literaryAnalysisESSAY2FINALDRAFT

In order to successfully complete Lesson 10, please do the following:

Lesson Check List

Readings

· Read:

· "A Wall of Fire Rising" by Edwidge Danticat (textbook)

· "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica" by Judith Ortiz Cofer (textbook)

· "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall (textbook)

· "Harlem" by Langston Hughes (textbook)

· "A Pair of Tickets" by Amy Tan (textbook)

Activities

· Complete and submit: Essay 2 - Literary Analysis

Presentation: Historical and Cultural Context as a Critical Approach

https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg

Historical and Cultural Context as a Critical Approach

 Why is the historical or cultural context important?

Knowing a story's historical or cultural context can give insight and meaning to a text. We can learn things about different eras and different cultural beliefs based on the literature produced from those places, or even about those places. Literature helps to keep record of certain cultural traditions and customs that had only previously been passed down orally. 

A story can reveal important elements about a culture in two ways:

· It can reveal the society or culture of the author.

· Because an author is immersed within a specific cultural or historical context while they are writing, they intentionally, or unintentionally, embed elements and clues of that time and culture into their works. 

· It can be set in another time or culture different from the author's own. 

· Author's of historical fiction often do incredible amounts of research in order to adequately portray the culture and society of the people in the story. 

· Author's of contemporary fiction that write about other cultures often consult individuals within that culture or society, also to adequately portray those individuals.  

Determining Historical and Cultural Context

· Look at the author's biography:

· Where are they from?

· When were they living and where, or are they living still?

· Did they have a passionate political stance or did they activate for social issues?

· Look at the setting:

· What era is the story set in? Is it modern? Is it from the 18th century? Ancient?

· What is the geographical setting?:

· The mountains of Montana? The coast of Greece? Big city or small town? Jamaican fishing village? All of these give clues to the over all purpose of the story.

· What is the time of day? Is it important culturally that things happen at certain times of day?

· Is it a time of war or peace?

· Look at the characters within the story:

· Are they from different places?

· How do they interact with each other? 

· Is there a "stranger" in a "strange land"? This is a useful took used by author's to examine a culture through the eyes of someone outside of that culture.

· Look at the message of the text:

· Is it exposing some sort of social injustice?

· Is it spreading a political message?

· What is the text's theme? It could be love, war, loss of innocence, the quest, etc.

ASSIGNMENT- Literary Analysis Essay

FINAL DRAFT

The final draft of your essay.

Assignment Overview

The last few weeks you have learned different types of literary themes. This week, you are working on crafting your second essay. 

· Read and review the Lesson notes below on "The Fiction Essay"

· Read and review the guide and resources included below

· Select a story or poem assigned for this class on which to write

· Create an outline according to the essay assignment specifications (optional, but recommended

· Complete and submit a fiction analysis essay according to the assignment specifications 

Literary Analysis Essay Prompt

In a 3 page (3 full pages) literary response essay, respond to the following prompt. Your essay should be in MLA format, make use of support (direct quotes) from the story or poem chosen and should include citations: in-text and on a Works Cited page.

Remember to avoid summarizing a story – instead, focus on answering the question(s) and explaining why the quotes and passages you’ve chosen are significant.  You SHOULD NOT consult research or outside sources for this paper.

Prompt:

Write an essay examining how a text (short story or poem) of your choosing makes a statement about a social issue (class, race, gender, ageism, cultural identity). What claim does the story seem to be making? How does it use literary devices to illustrate its point? Is the text speaking to a specific audience or society? How does the text show this?

Remember: Use professional writing. Do not use personal pronouns like "you", "us", "our", etc. Instead, use "individuals" or "society".

Notes: The Fiction Essay

Start by reading these notes over the fiction essay. This document is available as a PowerPoint and as a .pdf. 

Helpful Guide: The Writing Process:

This guide covers each step of the writing process for this essay. It is available as a Word document and as a .pdf.

