairs. The first one we went to, I only recognized her that first
moment when thin, shy, she almost drowned herself into the curtains. Then: Was
this Emily? The control, the command, the convulsing and deadly clowning, the
spell, then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this rare and precious
laughter out of their lives.
Afterwards: You ought to do something about her with a gift like thatbut
without money or knowing how, what does one do? We have left it all to her, and
the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing.
She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step,
and I know she is happy tonight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call did not
happen today.
"Aren't you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his
mother in a rocker. I'd have to paint mine standing over an ironing board." This is
one of her communicative nights and she tells me everything and nothing as she fixes
herself a plate of food out of the icebox.
She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you concerned? She will find her way.
She starts up the stairs to bed. "Don't get me up with the rest in the morning."
"But I thought you were having midterms." "Oh, those," she comes back in, kisses
me, and says quite lightly, "in a couple of years when we'll all be atom-dead they
won't matter a bit."
She has said it before. She believes it. But because I have been dredging the past,
and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I cannot
endure it tonight.
I will never total it all. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom smiled
at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I had to work her first six years when
there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were years she had care
she hated. She was dark and thin and foreign-looking in a world where the prestige
went to blondeness and curly hair and dimples, she was slow where glibness was
prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother.
There were other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister seemed ail that
she was not. There were years she did not want me to touch her. She kept too much
in herself, her life was such she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came
too late. She has much to her and probably little will come of it. She is a child of her
age, of depression, of war, of fear.
Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloombut in how many does it? There
is still enough left to live by. Only help her to knowhelp make it so there is cause
for her to knowthat she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.
OetavSo Paz
My Life with the Wave
TRANSLATED BY ELIOT WEINBERGER
Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was born in Mexico
City. His grandfather, a journalist and novelist,
had fought alongside Benito Juarez in resistance
to the French occupation of Mexico in the
1860s. His father, a lawyer, had fought for the
revolution and had been the private secretary of
peasant guerrilla leader Emiliano Zapata. Paz
grew up in his grandfather's large but decaying
house, and spent much of his time in its library
of more than 6 , 0 0 0 volumes. He went to Spain
in 1937, intending to fight on the Loyalist side in
the Spanish Civil War, but found his leftist
ideals severely tested by what he witnessed there,
and he gradually adopted a centrist political position that rejected both extremes of right-wing dictatorship and Marxist revolution; his intellectual
OCTAVIO PAZ
55
honesty would later bring him many enemies when he became an early critic of the Castro
regime in Cuba. Paz joined the Mexican foreign service in 1945; over the course of his
diplomatic career, he held postings in San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Geneva, and
Delhi, but in J968, after six years as Mexico's ambassador to India, he resigned in protest
over his government's brutal suppression of student demonstrations. He then supported himself by teaching at Cambridge, Harvard, the University of Texas, and elsewhere.
Beginning in 1933 and continuing steadily thereafter, Paz published the many volumes
of poetry that are the cornerstone of his achievement and the basis of his worldwide reputation. His work, which has been translated by such eminent poets as Elizabeth Bishop,
Denise Levertov, John Frederick Nims} and Charles Tomlinson, has its fullest representation in English in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957-1987. While immersed in
his own culture and national ethos, as demonstrated in T h e Labyrinth of Solitude
(1950), Paz was a profound internationalist as well: The Bow and the Lyre (1956), a
study of the poetic process, and Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature ( J 9 8 7 )
range impressively from ancient to modern times, from the old world to the new. In 1990,
Paz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the only Mexican-born writer to
have attained that honor.
When I left that sea, a wave moved ahead of the others. She was tall and light.
In spite of the shouts of the others who grabbed her by her floating clothes, she
clutched my arm and went off with me leaping. I didn't want to say anything to her,
because it hurt me to shame her in front of her friends. Besides, the furious stares of
the elders paralyzed me. When we got to town, I explained to her that it was impossible, that life in the city was not what she had been able to imagine with the ingenuity of a wave that had never left the sea. She watched me gravely. "No, your decision
is made. You can't go back." I tried sweetness, hardness, irony. She cried, screamed,
hugged, threatened. I had to apologize.
The next day my troubles began. How could we get on the train without being
seen by the conductor, the passengers, the police? Certainly the rules say nothing in
respect to the transport of waves on the railroad, but this same reserve was an indication of the severity with which our act would be judged. After much thought I arrived
at the station an hour before departure, took my seat, and, when no one was looking,
emptied the water tank for the passengers; then, carefully, poured in my friend.
T h e first incident came about when the children of a nearby couple declared
their noisy thirst. I stopped them and promised them refreshments and lemonade.
They were at the point of accepting when another thirsty passenger approached. I
was about to invite her also, but the stare of her companion stopped me. The lady
took a paper cup, approached the tank, and turned the faucet. Her cup was barely
half full when I leaped between the woman and my friend. She looked at me astonished. While I apologized, one of the children turned the faucet again. I closed it
violently. The lady brought the cup to her lips:
"Agh, this water is salty."
T h e boy echoed her. Various passengers rose. T h e husband called the conductor:
"This man put salt in the water."
The conductor called the Inspector:
"So you put substances in the water?"
The Inspector in turn called the police:
"So you poisoned the water?"
The police in turn called the Captain:
10
"So you're the poisoner?"
The captain called three agents. The agents took me to an empty car amid the
stares and whispers of the passengers. At the next station they took me off and
pushed and dragged me to the jail. For days no one spoke to me, except during the
long interrogations. When I explained my story no one believed me, not even the
jailer, who shook his head, saying: "The case is grave, truly grave. You didn't want to
poison the children?" One day they brought me before the Magistrate.
"Your case is difficult," he repeated. "I will assign you to the Penal Judge."
A year passed. Finally they judged me. As there were no victims, my sentence
was light. After a short time, my day of liberty arrived.
The Chief of the Prison called me in:
"Well, now you're free. You were lucky. Lucky there were no victims. But don't
do it again, because the next time won't be so s h o r t . . . "
And he stared at me with the same grave stare with which everyone watched me.
The same afternoon I took the train and after hours of uncomfortable traveling
arrived in Mexico City. I took a cab home. At the door of my apartment I heard
laughter and singing. I felt a pain in my chest, like the smack of a wave of surprise
when surprise smacks us across the chest: my friend was there, singing and laughing
as always.
"How did you get back?"
"Simple: in the train. Someone, after making sure that I was only salt water,
poured me in the engine. It was a rough trip: soon I was a wrhite plume of vapor, soon
I fell in a fine rain on the machine. I thinned out a lot. I lost many drops."
Her presence changed my life. The house of dark corridors and dusty furniture
was filled with air, with sun, with sounds and green and blue reflections, a numerous
and happy populace of reverberations and echoes. How many waves is one wave, and
how it can make a beach or a rock or jetty out of a wall, a chest, a forehead that it
crowns with foam! Even the abandoned corners, the abject corners of dust and debris
were touched by her light hands. Everything began to laugh and everywhere shined
with teeth. The sun entered the old rooms with pleasure and stayed in my house for
hours, abandoning the other houses, the district, the city, the country. And some
nights, very late, the scandalized stars watched it sneak from my house.
Love was a game, a perpetual creation. All was beach, sand, a bed of sheets that
were always fresh. If I embraced her, she swelled with pride, incredibly tall, like the
liquid stalk of a poplar; and soon that thinness flowered into a fountain of white
feathers, into a plume of smiles that fell over my head and back and covered me with
whiteness. Or she stretched out in front of me, infinite as the horizon, until I too became horizon and silence. Full and sinuous, it enveloped me like music or some giant
lips. Her present was a going and coming of caresses, of murmurs, of kisses. Entered in
her waters, I was drenched to the socks and in a wink of an eye I found myself up
above, at the height of vertigo, mysteriously suspended, to fall like a stone and feel
myself gently deposited on the dryness, like a feather. Nothing is comparable to
sleeping in those waters, to wake pounded by a thousand happy light lashes, by a
thousand assaults that withdrew laughing.
But never did I reach the center of her being. Never did I touch the nakedness of
pain and of death. Perhaps it does not exist in waves, that secret site that renders a
woman vulnerable and mortal, that electric button where all interlocks, twitches,
and straightens out to then swoon. Her sensibility, like that of women, spread in ripples, only they weren't concentric ripples, but rather eccentric, spreading each time
farther, until they touched other galaxies. To love her was to extend to remote contacts, to vibrate with far-off stars we never suspected. But her center . . . no, she had
no center, just an emptiness as in a whirlwind, that sucked me in and smothered me.
