`Literature Analysis of 3 poems by the same Author; Robert Browning

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Explication

• The Use of Conventional Metaphors for Death in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (draft, outline, and fi nal paper) Ch. 30, p. 958

• A Reading of Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light” Ch. 30, p. 962

Paper-in-Progress

• Explication: The Use of Conventional Metaphors for Death in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (draft, outline, and fi nal paper) Ch. 30, p. 958

Research Paper

• How William Faulkner’s Narrator Cultivates a Rose for Emily Ch. 32, p. 987

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• Research and Documentation Online for research

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Literature to Go

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Literature to Go

MICHAEL MEYER University of Connecticut

BEDFORD / ST. MARTIN’S BOSTON ◆ NEW YORK

For Bedford/St. Martin’s

Executive Editor: Ellen Thibault Developmental Editor: Christina Gerogiannis Production Editor: Lindsay DiGianvittorio Production Supervisor: Jennifer Peterson Senior Marketing Manager: Adrienne Petsick Editorial Assistants: Sophia Snyder, Mallory Moore Production Assistant: Alexis Biasell Copyeditor: Hilly van Loon Senior Art Director: Anna Palchik Text Design: Claire Seng-Niemoeller Cover Design: Donna Lee Dennison Cover Art: Wisconsin and N Street, by Joseph Craig English. Used with permission. Original

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4 3 2 1 0 e d c b a

For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 (617-399-4000)

ISBN 10: 0–312–62412–3 ISBN 13: 978–0–312–62412–5

Acknowledgments

fiction T. Coraghessan Boyle. “Carnal Knowledge” from Without a Hero by T. Coraghessan Boyle.

A. S. Byatt. “Baglady” from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice by Antonia Byatt. Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright by Peters Fraser & Dunlop A/A/F Antonia Byatt.

Raymond Carver. “Popular Mechanics” from What We Talk about When We Talk about Love by Raymond Carver. Copyright © 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981 by Raymond Carver. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Acknowledgments and copyrights are continued at the back of the book on pages 1013–18, which constitute an extension of the copyright page. It is a violation of the law to reproduce these selections by any means whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.

For My Wife Regina Barreca

About Michael Meyer

Michael Meyer has taught writing and literature courses for more than thirty years — since 1981 at the University of Connecticut and before that at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the College of Wil- liam and Mary. In addition to being an experienced teacher, Meyer is a highly regarded literary scholar. His scholarly articles have appeared in distinguished journals such as American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, Meyer is a former president of the Thoreau Society and coauthor (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. His fi rst book, Several More Lives to Live: Thoreau’s Political Reputation in America, was awarded the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize by the American Studies Association. He is also the editor of Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings. He has lectured on a variety of American literary topics from Cambridge University to Peking University. His other books for Bedford/St. Martin’s include The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Ninth Edition; The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Eighth Edition; Poetry: An Introduction, Sixth Edition; and Think- ing and Writing about Literature, Second Edition.

Preface for Instructors

Literature to Go is the long-trusted anthology, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, sized and priced to go. Created in response to instructors’ re- quests for an essential version of the full-length book — with a selection of literature that refl ects the classic canon and the new — Literature to Go is a brief and inexpensive collection of stories, poems, and plays, supported by class-tested, reliable pedagogy and unique features that bring literature to life for students. The hope is that the engaging selections and accessible instruction in Literature to Go will inspire students to become lifelong read- ers of imaginative literature, as well as more thoughtful and skillful writers. The text is designed to accommodate many different teaching styles and is fl exibly organized into four parts focusing on fi ction, poetry, drama, and critical thinking and writing. Creative chapters on the elements of litera- ture appear at the beginning of each genre section and cover such concepts as character, setting, confl ict, and tone, along with plenty of examples. Addi- tionally, case studies on major authors, including Flannery O’Connor and William Shakespeare, reveal writers as real people and literature as a living art form. And a unique, in-depth chapter on poet Billy Collins, created in collaboration with the poet himself, gives students an intimate look into the creative process of one of America’s most popular contemporary poets. In addition to offering literature from many periods, cultures, and diverse voices, including today’s wittiest writers, the book is also a surpris- ingly complete guide to close reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful writ- ing. Following the genre sections, the fourth part of Literature to Go provides detailed instruction on these crucial skills. Sample student papers and hun- dreds of assignments appear in the text, giving students the support they need. And two new online resources — Re:Writing for Literature, with lots of help for reading and writing about literature; and VideoCentral: Literature, a growing collection of exclusive interviews with today’s authors — offer even more options for teaching, learning, and enjoying literature.

FEATURES OF L ITER ATURE TO GO A wide and well-balanced selection of literature — sized and priced to go

34 stories, 202 poems, and 12 plays represent a variety of periods, nation- alities, cultures, styles, and voices — from the serious to the humorous, and from the traditional to the contemporary. Each selection has been

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viii preface for instructors

chosen for its appeal to students and for its effectiveness in demonstrat- ing the elements, signifi cance, and pleasures of literature. Canonical works by Ernest Hemingway, John Keats, Susan Glas pell, and many others are generously represented. In addition, there are many contemporary selections from writers such as Nilaja Sun, Ian McEwan, and Tim O’Brien, as well as a rich sampling of works by writers from other cultures. These selections ap pear throughout the anthology.

Many options for teaching and learning about literature

In an effort to make literature come to life for students, and the course a plea- sure to teach for instructors, Literature to Go offers these innovative features:

Perspectives on literature Intriguing documents — including critical essays, interviews, and contextual images — appear throughout the book to stimulate class discussion and writing.

Connections between “popular” and “literary” culture The poetry and drama introductions incorporate examples from popular culture, effectively introducing students to the literary elements of a given genre through what

they already know. For example, students are introduced to the elements of poetry through greeting card verse and song lyrics by Bruce Springsteen and to elements of drama through a television script from Seinfeld. Lively visuals throughout the anthology present images that demonstrate how literature is woven into the fabric of popular culture and art. These images help students recognize the imprint of literature on their everyday lives.

Case studies that treat authors in depth Each genre section includes a chapter that focuses closely on a major literary fi gure. Chapters on Flannery O’Connor, Billy Collins, and William Shakespeare are complemented by biographi- cal introductions (with author photographs),

critical perspectives, cultural documents (such as letters and draft manuscript pages), and images that serve to con- textualize the works. A vari- ety of critical thinking and writing questions follow the selections to stim ulate stu- dent responses. All these sup- plementary materials engage

From Chapter 9: “A Study of Flannery O’Connor.”

preface for instructors ix

students more fully with the writers and their works.

An in-depth chapter on Billy Collins — created with Billy Collins

Collins presents fi ve of his own poems in Chapter 20 alongside his own insights — written specifi cally for Michael Meyer’s anthologies — into each work, and shares photographs and pages from his notebooks. This case study reinforces Meyer’s empha- sis on poetry as a living, changing art form. Students will enjoy the oppor- tunity to have a major poet speak directly to them, in Collins’s one-of-a- kind style, about how he writes, why he writes, and the kinds of surprises that occur along the way.

Plenty of help with reading, writing, and research

Critical reading* Advice on how to read literature ap pears at the begin- ning of each genre section. Sample Close Readings of selections, in cluding Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (Fiction), William Hathaway’s “Oh, Oh” (Poetry), and Susan Glas pell’s Trifl es (Drama), provide analyses of the language, images, and other literary elements at work in these selections. Interpretive an notations clearly show students the pro cess of close reading and provide examples of the kind of critical thinking that leads to strong academic writing. Later in the book, Chapter 28, “Reading and the Writing Process,” provides more instruction on how to read a work closely, annotate a text, take notes, keep a reading journal, and develop a topic into a the- sis, with a section on arguing persuasively about literature. An Index of Terms appears at the back of the book, and a glossary provides thorough explanations of more than two hundred terms central to the study of literature.

Kate Chopin (1851–1904)

The Story of an Hour 1894

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 was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sen- tences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her hus- band’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the rail- road disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name lead- ing 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.

Sh did h h h h d h

The title could point to the brevity of the story — only 23 short paragraphs — or to the decisive nature of what happens in a very short period of time. Or both.

Mrs. Mallard’s first name, (Louise) is not given until paragraph 17, yet her sister Josephine is named immediately. This em- phasizes Mrs. Mal- lard’s married identity.

Given the nature of the cause of Mrs. Mallard death at the story’s end, it’s worth noting the ambiguous description that she “was afflicted with a heart trouble.” Is this one of Chopin’s

A Sample Close Reading

From Chapter 20, “A Study of Billy Collins: The Author Refl ects on Five Poems.”

*A reference chart on the book’s inside front cover outlines all of the book’s help for reading and writing about literature.

x preface for instructors

The writing and research process Five chapters (28–32) cover every step of the writing pro cess — from generating topics to documenting sources — while sample student papers model the results. Of these chapters, three — “Writing about Fiction” (29), “Writing about Poetry” (30), and “Writing about Drama” (31) — focus on genre-specifi c writing assignments. Six sample student papers — all with MLA-style documentation — model how to analyze and argue about literature and how to support ideas by citing examples. The papers are integrated throughout the book, as are “Questions for Writing” units that guide students through par- ticular writing tasks: reading and writing responsively, developing a topic into a revised thesis, and writing about multiple works by an author. Chapter 32, “The Literary Research Paper,” offers detailed advice for fi nding, evaluating, and incorporating sources in a paper and includes current, detailed MLA documentation guidelines.

Questions for critical reading and writing Hundreds of questions and assignments — “Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing,” “Connections to Other Selections,” “First Response” prompts, and “Cre- ative Re sponse” assignments — spark students’ interest, sharpen their thinking, and improve their reading, discussion, and writing skills.

Literature to Go e-Book: The fi rst electronic anthology for literature

Bedford/St. Martin’s is pleased to introduce the Literature to Go e-Book, the fi rst electronic anthology for the literature course. Are you moving away from print books? Or perhaps want to supplement your course with digital material? The e-Book for Literature to Go includes all of the print book’s instruction and nearly all of the literature. It’s easy to use, environmentally sound, and nicely priced.

• To order the e-Book, packaged for fi ve dollars with the student edition of the print book, use package ISBN-10: 0-312-55777-9 or ISBN-13: 978-0-312-55777-5.

Bonnie Katz

Professor Quiello

English 109–2

October 26, 2010

A Reading of Emily Dickinson’s

“There’s a certain Slant of light”

Because Emily Dickinson did not provide titles for her poetry, editors

follow the customary practice of using the first line of a poem as its title.

However, a more appropriate title for “There’s a certain Slant of light,” one

that suggests what the speaker in the poem is most concerned about, can be

drawn from the poem’s last line, which ends with “the look of Death” (Dickin-

son, line 16). Although the first line begins with an image of light, nothing

bright, carefree, or cheerful appears in the poem. Instead, the predominant

mood and images are darkened by a sense of despair resulting from the

speaker’s awareness of death.

In the first stanza, the “certain Slant of light” is associated with “Win-

ter Afternoons” (2), a phrase that connotes the end of a day, a season, and

even life itself. Such light is hardly warm or comforting. Not a ray or beam,

this slanting light suggests something unusual or distorted and creates in the

speaker a certain slant on life that is consistent with the cold, dark mood that

winter afternoons can produce. Like the speaker, most of us have seen and felt

this sort of light: it “oppresses” (3) and pervades our sense of things when we

encounter it. Dickinson uses the senses of hearing and touch as well as sight

to describe the overwhelming oppressiveness that the speaker experiences.

The light is transformed into sound by a simile that tells us it is “like the Heft

/ Of Cathedral Tunes” (3–4). Moreover, the “Heft” of that sound -- the slow,

solemn measures of tolling church bells and organ music--weighs heavily on

our spirits. Through the use of shifting imagery, Dickinson evokes a kind of

spiritual numbness that we keenly feel and perceive through our senses.

By associating the winter light with “Cathedral Tunes,” Dickinson lets

us know that the speaker is concerned about more than the weather. What-

ever it is that “oppresses” is related by connotation to faith, mortality, and

Katz 1

Thesis providing overview of explication

Line-by-line explication of first stanza, focusing on connotations of words and imagery, in relation to mood and meaning of poem as a whole; supported with refer- ences to the text

A sample student explication on Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light” includes parenthetical citations and a Works Cited page.

preface for instructors xi

• To purchase the e-Book as a standalone item (without the print book), use ISBN-10: 0-312-55242-4 or ISBN-13: 978-0-312-55242-8.

• To order the e-Book in CourseSmart format (as a PDF), use ISBN- 10: 0-312-55240-8 or ISBN-13: 978-0-312-55240-4.

YOU GET MORE DIGITAL CHOICES FOR LITER ATURE TO GO Literature to Go doesn’t stop with a book. Online, you’ll fi nd plenty of free and open resources to help students get even more out of the book and your course. You’ll also fi nd convenient instructor resources, and even a nationwide community of teachers. To learn more about or order any of the products below, contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative, e-mail sales support (sales_support@bfwpub .com), or visit the Web site at bedfordstmartins.com/meyertogo/ catalog.

xii preface for instructors

New! Re:Writing for Literature: Free and open resources

Send students to our best free and open resources (no codes required), or upgrade to an expanding collection of premium digital resources at bedfordstmartins.com/rewritinglit.

Students will fi nd easy-to-access visual tutorials, reference materials, and support for working with sources.

• VirtuaLit Tutorials for Close Reading (Fiction, Poetry, and Drama) • AuthorLinks and Biographies • Quizzes on Literary Works • A Glossary of Literary Terms • MLA-style sample student papers • Help for fi nding and citing sources, including Diana Hacker’s

Research and Documentation Online

New! VideoCentral: Literature: Interviews with today’s writers

VideoCentral: Literature — a Bedford/St. Martin’s production created with writer and teacher Peter Berkow — is a growing collection of more than fi fty video interviews with today’s writers, talking about their craft. Your students can hear from Ha Jin on how he uses humor and tension in his writing, Anne Rice on how she advances plot through dialogue, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on how she writes from experience, and T. C. Boyle on how he creates memorable voices. Related assignments and activities

preface for instructors xiii

help students get the most out of these instructive videos and apply what they learn to their own thinking and writing.

To package VideoCentral: Litera- ture, free with student copies of Literature to Go, use pack- age ISBN-10: 0-312-54620-3 or ISBN-13: 978-0-312-54620-5.

Instructor Resources: bedfordstmartins.com/ meyertogo/catalog

You have a lot to do in your course. Bedford/St. Martin’s wants to make it easy for you to fi nd the support you need — and to get it quickly.

Resources for Teaching Literature to Go is available as a print manual or as a PDF that can be downloaded from the Bedford/St. Martin’s online catalog. This manual supports every selection in the book and has something to offer new and experienced instructors. Resources include commentary, biographical information, additional writing assign- ments, further connections among the selections, and tips from instruc- tors who have taught with Michael Meyer’s anthologies. For the PDF, go to bedfordstmartins.com/meyertogo/catalog. To order the print edition, use ISBN-10: 0-312-66697-7 or ISBN-13: 978-0-312-66697-2.

Teaching Central offers the entire list of Bedford/St. Martin’s print and online professional resources in one place. You’ll fi nd landmark refer- ence works, sourcebooks on pedagogical issues, award-winning collec- tions, and practical advice for the classroom — all free for instructors and available through the Student Center or at bedfordstmartins.com/ meyertogo/catalog.

Literature Aloud is a two-CD set of audio recordings featuring celebrated writers and actors reading stories, poems, and selected scenes included in Michael Meyer’s anthologies. This resource is free to instructors who adopt Literature to Go. To order the CD set, use ISBN-10: 0-312-43011-6 or ISBN-13: 978-0-312-43011-5.

The Bedford/St. Martin’s Video & DVD Library offers selected videos and DVDs of plays and stories included in Literature to Go, and is avail- able to qualifi ed adopters of the anthology. To learn more, contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative or e-mail sales support (sales_ [email protected]).

xiv preface for instructors

Literary Reprints Titles in the Case Studies in Contemporary Criti- cism series, Bedford Cultural Edition series, and the Bedford Shake- speare series can be shrink-wrapped with Literature to Go for instructors who want to teach longer works in conjunction with the anthology. (For a complete list of available titles, visit bedfordstmartins.com/ meyertogo/catalog.)

TradeUp

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has benefi ted from the ideas, suggestions, and corrections of scores of careful readers who helped transform various stages of an evolv- ing manuscript into a fi nished book and into subsequent editions. I remain grateful to those I have thanked in previous prefaces, particularly the late Robert Wallace of Case Western Reserve University. In addition, many instructors who used the eighth edition of The Bedford Introduction to Literature responded to a questionnaire for the book. For their valuable comments and advice I am grateful to Sandra Allen-Kearney, Lincoln Park Academy; Jon W. Brooks, Okaloosa-Walton College; David Brumbley, Salisbury University; Robert Caughey, Torrey Pines High School; S. Elaine Craghead, Massachusetts Maritime Academy; Robert W. Croft, Gaines- ville State College; Allen Culpepper, Manatee Community College; Samir Dayal, Bentley College; Cheryl DeLacretaz, Dripping Springs High School; Janice Forgione, Salisbury University; Bernadette Gambino, University of North Florida; Sinceree Renee Gunn, University of Alabama in Hunts- ville; Cathy Henrichs, Pikes Peak Community College; Susan Hopkirk,

TradeUp Get 50% off all trade titles when packaged with your textbook!

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preface for instructors xv

Middle Tennessee State University; Mary Lee Stephenson Huffer, Lake Sumter Community College; Michelle Green Jimmerson, Louisiana Tech University; Sharon Johnston, Spokane Virtual Learning/Spokane Public Schools; Tamara Kuzmenkov, Tacoma Community College; Catherine Shanon Lawson, Pikes Peak Community College; Manuel Martinez, Santa Fe Community College; Sarah McIntosh, Santa Fe Community College; Jim McKeown, McLennan Community College; Julie Moore, Green River Community College; Larry Moss, Young Men’s Academy for Academic and Civic Development at MacArthur South; Angelina Northrip-Rivera, Missouri State University; David Pink, Rock Valley College; Deidre D. Price, Okaloosa-Walton College; Katharine Purcell, Trident Technical Col- lege; Karin Russell, Keiser University; Holly Schoenecker, Milwaukee Area Technical College; Beth Shelton, Paris Junior College; Karen Stewart, Norwich University; John A. Stoler, University of Texas at San Antonio; James D. Suderman, Okaloosa-Walton College; Becky Talk; Gregory J. Underwood, Pearl River Community College — Forrest County Center; and Marva Webb, Clinton High School. I would also like to give special thanks to the following instructors who contributed teaching tips to Resources for Teaching Literature to Go: Sandra Adickes, Winona State University; Helen J. Aling, Northwestern College; Sr. Anne Denise Brenann, College of Mt. St. Vincent; Robin Calitri, Merced College; James H. Clemmer, Austin Peay State University; Robert Croft, Gainesville College; Thomas Edwards, Westbrook College; Elizabeth Kleinfeld, Red Rocks Community College; Olga Lyles, Uni- versity of Nevada; Timothy Peters, Boston University; Catherine Rusco, Muskegon Community College; Robert M. St. John, DePaul University; Richard Stoner, Broome Community College; Nancy Veiga, Modesto Junior College; Karla Walters, University of New Mexico; and Joseph Zeppetello, Ulster Community College. I am also indebted to those who cheerfully answered questions and generously provided miscellaneous bits of information. What might have seemed to them like inconsequential conversations turned out to be important leads. Among these friends and colleagues are Raymond Anselment, Barbara Campbell, Ann Charters, Karen Chow, John Chris- tie, Eleni Coundouriotis, Irving Cummings, William Curtin, Patrick Hogan, Lee Jacobus, Thomas Jambeck, Bonnie Januszewski-Ytuarte, Greta Little, George Monteiro, Brenda Murphy, Joel Myerson, Rose Qui- ello, Thomas Recchio, William Sheidley, Stephanie Smith, Milton Stern, Kenneth Wilson, and the dedicated reference librarians at the Homer Babbidge Library, University of Connecticut. I am particularly happy to acknowledge the tactful help of Roxanne Cody, owner of R. J. Julia Book- sellers in Madison, Connecticut, whose passion for books authorizes her as the consummate matchmaker for writers, readers, and titles. It’s a wonder that somebody doesn’t call the cops. I continue to be grateful for what I have learned from teaching my students and for the many student papers I have received over the years

xvi preface for instructors

that I have used in various forms to serve as good and accessible mod- els of student writing. I am also indebted to Stefanie Wortman for her extensive work on Resources for Teaching literature to go. At Bedford/St. Martin’s, my debts once again require more time to ack- nowledge than the deadline allows. Charles H. Christensen and Joan E. Feinberg initiated The Bedford Introduction to Literature and launched it with their intelligence, energy, and sound advice. This book has also ben- efi ted from the savvy insights of Denise Wydra and Steve Scipione. Ear- lier editions were shaped by editors Karen Henry, Kathy Retan, Alanya Harter, Aron Keesbury, and Ellen Thibault; their work was as fi rst rate as it was essential. As development editor for Literature to Go, Christina Gerogiannis expertly kept the book on track and made the journey a pleasure to the end; her valuable contributions richly remind me of how fortunate I am to be a Bedford/St. Martin’s author. Stephanie Naudin, associate editor, energetically developed the book’s instructor’s manual, and Sophia Snyder, editorial assistant, gracefully handled a variety of editorial tasks. Permissions were deftly arranged by Kalina Hintz, Arthur Johnson, Martha Friedman, and Susan Doheny. The diffi cult tasks of production were skillfully managed by Lindsay DiGianvittorio, whose attention to details and deadlines was essential to the completion of this project. Hilly van Loon provided careful copyediting, and Laura Dewey and Arthur Johnson did meticulous proofreading. I thank all of the people at Bedford/St. Martin’s — including Donna Dennison, who designed the cover, and Adrienne Petsick, the marketing manager — who helped to make this formidable project a manageable one. Finally, I am grateful to my sons Timothy and Matthew for all kinds of help, but mostly I’m just grateful they’re my sons. And for making all the difference, I thank my wife, Regina Barreca.

Brief Contents

Resources for Reading and Writing about Literature inside front cover

Preface for Instructors vii

Introduction: Reading Imaginative Literature 1

FICT ION 7

The Elements of Fiction 9 1. Reading Fiction 11 2. Plot 44 3. Character 64 4. Setting 115 5. Point of View 135 6. Symbolism 178 7. Theme 199 8. Style, Tone, and Irony 223

Fiction in Depth 255 9. A Study of Flannery O’Connor 257

A Collection of Stories 277 10. Stories for Further Reading 279

POETRY 339

The Elements of Poetry 341 11. Reading Poetry 343 12. Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone 375 13. Images 399 14. Figures of Speech 412 15. Symbol, Allegory, and Irony 428

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16. Sounds 447 17. Patterns of Rhythm 464 18. Poetic Forms 481 19. Open Form 507

Poetry in Depth 523 20. A Study of Billy Collins: The Author Refl ects on Five Poems 525 21. A Thematic Case Study: Humor and Satire 550

A Collection of Poems 559 22. Poems for Further Reading 561

DR AMA 589

The Study of Drama 591 23. Reading Drama 593 24. Sophocles and Greek Drama 632 25. William Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama 687 26. Henrik Ibsen and Modern Drama 788

A Collection of Plays 849 27. Plays for Further Reading 851

CRIT ICAL THINKING AND WRIT ING 927

28. Reading and the Writing Process 929 29. Writing about Fiction 942 30. Writing about Poetry 950 31. Writing about Drama 965 32. The Literary Research Paper 973

Glossary of Literary Terms 991

Index of First Lines 1019

Index of Authors and Titles 1023

Index of Terms 1034

Contents

Resources for Reading and Writing about Literature inside front cover

Preface for Instructors vii

Introduction: Reading Imaginative Literature 1 The Nature of Literature 1

Emily Dickinson • A NARROW FELLOW IN THE GRASS 2

The Value of Literature 3 The Changing Literary Canon 5

FICT ION 7

The Elements of Fiction 9

1. Reading Fiction 11 Reading Fiction Responsively 11

Kate Chopin • THE STORY OF AN HOUR 13 A young woman reacts to news of her husband’s death. “She had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter!”

a sample close reading An Annotated Section of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” 15 a sample student paper Differences in Responses to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” 18

Explorations and Formulas 22 A Comparison of Two Stories 28

Karen van der Zee • FROM A SECRET SORROW 28 “Shut up and listen to me! . . . He was still breathing hard and he looked at her with stormy blue eyes.” A young couple debates their future, Harlequin romance style.

Gail Godwin • A SORROWFUL WOMAN 37 What happens when you’re a wife and mother — but it turns out that’s not what you really wanted?

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2. Plot 44 Edgar Rice Burroughs • FROM TARZAN OF THE APES 46 Two wild creatures battle over a woman. “Against the long canines of the ape was pitted the thin blade of the man’s knife.”

Alice Walker • THE FLOWERS 53 A young girl gathers fl owers, farther from home than usual. “It seemed gloomy in the little cove. . . . The air was damp, the silence close and deep.”

William Faulkner • A ROSE FOR EMILY 55 In a tale that Faulkner called a ghost story, a woman breaks from traditions of the old South — mysteriously and gruesomely.

3. Character 64 Charles Dickens • FROM HARD TIMES 65 “Facts alone are wanted in life.” No one can take the joy out of learning like Dickens’s Mr. Gradgrind.

May-lee Chai • SAVING SOURDI 69 In the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Sourdi saves her sister Nea. Now in the U.S., Nea wants to save her sister’s happiness.

Herman Melville • BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER 85 “I would prefer not to.” The classic story of the most resistant offi ce worker in literature.

4. Setting 115 Ernest Hemingway • SOLDIER’S HOME 117 A young man comes home from war, detached from emotion and the values of those who want him to make something of himself.

Fay Weldon • IND AFF, OR OUT OF LOVE IN SARAJEVO 124 “I love you with inordinate affection!” A graduate student and her married professor travel to the Balkans to make a decision.

A. S. Byatt • BAGLADY 131 A morning of shopping in a luxurious mall in the Far East does not go well for Daphne Gulver-Robinson.

5. Point of View 135 Third-Person Narrator 136 First-Person Narrator 137

Anton Chekhov • THE LADY WITH THE PET DOG 139 “Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other. . . . Fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband.”

Alice Munro • AN OUNCE OF CURE 168 A teenage girl’s fi rst experience with a broken heart leads to catastrophic consequences.

contents xxi

6. Symbolism 178

Ralph Ellison • BATTLE ROYAL 184 A young black man is humiliated, bloodied, and awarded a scholarship as he sets out on a path toward identity and equality in a racist society.

Peter Meinke • THE CRANES 196 People make many promises to the ones they love. Sometimes, there is no turning back.

7. Theme 199 Guy de Maupassant • THE NECKLACE 202 All Mathilde Loisel wants is a pretty necklace for the ball. When she borrows one from a friend, however, things do not go as expected.

Stephen Crane • THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY 209 In this commentary on the Wild West, things change with the marriage of the lone marshal of a gunslinging town.

Dagoberto Gilb • LOVE IN L.A. 219 A man driving an unregistered, uninsured ’58 Buick dreams and deceives on the Hollywood Freeway.

8. Style, Tone, and Irony 223 Style 223 Tone 225 Irony 225

Raymond Carver • POPULAR MECHANICS 227 With extreme economy, Carver tells the story of a troubled family’s tug-of-war.

Susan Minot • LUST 229 “The more girls a boy has, the better. . . . For a girl, with each boy it’s as though a petal gets plucked each time.” A woman chronicles her early sexual encounters.

T. Coraghessan Boyle • CARNAL KNOWLEDGE 237 How far will a man go for love? “The turkeys must have sensed that something was up — from behind the long white windowless wall, there arose a watchful gabbling.”

Fiction in Depth 255

9. A Study of Flannery O’Connor 257 A Brief Biography and Introduction 258

Flannery O’Connor • A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND 261 A southern grandmother weighs in on the “goodness” of one of literature’s most famous ex-convicts.

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perspectives on o’connor Flannery O’Connor • On the Use of Exaggeration and Distortion 274 Josephine Hendin • On O’Connor’s Refusal to “Do Pretty” 274 Claire Katz • The Function of Violence in O’Connor’s Fiction 275 Time Magazine • On A Good Man Is Hard to Find 276

A Collection of Stories 277

10. Stories for Further Reading 279 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni • CLOTHES 280 A young Indian woman sees her marriage, her move to America, and even her wardrobe (and a California 7-Eleven) in terms of possibility.

Nathaniel Hawthorne • THE BIRTHMARK 289 An eighteenth-century scientist seeks to obliterate imperfection.

James Joyce • EVELINE 302 How much should an obedient daughter sacrifi ce to fulfi ll her duty to her family and home?

Jamaica Kincaid • GIRL 306 “Always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach.” A critical mother subjects her daughter to a long list of advice.

Ian McEwan • THE USE OF POETRY 308 When a science major meets a beautiful English student, he decides poetry might have some use after all.

Tim O’Brien • HOW TO TELL A TRUE WAR STORY 318 “If a story seems moral, do not believe it. . . . You can tell a true war story by its abso- lute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”

E. Annie Proulx • 55 MILES TO THE GAS PUMP 329 A brief, startling story of a rancher and his wife.

Mark Twain • THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY 330 Obedience is not exactly celebrated in this story about being too good.

John Updike • A & P 334 “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.” A teenaged Sammy makes a gallant move that changes his life.

POETRY 339

The Elements of Poetry 341

11. Reading Poetry 343 Reading Poetry Responsively 343

Lisa Parker • SNAPPING BEANS 344

Robert Hayden • THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS 345

John Updike • DOG’S DEATH 346

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The Pleasure of Words 347 William Hathaway • OH, OH 348

a sample close reading An Annotated Version of William Hathaway’s “Oh, Oh” 348

Robert Francis • CATCH 350 a sample student analysis Tossing Metaphors Together in Robert Francis’s “Catch” 351

Elizabeth Bishop • THE FISH 355

Philip Larkin • A STUDY OF READING HABITS 357

Robert Morgan • MOUNTAIN GRAVEYARD 358

E. E. Cummings • l(a 359

Anonymous • WESTERN WIND 360

Regina Barreca • NIGHTTIME FIRES 361 suggestions for approaching poetry 362

Billy Collins • INTRODUCTION TO POETRY 364

Poetry in Popular Forms 364 Helen Farries • MAGIC OF LOVE 366

John Frederick Nims • LOVE POEM 366

Bruce Springsteen • YOU’RE MISSING 368

Poems for Further Study 369 Alberto Ríos • SENIORS 369

Li Ho • A BEAUTIFUL GIRL COMBS HER HAIR 370

Peter Pereira • ANAGRAMMER 371

Robert Frost • DESIGN 372

Mary Oliver • THE POET WITH HIS FACE IN HIS HANDS 373

12. Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone 375 Word Choice 375

Diction 375

Denotations and Connotations 377

Randall Jarrell • THE DEATH OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNER 378

Word Order 380 Tone 380

Katharyn Howd Machan • HAZEL TELLS LAVERNE 380

Martín Espada • LATIN NIGHT AT THE PAWNSHOP 381

Paul Laurence Dunbar • TO A CAPTIOUS CRITIC 382

Diction and Tone in Four Love Poems 382 Robert Herrick • TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME 383

Andrew Marvell • TO HIS COY MISTRESS 384

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Ann Lauinger • MARVELL NOIR 387

Sharon Olds • LAST NIGHT 388

Poems for Further Study 389 Thomas Hardy • THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN 389

David R. Slavitt • TITANIC 391

Gwendolyn Brooks • WE REAL COOL 391

Joan Murray • WE OLD DUDES 392

Louis Simpson • IN THE SUBURBS 393

Emily Dickinson • SOME KEEP THE SABBATH GOING TO CHURCH — 393

John Keats • ODE ON A GRECIAN URN 394

Poets at Play 396 Billy Collins • TAKING OFF EMILY DICKINSON’S CLOTHES 396

Joan Murray • TAKING OFF BILLY COLLINS’ CLOTHES 397

postcard: Billy Collins • TO JOAN MURRAY 398

13. Images 399 Poetry’s Appeal to the Senses 399

William Carlos Williams • POEM 400

Walt Whitman • CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD 400

Theodore Roethke • ROOT CELLAR 401

Matthew Arnold • DOVER BEACH 402

Jimmy Santiago Baca • GREEN CHILE 404

Poems for Further Study 405 Amy Lowell • THE POND 405

William Blake • LONDON 405

Emily Dickinson • WILD NIGHTS — WILD NIGHTS! 406

Wilfred Owen • DULCE ET DECORUM EST 407

Sally Croft • HOME-BAKED BREAD 408

John Keats • TO AUTUMN 409

Ezra Pound • IN A STATION OF THE METRO 411

14. Figures of Speech 412 William Shakespeare • FROM MACBETH (ACT V, SCENE V ) 413

Simile and Metaphor 414 Margaret Atwood • YOU FIT INTO ME 414

Emily Dickinson • PRESENTIMENT — IS THAT LONG SHADOW — ON THE LAWN — 415

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Other Figures 416 Edmund Conti • PRAGMATIST 416

Dylan Thomas • THE HAND THAT SIGNED THE PAPER 417

Janice Townley Moore • TO A WASP 418

J. Patrick Lewis • THE UNKINDEST CUT 420

Poems for Further Study 420 Gary Snyder • HOW POETRY COMES TO ME 420

Ernest Slyman • LIGHTNING BUGS 421

Judy Page Heitzman • THE SCHOOLROOM ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE KNITTING MILL 421

William Wordsworth • LONDON, 1802 422

Robert Frost • FIRE AND ICE 423

John Donne • A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING 423

Linda Pastan • MARKS 425

Kay Ryan • HAILSTORM 425

Elaine Magarrell • THE JOY OF COOKING 426

15. Symbol, Allegory, and Irony 428 Symbol 428

Robert Frost • ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT 429

Allegory 431 Edgar Allan Poe • THE HAUNTED PALACE 431

Irony 433 Edwin Arlington Robinson • RICHARD CORY 433

Kenneth Fearing • AD 434

E. E. Cummings • NEXT TO OF COURSE GOD AMERICA I 435

Stephen Crane • A MAN SAID TO THE UNIVERSE 436

Poems for Further Study 437 Bob Hicok • MAKING IT IN POETRY 437

Kevin Pierce • PROOF OF ORIGIN 437

Carl Sandburg • BUTTONS 438

Wallace Stevens • ANECDOTE OF THE JAR 438

Jim Tilley • RICHTER 7.8 439

William Stafford • TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK 440

Alden Nowlan • THE BULL MOOSE 441

Julio Marzán • ETHNIC POETRY 442

James Merrill • CASUAL WEAR 443

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Robert Browning • MY LAST DUCHESS 444

William Blake • THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER 445

16. Sounds 447 Listening to Poetry 447

John Updike • PLAYER PIANO 448

May Swenson • A NOSTY FRIGHT 449

Emily Dickinson • A BIRD CAME DOWN THE WALK — 450

Galway Kinnell • BLACKBERRY EATING 452

Rhyme 453 Richard Armour • GOING TO EXTREMES 453

Robert Southey • FROM “THE CATARACT OF LODORE” 454

Sound and Meaning 457 Gerard Manley Hopkins • GOD’S GRANDEUR 457

Poems for Further Study 458 Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) • JABBERWOCKY 458

Emily Dickinson • I HEARD A FLY BUZZ — WHEN I DIED — 459

Robert Frost • STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING 460

John Donne • SONG 461

Paul Humphrey • BLOW 462

Robert Francis • THE PITCHER 462

Helen Chasin • THE WORD PLUM 463

17. Patterns of Rhythm 464 Some Principles of Meter 464

Walt Whitman • FROM “SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD” 465

William Wordsworth • MY HEART LEAPS UP 468 suggestions for scanning a poem 469

Timothy Steele • WAITING FOR THE STORM 470

William Butler Yeats • THAT THE NIGHT COME 470

Poems for Further Study 471 Alfred, Lord Tennyson • BREAK, BREAK, BREAK 471

Alice Jones • THE FOOT 472

Rita Dove • FOX TROT FRIDAYS 473

Robert Herrick • DELIGHT IN DISORDER 474

Ben Jonson • STILL TO BE NEAT 474

William Blake • THE LAMB 475

William Blake • THE TYGER 476

contents xxvii

Carl Sandburg • CHICAGO 477

Robert Frost • “OUT, OUT — ” 478

Theodore Roethke • MY PAPA’S WALTZ 479

18. Poetic Forms 481 Some Common Poetic Forms 482

A. E. Housman • LOVELIEST OF TREES, THE CHERRY NOW 482

Robert Herrick • UPON JULIA’S CLOTHES 483

Sonnet 484

John Keats • ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER 485

William Wordsworth • THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US 486

William Shakespeare • SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY? 487

William Shakespeare • MY MISTRESS’ EYES ARE NOTHING LIKE THE SUN 487

Edna St. Vincent Millay • I WILL PUT CHAOS INTO FOURTEEN LINES 488

Molly Peacock • DESIRE 489

Mark Jarman • UNHOLY SONNET 489

X. J. Kennedy • “THE PURPOSE OF TIME IS TO PREVENT EVERYTHING FROM HAPPENING AT ONCE” 490

Villanelle 491

Dylan Thomas • DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT 491

Sestina 492

Florence Cassen Mayers • ALL-AMERICAN SESTINA 492

Epigram 493

Samuel Taylor Coleridge • WHAT IS AN EPIGRAM? 494

A. R. Ammons • COWARD 494

David McCord • EPITAPH ON A WAITER 494

Paul Laurence Dunbar • THEOLOGY 494

Limerick 495

Anonymous • THERE WAS A YOUNG LADY NAMED BRIGHT 495

Laurence Perrine • THE LIMERICK’S NEVER AVERSE 495

Haiku 496

Matsuo Bash–o • UNDER CHERRY TREES 496

Carolyn Kizer • AFTER BASH – O 496

Sonia Sanchez • C’MON MAN HOLD ME 496

Elegy 497

Theodore Roethke • ELEGY FOR JANE 497

Brendan Galvin • AN EVEL KNIEVEL ELEGY 498

xxviii contents

Ode 499

Percy Bysshe Shelley • ODE TO THE WEST WIND 499

Baron Wormser • LABOR 502

Parody 503

Blanche Farley • THE LOVER NOT TAKEN 503 perspective Elaine Mitchell • Form 504

Picture Poem 505

Michael McFee • IN MEDIAS RES 505

19. Open Form 507 E. E. Cummings • IN JUST- 507

Walt Whitman • FROM “I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC” 508

Louis Jenkins • THE PROSE POEM 510

Galway Kinnell • AFTER MAKING LOVE WE HEAR FOOTSTEPS 511

Kelly Cherry • ALZHEIMER’S 512

William Carlos Williams • THE RED WHEELBARROW 513

Marilyn Nelson Waniek • EMILY DICKINSON’S DEFUNCT 513

Julio Marzán • THE TRANSLATOR AT THE RECEPTION FOR LATIN AMERICAN WRITERS 514

Anonymous • THE FROG 515

Julia Alvarez • QUEENS, 1963 515

Tato Laviera • AMERÍCAN 517

Peter Meinke • THE ABC OF AEROBICS 519

Found Poem 520

Donald Justice • ORDER IN THE STREETS 520

Poetry in Depth 523

20. A Study of Billy Collins: The Author Refl ects on Five Poems 525 A Brief Biography and an Introduction to His Work 526

introduction: Billy Collins • “HOW DO POEMS TRAVEL?” 531

poem: Billy Collins • OSSO BUCO 532

essay: Billy Collins • ON WRITING “OSSO BUCO” 533

poem: Billy Collins • NOSTALGIA 534

essay: Billy Collins • ON WRITING “NOSTALGIA” 535

poem: Billy Collins • QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS 537

essay: Billy Collins • ON WRITING “QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS” 538

poem: Billy Collins • LITANY 539

essay: Billy Collins • ON WRITING “LITANY” 540

contents xxix

poem: Billy Collins • BUILDING WITH ITS FACE BLOWN OFF 541 perspective (interview) On “Building with Its Face Blown Off ”: Michael Meyer Interviews Billy Collins 542

facsimile: Billy Collins • DRAFT MANUSCRIPT PAGE OF “BUSY DAY” 546 suggested topics for longer papers 547 questions for writing about an author in depth 548

21. A Thematic Case Study: Humor and Satire 550 Fleur Adcock • THE VIDEO 551

John Ciardi • SUBURBAN 552

Howard Nemerov • WALKING THE DOG 552

Linda Pastan • JUMP CABLING 553

Peter Schmitt • FRIENDS WITH NUMBERS 554

Martín Espada • THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE REVISES ITS CURRICULUM IN RESPONSE TO CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS 555

Thomas Lux • COMMERCIAL LEECH FARMING TODAY 555

X. J. Kennedy • ON A YOUNG MAN’S REMAINING AN UNDERGRADUATE FOR TWELVE YEARS 557

A Collection of Poems 559

22. Poems for Further Reading 561 William Blake • INFANT SORROW 561

Robert Burns • A RED, RED ROSE 561

George Gordon, Lord Byron • SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY 562

Lucille Clifton • THIS MORNING (FOR THE GIRLS OF EASTERN HIGH SCHOOL) 563

Samuel Taylor Coleridge • KUBLA KHAN: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM 563

Emily Dickinson • BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH — 565

Emily Dickinson • HE FUMBLES AT YOUR SOUL 565

Emily Dickinson • I FELT A FUNERAL, IN MY BRAIN 566

Emily Dickinson • I STARTED EARLY — TOOK MY DOG — 566

Emily Dickinson • MY LIFE HAD STOOD — A LOADED GUN — 567

John Donne • THE APPARITION 568

John Donne • THE FLEA 568

T. S. Eliot • THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK 569

Robert Frost • MENDING WALL 573

Robert Frost • THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 574

Thomas Hardy • HAP 574

Gerard Manley Hopkins • PIED BEAUTY 575

A. E. Housman • TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG 575

xxx contents

Langston Hughes • HARLEM 576

Ben Jonson • TO CELIA 577

John Keats • LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 577

John Keats • WRITTEN IN DISGUST OF VULGAR SUPERSTITION 579

Emma Lazarus • THE NEW COLOSSUS 579

John Milton • WHEN I CONSIDER HOW MY LIGHT IS SPENT 580

Christina Georgina Rossetti • SOME LADIES DRESS IN MUSLIN FULL AND WHITE 580

Siegfried Sassoon • “THEY” 581

William Shakespeare • THAT TIME OF YEAR THOU MAYST IN ME BEHOLD 581

William Shakespeare • WHEN, IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES 581

Percy Bysshe Shelley • OZYMANDIAS 582

Alfred, Lord Tennyson • ULYSSES 582

Alfred, Lord Tennyson • TEARS, IDLE TEARS 584

Walt Whitman • WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER 585

William Carlos Williams • THIS IS JUST TO SAY 585

William Wordsworth • A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL 586

William Wordsworth • THE SOLITARY REAPER 586

William Wordsworth • MUTABILITY 587

William Butler Yeats • LEDA AND THE SWAN 587

DR AMA 589

The Study of Drama 591

23. Reading Drama 593 Reading Drama Responsively 593

Susan Glaspell • TRIFLES 595 Did Mrs. Wright kill her husband? While the men investigate, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale reach their own conclusions.

a sample close reading An Annotated Section of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles 606

Elements of Drama 607 Joan Ackermann • QUIET TORRENTIAL SOUND 612 Two sisters in their thirties order at a café: one a hot fudge sundae and a Diet Coke, the other a decaf. In short order, the conversation turns to appetites.

Drama in Popular Forms 619 Larry David • “THE PITCH,” A SEINFELD EPISODE 622 Are our lives just a series of insignifi cant, mundane events? Of episodes in which nothing happens?

contents xxxi

24. Sophocles and Greek Drama 632 Theatrical Conventions of Greek Drama 633 Tragedy 636

Sophocles • OEDIPUS THE KING 639 In the greatest of the surviving Greek tragedies, a hero sets out to discover the truth about himself.

25. William Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama 687 Shakespeare’s Theater 689 The Range of Shakespeare’s Drama: History, Comedy, and Tragedy 693 A Note on Reading Shakespeare 696

William Shakespeare • OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE 698 Jealousy proves to be the downfall of a Moorish general in this tragedy of love, betrayal, friendship, and race.

26. Henrik Ibsen and Modern Drama 788 Realism 788 Theatrical Conventions of Modern Drama 790

Henrik Ibsen • A DOLL HOUSE 792 “Yes, whatever you say, Torvald.” Can a nineteenth-century wife break from her dominating husband?

A Collection of Plays 849

27. Plays for Further Reading 851 Sharon E. Cooper • MISTAKEN IDENTITY 852 A Hindu lesbian and a clueless American go on a blind date.

David Henry Hwang • TRYING TO FIND CHINATOWN 857 “What — you think if I deny the importance of my race, I’m nobody?” Two young men have very different ideas about what makes us who we are.

Jane Martin • RODEO 864 When a closely knit community is corrupted in the name of progress and profi t, can it recover?

Jane Anderson • THE REPRIMAND 868 Mim and Rhona work through their professional power struggle. Sort of.

Nilaja Sun • NO CHILD . . . 905 When Ms. Sun arrives to direct a play with the worst class in school, her funny and frank students are more than a little skeptical.

xxxii contents

CRIT ICAL THINKING AND WRIT ING 927

28. Reading and the Writing Process 929 The Purpose and Value of Writing about Literature 929 Reading the Work Closely 930 Annotating the Text and Journal Note Taking 930

Annotated Text 931

Journal Note 931

Choosing a Topic 932 Developing a Thesis 933 Arguing about Literature 934 Organizing a Paper 935 Writing a Draft 936

Writing the Introduction and Conclusion 937

Using Quotations 937

Revising and Editing 939 questions for writing: a revision checklist 939

Types of Writing Assignments 941

29. Writing about Fiction 942 From Reading to Writing 942

questions for responsive reading and writing 943 Analysis 945

a sample student analysis John Updike’s “A&P” as a State of Mind 945

30. Writing about Poetry 950 From Reading to Writing 950

questions for responsive reading and writing 951

Explication 952

A Sample Paper-in-Progress 953 Mapping a Poem 953

John Donne • DEATH BE NOT PROUD 954

Asking Questions about the Elements 954 a sample fi rst response First Response to John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” 954

Organizing Your Thoughts 955 a sample informal outline Proposed Outline for Paper on John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” 956

contents xxxiii

The Elements and Theme 957 fi nal paper: a sample explication The Use of Conventional Metaphors for Death in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” 957

A Sample Student Explication 961 A Reading of Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light” 961

Emily Dickinson • THERE’S A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT 961

31. Writing about Drama 965 From Reading to Writing 965

questions for responsive reading and writing 966 Comparison and Contrast 968

32. The Literary Research Paper 973 Choosing a Topic 974 Finding Sources 975

Electronic Sources 975

Evaluating Sources and Taking Notes 976 Developing a Thesis and Organizing the Paper 977 Revising 978 Documenting Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism 978

The List of Works Cited 980 Parenthetical References 985

a sample student research paper How William Faulkner’s Narrator Cultivates a Rose for Emily 986

Glossary of Literary Terms 991

Index of First Lines 1019

Index of Authors and Titles 1023

Index of Terms 1034

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THE NATURE OF LITER ATURE Literature does not lend itself to a single tidy definition because the mak- ing of it over the centuries has been as complex, unwieldy, and natural as life itself. Is literature everything that has been written, from ancient prayers to graffiti? Does it include songs and stories that were not written down until many years after they were recited? Does literature include the television scripts from Seinfeld as well as Shakespeare’s King Lear? Is litera- ture only writing that has permanent value and continues to move people? Must literature be true or beautiful or moral? Should it be socially useful? Although these kinds of questions are not conclusively answered in this book, they are implicitly raised by the stories, poems, and plays included here. No definition of literature, particularly a brief one, is likely to satisfy everyone because definitions tend to weaken and require qualification when confronted by the uniqueness of individual works. In this context it is worth recalling Herman Melville’s humorous use of a definition of a whale in Moby-Dick (1851). In the course of the novel, Mel- ville presents his imaginative and symbolic whale as inscrutable, but he begins with a quota tion from Georges Cuvier, a French naturalist who defines a whale in his nineteenth-century study The Animal Kingdom this

INTRODUCTION

Reading Imaginative Literature

Literature has been the salvation of the damned; literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair, and can perhaps . . . save the world.

— JOHN CHEEVER

2 reading imaginative literature

way: “The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.” Cuvier’s description is technically correct, of course, but there is little wisdom in it. Melville under stood that the reality of the whale (which he describes as the “un graspable phantom of life”) cannot be caught by isolated facts. If the full meaning of the whale is to be understood, it must be sought on the open sea of experience, where the whale itself is, rather than in exclusionary definitions. Facts and definitions are helpful; however, they do not always reveal the whole truth. Despite Melville’s reminder that a definition can be too limiting and even comical, it is useful for our purposes to describe literature as a fiction consisting of carefully arranged words designed to stir the imagination. Stories, poems, and plays are fictional. They are made up — imagined — even when based on actual historic events. Such imaginative writing differs from other kinds of writing because its purpose is not primarily to transmit facts or ideas. Imaginative literature is a source more of pleasure than of infor- mation, and we read it for basically the same reasons we listen to music or view a dance: enjoyment, delight, and satisfaction. Like other art forms, imaginative literature offers pleasure and usually attempts to convey a perspective, mood, feeling, or experience. Writers transform the facts the world provides — people, places, and objects — into experiences that suggest meanings. Consider, for example, the difference between the following factual de scription of a snake and a poem on the same subject. Here is Webster’s Eleventh New Collegiate Dictionary’s definition:

any of numerous limbless scaled reptiles (suborder Serpentes syn. Ophidia) with a long tapering body and with salivary glands often modified to produce venom which is injected through grooved or tubular fangs.

Contrast this matter-of-fact definition with Emily Dickinson’s poetic evocation of a snake in “A narrow Fellow in the Grass”:

A narrow Fellow in the Grass Occasionally rides — You may have met Him — did you not His notice sudden is —

The Grass divides as with a Comb — 5 A spotted shaft is seen — And then it closes at your feet And opens further on —

He likes a Boggy Acre A floor too cool for Corn — 10 Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot — I more than once at Noon

Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash Unbraiding in the Sun

the value of literature 3

When stooping to secure it 15 It wrinkled, and was gone —

Several of Nature’s People I know, and they know me — I feel for them a transport Of cordiality — 20

But never met this Fellow Attended, or alone Without a tighter breathing And Zero at the Bone —

The dictionary provides a succinct, anatomical description of what a snake is, while Dickinson’s poem suggests what a snake can mean. The defi nition offers facts; the poem offers an experience. The dictionary would probably allow someone who had never seen a snake to sketch one with reasonable accuracy. The poem also provides some vivid subjec- tive descriptions — for example, the snake dividing the grass “as with a Comb” — yet it offers more than a picture of serpentine movements. The poem conveys the ambivalence many people have about snakes — the kind of feeling, for example, so evident on the faces of visitors viewing the snakes at a zoo. In the poem there is both a fascination with and a horror of what might be called snakehood; this combination of feelings has been coiled in most of us since Adam and Eve. A good deal more could be said about the numbing fear that under- cuts the affection for nature at the beginning of this poem, but the point here is that imaginative literature gives us not so much the full, fac- tual proportions of the world as some of its experiences and meanings. Instead of de fining the world, literature encourages us to try it out in our imaginations.

THE VALUE OF LITER ATURE Mark Twain once shrewdly observed that a person who chooses not to read has no advantage over a person who is unable to read. In industri- alized societies today, however, the question is not who reads, because nearly everyone can and does, but what is read. Why should anyone spend precious time with literature when there is so much reading material available that provides useful information about everything from the daily news to personal computers? Why should a literary art- ist’s imagination compete for attention that could be spent on the firm realities that constitute everyday life? In fact, national best-seller lists much less often include collections of stories, poems, or plays than they do cookbooks and, not surprisingly, diet books. Although such fare may be filling, it doesn’t stay with you. Most people have other appetites too.

4 reading imaginative literature

Certainly one of the most important values of literature is that it nourishes our emotional lives. An effective literary work may seem to speak directly to us, especially if we are ripe for it. The inner life that good writers reveal in their characters often gives us glimpses of some portion of ourselves. We can be moved to laugh, cry, tremble, dream, ponder, shriek, or rage with a character by simply turning a page instead of turning our lives upside down. Although the experience itself is imag- ined, the emotion is real. That’s why the final chapters of a good adven- ture novel can make a reader’s heart race as much as a 100-yard dash or why the repressed love of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is painful to a sympathetic reader. Human emotions speak a universal language regardless of when or where a work was written. In addition to appealing to our emotions, literature broadens our perspectives on the world. Most of the people we meet are pretty much like ourselves, and what we can see of the world even in a lifetime is astonishingly limited. Literature allows us to move beyond the inevitable boundaries of our own lives and culture because it introduces us to people different from ourselves, places remote from our neighborhoods, and times other than our own. Reading makes us more aware of life’s possibilities as well as its subtleties and ambiguities. Put simply, people who read literature experience more life and have a keener sense of a common human identity than those who do not. It is true, of course, that many people go through life without reading imaginative literature, but that is a loss rather than a gain. They may find themselves troubled by the same kinds of questions that reveal Daisy Buchanan’s restless, vague discontentment in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” Sometimes students mistakenly associate literature more with school than with life. Accustomed to reading it in order to write a paper or pass an examination, students may perceive such reading as a chore instead of a pleasurable opportunity, something considerably less important than studying for the “practical” courses that prepare them for a career. The study of literature, however, is also practical because it engages you in the kinds of problem solving important in a variety of fields, from phi- losophy to science and technology. The interpretation of literary texts requires you to deal with uncertainties, value judgments, and emotions; these are unavoidable aspects of life. People who make the most significant contributions to their profes- sions — whether in business, engineering, teaching, or some other area — tend to be challenged rather than threatened by multiple possibilities. Instead of retreating to the way things have always been done, they bring freshness and creativity to their work. F. Scott Fitzgerald once astutely described the “test of a first-rate intelligence” as “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” People with such intelligence know how to read situations,

the changing literary canon 5

shape questions, interpret details, and evaluate competing points of view. Equipped with a healthy respect for facts, they also understand the value of pursuing hunches and exercising their imaginations. Reading literature encourages a suppleness of mind that is helpful in any discipline or work. Once the requirements for your degree are completed, what ultimately matters are not the courses listed on your transcript but the sensibili- ties and habits of mind that you bring to your work, friends, family, and, indeed, the rest of your life. A healthy economy changes and grows with the times; people do too if they are prepared for more than simply filling a job description. The range and variety of life that literature affords can help you to interpret your own experiences and the world in which you live. To discover the insights that literature reveals requires careful reading and sensitivity. One of the purposes of a college introduction to literature class is to cultivate the analytic skills necessary for reading well. Class discussions often help establish a dialogue with a work that perhaps otherwise would not speak to you. Analytic skills can also be developed by writing about what you read. Writing is an effective means of clarifying your responses and ideas because it requires you to account for the author’s use of language as well as your own. This book is based on two premises: that reading literature is pleasurable and that reading and understanding a work sensitively by thinking, talking, or writing about it increases the pleasure of the experience of it. Understanding its basic elements — such as point of view, symbol, theme, tone, irony, and so on — is a prerequisite to an informed appre- ciation of literature. This kind of understanding allows you to perceive more in a literary work in much the same way that a spectator at a ten- nis match sees more if he or she understands the rules and conventions of the game. But literature is not simply a spectator sport. The analytic skills that open up literature also have their uses when you watch a tele- vision program or film and, more important, when you attempt to sort out the significance of the people, places, and events that constitute your own life. Literature enhances and sharpens your perceptions. What could be more lastingly practical as well as satisfying?

THE CHANGING LITER ARY CANON Perhaps the best reading creates some kind of change in us: We see more clearly; we’re alert to nuances; we ask questions that previously didn’t occur to us. Henry David Thoreau had that sort of reading in mind when he remarked in Walden that the books he valued most were those that caused him to date “a new era in his life from the reading.” Readers are sometimes changed by literature, but it is also worth noting that the life of a literary work can also be affected by its readers. Melville’s Moby-Dick, for example, was not valued as a classic until the 1920s, when critics res- cued the novel from the obscurity of being cataloged in many libraries

6 reading imaginative literature

(including Yale’s) not under fiction but under cetology, the study of whales. In deed, many writers contemporary to Melville who were impor- tant and popular in the nineteenth century — William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wads worth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell, to name a few — are now mostly unread; their names appear more often on elemen- tary schools built early in this century than in anthologies. Clearly, liter- ary reputations and what is valued as great literature change over time and in the eyes of readers. Such changes have steadily accelerated as the literary canon — those works considered by scholars, critics, and teachers to be the most impor- tant to read and study — has undergone a significant series of shifts. Writers who previously were overlooked, undervalued, neglected, or stu- diously ignored have been brought into focus in an effort to create a more diverse literary canon, one that recognizes the contributions of the many cultures that make up American society. Since the 1960s, for example, some critics have reassessed writings by women who had been left out of the standard literary traditions dominated by male writers. Many more female writers are now read alongside the male writers who traditionally populated literary history. Hence, a reader of Mark Twain and Stephen Crane is now just as likely to encounter Kate Chopin in a literary anthol- ogy. Until fairly recently, Chopin was mostly regarded as a minor local colorist of Louisiana life. In the 1960s, however, the feminist movement helped to establish her present reputation as a significant voice in Ameri- can literature owing to the feminist concerns so compellingly artic ulated by her female characters. This kind of enlargement of the canon also resulted from another reform movement of the 1960s. The civil rights movement sensitized literary critics to the political, moral, and aesthetic necessity of rediscovering African American literature, and more recently Asian and Hispanic writers have been making their way into the canon. Moreover, on a broader scale the canon is being revised and enlarged to include the works of writers from parts of the world other than the West, a development that reflects the changing values, concerns, and complexi- ties of recent decades, when literary landscapes have shifted as dramati- cally as the political boundaries of much of the world.

No semester’s reading list — or anthology — can adequately or accurately echo all the new voices competing to be heard as part of the mainstream literary canon, but recent efforts to open up the canon attempt to sensi- tize readers to the voices of women, minorities, and writers from all over the world. This development has not occurred without its urgent advo- cates or passionate dissenters. It’s no surprise that issues about race, gen- der, and class often get people off the fence and on their feet. Al though what we regard as literature — whether it’s called great, classic, or canoni- cal — continues to generate debate, there is no question that such con- troversy will continue to reflect readers’ values as well as the writers they admire.

F I C T I O N

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1. Reading Fiction 11

2. Plot 44

3. Character 64

4. Setting 115

5. Point of View 135

6. Symbolism 178

7. Theme 199

8. Style, Tone, and Irony 223

The Elements of Fiction

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READING FICT ION RESPONSIVELY Reading a literary work responsively can be an intensely demanding activity. Henry David Thoreau — about as intense and demanding a reader and writer as they come — insists that “books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” Thoreau is right about the necessity for a conscious, sustained involvement with a literary work. Imaginative literature does demand more from us than, say, browsing through People magazine in a dentist’s waiting room, but Thoreau makes the process sound a little more daunting than it really is. For when we respond to the demands of responsive reading, our efforts are usually rewarded with pleasure as well as understanding. Careful, deliberate reading — the kind that engages a reader’s imagination as it calls forth the writer’s — is a means of exploration that can take a reader outside whatever circumstance or experience previously defi ned his or her world. Just as we respond moment by moment to people and situations in our lives, we also respond to literary works as we read them, though we may

1 Reading Fiction

To seek the source, the impulse of a story is like tearing a fl ower to pieces for wantonness.

— KATE CHOPIN

What we do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.

— JUNOT DÍAZ © Scott Lituchy/Star Ledger/ corbis.

Brought to you by LibraryPirate... 12 reading fiction

not be fully aware of how we are affected at each point along the way. The more conscious we are of how and why we respond to works in par- ticular ways, the more likely we are to be imaginatively engaged in our reading. In a very real sense both the reader and the author create the liter- ary work. How a reader responds to a story, poem, or play will help to determine its meaning. The author arranges the various elements that constitute his or her craft — elements such as plot, character, setting, point of view, symbolism, theme, and style, which you will be examin- ing in subsequent chapters — but the author cannot completely control the reader’s response any more than a person can absolutely predict how a remark or action will be received by a stranger, a friend, or even a family member. Few authors tell readers how to respond. Our sympa- thy, anger, confusion, laughter, sadness, or whatever the feeling might be is left up to us to experience. Writers may have the talent to evoke such feelings, but they don’t have the power and authority to enforce them. Because of the range of possible responses produced by imagina- tive literature, there is no single, correct, defi nitive response or inter- pretation. There can be readings that are wrongheaded or foolish, and some readings are better than others — that is, more responsive to a work’s details and more persuasive — but that doesn’t mean there is only one possible reading of a work. Experience tells us that different people respond differently to the same work. Consider, for example, how often you’ve heard Melville’s Moby-Dick described as one of the greatest American novels. This, how- ever, is how a reviewer in New Monthly Magazine described the book when it was published in 1851: It is “a huge dose of hyperbolical slang, maudlin sentimentalism and tragic-comic bubble and squeak.” Melville surely did not intend or desire this response; but there it is, and it was not a singu- lar, isolated reaction. This reading — like any reading — was infl uenced by the values, assumptions, and expectations that the readers brought to the novel from both previous readings and life experiences. The reviewer’s refusal to take the book seriously may have caused him to miss the boat from the perspective of many other readers of Moby-Dick, but it indicates that even “classics” (perhaps especially those kinds of works) can generate disparate readings. Consider the following brief story by Kate Cho- pin, a writer whose fi ction (like Melville’s) sometimes met with indifference or hostility in her own time. As you read, keep track of your responses to the cen- tral character, Mrs. Mallard. Write down your feelings about her in a substantial paragraph when you fi nish the story. Think, for example, about how you respond to the emotions she expresses concerning news of her husband’s death. What do you think of her feelings about mar- riage? Do you think you would react the way she does under similar circumstances?

WEB Explore contexts for Kate Chopin and approaches to this story at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

chopin / the story of an hour 13

Kate Chopin (1851–1904)

The Story of an Hour 1894

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was affl icted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death. It was 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 offi ce 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 signifi cance. 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 arm- chair. 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 who 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 fi xed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of refl ection, 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 fi lled 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

14 reading fiction

striving to beat it back with her will — as powerless as her two white slen- der 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 or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the sug- gestion 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, fi xed 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 her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers 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 him — sometimes. 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 door — you 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 unwit- tingly 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. Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip- sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s pierc- ing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. But Richards was too late.

chopin / the story of an hour 15

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of joy that kills.

A SAMPLE CLOSE READING An Annotated Section of “The Story of an Hour”

Even as you read a story for the fi rst time, you can highlight passages, circle or underline words, and write responses in the margins. Subse- quent readings will yield more insights once you begin to understand how various elements such as plot, characterization, and wording build toward the conclusion and what you perceive to be the story’s central ideas. The following annotations for the fi rst eleven paragraphs of “The Story of an Hour” provide a perspective written by someone who had read the work several times. Your own approach might, of course, be quite different — as the sample paper that follows the annotated passage amply demonstrates.

Kate Chopin (1851–1904)

The Story of an Hour 1894

The title could point to the brevity of the story — only 23 short paragraphs — or to the decisive nature of what happens in a very short period of time. Or both.

Mrs. Mallard’s fi rst name (Louise) is not given until para- graph 17, yet her sister Josephine is named immediately. This emphasizes Mrs. Mallard’s married identity.

Given the nature of the cause of Mrs. Mallard’s death at the story’s end, it’s worth noting the ambiguous description that she “was affl icted with a heart trouble.” Is this one of Chopin’s (rather than Jose- phine’s) “veiled hints”?

When Mrs. Mallard weeps with “wild abandonment,” the reader is again confronted with an ambiguous phrase: she grieves in an overwhelming manner yet seems to express relief at being abandoned by Brently’s death.

16 reading fiction

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 dis- tant 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 cush- ion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who 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 fi xed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of refl ection, but rather indicated a sus- pension 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 fi lled 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 will — as 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. . . .

Do you fi nd Mrs. Mallard a sympathetic character? Some readers think that she is callous, selfi sh, and unnatural — even monstrous — because she ecstatically revels in her newly discovered sense of freedom so soon after learning of her husband’s presumed death. Others read her as a victim of her inability to control her own life in a repressive, male- dominated society. Is it possible to hold both views simultaneously, or are they mutually exclusive? Are your views in any way infl uenced by your being male or female? Does your age affect your perception? What

These 3 paragraphs create an increas- ingly “open” atmosphere that leads to the “delicious” outside where there are inviting sounds and “patches of blue sky.” There’s a defi nite tension between the inside and outside worlds.

Though still stunned by grief, Mrs. Mallard begins to feel a change come over her owing to her growing awareness of a world outside her room.

What that change is remains “too subtle and elusive to name.”

Mrs. Mallard’s confl icted struggle is described in pas- sionate, physical terms as if she is “possess[ed]” by a lover she is “powerless” to resist.

Once she has “aban- doned” herself (see the “abandonment” in paragraph 3), the reader realizes that her love is to be “free, free, free.” Her recognition is evident in the “coursing blood [that] warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.”

