Mr. Stallings' Eighth Grade English - Home



1342900Short StoriesHonors EditionTable of ContentsWhat Is a Short Story?"Thank You, Ma'am" by Langston HughesLiterary Focus: Plot"The Landlady" by Roald DahlLiterary Focus: Foreshadowing"Back There in the Grass" by Goevernuer MorrisLiterary Focus: Suspense“Sled” by Thomas E. AdamsLiterary Focus: Conflict"Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets" by Jack FinneyLiterary Focus: Climax and Resolution"The Midnight Sun" by Rod SerlingLiterary Focus: Irony“Jug of Silver” by Truman CapoteLiterary Focus: Character and Characterization"Come of Age" by B.J. ChuteLiterary Focus: Round and Flat Characters"Initiation" by Sylvia PlathLiterary Focus: Static and Dynamic Characters“Blues Ain't No Mocking Bird" by Toni Cade Bambara Literary Focus: Motivation"The Long Rain" by Ray BradburyLiterary Focus: Setting"Night in Funland" by William PedenLiterary Focus: Atmosphere"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan PoeLiterary Focus: First-Person Point of View"Salesmanship" by Mary Ellen ChaseLiterary Focus: Third-Person Point of View"The Osage Orange Tree" by William StaffordLiterary Focus: Theme"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel KeyesLiterary Focus: The Total EffectWhat Is a Short Story?A short story is a brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and usually deals with only a few characters. It can generally be read in one sitting.Small as it is, a short story can contain almost anything. For example, a story can show us events that remind us of our own lives and introduce us to people and places that we recognize. On the other hand, a story can take us to fantastic lands where people and events are like nothing we have ever known before. In either case, a story always communicates ideas about life and human nature.A short story may consist of some or all of the elements in the graphic organizer below. These are the events, people, places, and ideas that an author uses to create a fictional world. Each element has its own role in a story. In most good stories the elements work together so closely that we often cannot talk about one without also mentioning the others. This combination of elements forms a story’s total effect, or the overall impression that a story creates in our minds. We will examine each element in detail throughout this textbook.With every work of literature we read, we must answer three questions: 1) What does it say? This involves accurately interpreting the words and sentences in the story. If there are words we don’t understand, we must learn them. If there are sentences or paragraphs that make no sense, we must break them down until they do. 2) What does it mean? Answering this question means understanding the events and other story elements that the author is trying to communicate. It means pulling together the smaller components -- like the brush strokes of a painting -- until we can see the larger picture or scene that the writer has created. This may involve analyzing various aspects of the story until we can say that we actually comprehend it.3) What does it matter? Truly great stories change us in some way by revealing to us a previously hidden truth about life that we failed to see, by emphasizing a truth about human nature that we often overlook, or by challenging us to see these truths from a different perspective.Many short stories can bring us the most simplistic form of reading pleasure, which is “wish fulfillment” -- putting ourselves in the position of the characters and acting out some fantasy that we are unable to in real life. Other stories can provide us with stretches of entertainment and leave us with a feeling of delight. But for a story to truly be called “literature,” it must transform us in some way, large or small. If we put down a story with the realization that we may never be the same again, we may properly call it a work of literature.As you read the following short stories, think about what their effect is on you, keeping in mind that to give the story a chance to work its magic, you must be an active reader who engages with the text, not a passive reader who simply tries to understand the basic meaning in order to pass a quiz. Be receptive. Submerge yourself in the story’s world. Do not reject a story because you don’t like the characters, it doesn’t end the way you like, there’s not enough action, or the theme differs with your already-held opinions. Allow the story to reveal a brand-new vision to you. In this way you will have a deeper, more moving, and more profound reading experience than ever before.This is how we learn to truly enjoy literature.Thank You, Ma’amby Langston Hughes1219075Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career. One of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance -- an intellectual, social, and artistic explosion centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender.“Thank You, Ma'am” (1958) is a story about the challenges and hardships of growing up poor in the city. She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, instead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled. After that the woman said, “Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here.” She still held him. But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, “Now ain’t you ashamed of yourself?” Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, “Yes’m.” The woman said, “What did you want to do it for?” The boy said, “I didn’t aim to.” She said, “You a lie!” By that time two or three people passed, stopped, turned to look, and some stood watching. “If I turn you loose, will you run?” asked the woman. “Yes’m,” said the boy. “Then I won’t turn you loose,” said the woman. She did not release him. “I’m very sorry, lady, I’m sorry,” whispered the boy. “Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash your face for you. Ain’t you got nobody home to tell you to wash your face?” “No’m,” said the boy. “Then it will get washed this evening,” said the large woman starting up the street, dragging the frightened boy behind her. He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans. The woman said, “You ought to be my son. I would teach you right from wrong. Least I can do right now is to wash your face. Are you hungry?” “No’m,” said the being dragged boy. “I just want you to turn me loose.” “Was I bothering you when I turned that corner?” asked the woman. “No’m.” “But you put yourself in contact with me,” said the woman. “If you think that that contact is not going to last awhile, you got another thought coming. When I get through with you, sir, you are going to remember Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones.” Sweat popped out on the boy’s face and he began to struggle. Mrs. Jones stopped, jerked him around in front of her, put a half-nelson about his neck, and continued to drag him up the street. When she got to her door, she dragged the boy inside, down a hall, and into a large kitchenette furnished room at the rear of the house. She switched on the light and left the door open. The boy could hear other roomers laughing and talking in the large house. Some of their doors were open, too, so he knew he and the woman were not alone. The woman still had him by the neck in the middle of her room. She said, “What is your name?” 3076575180975“Roger,” answered the boy. “Then, Roger, you go to that sink and wash your face,” said the woman, whereupon she turned him loose—at last. Roger looked at the door—looked at the woman—looked at the door—and went to the sink. Let the water run until it gets warm,” she said. “Here’s a clean towel.” “You gonna take me to jail?” asked the boy, bending over the sink. “Not with that face, I would not take you nowhere,” said the woman. “Here I am trying to get home to cook me a bite to eat and you snatch my pocketbook! Maybe, you ain’t been to your supper either, late as it be. Have you?” “There’s nobody home at my house,” said the boy. “Then we’ll eat,” said the woman, “I believe you’re hungry—or been hungry—to try to snatch my pocketbook.” “I wanted a pair of blue suede shoes,” said the boy. “Well, you didn’t have to snatch my pocketbook to get some suede shoes,” said Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones. “You could have asked me.” “M’am?” The water dripping from his face, the boy looked at her. There was a long pause. A very long pause. After he had dried his face and not knowing what else to do dried it again, the boy turned around, wondering what next. The door was open. He could make a dash for it down the hall. He could run, run, run, run, run! The woman was sitting on the day-bed. After a while she said, “I were young once and I wanted things I could not get.” There was another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened. Then he frowned, but not knowing he frowned. The woman said, “Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that.” Pause. Silence. “I have done things, too, which I would not tell you, son—neither tell God, if he didn’t already know. So you set down while I fix us something to eat. You might run that comb through your hair so you will look presentable.” In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up and went behind the screen. The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now, nor did she watch her purse which she left behind her on the day-bed. But the boy took care to sit on the far side of the room where he thought she could easily see him out of the corner of her eye, if she wanted to. He did not trust the woman not to trust him. And he did not want to be mistrusted now. “Do you need somebody to go to the store,” asked the boy, “maybe to get some milk or something?” “Don’t believe I do,” said the woman, “unless you just want sweet milk yourself. I was going to make cocoa out of this canned milk I got here.” “That will be fine,” said the boy. She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa, and set the table. The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that would embarrass him. Instead, as they ate, she told him about her job in a hotel beauty-shop that stayed open late, what the work was like, and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes, red-heads, and Spanish. Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake. “Eat some more, son,” she said. When they were finished eating she got up and said, “Now, here, take this ten dollars and buy yourself some blue suede shoes. And next time, do not make the mistake of latching onto my pocketbook nor nobody else’s—because shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet. I got to get my rest now. But I wish you would behave yourself, son, from here on in.” She led him down the hall to the front door and opened it. “Good-night! Behave yourself, boy!” she said, looking out into the street. The boy wanted to say something else other than “Thank you, m’am” to Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, but he couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the large woman in the door. He barely managed to say “Thank you” before she shut the door. And he never saw her again.Study QuestionsWhat happens to Mrs. Jones as she is walking home from work? In what way does she continue to walk home?Name two points in the story where Roger can run away but does not.What reason does Roger give for wanting money? What is Mrs. Jones’ reaction?Name two things Mrs. Jones gives to Roger.Tell what happens in the last paragraph of the story.Why do you think Roger does not run away when he can?Why do you think Mrs. Jones treats Roger the way she does?At the end of the story, for what is Roger really thanking Mrs. Jones?Literary Focus: PlotIn a short story or novel, a plot is the sequence of events that make up the story. The plot basically is the story, and more specifically, how the story develops, unfolds, and moves in time. Plots are typically made up of five main elements:11143001. Exposition: At the beginning of the story, characters, setting, and the main conflict are typically introduced.2. Rising Action/Suspense: The main character is in crisis and events leading up to facing the conflict begin to unfold. The story becomes complicated.3. Climax: At the peak of the story, a major event occurs in which the main character faces a major enemy, fear, challenge, or other source of conflict. The most action, drama, change, and excitement occurs here.4. Falling Action: The story begins to slow down and work towards its end, tying up loose ends.5. Resolution: Also known as the denouement, the resolution is like a concluding paragraph that resolves any remaining issues and ends the story.These 5 elements are often represented like this:Plots, also sometimes called storylines, include the most significant events of the story and how the characters and their problems change over time.Example 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (By J. K. Rowling)The plot of this story begins when Harry learns that Professor Snape is after the Sorcerer’s Stone. The Professor lets loose a troll, who nearly kills Harry and his friends. In addition, Harry finds out that Hagrid let out the secret of the giant dog to a stranger in return for a dragon, which means that Snape can now reach the Sorcerer’s Stone.Example 2: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)With his Papa away on a cattle drive, 14-year-old Travis Coates gets help from a brave stray dog. Together, they defend the homestead and protect Travis’s mother and little brother. When a plague of hydrophobia threatens the family, Travis makes the difficult decision to kill Old Yeller.Question: In “Thank You, Ma’am” what happens in the exposition? What happens to increase your suspense? What occurs at the climax? What happens in the story’s falling action or resolution? The Landladyby ?Roald Dahl1161925Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. He has been referred to as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". His children's books are known for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood. His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda.Dahl also wrote works for older readers, including “The Landlady,” first published in The New Yorker in 1959. It can be seen as an example of a mystery story. Mystery is a genre of literature whose stories focus on a puzzling crime, situation, or circumstance that needs to be solved. The term comes from the Latin mysterium, meaning “a secret thing.” Mysteries can focus on both supernatural and non-supernatural topics. Many mystery stories involve what is called a “whodunit” scenario, meaning the mystery revolves around the uncovering of a culprit or criminal, but not always. As in the case of “The Landlady,” they sometimes focus on a character’s attempt to make sense of a baffling situation.Billy Weaver had traveled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a change at Reading on the way, and by the time he got to Bath, it was about nine o’clock in the evening, and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky over the houses opposite the station entrance. But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks.“Excuse me,” he said, “but is there a fairly cheap hotel not too far away from here?”“Try The Bell and Dragon,” the porter answered, pointing down the road. “They might take you in. It’s about a quarter of a mile along on the other side.”Billy thanked him and picked up his suitcase and set out to walk the quarter-mile to The Bell and Dragon. He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr. Greenslade at the head office in London had told him it was a splendid town. “Find your own lodgings,” he had said, “and then go along and report to the branch manager as soon as you’ve got yourself settled.”Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy-blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine. He walked briskly down the street. He was trying to do everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was the one common characteristic of all successful businessmen. The big shots up at the head office were absolutely fantastically brisk all the time. They were amazing. There were no shops on this wide street that he was walking along, only a line of tall houses on each side, all of them identical. They had porches and pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors, and it was obvious that once upon a time they had been very swanky residences. But now, even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling from the woodwork on their doors and windows and that the handsome white facades were cracked and blotchy from neglect.Suddenly, in a downstairs window that was brilliantly illuminated by a street lamp not six yards away, Billy caught sight of a printed notice propped up against the glass in one of the upper panes. It said BED AND BREAKFAST. There was a vase of yellow chrysanthemums, tall and beautiful, standing just underneath the notice.He stopped walking. He moved a bit closer. Green curtains (some sort of velvety material) were hanging down on either side of the window. The chrysanthemums looked wonderful beside them. He went right up and peered through the glass into the room, and the first thing he saw was a bright fire burning in the hearth. On the carpet in front of the fire, a pretty little dachshund was curled up asleep with its nose tucked into its belly. The room itself, so far as he could see in the half darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture. There was a baby grand piano and a big sofa and several plump armchairs, and in one corner he spotted a large parrot in a cage. Animals were usually a good sign in a place like this, Billy told himself; and all in all, it looked to him as though it would be a pretty decent house to stay in. Certainly it would be more comfortable than The Bell and Dragon.On the other hand, a pub would be more congenial than a boardinghouse. There would be beer and darts in the evenings, and lots of people to talk to, and it would probably be a good bit cheaper, too. He had stayed a couple of nights in a pub once before and he had liked it. He had never stayed in any boardinghouses, and, to be perfectly honest, he was a tiny bit frightened of them. The name itself conjured up images of watery cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living room.After dithering about like this in the cold for two or three minutes, Billy decided that he would walk on and take a look at The Bell and Dragon before making up his mind. He turned to go.And now a queer thing happened to him. He was in the act of stepping back and turning away from the window when all at once his eye was caught and held in the most peculiar manner by the small notice that was there. BED AND BREAKFAST, it said. BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST. Each word was like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not to walk away from that house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the window to the front door of the house, climbing the steps that led up to it, and reaching for the bell.He pressed the bell. Far away in a back room he heard it ringing, and then at once —it must have been at once because he hadn’t even had time to take his finger from the bell button—the door swung open and a woman was standing there.Normally you ring the bell and you have at least a half-minute’s wait before the door opens. But this dame was like a jack-in-the-box. He pressed the bell—and out she popped! It made him jump.She was about forty-five or fifty years old, and the moment she saw him, she gave him a warm, welcoming smile.“ Please come in,” she said pleasantly. She stepped aside, holding the door wide open, and Billy found himself automatically starting forward. The compulsion or, more accurately, the desire to follow after her into that house was extraordinarily strong.“I saw the notice in the window,” he said, holding himself back.“Yes, I know.”“I was wondering about a room.”“It’s all ready for you, my dear,” she said. She had a round pink face and very gentle blue eyes.“I was on my way to The Bell and Dragon,” Billy told her. “But the notice in your window just happened to catch my eye.”“My dear boy,” she said, “why don’t you come in out of the cold?”“How much do you charge?”“Five and sixpence a night, including breakfast.”It was fantastically cheap. It was less than half of what he had been willing to pay.“If that is too much,” she added, “then perhaps I can reduce it just a tiny bit. Do you desire an egg for breakfast? Eggs are expensive at the moment. It would be sixpence less without the egg.”“Five and sixpence is fine,” he answered. “I should like very much to stay here.”“I knew you would. Do come in.”She seemed terribly nice. She looked exactly like the mother of one’s best schoolfriend welcoming one into the house to stay for the Christmas holidays. Billy took off his hat and stepped over the threshold.“Just hang it there,” she said, “and let me help you with your coat.”There were no other hats or coats in the hall. There were no umbrellas, no walking sticks—nothing.“We have it all to ourselves,” she said, smiling at him over her shoulder as she led the way upstairs. “You see, it isn’t very often I have the pleasure of taking a visitor into my little nest.”The old girl is slightly dotty, Billy told himself. But at five and sixpence a night, who cares about that? “I should’ve thought you’d be simply swamped with applicants,” he said politely.“Oh, I am, my dear, I am, of course I am. But the trouble is that I’m inclined to be just a teeny-weeny bit choosy and particular—if you see what I mean.”“Ah, yes.”