Stretched out side by side, we exchanged confidences, whispers, smiles. Curled
up, she fell on my chest and there unfolded like a vegetation of murmurs. She sang in
my ear, a little snail. She became humble and transparent, clutching my feet like a
small animal, calm water. She was so clear I could read all of her thoughts. Certain
nights her skin was covered with phosphorescence and to embrace her was to embrace a piece of night tattooed with fire. But she also became black and bitter. At unexpected hours she roared, moaned, twisted. Her groans woke the neighbors. Upon
hearing her, the sea wind would scratch at the door of the house or rave in a loud
voice on the roof. Cloudy days irritated her; she broke furniture, said bad words, covered me with insults and green and gray foam. She spit, cried, swore, prophesied.
Subject to the moon, to the stars, to the influence of the light of other worlds, she
changed her moods and appearance in a way that 1 thought fantastic, but it was as
fatal as the tide.
She began to miss solitude. T h e house was full of snails and conches, of small
sailboats that in her fury she had shipwrecked (together with the others, laden with
images, that each night left my forehead and sank in her ferocious or pleasant whirlwinds). How many little treasures were lost in that time! But my boats and the silent
song of the snails was not enough. I had to install in the house a colony of fish. I
confess that it was not without jealousy that I watched them swimming in my
friend, caressing her breasts, sleeping between her legs, adorning her hair with light
flashes of color.
Among all those fish there were a few particularly repulsive and ferocious ones,
little tigers from the aquarium, the large fixed eyes and jagged and bloodthirsty
mouths. I don't know by what aberration my friend delighted in playing with them,
shamelessly showing them a preference whose significance I preferred to ignore. She
passed long hours confined with those horrible creatures. One day I couldn't stand it
any more; I threw open the door and launched after them. Agile and ghostly they escaped my hands while she laughed and pounded me until I fell. I thought I was
drowning. And when I was at the point of death, and purple, she deposited me on
the bank and began to kiss me, saying I don't know what things. I felt very weak, fatigued, and humiliated. And at the same time her voluptuousness made me close my
eyes, because her voice was sweet and she spoke to me of the delicious death of the
drowned. When I recovered, I began to fear and hate her.
I had neglected my affairs. Now I began to visit friends and renew old and dear
relations. I met an old girlfriend. Making her swear to keep my secret, I told her of my
life with the wave. Nothing moves women so much as the possibility of saving a man.
My redeemer employed all of her arts, but what could a woman, master of a limited
number of souls and bodies, do in front of my friend who was always changingand
always identical to herself in her incessant metamorphoses.
Winter came. The sky turned gray. Fog fell on the city. Frozen drizzle rained. My
friend cried every night. During the day she isolated herself, quiet and sinister, stuttering a single syllable, like an old woman who grumbles in a corner. She became
cold; to sleep with her was to shiver all night and to feel freeze, little by little, the
blood, the bones, the thoughts. She turned deep, impenetrable, restless. I left frequently and my absences were each time more prolonged. She, in her corner, howled
loudly. With teeth like steel and a corrosive tongue she gnawed the walls, crumbled
25
them. She passed the nights in mourning, reproaching me. She had nightmares, deliriums of the sun, of warm beaches. She dreamt of the pole and of changing into a great
block of ice, sailing beneath black skies in nights long as months. She insulted me.
She cursed and laughed; filled the house with guffaws and phantoms. She called up
the monsters of the depths, blind ones, quick ones, blunt. Charged with electricity,
she carbonized all she touched; full of acid, she dissolved whatever she brushed
against. Her sweet embraces became knotty cords that strangled me. And her body,
greenish and elastic, was an implacable whip that lashed, lashed, lashed. I fled. The
horrible fish laughed with ferocious smiles.
There in the mountains, among the tall pines and precipices, I breathed the cold
thin air like a thought of liberty. At the end of a month I returned. I had decided. It
had been so cold that over the marble of the chimney, next to the extinct fire, I
found a statue of ice. I was unmoved by her weary beauty. I put her in a big canvas
sack and went out to the streets with the sleeper on my shoulders. In a restaurant in
the outskirts I sold her to a waiter friend who immediately began to chop her into little pieces, which he carefully deposited in the buckets where bottles are chilled.
Leslie Marmon Silko
The Man to Send Rain Clouds
1981
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, in 1948. Her mixed ancestry included Laguna Pueblo Indian, Mexican, and
white, but she grew up on the Laguna Pueblo
Reservation, where some part of her family had
lived for generations. After attending Indian Affairs schools in Laguna Pueblo and Catholic
schools in Albuquerque, Silko graduated from the
University of New Mexico-Albuquerque
in
1969. She briefly attended law school before deciding to devote herself full-time to writing. Sill<o first
became known as a poet with Laguna Woman
(1974). Her first novel, Ceremony, was published in 1977 to critical acclaim. Her second,
A1
r 1
r^
r r
LESLIE MARMON SILKO
Almanac or the Dead, an apocalyptic view of the
American future, appeared in 1991. In her next novel, Gardens in the Dunes (1999), the
author mixed American history, Christian theology, Southwestern Indian myth, and botany to
create an extravagant family chronicle. Silko has also published Storyteller (1981), which includes poetry, short stories, family history, myths, and photographs, and Yellow Woman and a
Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today (1996). "The Man to Send
Rain Ck)uds" originally appeared in Storyteller, Silko lives in Tucson, Arizona.
They found him under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were
faded light blue so that he had been easy to find. The big cottonwood tree stood apart
from a small grove of winterbare cottonwoods which grew in the wide, sandy arroyo.
He had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up
and down the arroyo. Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, gathered the sheep and left
30
them in the pen at the sheep camp before they returned to the cottonwood tree.
Leon waited under the tree while Ken drove the truck through the deep sand to the
edge of the arroyo. He squinted up at the sun and unzipped his jacketit sure was
hot for this time of year. But high and northwest the blue mountains were still in
snow. Ken came sliding down the low, crumbling bank about fifty yards down, and he
was bringing the red blanket.
Before they wrapped the old man, Leon took a piece of string out of his pocket
and tied a small gray feather in the old man's long white hair. Ken gave him the
paint. Across the brown wrinkled forehead he drew a streak of white and along the
high cheekbones he drew a strip of blue paint. He paused and watched Ken throw
pinches of corn meal and pollen into the wind that fluttered the small gray feather.
Then Leon painted with yellow under the old man's broad nose, and finally, when he
had painted green across the chin, he smiled.
"Send us rain clouds, Grandfather." They laid the bundle in the back of the
pickup and covered it with a heavy tarp before they started back to the pueblo.
They turned off the highway onto the sandy pueblo road. Not long after they
passed the store and post office they saw Father Paul's car coming toward them.
When he recognized their faces he slowed his car and waved for them to stop. T h e
young priest rolled down the car window.
"Did you find old Teofilo?" he asked loudly.
Leon stopped the truck. "Good morning, Father. We were just out to the sheep
camp. Everything is O.K. now."
"Thank God for that. Teofilo is a very old man. You really shouldn't allow him
to stay at the sheep camp alone."
"No, he won't do that any more now."
"Well, I'm glad you understand. I hope I'll be seeing you at Mass this weekwe
missed you last Sunday. See if you can get old Teofilo to come with you." The priest
smiled and waved at them as they drove away.
Louise and Teresa were waiting. The table was set for lunch, and the coffee was
boiling on the black iron stove. Leon looked at Louise and then at Teresa.
"We found him under a cottonwood tree in the big arroyo near sheep camp. I
guess he sat down to rest in the shade and never got up again." Leon walked toward
the old man's bed. T h e red plaid shawl had been shaken and spread carefully over the
bed, and a new brown flannel shirt and pair of stiff new Levi's were arranged neatly
beside the pillow. Louise held the screen door open while Leon and Ken carried in
the red blanket. He looked small and shriveled, and after they dressed him in the new
shirt and pants he seemed more shrunken.
It was noontime now because the church bells rang the Angelus. They ate the
beans with hot bread, and nobody said anything until after Teresa poured the coffee.
Ken stood up and put on his jacket. "I'll see about the gravediggers. Only the top
layer of soil is frozen. I think it can be ready before dark."
Leon nodded his head and finished his coffee. After Ken had been gone for a while,
the neighbors and clanspeople came quietly to embrace Teofilo's family and to leave
food on the table because the gravediggers would come to eat when they were finished.
10
T h e sky in the west was full of pale yellow light. Louise stood outside with her
hands in the pockets of Leon's green army jacket that was too big for her. The funeral
was over, and the old men had taken their candles and medicine bags and were gone.
15
She waited until the body was laid into the pickup before she said anything to Leon.
She touched his arm, and he noticed that her hands were still dusty from the corn
meal that she had sprinkled around the old man. When she spoke, Leon could not
hear her.
"What did you say? I didn't hear you."
"I said that 1 had been thinking about something."
"About what?"
"About the priest sprinkling holy water for Grandpa. So he won't be thirsty."