Brought to you by LibraryPirate... chopin / the story of an hour 17

about your social and economic background? Does your nationality, race, or religion in any way shape your attitudes? Do you have particular views about the institution of marriage that inform your assessment of Mrs. Mallard’s character? Have other reading experiences — perhaps a familiarity with some of Chopin’s other stories — predisposed you one way or another to Mrs. Mallard? Understanding potential infl uences might be useful in determin- ing whether a particular response to Mrs. Mallard is based primarily on the story’s details and their arrangement or on an overt or a subtle bias that is brought to the story. If you unconsciously project your beliefs and assumptions onto a literary work, you run the risk of distorting it to accommodate your prejudice. Your feelings can be a reliable guide to interpretation, but you should be aware of what those feelings are based on. Often specifi c questions about literary works cannot be answered defi nitively. For example, Chopin does not explain why Mrs. Mallard suffers a heart attack at the end of this story. Is the shock of seeing her “dead” husband simply too much for this woman “affl icted with a heart trouble”? Does she die of what the doctors call a “joy that kills” because she is so glad to see her husband? Is she so profoundly guilty about feeling “free” at her husband’s expense that she has a heart attack? Is her death a kind of willed suicide in reaction to her loss of freedom? Your answers to these questions will depend on which details you emphasize in your interpretation of the story and the kinds of perspectives and values you bring to it. If, for example, you read the story from a feminist perspective, you would be likely to pay close attention to Chopin’s comments about marriage in paragraph 14. Or if you read the story as an oblique attack on the insensitivity of physicians of the period, you might want to fi nd out whether Chopin

WEB

more help with close reading Close readings of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” are available at Re:Writing for Litera- ture (www.bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit). Each story is annotated with critical interpretations and explanations of the literary elements at work.

www.bedfordstmartins.com/rewritinglit

18 reading fiction

wrote elsewhere about doctors (she did) and compare her comments with historic sources. Reading responsively makes you an active participant in the pro- cess of creating meaning in a literary work. The experience that you and the author create will most likely not be identical to another reader’s encounter with the same work, but then that’s true of nearly any experi- ence you’ll have, and it is part of the pleasure of reading. Indeed, talking and writing about literature is a way of sharing responses so that they can be enriched and deepened.

A SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER Differences in Responses to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”

The paper on the next page was written in response to an assignment that called for a three- to four-page discussion of how different readers might interpret Mrs. Mallard’s character.

a sample student paper 19

Villa 1

Wally Villa

Professor Brian

English 210

March 12, 2010

Differences in Responses to

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” appears merely to explore a woman’s

unpredictable reaction to her husband’s assumed death and reappearance, but

actually Chopin offers Mrs. Mallard’s bizarre story to reveal problems that are

inherent in the institution of marriage. By offering this depiction of a marriage

that stifles the woman to the point that she celebrates the death of her kind

and loving husband, Chopin challenges her readers to examine their own views

of marriage and relationships between men and women. Each reader’s judgment

of Mrs. Mallard and her behavior inevitably stems from his or her own personal

feelings about marriage and the influences of societal expectations. Readers

of differing genders, ages, and marital experiences are, therefore, likely to

react differently to Chopin’s startling portrayal of the Mallards’ marriage, and

that certainly is true of my response to the story compared to my father’s and

grandmother’s responses.

Marriage often establishes boundaries between people that make them

unable to communicate with each other. The Mallards’ marriage was evidently

crippled by both their inability to talk to one another and Mrs. Mallard’s

conviction that her marriage was defined by a “powerful will bending hers in

that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to

impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (14). Yet she does not recognize

that it is not just men who impose their will upon women and that the problems

inherent in marriage affect men and women equally. To me, Mrs. Mallard is

a somewhat sympathetic character, and I appreciate her longing to live out

the “years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (14). However, I also

believe that she could have tried to improve her own situation somehow, either

by reaching out to her husband or by abandoning the marriage altogether.

Chopin uses Mrs. Mallard’s tragedy to illuminate aspects of marriage that are

harmful and, in this case, even deadly. Perhaps the Mallards’ relationship should

be taken as a warning to others: sacrificing one’s own happiness in order to

satisfy societal expectations can poison one’s life and even destroy entire

families.

Thesis providing writer’s interpreta- tion of story’s purpose

Introduction setting up other reader responses discussed later in paper

Analysis of story’s portrayal of marriage, with textual evidence

Analysis of character and plot, connecting with story’s purpose

20 reading fiction

Villa 2

When my father read “The Story of an Hour,” his reaction to Mrs. Mallard

was more antagonistic than my own. He sees Chopin’s story as a timeless

“battle of the sexes,” serving as further proof that men will never really be able

to understand what it is that women want. Mrs. Mallard endures an obviously

unsatisfying marriage without ever explaining to her husband that she feels

trapped and unfulfilled. Mrs. Mallard dismisses the question of whether or

not she is experiencing a “monstrous joy” (14) as trivial, but my father does

not think that this is a trivial question. He believes Mrs. Mallard is guilty of a

monstrous joy because she selfishly celebrates the death of her husband without

ever having allowed him the opportunity to understand her feelings. He believes

that, above all, Brently Mallard should be seen as the most victimized character

in the story. Mr. Mallard is a good, kind man, with friends who care about him

and a marriage that he thinks he can depend on. He “never looked save with

love” (14) upon his wife, his only “crime” (14) was his presence in the house,

and yet he is the one who is bereaved at the end of the story, for reasons he

will never understand. Mrs. Mallard’s passion for her newly discovered freedom is

perhaps understandable, but according to my father, Mr. Mallard is the character

most deserving of sympathy.

Maybe not surprisingly, my grandmother’s interpretation of “The Story

of an Hour” was radically different from both mine and my father’s. My

grandmother was married in 1936 and widowed in 1959 and therefore can

identify with Chopin’s characters, who live at the turn of the century. Her

first reaction, aside from her unwavering support for Mrs. Mallard and her

predicament, was that this story demonstrates the differences between the ways

men and women related to each other a century ago and the way they relate

today. Unlike my father, who thinks Mrs. Mallard is too passive, my grandmother

believes that Mrs. Mallard doesn’t even know that she is feeling repressed until

after she is told that Brently is dead. In 1894, divorce was so scandalous and

stigmatized that it simply wouldn’t have been an option for Mrs. Mallard, and

so her only way out of the marriage would have been one of their deaths. Being

relatively young, Mrs. Mallard probably considered herself doomed to a long

life in an unhappy marriage. My grandmother also feels that, in spite of all we

know of Mrs. Mallard’s feelings about her husband and her marriage, she still

manages to live up to everyone’s expectations of her as a woman both in life

and in death. She is a dutiful wife to Brently, as she is expected to be. She

weeps “with sudden, wild abandonment” when she hears the news of his death;

Contrasting summary and analysis of another reader’s response

Cultural and historical background providing context for response and story itself

Analysis supported with textual evidence

a sample student paper 21

Villa 3

she locks herself in her room to cope with her new situation, and she has a fatal

heart attack upon seeing her husband arrive home. Naturally the male doctors

would think that she died of the “joy that kills” (15)—nobody could have

guessed that she was unhappy with her life, and she would never have wanted

them to know.

Interpretations of “The Story of an Hour” seem to vary according to the

gender, age, and experience of the reader. While both male and female readers

can certainly sympathize with Mrs. Mallard’s plight, female readers—as was

evident in our class discussions—seem to relate more easily to her predicament

and are quicker to exonerate her of any responsibility for her unhappy situation.

Conversely, male readers are more likely to feel compassion for Mr. Mallard,

who loses his wife for reasons that will always remain entirely unknown to him.

Older readers probably understand more readily the strength of social forces

and the difficulty of trying to deny societal expectations concerning gender

roles in general and marriage in particular. Younger readers seem to feel that

Mrs. Mallard is too passive and that she could have improved her domestic

life immeasurably if she had taken the initiative to either improve or end her

relationship with her husband. Ultimately, how each individual reader responds

to Mrs. Mallard’s story reveals his or her own ideas about marriage, society, and

how men and women communicate with each other.

Villa 4

Work Cited

Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature to Go. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston:

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 13–15. Print.

Conclusion summariz- ing reader responses explored in the paper

22 reading fiction

Before beginning your own writing assignment on fi ction, you should review Chapter 29, “Writing about Fiction,” as well as Chapter 28, “Reading and the Writing Process,” which provides a step-by-step expla- nation of how to choose a topic, develop a thesis, and organize various types of writing assignments. If you use outside sources, you should also be familiar with the conventional documentation procedures described in Chapter 32, “The Literary Research Paper.”

EXPLOR ATIONS AND FORMUL AS Each time we pick up a work of fi ction, go to the theater, or turn on the television, we have a trace of the same magical expectation that can be heard in the voice of a child who begs, “Tell me a story.” Human beings have enjoyed stories ever since they learned to speak. Whatever the motive for creating stories — even if simply to delight or instruct — the basic human impulse to tell and hear stories existed long before the develop- ment of written language. Myths about the origins of the world and leg- ends about the heroic exploits of demigods were among the earliest forms of storytelling to develop into oral traditions, which were eventually writ- ten down. These narratives are the ancestors of the stories we read on the printed page today. The stories that appear in anthologies for college students are gener- ally chosen for their high literary quality. Such stories can affect us at the deepest emotional level, reveal new insights into ourselves or the world, and stretch us by exercising our imaginations. The following chapters on plot, character, setting, and the other elements of literature are designed to provide the terms and concepts that can help you understand how a work of fi ction achieves its effects and meanings. It is worth acknowledg- ing, however, that many people buy and read fi ction that is quite differ- ent from the stories usually anthologized in college texts. What about all those paperbacks with exciting, colorful covers near the cash registers in shopping malls and corner drugstores? These books, known as formula fiction, are the adventure, western, detective, science fi ction, and romance novels that entertain millions of readers annually. What makes them so popular? What do their characters, plots, and themes offer readers that accounts for the tre- mendous sales of stories with titles like Caves of Doom, Silent Scream, Colt .45, and Forbidden Ecstasy? Many of the writers included in this book have enjoyed wide popularity and written best-sellers, but there are more readers of formula fi ction than there are readers of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, or Joyce Carol Oates, to name only a few. Formula novels do provide entertainment, of course, but that makes them no different from serious stories, if entertainment means pleasure. Any of the stories in this or any other anthology can be read for pleasure.

explorations and formulas 23

Formula fi ction, though, is usually characterized as escape litera- ture. There are sensible reasons for this description. Adventure stories about soldiers of fortune are eagerly read by men who live pretty aver- age lives doing ordinary jobs. Romance novels about attractive young women falling in love with tall, dark, handsome men are read mostly by women who dream themselves out of their familiar existences. The excitement, violence, and passion that such stories provide are a kind of reprieve from everyday experience. And yet readers of serious fi ction may also use it as a refuge, a lib- eration from monotony and boredom. Mark Twain’s humorous stories have, for example, given countless hours of pleasurable relief to readers who would rather spend time in Twain’s light and funny world than in their own. Others might prefer the terror of Edgar Allan Poe’s fi ction or the painful predicament of two lovers in a Joyce Carol Oates story. Although the specifi c elements of formula fi ction differ depending on the type of story, some basic ingredients go into all westerns, mys- teries, adventures, science fi ction, and romances. From the very start, a reader can anticipate a happy ending for the central character, with whom he or she will identify. There may be suspense, but no matter what or how many the obstacles, complications, or near defeats, the hero or heroine succeeds and reaffi rms the values and attitudes the reader brings to the story. Virtue triumphs, love conquers all, honesty is the best pol- icy, and hard work guarantees success. Hence, the villains are corralled, the wedding vows are exchanged, the butler confesses, and gold is dis- covered at the last moment. The visual equivalents of such formula sto- ries are readily available at movie theaters and in television series. Some are better than others, but all are relatively limited by the writer’s goal of giving an audience what will sell. Although formula fi ction may not offer many surprises, it provides pleasure to a wide variety of readers. College professors, for example, are just as likely to be charmed by formula stories as anyone else. Readers of serious fi ction who revel in exploring more challenging imaginative worlds can also enjoy formulaic stories, which offer little more than an image of the world as a simple place in which our assumptions and desires are confi rmed. The familiarity of a given formula is emotionally satisfying because we are secure in our expectations of it. We know at the start of a Sherlock Holmes story that the mystery will be solved by that famous detective’s relentless scientifi c analysis of the clues, but we take pleasure in seeing how Holmes unravels the mystery before us. Similarly, we know that James Bond’s wit, grace, charm, courage, and skill will ulti- mately prevail over the diabolic schemes of eccentric villains, but we vol- unteer for the mission anyway. Perhaps that happens for the same reason that we climb aboard a roller coaster: No matter how steep and sharp the curves, we stay on a track that is both exciting and safe. Although excitement, adventure, mystery, and romance are major routes to escape in formula fi ction,

24 reading fiction

most of us make that trip only temporarily, for a little relaxation and fun. Momentary relief from our everyday concerns is as healthy and desirable as an occasional daydream or fantasy. Such reading is a form of play because we — like spectators of or participants in a game — experi- ence a formula of excitement, tension, and then release that can fasci- nate us regardless of how many times the game is played.

Many publishers of formula fi ction — such as romance, adventure, or detective stories — issue a set number of new novels each month. Readers can buy them in stores or subscribe to them through the mail. These same publishers send “tip sheets” on request to authors who want to write for a particular series. The details of the formula differ from one series to another, but each tip sheet covers the basic elements that go into a story. The following composite tip sheet summarizes the typical advice offered by publishers of romance novels. These are among the most pop- ular titles published in the United States; it has been estimated that four out of every ten paperbacks sold are romance novels. The categories and the tone of the language in this composite tip sheet are derived from a number of publishers and provide a glimpse of how formula fi ction is written and what the readers of romance novels are looking for in their escape literature.

A Composite of a Romance Tip Sheet

Plot

The story focuses on the growing relationship between the heroine and hero. After a number of complications, they discover lasting love and make a permanent commitment to each other in marriage. The plot should move quickly. Background information about the heroine should be kept to a minimum. The hero should appear as early as possible (pref- erably in the fi rst chapter and no later than the second), so that the hero’s and heroine’s feelings about each other are in the foreground as they cope with misperceptions that keep them apart until the fi nal pages of the story. The more tension created by their uncertainty about each other’s love, the greater the excitement and anticipation for the reader. Love is the major interest. Do not inject murder, extortion, inter- national intrigue, hijacking, horror, or supernatural elements into the plot. Controversial social issues and politics, if mentioned at all, should never be allowed a signifi cant role. Once the heroine and hero meet, they should clearly be interested in each other, but that interest should be complicated by some kind of misunderstanding. He, for example, might fi nd her too ambitious, an opportunist, cold, or fl irtatious; or he might assume that she is attached to someone else. She might think he is haughty, snobbish, power hungry, indifferent, or contemptuous of her.

explorations and formulas 25

The reader knows what they do not: that eventually these obstacles will be overcome. Interest is sustained by keeping the lovers apart until very near the end so that the reader will stay with the plot to see how they get together.

Heroine The heroine is a modern American woman between the ages of nineteen and twenty-eight who refl ects today’s concerns. The story is told in the third person from her point of view. She is attractive and nicely dressed but not glamorous; glitter and sophistication should be reserved for the other woman (the heroine’s rival for the hero), whose fl ashiness will compare unfavorably with the heroine’s modesty. When the hero- ine does dress up, however, her beauty should be stunningly apparent. Her trim fi gure is appealing but not abundant; a petite healthy appear- ance is desirable. Both her looks and her clothes should be generously detailed. Her personality is spirited and independent without being pushy or stubborn because she knows when to give in. Although sensitive, she doesn’t cry every time she is confronted with a problem (though she might cry in private moments). A sense of humor is helpful. Because she is on her own, away from parents (usually deceased) or other pro- tective relationships, she is self-reliant as well as vulnerable. The story may begin with her on the verge of an important decision about her life. She is clearly competent but not entirely certain of her own qualities. She does not take her attractiveness for granted or realize how much the hero is drawn to her. Common careers for the heroine include executive secretary, nurse, teacher, interior designer, assistant manager, department store buyer, travel agent, or struggling photographer (no menial work). She can also be a doctor, lawyer, or other professional. Her job can be described in some detail and made exciting, but it must not dominate her life. Although she is smart, she is not extremely intellectual or defi ned by her work. Often she meets the hero through work, but her major con- cerns center on love, marriage, home, and family. White wine is okay, but she never drinks alone — or uses drugs. She may be troubled, frustrated, threatened, and momentarily thwarted in the course of the story, but she never totally gives in to despair or desperation. She has strengths that the hero recognizes and admires.

Hero

The hero should be about ten years older than the heroine and can be foreign or American. He needn’t be handsome in a traditional sense, but he must be strongly masculine. Always tall and well built (not brawny or thick) and usually dark, he looks as terrifi c in a three-piece suit as he does in sports clothes. His clothes refl ect good taste and an affl uent

26 reading fiction

life-style. Very successful professionally and fi nancially, he is a man in charge of whatever work he’s engaged in (fi nancier, doctor, publisher, architect, business executive, airline pilot, artist, etc.). His wealth is man- ifested in his sophistication and experience. His past may be slightly mysterious or shrouded by some painful moment (perhaps with a woman) that he doesn’t want to discuss. What- ever the circumstance — his wife’s death or divorce are common — it was not his fault. Avoid chronic problems such as alcoholism, drug addic- tion, or sexual dysfunctions. To others he may appear moody, angry, unpredictable, and explosively passionate, but the heroine eventually comes to realize his warm, tender side. He should be attractive not only as a lover but also as a potential husband and father.

Secondary Characters

Because the major interest is in how the heroine will eventually get together with the hero, the other characters are used to advance the action. There are three major types: (1) The Other Woman: Her vices serve to accent the virtues of the hero- ine; immediately beneath her glamorous sophistication is a deceptive, selfi sh, mean-spirited, rapacious predator. She may seem to have the hero in her clutches, but she never wins him in the end. (2) The Other Man: He usually falls into two types: (a) the decent sort who is there when the hero isn’t around and (b) the selfi sh sort who schemes rather than loves. Neither is a match for the hero. (3) Other Characters: Like furniture, they fi ll in the background and are useful for positioning the hero and heroine. These characters are familiar types such as the hero’s snobbish aunt, the heroine’s troubled younger siblings, the loyal friend, or the offi ce gossip. They should be realistic, but they must not be allowed to obscure the emphasis on the lovers. The hero may have children from a previous marriage, but they should rarely be seen or heard. It’s usually simpler and better not to include them.

Setting

The setting is usually contemporary. Romantic, exciting places are best: New York City, London, Paris, Rio, the mountains, the ocean — wherever it is exotic and love’s possibilities are the greatest. Marriage may take the heroine and hero to a pretty suburb or small town.

Love Scenes

The hero and heroine may make love before marriage. The choice will depend largely on the heroine’s sensibilities and circumstances. She should refl ect modern attitudes. If the lovers do engage in premarital sex, it should be made clear that neither is promiscuous, especially the her- oine. Even if their relationship is consummated before marriage, their

explorations and formulas 27

lovemaking should not occur until late in the story. There should be at least several passionate scenes, but complications, misunderstandings, and interruptions should keep the couple from actually making love until they have made a fi rm commitment to each other. Descriptions should appeal to the senses; however, detailed, graphic close-ups are unaccept- able. Passion can be presented sensually but not clinically; the lovemaking should be seen through a soft romantic lens. Violence and any out-of-the- way sexual acts should not even be hinted at. No coarse language.

Writing

Avoid extremely complex sentences, very long paragraphs, and lengthy descriptions. Use concise, vivid details to create the heroine’s world. Be sure to include full descriptions of the hero’s and heroine’s physical fea- tures and clothes. Allow the reader to experience the romantic mood sur- rounding the lovers. Show how the heroine feels; do not simply report her feelings. Dialogue should sound like ordinary conversation, and the overall writing should be contemporary English without slang, diffi cult foreign expressions, strange dialects, racial epithets, or obscenities (hell, damn, and a few other mild swears are all right).

Length

55,000 to 65,000 words in ten to twelve chapters.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Given the expectations implied by the tip sheet, what generalizations can you make about those likely to write for- mula fi ction? Does the tip sheet change the way you think about romantic fi ction or other kinds of formula fi ction?

2. Who is the intended audience for this type of romance? Try to describe the audience in detail: How does a romance novel provide escape for these readers?

3. Why should the hero be “about ten years older than the heroine”? If he is divorced, why is it signifi cant that “it was not his fault”?

4. Why do you think the hero and heroine are kept apart by complica- tions until the end of the story? Does the outline of the plot sound familiar to you or remind you of any other stories?

5. Why do you think restrictions are placed on the love scenes? 6. Why are “extremely complex sentences, very long paragraphs, and

lengthy descriptions” discouraged? 7. Explain how the tip sheet confi rms traditional views of male and

female roles in society. Does it accommodate any broken traditions? 8. CREATIVE RESPONSE. Try writing a scene for a formula romance, or

read the excerpt from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes (p. 46) and try an adventure scene.

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A COMPARISON OF TWO STORIES Each of the following contemporary pieces of fi ction is about a woman who experiences deep sorrow. The fi rst, from A Secret Sorrow by Karen van der Zee, is an excerpt from a romance by Harlequin Books, a major publisher of formula fi ction that has sold well over a billion copies of its romance titles — enough for about 20 percent of the world’s popu- lation. The second piece, Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman,” is a complete short story that originally appeared in Esquire; it is not a for- mula story. Read each selection carefully and look for evidence of formulaic writing in the chapters from A Secret Sorrow. Pay particular attention to the advice on plotting and characterization offered in the composite tip sheet. As you read Godwin’s short story, think about how it is different from van der Zee’s excerpt; note also any similarities. The questions that follow the stories should help you consider how the experiences of read- ing the two are different.

Karen van der Zee (b. 1947)

Born and raised in Holland, Karen van der Zee lives in the United States, where she has become a successful romance writer, contrib- uting more than thirty novels to the popular Harlequin series. This excerpt consists of the fi nal two chapters of A Secret Sorrow. This is what has happened so far: The central charac- ter, Faye, is recuperating from the psychologi- cal effects of a serious car accident in which she received a permanent internal injury. After the accident, she quits her job and breaks her engagement to Greg. She moves into her brother Chuck’s house and falls in love with Kai, a visiting Texan and good friend of her brother. At the end of Chapter 10, Kai insists on knowing why she will not marry him and asks, “Who is Doctor Jaworski?”

From A Secret Sorrow 1981

Chapter Eleven

Faye could feel the blood drain from her face and for one horrifying moment she thought she was going to faint right in Kai’s arms. The room tilted and everything swirled around in a wild madman’s dance.

By permission of the author.

van der zee / a secret sorrow 29

She clutched at him for support, fi ghting for control, trying to focus at some point beyond his shoulder. Slowly, everything steadied. “I . . . I don’t know him,” she murmured at last. “I . . .” He reached in the breast pocket of his shirt, took out a slip of paper, and held it out for her to see. One glance and Faye recognized it as the note from Doctor Martin with Doctor Jaworski’s name scrawled on it, thickly underlined. “How did you get that?” Her voice was a terrifi ed whisper. She was still holding on, afraid she would fall if she let go. “I found it on the fl oor in my bedroom. It must have fallen out of your wallet along with everything else on Saturday morning.” Yes — oh God! Her legs were shaking so badly, she knew it was only his arms that kept her from falling. “Who is Doctor Jaworski, Faye?” His voice was patiently persistent. “I . . . he . . .” Her voice broke. “Let me go, please let me go.” She felt as if she were suffocating in his embrace and she struggled against him, feebly, but it was no use. “He’s a psychiatrist, isn’t he?” His voice was gentle, very gentle, and she looked up at him in stunned surprise. He knew, oh God, he knew. She closed her eyes, a helpless sense of inevitability engulfi ng her. “You know,” she whispered. “How do you know?” “Simple. Two minutes on the phone to Chicago.” He paused. “Doc- tor Martin — was he one of the doctors who treated you at the hospital?” “Yes.” “Why did he give you Doctor Jaworski’s name? Did he want you to make an appointment with him?” “Yes.” Despondency overtook her. There was no going back now. No escape from the truth. No escape from his arms. Resistance faded and she felt numbed and lifeless. It didn’t matter any more. Nothing mattered. “Did you?” Kai repeated. “Did I what?” “See him — Doctor Jaworski.” “No.” “Why did Doctor Martin want you to see a psychiatrist?” “I . . .” Faye swallowed miserably. “It’s . . . it’s therapy for grieving . . . mourning.” She made a helpless gesture with her hand. “When people lose a . . . a wife, or husband for instance, they go through a more or less predictable pattern of emotions . . .” She gave him a quick glance, then looked away. “Like denial, anger. . . .” “. . . depression, mourning, acceptance,” Kai fi nished for her, and she looked back at him in surprise. “Yes.” His mouth twisted in a little smile. “I’m not totally ignorant about subjects other than agronomy.” There was a momentary pause as he scrutinized her face. “Why did you need that kind of therapy, Faye?”

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And then it was back again, the resistance, the revolt against his probing questions. She stiffened in defense — her whole body growing rigid with instinctive rebellion. “It’s none of your business!” “Oh, yes, it is. We’re talking about our life together. Your life and mine.” She strained against him, hands pushing against his chest. “Let me go! Please let me go!” Panic changed into tears. She couldn’t take his nearness any more, the feel of his hard body touching hers, the strength of him. “No, Faye, no. You’re going to tell me. Now. I’m not letting you go until you’ve told me everything. Everything, you hear?” “I can’t!” she sobbed. “I can’t!” “Faye,” he said slowly, “you’ll have to. You told me you love me, but you don’t want to marry me. You have given me no satisfactory reasons, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to accept your lack of explanations.” “You have no right to demand an explanation!” “Oh, yes, I have. You’re part of me, Faye. Part of my life.” “You talk as if you own me!” She was trembling, struggling to get away from him. She couldn’t stand there, so close to him with all the pent-up despair inside her, the anger, the fear of what she knew not how to tell him. His hands were warm and strong on her back, holding her steady. Then, with one hand, he tilted back her head and made her look at him. “You gave me your love — I own that,” he said softly. “True loving involves commitment, vulnerability, trust. Don’t you trust me, Faye?” New tears ran silently down her cheeks. “If I told you,” she blurted out, “you wouldn’t . . . you wouldn’t . . .” “I wouldn’t what?” “You wouldn’t want me any more!” The words were wrenched from her in blind, agonizing grief. “You wouldn’t want me any more!” He shook his head incredulously. “What makes you think you can make that decision for me? Do you have so little trust in my love for you?” Faye didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Through a mist of tears he was nothing but a blur in front of her eyes. “What is so terrible that you can’t tell me?” She shrank inwardly, as if shriveling away in pain. “Let me go,” she whispered. “Please let me go and I’ll tell you.” After a moment’s hesitation Kai released her. Faye backed away from him, feeling like a terrifi ed animal. She stood with her back against the wall, glad for the support, her whole body shaking. She took a deep breath and wiped her face dry with her hand. “I’m afraid . . . afraid to marry you.” “Afraid?” He looked perplexed. “Afraid of what? Of me? Of marriage?” Faye closed her eyes, taking another deep breath. “I can’t be what you want me to be. We can’t have the kind of life you want.” She looked

van der zee / a secret sorrow 31

at him, standing only a few feet away, anguish tearing through her. “I’m so afraid . . . you’ll be disappointed,” she whispered. “Oh God, Faye,” he groaned, “I love you.” He came toward her and panic surged through her as he held her against the wall, his hands reaching up to catch her face between them. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please, don’t touch me.” But it was no use. His mouth came down on hers and he kissed her with a hard, desperate passion. “I love you,” he said huskily. “I love you.” Faye wrenched her face free from his hands. “Don’t touch me! Please don’t touch me!” She was sobbing now, her words barely audible. Her knees gave way and her back slid down along the wall until she crumpled on to the fl oor, face in her hands. Kai took a step backward and pulled her up. “Stand up, Faye. For God’s sake stand up!” He held her against the wall and she looked at him, seeing every line in his dark face, the intense blue of his eyes, and knew that this was the moment, that there was no more waiting. And Kai knew it too. His eyes held hers locked in unrelenting demand. “Why should I be disappointed, Faye? Why?” Her heart was thundering in her ears and it seemed as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she were going to drown. “Because . . . because I can’t give you children! Because I can’t get pregnant! I can’t have babies! That’s why!” Her voice was an agonized cry, torn from the depths of her misery. She yanked down his arms that held her locked against the wall and moved away from him. And then she saw his face. It was ashen, gray under his tan. He stared at her as if he had never seen her before. “Oh my God, Faye . . .” His voice was low and hoarse. “Why didn’t you tell me, why . . .” Faye heard no more. She ran out the door, snatching her bag off the chair as she went by. The only thought in her mind was to get away — away from Kai and what was in his eyes. She reached for Kai’s spare set of car keys in her bag, doing it instinc- tively, knowing she couldn’t walk home alone in the dark. How she man- aged to get the keys in the door lock and in the ignition she never knew. Somehow, she made it home. The phone rang as Faye opened the front door and she heard Chuck answer it in the kitchen. “She’s just got in,” he said into the mouthpiece, smiling at Faye as she came into view. He listened for a moment, nodded. “Okay, fi ne with me.” Faye turned and walked up the stairs, taking deep breaths to calm her shattered nerves. Kai hadn’t wasted any time checking up on her. She didn’t care what he was telling Chuck, but she wasn’t going to stand there listening to a one-sided conversation. But only a second later Chuck was behind her on the stairs.

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“Kai wanted to know whether you’d arrived safely.” “I did, thank you,” she said levelly, her voice surprisingly steady. “I take it you ran out and took off with his car?” “Did he say that?” “No. He was worried about you. He wanted to make sure you went home.” He sounded impatient, and she couldn’t blame him. She was making life unbearable for everyone around her. Everybody worried about her. Everybody loved her. Everything should be right. Only it wasn’t. “Well, I’m home now, and I’m going to bed. Good night.” “Good night, Faye.” Faye lay in bed without any hope of sleep. Mechanically she started to sort through her thoughts and emotions, preparing mentally for the next confrontation. There would be one, she didn’t doubt it for a moment. But she needed time — time to clear her head, time to look at everything in a reasonable, unemotional way. It was a temptation to run — get in the car and keep driving, but it would be a stupid thing to do. There was no place for her to go, and Kai would fi nd her, no matter what. If there was one thing she knew about Kai it was his stubbornness and his persistence. She had to stick it out, right here, get it over with, deal with it. Only she didn’t know how. She lay listening to the stillness, just a few sounds here and there — the house creaking, a car somewhere in the distance, a dog barking. She had to think, but her mind refused to cooperate. She had to think, decide what to say to Kai the next time she saw him, but she couldn’t think, she couldn’t think. And then, as she heard the door open in the silence, the quiet foot- steps coming up the stairs, she knew it was too late, that time had run out. Without even knocking he came into her room and walked over to the bed. She could feel the mattress sag as his weight came down on it. Her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer, and then his arms came around her and he drew her against him. “Faye,” he said quietly, “please marry me.” “No,” she said thickly. “No.” She could feel him stiffen against her and she released herself from his arms and slid off the bed. She switched on the light and stood near the window, far from the bed, far from Kai. “I don’t expect you to play the gentleman, I don’t expect you to throw out a life of dreams just for the sake of chivalry. You don’t have to marry me, Kai.” She barely recognized her own voice. It was like the cool calm sound of a stranger, unemotional, cold. “You don’t have to marry me,” she repeated levelly, giving him a steady look. Her words were underlined by the silence that followed, a silence loaded with a strange, vibrating energy, a force in itself, fi lling the room. Kai rose to his feet, slowly, and the face that looked at her was like that of a stranger, a dangerous, angry stranger. Never before had she seen him so angry, so full of hot, fuming fury.

van der zee / a secret sorrow 33

“Shut up,” he said in a low, tight voice. “Shut up and stop playing the martyr!” The sound of his voice and the words he said shocked Faye into silence. She stared at him open-mouthed, and then a slow, burning anger arose inside her. “How dare you! How . . .” He strode toward her and took her upper arms and shook her. “Shut up and listen to me! What the hell are you thinking? What the hell did you expect me to do when you told me? You throw me a bomb and then walk out on me! What did you expect my reaction to be? Was I supposed to stay cool and calm and tell you it didn’t matter? Would you have mar- ried me then? Well, let me tell you something! It matters! It matters to me! I am not apologizing for my reaction!” He paused, breathing hard. “You know I always wanted children, but what in God’s name makes you think you’re the only one who has the right to feel bad about it? I have that right too, you hear! I love you, dammit, and I want to marry you, and if we can’t have children I have all the right in the world to feel bad about it!” He stopped talking. He was still breathing hard and he looked at her with stormy blue eyes. Faye felt paralyzed by his tirade and she stared at him, incapable of speech. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t think. “Why do you think I want you for my wife?” he continued on a calmer note. “Because you’re some kind of baby factory? What kind of man do you think I am? I love you, not your procreating ability. So we have a problem. Well, we’ll learn to deal with it, one way or another.” There was another silence, and still Faye didn’t speak, and she real- ized she was crying, soundlessly, tears slowly dripping down her cheeks. She was staring at his chest, blindly, not knowing what to think, not thinking at all. He lifted her chin, gently. “Look at me, Faye.” She did, but his face was only a blur. “Faye, we’re in this together — you and I. Don’t you see that? It’s not just your problem, it’s ours.” “No,” she whispered. “No!” She shook her head wildly. “You have a choice, don’t you see that? You don’t have to marry me. You could marry someone else and have children of your own.” “Oh, God, Faye,” he groaned, “you’re wrong. Don’t you know? Don’t you see? I don’t have a choice. I never did have a choice, or a chance. Not since I met you and fell in love with you. I don’t want anybody else, don’t you understand that? I want you, only you.” She wanted to believe it, give in to him. Never before had she wanted anything more desperately than she wanted to give in to him now. But she couldn’t, she couldn’t. . . . She closed her eyes, briefl y, fi ghting for reason, common sense. “Kai, I . . . I can’t live all my life with your regret and your disappoint- ment. Every time we see some pregnant woman, every time we’re with

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somebody else’s children I’ll feel I’ve failed you! I . . .” Her voice broke and new sobs came unchecked. He held her very tightly until she calmed down and then he put her from him a little and gave her a dark, compelling look. “It’s not my regret, or my disappointment,” he said with quiet emphasis. “It’s ours. We’re not talking about you or me. We’re talking about us. I love you, and you love me, and that’s the starting point, that comes fi rst. From then on we’re in it together.” Faye moved out of his arms, away from him, but her legs wouldn’t carry her and she sank into a chair. She covered her face with her hands and tried desperately to stop the crying, to stop the tears from coming and coming as if they would never end. “How . . . how can I ever believe it?” “Because I’m asking you to,” he said quietly. He knelt in front of her, took her hands away from her wet face. “Look at me, Faye. No other woman can give me what you can — yourself, your love, your warmth, your sense of humor. All the facets of your personality that make up the fi nal you. I’ve known other women, Faye, but none of them have ever stirred in me any feelings that come close to what I feel for you. You’re an original, remember? There’s no replacement for an original. There are only copies, and I don’t want a copy. To me you’re special, and you’ll have to believe it, take it on faith. That’s what love is all about.” He was holding her hands in his, strong brown hands, and she was looking down on them, fi ghting with herself, fi ghting with everything inside her to believe what he was saying, to accept it, to give in to it. Leaning forward, Kai kissed her gently on the mouth and smiled. “It’s all been too much too soon for you, hasn’t it? You never really got a chance to get over the shock, and when I fell in love with you it only made things worse.” He smiled ruefully and Faye was surprised at his insight. “Yes,” she said. “It all happened too fast.” “Bad timing. If only we could have met later, after you’d sorted it all out in your mind, then it would never have been such a crisis.” She looked at him doubtfully. “It wouldn’t have changed the facts.” “No, but it might have changed your perspective.” Would it have? she wondered. Could she ever feel confi dent and secure in her worth as a woman? Or was she at this moment too emo- tionally bruised to accept that possibility? “I don’t understand,” he said, “why I never guessed what was wrong. Now that I know, it all seems so obvious.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Faye,” he said gently, “I want you to tell me exactly what happened to you, what Doctor Martin told you.” She stared at him, surprised a little. A thought stirred in the back of her mind. Greg. He had never even asked. The why and the what had not interested him. But Kai, he wanted to know. She swallowed nervously and began the story, slowly, word for word, everything Doctor Martin

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had said. And he listened, quietly, not interrupting. “So you see,” she said at last, “we don’t have to hope for any miracles either.” “We’ll make our own miracles,” he said, and smiled. “Come here,” he said then, “kiss me.” She did, shyly almost, until he took over and lifted her up and car- ried her to the bed. He looked down on her, eyes thoughtful. “I won’t pretend I understand your feelings about this, the feelings you have about yourself as a woman, but I’ll try.” He paused for a moment. “Faye,” he said then, speaking with slow emphasis, “don’t ever, not for a single moment, think that you’re not good enough for me. You’re the best there is, Faye, the very best.” His mouth sought hers and he kissed her with gentle reassurance at fi rst, then with rising ardor. His hands moved over her body, touching her with sensual, intimate caresses. “You’re my woman, Faye, you’re mine . . .” Her senses reeled. She could never love anyone like she loved him. No one had ever evoked in her this depth of emotion. This was real, this was forever. Kai wanted her as much as ever. No chivalry, this, no game of pretense, she was very sure of that. And when he lifted his face and looked at her, it was all there in his eyes and the wonder of it fi lled her with joy. “Do you believe me now?” he whispered huskily. “Do you believe I love you and want you and need you?” She nodded wordlessly, incapable of uttering a sound. “And do you love me?” Again she nodded, her eyes in his. “Okay, then.” In one smooth fl owing movement he got to his feet. He crossed to the closet, opened it, and took out her suitcases. He put one on the end of the bed and began to pile her clothes in it, taking arm- fuls out of the closet. Faye watched incredulously. “What are you doing?” she managed at last. Kai kept on moving around, opening drawers, taking out her things, fi lling the suitcase until it could hold no more. “Get dressed. We’re going home.” “Home . . . ?” For a moment he stopped and he looked at her with a deep blue glit- ter in his eyes. “Yes, home — where you belong. With me, in my house, in my bed, in my arms.” “Oh, Kai,” she said tremulously, smiling suddenly. “It’s midnight!” His eyes were very dark. “I’ve waited long enough, I’m not waiting any more. You’re coming with me, now. And I’m not letting you out of my sight until we’re safely married. I don’t want you getting any crazy ideas about running off to save me from myself, or some such notion.” Her throat was dry. “Please, let’s not rush into it! Let’s think about it fi rst!”

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Calmly he zipped up the full suitcase, swung it off the bed, and put it near the door. “I’m not rushing into anything,” he said levelly. “I’ve wanted to marry you for quite a while, remember?” He crossed to the bed, sat down next to her, and put his arm around her. “Faye, I wish you wouldn’t worry so. I’m not going to change my mind. And I haven’t shelved my hopes for a family, either.” There was a brief silence. “When we’re ready to have kids, we’ll have them. We’ll adopt them. There are orphanages the world over, full of children in need of love and care. We’ll do whatever it takes. We’ll get them, one way or another.” Faye searched his face, faint hope fl ickering deep inside her. “Would you want that?” “Why not?” “I don’t know, really. I thought you . . . it isn’t the same.” “No,” he said levelly, “it isn’t. Adoption is a different process from pregnancy and birth, but the kids will be ours just the same and we’ll love them no less.” “Yes,” she said, “yes.” And suddenly it seemed as if a light had been turned on inside her, as if suddenly she could see again, a future with Kai, a future with children. A bronzed hand lifted her face. “Look, Faye, I’ll always be sorry. I’ll always be sorry not to see you pregnant, not to see you with a big stom- ach knowing you’re carrying my child, but I’ll live.” Faye lowered her eyes and tears threatened again. With both his hands he cupped her face. “Look at me, Faye. I want you to stop thinking of yourself as a machine with a defect. You’re not a damaged piece of merchandise, you hear? You’re a living, breathing human being, a warm-blooded female, and I love you.” Through a haze of tears she looked at him, giving a weak smile. “I love you too.” She put her arms around him and he heaved an unsteady breath. “Faye,” he said huskily, “you’re my fi rst and only choice.”

Chapter Twelve

Kai and Faye had their family, two girls and a boy. They came to them one at a time, from faraway places, with small faces and large dark eyes full of fear. In their faces Faye could read the tragedies of war and death and poverty. They were hungry for love, hungry for nourishment and care. At night they woke in terror, screaming, their memories alive in sleep. Time passed, and in the low white ranch house under the blue skies of Texas they fl ourished like the crops in the fi elds. They grew tall and straight and healthy and the fear in their dark eyes faded. Like their father they wore jeans and boots and large-brimmed hats, and they rode horses and played the guitar. They learned to speak English with a Southern twang.

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One day Kai and Faye watched them as they played in the garden, and joy and gratitude overfl owed in Faye’s heart. Life was good and fi lled with love. “They’re all ours,” she said. Even now after all these years she some- times still couldn’t believe it was really so. Kai smiled at her. His eyes, still very blue, crinkled at the corners. “Yes, and you’re all mine.” “They don’t even look like us,” she said. “Not even a tiny little bit.” No blondes, no redheads. Taking her in his arms, Kai kissed her. “They’re true originals, like their mother. I wouldn’t want it any other way.” There was love in his embrace and love in his words and in her heart there was no room now for doubt, no room for sorrow. Sometimes in the night he would reach for her and she would wake to his touch, his hands on her breast, her stomach, searching. In the warm darkness of their bed she would come to him and they would hold each other close and she knew he had been dreaming. She knew the dream. She was walking away from him, calling out that she couldn’t marry him, the words echoing all around. “I can’t marry you! I can’t marry you!” And Kai was standing there watching her go, ter- rifi ed, unable to move, his legs frozen to the ground. He wanted to fol- low her, keep her from leaving, but his legs wouldn’t move. Kai had told her of the dream, of the panic that clutched at him as he watched her walk out of his life. And always he would wake and search for her in the big bed, and she knew of only one way to reassure him. And in the warm afterglow of lovemaking, their bodies close to- gether, she knew that to him she was everything, to him she was the only woman, beautiful, complete, whole.

Gail Godwin (b. 1937)

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Gail God- win was educated at the University of North Carolina and the University of Iowa, where she earned a Ph.D. in English in 1971. She is a full-time writer who has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Institute for the Arts and Letters. Among her novels are Glass People (1971), A Mother and Two Daughters (1981), The Finishing School (1985), Evensong (1999), and Queen of the Underworld (2006). Her short stories have been collected in several volumes including Dream Children (1976) and Mr. Bedford and the Muses (1983). © Jerry Bauer.

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A Sorrowful Woman 1971

Once upon a time there was a wife and mother one too many times

One winter evening she looked at them: the husband durable, receptive, gentle; the child a tender golden three. The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again. She told the husband these thoughts. He was attuned to her; he understood such things. He said he understood. What would she like him to do? “If you could put the boy to bed and read him the story about the monkey who ate too many bananas, I would be grateful.” “Of course,” he said. “Why, that’s a pleasure.” And he sent her off to bed. The next night it happened again. Putting the warm dishes away in the cupboard, she turned and saw the child’s gray eyes approving her movements. In the next room was the man, his chin sunk in the open collar of his favorite wool shirt. He was dozing after her good supper. The shirt was the gray of the child’s trusting gaze. She began yelping without tears, retching in between. The man woke in alarm and carried her in his arms to bed. The boy followed them up the stairs, saying, “It’s all right, Mommy,” but this made her scream. “Mommy is sick,” the father said, “go wait for me in your room.” The husband undressed her, abandoning her only long enough to root beneath the eiderdown for her fl annel gown. She stood naked except for her bra, which hung by one strap down the side of her body; she had not the impetus to shrug it off. She looked down at the right nipple, shriveled with chill, and thought, How absurd, a vertical bra. “If only there were instant sleep,” she said, hiccuping, and the husband bundled her into the gown and went out and came back with a sleeping draught guaranteed swift. She was to drink a little glass of cognac followed by a big glass of dark liquid and afterwards there was just time to say Thank you and could you get him a clean pair of pajamas out of the laundry, it came back today. The next day was Sunday and the husband brought her breakfast in bed and let her sleep until it grew dark again. He took the child for a walk, and when they returned, red-cheeked and boisterous, the father made supper. She heard them laughing in the kitchen. He brought her up a tray of buttered toast, celery sticks, and black bean soup. “I am the luckiest woman,” she said, crying real tears. “Nonsense,” he said. “You need a rest from us,” and went to prepare the sleeping draught, fi nd the child’s pajamas, select the story for the night. She got up on Monday and moved about the house till noon. The boy, delighted to have her back, pretended he was a vicious tiger and fol- lowed her from room to room, growling and scratching. Whenever she came close, he would growl and scratch at her. One of his sharp little claws ripped her fl esh, just above the wrist, and together they paused to watch a thin red line materialize on the inside of her pale arm and spill

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over in little beads. “Go away,” she said. She got herself upstairs and locked the door. She called the husband’s offi ce and said, “I’ve locked myself away from him. I’m afraid.” The husband told her in his richest voice to lie down, take it easy, and he was already on the phone to call one of the baby-sitters they often employed. Shortly after, she heard the girl let herself in, heard the girl coaxing the frightened child to come and play. After supper several nights later, she hit the child. She had known she was going to do it when the father would see. “I’m sorry,” she said, collapsing on the fl oor. The weeping child had run to hide. “What has happened to me, I’m not myself anymore.” The man picked her tenderly from the fl oor and looked at her with much concern. “Would it help if we got, you know, a girl in? We could fi x the room downstairs. I want you to feel freer,” he said, understanding these things. “We have the money for a girl. I want you to think about it.” And now the sleeping draught was a nightly thing, she did not have to ask. He went down to the kitchen to mix it, he set it nightly beside her bed. The little glass and the big one, amber and deep rich brown, the fl annel gown and the eiderdown. The man put out the word and found the perfect girl. She was young, dynamic, and not pretty. “Don’t bother with the room, I’ll fi x it up myself.” Laughing, she employed her thousand energies. She painted the room white, fed the child lunch, read edifying books, raced the boy to the mailbox, hung her own watercolors on the fresh-painted walls, made spinach souffl é, cleaned a spot from the mother’s coat, made them all laugh, danced in stocking feet to music in the white room after read- ing the child to sleep. She knitted dresses for herself and played chess with the husband. She washed and set the mother’s soft ash-blonde hair and gave her neck rubs, offered to. The woman now spent her winter afternoons in the big bedroom. She made a fi re in the hearth and put on slacks and an old sweater she had loved at school, and sat in the big chair and stared out the window at snow-ridden branches, or went away into long novels about other people moving through other winters. The girl brought the child in twice a day, once in the later afternoon when he would tell of his day, all of it tumbling out quickly because there was not much time, and before he went to bed. Often now, the man took his wife to dinner. He made a courtship ceremony of it, inviting her beforehand so she could get used to the idea. They dressed and were beautiful together again and went out into the frosty night. Over candle- light he would say, “I think you are better, you know.” “Perhaps I am,” she would murmur. “You look . . . like a cloistered queen,” he said once, his voice breaking curiously. One afternoon the girl brought the child into the bedroom. “We’ve been out playing in the park. He found something he wants to give you, a surprise.” The little boy approached her, smiling mysteriously. He placed

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his cupped hands in hers and left a live dry thing that spat brown juice in her palm and leapt away. She screamed and wrung her hands to be rid of the brown juice. “Oh, it was only a grasshopper,” said the girl. Nimbly she crept to the edge of the curtain, did a quick knee bend, and reclaimed the creature, led the boy competently from the room. “The girl upsets me,” said the woman to her husband. He sat frown- ing on the side of the bed he had not entered for so long. “I’m sorry, but there it is.” The husband stroked his creased brow and said he was sorry too. He really did not know what they would do without that treasure of a girl. “Why don’t you stay here with me in bed,” the woman said. Next morning she fi red the girl who cried and said, “I loved the little boy, what will become of him now?” But the mother turned away her face and the girl took down the watercolors from the walls, sheathed the records she had danced to, and went away. “I don’t know what we’ll do. It’s all my fault, I know. I’m such a bur- den, I know that.” “Let me think. I’ll think of something.” (Still understanding these things.) “I know you will. You always do,” she said. With great care he rearranged his life. He got up hours early, did the shopping, cooked the breakfast, took the boy to nursery school. “We will manage,” he said, “until you’re better, however long that is.” He did his work, collected the boy from the school, came home and made the supper, washed the dishes, got the child to bed. He managed everything. One evening, just as she was on the verge of swallowing her draught, there was a timid knock on her door. The little boy came in wearing his pajamas. “Daddy has fallen asleep on my bed and I can’t get in. There’s not room.” Very sedately she left her bed and went to the child’s room. Things were much changed. Books were rearranged, toys. He’d done some new drawings. She came as a visitor to her son’s room, wakened the father and helped him to bed. “Ah, he shouldn’t have bothered you,” said the man, leaning on his wife. “I’ve told him not to.” He dropped into his own bed and fell asleep with a moan. Meticulously she undressed him. She folded and hung his clothes. She covered his body with the bedclothes. She fl icked off the light that shone in his face. The next day she moved her things into the girl’s white room. She put her hairbrush on the dresser; she put a note pad and pen beside the bed. She stocked the little room with cigarettes, books, bread, and cheese. She didn’t need much. At fi rst the husband was dismayed. But he was receptive to her needs. He understood these things. “Perhaps the best thing is for you to follow it through,” he said. “I want to be big enough to contain whatever you must do.” All day long she stayed in the white room. She was a young queen, a virgin in a tower; she was the previous inhabitant, the girl with all the

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energies. She tried these personalities on like costumes, then discarded them. The room had a new view of streets she’d never seen that way before. The sun hit the room in late afternoon and she took to brush- ing her hair in the sun. One day she decided to write a poem. “Perhaps a sonnet.” She took up her pen and pad and began working from words that had lately lain in her mind. She had choices for the sonnet, ABAB or ABBA for a start. She pondered these possibilities until she tottered into a larger choice: she did not have to write a sonnet. Her poem could be six, eight, ten, thirteen lines, it could be any number of lines, and it did not even have to rhyme. She put down the pen on top of the pad. In the evenings, very briefl y, she saw the two of them. They knocked on her door, a big knock and a little, and she would call Come in, and the husband would smile though he looked a bit tired, yet somehow this tiredness suited him. He would put her sleeping draught on the bedside table and say, “The boy and I have done all right today,” and the child would kiss her. One night she tasted for the fi rst time the power of his baby spit. “I don’t think I can see him anymore,” she whispered sadly to the man. And the husband turned away, but recovered admirably and said, “Of course, I see.” So the husband came alone. “I have explained to the boy,” he said. “And we are doing fi ne. We are managing.” He squeezed his wife’s pale arm and put the two glasses on her table. After he had gone, she sat look- ing at the arm. “I’m afraid it’s come to that,” she said. “Just push the notes under the door; I’ll read them. And don’t forget to leave the draught outside.” The man sat for a long time with his head in his hands. Then he rose and went away from her. She heard him in the kitchen where he mixed the draught in batches now to last a week at a time, storing it in a corner of the cupboard. She heard him come back, leave the big glass and the little one outside on the fl oor. Outside her window the snow was melting from the branches, there were more people on the streets. She brushed her hair a lot and seldom read anymore. She sat in her window and brushed her hair for hours, and saw a boy fall off his new bicycle again and again, a dog chasing a squirrel, an old woman peek slyly over her shoulder and then extract a parcel from a garbage can. In the evening she read the notes they slipped under her door. The child could not write, so he drew and sometimes painted his. The notes were painstaking at fi rst; the man and boy offering the fi nal strength of their day to her. But sometimes, when they seemed to have had a bad day, there were only hurried scrawls. One night, when the husband’s note had been extremely short, lov- ing but short, and there had been nothing from the boy, she stole out of her room as she often did to get more supplies, but crept upstairs

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instead and stood outside their doors, listening to the regular breathing of the man and boy asleep. She hurried back to her room and drank the draught. She woke earlier now. It was spring, there were birds. She listened for sounds of the man and the boy eating breakfast; she listened for the roar of the motor when they drove away. One beautiful noon, she went out to look at her kitchen in the daylight. Things were changed. He had bought some new dish towels. Had the old ones worn out? The canisters seemed closer to the sink. She got out fl our, baking powder, salt, milk (he bought a different brand of butter), and baked a loaf of bread and left it cooling on the table. The force of the two joyful notes slipped under her door that eve- ning pressed her into the corner of the little room; she had hardly space to breathe. As soon as possible, she drank the draught. Now the days were too short. She was always busy. She woke with the fi rst bird. Worked till the sun set. No time for hair brushing. Her fi n- gers raced the hours. Finally, in the nick of time, it was fi nished one late afternoon. Her veins pumped and her forehead sparkled. She went to the cupboard, took what was hers, closed herself into the little white room and brushed her hair for a while. The man and boy came home and found: fi ve loaves of warm bread, a roast stuffed turkey, a glazed ham, three pies of different fi llings, eight molds of the boy’s favorite custard, two weeks’ supply of fresh-laundered sheets and shirts and towels, two hand-knitted sweaters (both of the same gray color), a sheath of marvelous watercolor beasts accompanied by mad and fanciful stories nobody could ever make up again, and a tab- let full of love sonnets addressed to the man. The house smelled redo- lently of renewal and spring. The man ran to the little room, could not contain himself to knock, fl ung back the door. “Look, Mommy is sleeping,” said the boy. “She’s tired from doing all our things again.” He dawdled in a stream of the last sun for that day and watched his father roll tenderly back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast, test the delicate bones of her wrist. The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair. “Can we eat the turkey for supper?” the boy asked.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. How did you respond to the excerpt from A Secret Sorrow and to “A Sorrowful Woman”? Do you like one more than the other? Is one of the women — Faye or Godwin’s unnamed wife — more likable than the other?

2. Describe what you found appealing in each story. Can you point to passages in both that strike you as especially well written or interest- ing? Was there anything in either story that did not appeal to you? Why?

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3. How do the two women’s attitudes toward family life differ? How does that difference constitute the problem in each story?

4. How would you describe the theme — the central point and mean- ing — in each story?

5. To what extent might “A Sorrowful Woman” be regarded as an unro- mantic sequel to A Secret Sorrow?

6. Can both stories be read a second or third time and still be interest- ing? Why or why not?

7. Explain how you think a romance formula writer would end “A Sor- rowful Woman,” or write the ending yourself.

8. Contrast what marriage means in the two stories.

Never mistake motion for action. — ERNEST HEMINGWAY

I put a group of characters in some sort of predicament, and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn’t to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety — those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot — but to watch what happens and then write it down.

— STEPHEN KING

Created by a writer’s imagination, a work of fiction need not be factual or historically accurate. Although actual people, places, and events may be included in fiction, facts are not as important as is the writer’s use of them. We can learn much about Russian life in the early part of the nineteenth century from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but that histori- cal information is incidental to Tolstoy’s exploration of human nature. Tolstoy, like most successful writers, makes us accept as real the world in his novel no matter how foreign it may be to our own reality. One of the ways a writer achieves this accep- tance and engagement — and one of a writer’s few obli- gations — is to interest us in what is happening in the story. We are carried into the writer’s fictional world by the plot. Plot is the author’s arrangement of incidents in a story. It is the organizing principle that controls the order of events. This structure is, in a sense, what remains after a writer edits out what is irrelevant to

2 Plot

WEB Explore the literary element in this chapter at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

Alex Gotfryd/corbis.

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the story being told. What is told takes on meaning as it is brought into focus by a skillful writer who selects and orders the events that consti- tute the story’s plot. Events can be presented in a variety of orders. A chronological arrangement begins with what happens first, then sec- ond, and so on, until the last incident is related. The events in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” however, are not arranged in chrono- logical order because that would give away the story’s surprise ending; instead, Faulkner moves back and forth between the past and present to provide information that leads up to the final startling moment (which won’t be given away here either; the story begins on p. 55). Some stories begin at the end and then lead up to why or how events worked out as they did. If you read the first paragraph of Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” (p. 184), you’ll find an example of this arrangement that will make it difficult for you to stop reading. Stories can also begin in the middle of things (the Latin term for this common plot strategy is in medias res). In this kind of plot we enter the story on the verge of some important moment. John Updike’s “A & P” (p. 334) begins with the nar- rator, a teenager working at a checkout counter in a supermarket, telling us: “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.” Right away we are brought into the middle of a situation that will ultimately create the conflict in the story. Another common strategy is the flashback, a device that informs us about events that happened before the opening scene of a work. Nearly all of Ellison’s “Battle Royal” takes the form of a flashback as the nar- rator recounts how his identity as a black man was shaped by the cir- cumstances that attended a high-school graduation speech he delivered twenty years earlier in a hotel ballroom before a gathering of the town’s leading white citizens, most of whom were “quite tipsy.” Whatever the plot arrangement, you should be aware of how the writer’s conscious ordering of events affects your responses to the action.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950)

A great many stories share a standard plot pattern. The following excerpt from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novel Tarzan of the Apes provides a conven- tional plot pattern in which the character, an imagined person in the story, is confronted with a problem leading to a climactic struggle that is followed by a resolution of the problem. The elements of a conventional plot are easily recognizable to readers familiar with fast-paced, action- packed mysteries, spy thrillers, westerns, or adventure stories. These page-turners are carefully plotted so that the reader is swept up by the action. Burroughs’s novel, published in 1914 and the first of a series of enor- mously popular Tarzan books and films, charts the growth to manhood of a child raised in the African jungle by great apes. Tarzan struggles

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to survive his primitive beginnings and to reconcile what he has learned in the jungle with his equally powerful instincts to be a civilized human being. One of the more exciting moments in Tarzan’s develop- ment is his final confrontation with his old enemy, Terkoz, a huge tyrannical ape that has kidnapped Jane, a pretty nineteen-year- old from Baltimore, Maryland, who has accompanied her father on an expedition to the jungle. In the chapter preceding this excerpt, Tarzan falls in love with Jane and writes this pointed, if not eloquent, note to her: “I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine.” Just as he finishes the note, he hears “the agonized screams of a woman” and rushes to their source to find Esmeralda, Jane’s maid, hysterical with fear and grief. She reports that Jane, the fair and gentle embodiment of civilization in the story, has been carried off by a gorilla. Here is the first half of the next chapter, which illustrates how Burroughs plots the sequence of events so that the emphasis is on physical action.

From Tarzan of the Apes 1914

From the time Tarzan left the tribe of great anthropoids in which he had been raised, it was torn by continual strife and discord. Terkoz proved a cruel and capricious king, so that, one by one, many of the older and weaker apes, upon whom he was particularly prone to vent his brutish nature, took their families and sought the quiet and safety of the far interior. But at last those who remained were driven to desperation by the continued truculence of Terkoz, and it so happened that one of them recalled the parting admonition of Tarzan: “If you have a chief who is cruel, do not do as the other apes do, and attempt, any one of you, to pit yourself against him alone. But, instead, let two or three or four of you attack him together. Then, if you will do this, no chief will dare to be other than he should be, for four of you can kill any chief who may ever be over you.” And the ape who recalled this wise counsel repeated it to several of his fellows, so that when Terkoz returned to the tribe that day he found a warm reception awaiting him. There were no formalities. As Terkoz reached the group, five huge, hairy beasts sprang upon him.

Special Collection, Rare Books, Burroughs Memorial Collection, University of Louisville.

burroughs / tarzan of the apes 47

At heart he was an arrant coward, which is the way with bullies among apes as well as among men; so he did not remain to fight and die, but tore himself away from them as quickly as he could and fled into the sheltering boughs of the forest. Two more attempts he made to rejoin the tribe, but on each occa- sion he was set upon and driven away. At last he gave it up, and turned, foaming with rage and hatred, into the jungle. For several days he wandered aimlessly, nursing his spite and look- ing for some weak thing on which to vent his pent anger. It was in this state of mind that the horrible, manlike beast, swing- ing from tree to tree, came suddenly upon two women in the jungle. He was right above them when he discovered them. The first inti- mation Jane Porter had of his presence was when the great hairy body dropped to the earth beside her, and she saw the awful face and the snarling, hideous mouth thrust within a foot of her. One piercing scream escaped her lips as the brute hand clutched her arm. Then she was dragged toward those awful fangs which yawned at her throat. But ere they touched that fair skin another mood claimed the anthropoid. The tribe had kept his women. He must find others to replace them. This hairless white ape would be the first of his new household, and so he threw her roughly across his broad, hairy shoulders and leaped back into the trees, bearing Jane away. Esmeralda’s scream of terror had mingled once with that of Jane, and then, as was Esmeralda’s manner under stress of emergency which required presence of mind, she swooned. But Jane did not once lose consciousness. It is true that that awful face, pressing close to hers, and the stench of the foul breath beating upon her nostrils, paralyzed her with terror; but her brain was clear, and she comprehended all that transpired. With what seemed to her marvelous rapidity the brute bore her through the forest, but still she did not cry out or struggle. The sudden advent of the ape had confused her to such an extent that she thought now that he was bearing her toward the beach. For this reason she conserved her energies and her voice until she could see that they had approached near enough to the camp to attract the succor she craved. She could not have known it, but she was being borne farther and farther into the impenetrable jungle. The scream that had brought Clayton and the two older men stum- bling through the undergrowth had led Tarzan of the Apes straight to where Esmeralda lay, but it was not Esmeralda in whom his interest cen- tered, though pausing over her he saw that she was unhurt. For a moment he scrutinized the ground below and the trees above, until the ape that was in him by virtue of training and environment,

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combined with the intelligence that was his by right of birth, told his wondrous woodcraft the whole story as plainly as though he had seen the thing happen with his own eyes. And then he was gone again into the swaying trees, following the high-flung spoor which no other human eye could have detected, much less translated. At boughs’ ends, where the anthropoid swings from one tree to another, there is most to mark the trail, but least to point the direction of the quarry; for there the pressure is downward always, toward the small end of the branch, whether the ape be leaving or entering a tree. Nearer the center of the tree, where the signs of passage are fainter, the direction is plainly marked. Here, on this branch, a caterpillar has been crushed by the fugi- tive’s great foot, and Tarzan knows instinctively where that same foot would touch in the next stride. Here he looks to find a tiny particle of the demolished larva, ofttimes not more than a speck of moisture. Again, a minute bit of bark has been upturned by the scraping hand, and the direction of the break indicates the direction of the passage. Or some great limb, or the stem of the tree itself has been brushed by the hairy body, and a tiny shred of hair tells him by the direction from which it is wedged beneath the bark that he is on the right trail. Nor does he need to check his speed to catch these seemingly faint records of the fleeing beast. To Tarzan they stand out boldly against all the myriad other scars and bruises and signs upon the leafy way. But strongest of all is the scent, for Tarzan is pursuing up the wind, and his trained nostrils are as sensi- tive as a hound’s. There are those who believe that the lower orders are specially endowed by nature with better olfactory nerves than man, but it is merely a matter of development. Man’s survival does not hinge so greatly upon the perfection of his senses. His power to reason has relieved them of many of their duties, and so they have, to some extent, atrophied, as have the muscles which move the ears and scalp, merely from disuse. The muscles are there, about the ears and beneath the scalp, and so are the nerves which transmit sensations to the brain, but they are underdeveloped because they are not needed. Not so with Tarzan of the Apes. From early infancy his survival had depended upon acuteness of eyesight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste far more than upon the more slowly developed organ of reason. The least developed of all in Tarzan was the sense of taste, for he could eat luscious fruits, or raw flesh, long buried, with almost equal apprecia- tion; but in that he differed but slightly from more civilized epicures. Almost silently the ape-man sped on in the track of Terkoz and his prey, but the sound of his approach reached the ears of the fleeing beast and spurred it on to greater speed.

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Three miles were covered before Tarzan overtook them, and then Terkoz, seeing that further flight was futile, dropped to the ground in a small open glade, that he might turn and fight for his prize or be free to escape unhampered if he saw that the pursuer was more than a match for him. He still grasped Jane in one great arm as Tarzan bounded like a leopard into the arena which nature had provided for this primeval- like battle. When Terkoz saw that it was Tarzan who pursued him, he jumped to the conclusion that this was Tarzan’s woman, since they were of the same kind — white and hairless — and so he rejoiced at this opportunity for double revenge upon his hated enemy. To Jane the strange apparition of this godlike man was as wine to sick nerves. From the description which Clayton and her father and Mr. Philan- der had given her, she knew that it must be the same wonderful creature who had saved them, and she saw in him only a protector and a friend. But as Terkoz pushed her roughly aside to meet Tarzan’s charge, and she saw the great proportions of the ape and the mighty muscles and the fierce fangs, her heart quailed. How could any vanquish such a mighty antagonist? Like two charging bulls they came together, and like two wolves sought each other’s throat. Against the long canines of the ape was pit- ted the thin blade of the man’s knife. Jane — her lithe, young form flattened against the trunk of a great tree, her hands tight pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration — watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman — for her. As the great muscles of the man’s back and shoulders knotted beneath the tension of his efforts, and the huge biceps and forearm held at bay those mighty tusks, the veil of centuries of civilization and culture were swept from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl. When the long knife drank deep a dozen times of Terkoz’s heart’s blood, and the great carcass rolled lifeless upon the ground, it was a pri- meval woman who sprang forward with outstretched arms toward the primeval man who had fought for her and won. And Tarzan? He did what no red-blooded man needs lessons in doing. He took his woman in his arms and smothered her upturned, panting lips with kisses. For a moment Jane lay there with half-closed eyes. For a moment — the first in her young life — she knew the meaning of love. But as suddenly as the veil had been withdrawn it dropped again, and an outraged conscience suffused her face with its scarlet mantle, and a mortified woman thrust Tarzan of the Apes from her and buried her face in her hands.