Sample Essay Outline:

. Introduction a. Quick summary of short story b. Include name of story and author.

c. Thesis statement: The story “Story Name Here” makes a clear and strong statement regarding race and class in American in the 1950s. The characterization, symbols and setting details demonstrate the negative impact that racism and poverty has on people and on relationships. II. First main point: Characterization illustrates how the racism in America in the 1950s, as well as the struggles of poverty negatively impact the lives of the main characters. a. Quote from story (integrated into my own sentence) b. Example from story c. I explain how these examples prove my point III. Second main point: Symbols in this story also emphasize the challenges caused by racism and poverty. a. The door is a symbol of racism, because Steve can’t go through the door... b. The ring is a symbol of Steve’s oppression because.... c. The lost shoe is a symbol of the weight of poverty, because... IV. Third main point: Setting details further illustrate the negative impact of racism and America’s class system in the 1950s. a. Social environment details like Steve’s job and home b. Details about the neighborhood c. Quote about how the bus system doesn’t go to his neighborhood V. Conclusion a. brief restatement of thesis b. brief reminder of main idea Things to notice about this outline: 1. It is organized around the thesis. Each of the main points comes from the thesis. 2. All arguments are supported with examples from the story. Quotes would be integrated into your own sentences, and examples would be summarized. Evidence does not have to be given in order of the story – in fact, avoid putting things in order to help you avoid summary. 3. All body paragraphs (II, III, and IV) end with the author’s explanation of how the evidence proves the point. No paragraphs will end with quotes or facts. 4. This outline can be used as a blueprint when writing the paper. Each main point is its own paragraph.

This outline is an example of how to plan and organize an essay for this assignment. Its basis is an imaginary story. It is available as a Word document and as a .pdf.  You do not have to submit an outline for this assignment, though you are encouraged to create one before writing your essay. Either way, this guide can be helpful to you in understanding how to organize your essay. 

Scoring Rubric:

Literary Analysis Scoring Rubric Download Literary Analysis Scoring Rubric

Guidelines

Things to keep in mind:

1. For this essay, submit an MLA-formatted Word document (do not copy and paste).  You will submit your assignment below.

2. In 3 full pages of text.  This means your essay should hit (or come reasonably close) the last line on page 3. 

3. Your first paragraph should include (a) the name of the story/poem and author/poet, (b) a one or two sentence summary of the story and (c) your thesis statement or main point which answers the prompt.

4. Although not normally necessary, I DO EXPECT MLA in-text citations and a Works Cited Page (this does not count toward the page count

5. Your essay should be written in academic style (no first or second person, academic language, use of MLA formatting) AND include examples or quotes from the story or poem.

6. Chapters 30, 31 and 32 in your textbook have additional information on developing a thesis statement, using quotations, and citing sources.

Warnings:

1. Do not consult any source other than the story or poem for this assignment.

POEM

HARLEM BY LANGSTON HUGHES (1951)

PAGE 1073

LANGSTON HUGHES Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

1951

story

EDWIDGE DANTICAT (b. 1969) “A Wall of Fire Rising”

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“Listen to what happened today,” Guy said as he barged through the rat-tling door of his tiny shack.

His wife, Lili, was squatting in the middle of their one-room home, spread-ing cornmeal mush on banana leaves for their supper.

“Listen to what happened to me today!” Guy’s seven-year-old son—Little

Guy—dashed from a corner and grabbed his father’s hand. The boy dropped his composition notebook as he leaped to his father, nearly stepping into the corn mush and herring that his mother had set out in a trio of half gourds on the clay floor. “Our boy is in a play.” Lili quickly robbed Little Guy of the honor of telling his father the news. “A play?” Guy affectionately stroked the boy’s hair. The boy had such tiny corkscrew curls that no amount of brushing could

ever make them all look like a single entity. The other boys at the Lycée Jean-Jacques1

coiled into a tight tiny ball that looked like small peppercorns.

called him “pepper head” because each separate kinky strand was “When is this play?” Guy asked both the boy and his wife. “Are we going to

have to buy new clothes for this?” Lili got up from the floor and inclined her face towards her husband’s in order to receive her nightly peck on the cheek.

“What role do you have in the play?” Guy asked, slowly rubbing the tip of his

nails across the boy’s scalp. His fingers made a soft grating noise with each invisible circle drawn around the perimeters of the boy’s head. Guy’s fingers finally landed inside the boy’s ears, forcing the boy to giggle until he almost gave himself the hiccups.

“Tell me, what is your part in the play?” Guy asked again, pulling his fingers 10 away from his son’s ear.

“I am Boukman,” the boy huffed out, as though there was some laughter caught in his throat.