Leon stared at the new moccasins that Teofilo had made for the ceremonial
dances in the summer. They were nearly hidden by the red blanket. It was getting
colder, and the wind pushed gray dust down the narrow pueblo road. The sun was approaching the long mesa where it disappeared during the winter. Louise stood there
shivering and watching his face. Then he zipped up his jacket and opened the truck
door. "I'll see if he's there."
Ken stopped the pickup at the church, and Leon got out; and then Ken drove
down the hill to the graveyard where people were waiting. Leon knocked at the old
carved door with its symbols of the Lamb. While he waited he looked up at the twin
bells from the king of Spain with the last sunlight pouring around them in their
tower.
The priest opened the door and smiled when he saw who it was. "Come in!
What brings you here this evening?"
The priest walked toward the kitchen, and Leon stood with his cap in his hand,
playing with the earflaps and examining the living roomthe brown sofa, the green
armchair, and the brass lamp that hung down from the ceiling by links of chain. The
priest dragged a chair out of the kitchen and offered it to Leon.
"No thank you, Father. I only came to ask you if you would bring your holy water
to the graveyard."
The priest turned away from Leon and looked out the window at the patio full of
shadows and the dining-room windows of the nuns' cloister across the patio. The curtains were heavy, and the light from within faintly penetrated; it was impossible to
see the nuns inside eating supper. "Why didn't you tell me he was dead? I could have
brought the Last Rites anyway."
Leon smiled. "It wasn't necessary, Father."
T h e priest stared down at his scuffed brown loafers and the worn hem of his cassock. "For a Christian burial it was necessary."
His voice was distant, and Leon thought that his blue eyes looked tired.
"It's O.K., Father, we just want him to have plenty of water."
The priest sank down into the green chair and picked up a glossy missionary
magazine. He turned the colored pages full of lepers and pagans without looking at
them.
"You know I can't do that, Leon. There should have been the Last Rites and a
funeral Mass at the very least."
Leon put on his green cap and pulled the flaps down over his ears. "It's getting
late, Father. I've got to go."
When Leon opened the door Father Paul stood up and said, "Wait." He left the
room and came back wearing a long brown overcoat. He followed Leon out the door
and across the dim churchyard to the adobe steps in front of the church. They both
stooped to fit through the low adobe entrance. And when they started down the hill
to the graveyard only half of the sun was visible above the mesa.
T h e priest approached the grave slowly, wondering how they had managed to
dig into the frozen ground; and then he remembered that this was New Mexico, and
saw the pile of cold loose sand beside the hole. T h e people stood close to each other
with little clouds of steam puffing from their faces. The priest looked at them and saw
a pile of jackets, gloves, and scarves in the yellow, dry tumbleweeds that grew in the
graveyard. He looked at the red blanket, not sure that Teofilo was so small, wondering if it wasn't some perverse Indian tricksomething they did in March to ensure a
good harvestwondering if maybe old Teofilo was actually at sheep camp corralling
the sheep for the night. But there he was, facing into a cold dry wind and squinting at
the last sunlight, ready to bury a red wool blanket while the faces of his parishioners
were in shadow with the last warmth of the sun on their backs.
His fingers were stiff, and it took him a long time to twist the lid off the holy water. Drops of water fell on the red blanket and soaked into dark icy spots. He sprinkled the grave and the water disappeared almost before it touched the dim, cold sand;
it reminded him of somethinghe tried to remember what it was, because he
thought if he could remember he might understand this. He sprinkled more water; he
shook the container until it was empty, and the water fell through the light from sundown like August rain that fell while the sun was still shining, almost evaporating before it touched the wilted squash flowers.
The wind pulled at the priest's brown Franciscan robe and swirled away the com
meal and pollen that had been sprinkled on the blanket. They lowered the bundle into
the ground, and they didn't bother to untie the stiff pieces of new rope that were tied
around the ends of the blanket. The sun was gone, and over on the highway the eastbound lane was full of headlights. The priest walked away slowly. Leon watched him
climb the hill, and when he had disappeared within the tall, thick walls, Leon turned to
look up at the high blue mountains in the deep snow that reflected a faint red light
from the west. He felt good because it was finished, and he was happy about the sprinkling of the holy water; now the old man could send them big thunderclouds for sure.
Helena Maria Viramontes
The Moths
Helena Maria Viramontes was born in East Los
Angeles in 1954. It was while attending Immaculate
Heart College, from which she earned a B.A. in
English in 1975, that she began to write. In 1977
and 1978, she won prizes for her short stories from
Statement magazine, and in 1979 she won a fiction
contest for Chicano writers sponsored by the University of California at Irvine (where she would receive
a master of fine arts degree in 1994). Her work appeared in anthologies in 1983 and 1985, and the latter year also saw the publication of her first book,
T h e Moths and Other Stories.The title piece of
that collection has been anthologized many times
since then, and, as Viramontes told an interviewer,
"It has been taught in medical schools, sociology
classes on how to care for old people, it's been taught
HELENA MARIA VIRAMONTES
35
in art classes, of course in literature classes, women's studies classes, all these different
places." With Maria Herrera Sobel, she has co-edited two anthologies, Chicana Creativity
and Criticism: Creative Frontiers in American Literature (1988) and Chicana Writers: On Word and Film (1993). Viramontes has also published two novels, Under the
Feet of Jesus (1995) and Their Dogs Came with Them (2001). She teaches English at
Cornell University.
I was fourteen years old when Abuelita requested my help. And it seemed only
fair. Abuelita had pulled me through the rages of scarlet fever by placing, removing
and replacing potato slices on the temples of my forehead; she had seen me through
several whippings, an arm broken by a dare-jump off Tio Enrique's toolshed, puberty,
and my first lie. Really, I told Ama, it was only fair.
Not that I was her favorite granddaughter or anything special. I wasn't even
pretty or nice like my older sisters and I just couldn't do the girl things they could
do. My hands were too big to handle the fineries of crocheting or embroidery and I
always pricked my fingers or knotted my colored threads time and time again while
my sisters laughed and called me bull hands with their cute waterlike voices. So I
began keeping a piece of jagged brick in my sock to bash my sisters or anyone who
called me bull hands. Once, while we all sat in the bedroom, I hit Teresa on the
forehead, right above her eyebrow, and she ran to Ama with her mouth open, her
hand over her eye while blood seeped between her fingers. I was used to the whippings
by then.
I wasn't respectful either. I even went so far as to doubt the power of Abuelita's
slices, the slices she said absorbed my fever. "You're still alive, aren't you?" Abuelita
snapped back, her pasty gray eye beaming at me and burning holes in my suspicions.
Regretful that I had let secret questions drop out of my mouth, I couldn't look into
her eyes. My hands began to fan out, grow like a liar's nose until they hung by my
side like low weights. Abuelita made a balm out of dried moth wings and Vicks and
rubbed my hands, shaping them back to size. It was the strangest feeling. Like bones
melting. Like sun shining through the darkness of your eyelids. I didn't mind helping
Abuelita after that, so Ama would always send me over to her.
In the early afternoon Ama would push her hair back, hand me my sweater and
shoes, and tell me to go to Mama Luna's. This was to avoid another fight and another
whipping, I knew. I would deliver one last direct shot on Marisela's arm and jump out
of our house, the slam of the screen door burying her cries of anger, and I'd gladly go
help Abuelita plant her wild lilies or jasmine or heliotrope or cilantro or hierbabuena
in red Hills Brothers coffee cans. Abuelita would wait for me at the top step of her
porch holding a hammer and nail and empty coffee cans. And although we hardly
spoke, hardly looked at each other as we worked over root transplants, I always felt
her gray eye on me. It made me feel, in a strange sort of way, safe and guarded and not
alone. Like God was supposed to make you feel.
On Abuelita's porch, I would puncture holes in the bottom of the coffee cans
with a nail and a precise hit of a hammer. This completed, my job was to fill them
with red clay mud from beneath her rose bushes, packing it softly, then making a perfect hole, four fingers round, to nest a sprouting avocado pit, or the spidery sweet
potatoes that Abuelita rooted in mayonnaise jars with toothpicks and daily water, or
prickly chayotes that produced vines that twisted and wound all over her porch pillars, crawling to the roof, up and over the roof, and down the other side, making her
small brick house look like it was cradled within the vines that grew pear-shaped
squashes ready for the pick, ready to be steamed with onions and cheese and butter.
T h e roots would burst out of the rusted coffee cans and search for a place to connect.
I would then feed the seedlings with water.
But this was a different kind of help, Ama said, because Abuelita was dying.