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Tarzan had been surprised when he had found the girl he had learned to love after a vague and abstract manner a willing prisoner in his arms. Now he was surprised that she repulsed him. He came close to her once more and took hold of her arm. She turned upon him like a tigress, striking his great breast with her tiny hands. Tarzan could not understand it. A moment ago, and it had been his intention to hasten Jane back to her people, but that little moment was lost now in the dim and distant past of things which were but can never be again, and with it the good intention had gone to join the impossible. Since then Tarzan of the Apes had felt a warm, lithe form close pressed to his. Hot, sweet breath against his cheek and mouth had fanned a new flame to life within his breast, and perfect lips had clung to his in burning kisses that had seared a deep brand into his soul — a brand which marked a new Tarzan. Again he laid his hand upon her arm. Again she repulsed him. And then Tarzan of the Apes did just what his first ancestor would have done. He took his woman in his arms and carried her into the jungle.

This episode begins with exposition, the background information the reader needs to make sense of the situation in which the characters are placed. The first eight paragraphs let us know that Terkoz has been overthrown as leader of the ape tribe and that he is roaming the jungle “looking for some weak thing on which to vent his pent anger.” This exposition is in the form of a flashback. (Recall that the previous chapter ended with Esmeralda’s report of the kidnapping; now we will see what happened.) Once this information supplies a context for the characters, the plot gains momentum with the rising action, a complication that intensifies the situation: Terkoz, looking for a victim, discovers the vulnerable Esmeralda and Jane. His first impulse is to kill Jane, but his “mood” changes when he remembers that he has no woman of his own after hav- ing been forced to leave the tribe (more exposition). Hence, there is a further complication in the rising action when he decides to carry her off. Just when it seems that the situation could not get any worse, it does. The reader is invited to shudder even more than if Terkoz had made a meal of Jane because she may have to endure the “awful face,” “foul breath,” and lust of this beast. When Tarzan finally catches up to Terkoz, the conflict of this epi- sode fully emerges. Tarzan must save the woman he loves by defeating his long-standing enemy. Terkoz seeks to achieve a “double revenge” by killing Tarzan and taking his woman. Terkoz’s assumption that Jane is Tarzan’s woman is a foreshadowing, a suggestion of what is yet to come.

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In this conflict Tarzan is the protagonist or hero, the central character who engages our interest and empathy. Protagonist is often a more use- ful term than hero or heroine, however, because the central character of a story can be despicable as well as heroic. Terkoz is the antagonist, the force that opposes the protagonist. The battle between Tarzan and Terkoz creates suspense because the reader is made anxious about what is going to happen. Burroughs makes certain that the reader will worry about the outcome by having Jane wonder, “How could any vanquish such a mighty antagonist?” If we are caught up in the moment, we watch the battle, as Jane does, with “mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration” to see what will happen next. The moment of greatest emotional tension, the climax, occurs when Tarzan kills Terkoz. Tarzan’s victory is the reso- lution of the conflict, also known as the dénouement (a French word meaning the “untying of the knot”). This could have been the conclu- sion to the episode except that Jane and Tarzan simultaneously dis- cover their “primeval” selves sexually drawn to each other. Burroughs resolves one conflict — the battle with Terkoz — but then immediately creates another by raising the question of what a respectable profes- sor’s daughter from Baltimore is doing in the sweaty arms of a panting, half-naked man. For a brief moment the cycle of conflict, suspense, and resolution begins again as Jane passionately kisses Tarzan; then her “outraged con- science” causes her to regain her sense of propriety and she pushes him away. Although Tarzan succeeds in the encounter with Terkoz, he is not successful with Jane. However, Burroughs creates suspense for a third time at the very end of the episode, when the “new Tarzan,” having been transformed by this sexual awakening, “took his woman in his arms and carried her into the jungle.” What will he do next? Despite the nov- el’s implausibility (beginning with the premise that apes could raise a human child) and its heavy use of coincidences (not the least of which is Tarzan’s donning a loincloth for the first time only four pages before he meets Jane), the story is difficult to put down. The plot swings us swiftly and smoothly from incident to incident, even if there is an occasional interruption, such as Burroughs’s discussion of evolution, in the flow of the action. The primary conflict that Tarzan experiences in his battle with Ter- koz is external. External conflict is popular in adventure stories because the protagonist’s physical struggles with a formidable foe or the ever- present dangers of a dense jungle echoing wild screams provide plenty of excitement. External conflicts may place the protagonist in opposition to another individual, nature, or society. Tarzan’s battle with societal values begins the moment he instinctively takes Jane in his arms to carry her off into the jungle. He will learn that an individual’s conflict with society can be as frustrating as it is complex, which is why so many plots in serious

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fiction focus on this conflict. It can be seen, to cite only two examples, in a mysterious stranger’s alienation from a materialistic culture in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (p. 85) and in a young black man’s struggle with racism in Ellison’s “Battle Royal” (p. 184). Conflict may also be internal; in such a case some moral or psycho- logical issue must be resolved within the protagonist. Inner conflicts frequently accompany external ones, as in Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” (p. 38). Godwin’s story is quiet and almost uneventful com- pared with Tarzan of the Apes. The conflict, though puzzling, is more significant in “A Sorrowful Woman” because that story subtly explores some troubling issues that cannot be resolved simply by “huge biceps” or a “lithe, young form.” The protagonist struggles with both inter- nal and external forces. We are not told why she withdraws from her considerate husband and beautiful son. There is no exposition to explain why she is hopelessly “sad and sick” of them. There is no read- ily identifiable antagonist in her way, but there are several possibilities. Her antagonist is some part of herself that cannot find satisfaction in playing the roles of wife and mother, yet her husband and child also seem to bear some of the responsibility, as does the domestic environ- ment that defines her. Although Burroughs makes enormous demands on Tarzan to survive the perils of the jungle, the author makes few demands on the reader. In part, that’s why Tarzan of the Apes is so much fun: We sit back while Tarzan does all the work, struggling heroically through all the conflicts Burroughs has planted along his jungle paths. Godwin’s story, in contrast, illustrates that there are other kinds of plots, less depen- dent on action but equally full of conflict. This kind of reading is more demanding, but ultimately often more satisfying, because as we confront conflicts in serious fiction we read not only absorbing stories but also ourselves. We are invited not to escape life but to look long and hard at it. Although serious fiction can be as diverting and pleasurable as most standard action-packed plots, serious fiction offers an additional important element: a perspective on experience that reflects rather than deflects life. The two stories that follow — Alice Walker’s “The Flowers” and Wil- liam Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” — are remarkable for the different kinds of tension produced in each by a subtle use of plot.

Alice Walker (b. 1944)

Novelist, poet, and political activist, Alice Walker was born in 1944 to Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Willie Lee Walker, sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia. Walker started her collegiate career at Spelman Col- lege in Atlanta, but graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1965. After teaching history in Mississippi, she won a fellowship from

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the Radcliffe Institute and went on to teach at Wellesley College, where she pioneered one of the first women’s studies courses in the coun- try. Walker has published several volumes of poetry, including Once (1968), Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973), Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1984), Col- lected Poems (2005), and a book of essays, Liv- ing by the Word (1988). Her numerous works of fiction include In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973), The Temple of My Familiar (1989), The Complete Stories (1994), By the Light of My Father’s Smile (1998), Possessing the Secret of Joy (1998), Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004), and The Color Purple (1982), which was made into a major motion picture. The acclaim for her novel Meridian (1982) won her a Guggen- heim Fellowship.

The Flowers 1973

It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these. The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws. Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment. Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family’s sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence till it ran into the stream made by the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver ferns and wildflowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream. She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. She found, in addition to various com- mon but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet-suds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds. By twelve o’clock, her arms laden with sprigs of her findings, she was a mile or more from home. She had often been as far before, but the

Courtesy of Jean Weisinger.

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strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was damp, the silence close and deep. Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then she stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise. He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him. When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he’d had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overalls had turned green. Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she’d stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose’s root. It was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plowline, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled — barely there — but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. How do you interpret the final line of the story? What is the effect of the brevity of that sentence?

2. Describe the atmosphere and tone of the first three paragraphs. What emotions do they produce concerning Myop’s childhood?

3. How might paragraph 5 be described as an example of foreshadowing? 4. What is the conflict in the story? What is its climax? Is there a resolu-

tion to the conflict? Explain. 5. What do you think is the central point of this story? 6. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Discuss the significance of

Myop’s experience and that of the narrator in Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” (p. 184).

William Faulkner (1897–1962)

Born into an old Mississippi family that had lost its influence and wealth during the Civil War, William Faulkner lived nearly all his life in the South writing about Yoknapatawpha County, an imagined Mis- sissippi county similar to his home in Oxford. Among his novels based

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on this fictional location are The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Although his writings are regional in their emphasis on local social history, his con- cerns are broader. In his 1950 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, he insisted that the “problems of the human heart in conflict with itself . . . alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.” This commitment is evident in his novels and in The Collected Stories of Wil- liam Faulkner (1950).

A Rose for Emily 1931

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 manservant — a combined gardener and cook — had seen in at least ten years. It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, deco- rated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily light- some 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 pumps — an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anony- mous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson. Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor — he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron — remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. 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,

Courtesy of the Colfi eld Collection, Southern Media Archive, University of Mississippi. Special Collections.

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preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ genera- tion and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it. When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became may- ors 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 sheriff’s office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an 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 deputa- tion 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 disuse — a close, dank smell. The 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 tar- nished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily’s father. They rose when she entered — a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, lean- ing on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plump- ness 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?” “I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he considers him- self 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.”

faulkner / a rose for emily 57

“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.”

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 sweetheart — the one we believed would marry her — had 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 man — a young man then — going in and out with a market basket. “Just as if a man — any man — could keep a kitchen properly,” the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons. 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 met — three gray- beards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation. “It’s simple enough,” he said. “Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don’t . . .” “Dammit, sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoul- der. 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

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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 back- ground, 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 fam- ily 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 on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly. We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

III

She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows — sort of tragic and serene. The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father’s death they began the work. The con- struction company came with niggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee — a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. When- ever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Bar- ron 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. 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 laborer.” But there were still others, older people,

faulkner / a rose for emily 59

who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige° — without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her.” She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two 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 enough — even 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 earthi- ness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poi- son, 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 druggist 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.”

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 Bar- ron, we had said, “She will marry him.” Then we said, “She will persuade

noblesse oblige: The obligation of people of high social position.

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him yet,” because Homer himself had remarked — he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club — that he was not a marrying man. Later we said, “Poor Emily” behind the jal- ousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove. Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister — Miss Emily’s people were Episcopal — to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister’s wife wrote to Miss Emily’s relations in Alabama. So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet 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 Barron — the streets had been finished some time since — was 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 pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man. From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the

faulkner / a rose for emily 61

downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colo- nel Sartoris’ contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted. Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not lis- ten to them. Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows — she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house — like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, 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 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.

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 pro- foundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men — some in their brushed Confederate uniforms — on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her per- haps, 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 nar- row bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.

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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 every- where 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 mono- gram was obscured. Among them lay a 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.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. How might this story be rewritten as a piece of for- mula fiction? You could write it as a romance, detective, or horror story — whatever strikes your fancy. Does Faulkner’s version have ele- ments of formulaic fiction?

2. What is the effect of the final paragraph of the story? How does it contribute to your understanding of Emily? Why is it important that we get this information last rather than at the beginning of the story?

3. Contrast the order of events as they happen in the story with the order in which they are told. How does this plotting create interest and suspense?

4. Faulkner uses a number of gothic elements in this plot: the imposing decrepit house, the decayed corpse, and the mysterious secret hor- rors connected with Emily’s life. How do these elements forward the plot and establish the atmosphere?

5. In what sense does the narrator’s telling of the story serve as “A Rose for Emily”? Why do you think the narrator uses we rather than I?

faulkner / a rose for emily 63

6. Explain how Emily’s reasons for murdering Homer are related to her personal history and to the ways she handled previous conflicts.

7. Discuss how Faulkner’s treatment of the North and South contrib- utes to the meaning of the story.

8. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Contrast Faulkner’s ordering of events with Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” (p. 318). How does each author’s arrangement of incidents create different effects on the reader?

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When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before — met him on the river.

— MARK TWAIN

Character is essential to plot. Without characters Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes would be a travelogue through the jungle and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” little more than a faded history of a sleepy town in the South. If stories were depopulated, the plots would disappear because characters and plots are interrelated. A dangerous jungle is important only because we care what effect it has on a character. Characters are influenced by events just as events are shaped by characters. Tarzan’s physical strength is the result of his growing up in the jungle, and his strength, along with his inherited intelligence, allows him to be mas- ter there. The methods by which a writer creates people in a story so that they seem actually to exist are called characterization. Huck Finn never lived, yet those who have read Mark Twain’s novel about his adventures along the Mississippi River feel as if they know him. A good writer gives us the illusion that a character is real, but we should also remember that a char- acter is not an actual person but instead has been created by the author. Though we might walk out of a room in which Huck Finn’s Pap talks racist nonsense, we would not throw away the book in a similar fit of anger. This illusion of reality is the magic that allows us to move beyond the circumstances of our own lives into a writer’s fictional world, where we can encounter every- one from royalty to paupers, murderers, lovers, cheaters,

3 Character

WEB Explore the literary element in this chapter at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

dickens / hard times 65

martyrs, artists, destroyers, and, nearly always, some part of ourselves. To understand our response to a story, we should be able to recognize the methods of characterization the author uses.

Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

Charles Dickens is well known for creating characters who have stepped off the pages of his fictions into the imaginations and memo- ries of his readers. His characters are successful not because readers might have encountered such people in their own lives, but because his characterizations are vivid and convincing. He manages to make strange and eccentric people appear familiar. The following excerpt from Hard Times is the novel’s entire first chapter. In it Dickens introduces and characterizes a school principal addressing a classroom full of children.

From Hard Times 1854

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the prin- ciple on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!” The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders — nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was — all helped the emphasis.

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“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!” The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

Dickens withholds his character’s name until the beginning of the sec- ond chapter; he calls this fact-bound educator Mr. Gradgrind. Authors sometimes put as much time and effort into naming their characters as parents invest in naming their children. Names can be used to indicate qualities that the writer associates with the characters. Mr. Gradgrind is precisely what his name suggests. The “schoolmaster” employed by Gradgrind is Mr. M’Choakumchild. Pronounce this name aloud and you have the essence of this teacher’s educational philosophy. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Chillingworth is cold and relentless in his single-minded quest for revenge. The innocent and youthful protagonist in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd is nipped in the bud by the evil Clag- gart, whose name simply sounds unpleasant. Of course, not every name is suggestive of the qualities a character may embody, but it is frequently worth determining what is in a name. The only way to tell whether a name reveals character is to look at the other information the author supplies about the character. We eval- uate fictional characters in much the same way we understand people in our own lives. By piecing together bits of information, we create a context that allows us to interpret their behavior. We can predict, for instance, that an acquaintance who is a chronic complainer is not likely to have anything good to say about a roommate. We interpret words and actions in the light of what we already know about someone, and that is why keeping track of what characters say (and how they say it) along with what they do (and don’t do) is important. Authors reveal characters by other means too. Physical descriptions can indicate important inner qualities; disheveled clothing, a crafty smile, or a blush might communicate as much as or more than what a character says. Characters can also be revealed by the words and actions of others who respond to them. In literature, moreover, we have one great advantage that life cannot offer; a work of fiction can give us access to a person’s thoughts. Although in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (p. 85) we learn about Bartleby primarily through descriptive details, words, actions, and his relationships with the other characters, Melville allows us to enter the lawyer’s consciousness. Authors have two major methods of presenting characters: showing and telling. Characters shown in dramatic situations reveal themselves indirectly by what they say and do. In the first paragraph of the excerpt from Hard Times, Dickens shows us some of Gradgrind’s utilitarian edu- cational principles by having him speak. We can infer the kind of per- son he is from his reference to boys and girls as “reasoning animals,”

dickens / hard times 67

but we are not told what to think of him until the second paragraph. It would be impossible to admire Gradgrind after reading the physical description of him and the school that he oversees. The adjectives in the second paragraph make the author’s evaluation of Gradgrind’s val- ues and personality clear: Everything about him is rigidly “square”; his mouth is “thin, and hard set”; his voice is “inflexible, dry, and dictato- rial”; and he presides over a “plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school- room.” Dickens directly lets us know how to feel about Gradgrind, but he does so artistically. Instead of simply being presented with a state- ment that Gradgrind is destructively practical, we get a detailed and amusing description. We can contrast Dickens’s direct presentation in this paragraph with the indirect showing that Gail Godwin uses in “A Sorrowful Woman.” Godwin avoids telling us how we should think about the char- acters. Their story includes little description and no evaluations or inter- pretations by the author. To determine the significance of the events, the reader must pay close attention to what the characters say and do. Like Godwin, many twentieth-century authors favor showing over telling because showing allows readers to discover the meanings, which modern authors are often reluctant to impose on an audience for whom fixed meanings and values are not as strong as they once were. However, most writers continue to reveal characters by telling as well as showing when the technique suits their purposes — when, for example, a minor char- acter must be sketched economically or when a long time has elapsed, causing changes in a major character. Telling and showing complement each other. Characters can be convincing whether they are presented by telling or showing, provided their actions are motivated. There must be reasons for how they behave and what they say. If adequate motivation is offered, we can understand and find plausible their actions no matter how bizarre. In “A Rose for Emily” (p. 55), Faulkner makes Emily Grierson’s intimacy with a corpse credible by preparing us with information about her father’s death along with her inability to leave the past and live in the present. Emily turns out to be consistent. Although we are surprised by the ending of the story, the behavior it reveals is compatible with her temperament. Some kinds of fiction consciously break away from our expectations of traditional realistic stories. Consistency, plausibility, and motivation are not very useful concepts for understanding and evaluating character- izations in modern absurdist literature, for instance, in which characters are often alienated from themselves and their environment in an irra- tional world. In this world there is no possibility for traditional heroic action; instead we find an antihero who has little control over events. Yossarian from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is an example of a protagonist who is thwarted by the absurd terms on which life offers itself to many twentieth-century characters.

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In most stories we expect characters to act plausibly and in ways con- sistent with their personalities, but that does not mean that characters cannot develop and change. A dynamic character undergoes some kind of change because of the action of the plot. Huck Finn’s view of Jim, the runaway slave in Mark Twain’s novel, develops during their experiences on the raft. Huck discovers Jim’s humanity and, therefore, cannot betray him because Huck no longer sees his companion as merely the property of a white owner. On the other hand, Huck’s friend, Tom Sawyer, is a static character because he does not change. He remains interested only in high adventure, even at the risk of Jim’s life. As static characters often do, Tom serves as a foil to Huck; his frivolous concerns are contrasted with Huck’s serious development. A foil helps to reveal by contrast the distinctive qualities of another character. The extent to which a character is developed is another means by which character can be analyzed. The novelist E. M. Forster coined the terms flat and round to distinguish degrees of character development. A flat character embodies one or two qualities, ideas, or traits that can be readily described in a brief summary. For instance, Mr. M’Choakumchild in Dickens’s Hard Times stifles students instead of encouraging them to grow. Flat characters tend to be one-dimensional. They are readily acces- sible because their characteristics are few and simple; they are not cre- ated to be psychologically complex. Some flat characters are immediately recognizable as stock charac- ters. These stereotypes are particularly popular in formula fiction, televi- sion programs, and action movies. Stock characters are types rather than individuals. The poor but dedicated writer falls in love with a hard-work- ing understudy, who gets nowhere because the corrupt producer favors his boozy, pampered mistress for the leading role. Characters such as these — the loyal servant, the mean stepfather, the henpecked husband, the dumb blonde, the sadistic army officer, the dotty grandmother — are prepackaged; they lack individuality because their authors have, in a sense, not imaginatively created them but simply summoned them from a ware- house of clichés and social prejudices. Stock characters can become fresh if a good writer makes them vivid, interesting, or memorable, but too often a writer’s use of these stereotypes is simply weak characterization. Round characters are more complex than flat or stock characters. Round characters have more depth and require more attention. They may surprise us or puzzle us. Although they are more fully developed, round characters are also more difficult to summarize because we are aware of competing ideas, values, and possibilities in their lives. As a flat character, Huck Finn’s alcoholic, bigoted father is clear to us; we know that Pap is the embodiment of racism and irrationality. But Huck is con- siderably less predictable because he struggles with what Twain calls a “sound heart and a deformed conscience.” In making distinctions between flat and round characters, you must understand that an author’s use of a flat character — even as a

chai / saving sourdi 69

protagonist — does not necessarily represent an artistic flaw. Moreover, both flat and round characters can be either dynamic or static. Each plot can be made most effective by its own special kind of characterization. Terms such as round and flat are helpful tools to use to determine what we know about a character, but they are not an infallible measurement of the quality of a story. The next two stories — May-lee Chai’s “Saving Sourdi” and Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” — offer character studies worthy of close analysis. As you read them, notice the methods of characterization used to bring each to life.

May-lee Chai

May-lee Chai, the first of her family to be born in the United States, is a San Francisco author and gradu- ate of Yale University. Chai has worked as a reporter for the Asso- ciated Press and taught creative writing at San Francisco State University, the University of Wyo- ming, and Amherst College. She is the author of My Lucky Face (2001), a novel about a woman’s marriage in contemporary China; Glamorous Asians: Short Stories and Essays (2004); and coauthor, with her father, Winberg Chai, of The Girl from Purple Mountain (2002), a family mem- oir about her grandparents’ journey from China to America. Hapa Girl: A Memoir (2007) describes the bigotry her family encounters in rural South Dakota.

Saving Sourdi 2001

Once, when my older sister, Sourdi, and I were working alone in our fam- ily’s restaurant, just the two of us and the elderly cook, some men got drunk and I stabbed one of them. I was eleven. I don’t remember where Ma had gone that night. But I remember we were tired and it was late. We were one of the only restaurants that stayed open past nine in those days. The men had been growing louder, until they were our only customers, and, finally, one of them staggered up and put his arm across Sourdi’s shoulders. He called her his “China doll,” and his friends hooted at this. Sourdi looked distressed and tried to remove his arm, but he held her tighter. She said, “Please,” in her incense-sweet voice, and he smiled and said, “Say it again nice and I might just have to give you a kiss.”

Courtesy of Jason Doiy.

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That summer we’d just moved to South Dakota. After all the crummy jobs Ma had had to take in Texas, where we’d first come to the U.S., where our sponsors lived, we were so proud to be working in our own restaurant. When we moved to South Dakota, I thought we’d find the real America, the one where we were supposed to be, not the hot sweaty America where we lived packed together in an apartment with bars on the windows on a street where angry boys in cars played loud music and shot guns at each other in the night. The summer we moved to join my uncle’s family to run the Silver Palace, I was certain we would at last find the life we deserved. Now I was panicked. I wanted Ma to be there. Ma would know what to do. She always did. I stood there, chewing my nails, wishing I could make them go away. The men’s voices were so loud in my ears, I was drowning in the sound. I ran into the kitchen. I had this idea to get the cook and the cleaver, but the first thing that caught my eye was this little paring knife on the counter next to a bowl of oranges. I grabbed the knife and ran back out to Sourdi. “Get away from my sister!” I shouted, waving the paring knife. The men were silent for about three seconds, then they burst into laughter. I charged and stabbed the man in the sleeve. In a movie or a television show this kind of scene always unfolds in slow motion, but everything happened so fast. I stabbed the man, Sourdi jumped free, Ma came rushing in the front door waving her arms. “Omi- god! What happen?” “Jesus Christ!” The man shook his arm as though it were on fire, but the paring knife was stuck in the fabric of his jeans jacket. I thought Ma would take care of everything now. And I was right, she did, but not the way I had imagined. She started apologizing to the man, and she helped him take off his jacket. She made Sourdi get the first-aid kit from the bathroom, “Quick! Quick!” Ma even tried to put some ointment on his cut, but he just shrugged her off. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to take the knife back and stab myself. That’s how I felt when I heard her say, “No charge, on the house,” for their dinner, despite the $50-worth of pitchers they’d had. Ma grabbed me by the shoulders. “Say you sorry. Say it.” I pressed my lips firmly together and hung my head. Then she slapped me. I didn’t start crying until after the men had left. “But, Ma,” I said, “he was hurting Sourdi!” “Then why Sourdi not do something?” Ma twisted my ear. “You not thinking. That your problem. You always not think!” Afterwards, Sourdi said I was lucky. The knife had only grazed the man’s skin. They could have sued us. They could have pressed charges. “I don’t care!” I hissed then. “I shoulda killed him! I shoulda killed that sucker!”

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Sourdi’s face changed. I’d never seen my sister look like that. Not ever. Especially not at me. I was her favorite. But she looked then the way I felt inside. Like a big bomb was ticking behind her eyes. We were sitting together in the bathroom. It was late at night, and everyone else was asleep. Sometimes we locked ourselves in the bath- room then, just the two of us, so we could talk about things like boys at school or who was the cutest actor on television shows we liked or how we felt when our family fought, when Uncle and Auntie yelled at each other, or when Ma grew depressed and smoked too much and looked at us as though she wished we’d never been born. This night, however, Sourdi looked at me grimly. “Oh, no, Nea. Don’t ever say that. Don’t ever talk like that.” I was going to smile and shrug and say something like “I was just kid- ding,” but something inside me couldn’t lie tonight. I crossed my arms over my flat chest, and I stuck out my lower lip, like I’d seen the tough girls at school do. “Anyone mess like that with me, I’m gonna kill him!” Sourdi took me by the shoulders then and shook me so hard I thought she was going to shake my head right off my body. She wouldn’t stop even after I started to cry. “Stop, stop!” I begged. “I’ll be good! I promise, I’ll be good!” Finally, she pushed me away from her and sat on the toilet, with her head in her hands. Although she’d been the one hurting me, she looked as though she’d been beaten up, the way she sat like that, her shoulders hunched over her lap, as though she were trying to make herself disappear. “I was trying to protect you,” I said through my tears. “I was trying to save you. You’re so stupid! I should just let that man diss you!” Sourdi’s head shot up and I could see that she had no patience left. Her eyes were red and her nostrils flared. She stood up and I took a step back quickly. I thought she was going to grab me and shake me again, but this time she just put her hand on my arm. “They could take you away. The police, they could put you in a foster home. All of us.” A chill ran through my whole body, like a live current. We all knew about foster homes. Rudy Gutierrez in third grade was taken away from his parents after the teacher noticed some bruises on his back. He’d tried to shoplift some PayDays from the 7-Eleven and got caught. When his dad got home that weekend, he let him have it. But after the school nurse took a look at him, Rudy was taken away from his parents and sent to live in a foster home. His parents couldn’t speak English so good and didn’t know what was happening until too late. Anyway, what kind of lawyer could they afford? We heard later from his cousin in Mrs. Chang’s homeroom that Rudy’s foster-dad had molested him. The cousin said Rudy ran away from that home, but he got caught. At any rate, none of us ever saw him again. “You want to go to a foster home?” Sourdi asked me. “No,” I whispered. “Then don’t be so stupid!”

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I started crying again, because I realized Sourdi was right. She kissed me on the top of my head and hugged me to her. I leaned my head against her soft breasts that had only recently emerged from her chest and pretended that I was a good girl and that I would always obey her. What I didn’t tell Sourdi was that I was still a wicked girl. I was glad I’d stabbed that man. I was crying only because life was so unfair.

We used to say that we’d run away, Sourdi and me. When we were older. After she graduated. She’d be my legal guardian. We’d go to California to see the stars. Paris. London. Cambodia even, to light incense for the bones of our father. We’d earn money working in Chinese restaurants in every country we visited. We had enough experience; it had to be worth something. We’d lie awake all night whispering back and forth. I’d climb into Sourdi’s bed, claiming that I couldn’t sleep, curling into a ball beside my older sister, the smell of her like salt and garlic and a sweet scent that emanated directly from her skin. Sometimes I’d stroke Sourdi’s slick hair, which she plaited into a thick wet braid so that it would be wavy in the morning. I would stay awake all night, pinching the inside of Sour- di’s arm, the soft flesh of her thigh, to keep my sister from falling asleep and leaving me alone. When she first started seeing Duke, I used to think of him as some- thing like a bookmark, just holding a certain space in her life until it was time for her to move on. I never thought of him as a fork in the road, dividing my life with Sourdi from Sourdi’s life with men. In those days, I didn’t understand anything.

Ma had hired Duke to wash dishes at the Palace that first summer. At first, we paid him no mind. He was just this funny-looking white kid, hair that stuck up straight from his head when he wasn’t wearing his silly baseball cap backwards, skinny as a stalk of bamboo, long legs and long arms that seemed to move in opposition to each other. Chopstick- boy I called him, just to be mean. He took it as a compliment. I could see why he fell in love with Sourdi. My sister was beautiful. Really beautiful, not like the girls in magazines with their pale, pinched faces, pink and powdery, brittle girls. Sourdi looked like a statue that had been rescued from the sea. She was smooth where I had angles and soft where I was bone. Sourdi’s face was round, her nose low and wide, her eyes crescent-shaped like the quarter moon, her hair sleek as sea- weed. Her skin was a burnished cinnamon color. Looking at Sourdi, I could pretend I was beautiful, too. She had so much to spare. At first, Duke and Sourdi only talked behind the Palace, pretending to take a break from the heat of the kitchen. I caught them looking at the stars together. The first time they kissed, I was there, too. Duke was giving us a ride after school in his pickup. He had the music on loud and the windows

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were open. It was a hot day for October, and the wind felt like a warm ocean that we could swim in forever. He was going to drop us off at the Palace, but then Duke said he had something to show us, and we circled around the outskirts of town, taking the gravel road that led to the open fields, beyond the highway where the cattle ranches lay. Finally, he pulled off the gravel road and parked. “You want us to look at cows?” I asked impatiently, crossing my arms. He laughed at me then and took Sourdi by the hand. We hiked through a ditch to the edge of an empty cornfield long since harvested, the stubble of cornstalks poking up from the black soil, pale and bone- like. The field was laced with a barbed-wire fence to keep the cattle in, though I couldn’t see any cows at all. The whole place gave me the creeps. Duke held the strands of barbed wire apart for Sourdi and me and told us to crawl under the fence. “Just trust me,” he said. We followed him to a spot in the middle of the field. “It’s the center of the world,” Duke said. “Look.” And he pointed back to where we’d come from, and suddenly I realized the rest of the world had disappeared. The ground had appeared level, but we must have walked into a tiny hollow in the plains, because from where we stood there was only sky and field for as far as our eyes could see. We could no longer see the road or Duke’s pickup, our town, or even the green smudge of cottonwoods that grew along the Yankton River or the distant hills of Nebraska. There was nothing over- head, either; the sky was unbroken by clouds, smooth as an empty rice bowl. “It’s just us here,” Duke said. “We’re alone in the whole universe.” All at once, Sourdi began to breathe funny. Her face grew pinched, and she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “What’s wrong?” Duke asked stupidly. Then Sourdi was running wildly. She took off like an animal startled by a gunshot. She was trying to head back to the road, but she tripped over the cornstalks and fell onto her knees. She started crying for real. I caught up to her first — I’ve always been a fast runner. As Duke approached, I put my arms around Sourdi. “I thought you’d like it,” Duke said. “We’re city girls,” I said, glaring at him. “Why would we like this hick stuff?” “I’m sorry,” Sourdi whispered. “I’m so sorry.” “What are you sorry for? It’s his fault!” I pointed out. Now Duke was kneeling next to Sourdi. He tried to put his arm over her shoulder, too. I was going to push him away, when Sourdi did some- thing very surprising. She put both her arms around his neck and leaned against him, while Duke said soft, dumb-sounding things that I couldn’t quite hear. Then they were kissing. I was so surprised, I stared at them before I forced myself to look away. Then I was the one who felt like running, screaming, for the road.

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On the way back to the Palace, Duke and Sourdi didn’t talk, but they held hands. The worst part was I was sitting between them. Ma didn’t seem to notice anything for a while, but then with Ma it was always hard to know what she was thinking, what she knew and what she didn’t. Sometimes she seemed to go through her days like she was made of stone. Sometimes she erupted like a volcano. Uncle fired Duke a few weeks later. He said it was because Duke had dropped a tray of dishes. It was during the Saturday lunch rush when Sourdi and I weren’t working and couldn’t witness what had happened. “He’s a clumsy boy,” Ma agreed after work that night, when we all sat around in the back booths and ate our dinner. Sourdi didn’t say anything. She knew Ma knew. She kept seeing Duke, of course. They were both juniors, and there was only one high school in town. Now when I crept into Sourdi’s bed at night, when she talked about running away, she meant Duke and her. I was the one who had to pipe up that I was coming with them, too. What we didn’t know was that Ma was making plans as well.

Uncle first introduced his friend Mr. Chhay in the winter. I’d had a strange dream the night before. I hadn’t remembered it at all until Mr. Chhay walked into the Palace, with his hangdog face and his suit like a salesman’s. He sat in a corner booth with Uncle and, while they talked, he shredded a napkin, then took the scraps of paper and rolled them between his thumb and index finger into a hundred tiny red balls. He left them in the ashtray, like a mountain of fish eggs. Seeing them, I remembered my dream. I was swimming in the ocean. I was just a small child, but I wasn’t afraid at all. The sea was liquid turquoise, the sunlight yellow as gold against my skin. Fish were swimming alongside me. I could see through the clear water to the bottom of the sea. The fish were schooling around me and below me, and they brushed against my feet when I kicked the water. Their scales felt like bones scraping my toes. I tried to push them away, but the schools grew more dense, until I was swimming amongst them under the waves. The fish began to spawn around me and soon the water was cloudy with eggs. I tried to break through the film, but the eggs clung to my skin. The water darkened as we entered a sea of kelp. I pushed against the dark slippery strands like Sourdi’s hair. I realized I was pushing against my sister, wrapped in the kelp, suspended just below the surface of the water. Then I woke up. I thought about that dream seeing that old guy Mr. Chhay with Uncle and I knew they were up to no good. I wanted to warn Sourdi, but she seemed to understand without my having to tell her anything. Uncle called over to her and introduced her to his friend. But Sourdi wouldn’t even look at Mr. Chhay. She kept her eyes lowered, though he tried to smile and talk to her. She whispered so low in reply that no one

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could understand a word she said. I could tell the man was disappointed when he left. His shoulders seemed barely able to support the weight of his jacket. Mr. Chhay wrote letters to Uncle, to Ma. He thanked them for their hospitality and enclosed pictures of his business and his house, plus a formal portrait of himself looking ridiculous in another suit, standing in front of some potted plants, his hair combed over the bald spot in the middle of his head. The next time he came to visit the Palace, he brought gifts. A giant Chinese vase for Ma, Barbie dolls for my younger sisters and cousin, a Christian music cassette tape for me, and a bright red leather purse for Sourdi. Ma made Sourdi tell him thank you. And that was all she said to him. But this old guy was persistent. He took us all out to eat at a steakhouse once. He said he wanted to pay back Uncle for some good deed he’d done a long time ago when they both first came to America. I could have told him, Sourdi hated this kind of food. She preferred Mexican, tacos, not this Midwest cowboy stuff. But Ma made us all thank him. “Thank you, Mr. Chhay,” we said dutifully. He’d smiled so all his yel- low teeth showed at once. “Oh, please, call me Older Brother,” he said. It was the beginning of the end. I should have fought harder then. I should have stabbed this man, too.

I saw Duke at Sourdi’s wedding. She invited him for the ceremony proper, the reception, too, but he didn’t show up until the end. I almost didn’t see him at all. He was slouching through the parking lot of St. Agnes, wearing his best hightops and the navy-blue suit that his mother had insisted upon buying for graduation. I wasn’t used to him looking like a teenage undertaker, but I recognized his loping gait immediately. That afternoon of Sourdi’s wedding, he was holding a brown bag awkwardly behind his back, as if trying to conceal the fact that he was drinking as conspicuously as possible. I was standing inside the bingo hall, before the row of squat win- dows, my back turned to the festivities, the exploding flash capturing the tipsy toasts, the in-laws singing off-key to the rented karaoke machine. Then it really became too much to bear, and I had to escape the ter- rible heat, the flickering fluorescent lights. I slipped from the church into the ferocious March wind and gave it my best shot, running across the hard lawn, but the too-tight heels pinched my toes and the stiff taf- feta bodice of the cotton-candy-pink bridesmaid’s dress might as well have been a vise around my rib cage. I had intended to make it off church property, run to the empty field that stretched low and dark all the way to the horizon, but I only made it to the end of the walk near the rectory before vomiting into Sister Kevin’s over-tended tulip patch.

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Duke came over and sat on his haunches beside me, while I puked. I let him hold back my hair, while the wedding cake and wine cooler that I’d tried poured from my mouth. Finally, I spat a few times to clear my mouth, then sat back on my rear end. After a few minutes, I could take a sip from Duke’s beer. We didn’t talk. I took out the pack of cigarettes I’d stolen from Ma’s purse and lit one. It took five puffs before I could mask the taste of bile and sugar. The wind was blowing fiercely from the northwest, whipping my hair about my face like a widow’s veil, throwing dust from the parking lot around us like wedding rice. After a long while, Duke stood up and walked back down the side- walk lined with yellow daffodils. He walked bow-legged, like all the boys in our town, farmers’ sons, no matter how cool Duke tried to be. I bur- ied my head in my arms and watched him from under one polyester- covered armpit as he climbed back into his pickup and pulled away with a screech. As he left the parking lot, he tossed the brown bag with the empty bottle of Bud out the window. It fell into the street, where it rolled and rolled until it disappeared into a ditch. Ma liked Sourdi’s husband. He had a steady job, a house. She didn’t mind he was so old and Sourdi just eighteen when they married. In her eyes, eighteen was a good age to start a family. “I was younger than Sourdi when I get married,” Ma liked to say. When Sourdi sent pictures home for the holidays, Ma ooohed and aaahed as though they were winning lottery tickets. My sister and her old husband in front of a listing Christmas tree, a pile of presents at their feet. Then, the red-faced baby sprawled on a pink blanket on the living room carpet, drooling in its shiny high chair, slumped in its Snugli like a rock around Sourdi’s neck. “Look. Sony,” Ma pointed at the big-screen television in the back- ground of the New Year’s pictures. “Sourdi say they got all new washer/ dryer, too. Maytag.” When I looked at my sister’s pictures, I could see that she looked tired. Sourdi always said that Ma used to be a very brave woman. She also said that Ma used to be a beautiful woman who liked to have her hair fixed in salons, who wore pretty dresses and knew how to dance in all the fashionable styles. I don’t remember this mother. I remember the mother who worked two jobs for us.

I might never have seen Duke again if it were not for Sourdi’s strange phone call one Saturday evening nearly two years after her wedding. I was fourteen and a half. At first, I hadn’t recognized my older sister’s voice. “Who is this?” I demanded, thinking: heavy breathing, prank caller.

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“Who d’you think?” Sourdi was crying, a tiny crimped sound that barely crept out of the receiver. Then her voice steadied with anger and grew familiar. “Is Ma there?” “What’s the matter? What happened?” “Just let me speak to Ma, O.K.?” There was a pause, as Sourdi blew her nose. “Tell her it’s important.” I lured Ma from the TV room without alerting my younger sisters. Ma paced back and forth in the kitchen between the refrigerator and the stove, nodding and muttering, “Mmm, mmm, uh-hmm.” I could just hear the tinny squeak of Sourdi’s panicked voice. I sat on the floor, hugging my knees, in the doorway to the hall, just out of Ma’s line of sight. Finally, Ma said, in the tone normally reserved for refusing service to the unruly or arguing with a customer who had a complaint, “It’s always like this. Every marriage is hard. Sometimes there is nothing you can do —” Then Ma stopped pacing. “Just minute,” she said and she took the phone with her into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her. When she came out again, twenty-two minutes later, she ignored me completely. She set the phone back on the counter without saying a word. “So?” I prompted. “I’m tired.” Ma rubbed her neck with one hand. “Just let me rest. You girls, it’s always something. Don’t let your old mother rest.” She yawned extravagantly. She claimed she was too tired to watch any more TV. She had to go to bed, her eyes just wouldn’t stay open. I tried calling Sourdi, but the phone only rang and rang. The next morning, Sunday, I called first thing, but then he picked up, my sister’s husband. “Oh, is this Nea?” he said, so cheerfully it was obvious he was hiding something. “Yes, I’d like to speak to my sister.” “I’m sorry, Little Sister.” I just hated when he called me that. “My wife is out right now. But I’ll tell her you called. She’ll be sorry she missed you.” It was eight o’clock in the morning, for Chrissake. “Oh, thank you,” I said, sweet as pie. “How’s the baby?” “So well!” Then he launched into a long explanation about his daugh- ter’s eating habits, her rather average attempts to crawl, the simple words she was trying to say. For all I knew, Sourdi could have been right there, fixing his breakfast, washing his clothes, cleaning up his messes. I thought of my sister’s voice in my ear, the tiny sound like something breaking. It was all I could do to disguise the disdain in my voice. “Be sure to tell Sourdi to call back. Ma found that recipe she wanted. That special delicious recipe she was looking for. I can’t tell you what it is, Ma’s secret recipe, but you’ll really be surprised.”

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“Oh, boy,” the jerk said. “I didn’t know about any secret recipe.” “That’s why it’s a secret.” I hung up. I couldn’t breathe. My chest hurt. I could feel my swollen heart pressing against my ribs. The next afternoon, I tried calling back three more times, but no one answered. At work that evening, Ma was irritable. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes when I tried to get her attention. Some little kid spilled his Coke into a perfectly good plate of House Special Prawns and his parents insisted they be given a new order — and a new Coke — on the house. There was a minor grease fire around quarter to nine — the smoke alarms all went off at the same time — and then the customers started complaining about the cold, too, once we had opened all the doors and windows to clear the air. Fairly average as far as disasters went, but they put Ma in a sour mood. Ma was taking a cigarette break out back by the dumpsters, smoke curling from her nostrils, before I could corner her. She wasn’t in the mood to talk, but after the nicotine fix took hold, she didn’t tell me to get back to work, either. I asked Ma if I could have a smoke. She didn’t get angry. She smiled in her tired way, the edges of her mouth twitching upwards just a little, and said, “Smoking will kill you.” Then she handed me her pack. “Maybe Sourdi should come back home for a while,” I suggested. “She’s a married woman. She has her own family now.” “She’s still part of our family.” Ma didn’t say anything, just tilted her head back and blew smoke at the stars, so I continued, “Well, don’t you think she might be in trouble? She was crying, you know. It’s not like Sourdi.” My voice must have slipped a tad, just enough to sound disrespectful, because Ma jerked up- right, took the cigarette out of her mouth and glared at me. “What you think? You so smart? You gonna tell me what’s what?” Ma threw her cigarette onto the asphalt. “You not like your sister. Your sister know how to bear things!” She stormed back into the kitchen, and Ma ignored me for the rest of the evening.

I called Sourdi one more time, after Ma and my sisters had gone to bed and I finally had the kitchen to myself, the moon spilling from the window onto the floor in a big, blue puddle. I didn’t dare turn on the lights. This time, my sister answered. “Mmm. . . . Hello?” “Sourdi?” “What time is it?” “Sssh.” My heart beat so loudly, I couldn’t hear my own voice. “How are you doing?” “Oh, we’re fine. The baby, she’s doing real good. She’s starting to talk —”

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“No, no, no. I mean, what happened the other night?” “What?” Another voice now, low, a man’s voice, just beneath the snow on the line. Then suddenly a shriek. “Uh-oh. I just woke her up.” Sourdi’s voice grew fainter as she spoke to him: “Honey, can you check the baby’s diaper?” Then she said to me, “I have to go. The baby, she’s hungry, you know.” “Let him handle it. I have to talk to you a minute, O.K.? Just don’t go, Sourdi. What’s going on? What did you say to Ma?” Sourdi sighed, like a balloon losing its air. “Oh . . . nothing. Look, I really have to go. Talk to you later, Nea.” She hung up. I called back in twenty minutes, surely long enough to change a dia- per, but the phone only rang forlornly, ignored.

I considered taking Ma’s car, but then Ma wouldn’t be able to get to work and I wasn’t sure how long I needed to be gone. Then I thought of Duke. Even though it was far too late in the night, I called Duke. He was still in town, two years after graduation. I’d heard he was working as a mechanic at the Standard station. I found his number in the phone book. “It’s Nea. Pick up your phone, Duke,” I hissed into his machine. “It’s an emergency!” “Nea?!” He was yawning. “My God. What time is it?” “Duke! It’s important! It’s Sourdi, she’s in trouble.” There was a pause while I let him absorb all this. “You have to drive me to Des Moines. We have to get her.” “What happened?” “Look, I don’t have time to explain. We have to go tonight. It’s an emergency. A matter of life and death.” “Did you call the police?” “Don’t be stupid. Sourdi would never call the cops. She loves that jerk.” “What?” Duke whispered, “Her husband, he beat her up?” “Duke, I told you, I can’t say anything right now. But you have to help me.” He agreed to meet me at the corner, where there’d be no chance Ma could hear his truck. I’d be waiting.

It was freezing. The wind stung my cheeks, which wasn’t a good sign. Could be rain coming, or worse, snow. Even when the roads were clear, it was a good six-hour drive. I didn’t want to think how long it would take if we ran into a late-season blizzard. There was the roar of a souped-up engine and then a spray of gravel. Snoop Doggy Dogg growled over the wind. “Duke! What took you?”

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He put his hand over the door, barring me from climbing up. “You want me to help or not?” “Don’t joke.” I pulled myself inside and then made Duke back up rather than run in front of the house. Just in case Ma woke up. “How come your Ma didn’t want to come?” “She doesn’t know.” “Sourdi didn’t want to worry her?” “Mmm.” There was no point trying to shout above Snoop Dogg. He was obviously tired. When Duke was tired, he turned his music up even louder than normal. I’d forgotten that. Now the bass under- neath the rap was vibrating in my bones. But at least he did as I asked and took off toward the highway. Soon the squat buildings of town, the used-car lots on the route in from the interstate with their flapping colored flags, and the metal storage units of the Sav-U-Lot passed from view, and there was nothing before us but the black sky and the highway and the patches of snow on the shoulders glowing briefly in the wake of the headlights.

I must have fallen asleep, though I don’t remember feeling tired. I was standing on the deck of a boat in an inky ocean, trying to read the stars, but every time I found one constellation, the stars began to blink and fade. I squinted at them, but the stars would not stay in place. Then my head snapped forward as the pickup careened off the shoulder. The pickup landed in a ditch. Metal glittered in the headlights; the fields on this side of the highway were strung with barbed wire. We got out by sacrificing our jackets, stuffing them under the back tires until we had enough traction to slide back onto the pavement. I insisted upon driving. “I got my license,” I lied. “And I’m not tired at all.” Duke settled into the passenger seat, his arms folded across his chest, his head tilted back, preparing to go to sleep again. “D’ya think she’ll be happy to see me?” he said out of the blue. “Sourdi sent me a Christmas card with a picture of the baby. Looks just like. . . . But I didn’t write back or nothing. She probably thought I was angry. She mad at me, you think?” “Sourdi’s never mad at anybody.” “She must be mad at her husband if she wants you to come get her.” “She doesn’t know we’re coming.” “What!” “I didn’t have time to explain to her.” “You’re not running away from home, are you?” Duke’s eyes nar- rowed and his voice grew slow as if he thought he was suddenly being clever. “Yeah, I’m running away to Des Moines.”

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Once upon a time, in another world, a place almost unimaginable to me sitting in the pickup with Madonna singing “Lucky Star” on the radio, Sourdi had walked across a minefield, carrying me on her back. She was nine and I was four. Because she’d told me, I could see it all clearly, better than if I actually remembered: the startled faces of people who’d tripped a mine, their limbs in new arrangements, the bones peeking through the earth. Sourdi had said it was safest to step on the bodies; that way you knew a mine was no longer there. This was nothing I would ever tell Duke. It was our own personal story, just for Sourdi and me to share. Nobody’s business but ours. I would walk on bones for my sister, I vowed. I would put my bare feet on rotting flesh. I would save Sourdi.

We found the house in West Des Moines after circling for nearly an hour through the identical streets with their neat lawns and boxy houses and chain link fences. I refused to allow Duke to ask for directions from any of the joggers or the van that sputtered by, delivering the Register. He figured people in the neighborhood would know, just ask where the Oriental family lived. I told him to go to hell. Then we didn’t talk for a while. But as soon as we found Locust Street, I recognized the house. I knew it was Sourdi’s even though it had been painted a different color since the last set of pictures. The lace undercurtains before the cheerful flowered draperies, the flourishing plants in the windows, next to little trinkets, figurines in glass that caught the light. Every space crammed with something sweet. The heater in Duke’s truck began to make a high-pitched, sick-cat whine as we waited, parked across the street, staring at Sourdi’s house. “So, are we going to just sit here?” “Shh,” I said irritably. “Just wait a minute.” Somehow I had imagined that Sourdi would sense our presence, the curtains would stir, and I’d only have to wait a moment for my sister to come running out the front door. But we sat patiently, shivering, staring at Sourdi’s house. Nothing moved. “Her husband’s home,” I said stupidly. “He hasn’t gone to work yet.” “He wouldn’t dare try anything. Not with the both of us here. We should just go and knock.” “They’re probably still asleep.” “Nea, what’s the matter with you? What are you afraid of all of a sudden?” I’d had it with Duke. He just didn’t understand anything. I hopped out of the truck and ran through the icy air, my arms wrapped around my body. The sidewalk was slick beneath my sneakers, still damp from the ditch, and I slid onto my knees on the driveway. My right hand broke the fall. A sharp jagged pain shot up to my elbow and stayed there, throb- bing. I picked myself up and ran limping to the door and rang.

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No one answered for a minute, and then it was him. “What on earth? Nea!” Sourdi’s husband was dressed for work, but he hadn’t shaved yet. He looked even older than I remembered, his thin- ning hair flat across his skull, his bloodshot eyes and swollen lids still heavy from sleep. He might have been handsome once, decades ago, but I saw no evidence of it now. He held the door open and I slipped into the warmth without even removing my shoes first. “How did you get here? Is your mother coming, too?” My eyes started to water, the transition from cold to heat. Slowly the room came into focus. It was a mess. Baby toys on the carpet, shoes in a pile by the door, old newspapers scattered on an end table anchored by a bowl of peanut shells. The TV was blaring somewhere, and a baby was crying. Sourdi emerged from the kitchen, dressed in a bright pink sweat- suit emblazoned with the head of Minnie Mouse, pink slippers over her feet, the baby on her hip. She had a bruise across her cheekbone and the purple remains of a black eye. Sourdi didn’t say anything for a few seconds as she stared at me, blinking, her mouth falling open. “Where’s Ma?” “Home.” “Oh, no.” Sourdi’s face crumpled. “Is everything all right?” I couldn’t believe how dense my sister had become. We used to be able to communicate without words. “Everything’s fine . . . at home. Of course.” I tried to give her a look so that she’d understand that I had come to rescue her, but Sourdi stood rigidly in place in the doorway to the kitchen, her mouth twitching, puzzled. “Please, Little Sister, sit down,” her husband said. “Let me make you some tea.” Someone banged on the front door, three times. Before I could begin to feel annoyed that Duke couldn’t even wait five minutes, that he just had to ruin everything, my sister’s husband opened the door again. I didn’t bother to turn, instead I watched Sourdi’s eyes widen and her wide mouth pucker into an O as she gasped, “Duke!” “What’s goin’ on?” Duke said. Then everyone stared at me with such identical expressions of non- comprehension that I had to laugh. Then I couldn’t stop, because I hadn’t slept and it was so cold and my nose was running and I didn’t have any Kleenex. “I said, what the hell is going on?” Duke repeated. Sourdi’s husband approached Duke. He smiled. “You must be Nea’s —” But by now, Duke had seen Sourdi’s bruises. His mouth twisted into a sneer. “You bastard! I oughtta —” He punched Sourdi’s hus- band in the nose. Sourdi screamed, her husband bent over double. Duke drew back his fist again, but Sourdi ran forward and grabbed him. She was punching him on the chest, “Out! Out! You! I’ll call the

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police!” She tried to claw him with her nails, but Duke threw his arms up around his head. Sourdi’s husband stood up. Blood gushed from his nose all over his white shirt and tie. “Come on!” I said stupidly. “Come on, Sourdi, let’s go!” But it was pretty obvious that she didn’t want to leave. The baby began shrieking. I started crying, too. After everyone had calmed down, Duke went down the street to the 7-Eleven to get a bag of ice for Mr. Chhay, who kept saying “I’m fine, don’t worry,” even though his nose had turned a deep scarlet and was starting to swell. It turned out Sourdi’s husband hadn’t beaten her up. An economy- size box of baby wipes had fallen off the closet shelf and struck her full in the eye. While Mr. Chhay went into the bedroom to change his clothes, I sat with Sourdi in the kitchen as she tried to get the squawling baby to eat its breakfast. “Nea, what’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong with me? Don’t you get it? I was trying to help you!” Sourdi sighed as the baby spat a spoonful of the glop onto the table. “I’m a married woman. I’m not just some girl anymore. I have my own family. You understand that?” “You were crying.” I squinted at my sister. “I heard you.” “I’m gonna have another baby, you know. That’s a big step. That’s a big thing.” She said this as though it explained everything. “You sound like an old lady. You’re only twenty, for Chrissake. You don’t have to live like this. Ma is wrong. You can be anything, Sourdi.” Sourdi pinched her nose between two fingers. “Everything’s gonna be fine. We just had a little argument, but it’s O.K. We had a good talk. He understands now. I’m still gonna go to school. I haven’t changed my mind. After the baby gets a little bigger, I mean, both babies. Maybe when they start preschool.” Just then her husband came back into the kitchen. He had to use the phone to call work. His face looked like a gargoyle’s. Sourdi looked at me then, so disappointed. I knew what she was thinking. She had grown up, and I had merely grown unworthy of her love. After Duke got back with the ice, he and Sourdi’s husband shook hands. Duke kept saying, “Gosh, I’m so sorry,” and Mr. Chhay kept repeating, “No problem, don’t worry.” Then Sourdi’s husband had to go. We followed him to the driveway. My sister kissed him before he climbed into his Buick. He rolled down the window, and she leaned in and kissed him again. I turned away. I watched Duke standing in the doorway, holding the baby in his arms, cooing at its face. In his tough wannabe clothes, the

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super-wide jeans and his fancy sneakers and the chain from his wallet to his belt loops, he looked surprisingly young.

Sourdi lent us some blankets and matching his-and-hers Donald and Daisy Duck sweatshirts for the trip back, since our coats were still wet and worthless. “Don’t tell Ma I was here, O.K.?” I begged Sourdi. “We’ll be home by afternoon. She’ll just think I’m with friends or something. She doesn’t have to know, O.K.?” Sourdi pressed her full lips together into a thin line and nodded in a way that seemed as though she were answering a different question. And I knew that I couldn’t trust my sister to take my side anymore. As we pulled away from Sourdi’s house, the first icy snowflakes began to fall across the windshield. Sourdi stood in the driveway with the baby on her hip. She waved to us as the snow swirled around her like ashes. She had made her choice, and she hadn’t chosen me.

Sourdi told me a story once about a magic serpent, the Naga, with a mouth so large, it could swallow people whole. Our ancestors carved Naga into the stones of Angkor Wat to scare away demons. Sourdi said people used to believe they could come alive in times of great evil and protect the temples. They could eat armies. I wished I was a Naga. I would have swallowed the whole world in one gulp. But I have no magic powers. None whatsoever.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. How does your response to Nea develop over the course of the story? Is she a dynamic or a static character?

2. Explain how Nea and Sourdi serve as character foils to one another. 3. Discuss whether you think Duke is a flat or a round character. 4. What is the effect of the story’s being told from Nea’s perspective?

How might the story be different if it were told from the mother’s point of view?

5. Do you think Mr. Chhay is a good or bad husband? 6. How does the information about Nea and Sourdi’s trip through the

minefield affect your understanding of Nea’s relationship with her sister?

7. Comment on the title. Why wouldn’t an alternative like “Nea the Troublemaker” be appropriate?

8. connection to another selection. Compare the character- ization of Nea in “Saving Sourdi” and of Sammy in John Updike’s “A & P” (p. 334). In what sense do both characters see themselves as rescuers?

melville / bartleby, the scrivener 85

Herman Melville (1819–1891)

Hoping to improve his distressed financial situation, Herman Melville left New York and went to sea as a young common sailor. He returned to become an uncommon writer. His experiences at sea became the basis for his early novels: Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), and White-Jacket (1850). Ironically, with the publication of his mas- terpiece, Moby-Dick (1851), Melville lost the popular success he had enjoyed with his ear- lier books because his readers were not ready for its philosophical complexity. Although he wrote more, Melville’s works were read less and slipped into obscurity. His final short novel, Billy Budd, was not published until the 1920s, when critics rediscovered him. In “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Melville presents a quiet clerk in a law office whose baffling “passive resistance” disrupts the life of his employer, a man who attempts to make sense of Bartleby’s refusal to behave reasonably.

Bartleby, the Scrivener 1853

A Story of Wall Street

I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations, for the last thirty years, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, as yet, nothing, that I know of, has ever been written — I mean, the law-copyists, or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and pri- vately, and, if I pleased, could relate diverse histories, at which good- natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners, for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw, or heard of. While, of other law-copyists, I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist, for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascer- tainable, except from the original sources, and, in his case, those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report, which will appear in the sequel. Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make some mention of myself, my employés, my business, my cham- bers, and general surroundings, because some such description is

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented. Imprimis:° I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never address a jury, or in any way draw down public applause; but, in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor,° a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat; for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion. Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permit- ted to be rash here and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitu- tion, as a —— premature act; inasmuch as I had counted upon a life- lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years. But this is by the way. My chambers were up stairs, at No. — Wall Street. At one end, they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious skylight shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than other- wise, deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” But, if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if noth- ing more. In that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spyglass to bring out its lurking beauties, but, for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window-panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern. At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an

Imprimis: In the first place. John Jacob Astor (1763–1848): An enormously wealthy American capitalist.

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office-boy. First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth, they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman, of about my own age — that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, merid- ian — his dinner hour — it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing — but, as it were, with a gradual wane — till six o’clock, p.m., or thereabouts; after which, I saw no more of the propri- etor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many singular coinci- dences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among which was the fact, that, exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that critical moment, began the daily period when I considered his business capaci- ties as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutely idle, or averse to business then; far from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents were dropped there after twelve o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless, and sadly given to making blots in the afternoon, but, some days, he went further, and was rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with augmented blazonry, as if can- nel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sand-box; in mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them on the floor in a sudden pas- sion; stood up, and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most indecorous manner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o’clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature, too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easily to be matched — for these reasons, I was willing to overlook his eccen- tricities, though, indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this very gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest and most reverential of men in the morning, yet, in the afternoon, he was disposed, upon provocation, to be slightly rash with his tongue — in fact, insolent. Now, valuing his morning services as I did, and resolved not to lose them — yet, at the same time, made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve o’clock — and being a man of peace, unwill- ing by my admonitions to call forth unseemly retorts from him, I took upon me, one Saturday noon (he was always worse on Saturdays) to hint to him, very kindly, that, perhaps, now that he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in short, he need not come to

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my chambers after twelve o’clock, but, dinner over, had best go home to his lodgings, and rest himself till tea-time. But no; he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured me — gesticulating with a long ruler at the other end of the room — that if his services in the morning were useful, how indispensable, then, in the afternoon? “With submission, sir,” said Turkey, on this occasion, “I consider myself your right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy my columns; but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and gal- lantly charge the foe, thus” — and he made a violent thrust with the ruler. “But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I. “True; but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray hairs. Old age — even if it blot the page — is honorable. With submission, sir, we both are getting old.” This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all events, I saw that go he would not. So, I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it that, during the afternoon, he had to do with my less important papers. Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man, of about five-and-twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers — ambition and indi- gestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indiges- tion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked. Though of a very inge- nious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite adjustment, by final pieces of folded blotting-paper. But no invention would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table-lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk, then he declared that it stopped the circu- lation in his arms. If now he lowered the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then there was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the matter was, Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted anything, it was to be rid of a scrivener’s table alto- gether. Among the manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fond- ness he had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed, I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasion- ally did a little business at the justices’ courts, and was not unknown on

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the steps of the Tombs.° I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged title-deed, a bill. But, with all his failings, and the annoyances he caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers. Whereas, with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily, and smell of eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable, his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another matter. Concern- ing his coats, I reasoned with him; but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man with so small an income could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for red ink. One winter day, I presented Turkey with a highly respectable-looking coat of my own — a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him — upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, pre- cisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a man whom prosperity harmed. Though, concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey, I had my own private surmises, yet, touching Nippers, I was well persuaded that, whatever might be his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a tem- perate young man. But indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and, at his birth, charged him so thoroughly with an irritable, brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless. When I consider how, amid the stillness of my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk, and move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the table were a perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him, I plainly perceive that, for Nippers, brandy-and-water were altogether superfluous. It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar cause — indiges- tion — the irritability and consequent nervousness of Nippers were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon he was comparatively mild. So that, Turkey’s paroxysms only coming on about twelve o’clock,

the Tombs: A jail in New York City.

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I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved each other, like guards. When Nippers’ was on, Turkey’s was off; and vice versa. This was a good natural arrangement, under the circumstances. Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad, some twelve years old. His father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office, as stu- dent at law, errand-boy, cleaner, and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth, the whole noble sci- ence of the law was contained in a nutshell. Not the least among the employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one which he discharged with the most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers. Copying lawpapers being proverbially a dry, husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs, to be had at the numerous stalls nigh the Cus- tom House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake — small, flat, round, and very spicy — after which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning, when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers — indeed, they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny — the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders and flurried rashness of Turkey, was his once moistening a ginger-cake between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage, for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then. But he mollified me by making an oriental bow, and saying — “With submission, sir, it was generous of me to find you in statio- nery on my own account.” Now my original business — that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and drawer-up of recondite documents of all sorts — was considerably increased by receiving the Master’s office. There was now great work for scriveners. Not only must I push the clerks already with me, but I must have additional help. In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morn- ing stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now — pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby. After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the fiery one of Nippers. I should have stated before that ground-glass folding-doors divided my premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself. According to my humor, I threw open these doors, or closed them. I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors,

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but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet man within easy call, in case any trifling thing was to be done. I placed his desk close up to a small side-window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy brickyards and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some light. Within three feet of the panes was a wall, and the light came down from far above, between two lofty build- ings, as from a very small opening in a dome. Still further to a satisfac- tory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice. And thus, in a manner, privacy and society were conjoined. At first, Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sunlight and by candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically. It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener’s business to ver- ify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that, to some san- guine temperaments, it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet, Byron, would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand. Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose. One object I had, in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen, was, to avail myself of his services on such trivial occa- sions. It was on the third day, I think, of his being with me, and before any necessity had arisen for having his own writing examined, that, being much hurried to complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my haste and natural expectancy of instant compli- ance, I sat with my head bent over the original on my desk, and my right hand sideways, and somewhat nervously extended with the copy, so that, immediately upon emerging from his retreat, Bartleby might snatch it and proceed to business without the least delay. In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do — namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when, without mov- ing from his privacy, Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.” I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Imme- diately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the

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clearest tone I could assume; but in quite as clear a one came the previ- ous reply, “I would prefer not to.” “Prefer not to,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride. “What do you mean? Are you moonstruck? I want you to help me compare this sheet here — take it,” and I thrust it towards him. “I would prefer not to,” said he. I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience, or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been anything ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors. I stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on with his own writing, and then reseated myself at my desk. This is very strange, thought I. What had one best do? But my business hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the present, reserving it for my future leisure. So, calling Nippers from the other room, the paper was speedily examined. A few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy documents, being quadruplicates of a week’s testimony taken before me in my High Court of Chancery. It became necessary to examine them. It was an important suit, and great accuracy was imperative. Having all things arranged, I called Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut, from the next room, meaning to place the four copies in the hands of my four clerks, while I should read from the original. Accordingly, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut had taken their seats in a row, each with his document in his hand, when I called to Bartleby to join this interesting group. “Bartleby! quick, I am waiting.” I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and soon he appeared standing at the entrance of his hermitage. “What is wanted?” said he, mildly. “The copies, the copies,” said I, hurriedly. “We are going to examine them. There” — and I held towards him the fourth quadruplicate. “I would prefer not to,” he said, and gently disappeared behind the screen. For a few moments I was turned into a pillar of salt, standing at the head of my seated column of clerks. Recovering myself, I advanced towards the screen, and demanded the reason for such extraordinary conduct. “Why do you refuse?” “I would prefer not to.” With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but, in a wonderful manner, touched and discon- certed me. I began to reason with him.

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“These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor sav- ing to you, because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not so? Will you not speak? Answer!” “I prefer not to,” he replied in a flute-like tone. It seemed to me that, while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramount consider- ation prevailed with him to reply as he did. “You are decided, then, not to comply with my request — a request made according to common usage and common sense?” He briefly gave me to understand, that on that point my judgment was sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible. It is not seldom the case that, when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, won- derful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind. “Turkey,” said I, “what do you think of this? Am I not right?” “With submission, sir,” said Turkey, in his blandest tone, “I think that you are.” “Nippers,” said I, “what do you think of it?” “I think I should kick him out of the office.” (The reader of nice perceptions will have perceived that, it being morning, Turkey’s answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but Nippers replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous sentence, Nippers’ ugly mood was on duty, and Turkey’s off.) “Ginger Nut,” said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my behalf, “what do you think of it?” “I think, sir, he’s a little luny,” replied Ginger Nut, with a grin. “You hear what they say,” said I, turning towards the screen, “come forth and do your duty.” But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity. But once more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little trouble we made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though at every page or two Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion, that this proceed- ing was quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out, between his set teeth, occa- sional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the screen. And for his (Nippers’) part, this was the first and the last time he would do another man’s business without pay. Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to everything but his own peculiar business there.