“Show Papy your lines,” Lili told the boy as she arranged the three open gourds on a piece of plywood raised like a table on two bricks, in the middle of the room. “My love, Boukman is the hero of the play.” The boy went back to the corner where he had been studying and pulled out a thick book carefully covered in brown paper.

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“You’re going to spend a lifetime learning those.” Guy took the book from the

boy’s hand and flipped through the pages quickly. He had to strain his eyes to see the words by the light of an old kerosene lamp, which that night—like all others—flickered as though it was burning its very last wick.

“All these words seem so long and heavy,” Guy said. “You think you can do this, son?”

“He has one very good speech,” Lili said. “Page forty, remember, son?” The boy took back the book from his father. His face was crimped in an of-course-I-remember look as he searched for page forty.

“Bouk-man,” Guy struggled with the letters of the slave revolutionary’s name as he looked over his son’s shoulders. “I see some very hard words here, son.” “He already knows his speech,” Lili told her husband. “Does he now?” asked Guy.

“We’ve been at it all afternoon,” Lili said. “Why don’t you go on and recite

that speech for your father?” The boy tipped his head towards the rusting tin on the roof as he prepared to

recite his lines. Lili wiped her hands on an old apron tied around her waist and stopped to

listen. “Remember what you are,” Lili said, “a great rebel leader. Remember, it is the

revolution.” “Do we want him to be all of that?” Guy asked.

“He is Boukman,” Lili said. “What is the only thing on your mind now,

Boukman?” “Supper,” Guy whispered, enviously eyeing the food cooling off in the middle

of the room. He and the boy looked at each other and began to snicker. “Tell us the other thing that is on your mind,” Lili said, joining in their

laughter.

“Freedom!” shouted the boy, as he quickly slipped into his role. “Louder!” urged Lili.

“Freedom is on my mind!” yelled the boy. “Why don’t you start, son?” said Guy. “If you don’t, we’ll never get to that

other thing that we have on our minds.” The boy closed his eyes and took a deep breath. At first, his lips parted but

nothing came out. Lili pushed her head forward as though she were holding her breath. Then like the last burst of lightning out of clearing sky, the boy began.

“A wall of fire is rising and in the ashes, I see the bones of my people. Not only

those people whose dark hollow faces I see daily in the fields, but all those souls who have gone ahead to haunt my dreams. At night I relive once more the last caresses from the hand of a loving father, a valiant love, a beloved friend.”2 It was obvious that this was a speech written by a European man, who gave to the slave revolutionary Boukman the kind of European phrasing that might

have sent the real Boukman turning in his grave. However, the speech made Lili and Guy stand on the tips of their toes from great pride. As their applause thundered in the small space of their shack that night, they felt as though for a moment they had been given the rare pleasure of hearing the voice of one of the forefathers of Haitian independence in the forced baritone of their only child. The experience left them both with a strange feeling that they could not explain. It left the hair on the back of their necks standing on end. It left them feeling much more love than they ever knew that they could add to their feeling for their son. “Bravo,” Lili cheered, pressing her son into the folds of her apron. “Long live Boukman and long live my boy.”

“Long live our supper,” Guy said, quickly batting his eyelashes to keep tears from rolling down his face.

The boy kept his eyes on his book as they ate their supper that night. Usually Guy and Lili would not have allowed that, but this was a special occasion. They watched proudly as the boy muttered his lines between swallows of cornmeal. The boy was still mumbling the same words as the three of them used the

last of the rainwater trapped in old gasoline containers and sugarcane pulp from the nearby sugarcane mill to scrub the gourds that they had eaten from. When things were really bad for the family, they boiled clean sugarcane pulp

to make what Lili called her special sweet water tea. It was supposed to sup-press gas and kill the vermin in the stomach that made poor children hungry. That and a pinch of salt under the tongue could usually quench hunger until Guy found a day’s work or Lili could manage to buy spices on credit and then peddle them for a profit at the marketplace. That night, anyway, things were good. Everyone had eaten enough to put all

their hunger vermin to sleep. The boy was sitting in front of the shack on an old plastic bucket turned

upside down, straining his eyes to find the words on the page. Sometimes when there was no kerosene for the lamp, the boy would have to go sit by the side of the road and study under the street lamps with the rest of the neighborhood children. Tonight, at least, they had a bit of their own light. Guy bent down by a small clump of old mushrooms near the boy’s feet, try-ing to get a better look at the plant. He emptied the last drops of rainwater from a gasoline container on the mushroom, wetting the bulging toes sticking out of his sons’ sandals, which were already coming apart around his endlessly grow-ing feet. Guy tried to pluck some of the mushrooms, which were being pushed into

the dust as though they wanted to grow beneath the ground as roots. He took one of the mushrooms in his hand, running his smallest finger over the round bulb. He clipped the stem and buried the top in a thick strand of his wife’s hair.