Looking into her gray eye, then into her brown one, the doctor said it was just a
matter of days. And so it seemed only fair that these hands she had melted and
formed found use in rubbing her caving body with alcohol and marihuana, rubbing
her arms and legs, turning her face to the window so that she could watch the Bird of
Paradise blooming or smell the scent of clove in the air. I toweled her face frequently
and held her hand for hours. Her gray wiry hair hung over the mattress. Since I could
remember, she'd kept her long hair in braids. Her mouth was vacant and when she
slept, her eyelids never closed all the way. Up close, you could see her gray eye beaming out the window, staring hard as if to remember everything. I never kissed her. I
left the window open when I went to the market.
Across the street from Jay's Market there was a chapel. I never knew its denomination, but I went in just the same to search for candles. I sat clown on one of the
pews because there were none. After I cleaned my fingernails, I looked up at the
high ceiling. I had forgotten the vastness of these places, the coolness of the marble
pillars and the frozen statues with blank eyes. I was alone. I knew why I had never
returned.
That was one of Apa's biggest complaints. He would pound his hands on the
table, rocking the sugar dish or spilling a cup of coffee and scream that if I didn't
go to Mass every Sunday to save my goddamn sinning soul, then I had no reason
to go out of the house, period. Punto final. He would grab my arm and dig his
nails into me to make sure I understood the importance of catechism. Did he
make himself clear? T h e n he strategically directed his anger at Ama for her lousy
ways of bringing up daughters, being disrespectful and unbelieving, and my older
sisters would pull me aside and tell me if I didn't get to Mass right this minute,
they were all going to kick the holy shit out of me. Why am I so selfish? Can't
you see what it's doing to Ama, you idiot? So I would wash my feet and stuff them
in my black Easter shoes that shone with Vaseline, grab a missal and veil, and
wave goodbye to Ama.
I would walk slowly down Lorena to First to Evergreen, counting the cracks on
the cement. On Evergreen I would turn left and walk to Abuelita's. I liked her porch
because it was shielded by the vines of the chayotes and I could get a good look at the
people and car traffic on Evergreen without them knowing. I would jump up the
porch steps, knock on the screen door as I wiped my feet and call Abuelita, mi
Abuelita? As I opened the door and stuck my head in, I would catch the gagging
scent, of toasting chile 011 the placa. When I entered the sala, she would greet me
from the kitchen, wringing her hands in her apron. I'd sit at the corner of the table to
keep from being in her way. The chiles made my eyes water. Am I crying? No, Mama
Luna, I'm sure not crying. I don't like going to mass, but my eyes watered anyway, the
tears dropping on the tablecloth like candle wax. Abuelita lifted the burnt chiles
from the fire and sprinkled water on them until the skins began to separate. Placing
them in front of me, she turned to check the menudo. I peeled the skins off and put
the flimsy, limp-looking green and yellow chiles in the molcajete and began to crush
and crush and twist and crush the heart out of the tomato, the clove of garlic, the stupid chiles that made me cry, crushed them until they turned into liquid under my
bull hand. With a wooden spoon, I scraped hard to destroy the guilt, and my tears
were gone. I put the bowl of chile next to a vase filled with freshly cut roses. Abuelita
touched my hand and pointed to the bowl of menudo that steamed in front of me. I
spooned some chile into the menudo and rolled a corn tortilla thin with the palms of
my hands. As I ate, a fine Sunday breeze entered the kitchen and a rose petal calmly
feathered down to the table.
I left the chapel without blessing myself and walked to Jay's. Most of the time
Jay didn't have much of anything. The tomatoes were always soft and the cans of
Campbell soups had rusted spots on them. There was dust on the tops of cereal boxes.
I picked up what I needed: rubbing alcohol, five cans of chicken broth, a big bottle of
Pine Sol. At first Jay got mad because I thought I had forgotten the money. But it was
there all the time, in my back pocket.
When I returned from the market, I heard Ama crying in Abuelita's kitchen.
She looked up at me with puffy eyes. I placed the bags of groceries on the table and
began putting the cans of soup away. Ama sobbed quietly. I never kissed her. After a
while, I patted her on the back for comfort. Finally: "jY mi Ama?" she asked in a
whisper, then choked again and cried into her apron.
Abuelita fell off the bed twice yesterday, I said, knowing that I shouldn't have
said it and wondering why I wanted to say it because it only made Ama cry harder. I
guess I became angry and just so tired of the quarrels and beatings and unanswered
prayers and my hands just there hanging helplessly by my side. Ama looked at me
again, confused, angry, and her eyes were filled with sorrow. 1 went outside and sat
on the porch swing and watched the people pass. I sat there until she left. I dozed off
repeating the words to myself like rosary prayers: when do you stop giving when do
you start giving when do you . . . and when my hands fell from my lap, I awoke to
catch them. T h e sun was setting, an orange glow, and I knew Abuelita was hungry.
There comes a time when the sun is defiant. Just about the time when moods
change, inevitable seasons of a day, transitions from one color to another, that hour
or minute or second when the sun is finally defeated, finally sinks into the realization
that it cannot with all its power to heal or burn, exist forever, there comes an illumination where the sun and earth meet, a final burst of burning red orange fury reminding us that although endings are inevitable, they are necessary for rebirths, and when
that time came, just when I switched on the light in the kitchen to open Abuelita's
can of soup, it was probably then that she died.
The room smelled of Pine Sol and vomit, and Abuelita had defecated the remains of her cancerous stomach. She had turned to the window and tried to speak,
but her mouth remained open and speechless. I heard you, Abuelita, I said, stroking
her cheek, I heard you. I opened the windows of the house and let the soup simmer
and overboil on the stove. I turned the stove off and poured the soup down the sink.
From the cabinet I got a tin basin, filled it with lukewarm water and carried it carefully to the room. I went to the linen closet and took out some modest bleached
white towels. With the sacredness of a priest preparing his vestments, I unfolded the
towels one by one on my shoulders. I removed the sheets and blankets from her bed
and peeled off her thick flannel nightgown. I toweled her puzzled face, stretching out
the wrinkles, removing the coils of her neck, toweled her shoulders and breasts. Then
I changed the water. I returned to towel the creases of her stretch-marked stomach,
her sporadic vaginal hairs, and her sagging thighs. I removed the lint from between
her toes and noticed a mapped birthmark on the fold of her buttock. The scars on her
back, which were as thin as the life lines on the palms of her hands, made me realize
how little I really knew of Abuelita. I covered her with a thin blanket and went into
ioi
the bathroom. I washed my hands, turned on the tub faucets and watched the water
pour into the tub with vitality and steam. When it was full, I turned off the water and
undressed. Then I went to get Abuelita.
She was not as heavy as I thought and when I carried her in my arms, her body 15
fell into a V. And yet my legs were tired, shaky, and 1 felt as if the distance between
the bedroom and bathroom was miles and years away. Ami, where are you?
I stepped into the bathtub one leg first, then the other. I bent my knees slowly to
descend into the water slowly so I wouldn't scald her skin. There, there, Abuelita, I
said, cradling her, smoothing her as we descended, I heard you. Her hair fell back and
spread across the water like eagles' wings. The water in the tub overflowed and
poured onto the tile of the floor. Then the moths came. Small gray ones that came
from her soul and out through her mouth fluttering to light, circling the single dull
light bulb of the bathroom. Dying is lonely and I wanted to go to where the moths
were, stay with her and plant chayotes whose vines would crawl up her fingers and
into the clouds; I wanted to rest my head 011 her chest with her stroking my hair,
telling me about the moths that lay within the soul and slowly eat the spirit up; I
wanted to return to the waters of the womb with her so that we would never be alone
again. I wanted. I wanted my Ama. I removed a few strands of hair from Abuelita's
face and held her small light head within the hollow of my neck. The bathroom was
filled with moths, and for the first time in a long time I cried, rocking us, crying for
her, for me, for Ama, the sobs emerging from the depths of anguish, the misery of
feeling half-bom, sobbing until finally the sobs rippled into circles and circles of sadness and relief. There, there, I said to Abuelita, rocking us gently, there, there.
m u
Ua UM.
igaj
Themes
If you prefer to study by theme or want to research possible subjects for an essay, here is a listing of selections arranged into fourteen major themes.