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Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy work. His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his ways narrowly. I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed, that he never went anywhere. As yet I had never, of my personal knowledge, known him to be outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner. At about eleven o’clock though, in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut would advance toward the opening in Bartleby’s screen, as if silently beckoned thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The boy would then leave the office, jingling a few pence, and reappear with a handful of ginger-nuts, which he delivered in the hermitage, receiving two of the cakes for his trouble. He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly speaking; he must be a vegetarian, then, but no; he never eats even veg- etables, he eats nothing but ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in reveries concerning the probable effects upon the human constitution of living entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger-nuts are so called, because they contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and the final flavoring one. Now, what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby. Probably he pre- ferred it should have none. Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity, then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply pur- chase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with me. The passiveness of Bartleby some- times irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition — to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own. But, indeed, I might as well have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap. But one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following little scene ensued: “Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I will compare them with you.” “I would prefer not to.” “How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?” No answer. I threw open the folding-doors nearby, and turning upon Turkey and Nippers, exclaimed:

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“Bartleby a second time says, he won’t examine his papers. What do you think of it, Turkey?” It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass boiler; his bald head steaming; his hands reeling among his blotted papers. “Think of it?” roared Turkey. “I think I’ll just step behind his screen, and black his eyes for him!” So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugi- listic position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey’s combativeness after dinner. “Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what Nippers has to say. What do you think of it, Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately dis- missing Bartleby?” “Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite unusual, and, indeed, unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim.” “Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely changed your mind, then — you speak very gently of him now.” “All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is effects of beer — Nippers and I dined together to-day. You see how gentle I am, sir. Shall I go and black his eyes?” “You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey,” I replied; “pray, put up your fists.” I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt addi- tional incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against again. I remembered that Bartleby never left the office. “Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step around to the Post Office, won’t you?” (it was but a three minutes’ walk) “and see if there is anything for me.” “I would prefer not to.” “You will not?” “I prefer not.” I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind inveteracy returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight? — my hired clerk? What added thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he will be sure to refuse to do? “Bartleby!” No answer. “Bartleby,” in a louder tone. No answer. “Bartleby,” I roared. Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage. “Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.”

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“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared. “Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely-severe self- possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible ret- ribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner- hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day, suf- fering much from perplexity and distress of mind. Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that it soon became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scriv- ener, by the name of Bartleby, had a desk there; that he copied for me at the usual rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was permanently exempt from examining the work done by him, that duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, out of compliment, doubtless, to their superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was never, on any account, to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally under- stood that he would “prefer not to” — in other words, that he would refuse point-blank. As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circum- stances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was this — he was always there — first in the morning, continually through the day, and the last at night. I had a singular confidence in his honesty. I felt my most precious papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes, to be sure, I could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic passions with him. For it was exceeding difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard-of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby’s part under which he remained in my office. Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some papers. Of course, from behind the screen the usual answer, “I prefer not to,” was sure to come; and then, how could a human creature, with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness — such unreasonableness? However, every added repulse of this sort which I received only tended to lessen the probability of my repeating the inadvertence. Here it must be said, that, according to the custom of most legal gentlemen occupying chambers in densely populated law buildings, there were several keys to my door. One was kept by a woman residing in the attic, which person weekly scrubbed and daily swept and dusted my apartments. Another was kept by Turkey for convenience sake. The third I sometimes carried in my own pocket. The fourth I knew not who had.

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Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a celebrated preacher, and finding myself rather early on the ground I thought I would walk round to my chambers for a while. Luckily I had my key with me; but upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted by something inserted from the inside. Quite surprised, I called out; when to my consternation a key was turned from within; and thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the door ajar, the apparition of Bartleby appeared, in his shirt-sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered desha- bille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then, and — preferred not admitting me at present. In a brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had better walk round the block two or three times, and by that time he would probably have concluded his affairs. Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance, yet withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion against the mild effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own premises. Furthermore, I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my office in his shirt- sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of a Sunday morning. Was anything amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question. It was not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there? — copying? Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by any secular occupation violate the proprieties of the day. Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless curios- ity, at last I returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted my key, opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked round anx- iously, peeped behind his screen; but it was very plain that he was gone. Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat of a rickety old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a black- ing box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the

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thought came sweeping across me, what miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall Street is deserted as Petra;° and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building, too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous — a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage?° For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging mel- ancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fan- cyings — chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain — led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener’s pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shiv- ering winding-sheet. Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key in open sight left in the lock. I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity, thought I; besides, the desk is mine, and its contents, too, so I will make bold to look within. Everything was methodically arranged, the papers smoothly placed. The pigeon-holes were deep, and removing the files of documents, I groped into their recesses. Presently I felt something there, and dragged it out. It was an old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and knotted. I opened it, and saw it was a saving’s bank. I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that, though at intervals he had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading — no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating-house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey; or tea and cof- fee even, like other men; that he never went anywhere in particular that I could learn; never went out for a walk, unless, indeed, that was the case at

Petra: An ancient Arabian city whose ruins were discovered in 1812. Marius . . . of Carthage: Gaius Marius (157–86 B.C.), an exiled Roman general, sought refuge in the African city-state of Carthage, which was destroyed by the Romans in the Third Punic War.

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present; that he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill-health. And more than all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid — how shall I call it? — of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of his. Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered fact, that he made my office his constant abiding place and home, and not forgetful of his morbid moodiness; revolving all these things, a prudential feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in propor- tion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scriv- ener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach. I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity Church that morning. Somehow, the things I had seen disqualified me for the time from church-going. I walked homeward, thinking what I would do with Bartleby. Finally, I resolved upon this — I would put certain calm questions to him the next morning, touching his history, etc., and if he declined to answer them openly and unreservedly (and I supposed he would prefer not), then to give him a twenty dollar bill over and above whatever I might owe him, and tell him his services were no longer required; but that if in any other way I could assist him, I would be happy to do so, especially if he desired to return to his native place, wherever that might be, I would willingly help to defray the expenses. Moreover, if, after reaching home, he found himself at any time in want of aid, a letter from him would be sure of a reply. The next morning came. “Bartleby,” said I, gently calling to him behind his screen. No reply. “Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone, “come here; I am not going to ask you to do anything you would prefer not to do — I simply wish to speak to you.”

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Upon this he noiselessly slid into view. “Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?” “I would prefer not to.” “Will you tell me anything about yourself?” “I would prefer not to.” “But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly towards you.” He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of Cicero, which, as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head. “What is your answer, Bartleby?” said I, after waiting a considerable time for a reply, during which his countenance remained immovable, only there was the faintest conceivable tremor of the white attenuated mouth. “At present I prefer to give no answer,” he said, and retired into his hermitage. It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner, on this occasion, nettled me. Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain, but his perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from me. Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my office, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlor- nest of mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat down and said: “Bartleby, never mind, then, about revealing your his- tory; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this office. Say now, you will help to examine papers tomor- row or next day: in short, say now, that in a day or two you will begin to be a little reasonable: — say so, Bartleby.” “At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply. Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers approached. He seemed suffering from an unusually bad night’s rest, induced by severer indigestion than common. He overheard those final words of Bartleby. “Prefer not, eh?” gritted Nippers — “I’d prefer him, if I were you, sir,” addressing me — “I’d prefer him; I’d give him preferences, the stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray, that he prefers not to do now?” Bartleby moved not a limb. “Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I’d prefer that you would withdraw for the present.” Somehow, of late, I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word “prefer” upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper

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aberration might it not yet produce? This apprehension had not been without efficacy in determining me to summary measures. As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing, Turkey blandly and deferentially approached. “With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday I was thinking about Bar- tleby here, and I think that if he would but prefer to take a quart of good ale every day, it would do much towards mending him, and enabling him to assist in examining his papers.” “So you have got the word, too,” said I, slightly excited. “With submission, what word, sir?” asked Turkey, respectfully crowding himself into the contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing, making me jostle the scrivener. “What word, sir?” “I would prefer to be left alone here,” said Bartleby, as if offended at being mobbed in his privacy. “That’s the word, Turkey,” said I — “that’s it.” “Oh, prefer? oh yes — queer word. I never use it myself. But, sir, as I was saying, if he would but prefer —” “Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.” “Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I should.” As he opened the folding-door to retire, Nippers at his desk caught a glimpse of me, and asked whether I would prefer to have a certain paper copied on blue paper or white. He did not in the least roguishly accent the word “prefer.” It was plain that it involuntarily rolled from his tongue. I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks. But I thought it prudent not to break the dismission at once. The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon doing no more writing. “Why, how now? what next?” exclaimed I, “do no more writing?” “No more.” “And what is the reason?” “Do you not see the reason for yourself?” he indifferently replied. I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and glazed. Instantly it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence in copying by his dim window for the first few weeks of his stay with me might have temporarily impaired his vision. I was touched. I said something in condolence with him. I hinted that of course he did wisely in abstaining from writing for a while; and urged him to embrace that opportunity of taking wholesome exercise in the open air. This, however, he did not do. A few days after this, my other clerks being absent, and being in a great hurry to dispatch certain letters by the mail, I thought that, having nothing else earthly to do, Bartleby would surely be less inflexible than usual, and carry these letters to the Post Office. But he blankly declined. So, much to my inconvenience, I went myself.

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Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby’s eyes improved or not, I could not say. To all appearance, I thought they did. But when I asked him if they did, he vouchsafed no answer. At all events, he would do no copying. At last, in replying to my urgings, he informed me that he had permanently given up copying. “What!” exclaimed I; “suppose your eyes should get entirely well — better than ever before — would you not copy then?” “I have given up copying,” he answered, and slid aside. He remained as ever, a fixture in my chamber. Nay — if that were possible — he became still more of a fixture than before. What was to be done? He would do nothing in the office; why should he stay there? In plain fact, he had now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace, but afflictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occasioned me uneasiness. If he would but have named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have written, and urged their taking the poor fellow away to some conve- nient retreat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid-Atlantic. At length, necessities connected with my business tyrannized over all other considerations. Decently as I could, I told Bartleby that in six days’ time he must unconditionally leave the office. I warned him to take measures, in the interval, for procuring some other abode. I offered to assist him in this endeavor, if he himself would but take the first step towards a removal. “And when you finally quit me, Bartleby,” added I, “I shall see that you go not away entirely unprovided. Six days from this hour, remember.” At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo! Bartleby was there. I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself; advanced slowly towards him, touched his shoulder, and said, “The time has come; you must quit this place; I am sorry for you; here is money; but you must go.” “I would prefer not,” he replied, with his back still towards me. “You must.” He remained silent. Now I had an unbounded confidence in this man’s common hon- esty. He had frequently restored to me sixpences and shillings carelessly dropped upon the floor, for I am apt to be very reckless in such shirt- button affairs. The proceeding, then, which followed will not be deemed extraordinary. “Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars on account; here are thirty-two, the odd twenty are yours — Will you take it?” and I handed the bills towards him. But he made no motion. “I will leave them here, then,” putting them under a weight on the table. Then taking my hat and cane and going to the door, I tranquilly turned and added — “After you have removed your things from these offices, Bartleby, you will of course lock the door — since every one is now

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gone for the day but you — and if you please, slip your key underneath the mat, so that I may have it in the morning. I shall not see you again; so good-bye to you. If, hereafter, in your new place of abode, I can be of any service to you, do not fail to advise me by letter. Good-bye, Bartleby, and fare you well.” But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room. As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid of Bartleby. Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness. There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring, and striding to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart — as an inferior genius might have done — I assumed the ground that depart he must; and upon that assumption built all I had to say. The more I thought over my procedure, the more I was charmed with it. Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts — I had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever — but only in theory. How it would prove in practice — there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby’s departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby’s. The great point was, not whether I had assumed that he would quit me, but whether he would prefer to do so. He was more a man of preferences than assumptions. After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities pro and con. One moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure, and Bartleby would be found all alive at my office as usual; the next moment it seemed certain that I should find his chair empty. And so I kept veer- ing about. At the corner of Broadway and Canal Street, I saw quite an excited group of people standing in earnest conversation. “I’ll take odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed. “Doesn’t go? — done!” said I, “put up your money.” I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when I remembered that this was an election day. The words I had overheard bore no reference to Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate for the mayoralty. In my intent frame of mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all Broadway shared in my excitement, and were debating the same question with me. I passed on, very thankful that the uproar of the street screened my momentary absent-mindedness. As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood listening for a moment. All was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm;

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he indeed must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I was almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response a voice came to me from within — “Not yet; I am occupied.” It was Bartleby. I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by summer lightning; at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, when he fell. “Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me — this, too, I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there anything further that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby would depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding would in a sin- gular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doctrine of assumption. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with him again. “Bartleby,” said I, entering the office, with a quietly severe expression, “I am seriously displeased. I am pained, Bartleby. I had thought better of you. I had imagined you of such a gentlemanly organization, that in any delicate dilemma a slight hint would suffice — in short, an assumption. But it appears I am deceived. Why,” I added, unaffectedly starting, “you have not even touched that money yet,” pointing to it, just where I had left it the evening previous. He answered nothing. “Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. “I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied, gently emphasizing the not. “What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?” He answered nothing.

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“Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you copy a small paper for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or step round to the Post Office? In a word, will you do any- thing at all, to give a coloring to your refusal to depart the premises?” He silently retired into his hermitage. I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it but prudent to check myself at present from further demonstrations. Bartleby and I were alone. I remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt° in the solitary office of the latter; and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams, and imprudently permitting himself to get wildly excited, was at unawares hurried into his fatal act — an act which certainly no man could possi- bly deplore more than the actor himself. Often it had occurred to me in my ponderings upon the subject that had that altercation taken place in the public street, or at a private residence, it would not have terminated as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic asso- ciations — an uncarpeted office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance — this it must have been, which greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt. But when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him. How? Why, simply by recalling the divine injunction: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.” Yes, this it was that saved me. Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and pru- dent principle — a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have commit- ted murder for jealousy’s sake, and anger’s sake, and hatred’s sake, and selfishness’ sake, and spiritual pride’s sake; but no man, that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity’s sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my exasper- ated feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently construing his con- duct. Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don’t mean anything; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be indulged. I endeavored, also, immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to comfort my despondency. I tried to fancy, that in the course of the morning, at such time as might prove agreeable to him, Bartleby, of his own free accord, would emerge from his hermitage and take up some decided line of march in the direction of the door. But no. Half- past twelve o’clock came; Turkey began to glow in the face, overturn his inkstand, and become generally obstreperous; Nippers abated down

Adams . . . Colt: Samuel Adams was killed by John C. Colt, brother of the gun maker, during a quarrel in 1842. After a sensational court case, Colt committed suicide just before he was to be hanged.

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into quietude and courtesy; Ginger Nut munched his noon apple; and Bartleby remained standing at his window in one of his profoundest dead-wall reveries. Will it be credited? Ought I to acknowledge it? That afternoon I left the office without saying one further word to him. Some days now passed, during which, at leisure intervals I looked a little into “Edwards on the Will,” and “Priestley on Necessity.”° Under the circumstances, those books induced a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine, touching the scriv- ener, had been all predestined from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here. At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestined purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain. I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have con- tinued with me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my professional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous. Though to be sure, when I reflected upon it, it was not strange that people entering my office should be struck by the peculiar aspect of the unaccountable Bartleby, and so be tempted to throw out some sinister observations concerning him. Sometimes an attorney, having business with me, and calling at my office, and finding no one but the scrivener there, would undertake to obtain some sort of precise information from him touch- ing my whereabouts; but without heeding his idle talk, Bartleby would remain standing immovable in the middle of the room. So after contem- plating him in that position for a time, the attorney would depart, no wiser than he came. Also, when a reference was going on, and the room full of lawyers and witnesses, and business driving fast, some deeply-occupied legal gentleman present, seeing Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to run round to his (the legal gentleman’s) office and fetch some papers for him. Thereupon, Bartleby would tranquilly decline, and yet remain idle as before. Then the lawyer would give a great stare, and turn to me. And what could I say? At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me very much. And as the idea came upon me of

“Edwards . . . Necessity”: Jonathan Edwards, in Freedom of the Will (1754), and Joseph Priestley, in Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity (1777), both argued that human beings do not have free will.

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his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keeping occupying my chambers, and denying my authority; and perplexing my visitors; and scandalizing my professional reputation; and casting a general gloom over the premises; keeping soul and body together to the last upon his savings (for doubtless he spent but half a dime a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me, and claim possession of my office by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all these dark anticipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends continually intruded their relentless remarks upon the apparition in my room; a great change was wrought in me. I resolved to gather all my faculties together, and forever rid me of this intolerable incubus. Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end, I first simply suggested to Bartleby the propriety of his permanent depar- ture. In a calm and serious tone, I commended the idea to his careful and mature consideration. But, having taken three days to meditate upon it, he apprised me, that his original determination remained the same; in short, that he still preferred to abide with me. What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my coat to the last button. What shall I do? what ought I to do? what does conscience say I should do with this man, or, rather, ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall. But how? You will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive mortal — you will not thrust such a helpless creature out of your door? you will not dishonor yourself by such cruelty? No, I will not, I cannot do that. Rather would I let him live and die here, and then mason up his remains in the wall. What, then, will you do? For all your coaxing, he will not budge. Bribes he leaves under your own paper-weight on your table; in short, it is quite plain that he prefers to cling to you. Then something severe, something unusual must be done. What! surely you will not have him collared by a constable, and commit his innocent pallor to the common jail? And upon what ground could you procure such a thing to be done? — a vagrant, is he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to budge? It is because he will not be a vagrant, then, that you seek to count him as a vagrant. That is too absurd. No visible means of support: there I have him. Wrong again: for indubitably he does support himself, and that is the only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his possessing the means so to do. No more, then. Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere, and give him fair notice, that if I find him on my new premises I will then proceed against him as a common trespasser. Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: “I find these chambers too far from the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a word, I propose to remove my offices next week, and shall no longer require your services. I tell you this now, in order that you may seek another place.” He made no reply, and nothing more was said. On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers, and having but little furniture, everything was removed in

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a few hours. Throughout, the scrivener remained standing behind the screen, which I directed to be removed the last thing. It was withdrawn; and, being folded up like a huge folio, left him the motionless occupant of a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him a moment, while something from within me upbraided me. I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket — and — and my heart in my mouth. “Good-bye, Bartleby; I am going — good-bye, and God some way bless you; and take that,” slipping something in his hand. But it dropped upon the floor, and then — strange to say — I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of. Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door locked, and started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms, after any little absence, I would pause at the threshold for an instant, and attentively listen, ere applying my key. But these fears were needless. Bartleby never came nigh me. I thought all was going well, when a perturbed-looking stranger vis- ited me, inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at No. — Wall Street. Full of forebodings, I replied that I was. “Then, sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you are respon- sible for the man you left there. He refuses to do any copying; he refuses to do anything; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the premises.” “I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquillity, but an inward tremor, “but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me — he is no rela- tion or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me responsible for him.” “In mercy’s name, who is he?” “I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I employed him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some time past.” “I shall settle him, then — good morning, sir.” Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and, though I often felt a charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain squeamishness, of I know not what, withheld me. All is over with him, by this time, thought I, at last, when, through another week, no further intelligence reached me. But, coming to my room the day after, I found several persons waiting at my door in a high state of nervous excitement. “That’s the man — here he comes,” cried the foremost one, whom I recognized as the lawyer who had previously called upon me alone. “You must take him away, sir, at once,” cried a portly person among them, advancing upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord of No. — Wall Street. “These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any lon- ger; Mr. B ——,” pointing to the lawyer, “has turned him out of his room, and he now persists in haunting the building generally, sitting upon the

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banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by night. Every- body is concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some fears are enter- tained of a mob; something you must do, and that without delay.” Aghast at this torrent, I fell back before it, and would fain have locked myself in my new quarters. In vain I persisted that Bartleby was nothing to me — no more than to any one else. In vain — I was the last person known to have anything to do with him, and they held me to the terrible account. Fearful, then, of being exposed in the papers (as one person present obscurely threatened), I considered the matter, and, at length, said, that if the lawyer would give me a confidential interview with the scrivener, in his (the lawyer’s) own room, I would, that after- noon, strive my best to rid them of the nuisance they complained of. Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby silently sitting upon the banister at the landing. “What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I. “Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied. I motioned him into the lawyer’s room, who then left us. “Bartleby,” said I, “are you aware that you are the cause of great trib- ulation to me, by persisting in occupying the entry after being dismissed from the office?” No answer. “Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do some- thing, or something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?” “No; I would prefer not to make any change.” “Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?” “There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.” “Too much confinement,” I cried, “why, you keep yourself confined all the time!” “I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at once. “How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight in that.” “I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.” His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge. “Well, then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.” “No, I would prefer to be doing something else.” “How, then, would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation — how would that suit you?” “Not at all. It does not strike me that there is anything definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.”

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“Stationary you shall be, then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and, for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him, fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound — indeed, I am bound — to — to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance. Despairing of all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him, when a final thought occurred to me — one which had not been wholly unindulged before. “Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting circumstances, “will you go home with me now — not to my office, but my dwelling — and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away.” “No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all.” I answered nothing; but, effectually dodging every one by the sud- denness and rapidity of my flight, rushed from the building, ran up Wall Street towards Broadway, and, jumping into the first omnibus, was soon removed from pursuit. As soon as tranquillity returned, I distinctly per- ceived that I had now done all that I possibly could, both in respect to the demands of the landlord and his tenants, and with regard to my own desire and sense of duty, to benefit Bartleby, and shield him from rude persecution. I now strove to be entirely care-free and quiescent; and my conscience justified me in the attempt; though, indeed, it was not so suc- cessful as I could have wished. So fearful was I of being again hunted out by the incensed landlord and his exasperated tenants, that, surrender- ing my business to Nippers, for a few days, I drove about the upper part of the town and through the suburbs, in my rockaway; crossed over to Jersey City and Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville and Astoria. In fact, I almost lived in my rockaway for the time. When again I entered my office, lo, a note from the landlord lay upon the desk. I opened it with trembling hands. It informed me that the writer had sent to the police, and had Bartleby removed to the Tombs as a vagrant. Moreover, since I knew more about him than any one else, he wished me to appear at that place, and make a suitable statement of the facts. These tidings had a conflicting effect upon me. At first I was indignant; but, at last, almost approved. The landlord’s energetic, sum- mary disposition, had led him to adopt a procedure which I do not think I would have decided upon myself; and yet, as a last resort, under such peculiar circumstances, it seemed the only plan. As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told that he must be conducted to the Tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but, in his pale, unmoving way, silently acquiesced. Some of the compassionate and curious by-standers joined the party; and headed by one of the constables arm-in-arm with Bartleby, the silent procession filed its way through all the noise, and heat, and joy of the roaring thoroughfares at noon.

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The same day I received the note, I went to the Tombs, or, to speak more properly, the Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I stated the purpose of my call, and was informed that the individual I described was, indeed, within. I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly honest man, and greatly to be compassionated, however unac- countably eccentric. I narrated all I knew, and closed by suggesting the idea of letting him remain in as indulgent confinement as possible, till something less harsh might be done — though, indeed, I hardly knew what. At all events, if nothing else could be decided upon, the almshouse must receive him. I then begged to have an interview. Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and, especially, in the inclosed grass-platted yards thereof. And so I found him there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face towards a high wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves. “Bartleby!” “I know you,” he said, without looking round — “and I want nothing to say to you.” “It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I, keenly pained at his implied suspicion. “And to you, this should not be so vile a place. Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here. And see, it is not so sad a place as one might think. Look, there is the sky, and here is the grass.” “I know where I am,” he replied, but would say nothing more, and so I left him. As I entered the corridor again, a broad meat-like man, in an apron, accosted me, and, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, said — “Is that your friend?” “Yes.” “Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare, that’s all.” “Who are you?” asked I, not knowing what to make of such an unofficially speaking person in such a place. “I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to provide them with something good to eat.” “Is this so?” said I, turning the turnkey. He said it was. “Well, then,” said I, slipping some silver into the grub-man’s hands (for so they called him), “I want you to give particular attention to my friend there; let him have the best dinner you can get. And you must be as polite to him as possible.” “Introduce me, will you?” said the grub-man, looking at me with an expression which seemed to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to give a specimen of his breeding.

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Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I acquiesced; and, asking the grub-man his name, went up with him to Bartleby. “Bartleby, this is a friend; you will find him very useful to you.” “Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant,” said the grub-man, making a low salutation behind his apron. “Hope you find it pleasant here, sir; nice grounds — cool apartments — hope you’ll stay with us some time — try to make it agreeable. What will you have for dinner to-day?” “I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby, turning away. “It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners.” So saying, he slowly moved to the other side of the inclosure, and took up a position fronting the deadwall. “How’s this?” said the grub-man, addressing me with a stare of astonishment. “He’s odd, ain’t he?” “I think he is a little deranged,” said I, sadly. “Deranged? deranged is it? Well, now, upon my word, I thought that friend of yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale and genteel- like, them forgers. I can’t help pity ’em — can’t help it, sir. Did you know Monroe Edwards?” he added, touchingly, and paused. Then, laying his hand piteously on my shoulder, sighed, “he died of consumption at Sing-Sing. So you weren’t acquainted with Monroe?” “No, I was never socially acquainted with any forgers. But I cannot stop longer. Look to my friend yonder. You will not lose by it. I will see you again.” Some few days after this, I again obtained admission to the Tombs, and went through the corridors in quest of Bartleby; but without finding him. “I saw him coming from his cell not long ago,” said a turnkey, “may be he’s gone to loiter in the yards.” So I went in that direction. “Are you looking for the silent man?” said another turnkey, passing me. “Yonder he lies — sleeping in the yard there. ’Tis not twenty minutes since I saw him lie down.” The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common prisoners. The surrounding walls, of amazing thickness, kept off all sounds behind them. The Egyptian character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic, through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung. Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bar- tleby. But nothing stirred. I paused; then went close up to him; stooped over, and saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise he seemed pro- foundly sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him. I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet. The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. “His dinner is ready. Won’t he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?”

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250 “Lives without dining,” said I, and closed the eyes. “Eh! — He’s asleep, ain’t he?” “With kings and counselors,”° murmured I. There would seem little need for proceeding further in this history. Imagination will readily supply the meagre recital of poor Bartleby’s interment. But, ere parting with the reader, let me say, that if this little narrative has sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby was, and what manner of life he led prior to the present narra- tor’s making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that in such curiosity I fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I hardly know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor, which came to my ear a few months after the scrivener’s decease. Upon what basis it rested, I could never ascertain; and hence, how true it is I cannot now tell. But, inasmuch as this vague report has not been without a certain suggestive interest to me, however sad, it may prove the same with some others; and so I will briefly mention it. The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, hardly can I express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring — the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity — he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death. Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

“With kings and counselors”: From Job 3:13–14: “then had I been at rest, / With kings and counselors of the earth, / which built desolate places for themselves.”

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. How does the lawyer’s description of himself serve to characterize him? Why is it significant that he is a lawyer? Are his understandings and judgments about Bartleby and himself always sound?

2. Why do you think Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut are introduced to the reader before Bartleby?

3. Describe Bartleby’s physical characteristics. How is his physical description a foreshadowing of what happens to him?

4. How does Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” affect the routine of the lawyer and his employees?

5. What is the significance of the subtitle: “A Story of Wall Street”?

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6. Who is the protagonist? Whose story is it? 7. Does the lawyer change during the story? Does Bartleby? Who is

the antagonist? 8. What motivates Bartleby’s behavior? Why do you think Melville

withholds the information about the Dead Letter Office until the end of the story? Does this background adequately explain Bartleby?

9. Does Bartleby have any lasting impact on the lawyer? 10. Do you think Melville sympathizes more with Bartleby or with the

lawyer? 11. Describe the lawyer’s changing attitudes toward Bartleby. 12. Consider how this story could be regarded as a kind of protest with

nonnegotiable demands. 13. Discuss the story’s humor and how it affects your response to

Bartleby. 14. Trace your emotional reaction to Bartleby as he is revealed in the

story. 15. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Compare Bartleby’s with-

drawal from life with that of the protagonist in Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” (p. 38). Why does each character choose death?

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My role is to look at the world, get a true, not an idealized vision of it and hand it over to you in fi ctional form.

— FAY WELDON

Setting is the context in which the action of a story occurs. The major elements of setting are time, place, and the social environment that frames the characters. These elements establish the world in which the characters act. In most stories they also serve as more than backgrounds and furnishings. If we are sensitive to the contexts provided by setting, we are better able to understand the behavior of the characters and the significance of their actions. It may be tempting to read quickly through a writer’s descriptions and ignore the details of the setting once a geo- graphic location and a historic period are established. But if you read a story so impatiently, the significance of the setting may slip by you. That kind of reading is similar to traveling on interstate highways: A lot of ground gets covered, but very little is seen along the way. If we ask why a writer chooses to include certain details in a work, then we are likely to make connections that relate the details to some larger purpose, such as the story’s meaning. The final scene in Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” (p. 38) occurs in the spring, an ironic time for the action to be set because instead of rebirth for the pro- tagonist there is only death. There is usually a reason for placing a story in a particular time or location. Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (p. 85), for example, takes on

4 Setting

WEB Explore the literary element in this chapter at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

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meaning as Bartle by’s “dead-wall reveries” begin to reflect his shattered vision of life. He is surrounded by walls. A folding screen separates him from others in the office; he is isolated. The office window faces walls; there is no view to re lieve the deadening work. Bartleby faces a wall at the prison where he dies; the final wall is death. As the subtitle indicates, this is “A Story of Wall Street.” Unless the geographic location or the physi- cal details of a story are used merely as necessary props, they frequently shed light on character and action. All offices have walls, but Melville transforms the walls into an an tagonist that represents the limitations Bartleby sees and feels all around him but does not speak of. Time, location, and the physical features of a setting can all be rel- evant to the overall purpose of a story. So too is the social environment in which the characters are developed. In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (p. 55) the changes in her southern town serve as a foil for Emily’s tena- cious hold on a lost past. She is regarded as a “fallen monument,” as old- fashioned and peculiar as the “stubborn and coquettish decay” of her house. Neither she nor her house fits into the modern changes that are paving and transforming the town. Without the social context, this story would be mostly an account of a bizarre murder rather than an explora- tion of the conflicts Faulkner associated with the changing South. Set- ting enlarges the meaning of Emily’s actions. Not every story uses setting as a means of revealing mood, idea, mean- ing, or characters’ actions. Some stories have no particularly significant setting. It is entirely possible to envision a story in which two characters speak to each other about a conflict between them and little or no men- tion is made of the time or place they inhabit. If, however, a shift in setting would make a serious difference to our understanding of a story, then the setting is probably an important element in the work. Consider how different “Bartleby, the Scrivener” would be if it were set in a relaxed, pleasant, sunny town in the South rather than in the grinding, limiting materialism of Wall Street. Bartleby’s withdrawal from life would be less comprehensible and meaningful in such a setting. The setting is integral to that story. The following three stories — Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home,” Fay Weldon’s “IND AFF, or Out of Love in Sarajevo,” and A. S. Byatt’s “Baglady” — include settings that serve to shape their meanings.

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

In 1918, a year after graduating from high school in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Hemingway volunteered as an ambulance driver in World War I. At the Italian front, he was seriously wounded. This experience haunted him and many of the characters in his short stories and novels. In Our Time (1925) is a collection of short stories, including “Soldier’s Home,” that reflect some of Hemingway’s own attempts to readjust to life back

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home after the war. The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) are also about war and its impact on people’s lives. Hemingway courted vio- lence all his life in war, the bullring, the box- ing ring, and big-game hunting. When he was sixty-two years old and terminally ill with can- cer, he committed suicide. “Soldier’s Home” takes place in a small town in Oklahoma; the war, however, is never distant from the pro- tagonist’s mind as he struggles to come home again.

Soldier’s Home 1925

Krebs went to the war from a Methodist col- lege in Kansas. There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and style col- lar. He enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not return to the United States until the second division returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919. There is a picture which shows him on the Rhine with two German girls and another corporal. Krebs and the corporal look too big for their uniforms. The German girls are not beautiful. The Rhine does not show in the picture. By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. The men from the town who had been drafted had all been welcomed elaborately on their return. There had been a great deal of hysteria. Now the reaction had set in. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over. At first Krebs, who had been at Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Cham- pagne, St. Mihiel, and in the Argonne° did not want to talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actuali- ties. Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie, and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talk- ing about it. A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told. All of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only

Belleau Wood . . . Argonne: Sites of battles in World War I in which American troops were instrumental in pushing back the Germans.

Courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Photographic Collection, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston.

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thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves. His lies were quite unimportant lies and consisted in attributing to himself things other men had seen, done, or heard of, and stating as facts certain apocryphal incidents familiar to all soldiers. Even his lies were not sensational at the pool room. His acquaintances, who had heard detailed accounts of German women found chained to machine guns in the Argonne forest and who could not comprehend, or were barred by their patriotism from interest in, any German machine gunners who were not chained, were not thrilled by his stories. Krebs acquired the nausea in regard to experience that is the result of untruth or exaggeration, and when he occasionally met another man who had really been a soldier and they talked a few minutes in the dress- ing room at a dance he fell into the easy pose of the old soldier among other soldiers: that he had been badly, sickeningly frightened all the time. In this way he lost everything. During this time, it was late summer, he was sleeping late in bed, getting up to walk down town to the library to get a book, eating lunch at home, reading on the front porch until he became bored, and then walking down through the town to spend the hottest hours of the day in the cool dark of the pool room. He loved to play pool. In the evening he practiced on his clarinet, strolled down town, read, and went to bed. He was still a hero to his two young sisters. His mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it. She often came in when he was in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but her attention always wandered. His father was noncommittal. Before Krebs went away to the war he had never been allowed to drive the family motor car. His father was in the real estate business and always wanted the car to be at his command when he required it to take clients out into the country to show them a piece of farm property. The car always stood outside the First National Bank building where his father had an office on the second floor. Now, after the war, it was still the same car. Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls had grown up. But they lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or the courage to break into it. He liked to look at them, though. There were so many good-looking young girls. Most of them had their hair cut short. When he went away only little girls wore their hair like that or girls that were fast. They all wore sweaters and shirt waists with round Dutch col- lars. It was a pattern. He liked to look at them from the front porch as they walked on the other side of the street. He liked to watch them walk- ing under the shade of the trees. He liked the round Dutch collars above their sweaters. He liked their silk stockings and flat shoes. He liked their bobbed hair and the way they walked.

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When he was in town their appeal to him was not very strong. He did not like them when he saw them in the Greek’s ice cream parlor. He did not want them themselves really. They were too complicated. There was something else. Vaguely he wanted a girl but he did not want to have to work to get her. He would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did not want to have to do any courting. He did not want to tell any more lies. It wasn’t worth it. He did not want any consequences. He did not want any conse- quences ever again. He wanted to live alone without consequences. Besides he did not really need a girl. The army had taught him that. It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl. Nearly everybody did that. But it wasn’t true. You did not need a girl. That was the funny thing. First a fellow boasted how girls mean nothing to him, that he never thought of them, that they could not touch him. Then a fellow boasted that he could not get along without girls, that he had to have them all the time, that he could not go to sleep without them. That was all a lie. It was all a lie both ways. You did not need a girl unless you thought about them. He learned that in the army. Then sooner or later you always got one. When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did not have to think about it. Sooner or later it would come. He had learned that in the army. Now he would have liked a girl if she had come to him and not wanted to talk. But here at home it was all too complicated. He knew he could never get through it all again. It was not worth the trouble. That was the thing about French girls and German girls. There was not all this talking. You couldn’t talk much and you did not need to talk. It was simple and you were friends. He thought about France and then he began to think about Germany. On the whole he had liked Germany bet- ter. He did not want to leave Germany. He did not want to come home. Still, he had come home. He sat on the front porch. He liked the girls that were walking along the other side of the street. He liked the look of them much better than the French girls or the Ger- man girls. But the world they were in was not the world he was in. He would like to have one of them. But it was not worth it. They were such a nice pattern. He liked the pattern. It was exciting. But he would not go through all the talking. He did not want one badly enough. He liked to look at them all, though. It was not worth it. Not now when things were getting good again. He sat there on the porch reading a book on the war. It was a history and he was reading about all the engagements he had been in. It was the most interesting reading he had ever done. He wished there were more maps. He looked forward with a good feeling to reading all the really good histories when they would come out with good detail maps. Now he was really learning about the war. He had been a good soldier. That made a difference.

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One morning after he had been home about a month his mother came into his bedroom and sat on the bed. She smoothed her apron. “I had a talk with your father last night, Harold,” she said, “and he is willing for you to take the car out in the evenings.” “Yeah?” said Krebs, who was not fully awake. “Take the car out? Yeah?” “Yes. Your father has felt for some time that you should be able to take the car out in the evenings whenever you wished but we only talked it over last night.” “I’ll bet you made him,” Krebs said. “No. It was your father’s suggestion that we talk the matter over.” “Yeah. I’ll bet you made him,” Krebs sat up in bed. “Will you come down to breakfast, Harold?” his mother said. “As soon as I get my clothes on,” Krebs said. His mother went out of the room and he could hear her frying some- thing downstairs while he washed, shaved, and dressed to go down into the dining-room for breakfast. While he was eating breakfast his sister brought in the mail. “Well, Hare,” she said. “You old sleepyhead. What do you ever get up for?” Krebs looked at her. He liked her. She was his best sister. “Have you got the paper?” he asked. She handed him the Kansas City Star and he shucked off its brown wrapper and opened it to the sporting page. He folded the Star open and propped it against the water pitcher with his cereal dish to steady it, so he could read while he ate. “Harold,” his mother stood in the kitchen doorway, “Harold, please don’t muss up the paper. Your father can’t read his Star if it’s been mussed.” “I won’t muss it,” Krebs said. His sister sat down at the table and watched him while he read. “We’re playing indoor over at school this afternoon,” she said. “I’m going to pitch.” “Good,” said Krebs. “How’s the old wing?” “I can pitch better than lots of the boys. I tell them all you taught me. The other girls aren’t much good.” “Yeah?” said Krebs. “I tell them all you’re my beau. Aren’t you my beau, Hare?” “You bet.” “Couldn’t your brother really be your beau just because he’s your brother?” “I don’t know.” “Sure you know. Couldn’t you be my beau, Hare, if I was old enough and if you wanted to?” “Sure. You’re my girl now.” “Am I really your girl?”

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“Sure.” “Do you love me?” “Uh, huh.” “Will you love me always?” “Sure.” “Will you come over and watch me play indoor?” “Maybe.” “Aw, Hare, you don’t love me. If you loved me, you’d want to come over and watch me play indoor.” Krebs’s mother came into the dining-room from the kitchen. She carried a plate with two fried eggs and some crisp bacon on it and a plate of buckwheat cakes. “You run along, Helen,” she said. “I want to talk to Harold.” She put the eggs and bacon down in front of him and brought in a jug of maple syrup for the buckwheat cakes. Then she sat down across the table from Krebs. “I wish you’d put down the paper a minute, Harold,” she said. Krebs took down the paper and folded it. “Have you decided what you are going to do yet, Harold?” his mother said, taking off her glasses. “No,” said Krebs. “Don’t you think it’s about time?” His mother did not say this in a mean way. She seemed worried. “I hadn’t thought about it,” Krebs said. “God has some work for everyone to do,” his mother said. “There can be no idle hands in His Kingdom.” “I’m not in His Kingdom,” Krebs said. “We are all of us in His Kingdom.” Krebs felt embarrassed and resentful as always. “I’ve worried about you so much, Harold,” his mother went on. “I know the temptations you must have been exposed to. I know how weak men are. I know what your own dear grandfather, my own father, told us about the Civil War and I have prayed for you. I pray for you all day long, Harold.” Krebs looked at the bacon fat hardening on his plate. “Your father is worried, too,” his mother went on. “He thinks you have lost your ambition, that you haven’t got a definite aim in life. Char- ley Simmons, who is just your age, has a good job and is going to be married. The boys are all settling down; they’re all determined to get somewhere; you can see that boys like Charley Simmons are on their way to being really a credit to the community.” Krebs said nothing. “Don’t look that way, Harold,” his mother said. “You know we love you and I want to tell you for your own good how matters stand. Your father does not want to hamper your freedom. He thinks you should be allowed to drive the car. If you want to take some of the nice girls out

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riding with you, we are only too pleased. We want you to enjoy yourself. But you are going to have to settle down to work, Harold. Your father doesn’t care what you start in at. All work is honorable as he says. But you’ve got to make a start at something. He asked me to speak to you this morning and then you can stop in and see him at his office.” “Is that all?” Krebs said. “Yes. Don’t you love your mother, dear boy?” “No,” Krebs said. His mother looked at him across the table. Her eyes were shiny. She started crying. “I don’t love anybody,” Krebs said. It wasn’t any good. He couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t make her see it. It was silly to have said it. He had only hurt her. He went over and took hold of her arm. She was crying with her head in her hands. “I didn’t mean it,” he said. “I was just angry at something. I didn’t mean I didn’t love you.” His mother went on crying. Krebs put his arm on her shoulder. “Can’t you believe me, mother?” His mother shook her head. “Please, please, mother. Please believe me.” “All right,” his mother said chokily. She looked up at him. “I believe you, Harold.” Krebs kissed her hair. She put her face up to him. “I’m your mother,” she said. “I held you next to my heart when you were a tiny baby.” Krebs felt sick and vaguely nauseated. “I know, Mummy,” he said. “I’ll try and be a good boy for you.” “Would you kneel and pray with me, Harold?” his mother asked. They knelt down beside the dining-room table and Krebs’s mother prayed. “Now, you pray, Harold,” she said. “I can’t,” Krebs said. “Try, Harold.” “I can’t.” “Do you want me to pray for you?” “Yes.” So his mother prayed for him and then they stood up and Krebs kissed his mother and went out of the house. He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of it had touched him. He had felt sorry for his mother and she had made him lie. He would go to Kansas City and get a job and she would feel all right about it. There would be one more scene maybe before he got away. He would not go down to his father’s office. He would miss that one. He wanted his life to go smoothly. It had just gotten going that way. Well, that was all over now, anyway. He would go over to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball.

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Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. The title, “Soldier’s Home,” focuses on the setting. Do you have a clear picture of Krebs’s home? Describe it, filling in missing details from your associations of home, Krebs’s routine, or anything else you can use.

2. What does the photograph of Krebs, the corporal, and the German girls reveal?

3. Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champagne, St. Mihiel, and the Argonne were the sites of fierce and bloody fighting. What effect have these battles had on Krebs? Why do you think he won’t talk about them to the people at home?

4. Why does Krebs avoid complications and consequences? How has the war changed his attitudes toward work and women? How is his hometown different from Germany and France? What is the conflict in the story?

5. Why do you think Hemingway refers to the protagonist as Krebs rather than Harold? What is the significance of his sister calling him “Hare”?

6. How does Krebs’s mother embody the community’s values? What does Krebs think of those values?

7. What is the resolution to Krebs’s conflict? 8. Comment on the appropriateness of the story’s title. 9. Explain how Krebs’s war experiences are present throughout the

story even though we get no details about them. 10. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Contrast the attitudes toward

patriotism implicit in this story with those in Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” (p. 318). How do the stories’ settings help to account for the differences between them?

Fay Weldon (b. 1933)

Born in England and raised in New Zealand, Fay Weldon graduated from St. Andrew’s University in Scotland. She wrote advertis- ing copy for various companies and was a propaganda writer for the British Foreign Office before turning to fiction. She has writ- ten novels, short stories, plays, and radio scripts. In 1971 her script for an episode of Upstairs, Downstairs won an award from the Society of Film and Television Arts. She has written more than a score of novels, including The Fat Woman’s Joke (1967), Down Among the Women (1971), Praxis (1978), The Life and Loves © Jerry Bauer.

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of a She-Devil (1983), Life Force (1991), The Bulgari Connection (2001), She May Not Leave (2005), and The Stepmother’s Diary (2008), and an equal number of plays and scripts. Her collections of short stories include Moon over Minneapolis (1992), Wicked Women (American edition, 1997), A Hard Time to Be a Father (1998), and Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide (2002). Weldon often uses ironic humor to portray carefully drawn female characters coming to terms with the facts of their lives.

IND AFF 1988 or Out of Love in Sarajevo

This is a sad story. It has to be. It rained in Sarajevo, and we had expected fine weather. The rain filled up Sarajevo’s pride, two footprints set into a pavement which mark the spot where the young assassin Princip stood to shoot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. (Don’t forget his wife: everyone forgets his wife, the archduchess.) That was in the summer of 1914. Sarajevo is a pretty town, Balkan style, mountain-rimmed. A broad, swift, shallow river runs through its center, carrying the mountain snow away, arched by many bridges. The one nearest the two footprints has been named the Princip Bridge. The young man is a hero in these parts. Not only does he bring in the tourists — look, look, the spot, the very spot! — but by his action, as everyone knows, he lit a spark which fired the timber which caused World War I which crumbled the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the crumbling of which made modern Yugoslavia possible. Forty million dead (or was it thirty?) but who cares? So long as he loved his country. The river, they say, can run so shallow in the summer it’s known derisively as “the wet road.” Today, from what I could see through the sheets of falling rain, it seemed full enough. Yugoslavian streets are always busy — no one stays home if they can help it (thus can an indecent shortage of housing space create a sociable nation) and it seemed as if by common consent a shield of bobbing umbrellas had been erected two meters high to keep the rain off the streets. It just hadn’t worked around Princip’s corner. “Come all this way,” said Peter, who was a professor of classical his- tory, “and you can’t even see the footprints properly, just two undistin- guished puddles.” Ah, but I loved him. I shivered for his disappointment. He was supervising my thesis on varying concepts of morality and duty in the early Greek States as evidenced in their poetry and drama. I was dependent upon him for my academic future. He said I had a good mind but not a first-class mind and somehow I didn’t take it as an insult. I had a feeling first-class minds weren’t all that good in bed. Sarajevo is in Bosnia, in the center of Yugoslavia, that group- ing of unlikely states, that distillation of languages into the phonetic

weldon / ind aff 125

reasonableness of Serbo-Croatian. We’d sheltered from the rain in an ancient mosque in Serbian Belgrade; done the same in a monastery in Croatia; now we spent a wet couple of days in Sarajevo beneath other people’s umbrellas. We planned to go on to Montenegro, on the coast, where the fish and the artists come from, to swim and lie in the sun, and recover from the exhaustion caused by the sexual and moral torments of the last year. It couldn’t possibly go on raining forever. Could it? Satel- lite pictures showed black clouds swishing gently all over Europe, over the Balkans, into Asia — practically all the way from Moscow to London, in fact. It wasn’t that Peter and myself were being singled out. No. It was raining on his wife, too, back in Cambridge.

Peter was trying to decide, as he had been for the past year, between his wife and myself as his permanent life partner. To this end we had gone away, off the beaten track, for a holiday; if not with his wife’s blessing, at least with her knowledge. Were we really, truly suited? We had to be sure, you see, that this was more than just any old professor-student romance; that it was the Real Thing, because the longer the indecision went on the longer Mrs. Piper would be left dangling in uncertainty and distress. They had been married for twenty-four years; they had stopped loving each other a long time ago, of course — but there would be a fearful per- sonal and practical upheaval entailed if he decided to leave permanently and shack up, as he put it, with me. Which I certainly wanted him to do. I loved him. And so far I was winning hands down. It didn’t seem much of a contest at all, in fact. I’d been cool and thin and informed on the seat next to him in a Zagreb theater (Mrs. Piper was sweaty and only liked telly); was now eager and anxious for social and political instruc- tion in Sarajevo (Mrs. Piper spat in the face of knowledge, he’d once told me); and planned to be lissome (and I thought topless but I hadn’t quite decided: this might be the area where the age difference showed) while I splashed and shrieked like a bathing belle in the shallows of the Mon- tenegrin coast. (Mrs. Piper was a swimming coach: I imagined she smelt permanently of chlorine.) In fact so far as I could see, it was no contest at all between his wife and myself. But Peter liked to luxuriate in guilt and indecision. And I loved him with an inordinate affection. Princip’s prints are a meter apart, placed as a modern cop on a train- ing shoot-out would place his feet — the left in front at a slight outward angle, the right behind, facing forward. There seemed great energy focused here. Both hands on the gun, run, stop, plant the feet, aim, fire! I could see the footprints well enough, in spite of Peter’s complaint. They were clear enough to me.

We went to a restaurant for lunch, since it was too wet to do what we loved to do: that is, buy bread, cheese, sausage, wine, and go off some- where in our hired car, into the woods or the hills, and picnic and make

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love. It was a private restaurant — Yugoslavia went over to a mixed capi- talist-communist economy years back, so you get either the best or worst of both systems, depending on your mood — that is to say, we knew we would pay more but be given a choice. We chose the wild boar. “Probably ordinary pork soaked in red cabbage water to darken it,” said Peter. He was not in a good mood. Cucumber salad was served first. “Everything in this country comes with cucumber salad,” com- plained Peter. I noticed I had become used to his complaining. I sup- posed that when you had been married a little you simply wouldn’t hear it. He was forty-six and I was twenty-five. “They grow a lot of cucumber,” I said. “If they can grow cucumbers,” Peter then asked, “why can’t they grow mange-tout°?” It seemed a why-can’t-they-eat-cake sort of argument to me, but not knowing enough about horticulture not to be outflanked if I debated the point, I moved the subject on to safer ground. “I suppose Princip’s action couldn’t really have started World War I,” I remarked. “Otherwise, what a thing to have on your conscience! One little shot and the deaths of thirty million.” “Forty,” he corrected me. Though how they reckon these things and get them right I can’t imagine. “Of course he didn’t start the war. That’s just a simple tale to keep the children quiet. It takes more than an assas- sination to start a war. What happened was that the buildup of political and economic tensions in the Balkans was such that it had to find some release.” “So it was merely the shot that lit the spark that fired the timber that started the war, et cetera?” “Quite,” he said. “World War I would have had to have started sooner or later.” “A bit later or a bit sooner,” I said, “might have made the difference of a million or so; if it was you on the battlefield in the mud and the rain you’d notice; exactly when they fired the starting-pistol; exactly when they blew the final whistle. Is that what they do when a war ends; blow a whistle? So that everyone just comes in from the trenches.” But he wasn’t listening. He was parting the flesh of the soft collapsed orangey-red pepper which sat in the middle of his cucumber salad; he was carefully extracting the pips. His nan had once told him they could never be digested, would stick inside and do terrible damage. I loved him for his dexterity and patience with his knife and fork. I’d finished my salad yonks ago, pips and all. I was hungry. I wanted my wild boar. Peter might be forty-six, but he was six foot two and grizzled and muscled with it, in a dark-eyed, intelligent, broad-jawed kind of way. I adored him. I loved to be seen with him. “Muscular academic, not weedy academic” as my younger sister Clare once said. “Muscular academic is

mange-tout: A sugar pea or bean (French).

weldon / ind aff 127

just a generally superior human being: everything works well from the brain to the toes. Weedy academic is when there isn’t enough vital energy in the person, and the brain drains all the strength from the other parts.” Well, Clare should know. Clare is only twenty-three, but of the superior human variety kind herself, vividly pretty, bright and competent — some- where behind a heavy curtain of vibrant red hair, which she only parts for effect. She had her first degree at twenty. Now she’s married to a Har- vard professor of economics seconded to the United Nations. She can even cook. I gave up competing yonks ago. Though she too is capable of self-deception. I would say her husband was definitely of the weedy aca- demic rather than the muscular academic type. And they have to live in Brussels. The archduke’s chauffeur had lost his way, and was parked on the corner trying to recover his nerve when Princip came running out of a café, planted his feet, aimed, and fired. Princip was nineteen — too young to hang. But they sent him to prison for life and, since he had TB to begin with, he only lasted three years. He died in 1918, in an Austrian prison. Or perhaps it was more than TB: perhaps they gave him a hard time, not learning till later, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, that he was a hero. Poor Princip, too young to die — like so many other millions. Dying for love of a country. “I love you,” I said to Peter, my living man, progenitor already of three children by his chlorinated, swimming-coach wife. “How much do you love me?” “Inordinately! I love you with inordinate affection.” It was a joke between us. Ind Aff! “Inordinate affection is a sin,” he’d told me. “According to the Wes- leyans. John Wesley° himself worried about it to such a degree he ended up abbreviating it in his diaries, Ind Aff. He maintained that what he felt for young Sophy, the eighteen-year-old in his congregation, was not Ind Aff, which bears the spirit away from God towards the flesh: he insisted that what he felt was a pure and spiritual, if passionate, concern for her soul.” Peter said now, as we waited for our wild boar, and he picked over his pepper, “Your Ind Aff is my wife’s sorrow, that’s the trouble.” He wanted, I knew, one of the long half-wrangles, half soul-sharings that we could keep going for hours, and led to piercing pains in the heart which could only be made better in bed. But our bedroom at the Hotel Europa was small and dark and looked out into the well of the building — a punishment room if ever there was one. (Reception staff did sometimes take against us.) When Peter had tried to change it in his quasi-Serbo-Croatian, they’d shrugged their Bosnian shoulders and pretended not to understand, so we’d decided to put up with it. I did not fancy pushing hard single beds together — it seemed easier not to have the pain in the heart in the first

John Wesley (1703–1791): English religious leader and founder of Methodism.

128 setting

place. “Look,” I said, “this holiday is supposed to be just the two of us, not Mrs. Piper as well. Shall we talk about something else?”

Do not think that the archduke’s chauffeur was merely careless, an ineffi- cient chauffeur, when he took the wrong turning. He was, I imagine, in a state of shock, fright, and confusion. There had been two previous attempts on the archduke’s life since the cavalcade had entered town. The first was a bomb which got the car in front and killed its driver. The second was a shot fired by none other than young Princip, which had missed. Princip had vanished into the crowd and gone to sit down in a corner café and ordered coffee to calm his nerves. I expect his hand trembled at the best of times — he did have TB. (Not the best choice of assassin, but no doubt those who arrange these things have to make do with what they can get.) The archduke’s chauffeur panicked, took the wrong road, realized what he’d done, and stopped to await rescue and instructions just outside the café where Princip sat drinking his coffee. “What shall we talk about?” asked Peter, in even less of a good mood. “The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire?” I suggested. “How does an empire collapse? Is there no money to pay the military or the police, so everyone goes home? Or what?” He liked to be asked questions. “The Hungro-Austrarian Empire,” said Peter to me, “didn’t so much collapse as fail to exist any more. War destroys social organizations. The same thing happened after World War II. There being no organized bod- ies left between Moscow and London — and for London read Washing- ton, then as now — it was left to these two to put in their own puppet governments. Yalta, 1944. It’s taken the best part of forty-five years for nations of West and East Europe to remember who they are.” “Austro-Hungarian,” I said, “not Hungro-Austrarian.” “I didn’t say Hungro-Austrarian,” he said. “You did,” I said. “Didn’t,” he said. “What the hell are they doing about our wild boar? Are they out in the hills shooting it?” My sister Clare had been surprisingly understanding about Peter. When I worried about him being older, she pooh-poohed it; when I wor- ried about him being married, she said, “Just go for it, sister. If you can unhinge a marriage, it’s ripe for unhinging, it would happen sooner or later, it might as well be you. See a catch, go ahead and catch! Go for it!” Princip saw the archduke’s car parked outside, and went for it. Sec- ond chances are rare in life: they must be responded to. Except perhaps his second chance was missing in the first place? Should he have taken his cue from fate, and just sat and finished his coffee, and gone home to his mother? But what’s a man to do when he loves his country? Fate delivered the archduke into his hands: how could he resist it? A parked car, a uniformed and medaled chest, the persecutor of his country — how could Princip not, believing God to be on his side, but see this as His intervention, push his coffee aside and leap to his feet?

weldon / ind aff 129

Two waiters stood idly by and watched us waiting for our wild boar. One was young and handsome in a mountainous Bosnian way — flashing eyes, hooked nose, luxuriant black hair, sensuous mouth. He was about my age. He smiled. His teeth were even and white. I smiled back, and instead of the pain in the heart I’d become accustomed to as an erotic sensation, now felt, quite violently, an associated yet different pang which got my lower stomach. The true, the real pain of Ind Aff! “Fancy him?” asked Peter. “No,” I said. “I just thought if I smiled the wild boar might come quicker.” The other waiter was older and gentler: his eyes were soft and kind. I thought he looked at me reproachfully. I could see why. In a world which for once, after centuries of savagery, was finally full of young men, unslaughtered, what was I doing with this man with thinning hair? “What are you thinking of?” Professor Piper asked me. He liked to be in my head. “How much I love you,” I said automatically, and was finally aware how much I lied. “And about the archduke’s assassination,” I went on, to cover the kind of tremble in my head as I came to my senses, “and let’s not forget his wife, she died too — how can you say World War I would have happened anyway. If Princip hadn’t shot the archduke, something else, some undisclosed, unsuspected variable, might have come along and defused the whole political/military situation, and neither World War I nor II ever happened. We’ll just never know, will we?” I had my passport and my travelers’ checks with me. (Peter felt it was less confusing if we each paid our own way.) I stood up, and took my raincoat from the peg. “Where are you going?” he asked, startled. “Home,” I said. I kissed the top of his head, where it was balding. It smelt gently of chlorine, which may have come from thinking about his wife so much, but might merely have been that he’d taken a shower that morning. (“The water all over Yugoslavia, though safe to drink, is unusually chlorinated”: Guide Book.) As I left to catch a taxi to the air- port the younger of the two waiters emerged from the kitchen with two piled plates of roasted wild boar, potatoes duchesse, and stewed peppers. (“Yugoslavian diet is unusually rich in proteins and fats”: Guide Book.) I could tell from the glisten of oil that the food was no longer hot, and I was not tempted to stay, hungry though I was. Thus fate — or was it Bos- nian willfulness? — confirmed the wisdom of my intent. And that was how I fell out of love with my professor, in Sarajevo, a city to which I am grateful to this day, though I never got to see very much of it, because of the rain. It was a silly sad thing to do, in the first place, to confuse mere pass- ing academic ambition with love: to try and outdo my sister Clare. (Pro- fessor Piper was spiteful, as it happened, and did his best to have my thesis refused, but I went to appeal, which he never thought I’d dare, and

130 setting

won. I had a first-class mind after all.) A silly sad episode, which I regret. As silly and sad as Princip, poor young man, with his feverish mind, his bright tubercular cheeks, and his inordinate affection for his country, pushing aside his cup of coffee, leaping to his feet, taking his gun in both hands, planting his feet, aiming, and firing — one, two, three shots — and starting World War I. The first one missed, the second got the wife (never forget the wife), and the third got the archduke and a whole generation, and their children, and their children’s children, and on and on forever. If he’d just hung on a bit, there in Sarajevo, that June day, he might have come to his senses. People do, sometimes quite quickly.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Do you agree with Weldon’s first line, “This is a sad story”? Explain why or why not.

2. How does the rain establish the mood for the story in the first five paragraphs?

3. Characterize Peter. What details concerning him reveal his personality?

4. Describe the narrator’s relationship with Peter. How do you think he regards her? Why is she attracted to him?

5. Why is Sarajevo important for the story’s setting? What is the effect of having the story of Princip’s assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife woven through the plot?

6. Describe Mrs. Piper. Though she doesn’t appear in the story, she does have an important role. What do you think her role is?

7. What is “Ind Aff ”? Why is it an important element of this story? 8. What is the significance of the two waiters (paras. 38–41)? How do

they af fect the narrator? 9. Why does the narrator decide to go home (para. 46)? Do you think

she makes a reasoned or an impulsive decision? Explain why you think so.

A. S. Byatt (b. 1936)

A(ntonia) S(usan) Byatt was born in Yorkshire, England, and studied at Cambridge University, Bryn Mawr College, and Oxford University. A major fi ction writer and essayist, Byatt taught at University College, London, until her early retirement in 1983. She regularly contributes her critical expertise to London newspapers as well as to BBC radio and television. Among her novels are The Virgin in the Garden (1978), Still Life

byatt / baglady 131

(1985), Possession (winner of the Booker Prize, 1990), Babel Tower (1996), Biogra- pher’s Tale (2000), and The Children’s Book (2009). Her short story collections include Sugar and Other Stories (1987), The Matisse Stories (1993), The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (1994), Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (1998), from which “Baglady” is reprinted, and Little Black Book of Stories (2003).

Baglady 1998

“And then,” says Lady Scroop brightly, “the Company will send cars to take us all to the Good Fortune Shopping Mall. I understand that it is a real Aladdin’s Cave of Treasures, where we can all fi nd prezzies for everyone and all sorts of little indulgences for ourselves, and in per- fect safety: the entrances to the Mall are under constant surveillance, sad, but necessary in these diffi cult days.” Daphne Gulver-Robinson looks round the breakfast table. It is beautifully laid with peach-coloured damask, bronze cutlery, and little fl oating gardens in lacquered dishes of waxy fl owers that emit gusts of perfume. The directors of Doolittle Wind Quietus are in a meeting. Their wives are breakfasting together under the eye of Lady Scroop, the chairman’s wife. It is Lord Scroop’s policy to encourage his directors to travel with their wives. Especially in the Far East, and especially since the fi gures about AIDS began to be drawn to his attention. Most of the wives are elegant, with silk suits and silky legs and exquisitely cut hair. They chat mutedly, swapping recipes for chutney and horror stories about nannies, staring out of the amber glass wall of the Precious Jade Hotel at the dimpling sea. Daphne Gulver-Robinson is older than most of them, and dowdier, although her husband, Rollo, has less power than most of the other directors. She has tried to make herself attractive for this jaunt and has lost ten pounds and had her hands manicured; but now she sees the other ladies, she knows it is not enough. Her style is seated tweed, and stout shoes, and bird’s- nest hair. “You don’t want me on this trip,” she said to Rollo when told about it. “I’d better stay and mind the donkeys and the geese and the fantails as usual, and you can have a good time, as usual, in those exotic places.” “Of course I don’t want you,” said Rollo. “That is, of course I want you, but I do know you’re happier with the geese and the donkeys and pigs and things. But Scroop will think it’s very odd, I’m very odd, if you don’t come. He gets bees in his bonnet. You’ll like the shopping; the

Courtesy of Michael Trevillion.