“But I’m always ready. Everything is always ready day and night in this house just on the off chance that an acceptable young gentleman will come along. And it is such a pleasure, my dear, such a very great pleasure when now and again I open the door and I see someone standing there who is just exactly right.” She was halfway up the stairs, and she paused with one hand on the stair rail, turning her head and smiling down at him with pale lips.“Like you,” she added, and her blue eyes traveled slowly all the way down the length of Billy’s body, to his feet, and then up again.On the second-floor landing she said to him, “This floor is mine.”They climbed up another flight. “And this one is all yours,” she said. “Here’s your room. I do hope you’ll like it.”She took him into a small but charming front bedroom, switching on the light as she went in.“The morning sun comes right in the window, Mr. Perkins. It is Mr. Perkins, isn’t it?”“No,” he said. “It’s Weaver.”“Mr. Weaver. How nice. I’ve put a water bottle between the sheets to air them out, Mr. Weaver. It’s such a comfort to have a hot-water bottle in a strange bed with clean sheets, don’t you agree? And you may light the gas fire at any time if you feel chilly.”“Thank you,” Billy said. “Thank you ever so much.” He noticed that the bedspread had been taken off the bed and that the bedclothes had been neatly turned back on one side, allready for someone to get in.“I’m so glad you appeared,” she said, looking earnestly into his face. “I was beginning to get worried.”“That’s all right,” Billy answered brightly. “You mustn’t worry about me.” He put his suitcase on the chair and started to open it.“And what about supper, my dear? Did you manage to get anything to eat before you came here?”“I’m not a bit hungry, thank you,” he said. “I think I’ll just go to bed as soon as possible because tomorrow I’ve got to get up rather early and report to the office.”“Very well, then. I’ll leave you now so that you can unpack. But before you go to bed, would you be kind enough to pop into the sitting room on the ground floor and sign the book? Everyone has to do that because it’s the law of the land, and we don’t want to go breaking any laws at this stage in the proceedings, do we?” She gave him a little wave of the hand and went quickly out of the room and closed the door.2938463876300Now, the fact that his landlady appeared to be slightly off her rocker didn’t worry Billy in the least. After all, she not only was harmless—there was no question about that—but she was also quite obviously a kind and generous soul. He guessed that she had probably lost a son in the war, or something like that, and had never gotten over it.So a few minutes later, after unpacking his suitcase and washing his hands, he trotted downstairs to the ground floor and entered the living room. His landlady wasn’t there, but the fire was glowing in the hearth, and the little dachshund was still sleeping soundly in front of it. The room was wonderfully warm and cozy. I’m a lucky fellow, he thought, rubbing his hands. This is a bit of all right.He found the guest book lying open on the piano, so he took out his pen and wrote down his name and address.There were only two other entries above his on the page, and as one always does with guest books, he started to read them. One was a Christopher Mulholland from Cardiff. The other was Gregory W. Temple from Bristol.That’s funny, he thought suddenly. Christopher Mulholland. It rings a bell.Now where on earth had he heard that rather unusual name before?Was it a boy at school? No. Was it one of his sister’s numerous young men, perhaps, or a friend of his father’s?No, no, it wasn’t any of those. He glanced down again at the book.Christopher Mulholland231 Cathedral Road, CardiffGregory W. Temple27 Sycamore Drive, BristolAs a matter of fact, now he came to think of it, he wasn’t at all sure that the second name didn’t have almost as much of a familiar ring about it as the first.“Gregory Temple?” he said aloud, searching his memory. “Christopher Mulholland? . . .”“Such charming boys,” a voice behind him answered, and he turned and saw his landlady sailing into the room with a large silver tea tray in her hands. She was holding it well out in front of her, and rather high up, as though the tray were a pair of reins on a frisky horse.“They sound somehow familiar,” he said.“They do? How interesting.”“I’m almost positive I’ve heard those names before somewhere. Isn’t that odd? Maybe it was in the newspapers. They weren’t famous in any way, were they? I mean famous cricketers or footballers or something like that?”“Famous,” she said, setting the tea tray down on the low table in front of the sofa. “Oh no, I don’t think they were famous. But they were incredibly handsome, both of them, I can promise you that. They were tall and young and handsome, my dear, just exactly like you.”Once more, Billy glanced down at the book. “Look here,” he said, noticing the dates. “This last entry is over two years old.”“It is?”“Yes, indeed. And Christopher Mulholland’s is nearly a year before that—more than three years ago.”“Dear me,” she said, shaking her head and heaving a dainty little sigh. “I would never have thought it. How time does fly away from us all, doesn’t it, Mr. Wilkins?”“It’s Weaver,” Billy said. “W-e-a-v-e-r.”“Oh, of course it is!” she cried, sitting down on the sofa. “How silly of me. I do apologize. In one ear and out the other, that’s me, Mr. Weaver.”“You know something?” Billy said. “Something that’s really quite extraordinary about all this?”