The mushroom looked like a dried insect in Lili’s hair. “It sure makes you look special,” Guy said, teasing her.

“Thank you so much,” Lili said, tapping her husband’s arm. “It’s nice to know

that I deserve these much more than roses.” Taking his wife’s hand, Guy said, “Let’s go to the sugar mill.”

“Can I study my lines there?” the boy asked.

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“You know them well enough already,” Guy said. “I need many repetitions,” the boy said.

Their feet sounded as though they were playing a wet wind instrument as they slipped in and out of the puddles between the shacks in the shantytown. Near the sugar mill was a large television screen in an iron grill cage that the govern-ment had installed so that the shantytown dwellers could watch the state-sponsored news at eight o’clock every night. After the news, a gendarme3

would

come and turn off the television set, taking home the key. On most nights, the people stayed at the site long after this gendarme had gone and told stories to one another beneath the big blank screen. They made bonfires with dried sticks, corn husks, and paper, cursing the authorities under their breath. There was a crowd already gathering for the nightly news event. The sugar

mill workers sat in the front row in chairs or on old buckets. Lili and Guy passed the group, clinging to their son so that in his childhood

naïveté he wouldn’t accidentally glance at the wrong person and be called an insolent child. They didn’t like the ambiance of the nightly news watch. They spared themselves trouble by going instead to the sugar mill, where in the past year they had discovered their own wonder. Everyone knew that the family who owned the sugar mill were eccentric “Arabs,”

Haitians of Lebanese or Palestinian descent whose family had been in the country for generations. The Assad family had a son who, it seems, was into all manner of odd things, the most recent of which was a hot-air balloon, which he had brought to Haiti from America and occasionally flew over the shantytown skies. As they approached the fence surrounding the field where the large wicker

basket and deflated balloon rested on the ground, Guy let go of the hands of both his wife and the boy. Lili walked on slowly with her son. For the last few weeks, she had been feeling

as though Guy was lost to her each time he reached this point, twelve feet away from the balloon. As Guy pushed his hand through the barbed wire, she could tell from the look on his face that he was thinking of sitting inside the square basket while the smooth rainbow surface of the balloon itself floated above his head. During the day, when the field was open, Guy would walk up to the basket, staring at it with the same kind of longing that most men display when they admire very pretty girls. Lili and the boy stood watching from a distance as Guy tried to push his

hand deeper, beyond the chain link fence that separated him from the balloon. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife, sharpen-ing the edges on the metal surface of the fence. When his wife and child moved closer, he put the knife back in his pocket, letting his fingers slide across his son’s tightly coiled curls.

“I wager you I can make this thing fly,” Guy said. “Why do you think you can do that?” Lili asked.

“I know it,” Guy replied. He followed her as she circled the sugar mill, leading to their favorite spot

under a watch light. Little Guy lagged faithfully behind them. From this dis-tance, the hot-air balloon looked like an odd spaceship.

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Lili stretched her body out in the knee-high grass in the field. Guy reached over and tried to touch her between her legs.

“You’re not one to worry, Lili,” he said. “You’re not afraid of the frogs, lizards, or snakes that could be hiding in this grass?”

“I am here with my husband,” she said. “You are here to protect me if any-thing happens.” Guy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a lighter and a crumpled

piece of paper. He lit the paper until it burned to an ashy film. The burning paper floated in the night breeze for a while, landing in fragments on the grass.

“Did you see that, Lili?” Guy asked with a flame in his eyes brighter than the lighter’s. “Did you see how the paper floated when it was burned? This is how

that balloon flies.” “What did you mean by saying that you could make it fly?” Lili asked.

“You already know all my secrets,” Guy said as the boy came charging towards

them. “Papa, could you play Lago with me?” the boy asked. Lili lay peacefully on the grass as her son and husband played hide-and-seek.