132 setting

ladies do a lot of shopping, I believe. You might like the other wives,” he fi nished, not hopefully. “I didn’t like boarding-school,” Daphne said. “I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Rollo said. There is a lot Rollo doesn’t see. Doesn’t want to see and doesn’t see. Lady Scroop tells them they may scatter in the Mall as much as they like as long as they are all back at the front entrance at noon precisely. “We have all packed our bags, I hope,” she says, “though I have left time on the schedule for adjustments to make space for any goodies we may fi nd. And then there will be a delicious lunch at the Pink Pearl Café and then we leave at two-forty-fi ve sharp for the airport and on to Sydney.” The ladies pack into the cars. Daphne Gulver-Robinson is next to the driver of her Daimler, a place of both comfort and isolation. They swoop silently through crowded streets, isolated by bullet-proof glass from the smells and sounds of the Orient. The Mall is enormous and not beautiful. Some of the ladies have been in post-modern pink and peppermint Malls in San Diego, some have been in snug, glittering underground tunnels in Canadian winters, some have shopped in crystal palaces in desert land- scapes, with tinkling fountains and splashing streams. The Good Fortune Shopping Mall resembles an army barracks or a prison block, but it is not for the outside they have come, and they hasten to trip inside, like hens looking for worms, jerking and clucking, Daphne Gulver-Robinson thinks malevolently, as none of them waits for her. She synchronizes her watch with the driver, and goes in alone, between the sleepy soldiers with machine-guns and the uniformed police with their revolvers and little sticks. Further away, along the walls of the Mall, are little groups and gangs of human fl otsam and jetsam, gathered with bags and bottles around little fi res of cowdung or cardboard. There is a no-man’s-land, swept clean, between them and the police. She is not sure she likes shopping. She looks at her watch, and won- ders how she will fi ll the two hours before the rendezvous. She walks rather quickly past rows of square shop-fronts, glittering with gilt and silver, shining with pearls and opals, shimmering with lacquer and silk. Puppets and shadow-puppets mop and mow, paperbirds hop on threads, paper dragons and monstrous goldfi sh gape and dangle. She covers the fi rst fl oor, or one rectangular arm of the fi rst fl oor, ascends a fl ight of stairs and fi nds herself on another fl oor, more or less the same, except for a few windows full of sober suiting, run of American-style T-shirts, an area of bonsai trees. She stops to look at the trees, remembering her gar- den, and thinks of buying a particularly shapely cherry. But how could it go to Sydney, how return to Norfolk, would it even pass customs? She has slowed down now and starts looking. She comes to a corner, gets into a lift, goes up, gets out, fi nds herself on a higher, sunnier, emp- tier fl oor. There are fewer shoppers. She walks along one whole “street” where she is the only shopper, and is taken by a display of embroi- dered silk cushion-covers. She goes in, and turns over a heap of about a

byatt / baglady 133

hundred, quick, quick, chrysanthemums, cranes, peach-blossom, blue- tits, mountain tops. She buys a cover with a circle of embroidered fi sh, red and gold and copper, because it is the only one of its kind, perhaps a rarity. When she looks in her shopping bag, she cannot fi nd her camera, although she is sure it was there when she set out. She buys a jade egg on the next fl oor, and some lacquered chopsticks, and a mask with a white furious face for her student daughter. She is annoyed to see a whole win- dow full of the rare fi shes, better embroidered than the one in the bag. She follows a sign saying CAFÉ but cannot fi nd the café, though she trots on, faster now. She does fi nd a ladies’ room, with cells so small they are hard to squeeze into. She restores her make-up there: she looks hot and blowzy. Her lipstick has bled into the soft skin round her mouth. Hair- pins have sprung out. Her nose and eyelids shine. She looks at her watch, and thinks she should be making her way back to the entrance. Time has passed at surprising speed. Signs saying EXIT appear with great frequency and lead to fi re-escape- like stairways and lifts, which debouch only in identical streets of boxed shopfronts. They are designed, she begins to think, to keep you inside, to direct you past even more shops, in search of a hidden, deliberately elu- sive way out. She runs a little, trotting quicker, toiling up concrete stair- ways, clutching her shopping. On one of these stairways a heel breaks off one of her smart shoes. After a moment she takes off both, and puts them in her shopping bag. She hobbles on, on the concrete, sweating and panting. She dare not look at her watch, and then does. The time of the rendezvous is well past. She thinks she might call the hotel, opens her handbag, and fi nds that her purse and credit cards have mysteriously disappeared. There is nowhere to sit down: she stands in the Mall, going through and through her handbag, long after it is clear that the things have vanished. Other things, dislodged, have to be retrieved from the dusty ground. Her fountain-pen has gone too, Rollo’s present for their twenti- eth wedding anniversary. She begins to run quite fast, so that huge holes spread in the soles of her stockings, which in the end split, and begin to work their way over her feet and up her legs in wrinkles like fl aking skin. She looks at her watch; the packing-time and the “delicious lunch” are over: it is almost time for the airport car. Her bladder is bursting, but she must go on, and must go down, the entrance is down. It is in this way that she discovers that the Good Fortune Mall extends maybe as far into the earth as into the sky, excavated identical caverns of shopfronts, jade, gold, silver, silk, lacquer, watches, suiting, bonsai trees and masks and puppets. Lifts that say they are going down go only up. Stairwells are windowless: ground level cannot be found. The plane has now taken off with or without the directors and ladies of Doo- little Wind Quietus. She takes time out in another concrete and stainless- steel lavatory cubicle, and then looks at the watch, whose face has become a whirl of terror. Only now it is merely a compressed circle of pink skin,

134 setting

shiny with sweat. Her watch, too, has gone. She utters faint little moaning sounds, and then an experimental scream. No one appears to hear or see her, neither strolling shoppers, deafened by Walkmans or by propriety, or by fear of the strange, nor shopkeepers, watchful in their cells. Nevertheless, screaming helps. She screams again, and then screams and screams into the thick, bustling silence. A man in a brown overall brings a policeman in a reinforced hat, with a gun and a stick. “Help me,” says Daphne. “I am an English lady, I have been robbed, I must get home.” “Papers,” says the policeman. She looks in the back pocket of her handbag. Her passport, too, has gone. There is nothing. “Stolen. All stolen,” she says. “People like you,” says the policeman, “not allowed in here.” She sees herself with his eyes, a baglady, dirty, unkempt, with a bag full of somebody’s shopping, a tattered battery-hen. “My husband will come and look for me,” she tells the policeman. If she waits, if she stays in the Mall, he will, she thinks. He must. She sees herself sitting with the fl otsam and jetsam beyond the swept no- man’s-land outside. “I’m not moving,” she says, and sits down heavily. She has to stay in the Mall. The policeman prods her with his little stick. “Move, please.” It is more comfortable sitting down. “I shall stay here for ever if necessary,” she says. She cannot imagine anyone coming. She cannot imagine getting out the Good Fortune Mall.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Explain whether you think Daphne Gulver-Robinson is a sympathetic character.

2. Describe the antagonist. What is the confl ict? Is it resolved? 3. Can Lady Scroop, Rollo, and the policeman be accurately labeled as

stock characters? 4. How do your feelings about Daphne Gulver-Robinson develop over

the course of the story? 5. Why do you suppose Byatt names the shopping center Good For-

tune Mall? 6. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Explain how “Baglady” and

Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (p. 209) both explore large cultural issues in their plots.

135

It is not necessary to portray many characters. The center of gravity should be in two persons: him and her.

— ANTON CHEKHOV

Because one of the pleasures of reading fiction consists of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, it is easy to overlook the eyes that control our view of the plot, characters, and setting. Point of view refers to who tells us the story and how it is told. What we know and how we feel about the events in a story are shaped by the author’s choice of a point of view. The teller of a story, the narrator, inevitably affects our understanding of the characters’ actions by filtering what is told through his or her own perspective. The narrator should not be confused with the author who has created the narrative voice because the two are usually distinct (more on this point later). If the narrative voice is changed, the story will change. Consider, for example, how different “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (p. 85) would be if Melville had chosen to tell the story from Bartleby’s point of view instead of the lawyer’s. With Bartleby as narrator, much of the mystery concern- ing his behavior would be lost. The peculiar force of his saying “I would prefer not to” would be lessened amid all the other things he would have to say as narrator. Moreover, the lawyer’s reaction — puzzled, upset, out- raged, and finally sympathetic to Bartleby — would be lost too. It would be entirely possible, of course, to write a story from Bartleby’s point of view, but it would not be the story Melville wrote.

5 Point of View

Brought to you by LibraryPirate... 136 point of view

The possible ways of telling a story are many, and more than one point of view can be worked into a single story. However, the various points of view that storytellers draw on can be conveniently grouped into two broad categories: (1) the third-person narrator and (2) the first- person narrator. The third-person narrator uses he, she, or they to tell the story and does not participate in the action. The first-person narrator uses I and is a major or minor participant in the action. A second-person narrator, you, is possible but rarely used because of the awkwardness in thrusting the reader into the story, as in “You are minding your own business on a park bench when a drunk steps out of the bushes and demands your lunch bag.” Let’s look now at the most important and most often used varia- tions within first- and third-person narrations.

THIRD-PERSON NARR ATOR (Nonpart icipant ) 1. Omniscient (the narrator takes us inside the character[s]) 2. Limited omniscient (the narrator takes us inside one or two characters) 3. Objective (the narrator is outside the character[s])

No type of third-person narrator appears as a character in a story. The omniscient narrator is all-knowing. From this point of view, the narrator can move from place to place and pass back and forth through time, slipping into and out of characters as no human being possibly could in real life. This narrator can report the characters’ thoughts and feelings as well as what they say and do. In the excerpt from Tarzan of the Apes (p. 46), Burroughs’s narrator tells us about events concern- ing Terkoz in another part of the jungle that long preceded the battle between Terkoz and Tarzan. We also learn Tarzan’s and Jane’s inner thoughts and emotions during the episode. And Burroughs’s narrator describes Terkoz as “an arrant coward” and a bully, thereby evaluat- ing the character for the reader. This kind of intrusion is called edito- rial omniscience. In contrast, narration that allows characters’ actions and thoughts to speak for themselves is known as neutral omniscience. Most modern writers use neutral omniscience so that readers can reach their own conclusions. The limited omniscient narrator is much more confined than the omni- scient narrator. With limited omniscience the author very often restricts the narrator to the single perspective of either a major or a minor character. Sometimes a narrator can see into more than one character, particularly in a longer work that focuses, for example, on two characters alternately from one chapter to the next. Short stories, however, frequently are restricted

WEB Explore the literary element in this chapter at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

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by length to a single character’s point of view. The way people, places, and events appear to that character is the way they appear to the reader. The reader has access to the thoughts and feelings of the characters revealed by the narrator, but neither the reader nor the narrator has access to the inner lives of any of the other characters in the story. The events in James Joyce’s “Eveline” (p. 302) are viewed entirely through the protagonist’s eyes. She unifies the story by being present through all the action. In Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” (p. 117), a limited omniscient narration is the predominant point of view. Krebs’s thoughts and reac- tion to being home from the war are made available to the reader by the narrator, who tells us that Krebs “felt embarrassed and resentful” or “sick and vaguely nauseated” by the small-town life he has reen- tered. Occasionally, however, Hemingway uses an objective point of view when he dramatizes particularly tense moments in a detached imper- sonal manner between Krebs and his mother. In the following excerpt, Hemingway’s narrator shows us Krebs’s feelings instead of telling us what they are. Krebs’s response to his mother’s concerns is presented without comment. The external details of the scene reveal his inner feelings.

“I’ve worried about you so much, Harold,” his mother went on. “I know the temptations you must have been exposed to. I know how weak men are. I know what your own dear grandfather, my own father, told us about the Civil War and I have prayed for you. I pray for you all day long, Harold.” Krebs looked at the bacon fat hardening on his plate. “Your father is worried, too,” his mother went on. “He thinks you have lost your ambition, that you haven’t got a definite aim in life. Charley Simmons, who is just your age, has a good job and is going to be married. The boys are all settling down; they’re all determined to get somewhere; you can see that boys like Charley Simmons are on their way to being really a credit to the community.” Krebs said nothing. “Don’t look that way, Harold. . . .”

When Krebs looks at the bacon fat, we can see him cooling and harden- ing too. Hemingway does not describe the expression on Krebs’s face, yet we know it is a look that disturbs his mother as she goes on about what she thinks she knows. Krebs and his mother are clearly tense and upset; the de tails, action, and dialogue reveal that without the narrator telling the reader how each character feels.

FIRST-PERSON NARR ATOR (Par t icipant ) 1. Major character 2. Minor character

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With a first-person narrator, the I presents the point of view of only one character’s consciousness. The reader is restricted to the percep- tions, thoughts, and feelings of that single character. This is Melville’s technique with the lawyer in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (p. 85). Everything learned about the characters, action, and plot comes from the unnamed lawyer. Bartleby remains a mystery because we are limited to what the lawyer knows and reports. The lawyer cannot explain what Bartleby means because he does not entirely know himself. Melville’s use of the first person encourages us to identify with the lawyer’s confused reaction to Bartleby so that we pay attention not only to the scrivener but to the lawyer’s response to him. We are as perplexed as the lawyer and share his effort to make sense of Bartleby. The lawyer is an unreliable narrator, whose interpretation of events is different from the author’s. We cannot entirely accept the lawyer’s assessment of Bartleby because we see that the lawyer’s perceptions are not totally to be trusted. Melville does not expect us, for example, to agree with the lawyer’s suggestion that the solution to Bartleby’s situa- tion might be to “entertain some young gentleman with your conversa- tion” on a trip to Europe. Given Bartleby’s awful silences, this absurd suggestion reveals the lawyer’s superficial understanding. The lawyer’s perceptions frequently do not coincide with those Melville expects his readers to share. Hence the lawyer’s unreliability preserves Bartleby’s mysterious nature while revealing the lawyer’s sensibilities. The point of view is artistically appropriate for Melville’s purposes because the eyes through which we perceive the plot, characters, and setting are also the subject of the story. Narrators can be unreliable for a variety of reasons: They might lack self-knowledge, like Melville’s lawyer, or they might be innocent and inex- perienced, like Ralph Ellison’s young narrator in “Battle Royal” (p. 184). Youthful innocence frequently characterizes a naive narrator such as Mark Twain’s Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield, J. D. Salinger’s twentieth- century version of Huck in The Catcher in the Rye. These narrators lack the sophistication to interpret accurately what they see; they are unreli- able because the reader must go beyond their understanding of events to comprehend the situations described. Huck and Holden describe their respective social environments, but the reader, with more experience, supplies the critical perspective that each boy lacks. In “Battle Royal” that perspective is supplemented by Ellison’s dividing the narration between the young man who experiences events and the mature man who reflects back on those events. Few generalizations can be made about the advantages or disadvan- tages of using a specific point of view. What can be said with confidence, however, is that writers choose a point of view to achieve particular effects because point of view determines what we know about the char- acters and events in a story. We should, therefore, be aware of who is tell- ing the story and whether the narrator sees things clearly and reliably.

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Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)

Born in a small town in Russia, Anton Chekhov gave up the career his medical degree prepared him for in order to devote himself to writing. His concentration on realistic detail in the hundreds of short stories he published has had an impor- tant influence on fiction writing. Mod- ern drama has also been strengthened by his plays, among them these classics: The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Chekhov was a close observer of people in ordinary situations who struggle to live their lives as best they can. They are not very often completely successful. Chek- hov’s compassion, however, makes their failures less significant than their humanity. In “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” love is at the heart of a struggle that begins in Yalta, a resort town on the Black Sea.

The Lady with the Pet Dog 1899 TRANSLATED BY AVRAHM YARMOLINSKY (1947)

A new person, it was said, had appeared on the esplanade: a lady with a pet dog. Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, who had spent a fortnight at Yalta 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.”

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“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 ago — had 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 makeup there was something attractive and elusive that dis- posed 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 people — particularly Moscow people — who are irres- olute 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 expres- sion, her gait, her dress, 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 moun- tains, 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.

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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 look- ing 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 ‘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,° and this amused her. And Gurov learned too that her name was Anna Sergeyevna. Afterwards in his room at the hotel he thought about her — and 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: A district council.

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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 car- rying 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 Ser- geyevna 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 jerk- ily, 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 peo- ple’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 look- ing 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 grate- ful 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 expression — an 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

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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 embarrass- ment, as though someone had suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Ser- geyevna, “the lady with the pet dog,” treated what had happened in a peculiar way, very seriously, as though it were her fall — so 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 pen- sive 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.” 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 illumined 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. ‘There must be a different sort of life,’ I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live! Curiosity kept eating at me — you don’t understand it, 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 hus- band 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; I don’t know what I’m doing. Simple people say, ‘The 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.

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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 espla- nade. 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 board — von Dideritz,” said Gurov. “Is your husband German?” “No; I believe his grandfather was German, but he is Greek Ortho- dox 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 monoto- nous 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 indiffer- ently 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, per- haps, 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 surroundings — the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the wide sky — thought 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 them — probably a guard — looked 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 Sergeyevna, 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 pas- sionately. 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 Ser- geyevna how beautiful she was, how seductive, was urgently passionate;

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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 more — let 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 you — remembering you,” she said. “God bless you; be happy. Don’t remember evil against me. We are parting for- ever — it 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 affection- ate 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 called him kind, exceptional, high-minded; obviously he had seemed to her differ- ent 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!”

III

At home in Moscow the winter routine was already established: the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the chil- dren were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. There were frosts already. When

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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 news- papers 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 chil- dren 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 cor- ner — he 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, poeti- cal, edifying, or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna?

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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 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.” 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 things! 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 it — just 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. He was fed up with his children, fed up with the bank; he had no desire to go any- where 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 friend — and 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 rendez- vous 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 house. Directly opposite the house stretched a long gray fence studded with nails. “A fence like that would make one run away,” thought Gurov, look- ing 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 dis- turb her. If he were to send her a note, it might fall into her husband’s

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hands, and that might spoil everything. The 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 forgot- ten 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 were coming in and taking their seats, Gurov scanned the faces eagerly. Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when 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 sorrow 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

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at every step and seemed to be bowing continually. Probably this was the husband whom at Yalta, in an excess 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 wait- er’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 faint- ing. 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 vio- lently, thought: “Oh, Lord! Why are these people here and this orchestra!” 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 dis- tant the end still was! On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which it said “To the Amphi- theatre,” 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, 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 her 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

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once — I conjure you by all that is sacred, I implore you — People are com- ing this way!” Someone was walking up the stairs. “You must leave,” Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. “Do you hear, Dmitry 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.

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 suffering —— and 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,° and yet it’s snowing,” Gurov was say- ing 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.” “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 conven- tional falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life that went on in secret. And through some strange, per- haps 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 truth — his work at the bank, for instance, his discussions at the club, his references to the “inferior race,” his appearances at anniversary

three degrees above zero: On the Celsius scale; about thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

chekhov / the lady with the pet dog 151

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celebrations with his wife — all 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 Slavy- ansky 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 he had hardly entered when she flung herself on his breast. Their 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 moment — I 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 imagina- tion 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

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once loved; it was anything you please, but not love. And only now when his head was gray he had fallen in love, really, truly — for 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 what- ever 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 avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in differ- ent 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.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Consider the following assessment of the story: “No excuses can be made for the lovers’ adulterous affair. They behave selfishly and irresponsibly. They are immoral — and so is the story.” Explain what you think Chekhov’s response to this view would be, given his treatment of the lovers. How does this compare with your own views?

2. Why is it significant that the setting of this story is a resort town? How does the vacation atmosphere affect the action?

3. What does Gurov’s view of women reveal about him? Why does he regard them as an “inferior race”?

4. What do we learn about Gurov’s wife and Anna’s husband? Why do you think Chekhov includes this exposition? How does it affect our view of the lovers?

5. When and why do Gurov’s feelings about Anna begin to change? Is he really in love with her?

6. What is the effect of having Gurov as the central consciousness? How would the story be different if it were told from Anna’s perspective?

oates / the lady with the pet dog 153

7. Based on your understanding of the characterizations of Gurov and Anna, consider the final paragraph of the story and summarize what you think will happen to them.

This selection has been omitted intentionally from your eBook due to electronic permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make this piece available to you in a digital format. You may be able to find a copy at your local or school library.

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168 point of view

Alice Munro (b. 1931)

Alice Munro began writing in her teens in the small rural town of Wingham, Ontario. She published her fi rst story in 1950 when she was a student at Western Ontario Uni- versity. Munro’s fi rst book, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968, and she went on to publish a number of acclaimed short story collections including Lives of Girls and Women (1971), Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974), The Beggar Maid (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), The Prog- ress of Love (1986), Friend of My Youth (1990), Open Secrets (1994), The Love of a Good Woman (1998), Vintage Munro (2004), The View from Castle Rock (2006), and Too Much Happiness (2009). She has been the recip- ient of the Governor General’s Award (Canada’s highest literary prize), the Marian Engel Prize, and the Canada Council Molson Prize. Often dealing with the “emotional reality” of her characters, Munro’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Made- moiselle, and The Paris Review.

An Ounce of Cure 1968

My parents didn’t drink. They weren’t rabid about it, and in fact I remem- ber that when I signed the pledge in grade seven, with the rest of that superbly if impermanently indoctrinated class, my mother said, “It’s just nonsense and fanaticism, children of that age.” My father would drink a beer on a hot day, but my mother did not join him, and — whether accidentally or symbolically — this drink was always consumed outside the house. Most of the people we knew were the same way, in the small town where we lived. I ought not to say that it was this which got me into diffi culties, because the diffi culties I got into were a faithful expres- sion of my own incommodious nature — the same nature that caused my mother to look at me, on any occasion which traditionally calls for

Maclean’s Rich Chard/Canadian Press Images.

munro / an ounce of cure 169

feelings of pride and maternal accomplishment (my departure for my fi rst formal dance, I mean, or my hellbent preparations for a descent on college) with an expression of brooding and fascinated despair, as if she could not possibly expect, did not ask, that it should go with me as it did with other girls; the dreamed-of spoils of daughters — orchids, nice boys, diamond rings — would be borne home in due course by the daughters of her friends, but not by me; all she could do was hope for a lesser rather than a greater disaster — an elopement, say, with a boy who could never earn his living, rather than an abduction into the White Slave trade. But ignorance, my mother said, ignorance, or innocence if you like, is not always such a fi ne thing as people think and I am not sure it may not be dangerous for a girl like you; then she emphasized her point, as she had a habit of doing, with some quotation which had an innocent pomposity and odor of mothballs. I didn’t even wince at it, knowing full well how it must have worked wonders with Mr. Berryman. The evening I baby-sat for the Berrymans must have been in April. I had been in love all year, or at least since the fi rst week in September, when a boy named Martin Collingwood had given me a surprised, appre- ciative, and rather ominously complacent smile in the school assembly. I never knew what surprised him; I was not looking like anybody but me; I had an old blouse on and my home-permanent had turned out badly. A few weeks after that he took me out for the fi rst time, and kissed me on the dark side of the porch — also, I ought to say, on the mouth; I am sure it was the fi rst time anybody had ever kissed me effectively, and I know that I did not wash my face that night or the next morning, in order to keep the imprint of those kisses intact. (I showed the most painful banal- ity in the conduct of this whole affair, as you will see.) Two months, and a few amatory stages later, he dropped me. He had fallen for the girl who played opposite him in the Christmas production of Pride and Prejudice. I said I was not going to have anything to do with that play, and I got another girl to work on Makeup in my place, but of course I went to it after all, and sat down in front with my girl friend Joyce, who pressed my hand when I was overcome with pain and delight at the sight of Mr. Darcy° in white breeches, silk waistcoat, and sideburns. It was surely see- ing Martin as Darcy that did it for me; every girl is in love with Darcy anyway, and the part gave Martin an arrogance and male splendor in my eyes which made it impossible to remember that he was simply a high-school senior, passably good-looking and of medium intelligence (and with a reputation slightly tainted, at that, by such preferences as the Drama Club and the Cadet Band ) who happened to be the fi rst boy, the fi rst really presentable boy, to take an interest in me. In the last act they gave him a chance to embrace Elizabeth (Mary Bishop, with a sallow complexion and no fi gure, but big vivacious eyes) and during this realis- tic encounter I dug my nails bitterly into Joyce’s sympathetic palm.

Darcy: The hero of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1775–1817).

170 point of view

5 That night was the beginning of months of real, if more or less self-infl icted, misery for me. Why is it a temptation to refer to this sort of thing lightly, with irony, with amazement even, at fi nding oneself involved with such preposterous emotions in the unaccountable past? That is what we are apt to do, speaking of love; with adolescent love, of course, it’s practically obligatory; you would think we sat around, dull afternoons, amusing ourselves with these tidbit recollections of pain. But it really doesn’t make me feel very gay — worse still, it doesn’t really surprise me — to remember all the stupid, sad, half-ashamed things I did, that people in love always do. I hung around the places where he might be seen, and then pretended not to see him; I made absurdly roundabout approaches, in conversation, to the bitter pleasure of casu- ally mentioning his name. I day-dreamed endlessly; in fact if you want to put it mathematically, I spent perhaps ten times as many hours think- ing about Martin Collingwood — yes, pining and weeping for him — as I ever spent with him; the idea of him dominated my mind relentlessly and, after a while, against my will. For if at fi rst I had dramatized my feelings, the time came when I would have been glad to escape them; my well-worn daydreams had become depressing and not even temporarily consoling. As I worked my math problems I would torture myself, quite mechanically and helplessly, with an exact recollection of Martin kissing my throat. I had an exact recollection of everything. One night I had an impulse to swallow all the aspirins in the bathroom cabinet, but stopped after I had taken six.

My mother noticed that something was wrong and got me some iron pills. She said, “Are you sure everything is going all right at school?” School! When I told her that Martin and I had broken up all she said was, “Well so much the better for that. I never saw a boy so stuck on himself.” “Martin has enough conceit to sink a battleship,” I said morosely and went upstairs and cried. The night I went to the Berrymans was a Saturday night. I baby- sat for them quite often on Saturday nights because they liked to drive over to Baileyville, a much bigger, livelier town about twenty miles away, and perhaps have supper and go to a show. They had been living in our town only two or three years — Mr. Berryman had been brought in as plant manager of the new door-factory — and they remained, I suppose by choice, on the fringes of its society; most of their friends were young- ish couples like themselves, born in other places, who lived in new ranch- style houses on a hill outside town where we used to go tobogganing. This Saturday night they had two other couples in for drinks before they all drove over to Baileyville for the opening of a new supper-club; they were all rather festive. I sat in the kitchen and pretended to do Latin. Last night had been the Spring Dance at the high school. I had not gone, since the only boy who had asked me was Millerd Crompton, who asked so many girls that he was suspected of working his way through the whole

munro / an ounce of cure 171

class alphabetically. But the dance was held in the Armories, which was only half a block away from our house; I had been able to see the boys in dark suits, the girls in long pale formals under their coats, passing gravely under the street-lights, stepping around the last patches of snow. I could even hear the music and I have not forgotten to this day that they played “Ballerina,” and — oh, song of my aching heart — “Slow Boat to China.” Joyce had phoned me up this morning and told me in her hushed way (we might have been discussing an incurable disease I had) that yes, M.C. had been there with M.B., and she had on a formal that must have been made out of somebody’s old lace tablecloth, it just hung. When the Berrymans and their friends had gone I went into the liv- ing room and read a magazine. I was mortally depressed. The big softly lit room, with its green and leaf-brown colors, made an uncluttered set- ting for the development of the emotions, such as you would get on a stage. At home the life of the emotions went on all right, but it always seemed to get buried under the piles of mending to be done, the iron- ing, the children’s jigsaw puzzles and rock collections. It was the sort of house where people were always colliding with one another on the stairs and listening to hockey games and Superman on the radio. I got up and found the Berrymans’ “Danse Macabre” and put it on the record player and turned out the living-room lights. The curtains were only partly drawn. A street light shone obliquely on the window- pane, making a rectangle of thin dusty gold, in which the shadows of bare branches moved, caught in the huge sweet winds of spring. It was a mild black night when the last snow was melting. A year ago all this — the music, the wind and darkness, the shadows of the branches — would have given me tremendous happiness; when they did not do so now, but only called up tediously familiar, somehow humiliatingly personal thoughts, I gave up my soul for dead and walked into the kitchen and decided to get drunk. No, it was not like that. I walked into the kitchen to look for a coke or something in the refrigerator, and there on the front of the counter were three tall beautiful bottles, all about half full of gold. But even after I had looked at them and lifted them to feel their weight I had not decided to get drunk; I had decided to have a drink. Now here is where my ignorance, my disastrous innocence, comes in. It is true that I had seen the Berrymans and their friends drinking their highballs as casually as I would drink a coke, but I did not apply this attitude to myself. No; I thought of hard liquor as something to be taken in extremities, and relied upon for extravagant results, one way or another. My approach could not have been less casual if I had been the Little Mermaid drinking the witch’s crystal potion. Gravely, with a glance at my set face in the black window above the sink, I poured a little whisky from each of the bottles (I think now there were two brands of rye and an expensive Scotch) until I had my glass full. For I had never in my life seen anyone pour a drink and I had no idea that people frequently

172 point of view

diluted their liquor with water, soda, et cetera, and I had seen that the glasses the Berrymans’ guests were holding when I came through the liv- ing room were nearly full. I drank it off as quickly as possible. I set the glass down and stood looking at my face in the window, half expecting to see it altered. My throat was burning, but I felt nothing else. It was very disappointing, when I had worked myself up to it. But I was not going to let it go at that. I poured another full glass, then fi lled each of the bottles with water to approximately the level I had seen when I came in. I drank the second glass only a little more slowly than the fi rst. I put the empty glass down on the counter with care, perhaps feeling in my head a rustle of things to come, and went and sat down on a chair in the living room. I reached up and turned on a fl oor lamp beside the chair, and the room jumped on me.

When I say I was expecting extravagant results I do not mean that I was expecting this. I had thought of some sweeping emotional change, an upsurge of gaiety and irresponsibility, a feeling of lawlessness and escape, accompanied by a little dizziness and perhaps a tendency to giggle out loud. I did not have in mind the ceiling spinning like a great plate some- body had thrown at me, nor the pale green blobs of the chairs swelling, con- verging, disintegrating, playing with me a game full of enormous senseless inanimate malice. My head sank back; I closed my eyes. And at once opened them, opened them wide, threw myself out of the chair and down the hall and reached — thank God, thank God! — the Berrymans’ bathroom, where I was sick everywhere, everywhere, and dropped like a stone. From this point on I have no continuous picture of what happened; my memories of the next hour or two are split into vivid and improbable segments, with nothing but murk and uncertainty between. I do remem- ber lying on the bathroom fl oor looking sideways at the little six-sided white titles, which lay together in such an admirable and logical pattern, seeing them with the brief broken gratitude and sanity of one who has just been torn to pieces with vomiting. Then I remember sitting on the stool in front of the hall phone, asking weakly for Joyce’s number. Joyce was not home. I was told by her mother (a rather rattlebrained woman, who didn’t seem to notice a thing the matter — for which I felt weakly, mechanically grateful) that she was at Kay Stringer’s house. I didn’t know Kay’s number so I just asked the operator; I felt I couldn’t risk looking down at the telephone book. Kay Stringer was not a friend of mine but a new friend of Joyce’s. She had a vague reputation for wildness and a long switch of hair, very oddly, though naturally, colored — from soap-yellow to caramel brown. She knew a lot of boys more exciting than Martin Collingwood, boys who had quit school or been imported into town to play on the hockey team. She and Joyce rode around in these boys’ cars, and sometimes went with them — having lied of course to their mothers — to the Gay-la dance hall on the highway north of town.

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I got Joyce on the phone. She was very keyed-up, as she always was with boys around, and she hardly seemed to hear what I was saying. “Oh, I can’t tonight,” she said. “Some kids are here. We’re going to play cards. You know Bill Kline? He’s here. Ross Armour —” “I’m sick,” I said trying to speak distinctly; it came out an inhuman croak. “I’m drunk. Joyce!” Then I fell off the stool and the receiver dropped out of my hand and banged for a while dismally against the wall. I had not told Joyce where I was, so after thinking about it for a moment she phoned my mother, and using the elaborate and unneces- sary subterfuge that young girls delight in, she found out. She and Kay and the boys — there were three of them — told some story about where they were going to Kay’s mother, and got into the car and drove out. They found me still lying on the broadloom carpet in the hall; I had been sick again, and this time I had not made it to the bathroom. It turned out that Kay Stringer, who arrived on this scene only by accident, was exactly the person I needed. She loved a crisis, particularly one like this, which had a shady and scandalous aspect and which must be kept secret from the adult world. She became excited, aggressive, effi - cient; that energy which was termed wildness was simply the overfl ow of a great female instinct to manage, comfort, and control. I could hear her voice coming at me from all directions, telling me not to worry, tell- ing Joyce to fi nd the biggest coffeepot they had and make it full of coffee (strong coffee, she said), telling the boys to pick me up and carry me to the sofa. Later, in the fog beyond my reach, she was calling for a scrub-brush. Then I was lying on the sofa, covered with some kind of crocheted throw they had found in the bedroom. I didn’t want to lift my head. The house was full of the smell of coffee. Joyce came in, looking very pale; she said that the Berryman kids had wakened up but she had given them a cookie and told them to go back to bed, it was all right; she hadn’t let them out of their room and she didn’t believe they’d remember. She said that she and Kay had cleaned up the bathroom and the hall though she was afraid there was still a spot on the rug. The coffee was ready. I didn’t understand anything very well. The boys had turned on the radio and were going through the Berrymans’ record collection; they had it out on the fl oor. I felt there was something odd about this but I could not think what it was. Kay brought me a huge breakfast mug full of coffee. “I don’t know if I can,” I said. “Thanks.” “Sit up,” she said briskly, as if dealing with drunks was an every- day business for her, I had no need to feel myself important (I met, and recognized, that tone of voice years later, in the maternity ward.) “Now drink,” she said. I drank and at the same time realized that I was wearing only my slip. Joyce and Kay had taken off my blouse and skirt. They had brushed off the skirt and washed out the blouse, since it was nylon; it was hanging in the bathroom. I pulled the throw up under my arms and Kay laughed. She got everybody coffee. Joyce brought in the coffeepot

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and on Kay’s instruction she kept fi lling my cup whenever I drank from it. Somebody said to me with interest, “You must have really wanted to tie one on.” “No,” I said rather sulkily, obediently drinking my coffee. “I only had two drinks.” Kay laughed, “Well it certainly gets to you, I’ll say that. What time do you expect they’ll be back?” she said. “Late. After one I think.” “You should be all right by that time. Have some more coffee.” Kay and one of the boys began dancing to the radio. Kay danced very sexily, but her face had the gently superior and indulgent, rather cold look it had when she was lifting me up to drink the coffee. The boy was whispering to her and she was smiling, shaking her head. Joyce said she was hungry, and she went out to the kitchen to see what there was — potato chips or crackers, or something like that, that you could eat without making too noticeable a dint. Bill Kline came over and sat on the sofa beside me and patted my legs through the crocheted throw. He didn’t say anything to me, just patted my legs and looked at me with what seemed to me a very stupid, half sick, absurd, and alarming expres- sion. I felt very uncomfortable; I wondered how it had ever got around that Bill Kline was so good looking, with an expression like that. I moved my legs nervously and he gave me a look of contempt, not ceasing to pat me. Then I scrambled off the sofa, pulling the throw around me, with the idea of going to the bathroom to see if my blouse was dry. I lurched a little when I started to walk, and for some reason — probably to show Bill Kline that he had not panicked me — I immediately exaggerated this, and calling out, “Watch me walk a straight line!” I lurched and stumbled, to the accompaniment of everyone’s laughter, towards the hall. I was standing in the archway between the hall and the living room when the knob of the front door turned with a small matter-of-fact click and everything became silent behind me except the radio of course and the crocheted throw inspired by some delicate malice of its own slithered down around my feet and there — oh, delicious moment in a well-organized farce! — there stood the Berrymans, Mr. and Mrs., with expressions on their faces as appropriate to the occasion as any old-fashioned director of farces could wish. They must have been preparing those expressions, of course; they could not have produced them in the fi rst moment of shock; with the noise we were making, they had no doubt heard us as soon as they got out of the car; for the same reason, we had not heard them. I don’t think I ever knew what brought them home so early — a headache, an argument — and I was not really in a position to ask.

Mr. Berryman drove me home. I don’t remember how I got into that car, or how I found my clothes and put them on, or what kind of a good- night, if any, I said to Mrs. Berryman. I don’t remember what happened to my friends, though I imagine they gathered up their coats and fl ed,

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covering up the ignominy of their departure with a mechanical roar of defi ance. I remember Joyce with a box of crackers in her hand, saying that I had become terribly sick from eating — I think she said sauerkraut — for supper, and that I had called them for help. (When I asked her later what they made of this she said, “It wasn’t any use. You reeked.”) I remember also her saying, “Oh, no, Mr. Berryman I beg of you, my mother is a ter- ribly nervous person I don’t know what the shock might do to her. I will go down on my knees to you if you like but you must not phone my mother.” I have no picture of her down on her knees — and she would have done it in a minute — so it seems this threat was not carried out. Mr. Berryman said to me, “Well I guess you know your behav- ior tonight is a pretty serious thing.” He made it sound as if I might be charged with criminal negligence or something worse. “It would be very wrong of me to overlook it,” he said. I suppose that besides being angry and disgusted with me, he was worried about taking me home in this condition to my strait-laced parents, who could always say I got the liquor in his house. Plenty of Temperance people would think that enough to hold him responsible, and the town was full of Temperance people. Good relations with the town were very important to him from a business point of view. “I have an idea it wasn’t the fi rst time,” he said. “If it was the fi rst time, would a girl be smart enough to fi ll three bottles up with water? No. Well in this case, she was smart enough, but not smart enough to know I could spot it. What do you say to that?” I opened my mouth to answer and although I was feeling quite sober the only sound that came out was a loud, desolate-sounding giggle. He stopped in front of our house. “Light’s on,” he said. “Now go in and tell your parents the straight truth. And if you don’t, remember I will.” He did not mention paying me for my baby-sitting services of the evening and the subject did not occur to me either. I went into the house and tried to go straight upstairs but my mother called to me. She came into the front hall, where I had not turned on the light, and she must have smelled me at once for she ran forward with a cry of pure amazement, as if she had seen somebody falling, and caught me by the shoulders as I did indeed fall down against the banister, over- whelmed by my fantastic lucklessness, and I told her everything from the start, not omitting even the name of Martin Collingwood and my fl irta- tion with the aspirin bottle, which was a mistake. On Monday morning my mother took the bus over to Baileyville and found the liquor store and bought a bottle of Scotch whisky. Then she had to wait for a bus back, and she met some people she knew and she was not quite able to hide the bottle in her bag; she was furious with herself for not bringing a proper shopping-bag. As soon as she got back she walked out to the Berrymans’; she had not even had lunch. Mr. Ber- ryman had not gone back to the factory. My mother went in and had a talk with both of them and made an excellent impression and then

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Mr. Berryman drove her home. She talked to them in the forthright and unemotional way she had, which was always agreeably surprising to people prepared to deal with a mother, and she told them that although I seemed to do well enough at school I was extremely backward — or per- haps eccentric — in my emotional development. I imagine that this anal- ysis of my behavior was especially effective with Mrs. Berryman, a great reader of Child Guidance books. Relations between them warmed to the point where my mother brought up a specifi c instance of my diffi culties, and disarmingly related the whole story of Martin Collingwood. Within a few days it was all over town and the school that I had tried to commit suicide over Martin Collingwood. But it was already all over school and the town that the Berrymans had come home on Saturday night to fi nd me drunk, staggering, wearing nothing but my slip, in a room with three boys, one of whom was Bill Kline. My mother had said that I was to pay for the bottle she had taken the Berrymans out of my baby-sitting earnings, but my clients melted away like the last April snow, and it would not be paid for yet if newcomers to town had not moved in across the street in July, and needed a baby sitter before they talked to any of their neighbors. My mother also said that it had been a great mistake to let me go out with boys and that I would not be going out again until well after my sixteenth birthday, if then. This did not prove to be a concrete hardship at all, because it was at least that long before anybody asked me. If you think that news of the Berrymans adventure would put me in demand for whatever gambols and orgies were going on in and around that town, you could not be more mistaken. The extraordinary publicity which attended my fi rst debauch may have made me seem marked for a special kind of ill luck, like the girl whose illegitimate baby turns out to be triplets: nobody wants to have anything to do with her. At any rate I had at the same time one of the most silent telephones and positively the most sinful reputa- tion in the whole high school. I had to put up with this until the next fall, when a fat blonde girl in grade ten ran away with a married man and was picked up two months later, living in sin — though not with the same man — in the city of Saulte Ste. Marie. Then everybody forgot about me. But there was a positive, a splendidly unexpected, result of this affair: I got completely over Martin Collingwood. It was not only that he at once said, publicly, that he had always thought I was a nut; where he was concerned I had no pride, and my tender fancy could have found a way around that, a month, a week, before. What was it that brought me back into the world again? It was the terrible and fascinating reality of my disaster; it was the way things happened. Not that I enjoyed it; I was a self-conscious girl and I suffered a good deal from all this exposure. But the development of events on that Saturday night — that fascinated me; I felt that I had had a glimpse of the shameless, marvelous, shattering absurdity with which the plots of life, though not of fi ction, are impro- vised. I could not take my eyes off it.

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And of course Martin Collingwood wrote his Senior Matric that June, and went away to the city to take a course at a school for Morti- cians, as I think it is called, and when he came back he went into his uncle’s undertaking business. We lived in the same town and we would hear most things that happened to each other but I do not think we met face to face or saw one another, except at a distance, for years. I went to a shower for the girl he married, but then everybody went to every- body else’s showers. No, I do not think I really saw him again until I came home after I had been married several years, to attend a relative’s funeral. Then I saw him; not quite Mr. Darcy but still very nice-looking in those black clothes. And I saw him looking over at me with an expres- sion as close to a reminiscent smile as the occasion would permit, and I knew that he had been surprised by a memory either of my devotion or my little buried catastrophe. I gave him a gentle, uncomprehending look in return. I am a grown-up woman now; let him unbury his own catastrophes.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. In what ways does the fi rst-person narrator portray herself as a typical teenager? Why isn’t the characterization of her correctly described as stereotypical?

2. Discuss the narrator’s sense of humor. How does her humor affect your attitude toward her?

3. Describe the differences in perspective and sensibilities between the teenager who experiences the events in the story and the adult who recounts them.

4. How does the narrator’s drunken baby-sitting episode affect her rep- utation? What does this reveal about her and the town?

5. How convincing are the narrator’s descriptions of the effects of alco- hol upon her? Cite specifi c passages to illustrate your points.

6. How would you describe the confl ict in the story? How is it resolved? 7. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. In an essay discuss the narra-

tors’ humor in Munro’s “An Ounce of Cure” and John Updike’s “A & P” (p. 334). How does the humor affect your response to each narrator?

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Now mind, I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest.

— RALPH ELLISON

A symbol is a person, object, or event that suggests more than its literal meaning. This basic definition is simple enough, but the use of symbol in literature makes some students slightly nervous because they tend to regard it as a booby trap, a hidden device that can go off during a seem- ingly harmless class discussion. “I didn’t see that when I was reading the story” is a frequently heard comment. This sort of surprise and recog- nition is both natural and common. Most readers go through a story for the first time getting their bearings, figuring out what is happening to whom and so on. Patterns and significant details often require a sec- ond or third reading before they become evident — before a symbol sheds light on a story. Then the details of a work may suddenly fit together, and its meaning may be reinforced, clarified, or enlarged by the symbol. Symbolic meanings are usually embedded in the texture of a story, but they are not “hidden”; instead, they are carefully placed. Reading between the lines (where there is only space) is unnecessary. What is needed is a careful consideration of the elements of the story, a sensitivity to its lan- guage, and some common sense. Common sense is a good place to begin. Symbols appear all around us; anything can be given symbolic significance. Without symbols our lives would be stark and vacant. Awareness of a writer’s use of symbols is not all that different from the kinds of perceptions and interpretations that allow us to make sense of our daily lives. We know, for example, that a ring used in a wedding is more than just a piece of jewelry because it suggests the unity and intimacy of a closed circle. The bride’s gown may be white be cause we tend to associate innocence and purity with

6 Symbolism

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that color. Or consider the meaning of a small polo pony sewn on a shirt or some other article of clothing. What started as a company trademark has gathered around it a range of meanings suggesting everything from quality and money to preppiness and silliness. The ring, the white gown, and the polo pony trademark are symbolic because each has meanings that go beyond its specific qualities and functions. Symbols such as these that are widely recognized by a society or culture are called conventional symbols. The Christian cross, the Star of David, a swastika, or a nation’s flag all have meanings understood by large groups of people. Certain kinds of experiences also have traditional meanings in Western cultures. Winter, the setting sun, and the color black suggest death, while spring, the rising sun, and the color green evoke images of youth and new beginnings. (It is worth noting, how- ever, that individual cultures sometimes have their own conventions; some Eastern cultures associate white rather than black with death and mourning. And obviously the polo pony trademark would mean noth- ing to anyone totally unfamiliar with American culture.) These broadly shared symbolic meanings are second nature to us. Writers use conventional symbols to reinforce meanings. Kate Chopin, for example, emphasizes the spring setting in “The Story of an Hour” (p. 13) as a way of suggesting the renewed sense of life that Mrs. Mallard feels when she thinks herself free from her husband. A literary symbol can include traditional, conventional, or public meanings, but it may also be established internally by the total context of the work in which it appears. In “Soldier’s Home” (p. 117), Hemingway does not use Krebs’s family home as a conventional symbol of safety, comfort, and refuge from the war. Instead, Krebs’s home becomes sym- bolic of pro vincial, erroneous presuppositions compounded by blind innocence, sentimentality, and smug middle-class respectability. The symbolic meaning of his home reveals that Krebs no longer shares his family’s and town’s view of the world. Their notions of love, the value of a respectable job, and a be lief in God seem to him petty, com- plicated, and meaningless. The signifi cance of Krebs’s home is deter- mined by the events within the story, which reverse and subvert the traditional associations readers might bring to it. Krebs’s interactions with his family and the people in town reveal what home has come to mean to him. A literary symbol can be a setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that maintains its literal significance while suggesting other meanings. Symbols cannot be restricted to a single meaning; they are suggestive rather than definitive. Their evocation of multiple meanings allows a writer to say more with less. Symbols are economical devices for evoking complex ideas without having to resort to painstaking explanations that would make a story more like an essay than an experience. The many walls in Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

WEB Explore the literary element in this chapter at bedfordstmartins .com/ rewritinglit.

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(p. 85) cannot be re duced to one idea. They have multiple meanings that unify the story. The walls are symbols of the deadening, dehumanizing, restrictive repetitiveness of the office routine, as well as of the confining, materialistic sensibilities of Wall Street. They suggest whatever limits and thwarts human aspirations, including death itself. We don’t know precisely what shatters Bartleby’s will to live, but the walls in the story, through their symbolic suggestiveness, indicate the nature of the limita- tions that cause the scrive ner to slip into hopelessness and his “dead- wall reveries.” When a character, object, or incident indicates a single, fixed mean- ing, the writer is using allegory rather than symbol. Whereas symbols have literal functions as well as multiple meanings, the primary focus in allegory is on the abstract idea called forth by the concrete object. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, published during the seventeenth century, is a classic example of allegory because the characters, action, and setting have no existence beyond their abstract meanings. Bunyan’s purpose is to teach his readers the exemplary way to salvation and heaven. The pro- tagonist, named Christian, flees the City of Destruction in search of the Celestial City. Along the way he encounters characters who either help or hinder his spiritual journey. Among them are Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Faithful, Prudence, Piety, and a host of others named after the virtues or vices they display. These characters, places, and actions exist solely to illustrate religious doctrine. Allegory tends to be definitive rather than suggestive. It drives meaning into a corner and keeps it there. Most modern writers prefer the exploratory nature of symbol to the reductive nature of pure allegory. Stories often include symbols that you may or may not perceive on a first reading. Their subtle use is a sign of a writer’s skill in weaving symbols into the fabric of the characters’ lives. Symbols may sometimes escape you, but that is probably better than finding symbols where only literal meanings are intended. Allow the text to help you determine whether a symbolic reading is appropriate. By keeping track of the total context of the story, you should be able to decide whether your reading is reasonable and consistent with the other facts; plenty of lemons in literature yield no symbolic mean- ing even if they are squeezed. Be sensitive to the meanings that the author associates with people, places, objects, and actions. You may not associate home with provincial innocence as Hemingway does in “Soldier’s Home,” but a close reading of the story will permit you to see how and why he constructs that symbolic meaning. If you treat stories like people — with tact and care — they ordinarily are accessible and enjoyable. The next stories — Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” and Peter Meinke’s “The Cranes” — rely on symbols to convey meanings that go far be yond the specific incidents described in their plots.

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Ralph Ellison (1914–1994)

Born in Oklahoma and educated at the Tuskegee Institute in Ala- bama, where he studied music, Ralph Ellison gained his reputa- tion as a writer on the strength of his only published novel, Invis- ible Man (1952). He also published some scattered short stories and two collections of essays, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Ter- ritory (1986). Although his writing was not extensive, it is important

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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because Ellison wrote about race relations in the context of universal human concerns. Invisible Man is the story of a young black man who moves from the South to the North and discovers what it means to be black in America. “Battle Royal,” published in 1947 as a short story, be came the first chapter of Invisible Man. It concerns the beginning of the protagonist’s long struggle for an adult identity in a world made corrupt by racial prejudice.

Battle Royal 1947

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradic- tion and even self-contradictory. I was 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 born 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 that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in every- thing 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 gave 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 young-uns,” 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

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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 he 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 grandfa- ther 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 of the town. I was consid- ered an example of desirable conduct — just 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 this — how could I, remembering my grandfather? — I only believed that it worked.) It was a great success. Everyone praised me and I was invited to give the speech at a gather- ing of the town’s leading white citizens. It was a triumph for our 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. The 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. The fourth side was clear, revealing a gleaming space of polished floor. I had some mis- givings 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 into the servants’ elevator. Nor did they like my being there. In

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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 ante- room 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 acci- dentally be heard above the noise of the room. It was foggy with 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 al most wet my pants. A sea of faces, some hostile, some amused, ringed around us, and in the center, facing us, stood a magnificent blonde — stark 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 pow- dered 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 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 imper- sonal 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

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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 insinuat- ing 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 quick- ened. 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 the soft flesh. Some of the others tried to stop them as 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 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 flame. I felt the cloth pressed into place, and frowned so that it would be loosened when I relaxed.

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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 could hear the bleary voices yelling insis- tently 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 a terrific effort. I wanted to see, to see more desperately than ever before. But the blindfold was tight as a thick skin-puckering scab and when I raised my gloved hands to push the lay- ers 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 man- aged to feel my way to the ropes and held on, trying to catch my breath. A glove landed in my mid-section and I went over again, feeling as though the smoke had become a knife jabbed into my guts. Pushed this way and

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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 at mosphere like drunken dancers weaving to the rapid drumlike 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 from group to group. The boys groped about like blind, cautious crabs crouching to protect their mid- sections, 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 unpro- tected head. I played one group against the other, slipping in and throw- ing 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 blow, 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 tux- edoes 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 alive — with

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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 as 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, sonofabitch!” 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, “I’ll 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 despera- tion. 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 too — until 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 I 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 em phatically. 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. We 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

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hand. Looking up front, I saw attendants in white jackets rolling the por- table ring away and placing a small square rug in the vacant space sur- rounded 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. 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!” I lunged for a yellow coin lying on the blue design of the carpet, touching it and sending a surprised shriek to join those rising 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 the 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 electricity — a 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.

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“Get the money,” the M.C. called. “That’s good hard American cash!” And we snatched and grabbed, snatched and grabbed. I was care- ful not to come too close to the rug now, and when I felt the hot whis- key 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 obvi- ous, 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 swol- len 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 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 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 Green- wood. I’m told that he knows more big words than a pocket-sized dictionary.” Much applause and laughter.

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“So now, gentlemen, I want you to give him your attention.” There was still laughter as I faced them, my mouth dry, my eye 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 wis- dom: ‘A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly ves- sel. 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, ‘To those of my race who depend upon bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underesti- mate 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 . . .’” 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, sand-filled 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 was that all. Whenever I uttered a word of three or more syl lables a group of voices would yell for me to repeat it. I used the phrase “social responsi- bility” and they yelled: “What’s that word you say, boy?” “Social responsibility,” I said. “What?” “Social . . .” “Louder.” “. . . responsibility.” “More!” “Respon —” “Repeat!” “— sibility.” The room filled with the uproar of laughter until, no doubt, dis- tracted by having to gulp down my blood, I made a mistake and yelled

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100

a phrase I had often seen denounced in newspaper editorials, heard debated in private. “Social . . .” “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 this 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 that 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 calf- skin brief case. “. . . 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. Con- sider 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 des- tiny 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.

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105

My fingers a-tremble, I complied, smelling the fresh leather and finding an official-looking document inside. It was a scholarship to the state col- lege 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 that 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 death- bed curse usually spoiled my triumphs. I stood beneath his photograph with my brief case 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 with him and that he refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did. Then later he told me to open my brief case 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 document 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. (It was a dream I was to remember and dream again for many years after. But at that time I had no insight into its meaning. First I had to attend college.)

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Discuss how the protagonist’s expectations are similar to what has come to be known as the American dream — the assumption that ambition, hard work, perseverance, intelligence, and virtue always lead to success.

2. How does the first paragraph of the story sum up the conflict that the narrator confronts? In what sense is he “invisible”?

3. What is the symbolic significance of the naked blonde? What details reveal that she represents more than a sexual tease in the story?

4. How does the battle in the boxing ring and the scramble for money afterward suggest the kind of control whites have over blacks in the story?

5. How can the dream at the end of the story be related to the major incidents that precede it?

6. Given the grandfather’s advice, explain how “meekness” can be a “dangerous activity” and a weapon against oppression.

7. Imagine the story as told from a third-person point of view. How would this change the story? Do you think the story would be more

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or less effective told from a third-person point of view? Explain your answer.

8. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Compare and contrast Elli- son’s view of the South with William Faulk ner’s in “A Rose for Emily” (p. 55).

Peter Meinke (b. 1932)

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Peter Meinke was educated at Hamilton College (B.A., 1955), the University of Michigan (M.A., 1961), and the Uni- versity of Minnesota (Ph.D., 1965). He has taught literature and creative writing at a number of schools, including Hamline University, Eckerd Col- lege, and Old Dominion University. Though Meinke is primarily a poet, he has also published two collections of short stories: Piano Tuner (1986), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award, and Unheard Music (2007). In a 1990 interview in Clockwatch Review, Meinke discussed the similarities he sees between short stories and poetry: “I think that certainly poetry and short stories are more alike than short stories and novels, because that’s the main decision — leaving out the boffo endings, leaving out conversa- tions that are extraneous. There’s a big empty spot around poems and short stories, certainly. That’s the thing they have very strongly in com- mon.” “The Cranes” is a fine example of the kind of literary economy that Meinke believes poetry and short stories often share.

The Cranes 1987

“Oh!” she said, “what are those, the huge white ones?” Along the marshy shore two tall and stately birds, staring motionless toward the Gulf, tow- ered above the bobbing egrets and scurrying plovers. “Well, I can’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve been coming here for years and never saw one.” “But what are they? Don’t make me guess or anything; it makes me feel dumb.” They leaned forward in the car, and the shower curtain spread over the front seat crackled and hissed. “They’ve got to be whooping cranes, nothing else so big.” One of the birds turned gracefully, as if to acknowledge the old Dodge parked alone in the tall grasses. “See the black legs and black wingtips? Big! Why don’t I have my binoculars?” He looked at his wife and smiled. “Well,” he continued after a while, “I’ve seen enough birds. But whooping cranes, they’re rare. Not many left.” “They’re lovely. They make the little birds look like clowns.” “I could use a few clowns,” he said. “A few laughs never hurt anybody.” “Are you all right?” She put a hand on his thin arm. “I feel I’m responsible. Maybe this is the wrong thing.”

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“God, no!” His voice changed. “No way. I can’t smoke, can’t drink martinis, no coffee, no candy. I not only can’t leap buildings in a single bound, I can hardly get up the goddamn stairs.” She was smiling. “Do you remember the time you drank nine marti- nis and asked that young priest to step outside and see whose side God was on?” “What a jerk I was! How have you put up with me all this time?” “Oh no! I was proud of you. You were so funny, and that priest was a snot.” “Now you tell me.” The cranes were moving slowly over a small hill- ock, wings opening and closing like bellows. “It’s all right. It’s enough,” he said again. “How old am I anyway, 130?” “Really,” she said, “it’s me. Ever since the accident it’s been one thing after another. I’m just a lot of trouble to everybody.” “Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “Do you want to listen to the radio? How about turning on that preacher station so we can throw up?” “No,” she said, “I just want to watch the birds. And listen to you.” “You must be pretty tired of that.” She turned her head from the window and looked into his eyes. “I never got tired of listening to you. Never.” “Well, that’s good,” he said. “It’s just that when my mouth opens, your eyes tend to close.” “They do not!” she said, and began to laugh, but the laugh turned into a cough and he had to pat her on the back until she stopped. They leaned back in silence and looked toward the Gulf stretching out beyond the horizon. In the distance, the water looked like metal, still and hard. “I wish they’d court,” he said. “I wish we could see them court, the cranes. They put on a show. He bows like Nijinksy and jumps straight up in the air.” “What does she do?” “She lies down and he lands on top of her.” “No,” she said, “I’m serious.” “Well, I forget. I’ve never seen it. But I do remember that they mate for life and live a long time. They’re probably older than we are. Their feathers are falling out and their kids never write.” She was quiet again. He turned in his seat, picked up an object wrapped in a plaid towel, and placed it between them in the front. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said. “Do they really mate for life? I’m glad — they’re so beautiful.” “Yep. Audubon said that’s why they’re almost extinct: a failure of imagination.” “I don’t believe that,” she said. “I think there’ll always be whooping cranes.” “Why not?” he said. “I wish the children were more settled. I keep thinking it’s my fault.”

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“You think everything’s your fault. Nicaragua. Ozone depletion. Nothing is your fault. They’ll be fine, and anyway, they’re not children anymore. Kids are different today, that’s all. You were terrific.” He paused. “You were terrific in ways I couldn’t tell the kids about.” “I should hope not.” She laughed and began coughing again, but held his hand when he reached over. When the cough subsided they sat quietly, looking down at their hands as if they were objects in a museum. “I used to have pretty hands,” she said. “I remember.” “Do you? Really?” “I remember everything,” he said. “You always forgot everything.” “Well, now I remember.” “Did you bring something for your ears?” “No, I can hardly hear anything, anyway.” But he turned his head at a sudden squabble among the smaller birds. The cranes were stepping delicately away from the commotion. “I’m tired,” she said. “Yes.” He leaned over and kissed her, barely touching her lips. “Tell me,” he said, “did I really drink nine martinis?” But she had already closed her eyes and only smiled. Outside, the wind ruffled the bleached-out grasses, and the birds in the white glare seemed almost transparent. The hull of the car gleamed beetle-like — dull and somehow sinister in its metallic isolation. Suddenly, the two cranes plunged upward, their great wings beating the air and their long slender necks pointed like arrows toward the sun.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. What happens at the end of “The Cranes”? What do you think this story is about?

2. Point to incidences of suspenseful foreshadowing and discuss how they affect your understanding of the plot. Were you aware of the foreshadowing elements on a first reading or only after subsequent readings?

3. How might the cranes be read as both conventional and literary sym- bols in this story?

4. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Consider how symbols con- vey the central meanings of “The Cranes” and of either Kate Cho- pin’s “The Story of an Hour” (p. 13) or Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” (p. 38).

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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

— HERMAN MELVILLE, from Moby-Dick, 1851

Theme is the central idea or meaning of a story. It provides a unifying point around which the plot, characters, setting, point of view, symbols, and other elements of a story are organized. In some works the theme is explicitly stated. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Wakefield,” for example, begins with the author telling the reader that the point of his story is “done up neatly, and condensed into the final sentence.” Most modern writers, however, present their themes implicitly (as Hawthorne does in the majority of his stories), so determining the underlying mean- ing of a work often requires more effort than it does from the reader of “Wakefield.” One reason for the difficulty is that the theme is fused into the elements of the story, and these must be carefully examined in relation to one another as well as to the work as a whole. But then that’s the value of determining the theme, for it requires a close analysis of all the elements of a work. Such a close reading often results in sharper insights into this overlooked character or that seemingly unrelated inci- dent. Accounting for the details and seeing how they fit together result in greater understanding of the story. Themes are not always easy to express, but some principles can aid you in articulating the central meaning of a work. First distinguish between the theme of a story and its subject. They are not equivalents.

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Many stories share identical subjects, such as fate, death, innocence, youth, loneliness, racial prejudice, and disillusionment. Karen van der Zee’s “A Secret Sorrow” (p. 28) and Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” (p. 38) both focus on marriage. Yet each story usually makes its own statement about the subject and expresses a different view of life. Although readers may differ in their interpretations of a story, that does not mean that any interpretation is valid. If we were to assert that Krebs’s dissatisfactions in Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” (p. 117) could be readily eliminated by his settling down to marriage and a decent job (his mother’s solution), we would have missed Hemingway’s purposes in writing the story; we would have failed to see how Krebs’s war experi- ences have caused him to reexamine the assumptions and beliefs that previously nurtured him but now seem unreal to him. We would have to ignore much in the story in order to arrive at such a reading. To be valid, the statement of the theme should be responsive to the details of the story. It must be based on evidence within the story rather than solely on experiences, attitudes, or values the reader brings to the work — such as personally knowing a war veteran who successfully adjusted to civilian life after getting a good job and marrying. Familiarity with the subject matter of a story can certainly be an aid to interpretation, but it should not get in the way of seeing the author’s perspective. Sometimes readers too hastily conclude that a story’s theme always consists of a moral, some kind of lesson that is dramatized by the vari- ous elements of the work. There are stories that do this — Hawthorne’s “Wakefield,” for example. Here are the final sentences in his story about a middle-aged man who drops out of life for twenty years:

He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral, and be shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe.

Most stories, however, do not include such direct caveats about the conduct of life. A tendency to look for a lesson in a story can produce a reductive and inaccurate formulation of its theme.

In fact, a good many stories go beyond tradi- tional moral values to explore human behavior instead of condemning or endorsing it. Chekhov’s treatment of the adulterous affair between Gurov and Anna in “The Lady with the Pet Dog” (p. 139) portrays a love that is valuable and true despite the conventional moral codes it violates.

WEB Explore the literary element in this chapter at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

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There is no precise formula that can take you to the center of a story’s meaning and help you to articulate it. However, several strategies are practical and useful once you have read the story. Apply these pointers during a second or third reading:

1. Pay attention to the title of the story. It often provides a lead to a major symbol or to the subject around which the theme develops (Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman,” p. 38).

2. Look for details in the story that have potential for symbolic meanings. Careful consideration of names, places, objects, minor characters, and incidents can lead you to the central meaning — for example, think of the stripper in Ellison’s “Battle Royal” (p. 184). Be especially attentive to elements you did not understand on the first reading.

3. Decide whether the protagonist changes or develops some important insight as a result of the action. Carefully examine any generalizations the protagonist or narrator makes about the events in the story.

4. When you formulate the theme of the story in your own words, write it down in one or two complete sentences that make some point about the subject matter. Revenge may be the subject of a story, but its theme should make a statement about revenge: “Instead of providing satisfaction, revenge defeats the best in one’s self ” is one possibility.

5. Be certain that your expression of the theme is a generalized statement rather than a specific description of particular people, places, and incidents in the story. Contrast the preceding statement of a theme on revenge with this too-specific one: “In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth loses his humanity owing to his single-minded attempts to punish Arthur Dimmesdale for fathering a child with Chillingworth’s wife, Hester.” Hawthorne’s theme is not restricted to a single fictional character named Chillingworth but to anyone whose life is ruined by revenge.

6. Be wary of using clichés as a way of stating theme. They tend to short- circuit ideas instead of generating them. It may be tempting to resort to something like “Love conquers all” as a statement of the theme of Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog” (p. 139); however, even the slightest second thought reveals how much more ambiguous the ending of that story is.

7. Be aware that some stories emphasize theme less than others. Stories that have as their major purpose adventure, humor, mystery, or terror may have little or no theme. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” for example, the protagonist is not used to condemn torture; instead, he becomes a sensitive gauge to measure the pain and horror he endures at the hands of his captors.

What is most valuable about articulating the theme of a work is the process by which the theme is determined. Ultimately, the theme is expressed by the story itself and is inseparable from the experience of

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reading the story. Tim O’Brien’s explanation of “How to Tell a True War Story” (p. 318) is probably true of most kinds of stories: “In a true war story, if there’s a moral [or theme] at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning.” Describing the theme should not be a way to consume a story, to be done with it. It is a means of clarifying our thinking about what we’ve read and probably felt intuitively. Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” and Dagoberto Gilb’s “Love in L.A.” are three sto- ries whose themes emerge from the authors’ skillful use of plot, charac- ter, setting, and symbol.

Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893)

Born in Normandy, France, Guy de Maupassant studied law for a short time before joining the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War (1870– 1871). After the war, he worked as a civil servant in Paris but quit his job in 1880 to devote himself to writing. During the 1880s, he published nearly three hundred stories, six novels, and several plays. His stories are famous for their modern compactness and their freedom from authorial digressions and neatly tied-up moral endings. “The Necklace,” perhaps Maupassant’s best-known story, has intrigued generations of readers.

The Necklace 1884 TRANSLATED BY MARJORIE LAURIE

She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instructions. She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station, since with women there is neither caste nor rank: and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of family and birth. Natural fi neness, instinct for what is ele- gant, suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, and make from women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies. She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant, who did her humble housework, aroused in her regrets which were despairing, and distracted dreams. She

maupassant / the necklace 203

thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot air stove. She thought of the long salons fi tted up with ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks at fi ve o’clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire. When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth three days old, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with an enchanted air, “Ah, the good pot-au-feul! I don’t know anything better than that,” she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls with ancient per- sonages and with strange birds fl ying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvelous plates, and of the whispered gallantries which you listen to with a sphinxlike smile, while you are eating the pink fl esh of a trout or the wings of a quail. She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that; she felt made for that. She would so have liked to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after. She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go and see any more, because she suffered so much when she came back. But one evening, her husband returned home with a triumphant air, and holding a large envelope in his hand. “There,” said he. “Here is something for you.” She tore the paper sharply, and drew out a printed card which bore these words: “The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. Georges Rampon- neau request the honor of M. and Mme. Loisel’s company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January eighteenth.” Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with disdain, murmuring: “What do you want me to do with that?” “But, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is such a fi ne opportunity. I had awful trouble to get it. Everyone wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole offi cial world will be there.” She looked at him with an irritated glance, and said, impatiently: “And what do you want me to put on my back?” He had not thought of that; he stammered: “Why, the dress you go to the theater in. It looks very well, to me.” He stopped, distracted, seeing his wife was crying. Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth. He stuttered: “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”

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But, by violent effort, she had conquered her grief, and she replied, with a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks: “Nothing. Only I have no dress and therefore I can’t go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I.” He was in despair. He resumed: “Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable dress, which you could use on other occasions. Something very simple?” She refl ected several seconds, making her calculations and wonder- ing also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immedi- ate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk. Finally, she replied, hesitatingly: “I don’t know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hun- dred francs.” He had grown a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks down there, of a Sunday. But he said: “All right. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty dress.” The day of the ball drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anx- ious. Her dress was ready, however. Her husband said to her one evening: “What is the matter? Come, you’ve been so queer these last three days.” And she answered: “It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to put on. I shall look like distress. I should almost rather not go at all.” He resumed: “You might wear natural fl owers. It’s very stylish at this time of the year. For ten francs you can get two or three magnifi cent roses.” She was not convinced. “No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich.” But her husband cried: “How stupid you are! Go look up your friend Mme. Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You’re quite thick enough with her to do that.” She uttered a cry of joy: “It’s true. I never thought of it.” The next day she went to her friend and told of her distress. Mme. Forestier went to a wardrobe with a glass door, took out a large jewelbox, brought it back, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel: “Choose, choose, my dear.” She saw fi rst of all some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Vene- tian cross, gold and precious stones of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated, could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:

maupassant / the necklace 205

“Haven’t you any more?” “Why, yes. Look. I don’t know what you like.” All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb neck- lace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her high-necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself. Then she asked, hesitating, fi lled with anguish: “Can you lend me that, only that?” “Why, yes, certainly.” She sprang upon the neck of her friend, kissed her passionately, then fl ed with her treasure. The day of the ball arrived. Mme. Loisel made a great success. She was prettier than them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, endeavored to be intro- duced. All the attachés of the Cabinet wanted to waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself. She danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by plea- sure, forgetting all, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her suc- cess, in a sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this homage, of all this admiration, of all these awakened desires, and of that sense of com- plete victory which is so sweet to a woman’s heart. She went away about four o’clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight, in a little deserted anteroom, with three other gentlemen whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the wraps which he had brought, modest wraps of com- mon life, whose poverty contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs. Loisel held her back. “Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will go and call a cab.” But she did not listen to him, and rapidly descended the stairs. When they were in the street they did not fi nd a carriage; and they began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen whom they saw passing by at a distance. They went down toward the Seine, in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient noctambulant coupés° which, exactly as if they were ashamed to show their misery during the day, are never seen round Paris until after nightfall. It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and once more, sadly, they climbed up homeward. All was ended, for her. And as to him, he refl ected that he must be at the Ministry at ten o’clock. She removed the wraps which covered her shoulders before the glass, so as once more to see herself in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her neck!

coupés: Closed four-wheeled carriages.