Art, Language, and imagination
Stories
Sonny's Blues, 4 3
BORGES, The Gospel According to Mark, 48.5
CARVER, Cathedral, 9 8
GILMAN, The Yellow Wallpaper, 4 2 4
LE GUIN, The Ones Who Walk Away from
Omelas, 248
O'CONNOR, Parker's Back, 3 8 2
PAZ, My Life with the Wave, 642
PORTER, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, 7 6
WALKER, Everyday Use, 4 4 3
BALDWIN,
The Appointment in Samarra, 4
O'CONNOR, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, 3 5 8
PORTER, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, 7 6
TOLSTOY, The Death of Ivan Ilych, 2 8 0
VIRAMONTES, The Moths, 6 4 9
MAUGHAM,
Stories
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, 2 2 0
BORGES, The Gospel According to Mark, 4 8 5
GARCIA MARQUEZ, The Handsomest Drowned
Man in the World, 536
HAWTHORNE, Young Goodman Brown, 5 4 8
O'CONNOR, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, 3 5 8
O'CONNOR, Parker's Back, 3 8 2
SLLKO, The Man to Send Rain Clouds, 6 4 6
BIBLE,
Stories
The Prophecy, 4 6 5
GATHER, Paul's Case, 4 8 9
CISNEROS, The House on Mango Street, 5 2 5
ELLISON, Battle Royal, 5 2 6
JOYCE, Araby, 573
KINCAID, Girl, 5 7 8
LAWRENCE, The Rocking-Horse Winner, 5 9 3
MONRO, HOW I Met My Husband, 2 0 8
OATES, Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?, 613
APPACHANA,
Comedy and Satire
Stories
Happy Endings, 4 7 6
CHUANG, Independence, 8
MUNRO, How I Met My Husband, 2 0 8
VoNNEGUT, Harrison Bergeron, 221
ATWOOD,
Families/Parents and Children
Stories
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, 2 2 0
CHOPIN, The Storm, 115
ClSNEROS, The House on Mango Street, 5 2 5
FAULKNER, Barn Burning, 1 6 0
ISHIGURO, A Family Supper, 5 6 6
KAFKA, The Metamorphosis, 3 1 7
KINCAID, Girl, 5 7 8
LAHIRI, Interpreter of Maladies, 5 7 9
LAWRENCE, The Rocking-Horse Winner, 5 9 3
LI, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, 262
O'CONNOR, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, 3 5 8
OLSEN, I Stand Here Ironing, 637
PORTER, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, 7 6
TAN, A Pair of Tickets, 137
BIBLE,
TYLER, T e e n a g e Wasteland, 3 5
Stories
Dead Men's Path, 4 6 2
BLERCE, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,
BORGES, The Gospel According to Mark, 4 8 5
S. CRANE, The Open Boat, 1 9 1
FAULKNER, A Rose for Emily, 2 8
GRIMM, Godfather Death, 9
HURSTON, Sweat, 558
ISHIGURO, A Family Supper, 5 6 6
LONDON, To Build a Fire, 119
The Moths, 6 4 9
WALKER, Everyday Use, 4 4 3
WELTY, A Worn Path, 64
WOLFF, The Rich Brother, 86
VIRAMONTES,
ACHEBE,
479
Individual Versus Society
Stories
Dead Men's Path,
GATHER, Paul's Case, 4 8 9
CLIUANG, Independence, 8
ACHEBE,
462
Battle Royal, 526
FAULKNER, A Rose for Emily, 28
FAULKNER, Bam Burning, 160
GILB, Look on the Bright Side, 540
HAWTHORNE, Young Goodman Brown, 548
JACKSON, The Lottery, 239
JlN, Saboteur, 178
LE GUIN, The Ones Who Walk Away from
Omelas, 248
Shiloh, 604
STEINBECK, The Chrysanthemums, 231
TALLENT, No One's a Mystery, 245
ELLISON,
MASON,
UPDIKE, A & P, 1 4
Nature
Stories
The North Wind and the Sun, 5
CHOPIN, The Storm, 115
CRANE, The Open Boat, 191
LONDON, To Build a Fire, 119
SLLKO, The Man to Send Rain Clouds, 646
AESOP,
UPDIKE, A & P , 1 4
Harrison Bergeron, 221
The Rich Brother, 86
VONNEGUT,
WOLFF,
Loneliness and Alienation
Stories
Race, Class, and Culture
CATI-IER,
stories
Paul's Case, 4 8 9
CHEEVER, The Five-Forty-Eight, 5 0 3
ELLISON, Battle Royal, 5 2 6
GILMAN, The Yellow Wallpaper, 424
HEMINGWAY, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,
JOYCE, Araby, 573
KAFKA, The Metamorphosis, 3 1 7
MANSFIELD, Miss Brill, 83
MUNRO, How I M e t M y Husband, 208
OLSEN, I Stand Here Ironing, 6 3 7
STEINBECK, The Chrysanthemums, 2 3 1
VLRAMONTES, The Moths, 649
156
Love and Desire
Stories
Happy Endings, 476
CHEKHOV, The Lady with the Pet Dog, 512
CHOPIN, The Storm, 115
CHOPIN, The Story of an Hour, 5 2 3
FAULKNER, A Rose for Emily, 2 8
JOYCE, Araby, 573
LAHIRI, Interpreter of Maladies, 579
MASON, Shiloh, 604
MUNRO, H O W I M e t M y Husband, 208
O'CONNOR, Parker's Back, 3 8 2
PAZ, My Life with the Wave, 642
PORTER, The Jilting o f Granny Weatherall, 76
ATWOOD,
STEINBECK, T h e C h r y s a n t h e m u m s , 2 3 1
TALLENT, NO O n e ' s a M y s t e r y , 2 4 5
UPDIKE, A & P , 1 4
Men and Women/Marriage
Stories
Happy Endings, 476
CARVER, Cathedral, 9 8
CHOPIN, The Storm, 115
GILMAN, The Yellow Wallpaper, 424
HENRY, The Gift of the Magi, 1 7 4
HURSTON, Sweat, 558
LAHIRI, Interpreter of Maladies, 579
Ll, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, 262
ATWOOD,
Dead Men's Path, 462
BALDWIN, Sonny's Blues, 43
CHUANG, Independence, 8
CLSNEROS, The House on Mango Street, 525
ELLISON, Battle Royal, 526
FAULKNER, Bam Burning, 160
GlLB, Look on the Bright Side, 540
HURSTON, Sweat, 558
Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, 262
O'CONNOR, Revelation, 368
SlLKO, The Man to Send Rain Clouds, 646
TAN, A Pair of Tickets, 137
VlRAMONTES, The Moths, 649
WALKER, Everyday Use, 443
WELTY, A Worn Path, 64
ACHEBE,
War, Murder, and Violence
Stories
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,
479
BORGES, The Gospel According to Mark, 485
BOYLE, Greasy Lake, 130
ELLISON, Battle Royal, 526
FAULKNER, A Rose for Emily, 28
HURSTON, Sweat, 558
JlN, Saboteur, 178
OATES, Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?, 613
O'BRIEN, The Things They Carried, 625
O'CONNOR, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, 358
POE, The TelLTale Heart, 413
BlERCE,
Woman's Idenstity
Stories
The Chrysanthemums, 231
APACHANA, The Prophecy, 465
MASON, Shiloh, 604
OLSEN, I Stand Here Ironing, 637
OLSEN, The Yellow Wallpaper, 424
STEINBECK,
Authors and Titles
Each page number immediately following a writer's name indicates a quotation from or reference to
that writer. A number in bold refers you to the page on which you willfindthe author's biography,
n following a page number indicates an entry in a note.
A & P, 14
BOYLE, T . CORAGHESSAN, 1 2 9
Greasy Lake 129
ACHEBE, CHLNUA, 4 6 2
Dead Men's Path, 462
BRINKMEYER, R O B E R T H . , J R .
ADAMS, RICHARD, 7 3
Flannery O'Connor and Her Readers 399
Aesop, 4, 5, 189
North Wind and the Sun, The, 5
BRONTE, CHARLOTTE, 2 6 0
ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY, 2
BURROUGHS, WILLIAM, 2 7 8 , 2 8 0
ALGER, HORATIO, 2 0
AMMONS, ELIZABETH
Biographical Echoes in "The Yellow
Wallpaper," 441
Camel and His Friends, The, 6
C A M U S , ALBERT, 2 0 , 7 5
CAPOTE, T R U M A N , 2 7 7
CARVER, RAYMOND, 9 8 , 1 5 5
ANDERSEN, HANS CHRISTIAN, 9
APPACHANA, ANJANA, 4 6 5
Prophecy, The, 465
APPLE, M A X , 2 7 6
Appointment in Samarra, The, 4
Araby, 573
A T W O O D , MARGARET, 7 3 , 1 8 7 ,
BUNYAN, JOHN, 2 2 9
476
Happy Endings, 476
AUDEN, W . H . , 3 4 7 - 5 0
AUSTEN, JANE, 7 5 , 2 7 9 - 8 0
Cathedral, 98
Commonplace but Precise Language 109
Cathedral, 98
CATHER, WILLA, 1 1 3 , 4 8 9
Paul's Case, 489
CHEEVER, JOHN, 5 0 3
Five-Forty-Eight, The, 503
Chekhov, Anton, 1 5 3 - 5 4 , 512
Lady with the Pet Dog, The, 512
CHOPIN, KATE, 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 , 1 8 7
BABEL, ISAAC, 1 0 9
BAKER, HOUSTON A .