Guy kept hiding and his son kept finding him as each time Guy made it easier for the boy.

“We rest now.” Guy was becoming breathless. The stars were circling the peaks of the mountains, dipping into the cane

fields belonging to the sugar mill. As Guy caught his breath, the boy raced around the fence, running as fast as he could to purposely make himself dizzy. “Listen to what happened today,” Guy whispered softly in Lili’s ear.

“I heard you say that when you walked in the house tonight,” Lili said. “With

the boy’s play, I forgot to ask you.” The boy sneaked up behind them, his face lit up, though his brain was spin-ning. He wrapped his arms around both their necks. “We will go back home soon,” Lili said. “Can I recite my lines?” asked the boy.

“We have heard them,” Guy said. “Don’t tire your lips.” The boy mumbled something under his breath. Guy grabbed his ear and

twirled it until it was a tiny ball in his hand. The boy’s face contorted with agony as Guy made him kneel in the deep grass in punishment. Lili looked tortured as she watched the boy squirming in the grass, obviously terrified of the crickets, lizards, and small snakes that might be there. “Perhaps we should take him home to bed,” she said.

“He will never learn,” Guy said, “if I say one thing and you say another.” Guy got up and angrily started walking home. Lili walked over, took her son’s hand, and raised him from his knees.

“You know you must not mumble,” she said. “I was saying my lines,” the boy said.

“Next time say them loud,” Lili said, “so he knows what is coming out of your

mouth.” That night Lili could hear her son muttering his lines as he tucked himself in

his corner of the room and drifted off to sleep. The boy still had the book with his monologue in it clasped under his arm as he slept.

Page 418

Guy stayed outside in front of the shack as Lili undressed for bed. She loosened the ribbon that held the old light blue cotton skirt around her waist and let it drop past her knees. She grabbed half a lemon that she kept in the corner by the folded mat that she and Guy unrolled to sleep on every night. Lili let her blouse drop to the floor as she smoothed the lemon over her ashen legs. Guy came in just at that moment and saw her bare chest by the light of the

smaller castor oil lamp that they used for the later hours of the night. Her skin had coarsened a bit over the years, he thought. Her breasts now drooped from having nursed their son for two years after he was born. It was now easier for him to imagine their son’s lips around those breasts than to imagine his any-where near them. He turned his face away as she fumbled for her nightgown. He helped her

open the mat, tucking the blanket edges underneath. Fully clothed, Guy dropped onto the mat next to her. He laid his head on her chest, rubbing the spiky edges of his hair against her nipples.

“What was it that happened today?” Lili asked, running her fingers along

Guy’s hairline, an angular hairline, almost like a triangle, in the middle of his forehead. She nearly didn’t marry him because it was said that people with angular hairlines often have very troubled lives.

“I got a few hours’ work for tomorrow at the sugar mill,” Guy said. “That’s what happened today.”

“It was such a long time coming,” Lili said. It was almost six months since the last time Guy had gotten work there. The

jobs at the sugar mill were few and far between. The people who had them never left, or when they did they would pass the job on to another family member who was already waiting on line. Guy did not seem overjoyed about the one day’s work.

“I wish I had paid more attention when you came in with the news,” Lili said. “I was just so happy about the boy.”

“I was born in the shadow of that sugar mill,” Guy said. “Probably the first

thing my mother gave me to drink as a baby was some sweet water tea from the pulp of the sugarcane. If anyone deserves to work there, I should.” “What will you be doing for your day’s work?” “Would you really like to know?”

“There is never any shame in honest work,” she said. “They want me to scrub the latrines.”

“It’s honest work,” Lili said, trying to console him. “I am still number seventy-eight on the permanent hire list,” he said. “I was

thinking of putting the boy on the list now, so maybe by the time he becomes a man he can be up for a job.” Lili’s body jerked forward, rising straight up in the air. Guy’s head dropped with a loud thump onto the mat.

“I don’t want him on that list,” she said. “For a young boy to be on any list like that might influence his destiny. I don’t want him on the list.”

“Look at me,” Guy said. “If my father had worked there, if he had me on the list, don’t you think I would be working?”

“If you have any regard for me,” she said, “you will not put him on the list.”