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Her husband, already half undressed, demanded: “What is the matter with you?” She turned madly toward him. “I have — I have — I’ve lost Mme. Forestier’s necklace.” He stood up, distracted. “What! — how? — impossible!” And they looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere. They did not fi nd it. He asked: “You’re sure you had it on when you left the ball?” “Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the palace.” “But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab.” “Yes. Probably. Did you take his number?” “No. And you, didn’t you notice it?” “No.” They looked, thunderstruck, at one another. At last Loisel put on his clothes. “I shall go back on foot,” he said, “over the whole route which we have taken to see if I can fi nd it.” And he went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without fi re, without a thought. Her husband came back about seven o’clock. He had found nothing. He went to Police Headquarters, to the newspaper offi ces, to offer a reward; he went to the cab companies — everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least suspicion of hope. She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this ter- rible calamity. Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face; he had discovered nothing. “You must write to your friend,” said he, “that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round.” She wrote at his dictation. At the end of a week they had lost all hope. And Loisel, who had aged fi ve years, declared: “We must consider how to replace that ornament.” The next day they took the box which had contained it, and they went to the jeweler whose name was found within. He consulted his books. “It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have furnished the case.” Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the other, consulting their memories, sick both of them with chagrin and anguish.

maupassant / the necklace 207

100

They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds which seemed to them exactly like the one they looked for. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six. So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they found the other one before the end of February. Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest. He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, fi ve hundred of another, fi ve louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He compro- mised all the rest of his life, risked his signature without even knowing if he could meet it; and, frightened by the pains yet to come, by the black misery which was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the phys- ical privation and of all the moral tortures which he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, putting down upon the merchant’s coun- ter thirty-six thousand francs. When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace, Mme. Forestier said to her, with a chilly manner: “You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it.” She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had detected the substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have said? Would she not have taken Mme. Loisel for a thief? Mme. Loisel now knew the horrible existence of the needy. She took her part, moreover, all of a sudden, with heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof. She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her rosy nails on the greasy pots and pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts, and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the street every morning, and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing. And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, her basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, defending her miserable money sou by sou. Each month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time. Her husband worked in the evening making a fair copy of some tradesman’s accounts, and late at night he often copied manuscript for fi ve sous a page. And this life lasted for ten years. At the end of ten years, they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury, and the accumulations of the compound interest. Mme. Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impov- erished households — strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts

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105

110

115

120

125

askew, and red hands, she talked loud while washing the fl oor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the offi ce, she sat down near the window, and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so fêted. What would have happened if she had not lost the necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How life is strange and changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved? But, one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysées to refresh herself from the labor of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Mme. Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming. Mme. Loisel felt moved. Was she going to speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she was going to tell her all about it. Why not? She went up. “Good-day, Jeanne.” The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good- wife, did not recognize her at all, and stammered. “But—madam!—I do not know—you must be mistaken.” “No. I am Mathilde Loisel.” Her friend uttered a cry. “Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!” “Yes, I have had days hard enough, since I have seen you, days wretched enough—and that because of you!” “Of me? How so?” “Do you remember that diamond necklace which you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?” “Yes. Well?” “Well, I lost it.” “What do you mean? You brought it back.” “I brought you back another just like it. And for this we have been ten years paying. You can understand that it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad.” Mme. Forestier had stopped. “You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?” “Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very like.” And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive at once. Mme. Forestier, strongly moved, took her two hands. “Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at most fi ve hundred francs!”

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. After reading the fi rst fi ve paragraphs of the story, how do you feel about Mme. Loisel? Do you like her or not? Why? Does your opinion of her change by the end of the story?

2. What is the confl ict in the story?

crane / the bride comes to yellow sky 209

3. Locate the climax in the story. Is there a resolution to the confl ict? Explain.

4. What role does French society play in the story? 5. How well does paragraph 105 sum up the point of the story? What do

you think is the story’s theme? 6. Does this story have a moral? If so, what is it, and is it stated explic-

itly or merely implied? 7. What do you think is Mme. Loisel’s response to Mme. Forestier’s tell-

ing her that the necklace was merely paste? Write a conclusion to the story that describes her response.

8. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Write an essay comparing the ending of “The Necklace” with that of Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics” (p. 227). What is the effect of the ending on your reading of each story?

Stephen Crane (1871–1900)

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane attended Lafayette College and Syracuse Uni- versity and then worked as a freelance jour- nalist in New York City. He wrote newspaper pieces, short stories, poems, and novels for his entire, brief adult life. His first book, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), is a story about New York slum life and prostitution. His most famous novel, The Red Badge of Courage (1895), gives readers a vivid, convincing re-creation of Civil War battles, even though Crane had never been to war. However, Crane was per- sonally familiar with the American West, where he traveled as a reporter. “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” includes some of the ingredients of a typical popular western — a confrontation between a marshal and a drunk who shoots up the town.

The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky 1898

The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the plains of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of green grass, dull-hued spaces of mesquit and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of light and

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tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over the horizon, a precipice. A newly married pair had boarded this coach at San Antonio. The man’s face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun, and a direct result of his new black clothes was that his brick-colored hands were constantly performing in a most conscious fashion. From time to time he looked down respectfully at his attire. He sat with a hand on each knee, like a man waiting in a barber’s shop. The glances he devoted to other passengers were furtive and shy. The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there, and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted her head to regard her puff sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They embarrassed her. It was quite apparent that she had cooked, and that she expected to cook, dutifully. The blushes caused by the careless scrutiny of some pas- sengers as she had entered the car were strange to see upon this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in placid, almost emotion- less lines. They were evidently very happy. “Ever been in a parlor-car before?” he asked, smiling with delight. “No,” she answered; “I never was. It’s fine, ain’t it?” “Great! And then after a while we’ll go forward to the diner, and get a big lay-out. Finest meal in the world. Charge a dollar.” “Oh, do they?” cried the bride. “Charge a dollar? Why, that’s too much — for us — ain’t it, Jack?” “Not this trip, anyhow,” he answered bravely. “We’re going to go the whole thing.” Later he explained to her about the trains. “You see, it’s a thousand miles from one end of Texas to the other; and this train runs right across it, and never stops but four times.” He had the pride of an owner. He pointed out to her the dazzling fittings of the coach; and in truth her eyes opened wider as she contemplated the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil. At one end a bronze figure sturdily held a support for a separated chamber, and at convenient places on the ceiling were frescoes in olive and silver. To the minds of the pair, their surroundings reflected the glory of their marriage that morning in San Antonio; this was the environment of their new estate; and the man’s face in particular beamed with an ela- tion that made him appear ridiculous to the negro porter. This individ- ual at times surveyed them from afar with an amused and superior grin. On other occasions he bullied them with skill in ways that did not make it exactly plain to them that they were being bullied. He subtly used all the manners of the most unconquerable kind of snobbery. He oppressed them; but of this oppression they had small knowledge, and they speed- ily forgot that infrequently a number of travelers covered them with

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stares of derisive enjoyment. Historically there was supposed to be some- thing infinitely humorous in their situation. “We are due in Yellow Sky at 3:42,” he said, looking tenderly into her eyes. “Oh, are we?” she said, as if she had not been aware of it. To evince surprise at her husband’s statement was part of her wifely amiability. She took from a pocket a little silver watch; and as she held it before her, and stared at it with a frown of attention, the new husband’s face shone. “I bought it in San Anton’ from a friend of mine,” he told her gleefully. “It’s seventeen minutes past twelve,” she said, looking up at him with a kind of shy and clumsy coquetry. A passenger, noting this play, grew excessively sardonic, and winked at himself in one of the numerous mirrors. At last they went to the dining-car. Two rows of negro waiters, in glowing white suits, surveyed their entrance with the interest, and also the equanimity, of men who had been forewarned. The pair fell to the lot of a waiter who happened to feel pleasure in steering them through their meal. He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly pilot, his counte- nance radiant with benevolence. The patronage, entwined with the ordi- nary deference, was not plain to them. And yet, as they returned to their coach, they showed in their faces a sense of escape. To the left, miles down a long purple slope, was a little ribbon of mist where moved the keening Rio Grande. The train was approaching it at an angle, and the apex was Yellow Sky. Presently it was apparent that, as the distance from Yellow Sky grew shorter, the husband became commensurately restless. His brick-red hands were more insistent in their prominence. Occasionally he was even rather absent-minded and far-away when the bride leaned forward and addressed him. As a matter of truth, Jack Potter was beginning to find the shadow of a deed weigh upon him like a leaden slab. He, the town marshal of Yellow Sky, a man known, liked, and feared in his corner, a prominent person, had gone to San Antonio to meet a girl he believed he loved, and there, after the usual prayers, had actually induced her to marry him, without consulting Yellow Sky for any part of the transaction. He was now bring- ing his bride before an innocent and unsuspecting community. Of course people in Yellow Sky married as it pleased them in accor- dance with a general custom; but such was Potter’s thought of his duty to his friends, or of their idea of his duty, or of an unspoken form which does not control men in these matters, that he felt he was heinous. He had committed an extraordinary crime. Face to face with this girl in San Antonio, and spurred by his sharp impulse, he had gone headlong over all the social hedges. At San Antonio he was like a man hidden in the dark. A knife to sever any friendly duty, any form, was easy to his hand in that remote city. But the hour of Yellow Sky — the hour of daylight — was approaching.

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He knew full well that his marriage was an important thing to his town. It could only be exceeded by the burning of the new hotel. His friends could not forgive him. Frequently he had reflected on the advis- ability of telling them by telegraph, but a new cowardice had been upon him. He feared to do it. And now the train was hurrying him toward a scene of amazement, glee, and reproach. He glanced out of the window at the line of haze swinging slowly in toward the train. Yellow Sky had a kind of brass band, which played painfully, to the delight of the populace. He laughed without heart as he thought of it. If the citizens could dream of his prospective arrival with his bride, they would parade the band at the station and escort them, amid cheers and laughing congratulations, to his adobe home. He resolved that he would use all the devices of speed and plains- craft in making the journey from the station to his house. Once within that safe citadel, he could issue some sort of vocal bulletin, and then not go among the citizens until they had time to wear off a little of their enthusiasm. The bride looked anxiously at him. “What’s worrying you, Jack?” He laughed again. “I’m not worrying, girl; I’m only thinking of Yel- low Sky.” She flushed in comprehension. A sense of mutual guilt invaded their minds and developed a finer tenderness. They looked at each other with eyes softly aglow. But Potter often laughed the same nervous laugh; the flush upon the bride’s face seemed quite permanent. The traitor to the feelings of Yellow Sky narrowly watched the speed- ing landscape. “We’re nearly there,” he said. Presently the porter came and announced the proximity of Pot- ter’s home. He held a brush in his hand, and, with all his airy superiority gone, he brushed Potter’s new clothes as the latter slowly turned this way and that way. Potter fumbled out a coin and gave it to the porter, as he had seen others do. It was a heavy and muscle-bound business, as that of a man shoeing his first horse. The porter took their bag, and as the train began to slow they moved forward to the hooded platform of the car. Presently the two engines and their long string of coaches rushed into the station of Yellow Sky. “They have to take water here,” said Potter, from a constricted throat and in mournful cadence, as one announcing death. Before the train stopped his eye had swept the length of the platform, and he was glad and astonished to see there was none upon it but the station-agent, who, with a slightly hurried and anxious air, was walking toward the water- tanks. When the train had halted, the porter alighted first, and placed in position a little temporary step. “Come on, girl,” said Potter, hoarsely. As he helped her down they each laughed on a false note. He took the bag from the negro, and bade

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his wife cling to his arm. As they slunk rapidly away, his hang-dog glance perceived that they were unloading the two trunks, and also that the station-agent, far ahead near the baggage-car, had turned and was running toward him, making gestures. He laughed, and groaned as he laughed, when he noted the first effect of his marital bliss upon Yellow Sky. He gripped his wife’s arm firmly to his side, and they fled. Behind them the porter stood, chuckling fatuously.

The California express on the Southern Railway was due at Yellow Sky in twenty-one minutes. There were six men at the bar of the Weary Gentleman saloon. One was a drummer° who talked a great deal and rapidly; three were Texans who did not care to talk at that time; and two were Mexican sheep-herders, who did not talk as a general practice in the Weary Gentleman saloon. The barkeeper’s dog lay on the board walk that crossed in front of the door. His head was on his paws, and he glanced drowsily here and there with the constant vigilance of a dog that is kicked on occasion. Across the sandy street were some vivid green grass-plots, so wonderful in appearance, amid the sands that burned near them in a blazing sun, that they caused a doubt in the mind. They exactly resembled the grass mats used to represent lawns on the stage. At the cooler end of the railway station, a man without a coat sat in a tilted chair and smoked his pipe. The fresh-cut bank of the Rio Grande circled near the town, and there could be seen beyond it a great plum-colored plain of mesquit. Save for the busy drummer and his companions in the saloon, Yel- low Sky was dozing. The new-comer leaned gracefully upon the bar, and recited many tales with the confidence of a bard who has come upon a new field. “ — and at the moment that the old man fell downstairs with the bureau in his arms, the old woman was coming up with two scuttles of coal, and of course — ” The drummer’s tale was interrupted by a young man who suddenly appeared in the open door. He cried: “Scratchy Wilson’s drunk, and has turned loose with both hands.” The two Mexicans at once set down their glasses and faded out of the rear entrance of the saloon. The drummer, innocent and jocular, answered: “All right, old man. S’pose he has? Come in and have a drink, anyhow.” But the information had made such an obvious cleft in every skull in the room that the drummer was obliged to see its importance. All had become instantly solemn. “Say,” said he, mystified, “what is this?” His three companions made the introductory gesture of eloquent speech; but the young man at the door forestalled them.

drummer: Traveling salesman.

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“It means, my friend,” he answered, as he came into the saloon, “that for the next two hours this town won’t be a health resort.” The barkeeper went to the door, and locked and barred it; reach- ing out of the window, he pulled in heavy wooden shutters, and barred them. Immediately a solemn, chapel-like gloom was upon the place. The drummer was looking from one to another. “But, say,” he cried, “what is this, anyhow? You don’t mean there is going to be a gun-fight?” “Don’t know whether there’ll be a fight or not,” answered one man, grimly; “but there’ll be some shootin’ — some good shootin’.” The young man who had warned them waved his hand. “Oh, there’ll be a fight fast enough, if any one wants it. Anybody can get a fight out there in the street. There’s a fight just waiting.” The drummer seemed to be swayed between the interest of a for- eigner and a perception of personal danger. “What did you say his name was?” he asked. “Scratchy Wilson,” they answered in chorus. “And will he kill anybody? What are you going to do? Does this hap- pen often? Does he rampage around like this once a week or so? Can he break in that door?” “No; he can’t break down that door,” replied the barkeeper. “He’s tried it three times. But when he comes you’d better lay down on the floor, stranger. He’s dead sure to shoot at it, and a bullet may come through.” Thereafter the drummer kept a strict eye upon the door. The time had not yet called for him to hug the floor, but, as a minor precaution, he sidled near the wall. “Will he kill anybody?” he said again. The men laughed low and scornfully at the question. “He’s out to shoot, and he’s out for trouble. Don’t see any good in experimentin’ with him.” “But what do you do in a case like this? What do you do?” A man responded: “Why, he and Jack Potter — ” “But,” in chorus the other men interrupted, “Jack Potter’s in San Anton’.” “Well, who is he? What’s he got to do with it?” “Oh, he’s the town marshal. He goes out and fights Scratchy when he gets on one of these tears.” “Wow!” said the drummer, mopping his brow. “Nice job he’s got.” The voices had toned away to mere whisperings. The drummer wished to ask further questions, which were born of an increasing anx- iety and bewilderment; but when he attempted them, the men merely looked at him in irritation and motioned him to remain silent. A tense waiting hush was upon them. In the deep shadows of the room their eyes shone as they listened for sounds from the street. One man made three gestures at the barkeeper; and the latter, moving like a ghost, handed him a glass and a bottle. The man poured a full glass of whisky,

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and set down the bottle noiselessly. He gulped the whisky in a swallow, and turned again toward the door in immovable silence. The drummer saw that the barkeeper, without a sound, had taken a Winchester from beneath the bar. Later he saw this individual beckoning to him, so he tiptoed across the room. “You better come with me back of the bar.” “No thanks,” said the drummer, perspiring; “I’d rather be where I can make a break for the back door.” Whereupon the man of bottles made a kindly but peremptory ges- ture. The drummer obeyed it, and, finding himself seated on a box with his head below the level of the bar, balm was laid upon his soul at sight of various zinc and copper fittings that bore a resemblance to armor- plate. The barkeeper took a seat comfortably upon an adjacent box. “You see,” he whispered, “this here Scratchy Wilson is a wonder with a gun — a perfect wonder; and when he goes on the war-trail, we hunt our holes — naturally. He’s about the last one of the old gang that used to hang out along the river here. He’s a terror when he’s drunk. When he’s sober he’s all right — kind of simple — wouldn’t hurt a fly — nicest fellow in town. But when he’s drunk — whoo!” There were periods of stillness. “I wish Jack Potter was back from San Anton’,” said the barkeeper. “He shot Wilson up once — in the leg — and he would sail in and pull out the kinks in this thing.” Presently they heard from a distance the sound of a shot, followed by three wild yowls. It instantly removed a bond from the men in the darkened saloon. There was a shuffling of feet. They looked at each other. “Here he comes,” they said.

III

A man in a maroon-colored flannel shirt, which had been purchased for purposes of decoration, and made principally by some Jewish women on the East Side of New York, rounded a corner and walked into the middle of the main street of Yellow Sky. In either hand the man held a long, heavy, blue-black revolver. Often he yelled, and these cries rang through a semblance of a deserted village, shrilly flying over the roofs in a volume that seemed to have no relation to the ordinary vocal strength of a man. It was as if the surrounding stillness formed the arch of a tomb over him. These cries of ferocious challenge rang against walls of silence. And his boots had red tops with gilded imprints, of the kind beloved in winter by little sledding boys on the hillsides of New England. The man’s face flamed in a rage begot of whisky. His eyes, rolling, and yet keen for ambush, hunted the still doorways and windows. He walked with the creeping movement of the midnight cat. As it occurred to him, he roared menacing information. The long revolvers in his hands were as easy as straws; they were removed with an electric swiftness. The little fingers of each hand played sometimes in a musician’s way. Plain

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from the low collar of the shirt, the cords of his neck straightened and sank, straightened and sank, as passion moved him. The only sounds were his terrible invitations. The calm adobes preserved their demeanor at the passing of this small thing in the middle of the street. There was no offer of fight — no offer of fight. The man called to the sky. There were no attractions. He bellowed and fumed and swayed his revolvers here and everywhere. The dog of the barkeeper of the Weary Gentleman saloon had not appreciated the advance of events. He yet lay dozing in front of his mas- ter’s door. At sight of the dog, the man paused and raised his revolver humorously. At sight of the man, the dog sprang up and walked diago- nally away, with a sullen head, and growling. The man yelled, and the dog broke into a gallop. As it was about to enter the alley, there was a loud noise, a whistling, and something spat the ground directly before it. The dog screamed, and, wheeling in terror, galloped headlong in a new direction. Again there was a noise, a whistling, and sand was kicked viciously before it. Fear-stricken, the dog turned and flurried like an ani- mal in a pen. The man stood laughing, his weapons at his hips. Ultimately the man was attracted by the closed door of the Weary Gentleman saloon. He went to it and, hammering with a revolver, demanded drink. The door remaining imperturbable, he picked a bit of paper from the walk, and nailed it to the framework with a knife. He then turned his back contemptuously upon this popular resort and, walking to the opposite side of the street and spinning there on his heel quickly and lithely, fired at the bit of paper. He missed it by a half inch. He swore at himself, and went away. Later he comfortably fusilladed the windows of his most intimate friend. The man was playing with this town; it was a toy for him. But still there was no offer of fight. The name of Jack Potter, his ancient antagonist, entered his mind, and he concluded that it would be a glad thing if he should go to Potter’s house, and by bombardment induce him to come out and fight. He moved in the direction of his desire, chanting Apache scalp-music. When he arrived at it, Potter’s house presented the same still front as had the other adobes. Taking up a strategic position, the man howled a challenge. But this house regarded him as might a great stone god. It gave no sign. After a decent wait, the man howled further challenges, mingling with them wonderful epithets. Presently there came the spectacle of a man churning himself into deepest rage over the immobility of a house. He fumed at it as the win- ter wind attacks a prairie cabin in the North. To the distance there should have gone the sound of a tumult like the fighting of two hundred Mexicans. As necessity bade him, he paused for breath or to reload his revolvers.

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Potter and his bride walked sheepishly and with speed. Sometimes they laughed together shamefacedly and low. “Next corner, dear,” he said finally. They put forth the efforts of a pair walking bowed against a strong wind. Potter was about to raise a finger to point the first appearance of the new home when, as they circled the corner, they came face to face with a man in a maroon-colored shirt, who was feverishly pushing car- tridges into a large revolver. Upon the instant the man dropped his revolver to the ground and, like lightning, whipped another from its hol- ster. The second weapon was aimed at the bridegroom’s chest. There was a silence. Potter’s mouth seemed to be merely a grave for his tongue. He exhibited an instinct to at once loosen his arm from the woman’s grip, and he dropped the bag to the sand. As for the bride, her face had gone as yellow as old cloth. She was a slave to hideous rites, gaz- ing at the apparitional snake. The two men faced each other at a distance of three paces. He of the revolver smiled with a new and quiet ferocity. “Tried to sneak up on me,” he said. “Tried to sneak up on me!” His eyes grew more baleful. As Potter made a slight movement, the man thrust his revolver venomously forward. “No, don’t you do it, Jack Pot- ter. Don’t you move a finger toward a gun just yet. Don’t you move an eyelash. The time has come for me to settle with you and I’m goin’ to do it my own way, and loaf along with no interferin’. So if you don’t want a gun bent on you, just mind what I tell you.” Potter looked at his enemy. “I ain’t got a gun on me, Scratchy,” he said. “Honest, I ain’t.” He was stiffening and steadying, but yet some- where at the back of his mind a vision of the Pullman floated: the sea- green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil — all the glory of marriage, the environment of the new estate. “You know I fight when it comes to fighting, Scratchy Wilson; but I ain’t got a gun on me. You’ll have to do all the shootin’ yourself.” His enemy’s face went livid. He stepped forward, and lashed his weapon to and fro before Potter’s chest. “Don’t you tell me you ain’t got no gun on you, you whelp. Don’t tell me no lie like that. There ain’t a man in Texas ever seen you without no gun. Don’t take me for no kid.” His eyes blazed with light, and his throat worked like a pump. “I ain’t takin’ you for no kid,” answered Potter. His heels had not moved an inch backward. “I’m takin’ you for a damn fool. I tell you I ain’t got a gun, and I ain’t. If you’re goin’ to shoot me up, you better begin now; you’ll never get a chance like this again.” So much enforced reasoning had told on Wilson’s rage; he was calmer. “If you ain’t got a gun, why ain’t you got a gun?” he sneered. “Been to Sunday-school?”

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“I ain’t got a gun because I’ve just come from San Anton’ with my wife. I’m married,” said Potter. “And if I’d thought there was going to be any galoots like you prowling around when I brought my wife home, I’d had a gun, and don’t you forget it.” “Married!” said Scratchy, not at all comprehending. “Yes, married. I’m married,” said Potter, distinctly. “Married?” said Scratchy. Seemingly for the first time, he saw the drooping, drowning woman at the other man’s side. “No!” he said. He was like a creature allowed a glimpse of another world. He moved a pace backward, and his arm, with the revolver, dropped to his side. “Is this the lady?” he asked. “Yes; this is the lady,” answered Potter. There was another period of silence. “Well,” said Wilson at last, slowly, “I s’pose it’s all off now.” “It’s all off if you say so, Scratchy. You know I didn’t make the trouble.” Potter lifted his valise. “Well, I ’low it’s off, Jack,” said Wilson. He was looking at the ground. “Married!” He was not a student of chivalry; it was merely that in the pres- ence of this foreign condition he was a simple child of the earlier plains. He picked up his starboard revolver, and, placing both weapons in their hol- sters, he went away. His feet made funnel-shaped tracks in the heavy sand.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Think of a western you’ve read or seen: any of Larry McMurtry’s books would work, such as Lonesome Dove or Evening Star. Compare and contrast the setting, characters, action, and theme in Crane’s story with your western.

2. What is the nature of the conflict Marshal Potter feels on the train in Part I? Why does he feel that he committed a “crime” in bringing home a bride to Yellow Sky?

3. What is the function of the “drummer,” the traveling salesman, in Part II?

4. What is the significance of the setting? 5. Is Scratchy Wilson too drunk, comical, and ineffective to be a sympa-

thetic character? What is the meaning of his conceding that “I s’pose it’s all off now” at the end of Part IV? Is he a dynamic or a static character?

6. What details seem to support the story’s theme? Consider, for ex- ample, the descriptions of the bride’s clothes and Scratchy Wilson’s shirt and boots.

7. Explain why the heroes in western stories are rarely married and why Crane’s use of marriage is central to his theme.

8. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Write an essay comparing Crane’s use of suspense with William Faulkner’s in “A Rose for Emily” (p. 55).

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Dagoberto Gilb (b. 1950)

Born in Los Angeles, Dagoberto Gilb was a journeyman carpenter who considered both Los Angeles and El Paso to be home. Gilb’s fiction has been published in a variety of journals including The Threepenny Review, ZYZZYVA, and American Short Fiction. His sto- ries — collected in The Magic of Blood (1993), from which “Love in L.A.” is taken, and Woodcuts of Women (2001) — often reflect his experiences as a worker moving between Los Angeles and El Paso. In 1994 he published his first novel, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, and in 2003 he published a collection of essays, Gritos. He has also edited Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature (2006).

Love in L.A. 1993

Jake slouched in a clot of near motionless traffic, in the peculiar gray of concrete, smog, and early morning beneath the overpass of the Hol- lywood Freeway on Alvarado Street. He didn’t really mind because he knew how much worse it could be trying to make a left onto the onramp. He certainly didn’t do that every day of his life, and he’d assure anyone who’d ask that he never would either. A steady occupation had its advan- tages and he couldn’t deny thinking about that too. He needed an FM radio in something better than this ’58 Buick he drove. It would have crushed velvet interior with electric controls for the L.A. summer, a nice warm heater and defroster for the winter drives at the beach, a cruise control for those longer trips, mellow speakers front and rear of course, windows that hum closed, snuffing out that nasty exterior noise of free- ways. The fact was that he’d probably have to change his whole style. Exotic colognes, plush, dark nightclubs, maitais and daiquiris, necklaced ladies in satin gowns, misty and sexy like in a tequila ad. Jake could imag- ine lots of possibilities when he let himself, but none that ended up with him pressed onto a stalled freeway. Jake was thinking about this freedom of his so much that when he glimpsed its green light he just went ahead and stared bye bye to the steadily employed. When he turned his head the same direction his wind- shield faced, it was maybe one second too late. He pounced the brake pedal and steered the front wheels away from the tiny brakelights but the smack was unavoidable. Just one second sooner and it would only have been close. One second more and he’d be crawling up the Toyota’s

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trunk. As it was, it seemed like only a harmless smack, much less solid than the one against his back bumper. Jake considered driving past the Toyota but was afraid the traffic ahead would make it too difficult. As he pulled up against the curb a few carlengths ahead, it occurred to him that the traffic might have helped him get away too. He slammed the car door twice to make sure it was closed fully and to give himself another second more, then toured front and rear of his Buick for damage on or near the bumpers. Not an impres- sionable scratch even in the chrome. He perked up. Though the car’s beauty was secondary to its ability to start and move, the body and paint were clean except for a few minor dings. This stood out as one of his few clearcut accomplishments over the years. Before he spoke to the driver of the Toyota, whose looks he could see might present him with an added complication, he signaled to the driver of the car that hit him, still in his car and stopped behind the Toyota, and waved his hands and shook his head to let the man know there was no problem as far as he was concerned. The driver waved back and started his engine. “It didn’t even scratch my paint,” Jake told her in that way of his. “So how you doin? Any damage to the car? I’m kinda hoping so, just so it takes a little more time and we can talk some. Or else you can give me your phone number now and I won’t have to lay my regular b.s. on you to get it later.” He took her smile as a good sign and relaxed. He inhaled her scent like it was clean air and straightened out his less than new but not unhip clothes. “You’ve got Florida plates. You look like you must be Cuban.” “My parents are from Venezuela.” “My name’s Jake.” He held out his hand. “Mariana.” They shook hands like she’d never done it before in her life. “I really am sorry about hitting you like that.” He sounded genu- ine. He fondled the wide dimple near the cracked taillight. “It’s amaz- ing how easy it is to put a dent in these new cars. They’re so soft they might replace waterbeds soon.” Jake was confused about how to pro- ceed with this. So much seemed so unlikely, but there was always pos- sibility. “So maybe we should go out to breakfast somewhere and talk it over.” “I don’t eat breakfast.” “Some coffee then.” “Thanks, but I really can’t.” “You’re not married, are you? Not that that would matter that much to me. I’m an openminded kinda guy.” She was smiling. “I have to get to work.” “That sounds boring.” “I better get your driver’s license,” she said.

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Jake nodded, disappointed. “One little problem,” he said. “I didn’t bring it. I just forgot it this morning. I’m a musician,” he exaggerated greatly, “and, well, I dunno, I left my wallet in the pants I was wearing last night. If you have some paper and a pen I’ll give you my address and all that.” He followed her to the glove compartment side of her car. “What if we don’t report it to the insurance companies? I’ll just get it fixed for you.” “I don’t think my dad would let me do that.” “Your dad? It’s not your car?” “He bought it for me. And I live at home.” “Right.” She was slipping away from him. He went back around to the back of her new Toyota and looked over the damage again. There was the trunk lid, the bumper, a rear panel, a taillight. “You do have insurance?” she asked, suspicious, as she came around the back of the car. “Oh yeah,” he lied. “I guess you better write the name of that down too.” He made up a last name and address and wrote down the name of an insurance company an old girlfriend once belonged to. He considered giving a real phone number but went against that idea and made one up. “I act too,” he lied to enhance the effect more. “Been in a couple of movies.” She smiled like a fan. “So how about your phone number?” He was rebounding maturely. She gave it to him. “Mariana, you are beautiful,” he said in his most sincere voice. “Call me,” she said timidly. Jake beamed. “We’ll see you, Mariana,” he said holding out his hand. Her hand felt so warm and soft he felt like he’d been kissed. Back in his car he took a moment or two to feel both proud and sad about his performance. Then he watched the rear view mirror as Mari- ana pulled up behind him. She was writing down the license plate num- bers on his Buick, ones that he’d taken off a junk because the ones that belonged to his had expired so long ago. He turned the ignition key and revved the big engine and clicked into drive. His sense of freedom swelled as he drove into the now moving street traffic, though he couldn’t stop the thought about that FM stereo radio and crushed velvet interior and the new car smell that would even make it better.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Is “Love in L.A.” a love story? Try to argue that it is. (If the story ended with paragraph 37, how would your interpretation of the story be affected?)

2. What is the effect of setting the story’s action in a Los Angeles traffic jam below the Hollywood Freeway?

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3. Characterize Jake. What do his thoughts in the first two paragraphs reveal about him? About how old do you think he is?

4. Describe how Jake responds to Mariana when he introduces him- self to her, especially in paragraph 12. What does his behavior reveal about his character?

5. Explain how their respective cars serve to characterize Jake and Mariana.

6. What does the final paragraph reveal about each character? 7. In a sentence or two write down what you think the story’s theme is.

How does the title contribute to that theme? 8. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Compare and contrast the

themes in “Love in L.A.” and Fay Weldon’s “IND AFF, or Out of Love in Sarajevo” (p. 124).

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I like it when there is some feeling of threat or sense of menace in short stories. I think a little menace is fine to have in a story.

— RAYMOND CARVER

ST YLE Style is a concept that everyone understands on some level because in its broadest sense it refers to the particular way in which anything is made or done. Style is everywhere around us. The world is saturated with styles in cars, clothing, buildings, teaching, dancing, music, politics — in any- thing that reflects a distinctive manner of expression or design. Consider, for example, how a tune sung by the Beatles differs from the same tune performed by a string orchestra. There’s no mistaking the two styles. Authors also have different characteristic styles. Style refers to the distinctive manner in which a writer arranges words to achieve particu- lar effects. That arrangement includes individual word choices and mat- ters such as the length of sentences, their structure and tone, and the use of irony. Diction refers to a writer’s choice of words. Because different words evoke different associations in a reader’s mind, the writer’s choice of words is crucial in controlling a reader’s response. The diction must be appropriate for the characters and the situations in which the author places them. Consider how inappropriate it would have been if Mel- ville had had Bartleby respond to the lawyer’s requests with “Hell no!” instead of “I would prefer not to.” The word prefer and the tentativeness

8 Style, Tone, and Irony

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of would help reinforce the scrivener’s mildness, his dignity, and even his seeming reasonableness — all of which frustrate the lawyer’s efforts to get rid of him. Bartleby, despite his passivity, seems to be in control of the situation. If he were to shout “Hell no!” he would appear angry, aggressive, desperate, and too informal, none of which would fit with his solemn, conscious decision to die. Melville makes the lawyer the desperate party by carefully choosing Bartleby’s words. Sentence structure is another element of a writer’s style. Heming- way’s terse, economical sentences are frequently noted and readily per- ceived. Here are the concluding sentences of Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” (p. 117), in which Krebs decides to leave home:

He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of it had touched him. He had felt sorry for his mother and she had made him lie. He would go to Kansas City and get a job and she would feel all right about it. There would be one more scene maybe before he got away. He would not go down to his father’s office. He would miss that one. He wanted his life to go smoothly. It had just gotten going that way. Well, that was all over now, anyway. He would go over to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball.

Hemingway expresses Krebs’s thought the way Krebs thinks. The style avoids any “complicated” sentence structures. Seven of the eleven sentences begin with the word He. There are no abstractions or qualifications. We feel as if we are listening not only to what Krebs thinks but to how he thinks. The style reflects his firm determination to make, one step at a time, a clean, unobstructed break from his family and the entangling complications they would impose on him. Contrast this straightforward style with Vladimir Nabokov’s descrip- tion of a woman in his short story “The Vane Sisters.” The sophisticated narrator teaches French literature at a women’s college and is as obser- vant as he is icily critical of the woman he describes in this passage:

Her fingernails were gaudily painted, but badly bitten and not clean. Her lovers were a silent young photographer with a sudden laugh and two older men, brothers, who owned a small printing establishment across the street. I wondered at their tastes whenever I glimpsed, with a secret shudder, the higgledy-piggledy striation of black hairs that showed all along her pale shins through the nylon of her stockings with the scientific distinctness of a preparation flattened under glass; or when I felt, at her every movement, the dullish, stalish, not particularly conspicuous but all-pervading and depressing emanation that her sel- dom bathed flesh spread from under weary perfumes and creams.

This portrait — etched with a razor blade — is restrained but devas- tating. Hemingway’s and Nabokov’s uses of language are very different, yet each style successfully fuses what is said with how it is said. We could write summaries of both passages, but our summaries, owing to their

WEB Explore the literary element in this chapter at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

irony 225

styles, would not have the same effect as the originals. And that makes all the difference.

TONE Style reveals tone, the author’s implicit attitude toward the people, places, and events in a story. When we speak, tone is conveyed by our voice inflections, our wink of an eye, or some other gesture. A professor who says “You’re going to fail the next exam” may be indicating concern, frustration, sympathy, alarm, humor, or indifference, depending on the tone of voice. In a literary work that spoken voice is unavailable; instead we must rely on the context in which a statement appears to interpret it correctly. In Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (p. 13), for example, we can determine that the author sympathizes with Mrs. Mallard despite the fact that her grief over her husband’s assumed death is mixed with joy. Though Mrs. Mallard thinks she’s lost her husband, she experiences relief because she feels liberated from an oppressive male-dominated life. That’s why she collapses when she sees her husband alive at the end of the story. Chopin makes clear by the tone of the final line (“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of joy that kills”) that the men misinterpret both her grief and joy, for in the larger context of Mrs. Mallard’s emotions we see, unlike the doctors, that her death may well have been caused not by a shock of joy but by an overwhelming recognition of her lost freedom. We discover that through the tone. This stylistic technique is frequently an important element for interpreting a story. An insensitivity to tone can lead a reader astray in determining the theme of a work. Regardless of who is speaking in a story, it is wise to listen for the author’s voice too.

IRONY One of the enduring themes in literature is that things are not always what they seem to be. What we see — or think we see — is not always what we get. The unexpected complexity that often surprises us in life — what Herman Melville in Moby-Dick called the “universal thump” — is fertile ground for writers of imaginative literature. They cultivate that ground through the use of irony, a device that reveals a reality different from what appears to be true. Verbal irony consists of a person saying one thing but meaning the opposite. If a student driver smashes into a parked car and the angry instructor turns to say “You sure did well today,” the statement is an example of verbal irony. What is meant is not what is said. Verbal irony that is calculated to hurt someone by false praise is commonly known as

226 style, tone, and irony

sarcasm. In literature, however, verbal irony is usually not openly aggres- sive; instead, it is more subtle and restrained though no less intense. In Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” (p. 38), a woman retreats from her family because she cannot live in the traditional role that her hus- band and son expect of her. When the husband tries to be sympathetic about her withdrawal from family life, the narrator tells us three times that “he understood such things” and that in “understanding these things” he tried to be patient by “[s]till understanding these things.” The narrator’s repetition of these phrases constitutes verbal irony because they call attention to the fact that the husband doesn’t understand his wife at all. His “understanding” is really only a form of condescension that represents part of her problem rather than a solution. Situational irony exists when there is an incongruity between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. For instance, at the climactic showdown between Marshal Potter and Scratchy Wilson in Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (p. 209), there are no gunshots, only talk — and what subdues Wilson is not Potter’s strength and her- oism but the fact that the marshal is now married. To take one more example, the protagonist in Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” seems, by traditional societal standards, to have all that a wife and mother could desire in a family, but, given her needs, that turns out not to be enough to sustain even her life, let alone her happiness. In each of these instances the ironic situation creates a distinction between appearances and reali- ties and brings the reader closer to the central meaning of the story. As you read Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics,” Susan Minot’s “Lust,” and T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Carnal Knowledge,” pay attention to the authors’ artful use of style, tone, and irony to convey meanings.

Raymond Carver (1938–1988)

Born in 1938 in Clatskanie, Oregon, to working-class parents, Carver grew up in Yakima, Washington, was edu- cated at Humboldt State College in California, and did graduate work at the University of Iowa. He mar- ried at age nineteen and during his college years worked at a series of low-paying jobs to help support his family. These difficult years eventu- ally ended in divorce. He taught at a number of universities, among them the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Iowa; the Univer- sity of Texas, El Paso; and Syracuse

carver / popular mechanics 227

University. Carver’s collections of stories include Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976); What We Talk about When We Talk about Love (1981), from which “Popular Mechanics” is taken; Cathedral (1984); and Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories (1988). Though extremely brief, “Popular Mechanics” describes a stark domestic situation with a startling conclusion.

Popular Mechanics 1981

Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too. He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door. I’m glad you’re leaving! I’m glad you’re leaving! she said. Do you hear? He kept on putting his things into the suitcase. Son of a bitch! I’m so glad you’re leaving! She began to cry. You can’t even look me in the face, can you? Then she noticed the baby’s picture on the bed and picked it up. He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room. Bring that back, he said. Just get your things and get out, she said. He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room. She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby. I want the baby, he said. Are you crazy? No, but I want the baby. I’ll get someone to come by for his things. You’re not touching this baby, she said. The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head. Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby. He moved toward her. For God’s sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen. I want the baby. Get out of here! She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove. But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby. Let go of him, he said.

228 style, tone, and irony

Get away, get away! she cried. The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove. He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed with all his weight. Let go of him, he said. Don’t, she said. You’re hurting the baby, she said. I’m not hurting the baby, he said. The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder. She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her. No! she screamed just as her hands came loose. She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby’s other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back. But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard. In this manner, the issue was decided.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. Discuss the story’s final lines. What is the “issue” that is “decided”?

2. Though there is little description of the setting in this story, how do the few details that are provided help to establish the tone?

3. How do small actions take on larger significance in the story? Con- sider the woman picking up the baby’s picture and the knocked- down flowerpot.

4. Why is this couple splitting up? Do we know? Does it matter? Explain your response.

5. Discuss the title of the story. The original title was “Mine.” Which do you think is more effective?

6. Explain how Carver uses irony to convey theme. 7. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Compare Carver’s style with

Ernest Hemingway’s in “Soldier’s Home” (p. 117).

Susan Minot (b. 1956)

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Susan Minot earned a B.A. at Brown University and an M.F.A. at Columbia University. Before devoting her- self full-time to writing, Minot worked as an assistant editor at Grand Street magazine. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Mademoiselle, and Paris Review. Her short stories have been

minot / lust 229

collected in Lust and Other Stories (1989), and she has published four novels — Monkeys (1986), Folly (1992), Evening (1998), and Rap- ture (2002), as well as one volume of poetry, Poems 4 A.M. (2002).

Lust 1984

Leo was from a long time ago, the first one I ever saw nude. In the spring before the Hell- mans filled their pool, we’d go down there in the deep end, with baby oil, and like that. I met him the first month away at board- ing school. He had a halo from the campus light behind him. I flipped.

Roger was fast. In his illegal car, we drove to the reservoir, the radio blaring, talking fast, fast, fast. He was always going for my zipper. He got kicked out sophomore year.

By the time the band got around to playing “Wild Horses,” I had tasted Bruce’s tongue. We were clicking in the shadows on the other side of the amplifier, out of Mrs. Donovan’s line of vision. It tasted like salt, with my neck bent back, because we had been dancing so hard before.

Tim’s line: “I’d like to see you in a bathing suit.” I knew it was his line when he said the exact same thing to Annie Hines.

You’d go on walks to get off campus. It was raining like hell, my sweater as sopped as a wet sheep. Tim pinned me to a tree, the woods light brown and dark brown, a white house half hidden with the lights already on. The water was as loud as a crowd hissing. He made certain comments about my forehead, about my cheeks.

We started off sitting at one end of the couch and then our feet were squished against the armrest and then he went over to turn off the TV and came back after he had taken off his shirt and then we slid onto the floor and he got up again to close the door, then came back to me, a body waiting on the rug.

You’d try to wipe off the table or to do the dishes and Willie would untuck your shirt and get his hands up under in front, standing behind you, making puffy noises in your ear.

Courtesy of Dinah Minot Hubley.

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He likes it when I wash my hair. He covers his face with it and if I start to say something, he goes, “Shush.”

For a long time, I had Philip on the brain. The less they noticed you, the more you got them on the brain.

My parents had no idea. Parents never really know what’s going on, especially when you’re away at school most of the time. If she met them, my mother might say, “Oliver seems nice” or “I like that one” without much of an opinion. If she didn’t like them, “He’s a funny fellow, isn’t he?” or “Johnny’s perfectly nice but a drink of water.” My father was too shy to talk to them at all unless they played sports and he’d ask them about that.

The sand was almost cold underneath because the sun was long gone. Eben piled a mound over my feet, patting around my ankles, the ghostly surf rumbling behind him in the dark. He was the first person I ever knew who died, later that summer, in a car crash. I thought about it for a long time.

“Come here,” he says on the porch. I go over to the hammock and he takes my wrist with two fingers. “What?” He kisses my palm then directs my hand to his fly.

Songs went with whichever boy it was. “Sugar Magnolia” was Tim, with the line “Rolling in the rushes/down by the riverside.” With “Dark- ness Darkness,” I’d picture Philip with his long hair. Hearing “Under My Thumb” there’d be the smell of Jamie’s suede jacket.

We hid in the listening rooms during study hall. With a record cover over the door’s window, the teacher on duty couldn’t look in. I came out flushed and heady and back at the dorm was surprised how red my lips were in the mirror.

One weekend at Simon’s brother’s, we stayed inside all day with the shades down, in bed, then went out to Store 24 to get some ice cream. He stood at the magazine rack and read through MAD while I got butter- scotch sauce, craving something sweet.

I could do some things well. Some things I was good at, like math or painting or even sports, but the second a boy put his arm around me, I forgot about wanting to do anything else, which felt like a relief at first until it became like sinking into a muck.

It was different for a girl.

minot / lust 231

When we were little, the brothers next door tied up our ankles. They held the door of the goat house and wouldn’t let us out till we showed them our underpants. Then they’d forget about being after us and when we played whiffle ball, I’d be just as good as they were.

Then it got to be different. Just because you have on a short skirt, they yell from the cars, slowing down for a while, and if you don’t look, they screech off and call you a bitch.

“What’s the matter with me?” they say, point-blank. Or else, “Why won’t you go out with me? I’m not asking you to get married,” about to get mad.

Or it’d be, trying to be reasonable, in a regular voice, “Listen, I just want to have a good time.” So I’d go because I couldn’t think of something to say back that wouldn’t be obvious, and if you go out with them, you sort of have to do something.

I sat between Mack and Eddie in the front seat of the pickup. They were having a fight about something. I’ve a feeling about me.

Certain nights you’d feel a certain surrender, maybe if you’d had wine. The surrender would be forgetting yourself and you’d put your nose to his neck and feel like a squirrel, safe, at rest, in a restful dream. But then you’d start to slip from that and the dark would come in and there’d be a cave. You make out the dim shape of the windows and feel yourself become a cave, filled absolutely with air, or with a sadness that wouldn’t stop.

Teenage years. You know just what you’re doing and don’t see the things that start to get in the way.

Lots of boys, but never two at the same time. One was plenty to keep you in a state. You’d start to see a boy and something would rush over you like a fast storm cloud and you couldn’t possibly think of anyone else. Boys took it differently. Their eyes perked up at any little number that walked by. You’d act like you weren’t noticing.

The joke was that the school doctor gave out the pill like aspirin. He didn’t ask you anything. I was fifteen. We had a picture of him in assembly, holding up an IUD shaped like a T. Most girls were on the pill, if anything, because they couldn’t handle a diaphragm. I kept the dial in my top drawer like my mother and thought of her each time I tipped out the yellow tablets in the morning before chapel.

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If they were too shy, I’d be more so. Andrew was nervous. We stayed up with his family album, sharing a pack of Old Golds. Before it got light, we turned on the TV. A man was explaining how to plant seedlings. His mouth jerked to the side in a tic. Andrew thought it was a riot and kept imitating him. I laughed to be polite. When we finally dozed off, he dared to put his arm around me, but that was it.

You wait till they come to you. With half fright, half swagger, they stand one step down. They dare to touch the button on your coat then lose their nerve and quickly drop their hand so you — you’d do anything for them. You touch their cheek.

The girls sit around in the common room and talk about boys, smoking their heads off. “What are you complaining about?” says Jill to me when we talk about problems. “Yeah,” says Giddy. “You always have a boyfriend.” I look at them and think, As if.

I thought the worst thing anyone could call you was a cock-teaser. So, if you flirted, you had to be prepared to go through with it. Sleeping with someone was perfectly normal once you had done it. You didn’t really worry about it. But there were other problems. The problems had to do with something else entirely.

Mack was during the hottest summer ever recorded. We were rent- ing a house on an island with all sorts of other people. No one slept dur- ing the heat wave, walking around the house with nothing on which we were used to because of the nude beach. In the living room, Eddie lay on top of a coffee table to cool off. Mack and I, with the bedroom door open for air, sweated and sweated all night. “I can’t take this,” he said at three a.m. “I’m going for a swim.” He and some guys down the hall went to the beach. The heat put me on edge. I sat on a cracked chest by the open window and smoked and smoked till I felt even worse, waiting for something — I guess for him to get back.

One was on a camping trip in Colorado. We zipped our sleeping bags together, the coyotes’ hysterical chatter far away. Other couples murmured in other tents. Paul was up before sunrise, starting a fire for breakfast. He wasn’t much of a talker in the daytime. At night, his hand leafed about in the hair at my neck.

There’d be times when you overdid it. You’d get carried away. All the next day, you’d be in a total fog, delirious, absent-minded, crossing the street and nearly getting run over.

minot / lust 233

The more girls a boy has, the better. He has a bright look, having reaped fruits, blooming. He stalks around, sure-shouldered, and you have the feeling he’s got more in him, a fatter heart, more stories to tell. For a girl, with each boy it’s as though a petal gets plucked each time.

Then you start to get tired. You begin to feel diluted, like watered- down stew.

Oliver came skiing with us. We lolled by the fire after everyone had gone to bed. Each creak you’d think was someone coming downstairs. The silver loop bracelet he gave me had been a present from his girlfriend before.

On vacations, we went skiing, or you’d go south if someone invited you. Some people had apartments in New York that their families hardly ever used. Or summer houses, or older sisters. We always managed to find someplace to go.

We made the plan at coffee hour. Simon snuck out and met me at Main Gate after lights-out. We crept to the chapel and spent the night in the balcony. He tasted like onions from a submarine sandwich.

The boys are one of two ways: either they can’t sit still or they don’t move. In front of the TV, they won’t budge. On weekends they play touch football while we sit on the sidelines, picking blades of grass to chew on, and watch. We’re always watching them run around. We shiver in the stands, knocking our boots together to keep our toes warm, and they whizz across the ice, chopping their sticks around the puck. When they’re in the rink, they refuse to look at you, only eyeing each other beneath low helmets. You cheer for them but they don’t look up, even if it’s a face-off when nothing’s happening, even if they’re doing drills before any game has started at all.

Dancing under the pink tent, he bent down and whispered in my ear. We slipped away to the lawn on the other side of the hedge. Much later, as he was leaving the buffet with two plates of eggs and sausage, I saw the grass stains on the knees of his white pants.

Tim’s was shaped like a banana, with a graceful curve to it. They’re all different. Willie’s like a bunch of walnuts when nothing was happen- ing, another’s as thin as a thin hot dog. But it’s like faces; you’re never really surprised.

Still, you’re not sure what to expect.

234 style, tone, and irony

I look into his face and he looks back. I look into his eyes and they look back at mine. Then they look down at my mouth so I look at his mouth, then back to his eyes then, backing up, at his whole face. I think, Who? Who are you? His head tilts to one side. I say, “Who are you?” “What do you mean?” “Nothing.” I look at his eyes again, deeper. Can’t tell who he is, what he thinks. “What?” he says. I look at his mouth. “I’m just wondering,” I say and go wandering across his face. Study the chin line. It’s shaped like a persimmon. “Who are you? What are you thinking?” He says, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Then they get mad after, when you say enough is enough. After, when it’s easier to explain that you don’t want to. You wouldn’t dream of saying that maybe you weren’t really ready to in the first place.

Gentle Eddie. We waded into the sea, the waves round and plowing in, buffalo-headed, slapping our thighs. I put my arms around his freckled shoulders and he held me up, buoyed by the water, and rocked me like a sea shell.

I had no idea whose party it was, the apartment jam-packed, step- ping over people in the hallway. The room with the music was practi- cally empty, the bare floor, me in red shoes. This fellow slides onto one knee and takes me around the waist and we rock to jazzy tunes, with my toes pointing heavenward, and waltz and spin and dip to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” or “I’ll Love You Just for Now.” He puts his head to my chest, runs a sweeping hand down my inside thigh and we go loose-limbed and sultry and as smooth as silk and I stamp my red heels and he takes me into a swoon. I never saw him again after that but I thought, I could have loved that one.

You wonder how long you can keep it up. You begin to feel as if you’re showing through, like a bathroom window that only lets in grey light, the kind you can’t see out of.

They keep coming around. Johnny drives up at Easter vacation from Baltimore and I let him in the kitchen with everyone sound asleep. He has friends waiting in the car. “What are you, crazy? It’s pouring out there,” I say. “It’s okay,” he says. “They understand.” So he gets some long kisses from me, against the refrigerator, before he goes because I hate those girls who push away a boy’s face as if she were made out of Ivory soap, as if she’s that much greater than he is.

minot / lust 235

The note on my cubby told me to see the headmaster. I had no idea for what. He had received complaints about my amorous displays on the town green. It was Willie that spring. The headmaster told me he didn’t care what I did but that Casey Academy had a reputation to uphold in the town. He lowered his glasses on his nose. “We’ve got twenty acres of woods on this campus,” he said. “If you want to smooch with your boy- friend, there are twenty acres for you to do it out of the public eye. You read me?”

Everybody’d get weekend permissions for different places, then we’d all go to someone’s house whose parents were away. Usually there’d be more boys than girls. We raided the liquor closet and smoked pot at the kitchen table and you’d never know who would end up where, or with whom. There were always disasters. Ceci got bombed and cracked her head open on the banister and needed stitches. Then there was the time Wendel Blair walked through the picture window at the Lowes’ and got slashed to ribbons.

He scared me. In bed, I didn’t dare look at him. I lay back with my eyes closed, luxuriating because he knew all sorts of expert angles, his hands never fumbling, going over my whole body, pressing the hair up and off the back of my head, giving an extra hip shove, as if to say There. I parted my eyes slightly, keeping the screen of my lashes low because it was too much to look at him, his mouth loose and pink and parted, his eyes looking through my forehead, or kneeling up, looking through my throat. I was ashamed but couldn’t look him in the eye.

You wonder about things feeling a little off-kilter. You begin to feel like a piece of pounded veal.

At boarding school, everyone gets depressed. We go in and see the housemother, Mrs. Gunther. She got married when she was eighteen. Mr. Gunther was her high school sweetheart, the only boyfriend she ever had. “And you knew you wanted to marry him right off?” we ask her. She smiles and says, “Yes.” “They always want something from you,” says Jill, complaining about her boyfriend. “Yeah,” says Giddy. “You always feel like you have to deliver something.” “You do,” says Mrs. Gunther. “Babies.”

After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, an elusive gaping worry. You don’t try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it’s nothing after all, every- thing filling up finally and absolutely with death. After the briskness of

236 style, tone, and irony

loving, loving stops. And you roll over with death stretched out alongside you like a feather boa, or a snake, light as air, and you . . . you don’t even ask for anything or try to say something to him because it’s obviously your own damn fault. You haven’t been able to — to what? To open your heart. You open your legs but can’t, or don’t dare anymore, to open your heart.

It starts this way: You stare into their eyes. They flash like all the stars are out. They look at you seriously, their eyes at a low burn and their hands no matter what starting off shy and with such a gentle touch that the only thing you can do is take that tenderness and let yourself be swept away. When, with one attentive finger they tuck the hair behind your ear, you — You do everything they want. Then comes after. After when they don’t look at you. They scratch their balls, stare at the ceiling. Or if they do turn, their gaze is altogether changed. They are surprised. They turn casually to look at you, dis- tracted, and get a mild distracted surprise. You’re gone. Their blank look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. What do you think of the narrator? Why? Do you agree with the definition the story offers for lust?

2. How effective is the narrator’s description of teenage sex? What do you think she means when she says “You know just what you’re doing and don’t see the things that start to get in the way” (para. 29)?

3. Discuss the story’s tone. Is it what you expected from the title? 4. What do you think is the theme of “Lust”? Does its style carry its

theme? 5. What is the primary setting for the story? What does it reveal about

the nature of the narrator’s economic and social class? 6. In a Publishers Weekly interview (November 6, 1992), Minot observed,

“There’s more fictional material in unhappiness and disappoint- ment and frustration than there is in happiness. Who was it said, ‘Happiness is like a blank page’?” What do you think of this observation?

T. Coraghessan Boyle (b. 1948)

Born in Peekskill, New York, T. Coraghessan Boyle earned a doctorate at the University of Iowa and has taught at the University of Southern Cali- fornia. Among his literary awards is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.

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His fiction has appeared in a variety of periodicals in cluding the North American Review, the New Yorker, Harper’s, the Atlan- tic, and Playboy. His novels include World’s End (1987), East Is East (1990), The Road to Wellville (1993), Drop City (2003), Talk Talk (2006), The Women (2009), and Wild Child, and Other Stories (2010). His short stories are collected in Greasy Lake and Other Stories (1985); If the River Was Whiskey (1989); Without a Hero and Other Stories (1994), from which “Carnal Knowledge” is reprinted; T. C. Boyle Stories: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle (1998); After the Plague and Other Stories (2001); and Tooth and Claw (2005).

Carnal Knowledge 1994

I’d never really thought much about meat. It was there in the supermarket in a plastic wrapper; it came between slices of bread with mayo and mus- tard and a dill pickle on the side; it sputtered and smoked on the grill till somebody flipped it over, and then it appeared on the plate, between the baked potato and the julienne carrots, neatly cross-hatched and floating in a puddle of red juice. Beef, mutton, pork, venison, dripping burgers, and greasy ribs — it was all the same to me, food, the body’s fuel, some- thing to savor a moment on the tongue before the digestive system went to work on it. Which is not to say I was totally unconscious of the deeper implications. Every once in a while I’d eat at home, a quartered chicken, a package of Shake ’n Bake, Stove Top stuffing, and frozen peas, and as I hacked away at the stippled yellow skin and pink flesh of the sanitized bird I’d wonder at the darkish bits of organ clinging to the ribs — what was that, liver? kidney? — but in the end it didn’t make me any less fond of Kentucky Fried or Chicken McNuggets. I saw those ads in the maga- zines, too, the ones that showed the veal calves penned up in their own waste, their limbs atrophied and their veins so pumped full of antibiot- ics they couldn’t control their bowels, but when I took a date to Anna Maria’s, I could never resist the veal scallopini. And then I met Alena Jorgensen. It was a year ago, two weeks before Thanksgiving — I remember the date because it was my birthday, my thirtieth, and I’d called in sick and gone to the beach to warm my face, read a book, and feel a little sorry for myself. The Santa Anas were blowing and it was clear all the way to Catalina, but there was an edge to the air, a scent of winter hanging over Utah, and as far as I could see in either direction I had the beach pretty much to myself. I found a sheltered spot in a tumble of boulders, spread

Photograph of T. C. Boyle. By permission of the author.

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a blanket, and settled down to attack the pastrami on rye I’d brought along for nourishment. Then I turned to my book — a comfortingly apocalyptic tract about the demise of the planet — and let the sun warm me as I read about the denuding of the rain forest, the poisoning of the atmosphere, and the swift silent eradication of species. Gulls coasted by overhead. I saw the distant glint of jetliners. I must have dozed, my head thrown back, the book spread open in my lap, because the next thing I remember, a strange dog was hovering over me and the sun had dipped behind the rocks. The dog was big, wild-haired, with one staring blue eye, and it just looked at me, ears slightly cocked, as if it expected a Milk-Bone or something. I was startled — not that I don’t like dogs, but here was this woolly thing pok- ing its snout in my face — and I guess that I must have made some sort of defensive gesture, because the dog staggered back a step and froze. Even in the confusion of the moment I could see that there was some- thing wrong with this dog, an unsteadiness, a gimp, a wobble to its legs. I felt a mixture of pity and revulsion — had it been hit by a car, was that it? — when all at once I became aware of a wetness on the breast of my windbreaker, and an unmistakable odor rose to my nostrils: I’d been pissed on. Pissed on. As I lay there unsuspecting, enjoying the sun, the beach, the solitude, this stupid beast had lifted its leg and used me as a pissoir — and now it was poised there on the edge of the blanket as if it expected a reward. A sudden rage seized me. I came up off the blanket with a curse, and it was only then that a dim apprehension seemed to seep into the dog’s other eye, the brown one, and it lurched back and fell on its face, just out of reach. And then it lurched and fell again, bobbing and weaving across the sand like a seal out of water. I was on my feet now, murderous, glad to see that the thing was hobbled — it would simplify the task of running it down and beating it to death. “Alf!” a voice called, and as the dog floundered in the sand, I turned and saw Alena Jorgensen poised on the boulder behind me. I don’t want to make too much of the moment, don’t want to mythologize it or clut- ter the scene with allusions to Aphrodite rising from the waves or accept- ing the golden apple from Paris, but she was a pretty impressive sight. Bare-legged, fluid, as tall and uncompromising as her Nordic ancestors, and dressed in a Gore-Tex bikini and hooded sweatshirt unzipped to the waist, she blew me away, in any event. Piss-spattered and stupefied, I could only gape up at her. “You bad boy,” she said, scolding, “you get out of there.” She glanced from the dog to me and back again. “Oh, you bad boy, what have you done?” she demanded, and I was ready to admit to anything, but it was the dog she was addressing, and the dog flopped over in the sand as if it had been shot. Alena skipped lightly down from the rock, and in the next moment, before I could protest, she was rubbing at the stain on my windbreaker with the wadded-up hem of her sweatshirt.

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I tried to stop her — “It’s all right,” I said, “it’s nothing,” as if dogs routinely pissed on my wardrobe — but she wouldn’t hear of it. “No,” she said, rubbing, her hair flying in my face, the naked skin of her thigh pressing unconsciously to my own, “no, this is terrible, I’m so embarrassed — Alf, you bad boy — I’ll clean it for you, I will, it’s the least — oh, look at that, it’s stained right through to your T-shirt —” I could smell her, the mousse she used in her hair, a lilac soap or per- fume, the salt-sweet odor of her sweat — she’d been jogging, that was it. I murmured something about taking it to the cleaner’s myself. She stopped rubbing and straightened up. She was my height, maybe even a fraction taller, and her eyes were ever so slightly mis- matched, like the dog’s: a deep earnest blue in the right iris, shading to sea-green and turquoise in the left. We were so close we might have been dancing. “Tell you what,” she said, and her face lit with a smile, “since you’re so nice about the whole thing, and most people wouldn’t be, even if they knew what poor Alf has been through, why don’t you let me wash it for you — and the T-shirt too?” I was a little disconcerted at this point — I was the one who’d been pissed on, after all — but my anger was gone. I felt weightless, adrift, like a piece of fluff floating on the breeze. “Listen,” I said, and for the moment I couldn’t look her in the eye, “I don’t want to put you to any trouble . . .” “I’m ten minutes up the beach, and I’ve got a washer and dryer. Come on, it’s no trouble at all. Or do you have plans? I mean, I could just pay for the cleaner’s if you want . . .” I was between relationships — the person I’d been seeing off and on for the past year wouldn’t even return my calls — and my plans consisted of taking a solitary late-afternoon movie as a birthday treat, then head- ing over to my mother’s for dinner and the cake with the candles. My Aunt Irene would be there, and so would my grandmother. They would exclaim over how big I was and how handsome and then they would begin to contrast my present self with my previous, more diminutive incarnations, and finally work themselves up to a spate of reminiscence that would continue unabated till my mother drove them home. And then, if I was lucky, I’d go out to a singles bar and make the acquaintance of a divorced computer programmer in her mid-thirties with three kids and bad breath. I shrugged. “Plans? No, not really. I mean, nothing in particular.”