Stylish vs. Sacred in "Everyday Use," 455
Storm, The, 115
Story of an Hour, The, 523
CHRISTIAN, BARBARA T .
BALDWIN, JAMES, 4 3
"Everyday Use" and the Black Power
Movement, 453
Chrysanthemums, The, 231
BALZAC, HONORE DE, 1 1 2
C H U A , JOHN
Race and the African American Writer, 70
Sonny's Blues, 43
Barn Burning, 160
Battle Royal, 526
BELLOW, SAUL, 2 7 8
Figure of the Double in Poe, The, 422
CHUANG T Z U , 8
Independence, 8
BERENDT, JOHN, 2 7 7
CISNEROS, SANDRA, 5 2 5
BIDPAI, 6
House on Mango Street, The, 525
CLANCY, LAURIE, 225-26
Clean, Well-Lighted Place, A, 156
Commonplace but Precise Language, 109
Camel and His Friends, The, 6
BIERCE, AMBROSE, 2 7 7 , 4 7 9
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An,
479
Biographical Echoes in "The Yellow
Wallpaper," 441
Biography of a Story, 253
Black Woman Writer in America, The, 450
CONNELL, EVAN, 1 0 9
CONNOLLY, CYRIL, 2 7 7
CONRAD, JOSEPH, 1 5 4 , 2 3 0
3,113n, 191, 227, 277, 278
Open Boat, The, 191
CRANE, STEPHEN,
BORGES, JORGE LUIS, 1 8 7 , 4 8 5
Gospel According to Mark, The, 485
BOTTOME, PHYLLIS, 1 1 0
BOWLES, PAUL, 2 6
DANTE ( D A N T E ALIGHIERI), 2 2 9
Dead Men's Path, 462
Death of Ivan Ilych, The, 280
Deconstructing "A Good Man Is Hard to Find,"
406
DEFOE, DANIEL, 3 , 2 7 6 - 7 7
DICK, PHILIP K . , 2 8 0
DICKENS, CHARLES, 7 3 , 7 4
GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS, 2 6 0 , 4 2 4 , 4 3 8 - 4 2
Nervous Breakdown of Women, The, 437
Whatever Is, 436
Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," 435
Yellow Wallpaper, The, 424
Direct Style, The, 186
GIOIA, DANA
DISCH, THOMAS, 2 8 0
Godfather Death (translation), 9
Girl, 578
Godfather Death, 9
Discussing The Metamorphosis, 345
DONLEAVY, J . P . , 2 7 8
DREISER, THEODORE, 1 1 3 ,
211
ELIOT, GEORGE, 1 5 3
ELLISON, RALPH, 5 2 6
Battle Royal, 526
EMERSON, RALPH W A L D O , 3
Everyday Use, 443
"Everyday Use" and the Black Power
Movement, 453
Excerpt from "On Her Own Work," 394
Excerpt from "The Grotesque in Southern
Fiction," 398
Family Supper, A, 566
Father-Figure in "The Tell-Tale Heart," The,
419
FAULKNER, WILLIAM, 14, 27, 2 8 , 7 4 , 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 ,
155, 156, 187, 190, 230, 261
Barn Burning, 160
Rose for Emily, A, 28
FEELEY, KATHLEEN
Mystery of Divine Direction: "Parker's Back,"
The, 407
FERRIS, WILLIAM R . , 4 5 1
FIELDING, HENRY, 7 4 , 2 7 8
FIELDS, W . C ,
110
Figure of the Double in Poe, The, 422
FITZGERALD, F. S C O T T , 2 2 9
Five-Forty-Eight, The, 503
Fiannery O'Connor and Her Readers, 399
FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE, 2 3 , 2 5 - 2 6
FLEENOR, JULIANN
Gender and Pathology in "The Yellow
Wallpaper," 438
FORSTER, R M . , 7 4 , 2 7 8
FREUD, SIGMUND, 7 5
GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON, 2 6 0 , 2 7 8
Good Man Is Hard to Find, A, 358
Good Source Is Not So Hard to Find: The Real
Life Misfit, A, 403
Gospel According to Mark, The, 485
GRAVES, ROBERT, 2 7 8
Greasy Lake, 129
GRIMM, JAKOB AND WILHELM, 9 , 1 1 - 1 3 , 2 3 , 2 4
Godfather Death, 9
HAMMETT, DASHIELL, 2 6
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, The,
536
Happy Endings, 476
HARDY, T H O M A S , 1 7 3
Harrison Bergeron, 220
HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 , 2 2 9 ,
275-76, 278, 5 4 8
Young Goodman Brown, 548
HELLER, PETER, 3 4 7 - 5 0
HEMINGWAY, ERNEST, 2 0 , 24N,
156,173,187,
1 8 9 - 9 0 , 277
Clean, Well-Lighted Place, A, 156
Direct Style, The, 186
HENRY, O . [WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER],
173,174
Gift of the Magi, The, 174
HERSEY, JOHN, 2 7 8
HILBERT, DAVID, 2 7 7
HOFFMAN, DANIEL
Father-Figure in "The Tell-Tale Heart," The,
419
HOMER, 1 3 , 7 5
House on Mango Street, The, 525
How I Met My Husband, 207
HUME, DAVID, 7 5
HURLEY, ANDREW
Gospel According to Mark (translation), The,
485
G A R C I A MARQUEZ, GABRIEL, 5 3 6
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,
The, 5 3 6
G A S S , WILLIAM, 7 4
Gender and Pathology in "The Yellow
Wallpaper," 438
GIDE, ANDRE, 7 5
Gift of the Magi, The, 174
GILB, DAGOBERTO, 5 4 0
Look on the Bright Side, 540
HURSTON, ZORA NEALE, 1 9 0 , 4 5 0 , 5 5 8
Sweat, 558
Imprisonment and Escape: The Psychology of
Confinement, 439
Independence, 8
Interpreter of Maladies, 579
ISHIGURO, KAZUO, 5 6 6
Family Supper, A, 566
I Stand Here Ironing, 637
GILBERT, SANDRA M .
Imprisonment and Escape: The Psychology of
Confinement, 439
GILES, HERBERT
Independence (translation), 8
JACKSON, SHIRLEY, 1 9 0 , 2 3 9 , 2 5 3
Biography of a Story, 253
Lottery, The, 239
JAMES, HENRY, 2 8 , 7 4 , 1 1 2 , 2 2 9 , 2 8 0
Jilting of Granny Weatherall, The, 76
JIN, H A ,
178
Saboteur, 178
JONES, V . S . VERNON
North Wind and the Sun (translation), The, 5
JONG, ERICA, 2 7 8
JOYCE, JAMES,
278, 5 7 3
Araby, 573
13, 27, 75,113,190, 230, 276,
NABOKOV, VLADIMIR, 1 0 9 , 2 7 6
Nervous Breakdown of Women, The, 437
No One's a Mystery, 245
North Wind and the Sun, The 5
O A T E S , JOYCE CAROL, 1 4 , 6 1 3
Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?, 613
O ' B R I E N , EDNA, 7 5
O ' B R I E N , JOHN, 4 5 0
O'BRIEN, TIM, 6 2 5
KAFKA, FRANZ, 7 6 , 3 1 6 , 3 4 7 - 5 2
Discussing The Metamorphosis, 345
Metamorphosis, The, 316
KHANWALKAR, ARUNDHATI
Things They Carried, The, 625
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An, 479
O ' C O N N O R , FLANNERY,
Camel and His Friends (translation), The, 6
KINCAID, JAMAICA, 5 7 8
Girl, 578
Lady with the Pet Dog, The, 512
LAHIRI, JHUMPA, 2 3 0 , 5 7 9
Interpreter of Maladies, 579
LAWRENCE, D . H . , 7 5 , 2 7 5 , 5 9 3
Rocking-Horse Winner, The, 593
357,399-408
Excerpt from "On Her Own Work," 394
Excerpt from "The Grotesque in Southern
Fiction," 398
Good Man Is Hard to Find, A, 358
On Her Catholic Faith, 397
Parker's Back, 381
Revelation, 368
Yearbook Cartoons, 401
O'FAOLAIN, SEAN, 7 5
O ' H A R A , JOHN, 1 8 9
LE G U I N , URSULA K . , 2 4 8
Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, The,
248
LL, YLYUN, 2 6 2
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A, 262
What I Could Not Write About Was Why I
Was Writing, 271
LONDON, JACK, 1 1 9 , 1 7 3 , 2 7 7
OLSEN, TILLIE, 6 3 7
I Stand Here Ironing, 637
Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, The, 248
On Her Catholic Faith, 397
On Imagination, 418
Open Boat, The, 191
ORWELL, GEORGE, 2 3 0
To Build a Fire, 119
Look on the Bright Side, 540
Lottery, The, 239
LUKE
Parable of the Prodigal Son, The, 219
Pair of Tickets, A, 136
Parable of the Prodigal Son, The, 219
Parker's Back, 381
Paul's Case, 489
PAZ, O C T A V I O , 6 4 2
MAILER, NORMAN, 2 7 7
Man to Send Rain Clouds, The, 646
MANSFIELD, KATHERINE, 8 3
Miss Brill, 83
MARQUEZ, GABRIEL G A R C I A . See
GARCIA
MARQUEZ, GABRIEL
MASON, BOBBIE A N N , 1 5 5 , 6 0 4
Shiloh, 604
MAUDE, LOUISE AND AYLMER
Death of Ivan Ilych (translation), The, 280
MAUGHAM, W . SOMERSET, 4 , 1 1 4 , 1 7 3
Appointment in Samarra, The, 4
MCINERNEY, JAY, 2 6 - 2 7
MELVILLE, HERMAN, 7 4 , 2 2 9 , 2 3 0 , 2 7 8
My Live with the Wave, 642
PEEPLES, S C O T T
"The Tell-Tale Heart" as a Love Story, 421
Philosophy of Composition, The, 418
PIERCE-BAKER, CHARLOTTE,
Stylish vs. Sacred in "Everyday Use," 455
POE, EDGAR ALLAN, 114, 230, 261,412,
419-23
On Imagination, 418
Philosophy of Composition, The, 418
Tale and Its Effect, The, 417
Tell-Tale Heart, The, 413
PORTER, KATHERINE ANNE,
76,110
Jilting of Granny Weatherall, The, 76
Metamorphosis, The, 316
PORTER, WILLIAM. S e e HENRY, O .