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She groped for her husband’s chest in the dark and laid her head on it. She 110

could hear his heart beating loudly as though it were pumping double, triple its normal rate. “You won’t put the boy on any lists, will you?” she implored. “Please, Lili, no more about the boy. He will not go on the list.” “Thank you.”

“Tonight I was looking at that balloon in the yard behind the sugar mill,” he said. “I have been watching it real close.”

“I know.” “I have seen the man who owns it,” he said. “I’ve seen him get in it and put it

in the sky and go up there like it was some kind of kite and he was the kite master. I see the men who run after it trying to figure out where it will land. Once I was there and I was one of those men who were running and I actually guessed correctly. I picked a spot in the sugarcane fields. I picked the spot from a distance and it actually landed there.” “Let me say something to you, Guy—”

“Pretend that this is the time of miracles and we believed in them. I watched

the owner for a long time, and I think I can fly that balloon. The first time I saw him do it, it looked like a miracle, but the more and more I saw it, the more ordinary it became.”

“You’re probably intelligent enough to do it,” she said.

“I am intelligent enough to do it. You’re right to say that I can.” “Don’t you think about hurting yourself?”

“Think like this. Can’t you see yourself up there? Up in the clouds some-where like some kind of bird?” “If God wanted people to fly, he would have given us wings on our backs.”

“You’re right, Lili, you’re right. But look what he gave us instead. He gave us reasons to want to fly. He gave us the air, the birds, our son.” “I don’t understand you,” she said.

“Our son, your son, you do not want him cleaning latrines.” “He can do other things.”

“Me too. I can do other things too.” A loud scream came from the corner where the boy was sleeping. Lili and

Guy rushed to him and tried to wake him. The boy was trembling when he opened his eyes.

“What is the matter?” Guy asked.

“I cannot remember my lines,” the boy said. Lili tried to string together what she could remember of her son’s lines. The

words slowly came back to the boy. By the time he fell back to sleep, it was almost dawn.

The light was slowly coming up behind the trees. Lili could hear the whispers of the market women, their hisses and swearing as their sandals dug into the sharp-edged rocks on the road. She turned her back to her husband as she slipped out of her nightgown, quickly putting on her day clothes.

“Imagine this,” Guy said from the mat on the floor. “I have never really seen 135 your entire body in broad daylight.”

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Lili shut the door behind her, making her way out to the yard. The empty gaso-line containers rested easily on her head as she walked a few miles to the public water fountains. It was harder to keep them steady when the containers were full. The water splashed all over her blouse and rippled down her back. The sky was blue as it was most mornings, a dark indigo-shaded turquoise

that would get lighter when the sun was fully risen. Guy and the boy were standing in the yard waiting for her when she got back. “You did not get much sleep, my handsome boy,” she said, running her wet fingers over the boy’s face.

“He’ll be late for school if we do not go right now,” Guy said. “I want to drop

him off before I start work.” “Do we remember our lines this morning?” Lili asked, tucking the boy’s shirt

down deep into his short pants.

“We just recited them,” Guy said. “Even I know them now.” Lili watched them walk down the footpath, her eyes following them until

they disappeared. As soon as they were out of sight, she poured the water she had fetched into

a large calabash, letting it stand beside the house. She went back into the room and slipped into a dry blouse. It was never too early to start looking around, to scrape together that night’s meal.

“Listen to what happened again today,” Lili said when Guy walked through the door that afternoon. Guy blotted his face with a dust rag as he prepared to hear the news. After

the day he’d had at the factory, he wanted to sit under a tree and have a leisurely smoke, but he did not want to set a bad example for his son by indulging his very small pleasures.

reading. 150 you want to hear them?” he did such a good job memorizing so fast.”

“You tell him, son,” Lili urged the boy, who was quietly sitting in a corner, “I’ve got more lines,” the boy announced, springing up to his feet. “Papy, do “They are giving him more things to say in the play,” Lili explained, “because “My compliments, son. Do you have your new lines memorized too?” Guy asked.

“Why don’t you recite your new lines for your father?” Lili said. The boy walked to the middle of the room and prepared to recite. He cleared his throat, raising his eyes towards the ceiling.

“There is so much sadness in the faces of my people. I have called on their gods,

now I call on our gods. I call on our young. I call on our old. I call on our mighty and the weak. I call on everyone and anyone so that we shall all let out one pierc-ing cry that we may either live freely or we should die.”