Alena was housesitting a one-room bungalow that rose stumplike from the sand, no more than fifty feet from the tide line. There were trees in the yard behind it and the place was sandwiched between glass fortresses with crenellated decks, whipping flags, and great hulking concrete pylons. Sitting on the couch inside, you could feel the dull reverberation of each wave hitting the shore, a slow steady pulse that forever defined the place for me. Alena gave me a faded UC Davis sweatshirt that nearly fit, sprayed a stain remover on my T-shirt and windbreaker, and in a

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single fluid motion flipped down the lid of the washer and extracted two beers from the refrigerator beside it. There was an awkward moment as she settled into the chair opposite me and we concentrated on our beers. I didn’t know what to say. I was disoriented, giddy, still struggling to grasp what had happened. Fifteen minutes earlier I’d been dozing on the beach, alone on my birthday and feeling sorry for myself, and now I was ensconced in a cozy beach house, in the presence of Alena Jorgensen and her naked spill of leg, drinking a beer. “So what do you do?” she said, setting her beer down on the coffee table. I was grateful for the question, too grateful maybe. I described to her at length how dull my job was, nearly ten years with the same agency, writing ad copy, my brain gone numb with disuse. I was somewhere in the middle of a blow-by-blow account of our current campaign for a Ghanian vodka distilled from calabash husks when she said, “I know what you mean,” and told me she’d dropped out of veterinary school herself. “After I saw what they did to the animals. I mean, can you see neutering a dog just for our convenience, just because it’s easier for us if they don’t have a sex life?” Her voice grew hot. “It’s the same old story, species fascism at its worst.” Alf was lying at my feet, grunting softly and looking up mournfully out of his staring blue eye, as blameless a creature as ever lived. I made a small noise of agreement and then focused on Alf. “And your dog,” I said, “he’s arthritic? Or is it hip dysplasia or what?” I was pleased with myself for the question — aside from “tapeworm,” “hip dysplasia” was the only veterinary term I could dredge up from the memory bank, and I could see that Alf’s problems ran deeper than worms. Alena looked angry suddenly. “Don’t I wish,” she said. She paused to draw a bitter breath. “There’s nothing wrong with Alf that wasn’t inflicted on him. They tortured him, maimed him, mutilated him.” “Tortured him?” I echoed, feeling the indignation rise in me — this beautiful girl, this innocent beast. “Who?” Alena leaned forward and there was real hate in her eyes. She men- tioned a prominent shoe company — spat out the name, actually. It was an ordinary name, a familiar one, and it hung in the air between us, sud- denly sinister. Alf had been part of an experiment to market booties for dogs — suede, cordovan, patent leather, the works. The dogs were made to pace a treadmill in their booties, to assess wear; Alf was part of the control group. “Control group?” I could feel the hackles rising on the back of my neck. “They used eighty-grit sandpaper on the treads, to accelerate the process.” Alena shot a glance out the window to where the surf pounded the shore; she bit her lip. “Alf was one of the dogs without booties.” I was stunned. I wanted to get up and comfort her, but I might as well have been grafted to the chair. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “How could anybody — ”

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“Believe it,” she said. She studied me a moment, then set down her beer and crossed the room to dig through a cardboard box in the corner. If I was moved by the emotion she’d called up, I was moved even more by the sight of her bending over the box in her Gore-Tex bikini; I clung to the edge of the chair as if it were a plunging roller coaster. A moment later she dropped a dozen file folders in my lap. The uppermost bore the name of the shoe company, and it was crammed with news clippings, several pages of a diary relating to plant operations and workers’ shifts at the Grand Rapids facility, and a floor plan of the laboratories. The folders beneath it were inscribed with the names of cosmetics firms, bio- medical research centers, furriers, tanners, meatpackers. Alena perched on the edge of the coffee table and watched as I shuffled through them. “You know the Draize test?” I gave her a blank look. “They inject chemicals into rabbits’ eyes to see how much it’ll take before they go blind. The rabbits are in cages, thousands of them, and they take a needle and jab it into their eyes — and you know why, you know in the name of what great humanitarian cause this is going on, even as we speak?” I didn’t know. The surf pounded at my feet. I glanced at Alf and then back into her angry eyes. “Mascara, that’s what. Mascara. They torture countless thousands of rabbits so women can look like sluts.” I thought the characterization a bit harsh, but when I studied her pale lashes and tight lipstickless mouth, I saw that she meant it. At any rate, the notion set her off, and she launched into a two-hour lecture, gesturing with her flawless hands, quoting figures, digging through her files for the odd photo of legless mice or morphine-addicted ger- bils. She told me how she’d rescued Alf herself, raiding the laboratory with six other members of the Animal Liberation Front, the militant group in honor of which Alf had been named. At first, she’d been con- tent to write letters and carry placards, but now, with the lives of so many animals at stake, she’d turned to more direct action: harassment, vandalism, sabotage. She described how she’d spiked trees with Earth- First!ers in Oregon, cut miles of barbed-wire fence on cattle ranches in Nevada, destroyed records in biomedical research labs up and down the coast and insinuated herself between the hunters and the bighorn sheep in the mountains of Arizona. I could only nod and exclaim, smile ruefully and whistle in a low “holy cow!” sort of way. Finally, she paused to level her unsettling eyes on me. “You know what Isaac Bashevis Singer said?” We were on our third beer. The sun was gone. I didn’t have a clue. Alena leaned forward. “‘Every day is Auschwitz for the animals.’” I looked down into the amber aperture of my beer bottle and nod- ded my head sadly. The dryer had stopped an hour and a half ago. I won- dered if she’d go out to dinner with me, and what she could eat if she

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did. “Uh, I was wondering,” I said, “if . . . if you might want to go out for something to eat —” Alf chose that moment to heave himself up from the floor and uri- nate on the wall behind me. My dinner proposal hung in the balance as Alena shot up off the edge of the table to scold him and then gently usher him out the door. “Poor Alf,” she sighed, turning back to me with a shrug. “But listen, I’m sorry if I talked your head off — I didn’t mean to, but it’s rare to find somebody on your own wavelength.” She smiled. On your own wavelength: the words illuminated me, excited me, sent up a tremor I could feel all the way down in the deep- est nodes of my reproductive tract. “So how about dinner?” I persisted. Restaurants were running through my head — would it have to be veggie? Could there be even a whiff of grilled flesh on the air? Curdled goat’s milk and tabbouleh, tofu, lentil soup, sprouts: Every day is Auschwitz for the animals. “No place with meat, of course.” She just looked at me. “I mean, I don’t eat meat myself,” I lied, “or actually, not anymore” — since the pastrami sandwich, that is — “but I don’t really know any place that . . .” I trailed off lamely. “I’m a Vegan,” she said. After two hours of blind bunnies, butchered calves and mutilated pups, I couldn’t resist the joke. “I’m from Venus myself.” She laughed, but I could see she didn’t find it all that funny. Vegans didn’t eat meat or fish, she explained, or milk or cheese or eggs, and they didn’t wear wool or leather — or fur, of course. “Of course,” I said. We were both standing there, hovering over the coffee table. I was beginning to feel a little foolish. “Why don’t we just eat here,” she said.

The deep throb of the ocean seemed to settle in my bones as we lay there in bed that night, Alena and I, and I learned all about the fluency of her limbs and the sweetness of her vegetable tongue. Alf sprawled on the floor beneath us, wheezing and groaning in his sleep, and I blessed him for his incontinence and his doggy stupidity. Something was happening to me — I could feel it in the way the boards shifted under me, feel it with each beat of the surf — and I was ready to go along with it. In the morn- ing, I called in sick again. Alena was watching me from bed as I dialed the office and described how the flu had migrated from my head to my gut and beyond, and there was a look in her eye that told me I would spend the rest of the day right there beside her, peeling grapes and dropping them one by one between her parted and expectant lips. I was wrong. Half an hour later, after a breakfast of brewer’s yeast and what appeared to be some sort of bark marinated in yogurt, I found myself marching up and down the sidewalk in front of a fur emporium in Beverly Hills, waving a placard that read how does it feel to wear a corpse? in letters that dripped like blood.

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It was a shock. I’d seen protest marches on TV, antiwar rallies and civil rights demonstrations and all that, but I’d never warmed my heels on the pavement or chanted slogans or felt the naked stick in my hand. There were maybe forty of us in all, mostly women, and we waved our placards at passing cars and blocked traffic on the sidewalk. One woman had smeared her face and hands with cold cream steeped in red dye, and Alena had found a ratty mink stole somewhere — the kind that features whole animals sewed together, snout to tail, their miniature limbs dangling — and she’d taken a can of crimson spray paint to their muzzles so that they looked freshly killed. She brandished this grisly banner on a stick high above her head, whooping like a savage and chanting, “Fur is death, fur is death,” over and over again till it became a mantra for the crowd. The day was unseasonably warm, the Jaguars glinted in the sun and the palms nodded in the breeze, and no one, but for a single tight-lipped salesman glowering from behind the store’s immaculate windows, paid the slightest bit of attention to us. I marched out there on the street, feeling exposed and conspicuous, but marching nonetheless — for Alena’s sake and for the sake of the foxes and martens and all the rest, and for my own sake too: with each step I took I could feel my consciousness expanding like a balloon, the breath of saintliness seeping steadily into me. Up to this point I’d worn suede and leather like anybody else, ankle boots and Air Jordans, a bombardier jacket I’d had since high school. If I’d drawn the line with fur, it was only because I’d never had any use for it. If I lived in the Yukon — and some- times, drowsing through a meeting at work, I found myself fantasizing about it — I would have worn fur, no compunction, no second thoughts. But not anymore. Now I was the protestor, a placard waver, now I was fighting for the right of every last weasel and lynx to grow old and die gracefully, now I was Alena Jorgensen’s lover and a force to be reck- oned with. Of course, my feet hurt and I was running sweat and praying that no one from work would drive by and see me there on the sidewalk with my crazy cohorts and denunciatory sign. We marched for hours, back and forth, till I thought we’d wear a groove in the pavement. We chanted and jeered and nobody so much as looked at us twice. We could have been Hare Krishnas, bums, anti- abortionists, or lepers, what did it matter? To the rest of the world, to the uninitiated masses to whose sorry number I’d belonged just twenty- four hours earlier, we were invisible. I was hungry, tired, discouraged. Alena was ignoring me. Even the woman in red-face was slowing down, her chant a hoarse whisper that was sucked up and obliterated in the roar of traffic. And then, as the afternoon faded toward rush hour, a wiz- ened silvery old woman who might have been an aging star or a star’s mother or even the first dimly remembered wife of a studio exec got out of a long white car at the curb and strode fearlessly toward us. Despite the heat — it must have been eighty degrees at this point — she was wear- ing an ankle-length silver fox coat, a bristling shouldery wafting mass of

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peltry that must have decimated every burrow on the tundra. It was the moment we’d been waiting for. A cry went up, shrill and ululating, and we converged on the lone old woman like a Cheyenne war party scouring the plains. The man beside me went down on all fours and howled like a dog. Alena slashed the air with her limp mink, and the blood sang in my ears. “Murderer!” I screamed, getting into it. “Torturer! Nazi!” The strings in my neck were tight. I didn’t know what I was saying. The crowd gibbered. The placards danced. I was so close to the old woman I could smell her — her perfume, a whiff of mothballs from the coat — and it intoxicated me, maddened me, and I stepped in front of her to block her path with all the seeth- ing militant bulk of my one hundred eighty-five pounds of sinew and muscle. I never saw the chauffeur. Alena told me afterward that he was a for- mer kickboxing champion who’d been banned from the sport for exces- sive brutality. The first blow seemed to drop down from above, a shell lobbed from deep within enemy territory; the others came at me like a windmill churning in a storm. Someone screamed. I remember focusing on the flawless rigid pleats of the chauffeur’s trousers, and then things got a bit hazy. I woke to the dull thump of the surf slamming at the shore and the touch of Alena’s lips on my own. I felt as if I’d been broken on the wheel, dismantled, and put back together again. “Lie still,” she said, and her tongue moved against my swollen cheek. Stricken, I could only drag my head across the pillow and gaze into the depths of her parti-colored eyes. “You’re one of us now,” she whispered. Next morning I didn’t even bother to call in sick.

By the end of the week I’d recovered enough to crave meat, for which I felt deeply ashamed, and to wear out a pair of vinyl huaraches on the picket line. Together, and with various coalitions of antivivisectionists, militant Vegans, and cat lovers, Alena and I tramped a hundred miles of sidewalk, spray-painted inflammatory slogans across the windows of supermarkets and burger stands, denounced tanners, furriers, poul- terers, and sausage makers, and somehow found time to break up a cockfight in Pacoima. It was exhilarating, heady, dangerous. If I’d been disconnected in the past, I was plugged in now. I felt righteous — for the first time in my life I had a cause — and I had Alena, Alena above all. She fascinated me, fixated me, made me feel like a tomcat leaping in and out of second-story windows, oblivious to the free-fall and the picket fence below. There was her beauty, of course, a triumph of evolution and the happy interchange of genes going all the way back to the cavemen, but it was more than that — it was her commitment to animals, to the righting of wrongs, to morality that made her irresistible. Was it love? The term is something I’ve always had difficulty with, but I suppose it was. Sure it was. Love, pure and simple. I had it, it had me.

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“You know what?” Alena said one night as she stood over the minia- ture stove, searing tofu in oil and garlic. We’d spent the afternoon dem- onstrating out front of a tortilla factory that used rendered animal fat as a congealing agent, after which we’d been chased three blocks by an over- weight assistant manager at Von’s who objected to Alena’s spray-painting meat is death over the specials in the front window. I was giddy with the adolescent joy of it. I sank into the couch with a beer and watched Alf limp across the floor to fling himself down and lick at a suspicious spot on the floor. The surf boomed like thunder. “What?” I said. “Thanksgiving’s coming.” I let it ride a moment, wondering if I should invite Alena to my mother’s for the big basted bird stuffed with canned oysters and but- tered bread crumbs, and then realized it probably wouldn’t be such a great idea. I said nothing. She glanced over her shoulder. “The animals don’t have a whole lot to be thankful for, that’s for sure. It’s just an excuse for the meat industry to butcher a couple million turkeys, is all it is.” She paused; hot safflower oil popped in the pan. “I think it’s time for a little road trip,” she said. “Can we take your car?” “Sure, but where are we going?” She gave me her Gioconda smile. “To liberate some turkeys.”

In the morning I called my boss to tell him I had pancreatic cancer and wouldn’t be in for a while, then we threw some things in the car, helped Alf scrabble into the back seat, and headed up Route 5 for the San Joa- quin Valley. We drove for three hours through a fog so dense the win- dows might as well have been packed with cotton. Alena was secretive, but I could see she was excited. I knew only that we were on our way to rendezvous with a certain “Rolfe,” a longtime friend of hers and a big name in the world of ecotage and animal rights, after which we would commit some desperate and illegal act, for which the turkeys would be eternally grateful. There was a truck stalled in front of the sign for our exit at Calpurnia Springs, and I had to brake hard and jerk the wheel around twice to keep the tires on the pavement. Alena came up out of her seat and Alf slammed into the armrest like a sack of meal, but we made it. A few minutes later we were gliding through the ghostly vacancy of the town itself, lights drifting past in a nimbus of fog, glowing pink, yellow, and white, and then there was only the blacktop road and the pale void that engulfed it. We’d gone ten miles or so when Alena instructed me to slow down and began to study the right-hand shoulder with a keen, unwavering eye. The earth breathed in and out. I squinted hard into the soft drift- ing glow of the headlights. “There, there!” she cried and I swung the wheel to the right, and suddenly we were lurching along a pitted dirt road that rose up from the blacktop like a goat path worn into the side

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of a mountain. Five minutes later Alf sat up in the back seat and began to whine, and then a crude unpainted shack began to detach itself from the vagueness around us. Rolfe met us on the porch. He was tall and leathery, in his fifties, I guessed, with a shock of hair and rutted features that brought Samuel Beckett to mind. He was wearing gumboots and jeans and a faded lum- berjack shirt that looked as if it had been washed a hundred times. Alf took a quick pee against the side of the house, then fumbled up the steps to roll over and fawn at his feet. “Rolfe!” Alena called, and there was too much animation in her voice, too much familiarity, for my taste. She took the steps in a bound and threw herself in his arms. I watched them kiss, and it wasn’t a fatherly- daughterly sort of kiss, not at all. It was a kiss with some meaning behind it, and I didn’t like it. Rolfe, I thought: What kind of name is that? “Rolfe,” Alena gasped, still a little breathless from bouncing up the steps like a cheerleader, “I’d like you to meet Jim.” That was my signal. I ascended the porch steps and held out my hand. Rolfe gave me a look out of the hooded depths of his eyes and then took my hand in a hard calloused grip, the grip of the wood splitter, the fence mender, the liberator of hothouse turkeys and laboratory mice. “A pleasure,” he said, and his voice rasped like sandpaper. There was a fire going inside, and Alena and I sat before it and warmed our hands while Alf whined and sniffed and Rolfe served Red Zinger tea in Japanese cups the size of thimbles. Alena hadn’t stopped chattering since we stepped through the door, and Rolfe came right back at her in his woodsy rasp, the two of them exchanging names and news and gossip as if they were talking in code. I studied the reproductions of teal and widgeon that hung from the peeling walls, noted the case of Heinz vegetarian beans in the corner and the half-gallon of Jack Daniel’s on the mantel. Finally, after the third cup of tea, Alena settled back in her chair — a huge old Salvation Army sort of thing with a soiled antima- cassar — and said, “So what’s the plan?” Rolfe gave me another look, a quick predatory darting of the eyes, as if he weren’t sure I could be trusted, and then turned back to Alena. “Hedda Gabler’s Range-Fed Turkey Ranch,” he said. “And no, I don’t find the name cute, not at all.” He looked at me now, a long steady assay. “They grind up the heads for cat food, and the neck, the organs, and the rest, that they wrap up in paper and stuff back in the body cavity like it was a war atrocity or something. Whatever did a turkey go and do to us to deserve a fate like that?” The question was rhetorical, even if it seemed to have been aimed at me, and I made no response other than to compose my face in a look that wedded grief, outrage, and resolve. I was thinking of all the turkeys I’d sent to their doom, of the plucked wishbones, the pope’s noses,° and

pope’s noses: Slang for the fleshy tail sections of turkeys and other poultry.

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the crisp browned skin I used to relish as a kid. It brought a lump to my throat, and something more: I realized I was hungry. “Ben Franklin wanted to make them our national symbol,” Alena chimed in, “did you know that? But the meat eaters won out.” “Fifty thousand birds,” Rolfe said, glancing at Alena and bringing his incendiary gaze back to rest on me. “I have information they’re going to start slaughtering them tomorrow, for the fresh-not-frozen market.” “Yuppie poultry,” Alena’s voice was drenched in disgust. For a moment, no one spoke. I became aware of the crackling of the fire. The fog pressed at the windows. It was getting dark. “You can see the place from the highway,” Rolfe said finally, “but the only access is through Calpurnia Springs. It’s about twenty miles — twenty-two point three, to be exact.” Alena’s eyes were bright. She was gazing on Rolfe as if he’d just dropped down from heaven. I felt something heave in my stomach. “We strike tonight.”

Rolfe insisted that we take my car — “Everybody around here knows my pickup, and I can’t take any chances on a little operation like this” — but we did mask the plates, front and back, with an inch-thick smear of mud. We blackened our faces like commandos and collected our tools from the shed out back — tin snips, a crowbar, and two five-gallon cans of gasoline. “Gasoline?” I said, trying the heft of the can. Rolfe gave me a craggy look. “To create a diversion,” he said. Alf, for obvious reasons, stayed behind in the shack. If the fog had been thick in daylight, it was impenetrable now, the sky collapsed upon the earth. It took hold of the headlights and threw them back at me till my eyes began to water from the effort of keeping the car on the road. But for the ruts and bumps we might have been floating in space. Alena sat up front between Rolfe and me, curiously silent. Rolfe didn’t have much to say either, save for the occasional grunted command: “Hang a right here”; “Hard left”; “Easy, easy.” I thought about meat and jail and the heroic proportions to which I was about to swell in Alena’s eyes and what I intended to do to her when we finally got to bed. It was 2:00 a.m. by the dashboard clock. “Okay,” Rolfe said, and his voice came at me so suddenly it startled me, “pull over here — and kill the lights.” We stepped out into the hush of night and eased the doors shut behind us. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could hear the not-so-distant hiss of traffic on the highway, and another sound, too, muffled and indis- tinct, the gentle unconscious suspiration of thousands upon thousands of my fellow creatures. And I could smell them, a seething rancid odor of feces and feathers and naked scaly feet that crawled down my throat and burned my nostrils. “Whew,” I said in a whisper, “I can smell them.” Rolfe and Alena were vague presences at my side. Rolfe flipped open the trunk and in the next moment I felt the heft of a crowbar and a pair

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of tin snips in my hand. “Listen, you, Jim,” Rolfe whispered, taking me by the wrist in his iron grip and leading me half-a-dozen steps forward. “Feel this?” I felt a grid of wire, which he promptly cut: snip, snip, snip. “This is their enclosure — they’re out there in the day, scratching around in the dirt. You get lost, you follow this wire. Now, you’re going to take a section out of this side, Alena’s got the west side and I’ve got the south. Once that’s done I signal with the flashlight and we bust open the doors to the turkey houses — they’re these big low white buildings, you’ll see them when you get close — and flush the birds out. Don’t worry about me or Alena. Just worry about getting as many birds out as you can.” I was worried. Worried about everything, from some half-crazed farmer with a shotgun or AK-47 or whatever they carried these days, to losing Alena in the fog, to the turkeys themselves: How big were they? Were they violent? They had claws and beaks, didn’t they? And how were they going to feel about me bursting into their bedroom in the middle of the night? “And when the gas cans go up, you hightail it back to the car, got it?” I could hear the turkeys tossing in their sleep. A truck shifted gears out on the highway. “I think so,” I whispered. “And one more thing — be sure to leave the keys in the ignition.” This gave me pause. “But — ” “The getaway.” Alena was so close I could feel her breath on my ear. “I mean, we don’t want to be fumbling around for the keys when all hell is breaking loose out there, do we?” I eased open the door and reinserted the keys in the ignition, even though the automatic buzzer warned me against it. “Okay,” I mur- mured, but they were already gone, soaked up in the shadows and the mist. At this point my heart was hammering so loudly I could barely hear the rustling of the turkeys — this is crazy, I told myself, it’s hurt- ful and wrong, not to mention illegal. Spray-painting slogans was one thing, but this was something else altogether. I thought of the tur- key farmer asleep in his bed, an entrepreneur working to make Amer- ica strong, a man with a wife and kids and a mortgage . . . but then I thought of all those innocent turkeys consigned to death, and finally I thought of Alena, long-legged and loving, and the way she came to me out of the darkness of the bathroom and the boom of the surf. I took the tin snips to the wire. I must have been at it half an hour, forty-five minutes, gradually working my way toward the big white sheds that had begun to emerge from the gloom up ahead, when I saw Rolfe’s flashlight blinking off to my left. This was my signal to head to the nearest shed, snap off the padlock with my crowbar, fling open the doors, and herd a bunch of cranky suspicious gobblers out into the night. It was now or never. I looked twice round me and then broke for the near shed in an awk- ward crouching gait. The turkeys must have sensed that something was

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up — from behind the long white windowless wall there arose a watch- ful gabbling, a soughing of feathers that fanned up like a breeze in the treetops. Hold on, you toms and hens, I thought, freedom is at hand. A jerk of the wrist, and the padlock fell to the ground. Blood pounded in my ears, I took hold of the sliding door and jerked it open with a great dull booming reverberation — and suddenly, there they were, turkeys, thou- sands upon thousands of them, cloaked in white feathers under a string of dim yellow bulbs. The light glinted in their reptilian eyes. Somewhere a dog began to bark. I steeled myself and sprang through the door with a shout, whirl- ing the crowbar over my head, “All right!” I boomed, and the echo gave it back to me a hundred times over, “this is it! Turkeys, on your feet!” Nothing. No response. But for the whisper of rustling feathers and the alertly cocked heads, they might have been sculptures, throw pillows, they might as well have been dead and butchered and served up with yams and onions and all the trimmings. The barking of the dog went up a notch. I thought I heard voices. The turkeys crouched on the concrete floor, wave upon wave of them, stupid and immovable; they perched in the rafters, on shelves and platforms, huddled in wooden stalls. Desperate, I rushed into the front rank of them, swinging my crowbar, stamping my feet, and howling like the wishbone plucker I once was. That did it. There was a shriek from the nearest bird and the others took it up till an unholy racket filled the place, and now they were moving, tumbling down from their perches, flapping their wings in a storm of dried excrement and pecked-over grain, pouring across the concrete floor till it vanished beneath them. Encouraged, I screamed again — “Yeeee-ha-ha-ha-ha!” — and beat at the aluminum walls with the crowbar as the turkeys shot through the door- way and out into the night. It was then that the black mouth of the doorway erupted with light and the ka-boom! of the gas cans sent a tremor through the earth. Run! a voice screamed in my head, and the adrenaline kicked in and all of a sud- den I was scrambling for the door in a hurricane of turkeys. They were everywhere, flapping their wings, gobbling and screeching, loosing their bowels in panic. Something hit the back of my legs and all at once I was down amongst them, on the floor, in the dirt and feathers and wet turkey shit. I was a roadbed, a turkey expressway. Their claws dug at my back, my shoulders, the crown of my head. Panicked now, choking on feath- ers and dust and worse, I fought to my feet as the big screeching birds launched themselves round me, and staggered out into the barnyard. “There! Who’s that there?” a voice roared, and I was off and running. What can I say? I vaulted turkeys, kicked them aside like so many footballs, slashed and tore at them as they sailed through the air. I ran till my lungs felt as if they were burning right through my chest, disoriented, bewildered, terrified of the shotgun blast I was sure would cut me down at any moment. Behind me the fire raged and lit the fog

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till it glowed blood-red and hellish. But where was the fence? And where the car? I got control of my feet then and stood stock-still in a flurry of tur- keys, squinting into the wall of fog. Was that it? Was that the car over there? At that moment I heard an engine start up somewhere behind me — a familiar engine with a familiar coughing gurgle in the throat of the carburetor — and then the lights blinked on briefly three hundred yards away. I heard the engine race and listened, helpless, as the car roared off in the opposite direction. I stood there a moment longer, for- lorn and forsaken, and then I ran blindly off into the night, putting the fire and the shouts and the barking and the incessant mindless squawk- ing of the turkeys as far behind me as I could.

When dawn finally broke, it was only just perceptibly, so thick was the fog. I’d made my way to a blacktop road — which road and where it led I didn’t know — and sat crouched and shivering in a clump of weed just off the shoulder. Alena wouldn’t desert me, I was sure of that — she loved me, as I loved her; needed me, as I needed her — and I was sure she’d be cruising along the back roads looking for me. My pride was wounded, of course, and if I never laid eyes on Rolfe again I felt I wouldn’t be miss- ing much, but at least I hadn’t been drilled full of shot, savaged by farm dogs, or pecked to death by irate turkeys. I was sore all over, my shin throbbed where I’d slammed into something substantial while vaulting through the night, there were feathers in my hair, and my face and arms were a mosaic of cuts and scratches and long trailing fissures of dirt. I’d been sitting there for what seemed like hours, cursing Rolfe, developing suspicions about Alena and unflattering theories about environmental- ists in general, when finally I heard the familiar slurp and roar of my Chevy Citation cutting through the mist ahead of me. Rolfe was driving, his face impassive. I flung myself into the road like a tattered beggar, waving my arms over my head and giving vent to my joy, and he very nearly ran me down. Alena was out of the car before it stopped, wrapping me up in her arms, and then she was bundling me into the rear seat with Alf and we were on our way back to the hideaway. “What happened?” she cried, as if she couldn’t have guessed. “Where were you? We waited as long as we could.” I was feeling sulky, betrayed, feeling as if I was owed a whole lot more than a perfunctory hug and a string of insipid questions. Still, as I told my tale I began to warm to it — they’d got away in the car with the heater going, and I’d stayed behind to fight the turkeys, the farmers, and the elements, too, and if that wasn’t heroic, I’d like to know what was. I looked into Alena’s admiring eyes and pictured Rolfe’s shack, a nip or two from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, maybe a peanut-butter-and-tofu sandwich, and then the bed, with Alena in it. Rolfe said nothing. Back at Rolfe’s, I took a shower and scrubbed the turkey droppings from my pores, then helped myself to the bourbon. It was ten in the

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morning and the house was dark — if the world had ever been without fog, there was no sign of it here. When Rolfe stepped out on the porch to fetch an armload of firewood, I pulled Alena down into my lap. “Hey,” she murmured, “I thought you were an invalid.” She was wearing a pair of too-tight jeans and an oversize sweater with nothing underneath it. I slipped my hand inside the sweater and found something to hold on to. “Invalid?” I said, nuzzling at her sleeve. “Hell, I’m a turkey liberator, an ecoguerrilla, a friend of the animals and the environment, too.” She laughed, but she pushed herself up and crossed the room to stare out the occluded window. “Listen, Jim,” she said, “what we did last night was great, really great, but it’s just the beginning.” Alf looked up at her expectantly. I heard Rolfe fumbling around on the porch, the thump of wood on wood. She turned around to face me now. “What I mean is, Rolfe wants me to go up to Wyoming for a little bit, just outside of Yellowstone —” Me? Rolfe wants me? There was no invitation in that, no plurality, no acknowledgment of all we’d done and meant to each other. “For what?” I said. “What do you mean?” “There’s this grizzly — a pair of them, actually — and they’ve been raiding places outside the park. One of them made off with the mayor’s Doberman the other night and the people are up in arms. We — I mean Rolfe and me and some other people from the old Bolt Weevils in Min- nesota? — we’re going to go up there and make sure the Park Service — or the local yahoos — don’t eliminate them. The bears, I mean.” My tone was corrosive. “You and Rolfe?” “There’s nothing between us, if that’s what you’re thinking. This has to do with animals, that’s all.” “Like us?” She shook her head slowly. “Not like us, no. We’re the plague on this planet, don’t you know that?” Suddenly I was angry. Seething. Here I’d crouched in the bushes all night, covered in turkey crap, and now I was part of a plague. I was on my feet. “No, I don’t know that.” She gave me a look that let me know it didn’t matter, that she was already gone, that her agenda, at least for the moment, didn’t include me and there was no use arguing about it. “Look,” she said, her voice drop- ping as Rolfe slammed back through the door with a load of wood, “I’ll see you in L.A. in a month or so, okay?” She gave me an apologetic smile. “Water the plants for me?”

An hour later I was on the road again. I’d helped Rolfe stack the wood beside the fireplace, allowed Alena to brush my lips with a good-bye kiss, and then stood there on the porch while Rolfe locked up, lifted Alf into the bed of his pickup, and rumbled down the rutted dirt road with Alena at his side. I watched till their brake lights dissolved in the drifting

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gray mist, then fired up the Citation and lurched down the road behind them. A month or so: I felt hollow inside. I pictured her with Rolfe, eating yogurt and wheat germ, stopping at motels, wrestling grizzlies, and spik- ing trees. The hollowness opened up, cored me out till I felt as if I’d been plucked and gutted and served up on a platter myself. I found my way back through Calpurnia Springs without incident — there were no roadblocks, no flashing lights and grim-looking troopers searching trunks and back seats for a tallish thirty-year-old ecoterror- ist with turkey tracks down his back — but after I turned onto the high- way for Los Angeles, I had a shock. Ten miles up the road my nightmare materialized out of the gloom: red lights everywhere, signal flares and police cars lined up on the shoulder. I was on the very edge of panicking, a beat away from cutting across the median and giving them a run for it, when I saw the truck jackknifed up ahead. I slowed to forty, thirty, and then hit the brakes again. In a moment I was stalled in a line of cars and there was something all over the road, ghostly and white in the fog. At first I thought it must have been flung from the truck, rolls of toilet paper or crates of soap powder ruptured on the pavement. It was nei- ther. As I inched closer, the tires creeping now, the pulse of the lights in my face, I saw that the road was coated in feathers, turkey feathers. A storm of them. A blizzard. And more: there was flesh there too, slick and greasy, a red pulp ground into the surface of the road, thrown up like slush from the tires of the car ahead of me, ground beneath the massive wheels of the truck. Turkeys. Turkeys everywhere. The car crept forward. I flicked on the windshield wipers, hit the washer button, and for a moment a scrim of diluted blood obscured the windows and the hollowness opened up inside of me till I thought it would suck me inside out. Behind me, someone was leaning on his horn. A trooper loomed up out of the gloom, waving me on with the dead yel- low eye of his flashlight. I thought of Alena and felt sick. All there was between us had come to this, expectations gone sour, a smear on the road. I wanted to get out and shoot myself, turn myself in, close my eyes, and wake up in jail, in a hair shirt, in a straitjacket, anything. It went on. Time passed. Nothing moved. And then, miraculously, a vision began to emerge from behind the smeared glass and the gray belly of the fog, lights glowing golden in the waste. I saw the sign, Gas/Food/Lodging, and my hand was on the blinker. It took me a moment, picturing the place, the generic tile, the false cheer of the lights, the odor of charred flesh hanging heavy on the air, Big Mac, three-piece dark meat, carne asada, cheeseburger. The engine coughed. The lights glowed. I didn’t think of Alena then, didn’t think of Rolfe or grizzlies or the doomed bleating flocks and herds, or of the blind bunnies and cancerous mice — I thought only of the cavern opening inside me and how to fill it. “Meat,” and I spoke the word aloud, talking to calm myself as if I’d awakened from a bad dream, “it’s only meat.”

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Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. How do your own views of vegetarianism and ani- mal rights’ groups influence your response to this story?

2. Comment on how Boyle achieves humorous effects through his first-person narrator in the story’s first paragraph.

3. Describe the tone of the first-person narrator. How does he regard the world — the people, situations, and events — he encounters? Why is it especially appropriate that he has a job writing copy for an advertising agency?

4. How does Boyle’s style reveal the narrator’s character? Select several paragraphs to illustrate your points.

5. How does the narrator use irony? Select three instances of his use of irony, and discuss their effects and what they reveal about him.

6. How does Boyle create a genuinely comic character with Alf? What is the narrator’s relationship with Alf?

7. How do you think the story would differ if it were told from Alena’s point of view?

8. What is the major conflict in the story? How is it resolved in the story’s final paragraphs?

9. How do the story’s last words, “it’s only meat,” shed light on the significance of the title? What does a dictionary tell you about pos- sible readings of the title?

10. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. Compare the tone of Boyle’s treatment of lust with Susan Minot’s in “Lust” (p. 229).

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Fiction in Depth

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9. A Study of Flannery O’Connor 257

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When Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) died of lupus before her fortieth birthday, her work was cruelly cut short. Nevertheless, she had com- pleted two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960), as well as thirty-one short stories. Despite her brief life and relatively mod- est output, her work is regarded as among the most distinguished Amer- ican fiction of the mid-twentieth century. Her two collections of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965), were included in The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (1971), which won the National Book Award. The story included in this chapter offers a glimpse into the work of this important twentieth- century writer.

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9 A Study of Flannery O’Connor

In most English classes the short story has become a kind of literary specimen to be dissected. Every time a story of mine appears in a Freshman anthology, I have a vision of it, with its little organs laid open, like a frog in a bottle.

— FLANNERY O’CONNOR

I am always having it pointed out to me that life in Georgia is not at all the way I picture it, that escaped criminals do not roam the roads exterminating families, nor Bible salesmen prowl about looking for girls with wooden legs.

— FLANNERY O’CONNOR

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A BRIEF BIOGR APHY AND INTRODUCTION O’Connor’s fiction grapples with living a spiritual life in a secular world. Although this major concern is worked into each of her stories, she takes a broad approach to spiritual issues by providing moral, social, and psy- chological contexts that offer a wealth of insights and passion that her readers have found both startling and absorbing. Her stories are chal- lenging be cause her characters, who initially seem radically different from people we know, turn out to be, by the end of each story, somehow familiar — somehow connected to us. O’Connor inhabited simultaneously two radically different worlds. The world she created in her stories is populated with bratty children, malcon- tents, incompetents, pious frauds, bewildered intellectuals, deformed cynics, rednecks, hucksters, racists, perverts, and murderers who experience dra- matically intense moments that surprise and shock readers. Her personal

Flannery O’Connor and a Self-Portrait. The author poses in front of an accurate, if rather fierce self-portrait with one of her beloved ring-necked pheasants. As a child, O’Connor enjoyed raising birds, a passion that was sparked when one of her chickens, “a buff Cochin Bantam [that] had the distinction of being able to walk either forward or backward,” was reported on in the press. “I had to have more and more chickens. . . . I wanted one with three legs or three wings but nothing in that line turned up. . . . My quest, whatever it was for, ended with peacocks,” she wrote. Reprinted by permission of Bettmann/corbis.

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life, however, was largely uneventful. She humorously acknowledged its quiet nature in 1958 when she claimed that “there won’t be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.” A broad outline of O’Connor’s life may not offer very much “exciting copy,” but it does provide clues about why she wrote such powerful fiction. The only child of Catholic parents, O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, where she attended a parochial grammar school and high school. When she was thirteen, her father became ill with disseminated lupus, a rare, incurable blood disease, and had to abandon his real-estate business. The family moved to Milledgeville in central Georgia, where her mother’s family had lived for generations. Because there were no Catholic schools in Milledgeville, O’Connor attended a public high school. In 1942, the year after her father died of lupus, O’Connor graduated from high school and enrolled in Georgia State College for Women. There she wrote for the liter- ary magazine until receiving her diploma in 1945. Her stories earned her a fellowship to the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, and for two years she learned to write steadily and seriously. She sold her first story to Accent in 1946 and earned her master of fine arts degree in 1947. She wrote stories about life in the rural South, and this subject matter, along with her devout Catholic perspective, became central to her fiction. With her formal education behind her, O’Connor was ready to begin her professional career at the age of twenty-two. Equipped with determi- nation (“No one can convince me that I shouldn’t rewrite as much as I do”) and offered the opportunity to be around other practicing writers, she moved to New York, where she worked on her first novel, Wise Blood. In 1950, however, she was diagnosed as having lupus, and, returning to Georgia for treatment, she took up permanent residence on her mother’s farm in Milledgeville. There she lived a severely restricted but productive life, writing stories and raising peacocks. With the exception of O’Connor’s early years in Iowa and New York and some short lecture trips to other states, she traveled little. Although she made a pilgrimage to Lourdes (apparently more for her mother’s sake than for her own) and then to Rome for an audience with the pope, her life was centered in the South. Like those of William Faulkner and many other southern writers, O’Connor’s stories evoke the rhythms of rural southern speech and manners in insulated settings where widely diverse characters mingle. Also like Faulkner, she created works whose meanings go beyond their settings. She did not want her fiction to be seen in the context of narrowly defined regionalism: she complained that “in almost every hamlet you’ll find at least one old lady writing epics in Negro dialect and probably two or three old gentlemen who have impossible historical novels on the way.” Refusing to be caricatured, she knew that “the woods are full of re gional writers, and it is the great hor- ror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them.” O’Connor’s stories are rooted in rural southern culture, but in a larger

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sense they are set within the psychological and spiritual landscapes of the human soul. O’Connor’s deep spiritual convictions coincide with the traditional emphasis on religion in the South, where, she said, there is still the belief “that man has fallen and that he is only perfectible by God’s grace, not by his own unaided efforts.” Although O’Connor’s Catholicism differs from the prevailing Protestant fundamentalism of the South, the reli- gious ethos so pervasive even in rural southern areas provided fertile ground for the spiritual crises her characters experience. In a posthu- mous collection of her articles, essays, and reviews aptly titled Mystery and Manners (1969), she summarized her basic religious convictions:

I am no disbeliever in spiritual purpose and no vague believer. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relation to that. I don’t think that this is a posi- tion that can be taken halfway or one that is particularly easy in these times to make transparent in fiction.

O’Connor realized that she was writing against the grain of the read- ers who discovered her stories in the Partisan Review, Sewanee Review, Mademoiselle, or Harper’s Bazaar. Many readers thought that Christian dogma would make her writing doctrinaire, but she insisted that the perspective of Christianity allowed her to interpret the details of life and guaranteed her “respect for [life’s] mystery.” O’Connor’s stories contain no prepackaged prescriptions for living, no catechisms that lay out all the answers. In stead, her characters struggle with spiritual ques- tions in bizarre, incongruous situations. Their lives are grotesque — even comic — precisely be cause they do not understand their own spiritual natures. Their actions are ex treme and abnormal. O’Connor explains the reasons for this in Mystery and Manners; she says she sought to expose the “distortions” of “modern life” that appear “normal” to her audience. Hence, she used “violent means” to convey her vision to a “hostile audi- ence.” “When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it.” But when the audience holds different values, “you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.” O’Connor’s characters lose or find their soul-saving grace in painful, chaotic circum- stances that bear little or no resemblance to the slow but sure progress to the Celestial City of repentant pilgrims in traditional religious stories. Because her characters are powerful creations who live convincing, even if ugly, lives, O’Connor’s religious beliefs never supersede her story- telling. One need not be either Christian or Catholic to appreciate her concerns about human failure and degradation and her artistic ability to render fictional lives that are alternately absurdly comic and tragic. The ironies that abound in her work leave plenty of room for readers of

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all persuasions. O’Connor’s work is narrow in the sense that her con- cerns are emphatically spiritual, but her compassion and her belief in human possibilities — even among the most unlikely characters — afford her fictions a capacity for wonder that is exhilarating. Her precise, deft use of language always reveals more than it seems to tell. O’Connor’s stories present complex experiences that cannot be tidily summarized; it takes the entire story to suggest the meanings. Read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” for the pleasure of entering the remarkable world O’Connor creates. You’re in for some surprises.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find 1953

The 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. He was sitting on 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 hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls him- self The 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 then and faced the children’s mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green headkerchief that had two points on the top like a rabbit’s ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar. “The chil- dren have been to Florida before,” the old lady said. “You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee.” The children’s mother didn’t seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, “If you don’t want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?” He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor. “She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day,” June Star said without raising her yellow head. “Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?” the grandmother asked. “I’d smack his face,” John Wesley said. “She wouldn’t stay at home for a million bucks,” June Star said. “Afraid she’d miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.” “All right, Miss,” the grandmother said. “Just remember that the next time you want me to curl your hair.” June Star said her hair was naturally curly.

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The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the 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 acciden- tally 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 John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children’s mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children’s mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the 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 both 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. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The 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 then. Oh look at the cute little

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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. He 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. The children exchanged comic books. The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children’s mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him 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 of it, like a small island. “Look at the graveyard!” the grandmother said, pointing it out. “That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation.” “Where’s the plantation?” John Wesley asked. “Gone With the Wind,” said the grandmother. “Ha. Ha.” When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn’t play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother. The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When 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, Geor- gia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he 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 the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the water- melon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E.A.T.! This story tickled John Wesley’s funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn’t think it was any good. She said she wouldn’t marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grand- mother 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. They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sandwiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a

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clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY’S FAMOUS BAR- BECUE. 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 The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him. Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam’s wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children’s mother put a dime in the machine and played “The Tennessee Waltz,” and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn’t have a naturally sunny disposi- tion like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother’s brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pre- tended 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 onto 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?” “No 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?” the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely. “Aren’t you ashamed?” hissed the 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 hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. “You can’t win,” he 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 not 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 them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?”

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“Because you’re a good man!” the grandmother said at once. “Yes’m, I suppose so,” Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer. His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once with- out a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. “It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust,” she said. “And I don’t count nobody out of that, not nobody,” she repeated, looking at Red Sammy. “Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that’s escaped?” asked the grandmother. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he didn’t attack this place right here,” said the woman. “If he hears about it being here, I wouldn’t be none surprised to see him. If he 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 man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is get- ting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door un latched. Not no more.” He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully be tween his teeth as if it were a delicacy. They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombs boro 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 telling the truth but wishing that she were, “and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman° came through but it was never found. . . .”

Sherman: William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891), Union Army commander who led infamous marches through the South during the Civil War.

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“Hey!” John Wesley said. “Let’s go see it! We’ll find it! We’ll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can’t we turn off there?” “We never have seen a house with a secret panel!” June Star shrieked. “Let’s go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can’t we go see the house with the secret panel!” “It’s not far from here, I know,” the grandmother said. “It won’t take over twenty minutes.” Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horse- shoe. “No,” he said. The children began to yell and scream that 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. The 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 the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wes- ley 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 the car,” his mother said. They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day’s journey. The 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, then 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.” The road looked as if no one had traveled on it for months. “It’s not much farther,” the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing

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that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey’s shoulder. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right- side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver’s seat with the cat — gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose — clinging 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!” The 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. The horrible thought she had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee. Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children’s mother. She 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 the side. They 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 mother hoarsely. “I believe I have injured an organ,” said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no 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 the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee. The 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. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black bat- tered hearse-like automobile. There were three men in it. It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sit- ting, and didn’t speak. Then he turned his head and muttered some- thing to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black

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trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood star- ing, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke. The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn’t have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns. “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed. The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from the car and began to come down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn’t slip. He had on tan and white shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. “Good afternoon,” he said. “I see you all had you a little spill.” “We turned over twice!” said the grandmother. “Oncet,” he corrected. “We seen it happen. Try their car and see will it run, Hiram,” he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat. “What you got that gun for?” John Wesley asked. “Whatcha 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. I want all you all to sit down right together there where you’re at.” “What are you telling US 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 said suddenly, “we’re in a predicament! We’re in. . . .” The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. “You’re The Misfit!” she said. “I recognized you at once!” “Yes’m,” the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, “but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.” Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened. “Lady,” he said, “don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man 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 re moved a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.

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The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then 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.” When 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. The boy with the red sweat shirt had come around behind them and was stand- ing with his gun at his hip. The Misfit squatted down on the ground. “Watch them children, Bobby Lee,” he said. “You know they make me nervous.” He looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn’t think of anything to say. “Ain’t a cloud in the sky,” he 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 The Misfit because I 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!” He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint for- ward but he didn’t move. “I pre-chate that, lady,” The 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 hood of it. “Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder with you,” The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wes- ley. “The boys want to ast you something,” he 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. The 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. She stood star- ing at it and after a second she let it fall to the ground. Hiram pulled Bai- ley up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father’s hand and Bobby Lee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned and sup- porting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, he shouted, “I’ll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!” “Come back this instant!” his mother shrilled but they all disap- peared into the woods. “Bailey Boy!” the grandmother called in a tragic voice but she found she was looking at The Misfit squatting on the ground in front of her. “I just know you’re a good man,” she said desperately. “You’re not a bit common!”

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“Nome, I ain’t a good man,” The Misfit said after a second as if he had considered 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 on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again. “I’m sorry I don’t have on a shirt before you ladies,” he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. “We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we’re just mak- ing do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met,” he explained. “That’s perfectly all right,” the grandmother said. “Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in his suitcase.” “I’ll look and see terrectly,” The Misfit said. “Where are they taking him?” the children’s mother screamed. “Daddy was a card himself,” The Misfit said. “You couldn’t put any- thing over on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the knack of handling them.” “You could be honest too if you’d only try,” said the grandmother. “Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time.” The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about it. “Yes’m, somebody is always after you,” he murmured. The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat because she was standing up looking down on him. “Do you ever pray?” she asked. He shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. “Nome,” he said. There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence. The 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,” The Misfit said. “I been most everything. Been in the arm service, both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet,” and he looked up at the children’s mother and the little girl who were sit- ting close together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; “I even seen a woman flogged,” he said. “Pray, pray,” the grandmother began, “pray, pray. . . .” “I never was a bad boy that I remember of,” The 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 attention to him by a steady stare.

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“That’s when you should have started to pray,” she said. “What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?” “Turn to the right, it was a wall,” The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. “Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceil- ing, 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. Oncet 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 no mistake. They had the papers on me.” “You must have stolen something,” she said. The Misfit sneered slightly. “Nobody had nothing I wanted,” he said. “It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can see for yourself.” “If you would pray,” the old lady said, “Jesus would help you.” “That’s right,” The Misfit said. “Well then, why don’t you pray?” she asked trembling with delight suddenly. “I don’t want no hep,” he 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. “Throw me that shirt, Bobby Lee,” The Misfit said. The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grand- mother couldn’t name what the shirt reminded her of. “No, lady,” The Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, “I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man 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.” The children’s mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn’t get her breath. “Lady,” he 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 help- lessly and she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. “Hep that lady up, Hiram,” The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, “and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl’s hand.” “I don’t want to hold hands with him,” June Star said. “He reminds me of a pig.” The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her mother. Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was noth- ing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray.

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She opened and closed her mouth 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,” The Misfit said as if he agreed. “Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course,” he said, “they never shown me my papers. That’s why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get your signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you’ll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the pun- ishment and see do they match and in the end you’ll have something to prove you ain’t been treated right. I call myself The Misfit,” he said, “because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.” There 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 not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!” “Lady,” The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, “there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip.” There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, “Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!” as if her heart would break. “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit contin- ued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away every- thing and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can — by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his voice had become almost a snarl. “Maybe He didn’t raise the dead,” the old lady mumbled, not know- ing 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,” The Misfit said. “I wisht I had of been there,” he 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 known and I wouldn’t be like I am now.” His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She 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

130

135

o’connor / a good man is hard to find 273

reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on 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. Without his glasses, The Misfit’s eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. “Take her off and thow her where you thown the others,” he 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,” The 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,” The Misfit said. “It’s no real pleasure in life.”

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. How does O’Connor portray the family? What is comic about them? What qualities about them are we meant to take seriously? Are you shocked by what happens to them? Does your attitude toward them remain constant during the course of the story?

2. How do the grandmother’s concerns about the trip to Florida fore- shadow events in the story?

3. Describe the grandmother. How does O’Connor make her the cen- tral character?

4. Characterize The Misfit. What makes him so? Can he be written off as simply insane? How does the grandmother respond to him?

5. Why does The Misfit say that “Jesus thown everything off balance” (para. 129)? What does religion have to do with the brutal action of this story?

6. What does The Misfit mean at the end when he says about the grandmother, “She would of been a good woman . . . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life”?

7. Describe the story’s tone. Is it consistent? What is the effect of O’Connor’s use of tone?

8. How is coincidence used to advance the plot? How do coincidences lead to ironies in the story?

9. Explain how the title points to the story’s theme. 10. CONNECTION TO ANOTHER SELECTION. What makes “A Good Man

Is Hard to Find” so difficult to interpret in contrast, say, to Haw- thorne’s “The Birthmark” (p. 289)?

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Perspectives on O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor

On the Use of Exaggeration and Distortion 1969

When I write a novel in which the central action is a baptism, I am very well aware that for a majority of my readers, baptism is a meaningless rite, and so in my novel I have to see that this baptism carries enough awe and mystery to jar the reader into some kind of emotional recogni- tion of its significance. To this end I have to bend the whole novel — its language, its structure, its action. I have to make the reader feel, in his bones if nowhere else, that something is going on here that counts. Dis- tortion in this case is an instrument; exaggeration has a purpose, and the whole structure of the story or novel has been made what it is because of belief. This is not the kind of distortion that destroys; it is the kind that reveals, or should reveal.

From “Novelist and Believer” in Mystery and Manners

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. O’Connor says that exaggeration and distortion reveal something in her stories. What is the effect of such exaggeration and distortion in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find?” What is revealed by it?

2. Do you think that O’Connor’s story has anything to offer a reader who has no religious faith? Explain why or why not.

Josephine Hendin (b. 1946)

On O’Connor’s Refusal to “Do Pretty” 1970

There is, in the memory of one Milledgeville matron, the image of O’Connor at nineteen or twenty who, when invited to a wedding shower for an old family friend, remained standing, her back pressed against the wall, scowling at the group of women who had sat down to lunch. Nei- ther the devil nor her mother could make her say yes to this fiercely gra- cious female society, but Flannery O’Connor could not say no even in a whisper. She could not refuse the invitation but she would not accept it either. She did not exactly “fuss” but neither did she “do pretty.”

From The World of Flannery O’Connor

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. How is O’Connor’s personality revealed in this anecdote about her ambivalent response to society? Allow the description to be sugges- tive for you, and flesh out a brief portrait of her.

katz / the function of violence in o’connor’s fiction 275

2. Consider how this personality makes itself apparent in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” How does the anecdote help to characterize the narrator’s voice in the story?

3. To what extent do you think biographical details such as this — assuming the Milledgeville matron’s memory to be accurate — can shed light on a writer’s works?

Claire Katz (b. 1935)

The Function of Violence in O’Connor’s Fiction 1974

From the moment the reader enters O’Connor’s backwoods, he is poised on the edge of a pervasive violence. Characters barely contain their rage; images reflect a hostile nature; and even the Christ to whom the charac- ters are ultimately driven is a threatening figure . . . full of the apocalyptic wrath of the Old Testament. O’Connor’s conscious purpose is evident enough . . . : to reveal the need for grace in a world grotesque without a transcendent context. “I have found that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil,” she wrote [in Mystery and Manners], and she was not vague about what the devil is: “an evil intelligence determined on its own supremacy.” It would seem that for O’Connor, given the fact of original Sin, any intelligence determined on its own supremacy was intrinsically evil. For in each work, it is the im pulse toward secular autonomy, the smug confidence that human nature is perfectible by its own efforts, that she sets out to destroy, through an act of violence so intense that the character is rendered helpless, a passive victim of a supe- rior power. Again and again she creates a fiction in which a character attempts to live autonomously, to define himself and his values, only to be jarred back to what she calls “reality” — the recognition of helpless- ness in the face of contingency, and the need for absolute submission to the power of Christ.

From “Flannery O’Connor’s Rage of Vision” in American Literature

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. Which O’Connor characters can be accurately described as having an “evil intelligence determined on its own supremacy” (para. 2)? Choose one character, and write an essay explaining how this description is central to the conflict of the story.

2. To what extent might “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” be accurately described as a story “in which a character attempts to live autonomously, to define . . . values, only to be jarred back to . . . ‘reality’ — the recognition of helplessness in the face of contingency . . .” (para. 2)?

276 a study of flannery o’connor

Time Magazine, On A Good Man Is Hard to Find 1962

Highly unladylike . . . a brutal irony, a slam-bang humor, and a style of writing as balefully direct as a death sentence.

From a Time magazine blurb quoted on the cover of the second American edition of A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. How adequate do you think this blurb is in characterizing the story? 2. CREATIVE RESPONSE. Write your own blurb for the story and be pre-

pared to justify your pithy description.

A Collection of Stories

277

10. Stories for Further Reading 279

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (b. 1956)

Born in India, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni left Calcutta when she was nineteen years old to continue her education in the United States, where she worked a variety of odd jobs while earning a master’s degree from Wright State University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She currently teaches in the creative writ- ing department at the University of Hous- ton. Her fi rst collection of short stories, Arranged Marriage (which includes “Clothes,” reprinted below), was published in 1995; it won several awards including the American Book Award. In addition to a second collec- tion of stories, The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (2001), she has published several novels including Sister of My Heart (1999), Vine of Desire (2002), The Conch Bearer (2003), and Queen of Dreams (2004). Among her three books

279

10 Stories for Further Reading

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

— TONI MORRISON AP/Wide World Photos.

280 stories for further reading

of poetry, her most recent is Leaving Yuba City (1997). Much of her work focuses on Indian immigrant women who fi nd themselves having to balance their lives between their homeland and the United States.

Clothes 1990

The water of the women’s lake laps against my breasts, cool, calming. I can feel it beginning to wash the hot nervousness away from my body. The little waves tickle my armpits, make my sari fl oat up around me, wet and yellow, like a sunfl ower after rain. I close my eyes and smell the sweet brown odor of the ritha pulp my friends Deepali and Radha are working into my hair so it will glisten with little lights this evening. They scrub with more vigor than usual and wash it out more carefully, because today is a special day. It is the day of my bride-viewing. “Ei, Sumita! Mita! Are you deaf?” Radha says. “This is the third time I’ve asked you the same question.” “Look at her, already dreaming about her husband, and she hasn’t even seen him yet!” Deepali jokes. Then she adds, the envy in her voice only half hidden, “Who cares about friends from a little Indian village when you’re about to go live in America?” I want to deny it, to say that I will always love them and all the things we did together through my growing-up years — visiting the charak fair where we always ate too many sweets, raiding the neighbor’s guava tree summer afternoons while the grown-ups slept, telling fairy tales while we braided each other’s hair in elaborate patterns we’d invented. And she married the handsome prince who took her to his kingdom beyond the seven seas. But already the activities of our girlhood seem to be far in my past, the colors leached out of them, like old sepia photographs. His name is Somesh Sen, the man who is coming to our house with his parents today and who will be my husband “if I’m lucky enough to be chosen,” as my aunt says. He is coming all the way from California. Father showed it to me yesterday, on the metal globe that sits on his desk, a chunky pink wedge on the side of a multicolored slab marked Untd. Sts. of America. I touched it and felt the excitement leap all the way up my arm like an electric shock. Then it died away, leaving only a beaten-metal coldness against my fi ngertips. For the fi rst time it occurred to me that if things worked out the way everyone was hoping, I’d be going halfway around the world to live with a man I hadn’t even met. Would I ever see my parents again? Don’t send me so far away, I wanted to cry, but of course I didn’t. It would be ungrate- ful. Father had worked so hard to fi nd this match for me. Besides, wasn’t it every woman’s destiny, as Mother was always telling me, to leave the known for the un known? She had done it, and her mother before her. A married woman belongs to her husband, her in-laws. Hot seeds of tears pricked my eyelids at the unfairness of it.

divakaruni / clothes 281

“Mita Moni, little jewel,” Father said, calling me by my childhood name. He put out his hand as though he wanted to touch my face, then let it fall to his side. “He’s a good man. Comes from a fi ne family. He will be kind to you.” He was silent for a while. Finally he said, “Come, let me show you the special sari I bought in Calcutta for you to wear at the bride-viewing.” “Are you nervous?” Radha asks as she wraps my hair in a soft cotton towel. Her parents are also trying to arrange a marriage for her. So far three families have come to see her, but no one has chosen her because her skin-color is considered too dark. “Isn’t it terrible, not knowing what’s going to happen?” I nod because I don’t want to disagree, don’t want to make her feel bad by saying that sometimes it’s worse when you know what’s coming, like I do. I knew it as soon as Father unlocked his mahogany almirah° and took out the sari. It was the most expensive sari I had ever seen, and surely the most beau tiful. Its body was a pale pink, like the dawn sky over the women’s lake. The color of transition. Embroidered all over it were tiny stars made out of real gold zari thread. “Here, hold it,” said Father. The sari was unexpectedly heavy in my hands, silk-slippery, a sari to walk carefully in. A sari that could change one’s life. I stood there holding it, wanting to weep. I knew that when I wore it, it would hang in perfect pleats to my feet and shimmer in the light of the evening lamps. It would dazzle Somesh and his parents and they would choose me to be his bride.

When the plane takes off, I try to stay calm, to take deep, slow breaths like Father does when he practices yoga. But my hands clench them- selves on to the folds of my sari and when I force them open, after the fasten seat belt and no smoking signs have blinked off, I see they have left damp blotches on the delicate crushed fabric. We had some arguments about this sari. I wanted a blue one for the journey, because blue is the color of possibility, the color of the sky through which I would be traveling. But Mother said there must be red in it because red is the color of luck for married women. Finally, Father found one to satisfy us both: midnight-blue with a thin red border the same color as the marriage mark I’m wearing on my forehead. It is hard for me to think of myself as a married woman. I whisper my new name to myself, Mrs. Sumita Sen, but the syllables rustle uneas- ily in my mouth like a stiff satin that’s never been worn. Somesh had to leave for America just a week after the wedding. He had to get back to the store, he explained to me. He had promised his partner. The store. It seems more real to me than Somesh — perhaps because I know more about it. It was what we had mostly talked about

almirah: A large closet.

282 stories for further reading

the night after the wedding, the fi rst night we were together alone. It stayed open twenty-four hours, yes, all night, every night, not like the Indian stores which closed at dinnertime and sometimes in the hottest part of the afternoon. That’s why his partner needed him back. The store was called 7-Eleven. I thought it a strange name, exotic, risky. All the stores I knew were piously named after gods and goddesses — Ganesh Sweet House, Lakshmi Vastralaya for Fine Saris — to bring the owners luck. The store sold all kinds of amazing things — apple juice in cardboard cartons that never leaked; American bread that came in cellophane packages, already cut up; canisters of potato chips, each large grainy fl ake curved exactly like the next. The large refrigerator with see-through glass doors held beer and wine, which Somesh said were the most popular items. “That’s where the money comes from, especially in the neighbor- hood where our store is,” said Somesh, smiling at the shocked look on my face. (The only places I knew of that sold alcohol were the village toddy shops, “dark, stinking dens of vice,” Father called them.) “A lot of Americans drink, you know. It’s a part of their culture, not considered immoral, like it is here. And really, there’s nothing wrong with it.” He touched my lips lightly with his fi nger. “When you come to California, I’ll get you some sweet white wine and you’ll see how good it makes you feel. . . .” Now his fi ngers were stroking my cheeks, my throat, moving downward. I closed my eyes and tried not to jerk away because after all it was my wifely duty. “It helps if you can think about something else,” my friend Madhavi had said when she warned me about what most husbands demanded on the very fi rst night. Two years married, she already had one child and was pregnant with a second one. I tried to think of the women’s lake, the dark cloudy green of the shapla° leaves that fl oat on the water, but his lips were hot against my skin, his fi ngers fumbling with buttons, pulling at the cotton night-sari I wore. I couldn’t breathe. “Bite hard on your tongue,” Madhavi had advised. “The pain will keep your mind off what’s going on down there.” But when I bit down, it hurt so much that I cried out. I couldn’t help it although I was ashamed. Somesh lifted his head. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but he stopped right away. “Shhh,” he said, although I had made myself silent already. “It’s OK, we’ll wait until you feel like it.” I tried to apologize but he smiled it away and started telling me some more about the store. And that’s how it was the rest of the week until he left. We would lie side by side on the big white bridal pillow I had embroidered with a pair of doves for married harmony, and Somesh would describe how the store’s front windows were decorated with a fl ashing neon Dewar’s sign

shapla: A water plant.

divakaruni / clothes 283

and a lighted Budweiser waterfall this big. I would watch his hands mov- ing excitedly through the dim air of the bedroom and think that Father had been right, he was a good man, my husband, a kind, patient man. And so handsome, too, I would add, stealing a quick look at the strong curve of his jaw, feeling luckier than I had any right to be. The night before he left, Somesh confessed that the store wasn’t making much money yet. “I’m not worried, I’m sure it soon will,” he added, his fi ngers pleating the edge of my sari. “But I just don’t want to give you the wrong im pression, don’t want you to be disappointed.” In the half dark I could see he had turned toward me. His face, with two vertical lines between the brows, looked young, apprehensive, in need of protection. I’d never seen that on a man’s face before. Something rose in me like a wave. “It’s all right,” I said, as though to a child, and pulled his head down to my breast. His hair smelled faintly of the American cigarettes he smoked. “I won’t be disappointed. I’ll help you.” And a sudden happiness fi lled me. That night I dreamed I was at the store. Soft American music fl oated in the background as I moved between shelves stocked high with brightly colored cans and elegant-necked bottles, turning their labels carefully to the front, polishing them until they shone. Now, sitting inside this metal shell that is hurtling through emptiness, I try to remember other things about my husband: how gentle his hands had been, and his lips, surprisingly soft, like a woman’s. How I’ve longed for them through those drawn-out nights while I waited for my visa to arrive. He will be standing at the customs gate, and when I reach him, he will lower his face to mine. We will kiss in front of everyone, not caring, like Americans, then pull back, look each other in the eye, and smile. But suddenly, as I am thinking this, I realize I cannot recall Somesh’s face. I try and try until my head hurts, but I can only visualize the black air swirling outside the plane, too thin for breathing. My own breath grows ragged with panic as I think of it and my mouth fi lls with sour fl uid the way it does just before I throw up. I grope for something to hold on to, something beautiful and talis- manic from my old life. And then I remember. Somewhere down under me, low in the belly of the plane, inside my new brown case which is stacked in the dark with a hundred others, are my saris. Thick Kanjeep- uram silks in solid purples and golden yellows, the thin hand-woven cot- tons of the Bengal countryside, green as a young banana plant, gray as the women’s lake on a monsoon morning. Already I can feel my shoul- ders loosening up, my breath steadying. My wedding Benarasi, fl ame- orange, with a wide palloo° of gold-embroidered dancing peacocks. Fold upon fold of Dhakais° so fi ne they can be pulled through a ring. Into each fold my mother has tucked a small sachet of sandalwood powder

palloo: The piece of the sari that goes over the shoulder. Dhakais: Hand-loomed saris from Bangladesh.

284 stories for further reading

to protect the saris from the unknown insects of America. Little silk sachets, made from her old saris — I can smell their calm fragrance as I watch the American air hostess wheeling the dinner cart toward my seat. It is the smell of my mother’s hands. I know then that everything will be all right. And when the air host- ess bends her curly golden head to ask me what I would like to eat, I understand every word in spite of her strange accent and answer her without stumbling even once over the unfamiliar English phrases.