MICHENER, JAMES A . , 2 7 7
PRITCI-IETT, V . S . , 4 6 2
MILTON, JOHN, 1 3
Prophecy, The, 465
Miss Brill, 83
M O R G A N , SETH, 2 7 8
Moths, The, 649
Quilt as Metaphor in "Everyday Use," 459
QUINTON, ANTHONY, 7 5
M U N R O , ALICE, 2 0 7
How I Met My Husband, 207
My Life with the Wave, 642
Mystery of Divine Direction: "Parker's Back,"
The, 407
RABASSA, GREGORY
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
(translation), The, 536
Race and the African American Writer, 70
REEVE, CLARA, 2 7 5
Reflections on Writing, 451
Revelation, 368
Rich Brother, The, 86
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A, 262
To Build a Fire, 119
TOLSTOY, LEO, 2 4 , 2 8 0
Death of Ivan Ilych, The, 280
RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, 2 7 6
TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, 1 5 3
ROBBE-GRILLET, ALAIN, 7 6
T W A I N , MARK, 1 3 , 2 3 , 2 7 , 2 7 8
Rocking-Horse Winner, The, 593
Rose for Emily, A, 28
Saboteur, 178
SANDBANK, SHIMON, 3 4 7
SCHENCK, MARY JANE
Deconstructing "A Good Man Is Hard to
Find," 406
SENECA, 1 5 3
Setting the Voice, 149
Shiloh, 604
SHOW ALTER, ELAINE
Quilt as Metaphor in "Everyday Use," 459
SILKO, LESLIE MARMON, 6 4 6
Man to Send Rain Clouds, The, 646
SINGER, ISAAC BASHEVIS, 1 7 2
SISCOE, JOHN
TYLER, ANNE, 3 5 , 1 7 3
Teenage Wasteland, 35
UPDIKE, JOHN,
14,154, 173
A & P , 14
Why Write?, 20
VIRAMONTES, HELENA M A R I A , 6 4 9
Moths, The, 649
VONNEGUT, K U R T , J R . , 2 2 0
Harrison Bergeron, 220
Themes of Science Fiction, The, 225-26
276,443,453-60
Black Woman Writer in America, The,
450
Everyday Use, 443
Reflections on Writing, 451
WALKER, ALICE,
Metamorphosis (translation), The, 316
Sonnys Blues, 43
WALPOLE, HORACE, 2 6 0
SOPHOCLES, 1 7 2
WEINBERGER, ELIOT
STANDISH, DAVID, 2 2 5 - 2 6
STEINBECK, JOHN, 1 4 , 1 1 4 , 2 3 1 , 2 5 5 , 2 5 6 - 5 9
Chrysanthemums, The, 231
STEWART, GEORGE, 7 3
Storm, The, 115
Story of an Hour, The, 523
Stylish vs. Sacred in "Everyday Use," 455
Sweat, 558
SWIFT, JONATHAN, 2 7 5
Tale and Its Effect, The, 417
TALLENT, ELIZABETH, 2 4 5 , 2 5 5
My Live with the Wave (translation), 642
W E L T Y , EUDORA, 6 4
Worn Path, A, 64
Whatever Is, 436
What I Could Not Write About Was Why I
Was Writing, 271
Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?, 613
Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper," 435
Why Write?, 20
Wilde, Oscar, 262
Williams, Tennessee, 229
No One's a Mystery, 245
TAN, AMY, 136,187
Pair of Tickets, A, 137
Setting the Voice, 150
WOLFF, T O B I A S , 8 6
TATE, J . O .
W R I G H T , RICHARD, 2 7 8
Good Source Is Not So Hard to Find: The
Real Life Misfit, A, 403
Teenage Wasteland, 35
Tell-Tale Heart, The, 413
THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1 5 3 , 2 6 1
"The Tell-Tale Heart" as a Love Story, 421
Themes of Science Fiction, The, 225-26
Things They Carried, The, 625
Rich Brother, The, 86
W O O L F , VIRGINIA, 2 6 , 7 5 , 2 8 0
Worn Path, A, 64
YARMOLINSKY, AVRAHM
Lady with the Pet Dog (translation), The, 512
Yearbook Cartoons, 401
Yellow Wallpaper, The, 424
Young Goodman Brown, 548
ZOLA, EMILE, 1 1 3 n
Index of
Literary Terms
Page numbers indicate discussion of term in anthology. A page number in bold indicates entry in the
Glossary of Literary Terms* n following a page number indicates entry in a note.