“I see your new lines have as much drama as the old ones,” Guy said. He

wiped a tear away, walked over to the chair, and took the boy in his arms. He pressed the boy’s body against his chest before lowering him to the ground. “Your new lines are wonderful, son. They’re every bit as affecting as the old.” He tapped the boy’s shoulder and walked out of the house.

behind Guy.

“What’s the matter with Papy?” the boy asked as the door slammed shut “His heart hurts,” Lili said.

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After supper, Lili took her son to the field where she knew her husband would be. While the boy ran around, she found her husband sitting in his favorite spot behind the sugar mill.

“Nothing, Lili,” he said. “Ask me nothing about this day that I have had.” She sat down on the grass next to him, for once feeling the sharp edges of the grass blades against her ankles.

“You’re really good with that boy,” he said, drawing circles with his smallest

finger on her elbow. “You will make a performer of him. I know you will. You can see the best in that whole situation. It’s because you have those stars in your eyes. That’s the first thing I noticed about you when I met you. It was your eyes, Lili, so dark and deep. They drew me like danger draws a fool.” He turned over on the grass so that he was staring directly at the moon up in

the sky. She could tell that he was also watching the hot-air balloon behind the sugar mill fence out of the corner of his eye.

“Sometimes I know you want to believe in me,” he said. “I know you’re wish-ing things for me. You want me to work at the mill. You want me to get a pretty house for us. I know you want these things too, but mostly you want me to feel like a man. That’s why you’re not one to worry about, Lili. I know you can take things as they come.”

“I don’t like it when you talk this way,” she said. “Listen to this, Lili. I want to tell you a secret. Sometimes, I just want to take

that big balloon and ride it up in the air. I’d like to sail off somewhere and keep floating until I got to a really nice place with a nice plot of land where I could be something new. I’d build my own house, keep my own garden. Just be some-thing new.”

“I want you to stay away from there.”

“I know you don’t think I should take it. That can’t keep me from wanting.” “You could be injured. Do you ever think about that?” “Don’t you ever want to be something new?” “I don’t like it,” she said.

boy’s. “First you don’t want me to take it and now you want to go?”

“Please don’t get angry with me,” he said, his voice straining almost like the “If you were to take that balloon and fly away, would you take me and the boy?” “I just want to know that when you dream, me and the boy, we’re always in

your dreams.” He leaned his head on her shoulders and drifted off to sleep. Her back

ached as she sat there with his face pressed against her collar bone. He drooled and the saliva dripped down to her breasts, soaking her frayed polyes-ter bra. She listened to the crickets while watching her son play, muttering his lines to himself as he went in a circle around the field. The moon was glowing above their heads. Winking at them, as Guy liked to say, on its way to brighter shores. Opening his eyes, Guy asked her, “How do you think a man is judged after

he’s gone?” How did he expect her to answer something like that? “People don’t eat riches,” she said. “They eat what it can buy.”

“What does that mean, Lili? Don’t talk to me in parables. Talk to me honestly.

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“A man is judged by his deeds,” she said. “The boy never goes to bed hungry.

For as long as he’s been with us, he’s always been fed.” Just as if he had heard himself mentioned, the boy came dashing from the other side of the field, crashing in a heap on top of his parents. “My new lines,” he said. “I have forgotten my new lines.”

“Is this how you will be the day of this play, son?” Guy asked. “When people

give you big responsibilities, you have to try to live up to them.” The boy had relearned his new lines by the time they went to bed. That night, Guy watched his wife very closely as she undressed for bed. “I would like to be the one to rub that piece of lemon on your knees tonight,”

he said. She handed him the half lemon, then raised her skirt above her knees. Her body began to tremble as he rubbed his fingers over her skin. “You know that question I asked you before,” he said, “how a man is remem-bered after he’s gone? I know the answer now. I know because I remember my father, who was a very poor struggling man all his life. I remember him as a man that I would never want to be.”

Lili got up with the break of dawn the next day. The light came up quickly above the trees. Lili greeted some of the market women as they walked together to the public water fountain. On her way back, the sun had already melted a few gray clouds. She found

the boy standing alone in the yard with a terrified expression on his face, the old withered mushrooms uprooted at his feet. He ran up to meet her, nearly knock-ing her off balance.