“No, dear, I don’t.”“Well, you see, both of these names—Mulholland and Temple—I not only seem to remember each one of them separately, so to speak, but somehow or other, in some peculiar way, they both appear to be sort of connected together as well. As though they were both famous for the same sort of thing, if you see what I mean—like . . . well . . . like Dempsey and Tunney, for example, or Churchill and Roosevelt.”“How amusing,” she said. “But come over here now, dear, and sit down beside me on the sofa and I’ll give you a nice cup of tea and a ginger biscuit before you go to bed.”“You really shouldn’t bother,” Billy said. “I didn’t mean you to do anything like that.” He stood by the piano, watching her as she fussed about with the cups and saucers. He noticed that she had small, white, quickly moving hands and red fingernails.“I’m almost positive it was in the newspapers I saw them,” Billy said. “I’ll think of it in a second. I’m sure I will.”There is nothing more tantalizing than a thing like this that lingers just outside the borders of one’s memory. He hated to give up.“Now wait a minute,” he said. “Wait just a minute. Mulholland . . . Christopher Mulholland . . . wasn’t that the name of the Eton schoolboy who was on a walking tour through the West Country, and then all of a sudden . . .”“Milk?” she said. “And sugar?”“Yes, please. And then all of a sudden . . .”“Eton schoolboy?” she said. “Oh no, my dear, that can’t possibly be right, because my Mr. Mulholland was certainly not an Eton schoolboy when he came to me. He was a Cambridge undergraduate. Come over her now and sit next to me and warm yourself in front of this lovely fire. Come on. Your tea’s all ready for you.” She patted the empty place beside her on the sofa, and she sat there smiling at Billy and waiting for him to come over.He crossed the room slowly and sat down on the edge of the sofa. She placed his teacup on the table in front of him.“ There we are,” she said. “How nice and cozy this is, isn’t it?”Billy started sipping his tea. She did the same. For half a minute or so, neither of them spoke. But Billy knew that she was looking at him. Her body was half turned toward him, and he could feel her eyes resting on his face, watching him over the rim of her teacup. Now and again, he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate directly from her person. It was not in the least unpleasant, and it reminded him—well, he wasn’t quite sure what it reminded him of. Pickled walnuts? New leather? Or was it the corridors of a hospital?At length, she said, “Mr. Mulholland was a great one for his tea. Never in my life have I seen anyone drink as much tea as dear, sweet Mr. Mulholland.”“I suppose he left fairly recently,” Billy said. He was still puzzling his head about the two names. He was positive now that he had seen them in the newspapers—in the headlines.“Left?” she said, arching her brows. “But my dear boy, he never left. He’s still here. Mr. Temple is also here. They’re on the fourth floor, both of them together.”Billy set his cup down slowly on the table and stared at his landlady. She smiled back at him, and then she put out one of her white hands and patted him comfortingly on the knee. “How old are you, my dear?” she asked.“Seventeen.”“Seventeen!” she cried. “Oh, it’s the perfect age! Mr. Mulholland was also seventeen. But I think he was a trifle shorter than you are; in fact I’m sure he was, and his teeth weren’t quite so white. You have the most beautiful teeth, Mr. Weaver, did you know that?”“They’re not as good as they look,” Billy said. “They’ve got simply masses of fillings in them at the back.”“Mr. Temple, of course, was a little older,” she said, ignoring his remark. “He was actually twenty-eight. And yetI never would have guessed it if he hadn’t told me, never in my whole life. There wasn’t a blemish on his body.”“A what?” Billy said.“His skin was just like a baby’s.”There was a pause. Billy picked up his teacup and took another sip of his tea; then he set it down again gently in its saucer. He waited for her to say something else, but she seemed to have lapsed into another of her silences.He sat there staring straight ahead of him into the far corner of the room, biting his lower lip.“That parrot,” he said at last. “You know something? It had me completely fooled when I first saw it through the window. I could have sworn it was alive.”“Alas, no longer.”“It’s most terribly clever the way it’s been done,” he said. “It doesn’t look in the least bit dead. Who did it?”“I did.”“You did?”“Of course,” she said. “And have you met my little Basil as well?” She nodded toward the dachshund curled up so comfortably in front of the fire. Billy looked at it. And suddenly, he realized that this animal had all the time been just as silent and motionless as the parrot. He put out a hand and touched it gently on the top of its back. The back was hard and cold, and when he pushed the hair to one side with his fingers, he could see the skin underneath, grayish black and dry and perfectly preserved.“Good gracious me,” he said. “How absolutely fascinating.” He turned away from the dog and stared with deep admiration at the little woman beside him on the sofa. “It must be most awfully difficult to do a thing like that.”“Not in the least,” she said. “I stuff all my little pets myself when they pass away. Will you have another cup of tea?”