abstract diction, 708, Gl
accent, 829, Gl
accentual meter, 830n, 841,
Gl
acrostic, 855, Gl
allegory, 229, 898, Gl
alliteration, 813, Gl
all-knowing narrator, 24,
Gl
allusion, 74, 712, G l
analysis, 2088,2115,2128, Gl
anapest, anapestic, 837, G2
anecdote, G2
antagonist, 12, G2
anticlimax, 990n, G2
antihero, 75, 1737, G2
antithesis, 852, G2
apostrophe, 776, G2
apprenticeship novel, 278,
G2
archetype, 913, 2196, G2
arena theater, 1679, G2
aside, 1678, G2
assonance, 814, G2
atmosphere, G3
auditory imagery, 743, G3
Augustan age, 714, G3
ballad, 793, G3
ballad stanza, 795, G3
bathos, 990, G3
Bildungsroman, 278, G3
biographical criticism,
2182, G3
biography, 2183, G3
blank verse, 851, G3
blues, 797, G3
box set, 1677, G3
broadside ballad, 796, G4
burlesque, 1258, G4
cacophony, 809, G4
card report, 2092, 2128
> carpe diem, 662, G4
catharsis, G17
central intelligence, G4
cesura, caesura, 832, G4
character, 73, G4
character development, G4
characterization, G4
Child ballad, 793, G4
clerihew, 865, G4
climax, 12, 1239, G5
closed couplet, 852, G5
closed denouement, G5
closed form, 850, G5
close reading, 2178, G5
closet drama, 1223, G5
colloquial English, 716, G5
comedy, 1257, G5
comedy of manners, 1258,
G5
comic relief, 1737, G6
coming-of-age story, G6
commedia dell'arte, 1258,
G6
common meter, 795, G6
comparison, 2095, 2118,
2128, G6
complication, 12, G6
conceit, 997, G6
conclusion, 12, 1239, G6
concrete diction, 708, G6
concrete poetry, 886, G6
Confessional poetry, 933,
G6
conflict, G7
connotation, 731, G7
consonance, 817, G7
contrast, 2095, 2118, 2128,
G7
convention, 260, 857,
1224, G7
conventional symbol, 894,
G7
cosmic irony, 173, 689, G7
cothurni, 1280, G7
couplet, 852, G7
cowboy poetry, 991, G7
crisis, 12,1239n, G7
cultural studies, 2216, G8
dactyl, dactylic, 839, G8
deconstructionist criticism,
2212, G8
decorum, 715, G8
denotation, 731, G8
denouement, 12, 1239, G8
deus ex machina, G8
dialect, 717, G8
dialogue, 1220, G8
diction, 155, 708, G8
didactic fiction, G8
didactic poetry, 670, G9
dimeter, 840, G9
doggerel, 796, G9
double plot, 1239, G9
drama, 1221, G9
dramatic irony, 172, 689,
G9
dramatic monologue, 668,
G9
dramatic poetry, 668, G9
dramatic point of view, G9
dramatic question, 1238,
G9
dramatic situation, 12, G9
dramatist, 1221
dumb show, 1220n, G9
dynamic character, 74,
G10
echo verse, 822n, G10
editing, GlO
editorial omniscience, 25,
GlO
editorial point of view, GlO
elegy, GlO
endnote, GlO
end rime, 817, GlO
end-stopped line, 833, GlO
English sonnet, 857, GlO
envoy, 869n, GlO
epic, 851, GlO
epigram, 862, 1258, GlO
epigraph, GlO
epiphany, 13, GlO
episode, 1280, G i l
episodic plot, G i l
epistolary novel, 276, G l 1
euphony, 809, G i l
evaluate, 260, 1759
exact rime, 817, G i l
exodos, 1280
explication, 2083, 2110,
2128, G i l
exposition, 12, 1238, G i l
Expressionism, 1679, G i l
eye rime, 819, G i l
fable, 4, G i l
fairytale, 9, G i l
falling action, 1240, G12
falling meter, 839, G12
fantasy, G12
farce, 1258, G12
feminine rime, 818, G12
feminist criticism, G12
feminist theater, 1738
fiction, 3, G12
figure of speech, 766, G12
first-person narrator, G12
fixed form, 856, G12
flashback, 13, G12
flat character, 74, G13
flexible theater, 1679, G13
folk ballad, 793, G13
folk epic, G13
folklore, G13
folktale, G13
foot, 837, G13
footnote, G13
foreshadowing, 12, 1238,
G13
form, 850, G13
formal English, 716, G13
formalist criticism, 2178,
G13
found poetry, 888, G14
free verse, 874, G14
gender criticism, 2204, G14
general English, 716, G14
genre, G14
Gothic fiction, 260, G14
gratuitous act, 75
haiku, 750, G14
hamartia, 1282, G14
heptameter, 840, G l 4
hero, 12, G14
heroic couplet, 852, G15
hexameter, 840, G15
hidden alliteration, 813
high comedy, 1258, G15
historical criticism, 2187,
G15
historical fiction, historical
novel, 278, G15
hubris, 1282, G15
hyperbole, 776, G15
iamb, iambic, 837, G15
iambic meter, 830, G15
iambic pentameter, 839,
G15
image, 743, G15
imagery, 744, G15
impartial omniscience, 25,
G15
imperfect rime, 817
implied metaphor, 769,
G15
impressionism, G15
incremental refrain, 789,
G16
initial alliteration, 813,
G16
initial rime, 816n
initiation story, 14, G16
in medias res, 12, G16
innocent narrator, 27, G16
interior monologue, 27,
G16
internal alliteration, 813,
G16
internal refrain, 789, G16
internal rime, 817, G16
ironic point of view, 173,
688, G16
irony, 172, 688, G16
irony of fate, 173, 689, G16
Italian sonnet, 858, G17
katharsis, 1282, G17
legend, G17
levels of diction, 716, Gl 7
limerick, 865, G17
limited omniscience, 25,
G17
literary ballad, 796, G17
literary epic, G17
literary theory, 2177, G17
local color, G17
locale, 112, G17
low comedy, 1258, GJ. 7
lyric, 663, G17
madrigal, 790, G18
magic realism, G18
masculine rime, 818, G18
masks, 1280, G18
melodrama, 1760, G l 8
metafiction, G18
metaphor, 769, G18
meter, 830, G18
metonymy, 776, G18
microcosm, G18
mime, 1220n, G18
minimalist fiction, 155,
G18
mixed metaphor, 769, G19
monologue, G19
monometer, 840, G19
monosyllabic foot, 839, G19
moral, 4,G19
motif, G19
motivation, 73, G19
myth, 909, G19
mythological criticism,
2196, G19
mythology, 909
naive narrator, 27, G19
narrative poem, 665, G19
narrator, 23, G19
naturalism, 113, 1678, G19
near rime, 817
neoclassical period, 714,
G20
New Formalism, 819, G20
new naturalism, 1738, G20
nonfiction novel, 277, G20
nonparticipant narrator, 24,
G20
nouvelle, 278, G20
novel, 275, G20
novelette, 279
novella, 278, G20
objective point of view, 26,
G20
observer, 24, G20
octameter, 840, G20
octave, 858, G20
off rime, 817, G20
omniscient nana tor, 24,
G21
onomatopoeia, 810, G21
open denouement, G21
open form, 850, 873, G21
oral tradition, G21
orchestra, 1278, G21
overstatement, 776, G21
pantomime, 1220n, G21
parable, 7, 898, G21
parados, 1279
paradox, 777, G21
parallel, parallelism, 852,
G21
paraphrase, 660, G21
parody, 960, G21
participant narrator, 24,
G21
pentameter, 840, G21
peripeteia, peripety, 1283,
G21
persona, 681, G22
personification, 775, G22
Petrarchan sonnet, 858,
G22
picaresque novel, 278, G22
picture-frame stage, 1677,
G22
play, 1220, G22
play review, G22
plot, 12, 1237, G22
poetic diction, 715, G22
point of viewj 24, G23
portmanteau word, 728n,
G23
print culture, G23
projective verse, 874, G23
prologue, 1279
proscenium arch, 1677, G23
prose poem, 882, G23
prosody, 836, G23
protagonist, 12,1238, G23
psalms, 875, G23
psychological criticism,
2192, G23
pulp fiction, pulp magazine,
13n, G23
pun, 777, G23
purgation, 1282, G23
quantitative meter, 842,
G23
quatrain, 853, G23
rap, 799, G23
reader-response criticism,
2207, G24
realism, 1677, G24
recognition, 1282, G24
refrain, 789, G24
regionalism, G24
regional writer, 113
resolution, 12, 1239, G24
Restoration period, 1258,
G24
retrospect, 13, G24
reversal, 1283, G24
rhyme, rime, 816, G24
rhythm, 829, G25
rime, rhyme, 816, G24
rime scheme, 789, G25
rising action, 1239, G25
rising meter, 839, G25
romance, 276, G25
romantic comedy, 1259,
G25
rondel, 1093n, G25
round character, 74, G25
run-on line, 833, G25
sarcasm, 172, 688, G25
satiric comedy, 1257,
G25
satiric poetry, 675, G26
satyr play, 1277, G26
scansion, 837, G26
scene, 13, G26
selective omniscience, 25,
G26
sentimentality, 261, 989,
G26
sestet, 858, G26
sestina, 869n, G26
setting, 112, G26
Shakespearean sonnet, 857,
G26
short novel, 278
short story, 13, G26
simile, 768, G26
skene, 1278, G26
sketch, G27
slack syllable, 830, G27
slant rime, 817, G27
slapstick comedy, 1259,
G27
sociological criticism, 2200,
G27
soliloquy, 1224, G27
sonnet, 857, G27
spondee, 839, G27
stage business, 1239, G27
stanza, 789, G27
static character, 74, G27
stock character, 73, G27
stream of consciousness, 27,
G27
stress, 829, G27
style, 154, G27
subject, 662, G28
subplot, 1239, G28
summary, 13, 660, G28
Surrealism, 663n, G28
suspense, 12,1239, G28
syllabic verse, 855, G28
symbol, 229, 894, 1240,
G28
symbolic act, 230, 897,
G28
Symbolist movement,
896n, 1678, G28
synecdoche, 776, G28
synopsis, G28
tactile imagery, 743, G28
tale, 8, G28
tall tale, 9, G29
tercet, 853, G29
terminal refrain, 789, G29
terxa rimay 853, G29
tetrameter, 840, G29
theater in the round, 1679
theater of the absurd, 1737,
G29
theme, 189, 662, 1225,
G29
thesis sentence, G29
third-person narrator, G29
tone, 154, 674, G29
total omniscience, 28, G29
tragedy, 1249, G29
tragic flaw, 1250, 1282,
G30
tragic irony, 689, G30
tragicomedy, 1736, G30
transferred epithet, 777,
G30
trick ending, G30
trimeter, 840, G30
triolet, 868n, G30
trochaic, trochee, 838, G30
troubadour, 791, G30
understatement, 776, G30
unities, 1240, G30
unreliable narrator, 27,
G31
verbal irony, 172, 688, G31
verisimilitude, G31
verse, 659, 789, G31
t'm libre, 874, G31
villanelle, 72In, 867n, G31
visual imagery, 743, G31
vulgate, 716, G31
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