“What happened?” she asked. “Have you forgotten your lines?” The boy was breathing so heavily that his lips could not form a single

word. “What is it?” Lili asked, almost shaking him with anxiety.

“It’s Papa,” he said finally, raising a stiff finger in the air. The boy covered his face as his mother looked up at the sky. A rainbow-colored balloon was floating aimlessly above their heads.

“It’s Papa,” the boy said. “He is in it.” She wanted to look down at her son and tell him that it wasn’t his father, but

she immediately recognized the spindly arms, in a bright flowered shirt that she had made, gripping the cables.

From the field behind the sugar mill a group of workers were watching the bal-loon floating in the air. Many were clapping and cheering, calling out Guy’s name. A few of the women were waving their head rags at the sky, shouting,

“Go! Beautiful, go!” Lili edged her way to the front of the crowd. Everyone was waiting, watching the balloon drift higher up into the clouds.

“He seems to be right over our heads,” said the factory foreman, a short slen-der mulatto with large buckteeth. Just then, Lili noticed young Assad, his thick black hair sticking to the beads

of sweat on his forehead. His face had the crumpled expression of disrupted sleep.

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“He’s further away than he seems,” said young Assad. “I still don’t under-stand. How did he get up there? You need a whole crew to fly these things.” “I don’t know,” the foreman said. “One of my workers just came in saying 205 there was a man flying above the factory.”

“But how the hell did he start it?” Young Assad was perplexed. “He just did it,” the foreman said.

“Look, he’s trying to get out!” someone hollered. A chorus of screams broke out among the workers. The boy was looking up, trying to see if his father was really trying to jump

out of the balloon. Guy was climbing over the side of the basket. Lili pressed her son’s face into her skirt. Within seconds, Guy was in the air hurtling down towards the crowd. Lili

held her breath as she watched him fall. He crashed not far from where Lili and the boy were standing, his blood immediately soaking the landing spot. The balloon kept floating free, drifting on its way to brighter shores. Young

Assad rushed towards the body. He dropped to his knees and checked the wrist for a pulse, then dropped the arm back to the ground.

“It’s over!” The foreman ordered the workers back to work. Lili tried to keep her son’s head pressed against her skirt as she moved closer

to the body. The boy yanked himself away and raced to the edge of the field where his father’s body was lying on the grass. He reached the body as young Assad still knelt examining the corpse. Lili rushed after him.

“He is mine,” she said to young Assad. “He is my family. He belongs

to me.” Young Assad got up and raised his head to search the sky for his aimless bal-loon, trying to guess where it would land. He took one last glance at Guy’s bloody corpse, then raced to his car and sped away. The foreman and another worker carried a cot and blanket from the factory. Little Guy was breathing quickly as he looked at his father’s body on the

ground. While the foreman draped a sheet over Guy’s corpse, his son began to recite the lines from his play.

“A wall of fire is rising and in the ashes, I see the bones of my people. Not only

those people whose dark hollow faces I see daily in the fields, but all those souls who have gone ahead to haunt my dreams. At night I relive once more the last caresses from the hand of a loving father, a valiant love, a beloved friend.”

“Let me look at him one last time,” Lili said, pulling back the sheet. She leaned in very close to get a better look at Guy’s face. There was little left

of that countenance that she had loved so much. Those lips that curled when he was teasing her. That large flat nose that felt like a feather when rubbed against hers. And those eyes, those night-colored eyes. Though clouded with blood, Guy’s eyes were still bulging open. Lili was searching for some kind of sign—a blink, a smile, a wink—something that would remind her of the man that she

had married. “His eyes aren’t closed,” the foreman said to Lili. “Do you want to close them,

or should I?” The boy continued reciting his lines, his voice rising to a man’s grieving roar.

He kept his eyes closed, his fists balled at his side as he continued with his newest lines.

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“There is so much sadness in the faces of my people. I have called on their gods,

now I call on our gods. I call on our young. I call on our old. I call on our mighty and the weak. I call on everyone and anyone so that we shall all let out one pierc-ing cry that we may either live freely or we should die.”

225 “Do you want to close the eyes?” the foreman repeated impatiently.

“No, leave them open,” Lili said. “My husband, he likes to look at the sky.”

1991