Late at night I stand in front of our bedroom mirror trying on the clothes Somesh has bought for me and smuggled in past his parents. I model each one for him, walking back and forth, clasping my hands behind my head, lips pouted, left hip thrust out just like the models on TV, while he whispers applause. I’m breathless with suppressed laughter (Father and Mother Sen must not hear us) and my cheeks are hot with the delicious excitement of conspiracy. We’ve stuffed a towel at the bot- tom of the door so no light will shine through. I’m wearing a pair of jeans now, marveling at the curves of my hips and thighs, which have always been hidden under the fl owing lines of my saris. I love the color, the same pale blue as the nayantara fl owers that grow in my parents’ garden. The solid comforting weight. The jeans come with a close-fi tting T-shirt which outlines my breasts. I scold Somesh to hide my embarrassed pleasure. He shouldn’t have been so extravagant. We can’t afford it. He just smiles. The T-shirt is sunrise-orange — the color, I decide, of joy, of my new American life. Across its middle, in large black letters, is written Great America. I was sure the letters referred to the country, but Somesh told me it is the name of an amusement park, a place where people go to have fun. I think it a wonderful concept, novel. Above the letters is the picture of a train. Only it’s not a train, Somesh tells me, it’s a roller coaster. He tries to explain how it moves, the insane speed, the dizzy ground falling away, then gives up. “I’ll take you there, Mita sweetheart,” he says, “as soon as we move into our own place.” That’s our dream (mine more than his, I suspect) — moving out of this two-room apartment where it seems to me if we all breathed in at once, there would be no air left. Where I must cover my head with the edge of my Japan nylon sari (my expensive Indian ones are to be saved for spe- cial occasions — trips to the temple, Bengali New Year) and serve tea to the old women that come to visit Mother Sen, where like a good Indian wife I must never address my husband by his name. Where even in our bed we kiss guiltily, uneasily, listening for the giveaway creak of springs. Some- times I laugh to myself, thinking how ironic it is that after all my fears about America, my life has turned out to be no different from Deepali’s or Radha’s. But at other times I feel caught in a world where everything is fro- zen in place, like a scene inside a glass paperweight. It is a world so small that if I were to stretch out my arms, I would touch its cold unyielding

divakaruni / clothes 285

edges. I stand inside this glass world, watching helplessly as America rushes by, wanting to scream. Then I’m ashamed. Mita, I tell myself, you’re growing westernized. Back home you’d never have felt this way. We must be patient. I know that. Tactful, loving children. That is the Indian way. “I’m their life,” Somesh tells me as we lie beside each other, lazy from lovemaking. He’s not boasting, merely stating a fact. “They’ve always been there when I needed them. I could never abandon them at some old people’s home.” For a moment I feel rage. You’re constantly thinking of them, I want to scream. But what about me? Then I remem- ber my own parents, Mother’s hands cool on my sweat-drenched body through nights of fever, Father teaching me to read, his fi nger moving along the crisp black angles of the alphabet, transforming them magi- cally into things I knew, water, dog, mango tree. I beat back my unrea- sonable desire and nod agreement. Somesh has bought me a cream blouse with a long brown skirt. They match beautifully, like the inside and outside of an almond. “For when you begin working,” he says. But fi rst he wants me to start college. Get a degree, perhaps in teaching. I picture myself in front of a classroom of girls with blond pigtails and blue uniforms, like a scene out of an English movie I saw long ago in Calcutta. They raise their hands respectfully when I ask a question. “Do you really think I can?” I ask. “Of course,” he replies. I am gratifi ed he has such confi dence in me. But I have another plan, a secret that I will divulge to him once we move. What I really want is to work in the store. I want to stand behind the counter in the cream-and- brown skirt set (color of earth, color of seeds) and ring up purchases. The register drawer will glide open. Confi dent, I will count out green dollars and silver quarters. Gleaming copper pennies. I will dust the jars of gilt- wrapped chocolates on the counter. Will straighten, on the far wall, post- ers of smiling young men raising their beer mugs to toast scantily clad redheads with huge spiky eyelashes. (I have never visited the store — my in- laws don’t consider it proper for a wife — but of course I know exactly what it looks like.) I will charm the customers with my smile, so that they will return again and again just to hear me telling them to have a nice day. Meanwhile, I will the store to make money for us. Quickly. Because when we move, we’ll be paying for two households. But so far it hasn’t worked. They’re running at a loss, Somesh tells me. They had to let the hired help go. This means most nights Somesh has to take the graveyard shift (that horrible word, like a cold hand up my spine) because his part- ner refuses to. “The bastard!” Somesh spat out once. “Just because he put in more money he thinks he can order me around. I’ll show him!” I was fright- ened by the vicious twist of his mouth. Somehow I’d never imagined that he could be angry. Often Somesh leaves as soon as he has dinner and doesn’t get back till after I’ve made morning tea for Father and Mother Sen. I lie mostly awake those nights, picturing masked intruders crouching in the

286 stories for further reading

shadowed back of the store, like I’ve seen on the police shows that Father Sen sometimes watches. But Somesh insists there’s nothing to worry about, they have bars on the windows and a burglar alarm. “And remem- ber,” he says, “the extra cash will help us move out that much quicker.” I’m wearing a nightie now, my very fi rst one. It’s black and lacy, with a bit of a shine to it, and it glides over my hips to stop outrageously at mid-thigh. My mouth is an O of surprise in the mirror, my legs long and pale and sleek from the hair remover I asked Somesh to buy me last week. The legs of a movie star. Somesh laughs at the look on my face, then says, “You’re beautiful.” His voice starts a fl utter low in my belly. “Do you really think so?” I ask, mostly because I want to hear him say it again. No one has called me beautiful before. My father would have thought it inappropriate, my mother that it would make me vain. Somesh draws me close. “Very beautiful,” he whispers. “The most beautiful woman in the whole world.” His eyes are not joking as they usually are. I want to turn off the light, but “Please,” he says, “I want to keep seeing your face.” His fi ngers are taking the pins from my hair, undoing my braids. The escaped strands fall on his face like dark rain. We have already decided where we will hide my new American clothes — the jeans and T-shirt camoufl aged on a hanger among Somesh’s pants, the skirt set and nightie at the bottom of my suitcase, a sandalwood sachet tucked between them, waiting.

I stand in the middle of our empty bedroom, my hair still wet from the purifi cation bath, my back to the stripped bed I can’t bear to look at. I hold in my hands the plain white sari I’m supposed to wear. I must hurry. Any minute now there’ll be a knock at the door. They are afraid to leave me alone too long, afraid I might do something to myself. The sari, a thick voile that will bunch around the waist when worn, is borrowed. White. Widow’s color, color of endings. I try to tuck it into the top of the petticoat, but my fi ngers are numb, disobedient. It spills through them and there are waves and waves of white around my feet. I kick out in sudden rage, but the sari is too soft, it gives too easily. I grab up an edge, clamp down with my teeth and pull, feeling a fi erce, bitter satisfaction when I hear it rip. There’s a cut, still stinging, on the side of my right arm, halfway to the elbow. It is from the bangle-breaking ceremony. Old Mrs. Ghosh per- formed the ritual, since she’s a widow, too. She took my hands in hers and brought them down hard on the bedpost, so that the glass bangles I was wearing shattered and multicolored shards fl ew out in every direc- tion. Some landed on the body that was on the bed, covered with a sheet. I can’t call it Somesh. He was gone already. She took an edge of the sheet and rubbed the red marriage mark off my forehead. She was crying. All the women in the room were crying ex cept me. I watched them as though from the far end of a tunnel. Their fl ared nostrils, their red-veined eyes, the runnels of tears, salt-corrosive, down their cheeks.

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It happened last night. He was at the store. “It isn’t too bad,” he would tell me on the days when he was in a good mood. “Not too many customers. I can put up my feet and watch MTV all night. I can sing along with Michael Jackson as loud as I want.” He had a good voice, Somesh. Sometimes he would sing softly at night, lying in bed, holding me. Hindi songs of love, Mere Sapnon Ki Rani, queen of my dreams. (He would not sing American songs at home out of respect for his parents, who thought they were decadent.) I would feel his warm breath on my hair as I fell asleep. Someone came into the store last night. He took all the money, even the little rolls of pennies I had helped Somesh make up. Before he left he emptied the bullets from his gun into my husband’s chest. “Only thing is,” Somesh would say about the night shifts, “I really miss you. I sit there and think of you asleep in bed. Do you know that when you sleep you make your hands into fi sts, like a baby? When we move out, will you come along some nights to keep me company?” My in-laws are good people, kind. They made sure the body was covered before they let me into the room. When someone asked if my hair should be cut off, as they sometimes do with widows back home, they said no. They said I could stay at the apartment with Mrs. Ghosh if I didn’t want to go to the crematorium. They asked Dr. Das to give me something to calm me down when I couldn’t stop shivering. They didn’t say, even once, as people would surely have in the village, that it was my bad luck that brought death to their son so soon after his marriage. They will probably go back to India now. There’s nothing here for them anymore. They will want me to go with them. You’re like our daughter, they will say. Your home is with us, for as long as you want. For the rest of your life. The rest of my life. I can’t think about that yet. It makes me dizzy. Fragments are fl ying about my head, multicolored and piercing sharp like bits of bangle glass. I want you to go to college. Choose a career. I stand in front of a class- room of smiling children who love me in my cream-and-brown American dress. A faceless parade straggles across my eyelids: all those customers at the store that I will never meet. The lace nightie, fragrant with san- dalwood, waiting in its blackness inside my suitcase. The savings book where we have $3605.33. Four thousand and we can move out, maybe next month. The name of the panty hose I’d asked him to buy me for my birth- day: sheer golden-beige. His lips, unexpectedly soft, woman-smooth. Elegant-necked wine bottles swept off shelves, shattering on the fl oor. I know Somesh would not have tried to stop the gunman. I can pic- ture his silhouette against the lighted Dewar’s sign, hands raised. He is trying to fi nd the right expression to put on his face, calm, reassuring, reasonable. OK, take the money. No, I won’t call the police. His hands tremble just a little. His eyes darken with disbelief as his fi ngers touch his chest and come away wet.

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I yanked away the cover. I had to see. Great America, a place where people go to have fun. My breath roller-coasting through my body, my unlived life gathering itself into a scream. I’d expected blood, a lot of blood, the deep red-black of it crusting his chest. But they must have cleaned him up at the hospital. He was dressed in his silk wedding kurta. Against its warm ivory his face appeared remote, stern. The musky aroma of his aftershave lotion that someone must have sprinkled on the body. It didn’t quite hide that other smell, thin, sour, metallic. The smell of death. The fl oor shifted under me, tilting like a wave. I’m lying on the fl oor now, on the spilled white sari. I feel sleepy. Or perhaps it is some other feeling I don’t have a word for. The sari is seductive-soft, drawing me into its folds. Sometimes, bathing at the lake, I would move away from my friends, their endless chatter. I’d swim toward the middle of the water with a lazy backstroke, gazing at the sky, its enormous blueness drawing me up until I felt weightless and dizzy. Once in a while there would be a plane, a small silver needle drawn through the clouds, in and out, until it disap- peared. Sometimes the thought came to me, as I fl oated in the middle of the lake with the sun beating down on my closed eyelids, that it would be so easy to let go, to drop into the dim brown world of mud, of water weeds fi ne as hair. Once I almost did it. I curled my body inward, tight as a fi st, and felt it start to sink. The sun grew pale and shapeless; the water, suddenly cold, licked at the insides of my ears in welcome. But in the end I couldn’t. They are knocking on the door now, calling my name. I push myself off the fl oor, my body almost too heavy to lift up, as when one climbs out after a long swim. I’m surprised at how vividly it comes to me, this memory I haven’t called up in years: the desperate fl ailing of arms and legs as I fought my way upward; the press of the water on me, heavy as terror; the wild animal trapped inside my chest, clawing at my lungs. The day returning to me as searing air, the way I drew it in, in, in, as though I would never have enough of it. That’s when I know I cannot go back. I don’t know yet how I’ll man- age, here in this new, dangerous land. I only know I must. Because all over India, at this very moment, widows in white saris are bowing their veiled heads, serving tea to in-laws. Doves with cut-off wings. I am standing in front of the mirror now, gathering up the sari. I tuck in the ripped end so it lies next to my skin, my secret. I make myself think of the store, although it hurts. Inside the refrigerated unit, blue milk cartons neatly lined up by Somesh’s hands. The exotic smell of Hills Brothers coffee brewed black and strong, the glisten of sugar-glazed donuts nestled in tissue. The neon Budweiser emblem winking on and off like a risky invitation. I straighten my shoulders and stand taller, take a deep breath. Air fi lls me — the same air that traveled through Somesh’s lungs a little while ago. The thought is like an unexpected, intimate gift. I tilt my chin,

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readying myself for the arguments of the coming weeks, the remonstra- tions. In the mirror a woman holds my gaze, her eyes apprehensive yet steady. She wears a blouse and skirt the color of almonds.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Nathaniel Haw- thorne came from a family that traced its roots back to the Puritans. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1825, he returned home to Salem, where for the next twelve years he read and taught himself how to write. He pub- lished his fi rst collection of stories, Twice-Told Tales, in 1837, followed by a second edition in 1842, and Mosses from an Old House in 1846. In 1849 he lost his job at the Salem Custom House and focused on his writing. In addition to The Scarlet Letter (1850), he wrote The House of Seven Gables (1851); The Blithe- dale Romance (1852); The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852); a campaign biography of his Bowdoin classmate, The Life of Franklin Pierce (1852); and two collections of stories for children, A Wonder Book (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853).

The Birthmark 1843

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an emi- nent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man’s ultimate con- trol over Nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it

By permission of the Peabody Essex Museum.

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could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own. Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke. “Georgiana,” said he, “has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?” “No, indeed,” said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply. “To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so.” “Ah, upon another face perhaps it might,” replied her husband; “but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a de fect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imper fection.” “Shocks you, my husband!” cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. “Then why did you take me from my mother’s side? You cannot love what shocks you!” To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the cen- ter of Georgiana’s left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwo- ven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of her complexion — a healthy though delicate bloom — the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale, there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinct- ness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana’s lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant’s cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons — but they were exclusively of her own sex — affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana’s beauty, and ren- dered her countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains which sometimes oc cur in the purest statuary marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admira- tion, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might

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possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage, — for he thought little or nothing of the matter before, — Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself. Had she been less beautiful, — if Envy’s self could have found aught else to sneer at, — he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe° in which mortality clutches the high- est and purest of earthly mold, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer’s somber imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana’s beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight. At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invari- ably and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife’s face and recognized the symbol of imper- fection; and when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes wan- dered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshiped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble. Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray the stain on the poor wife’s cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily took up the subject. “Do you remember, my dear Aylmer,” said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile, “have you any recollection of a dream last night about this odious hand?” “None! none whatever!” replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of his emotion, “I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy.”

gripe: Grip.

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“And you did dream of it?” continued Georgiana hastily, for she dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. “A ter- rible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this one expression? — ‘It is in her heart now; we must have it out!’ Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall that dream.” The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her specters within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fan- cied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana’s heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away. When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in his wife’s presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace. “Aylmer,” resumed Georgiana solemnly, “I know not what may be the cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm grip of this little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world?” “Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,” hastily in terrupted Aylmer. “I am convinced of the perfect practicability of its removal.” “If there be the remotest possibility of it,” continued Georgiana, “let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and dis- gust, — life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Can- not you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?” “Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife,” cried Aylmer rapturously, “doubt not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest thought — thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph

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when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be.” “It is resolved, then,” said Georgiana, faintly smiling. “And, Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my heart at last.” Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek — her right cheek — not that which bore the impress of the crimson hand. The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and con- stant watchfulness which the proposed operation would require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its suc- cess. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments occu- pied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others with such rich medicinal vir- tues, from the dark bosom of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the truth — against which all seekers sooner or later stumble — that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely care- ful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She per mits us, indeed, to mar, but sel- dom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations, — not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them, but because they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his pro- posed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana. As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the birth- mark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted. “Aminadab! Aminadab!” shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor. Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stat- ure, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been

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Aylmer’s underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admi- rably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he exe- cuted all the details of his master’s experiments. With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky as pect, and the indescribable earthiness that encrusted him, he seemed to represent man’s physical nature; while Aylmer’s slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element. “Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab,” said Aylmer, “and burn a pastille.” “Yes, master,” answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, “If she were my wife, I’d never part with that birthmark.” When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breath- ing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, somber rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pur- suits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For aught Geor- giana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, empurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife’s side, watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude. “Where am I? Ah, I remember,” said Georgiana faintly; and she placed her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her hus- band’s eyes. “Fear not, dearest!” exclaimed he. “Do not shrink from me! Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it.” “Oh, spare me!” sadly replied his wife. “Pray do not look at it again. I never can forget that convulsive shudder.” In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indis- tinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion

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was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband pos- sessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always makes a pic- ture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel con- taining a quantity of earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded them- selves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower. “It is magical!” cried Georgiana. “I dare not touch it.” “Nay, pluck it,” answered Aylmer: “pluck it, and inhale its brief per- fume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself.” But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of fire. “There was too powerful a stimulus,” said Aylmer thoughtfully. To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metal- lic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid. Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and base. Aylmer appeared to be lieve that, by the plainest scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long- sought medium; “but,” he added, “a philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it.” Not less singular were his opinions in regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would find cause to curse. “Aylmer, are you in earnest?” asked Georgiana, looking at him with amazement and fear. “It is terrible to possess such power, or even to dream of possessing it.”

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“Oh, do not tremble, my love,” said her husband. “I would not wrong either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is the skill requisite to remove this little hand.” At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a red-hot iron had touched her cheek. Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating delight. “And what is this?” asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe containing a gold-colored liquid. “It is so beautiful to the eye that I could imagine it the elixir of life.” “In one sense it is,” replied Aylmer; “or rather, the elixir of immor- tality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if I, in my private sta- tion, should deem that the welfare of millions justified me in depriving him of it.” “Why do you keep such a terrific drug?” inquired Georgiana in horror. “Do not mistrust me, dearest,” said her husband, smiling; “its virtu- ous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a power- ful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water, freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale ghost.” “Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?” asked Georgiana, anxiously. “Oh, no,” hastily replied her husband; “this is merely superficial. Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper.” In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she was already sub jected to certain physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise, but it

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might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system — a strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as she. To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it nec- essary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the works of the philosophers of the middle ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created the prophetic Bra- zen Head. All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from physics a sway over the spiri- tual world. Hardly less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society, in which the members, knowing little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually recording won- ders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be wrought. But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her husband’s own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances to which either event was at tributable. The book, in truth, was both the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and re deemed himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspira- tion towards the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul. Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more pro- foundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume, rich with achieve- ments that had won renown for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit bur- dened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Per- haps every man of genius in whatever sphere might recognize the image of his own experience in Aylmer’s journal. So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was found by her husband.

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“It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer’s books,” said he with a smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. “Georgiana, there are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you.” “It has made me worship you more than ever,” said she. “Ah, wait for this one success,” rejoined he, “then worship me if you will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I have sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest.” So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gaiety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when Georgi- ana felt irresistibly im pelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal birthmark, not pain- ful, but which induced a restlessness throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time into the laboratory. The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quanti- ties of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling ap paratus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemi- cal research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the pro cesses of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself. He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the fur- nace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana’s encouragement! “Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully, thou man of clay!” muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant. “Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over.” “Ho! ho!” mumbled Aminadab. “Look, master! look!” Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it. “Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?” cried he impetuously. “Would you throw the blight of that fatal birth- mark over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!” “Nay, Aylmer,” said Georgiana with the firmness of which she pos- sessed no stinted endowment, “it is not you that have a right to complain.

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You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink; for my share in it is far less than your own.” “No, no, Georgiana!” said Aylmer impatiently; “it must not be.” “I submit,” replied she calmly. “And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand.” “My noble wife,” said Aylmer, deeply moved, “I knew not the height and depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous concep- tion. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except to change your en tire physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If that fails us we are ruined.” “Why did you hesitate to tell me this?” asked she. “Because, Georgiana,” said Aylmer in a low voice, “there is danger.” “Danger? There is but one danger — that this horrible stigma shall be left upon my cheek!” cried Georgiana. “Remove it, remove it, whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!” “Heaven knows your words are too true,” said Aylmer sadly. “And now, dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested.” He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tender- ness which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any pre- vious moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love — so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and deep- est conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant before. The sound of her husband’s footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the conse- quence of a highly wrought state of mind and tension of spirit than of fear or doubt. “The concoction of the draught has been perfect,” said he, in answer to Georgiana’s look. “Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot fail.” “Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer,” observed his wife, “I might wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing

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mortality itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad posses- sion to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advance- ment at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die.” “You are fit for heaven without tasting death!” replied her husband. “But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its effect upon this plant.” On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure. “There needed no proof,” said Georgiana quietly. “Give me the gob- let. I joyfully stake all upon your word.” “Drink, then, thou lofty creature!” exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. “There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect.” She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand. “It is grateful,” said she, with a placid smile. “Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset.” She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood, how- ever, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of sci- ence. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly per- ceptible tremor through the frame — such were the details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last. While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneas- ily and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana’s cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever;

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but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away. “By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!” said Aylmer to himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. “I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success! And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!” He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant Aminadab’s expression of delight. “Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!” cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of frenzy, “you have served me well! Matter and spirit — earth and heaven — have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses! You have earned the right to laugh.” These exclamations broke Georgiana’s sleep. She slowly unclosed her eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that pur pose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how barely percep tible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed forth with such dis astrous brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer’s face with a trouble and anxiety that he could by no means ac count for. “My poor Aylmer!” murmured she. “Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!” exclaimed he. “My peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!” “My poor Aylmer,” she repeated, with a more than human tender- ness, “you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!” Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark — that sole token of human imperfection — faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lin- gering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross fatal- ity of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands the complete- ness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shad- owy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.

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James Joyce (1882–1941)

James Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1882 and, in an imaginative sense, he never left that city. He received a strict Jesuit education, but once he began to doubt his faith during his fi nal year at Belvedere Col- lege, Dublin, he felt his calling as a writer more and more strongly. Joyce studied modern languages at Uni- versity College, Dublin, and taught himself Norwegian so he could read the plays of Henrik Ibsen in their orig- inal language. Ibsen’s depiction of individual rebellion against community values resonated deeply for Joyce and contributed to his resolution to leave Ireland for Paris after he received his B.A. degree in 1902. Joyce returned to Dublin when his mother contracted a fatal ill- ness, and he stayed on for a brief time, working as a schoolteacher. He departed for Switzerland, leaving Ireland for good, in 1904. Nora Bar- nacle, an uneducated young woman with little interest in literature, went with him. The couple lived in Trieste and Zurich, where Joyce taught school and wrote. He published Dubliners in 1914; “Eveline” is taken from this collection of short stories. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man fol- lowed in 1916. He and Nora moved to Paris in 1920 and remained there until World War II forced them back to Switzerland. He published Ulysses in Paris in 1922, but the book was banned in America and Britain until 1933. Finnegan’s Wake, which Joyce considered his crowning achievement, took fourteen years to write and was published in 1939.

Eveline 1914

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a fi eld there in which they used to play every evening with other people’s children. Then a man from Belfast bought the fi eld and built houses in it — not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that fi eld — the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the fi eld with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then;

Courtesy of the Poetry/Rare Books Collection, UB Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo.

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and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Every- thing changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home. Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the colored print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word: — He is in Melbourne now. She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be fi lled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening. — Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting? — Look lively, Miss Hill, please. She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores. But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married — she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt her- self in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to pro- tect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages — seven shillings — and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard- earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a Saturday night. In the end he would give her the

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money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work — a hard life — but now that she was about to leave it she did not fi nd it a wholly undesirable life. She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night- boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Aires where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the fi rst time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theater with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Aires, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him. — I know these sailor chaps, he said. One day he had quarreled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly. The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favorite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fi re. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to make the children laugh. Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odor of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing.

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She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother’s ill- ness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying: — Damned Italians! coming over here! As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very quick of her being — that life of commonplace sacrifi ces closing in fi nal craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother’s voice saying constantly with foolish insistence: — Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!° She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mourn- ful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming toward Buenos Aires. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her dis- tress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer. A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand: — Come! All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing. — Come! No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish! — Eveline! Evvy! He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to

Derevaun Seraun!: “The end of pleasure is pain!” (Gaelic).

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him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

Jamaica Kincaid (b. 1949)

Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson on the Caribbean island of Antigua. She moved to New York in 1965 to work as an au pair, studied photography at both the New School for Social Research and Franconia College, and changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid in 1973 with her first publication, “When I Was 17,” a series of interviews. Over the next few years, she wrote for The New Yorker magazine, first as a freelancer and then as a staff writer. In 1978, Kincaid wrote her first piece of fiction, “Girl,” published in The New Yorker and included in her debut short story collection, At the Bottom of the River (1983), which won an award from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her other work includes Annie John (1985), Lucy (1990), Autobiography of My Mother (1994), and three nonfiction books, A Small Place (1988), My Brother (1997), and Mr. Potter (2002). Whether autobiographical fiction or nonfiction, her work usually focuses on the perils of postcolonial society, paralleled by an examination of rifts in mother-daughter relationships.

Girl 1978

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline 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

By permission of Trix Rosen.

WEB Explore contexts for Jamaica Kincaid and approaches to “Girl” at bedfordstmartins.com/ rewritinglit.

benna: Calypso music.

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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 street — flies 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 okra — far 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 marbles — you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s flowers — you 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 won’t 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?

dasheen: The edible rootstock of taro, a tropical plant. doukona: A spicy plantain pudding. pepper pot: A stew.

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Ian McEwan (b. 1948)

Born in Aldershot, England, Ian McEwan lived part of his youth in Asia, Germany, and North Africa owing to his father’s military career. He earned a B.A. degree at the University of Sussex and an M.A. degree at the University of East Anglia, both in English literature. His work is prized for its subtle, witty, and sharply precise prose. In addition to two collections of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975) and In Between the Sheets (1978), McEwan’s novels include The Child in Time (1987), Amsterdam (1998), Atonement (2001), Saturday (2005), On Chesil Beach (2007), and Solar (2010), a story about a scientist who tries to save the planet from threatening climate changes — and from which “The Use of Poetry ” is excerpted.

The Use of Poetry 2009

It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the fi rst to concede that he’d never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class. In those harsh postwar years, ide- als of infant beauty resided chiefl y in fat, in Churchillian multiple chins, in dreams of an end to rationing and of the reign of plenty to come. Babies were exhibited and judged like prize marrows, and, in 1947, the fi ve-month- old Michael, bloated and jolly, swept all before him. However, it was unusual at a village fête for a middle-class woman, a stockbroker’s wife, to abandon the cake-and-chutney stall and enter her child for such a gaudy event. She must have known that he was bound to win, just as she later claimed always to have known that he would get a scholarship to Oxford. Once he was on solids, and for the rest of her life, she cooked for him with the same commit- ment with which she had held the bottle, sending herself in the mid-sixties, despite her illness, on a Cordon Bleu cookery course so that she could try new meals during his occasional visits home. Her husband, Henry, was a meat-and-two-veg man, who despised garlic and the smell of olive oil. Early in the marriage, for reasons that remained private, Angela withdrew her love from him. She lived for her son, and her legacy was clear: a fat man who rest- lessly craved the attentions of beautiful women who could cook.

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Henry Beard was a lean sort with a drooping mustache and slicked- back brown hair, whose dark suits and brown tweeds seemed a cut too large, especially around the neck. He provided for his miniature family well and, in the fashion of the time, loved his son sternly and with little physical contact. Though he never embraced Michael, and rarely laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder, he supplied all the right kinds of pres- ent—Meccano and chemistry sets, a build-it-yourself wireless, encyclope- dias, model airplanes, and books about military history, geology, and the lives of great men. He had had a long war, serving as a junior offi cer in the infantry in Dunkirk, North Africa, and Sicily, and then, as a lieu- tenant colonel, in the D Day landings, where he won a medal. He had arrived at the concentration camp of Belsen a week after it was liberated, and was stationed in Berlin for eight months after the war ended. Like many men of his generation, he did not speak about his experiences and he relished the ordinariness of postwar life, its tranquil routines, its tidi- ness and rising material well-being, and, above all, its lack of danger — everything that would later appear stifl ing to those born in the fi rst years of the peace. In 1952, when Michael was fi ve, the forty-year-old Henry Beard gave up his job at a merchant bank in the City and returned to his fi rst love, which was the law. He became a partner in an old fi rm in nearby Chelms- ford and stayed there for the rest of his working life. To celebrate the momentous change and his liberation from the daily commute to Liver- pool Street, he bought himself a secondhand Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. This pale-blue machine lasted him thirty-three years, until his death. From the vantage of adulthood, and with some retrospective guilt, his son loved him for this grand gesture. But the life of a small-town solici- tor, absorbed by matters of conveyancing and probate, settled on Henry Beard an even greater tranquillity. At weekends, he mostly cared for his roses, or his car, or golf with fellow-Rotarians. He stolidly accepted his loveless marriage as the price he must pay for his gains. It was about this time that Angela Beard began a series of affairs that stretched over eleven years. Young Michael registered no outward hos- tilities or silent tensions in the home, but, then, he was neither observant nor sensitive, and was often in his room after school, building, reading, gluing, and later took up pornography and masturbation full time, and then girls. Nor, at the age of seventeen, did he notice that his mother had retreated, exhausted, to the sanctuary of her marriage. He heard of her adventures only when she was dying of breast cancer, in her early fi fties. She seemed to want his forgiveness for ruining his childhood. By then he was nearing the end of his second year at Oxford and his head was full of maths and girlfriends, physics and drinking, and at fi rst he could not take in what she was telling him. She lay propped up on pillows in her private room on the nineteenth fl oor of a tower-block hospital, with views toward the industrialized salt marshes by Canvey Island and the south shore of the Thames. He was grownup enough to know that it

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would have insulted her to say that he had noticed nothing. Or that she was apologizing to the wrong person. Or that he could not imagine any- one over thirty having sex. He held her hand and squeezed it to signal his warm feelings, and said that there was nothing to forgive. It was only after he had driven home, and drunk three nightcap Scotches with his father, then gone to his old room and lain on the bed fully dressed and considered what she had told him, that he grasped the extent of her achievement. Seventeen lovers in eleven years. Lieutenant Colonel Beard had had all the excitement and danger he could stand by the age of thirty-three. Angela had to have hers. Her lovers were her desert campaign against Rommel, her D Day, and her Berlin. Without them, she had told Michael from her hospital pillows, she would have hated herself and gone mad. But she hated herself anyway, for what she thought she had done to her only child. He went back to the hospital the next day and, while she sweatily clung to his hand, told her that his childhood had been the happiest and most secure imaginable, that he had never felt neglected or doubted her love or eaten so well, and that he was proud of what he called her appetite for life and hoped to emulate it. It was the fi rst time that he had ever given a speech. These half and quar- ter truths were the best words he had ever spoken. Six weeks later, she was dead. Naturally, her love life was a closed subject between father and son, but for years afterward Michael could not drive through Chelms- ford or the surrounding villages without wondering whether this or that old fellow tottering along the pavement or slumped near a bus stop was one of the seventeen. By the standards of the day, he was a precocious lad when he arrived at Oxford. He had already made love to two girls, he owned a car, a split- screen Morris Minor, which he kept in a lockup garage off the Cowley Road, and he had an allowance from his father that was far in excess of what other grammar-school boys received. He was clever, sociable, opin- ionated, unimpressed by and even a little scornful of boys from famous schools. He was one of those types, infuriating and indispensable, who were at the front of every queue, had tickets to key events in London, within days knew strategically important people and all kinds of short- cuts, social as well as topographic. He looked much older than eighteen, and was hardworking, organized, tidy, and actually owned and used a desk diary. People sought him out because he could repair radios and record-players and kept a soldering iron in his room. For these services he never asked for money, of course, but he had the knack of calling in favors. Within weeks of settling in, he had a girlfriend, a “bad” girl from Oxford High named Susan Doty. Other boys studying maths and phys- ics tended to be closed, mousy types. Outside of lab work and tutori- als, Beard kept well clear of them, and he also avoided the arty sort of people—they intimidated him with literary references he did not under- stand. He preferred instead the engineers, who gave him access to their

mcewan / the use of poetry 311

workshops, and the geographers, zoologists, and anthropologists, espe- cially the ones who had already done fi eld work in strange places. Beard knew many people but had no close friends. He was never exactly popu- lar, but he was well known, talked about, useful to people, and faintly despised. At the end of his second year, while he was trying to accustom him- self to the idea that his mother would soon die, Beard overheard someone in a pub refer to a student at Lady Margaret Hall named Maisie Farmer as a “dirty girl.” The phrase was used approvingly, as though it were a well-established category of some clinical accuracy. Her bucolic name in this connection intrigued him. He thought of a generous strapping lass, manure-streaked, astride a tractor — and then did not think about her again. The term ended, he went home, his mother died, and the sum- mer was lost to grief and boredom and numbing, inarticulate silences at home with his father. They had never discussed feelings before, and had no language for them now. Once, when he saw from the house his father at the bottom of the garden, examining the roses too closely, he was embarrassed, no, horrifi ed, to realize from the tremors of his father’s shoulders that he was weeping. It did not occur to Michael to go out to him. Knowing about his mother’s lovers, and not knowing whether his father knew — he guessed he did not — was another impossible obstacle. He returned to Oxford in September and took a third-fl oor room in Park Town, a down-at-heel mid-Victorian crescent arranged around a central garden. His walk to the physics buildings each day took him past the front gates of the “dirty girl” ’s college, by the narrow passageway to University Parks. One morning, on impulse, he wandered in and estab- lished at the porter’s lodge that a student by the name of Maisie Farmer indeed existed. He discovered later in the same week that she was in her third year, doing English, but he did not let that put him off. For a day or two he wondered about her, and then work and other matters took over and he forgot all about her again, and it was not until late October that a friend introduced him to her and another girl outside the Museum of Natural History. She was not as he had imagined, and at fi rst he was disappointed. She was small, almost frail, intensely pretty, with dark eyes and scant eyebrows and a musical voice with a surprising accent, a hint of Cock- ney, which was unusual in a woman at university in those days. When, in answer to her question, he told her what his subject was, her face went blank and soon she walked on with her friend. He bumped into her alone two days later and asked her to come for a drink and she said no, and said it immediately, before he had quite fi nished his sentence. It was a measure of Beard’s self-confi dence that he was surprised. But what did she see in front of her? A stout fellow with an accountant’s look and an earnest manner, wearing a tie (in 1967!), with short hair, side-parted, and, the damning detail, a pen clipped into the breast pocket of his jacket. And he was studying science, a non-subject for fools. She said goodbye

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politely enough and went on her way, but Beard walked after her and asked if she was free the next day, or the day after that, or at the week- end. No, no, and no. Then he said brightly, “How about ever?,” and she laughed pleasantly, genuinely amused by his persistence, and seemed on the point of changing her mind. But she said, “There’s always never? Can you make never?,” to which he replied, “I’m not free,” and she laughed again and made a sweet little mock punch to his lapel with a child-size fi st and walked off, leaving him with the impression that he still had a chance, that she had a sense of humor, that he might wear her down. He did. He researched her. Someone told him that she had a spe- cial interest in John Milton. It did not take long to discover the century to which this man belonged. A third-year literature student in Beard’s college who owed him a favor (for procuring tickets to a Cream con- cert) gave him an hour on Milton, what to read, what to think. He read “Comus” and was astounded by its silliness. He read through “Lycidas,” “Samson Agonistes,” and “Il Penseroso” — stilted and rather prissy in parts, he thought. He fared better with “Paradise Lost” and, like many before him, preferred Satan’s party to God’s. He, Beard, that is, memo- rized passages that appeared to him intelligent and especially sonorous. He read a biography, and four essays that he had been told were pivotal. The reading took him one long week. He came close to being thrown out of an antiquarian bookshop in the Turl when he casually asked for a fi rst edition of “Paradise Lost.” He tracked down a kindly tutor who knew about buying old books and confi ded to him that he wanted to impress a girl with a certain kind of present, and was directed to a bookshop in Covent Garden where he spent half a term’s money on an eighteenth- century edition of “Areopagitica.” When he speed-read it on the train back to Oxford, one of the pages cracked in two. He repaired it with Sellotape. Then, naturally enough, he bumped into her again, this time by the gates of her college, where he had been waiting for two and a half hours. He asked if he could at least walk with her across the Parks. She didn’t say no. She was wearing an Army-surplus greatcoat, over a yellow cardi- gan, and a black pleated skirt and patent-leather shoes with strange silver buckles. She was even more beautiful than he had thought. As they went along he politely inquired about her work, and she explained, as though to a village idiot, that she was writing about Milton, a well-known Eng- lish poet of the seventeenth century. He asked her to be more precise about her essay. She was. He ventured an informed opinion. Surprised, she spoke at greater length. To elucidate some point of hers, he quoted the lines “from morn / To noon he fell,” and she breathily completed them: “from noon to dewy eve.” Making sure to keep his tone tentative, he spoke of Milton’s childhood, and then of the Civil War. There were things she did not know and was interested to learn. She knew little of the poet’s life, and, amazingly, it seemed that it was not part of her stud- ies, to consider the circumstances of his times. Beard steered her back

mcewan / the use of poetry 313

onto familiar ground. They quoted more of their favorite lines. He asked her which Milton scholars she had read. He had read some of them, too, and gently proved it. He had glanced over a bibliography, and his conver- sation far outran his reading. She disliked “Comus” even more than he did, so he ventured a mild defense and allowed himself to be demolished. Then he spoke of “Areopagitica” and its relevance to modern poli- tics. At this she stopped on the path and asked signifi cantly what a sci- entist was doing, knowing so much about Milton, and he thought he had been rumbled. He pretended to be just a little insulted. All knowl- edge interested him, he said; the demarcations between subjects were mere conveniences or historical accidents or the inertia of tradition. To illustrate his point, he drew on tidbits that he had picked up from his anthropologist and zoologist friends. With a fi rst touch of warmth in her voice, she began to ask him questions about himself, though she did not care to hear about physics. And where was he from? Essex, he said. But so was she! From Chingford! That was his lucky break, and he seized his chance. He asked her to dinner. She said yes. He was to count that misty, sunny November afternoon, along the Cherwell river by the Rainbow Bridge, as the point at which the fi rst of his marriages began. Three days later he took her to dinner at the Ran- dolph Hotel, by which time he had completed another whole day of Milton. It was already clear that his own special study would be the phys- ics of light, and he was naturally drawn to the poem of that name, and learned its last dozen lines by heart. Over the second bottle of wine, he talked to her of its pathos, a blind man lamenting what he would never see, then celebrating the redeeming power of the imagination. Over the starched tablecloth, wineglass in hand, he recited it to her, ending, “thou Celestial light / Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers / Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence / Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight.” At these lines he saw the tears well in Maisie’s eyes, and reached under his chair to produce his gift, “Areopagitica,” bound in calf leather in 1738. She was stunned. A week later, illicitly in her room, to the sound of “Sgt. Pep- per’s” playing on the Dansette record-player he had repaired for her that afternoon with smoking soldering iron, they were lovers at last. The term “dirty girl,” with its suggestion that she was general property, was now obnoxious to him. Still, she was far bolder and wilder, more experimen- tal and generous in lovemaking, than any girl he had known. She also cooked a fi ne steak-and-kidney pie. He decided he was in love. Going after Maisie was a relentless, highly organized pursuit, and it gave him great satisfaction, and it was a turning point in his develop- ment, for he knew that no third-year arts person, however bright, could have passed himself off, after a week’s study, among the undergraduate mathematicians and physicists who were Beard’s colleagues. The traf- fi c was one way. His Milton week made him suspect a monstrous bluff. The reading was a slog, but he encountered nothing that could remotely

314 stories for further reading

be construed as an intellectual challenge, nothing on the scale of dif- fi culty he encountered daily in his course. That very week of the Ran- dolph dinner, he had studied the Ricci scalar and fi nally understood its use in general relativity. At least, he thought he could grasp these extraordinary equations. The theory was no longer an abstraction; it was sensual. He could feel the way the seamless fabric of space-time might be warped by matter, and how this fabric infl uenced the movement of objects, how gravity was conjured by its curvature. He could spend half an hour staring at the handful of terms and subscripts of the crux of the fi eld equations and understand why Einstein himself had spoken of its “incomparable beauty,” and why Max Born had said that it was “the greatest feat of human thinking about nature.” This understanding was the mental equivalent of lifting very heavy weights — not possible at fi rst attempt. He and his lot were at lectures and lab work nine till fi ve every day, attempting to grasp some of the hardest things ever thought. The arts people fell out of bed at midday for their two tutorials a week. He suspected that there was nothing they talked about at those meetings that anyone with half a brain could fail to understand. He had read four of the best essays on Milton. He knew. And yet they passed themselves off as his superiors, these lie-abeds, and he had let them intimidate him. No longer. From the moment he won Maisie, he was intellectually free. Many years later, Beard told this story and his conclusions to an English professor in Hong Kong, who said, “But, Michael, you’ve missed the point. If you had seduced ninety girls with ninety poets, one a week in a course of three academic years, and remembered them all at the end—the poets, I mean — and synthesized your reading into some kind of aesthetic overview, then you would have earned yourself a degree in English literature. But don’t pretend that it’s easy.” But it seemed so at the time, and he was far happier during his fi nal year, and so was Maisie. She persuaded him to grow his hair, to wear jeans instead of fl annels, and to stop repairing things. It wasn’t cool. And they became cool, even though they were both rather short. He gave up Park Town and found a tiny fl at in Jericho, where they set up together. Her friends, all literature and history students, became his. They were wittier than his other friends, and lazier, of course, and had a developed sense of pleasure, as though they felt they were owed. He cultivated new opinions—on the distribution of wealth, Vietnam, the events in Paris, the coming revolution, and LSD, which he declared to be important, though he refused to take it. When he heard himself sounding off, he was not at all convinced, and was amazed that no one took him for a fraud. He tried pot and disliked it intensely for the way it interfered with his memory. Despite the usual parties, with howling music and terrible wine in sod- den paper cups, he and Maisie never stopped working. Summer came, and fi nals, and then, to their stupid surprise, it was all over and everyone dispersed.

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They both got fi rsts. Beard was offered the place he wanted at the University of Sussex, to do a Ph.D. They went to Brighton together and found a fi ne place to move into in September, an old rectory in an out- lying village on the Sussex Downs. The rent was beyond them and so, before returning to Oxford, they agreed to share with a couple studying theology, who had newborn identical twins. The Chingford newspaper ran a story about the local working-class girl who had “soared to the heights,” and it was from these heights, and to hold together their disin- tegrating milieu, that they decided to get married—not because it was the conventional thing to do but precisely because it was the opposite, it was exotic, it was hilarious and camp and harmlessly old-fashioned, like the tasselled military uniforms the Beatles wore in promotional pictures for their sensational LP. For that reason, the couple did not invite or even inform their parents. They were married in the Oxford registry offi ce, and got drunk on Port Meadow with a handful of friends who came for the day. The new age dawned, the arrogant, shameless, spoiled genera- tion turned its back on the fathers who had fought the war, dismissing them for their short hair and tidy ways and their indifference to rock and roll. Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Henry Beard D.S.O., living alone in the old house at Cold Norton, did not learn of his son’s marriage until after the divorce. The name of the married theology students was Gibson, Charlie and Amanda, and they were devout and intellectual, against the fashion of the time, and studied at an institute in Lewes. Their god, by way of mysterious love, or an urge to punish, had conferred on them two babies of a giant size and type who would easily have snatched the prize from Beard in ’47, twins who never slept and rarely ceased their identical piercing wails, who set each other off if they ever failed to start up in step, and who jointly propelled a miasma through the elegant house, as penetrative as a curry on the stove, a prawn vindaloo, but rank like sea swamp, as though they were confi ned for reasons of religion to a diet of guano and mussels. Young Beard, working in the bedroom on the early calculations that would lead him to his life’s work — his life’s free ride — stuffed wads of blotting paper in his ears and kept the windows open, even in midwinter. When he went downstairs to make himself coffee, he would encounter the couple in the kitchen, in some aspect of their private hell, dark-eyed and irritable from lack of sleep and mutual loathing, as they divvied up their awful tasks, which included prayer and meditation. The generous hallway and living spaces of the Georgian rectory were rendered charm- less by the hundred protruding metal and plastic tools and devices of modern child care. Neither adult nor infant Gibsons expressed any plea- sure in their own or one another’s existence. Why would they? Beard pri- vately swore to himself that he would never become a father. And Maisie? She changed her mind about a doctorate on Aphra Behn; she turned down a job in the university library and signed on instead for social-security benefi ts. In another century she would have

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been considered a woman of leisure, but in the twentieth she was “active.” She read up on social theory, attended a group run by a collective of Cali- fornian women, and started up a “workshop” herself, a new concept at the time, and though, in conventional terms, she no longer soared, her consciousness was raised, and within a short time she confronted the blatant fact of patriarchy and her husband’s role in a network of oppres- sion that extended from the institutions that sustained him as a man, even though he could not acknowledge the fact, to the nuances of his small talk. It was, as she said at the time, like stepping through a mirror. Every- thing looked different, and it was no longer possible to be innocently content, not for her, and, therefore, not for him. Certain matters were settled after serious discussion. He was too much of a rationalist to think of many good reasons that he should not help out around the house. He believed that it bored him more than it did her, but he did not say so. And washing a few dishes was the least of it. There were profoundly entrenched attitudes that he needed to examine and change, there were unconscious assumptions of his own “centrality,” his alienation from his own feelings, his failure to listen, to hear, really hear what she was saying, and to understand how the system that worked in his favor in both trivial and important ways always worked against her. One example was this: he could go to the village pub for a pleasant pint on his own, while she could not do so without being stared at by the locals and made to feel like a whore. There was his unexamined belief in the importance of his work, in his objectivity, and in rationality itself. He failed to grasp that knowing himself was a vital undertaking. There were other ways of knowing the world, women’s ways, which he treated dismissively. Though he pretended not to be, he was squeamish about her menstrual blood, which was an insult to the core of her womanhood. Their love- making, blindly enacting postures of dominance and submission, was an imitation of rape and was fundamentally corrupt. Months passed, and many evening sessions, during which Beard mostly listened and, in the pauses, thought about work. During that period, he was thinking a good deal about photons, from a radically dif- ferent angle. Then, one night, he and Maisie were woken, by the twins as usual, and lay side by side on their backs in the dark while she broke the news that she was leaving him. She had thought this through and did not want an argument. There was a commune forming in the sod- den hills of mid-Wales and she intended to join it and did not think she would ever return. She knew, in ways that he could never understand, that this must be her course now. There were issues of her self-realization, her past, and her identity as a woman that she felt bound to follow through. It was her duty. At this point, Beard felt himself overtaken by a powerful and unfamiliar emotion that tightened his throat and forced from his chest a sob that he was powerless to contain. It was a sound that surely all the Gibsons heard through the wall. It could easily have been

o’brien / how to tell a true war story 317

confused with a shout. What he experienced was a compound of joy and relief, followed by a fl oating, expansive sensation of lightness, as if he were about to drift free of the sheets and bump against the ceiling. Sud- denly, it was all before him, the prospect of freedom, of working when- ever he wanted, of inviting home some of the women he had seen on the Falmer campus, lolling on the steps outside the library, of returning to his unexamined self and being guiltlessly shot of Maisie. All this caused a tear of gratitude to roll down his cheek. He also felt fi erce impatience for her to be gone. It crossed his mind to offer to drive her to the sta- tion now, but there were no trains from Lewes at 3 A.M., and she had not packed. Hearing his sob, she reached for the bedside light and, leaning over to look into his face, saw the dampness around his eyes. Firmly and deliberately she whispered, “I will not be blackmailed, Michael. I will not, repeat not, be emotionally manipulated by you into staying.” Was ever a marriage dissolved so painlessly? Within a week she had left for the hill farm in Powys. In the course of a year they exchanged a couple of postcards. Then one came from an ashram in India, where she remained for three years and from where she sent one day her cheery acceptance of a divorce, all papers duly signed. He did not see her until his twenty-sixth birthday, at which she appeared with a shaved head and a jewel in her nose. Many years later, he spoke at her funeral. Perhaps it was the ease of their parting in the old rectory that made him so incau- tious about marrying again, and again.

Tim O’Brien (b. 1946)

Born in Austin, Minnesota, Tim O’Brien was educated at Macalester College and Harvard University. He was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart. His work is heavily influenced by his service in the war. His first book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973), is a blend of fiction and actual experiences during his tour of duty. Going after Cacciato, judged by many critics to be the best work of American fiction about the Vietnam War, won the National Book Award in 1978. He has also published five other novels, Northern Lights (1974), The Nuclear Age (1985), In the Lake of the Woods (1994), Tomcat in Love (1998), and July, July (2002). “How to Tell a True War Story” is from a collection of interrelated stories titled The Things They Carried (1990). Originally published in Esquire, this story is at once grotesque and beautiful in its at tempt to be true to experience.

318 stories for further reading

How to Tell a True War Story 1987

This is true. I had a buddy in Vietnam. His name was Bob Kiley, but everybody called him Rat. A friend of his gets killed, so about a week later Rat sits down and writes a letter to the guy’s sister. Rat tells her what a great brother she had, how strack° the guy was, a number one pal and comrade. A real soldier’s soldier, Rat says. Then he tells a few stories to make the point, how her brother would always volunteer for stuff nobody else would vol- unteer for in a million years, dangerous stuff, like doing recon° or going out on these really badass night patrols. Stainless steel balls, Rat tells her. The guy was a little crazy, for sure, but crazy in a good way, a real daredevil, because he liked the challenge of it, he liked testing himself, just man against gook. A great, great guy, Rat says. Anyway, it’s a terrific letter, very personal and touching. Rat almost bawls writing it. He gets all teary telling about the good times they had together, how her brother made the war seem almost fun, always raising hell and lighting up villes° and bringing smoke to bear every which way. A great sense of humor, too. Like the time at this river when he went fishing with a whole damn crate of hand grenades. Probably the funniest thing in world history, Rat says, all that gore, about twenty zillion dead gook fish. Her brother, he had the right attitude. He knew how to have a good time. On Halloween, this real hot spooky night, the dude paints up his body all different colors and puts on this weird mask and goes out on ambush almost stark naked, just boots and balls and an M-16. A tre- mendous human being, Rat says. Pretty nutso sometimes, but you could trust him with your life. And then the letter gets very sad and serious. Rat pours his heart out. He says he loved the guy. He says the guy was his best friend in the world. They were like soul mates, he says, like twins or something, they had a whole lot in common. He tells the guy’s sister he’ll look her up when the war’s over. So what happens? Rat mails the letter. He waits two months. The dumb cooze never writes back.

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage vir- tue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste,

strack: A strict military appearance. doing recon: Reconnaissance, or exploratory survey of enemy territory. villes: Villages.

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then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromis- ing allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He’s nineteen years old — it’s too much for him — so he looks at you with those big gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it’s so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back. You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. Listen to Rat: “Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fucking letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back.”

The dead guy’s name was Curt Lemon. What happened was, we crossed a muddy river and marched west into the mountains, and on the third day we took a break along a trail junction in deep jungle. Right away, Lemon and Rat Kiley started goofing off. They didn’t understand about the spookiness. They were kids; they just didn’t know. A nature hike, they thought, not even a war, so they went off into the shade of some giant trees — quadruple canopy, no sunlight at all — and they were giggling and calling each other motherfucker and playing a silly game they’d invented. The game involved smoke grenades, which were harmless unless you did stupid things, and what they did was pull out the pin and stand a few feet apart and play catch under the shade of those huge trees. Whoever chick- ened out was a motherfucker. And if nobody chickened out, the grenade would make a light popping sound and they’d be covered with smoke and they’d laugh and dance around and then do it again. It’s all exactly true. It happened nearly twenty years ago, but I still remember that trail junction and the giant trees and a soft dripping sound somewhere beyond the trees. I remember the smell of moss. Up in the canopy there were tiny white blossoms, but no sunlight at all, and I remember the shad- ows spreading out under the trees where Lemon and Rat Kiley were play- ing catch with smoke grenades. Mitchell Sanders sat flipping his yo-yo. Norman Bowker and Kiowa and Dave Jensen were dozing, or half-dozing, and all around us were those ragged green mountains. Except for the laughter things were quiet. At one point, I remember, Mitchell Sanders turned and looked at me, not quite nodding, then after a while he rolled up his yo-yo and moved away. It’s hard to tell what happened next. They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which must’ve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and

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shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow- waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms.

In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies, like Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.

In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness. In other cases you can’t even tell a true war story. Sometimes it’s just beyond telling. I heard this one, for example, from Mitchell Sanders. It was near dusk and we were sitting at my foxhole along a wide, muddy river north of Quang Ngai. I remember how peaceful the twilight was. A deep pink- ish red spilled out on the river, which moved without sound, and in the morning we would cross the river and march west into the mountains. The occasion was right for a good story. “God’s truth,” Mitchell Sanders said. “A six-man patrol goes up into the mountains on a basic listening-post operation. The idea’s to spend a week up there, just lie low and listen for enemy movement. They’ve got a radio along, so if they hear anything suspicious — anything — they’re sup- posed to call in artillery or gunships, whatever it takes. Otherwise they keep strict field discipline. Absolute silence. They just listen.” He glanced at me to make sure I had the scenario. He was playing with his yo-yo, making it dance with short, tight little strokes of the wrist. His face was blank in the dusk. “We’re talking hardass LP.° These six guys, they don’t say boo for a solid week. They don’t got tongues. All ears.” “Right,” I said. “Understand me?” “Invisible.”

LP: Listening post.

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Sanders nodded. “Affirm,” he said. “Invisible. So what happens is, these guys get themselves deep in the bush, all camouflaged up, and they lie down and wait and that’s all they do, nothing else, they lie there for seven straight days and just listen. And man, I’ll tell you — it’s spooky. This is moun- tains. You don’t know spooky till you been there. Jungle, sort of, except it’s way up in the clouds and there’s always this fog — like rain, except it’s not raining — everything’s all wet and swirly and tangled up and you can’t see jack, you can’t find your own pecker to piss with. Like you don’t even have a body. Serious spooky. You just go with the vapors — the fog sort of takes you in. . . . And the sounds, man. The sounds carry forever. You hear shit nobody should ever hear.” Sanders was quiet for a second, just working the yo-yo, then he smiled at me. “So, after a couple days the guys start hearing this real soft, kind of wacked-out music. Weird echoes and stuff. Like a radio or something, but it’s not a radio, it’s this strange gook music that comes right out of the rocks. Faraway, sort of, but right up close, too. They try to ignore it. But it’s a listening post, right? So they listen. And every night they keep hearing this crazyass gook concert. All kinds of chimes and xylophones. I mean, this is wilderness — no way, it can’t be real — but there it is, like the mountains are tuned in to Radio Fucking Hanoi. Nat- urally they get nervous. One guy sticks Juicy Fruit in his ears. Another guy almost flips. Thing is, though, they can’t report music. They can’t get on the horn and call back to base and say, ‘Hey, listen, we need some firepower, we got to blow away this weirdo gook rock band.’ They can’t do that. It wouldn’t go down. So they lie there in the fog and keep their mouths shut. And what makes it extra bad, see, is the poor dudes can’t horse around like normal. Can’t joke it away. Can’t even talk to each other except maybe in whispers, all hush-hush, and that just revs up the willies. All they do is listen.” Again there was some silence as Mitchell Sanders looked out on the river. The dark was coming on hard now, and off to the west I could see the mountains rising in silhouette, all the mysteries and unknowns. “This next part,” Sanders said quietly, “you won’t believe.” “Probably not,” I said. “You won’t. And you know why?” “Why?” He gave me a tired smile. “Because it happened. Because every word is absolutely dead-on true.” Sanders made a little sound in his throat, like a sigh, as if to say he didn’t care if I believed it or not. But he did care. He wanted me to believe, I could tell. He seemed sad, in a way. “These six guys, they’re pretty fried out by now, and one night they start hearing voices. Like at a cocktail party. That’s what it sounds like, this big swank gook cocktail party somewhere out there in the fog. Music and chitchat and stuff. It’s crazy, I know, but they hear the champagne

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corks. They hear the actual martini glasses. Real hoity-toity, all very civi- lized, except this isn’t civilization. This is Nam. “Anyway, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing — you won’t believe this — they hear cham- ber music. They hear violins and shit. They hear this terrific mama-san soprano. Then after a while they hear gook opera and a glee club and the Haiphong Boys Choir and a barbershop quartet and all kinds of weird chanting and Buddha-Buddha stuff. The whole time, in the background, there’s still that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it’s the mountains. Follow me? The rock — it’s talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mon- gooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk reli- gion. The whole country. Vietnam, the place talks. “The guys can’t cope. They lose it. They get on the radio and report enemy movement — a whole army, they say — and they order up the firepower. They get arty° and gunships. They call in air strikes. And I’ll tell you, they fuckin’ crash that cocktail party. All night long, they just smoke those mountains. They make jungle juice. They blow away trees and glee clubs and whatever else there is to blow away. Scorch time. They walk napalm up and down the ridges. They bring in the Cobras and F-4s, they use Willie Peter and HE° and incendiaries. It’s all fire. They make those mountains burn. “Around dawn things finally get quiet. Like you never even heard quiet be fore. One of those real thick, real misty days — just clouds and fog, they’re off in this special zone — and the mountains are absolutely dead-flat silent. Like Brigadoon° — pure vapor, you know? Everything’s all sucked up inside the fog. Not a single sound, except they still hear it. “So they pack up and start humping. They head down the moun- tain, back to base camp, and when they get there they don’t say diddly. They don’t talk. Not a word, like they’re deaf and dumb. Later on this fat bird colonel comes up and asks what the hell happened out there. What’d they hear? Why all the ordnance? The man’s ragged out, he gets down tight on their case. I mean, they spent six trillion dollars on firepower, and this fatass colonel wants answers, he wants to know what the fuckin’ story is. “But the guys don’t say zip. They just look at him for a while, sort of funny-like, sort of amazed, and the whole war is right there in that stare. It says everything you can’t ever say. It says, man, you got wax in your ears. It says, poor bastard, you’ll never know — wrong frequency — you don’t even want to hear this. Then they salute the fucker and walk away, because certain stories you don’t ever tell.”

arty: Artillery. Willie Peter and HE: White phosphorus, an incendiary substance, and high explosives. Brigadoon: A fictional village in Scotland that only appears once every one hundred years; subject of a popular American musical (1947).

o’brien / how to tell a true war story 323

You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever. Not when Mitchell Sanders stood up and moved off into the dark. It all happened. Even now I remember that yo-yo. In a way, I suppose, you had to be there, you had to hear it, but I could tell how desperately Sanders wanted me to believe him, his frustration at not quite getting the details right, not quite pinning down the final and definitive truth. And I remember sitting at my foxhole that night, watching the shad- ows of Quang Ngai, thinking about the coming day and how we would cross the river and march west into the mountains, all the ways I might die, all the things I did not understand. Late in the night Mitchell Sanders touched my shoulder. “Just came to me,” he whispered. “The moral, I mean. Nobody lis- tens. Nobody hears nothing. Like that fatass colonel. The politicians, all the civilian types, what they need is to go out on LP. The vapors, man. Trees and rocks — you got to listen to your enemy.” And then again, in the morning, Sanders came up to me. The pla- toon was preparing to move out, checking weapons, going through all the little rituals that preceded a day’s march. Already the lead squad had crossed the river and was filing off toward the west. “I got a confession to make,” Sanders said. “Last night, man, I had to make up a few things.” “I know that.” “The glee club. There wasn’t any glee club.” “Right.” “No opera.” “Forget it, I understand.” “Yeah, but listen, it’s still true. Those six guys, they heard wicked sound out there. They heard sound you just plain won’t believe.” Sanders pulled on his rucksack, closed his eyes for a moment, then almost smiled at me. I knew what was coming but I beat him to it. “All right,” I said, “what’s the moral?” “Forget it.” “No, go ahead.” For a long while he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a stare that lasted all day. “Hear that quiet, man?” he said. “There’s your moral.”

In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe “Oh.” True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstrac- tion or analysis.

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For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside. It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.

This one does it for me. I’ve told it before — many times, many ver- sions — but here’s what actually happened. We crossed the river and marched west into the mountains. On the third day, Curt Lemon stepped on a booby-trapped 105 round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead. The trees were thick; it took nearly an hour to cut an LZ for the dustoff.° Later, higher in the mountains, we came across a baby VC° water buffalo. What it was doing there I don’t know — no farms or pad- dies — but we chased it down and got a rope around it and led it along to a deserted village where we set for the night. After supper Rat Kiley went over and stroked its nose. He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buf- falo wasn’t interested. Rat shrugged. He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. The ani- mal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took care ful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was just to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world. Later in the week he would write a long personal letter to the guy’s sister, who would not write back, but for now it was a question of pain. He shot off the tail. He shot away chunks of meat below the ribs. All around us there was the smell of smoke and filth, and deep greenery, and the evening was humid and very hot. Rat went to automatic. He shot randomly, almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly and butt. Then he reloaded, squatted down, and shot it in the left front knee. Again the animal fell hard and tried to get up, but this time it couldn’t quite make it. It wobbled and went down sideways. Rat shot it in the nose. He bent forward and whispered something, as if talking to a pet, then he shot it in the throat. All the while the baby buffalo was silent, or almost silent, just a light bubbling sound where the nose had been. It lay very still. Nothing moved except the eyes, which were enor- mous, the pupils shiny black and dumb.

LZ for the dustoff: Landing zone for a helicopter evacuation of a casualty. VC: Vietcong (North Vietnamese).

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Rat Kiley was crying. He tried to say something, but then cradled his rifle and went off by himself. The rest of us stood in a ragged circle around the baby buffalo. For a time no one spoke. We had witnessed something essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it. Somebody kicked the baby buffalo. It was still alive, though just barely, just in the eyes. “Amazing,” Dave Jensen said. “My whole life, I never seen anything like it.” “Never?” “Not hardly. Not once.” Kiowa and Mitchell Sanders picked up the baby buffalo. They hauled it across the open square, hoisted it up, and dumped it in the vil- lage well. Afterward, we sat waiting for Rat to get himself together. “Amazing,” Dave Jensen kept saying. “For sure.” “A new wrinkle. I never seen it before.” Mitchell Sanders took out his yo-yo. “Well, that’s Nam,” he said. “Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and original.”

How do you generalize? War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the night- time paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorous, the purply black glow of napalm, the rocket’s red glare. It’s not pretty, exactly. It’s astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery bar- rage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference — a powerful, implacable beauty — and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the

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truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a fire fight, there is always the immense pleasure of alive- ness. The trees are alive. The grass, the soil — everything. All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble. You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your liv- ing self — your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it; a kind of godliness. Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. You recognize what’s valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find your- self studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not. Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel — the spiritual texture — of a great ghostly fog, thick and per- manent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no lon- ger binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is absolute ambiguity. In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing much is ever very true.

Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn’t hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story happen in your head. You listen to your wife’s breathing. The war’s over. You close your eyes. You smile and think, Christ, what’s the point?

This one wakes me up. In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there, so Norman Bowker and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I

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remember the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must’ve been the intestines. The gore was horrible, and stays with me, but what wakes me up twenty years later is Norman Bowker singing “Lemon Tree” as we threw down the parts.

You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer mat- ters, you’ve got your answer. For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies. Is it true? The answer matters. You’d feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen — and maybe it did, anything’s possible — even then you know it can’t be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Happening- ness is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For ex ample: four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The fuck you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead. That’s a true story that never happened.

Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Lemon’s face. I can see him turning, looking back at Rat Kiley, then he laughed and took that curious half step from shade into sunlight, his face suddenly brown and shining, and when his foot touched down, in that instant, he must’ve thought it was the sunlight that was killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round. But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and lift him into a tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last thing Lemon believed, which for him must’ve been the final truth.

Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to me after- ward and say she liked it. It’s always a woman. Usually it’s an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics. She’ll explain that as a rule she hates war stories, she can’t understand why people want to wallow in blood and gore. But this one she liked. Sometimes, even, there are little tears. What I should do, she’ll say, is put it all behind me. Find new stories to tell.

100

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I won’t say it but I’ll think it. I’ll picture Rat Kiley’s face, his grief, and I’ll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn’t listening. It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story. It was a ghost story. But you can’t say that. All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth. No Mitchell Sanders, you tell her. No Lemon, no Rat Kiley. And it didn’t happen in the mountains, it happened in this little village on the Batangan Peninsula, and it was raining like crazy, and one night a guy named Stink Harris woke up screaming with a leech on his tongue. You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it. In the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.

E. Annie Proulx (b. 1935)

Edna Annie Proulx was born in 1935 and did not finish her first book until 1988. She re ceived a B.A. from the University of Vermont in 1969 and a master’s degree from Sir George Williams University, both in history, and later became a freelance writer of ar ticles for magazines in the United States. She published short stories occasionally until she had enough to make her first collection, Heart Songs and Other Stories (1988), which she followed with the novel Postcards in 1992. Her breakthrough novel was The Shipping News (1993), which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and she has since produced two novels, Accordion Crimes (1996) and The Old Ace in the Hole (2003), and three books of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999), Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (2004), and Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 (2008). Setting her works in places as distant as Newfoundland and Wyoming, Proulx conveys her dark, comic stories by creating a strong sense of place, using her talent for keen detail and for reproducing the peculiarities of local speech. The Shipping News and the short story “Brokeback Mountain” from Close Range were made into popular films.

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55 Miles to the Gas Pump 1999

Rancher Croom in handmade boots and filthy hat, that walleyed cattle- man, stray hairs like curling fiddle string ends, that warm-handed, quick-foot dancer on splintery boards or down the cellar stairs to a rack of bottles of his own strange beer, yeasty, cloudy, bursting out in gar- lands of foam, Rancher Croom at night galloping drunk over the dark plain, turning off at a place he knows to arrive at a canyon brink where he dismounts and looks down on tumbled rock, waits, then steps out, parting the air with his last roar, sleeves surging up windmill arms, jeans riding over boot tops, but before he hits he rises again to the top of the cliff like a cork in a bucket of milk. Mrs. Croom on the roof with a saw cutting a hole into the attic where she has not been for twelve years thanks to old Croom’s padlocks and warnings, whets to her desire, and the sweat flies as she exchanges the saw for a chisel and hammer until a ragged slab of peak is free and she can see inside: just as she thought: the corpses of Mr. Croom’s par- amours — she recognizes them from their photographs in the paper: MISSING WOMAN — some desiccated as jerky and much the same color, some moldy from lying beneath roof leaks, and all of them used hard, covered with tarry handprints, the marks of boot heels, some bright blue with the remnants of paint used on the shutters years ago, one wrapped in newspaper nipple to knee. When you live a long way out you make your own fun.

Mark Twain (1835–1910)

Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Clemens, born in Missouri in 1835. Twain spent most of his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River, and after the death of his father when he was eleven, he worked at a series of jobs to help support his family. A newspaper job prepared him to wander east working for papers and ex ploring St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia. Later he trained as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi and piloted boats pro fessionally until the onset of the Civil War. Clemens had used a couple of different pseudonyms for minor publications before this point, but in 1863 he signed a travel narrative “Ma