“No, thank you,” Billy said. The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn’t much care for it.“You did sign the book, didn’t you?”“Oh, yes.”“That’s good. Because later on, if I happen to forget what you were called, then I could always come down here and look it up. I still do that almost every day with Mr. Mulholland and Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”“Temple,” Billy said, “Gregory Temple. Excuse my asking, but haven’t there been any other guests here except them in the last two or three years?”Holding her teacup high in one hand, inclining her head slightly to the left, she looked up at him out of the corners of her eyes and gave him another gentle little smile.“No, my dear,” she said. “Only you.”Study QuestionsWhy is Billy in Bath on this particular night?Why does Billy debate between staying at a pub instead of a boarding house?Billy remarks on the speed with which the landlady opens the door. What might this suggest about her?Describe two things in the house that are not what they appear to be.Who are Mulholland and Temple? What is it that Billy remembers about them.Why might there have been so few boarders in the last few years?How does Billy describe the tea that he drinks. Why might this be significant?What do you think will be Billy’s fate? Why?Literary Focus: Foreshadowing1142875Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making explicit statements or leaving subtle clues about what will happen later in the text. The Russian author Anton Chekhov summarized foreshadowing when he wrote, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off." The description of the gun on the wall, in other words, should foreshadow its later use.Some additional key details about foreshadowing:Foreshadowing can be so subtle that it goes unnoticed, often until after the foreshadowed event comes to pass.Often foreshadowing serves to increase the sense of mystery rather than dispel it, by suggesting that some event might occur but not how it will come to pass.Foreshadowing is a useful tool for writers because it helps prepare readers for later scenes, builds a sense of suspense, and makes a work seem to have tied up "loose ends."Example 1: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (by J.K. Rowling)The students have an Herbology lesson with Professor Sprout, who begins by asking the class is they know what “Mandrakes” are, to which Hermione answers, “Mandrake, or Mandragora, is a powerful restorative…It is used to return people who have been transfigured our cursed back to their original state.”While Harry and his classmates attend many classes each day, the author specifically chooses to share this class with her readers. Professor Sprout’s lesson teaches them that one of the Mandrake’s healing properties can bring a cursed (or petrified) person back to their normal state. The author is hinting to the readers that the Mandrakes will be necessary later in the book, foreshadowing that a character (or characters) will be cursed later in the story. Furthermore, it foreshadows that the monster from the Chamber of Secrets is a Basilisk, as this is a beast whose gaze can lead to a person becoming petrified.Example 2: Old Yeller (by Frank Gipson)Early in the book, a visitor warns the kids to beware of hydrophobia. This foreshadows events later in the story when the dog contracts the disease.Question: Identify three specific details that foreshadow the end of the story.Back There in the Grassby Gouverneur Morris19051190500Gouverneur Morris IV (1876–1953) was an American author of pulp novels and short stories during the early twentieth century. He was a great grandson of American Founding Father Gouverneur Morris. He graduated from Yale University, where he wrote for campus humor magazine The Yale Record. Several of his works were adapted into films.“Back There in the Grass” Originally appeared in Collier’s Weekly Magazine, December 16, 1911. Like “The Landlady,” it might be considered a kind of mystery story. When such a story contains a high degree of suspense, danger, or horror (like “Back There in the Grass”), it is often called a “thriller.” The story also belongs to a genre known as “South Sea Stories,” which were quite popular at one time.It was spring in the South Seas when, for the first time, I went ashore at Batengo, which is the Polynesian village, and the only one on the big grass island of the same name. There is a cable station just up the beach from the village, and a good-natured young chap named Graves had charge of it. He was an upstanding, clean-cut fellow, as the fact that he had been among the islands for three years without falling into any of their ways proved. The interior of the corrugated iron house in which he lived, for instance, was bachelor from A to Z. And if that wasn't a sufficient alibi my pointer dog, Don, who dislikes anything Polynesian or Melanesian, took to him at once. And they established a romping friendship. He gave us lunch on the porch, and because he had not seen a white man for two months, or a liver-and-white dog for two years, he told us the entire story of his young life, with reminiscences of early childhood and plans for the future thrown in. The future was very simple. There was a girl coming out to him from the States by the next steamer but one; the captain of that steamer would join them together in holy wedlock, and after that the Lord would provide. “My dear fellow;” he said, “you think I’m asking her to share a very lonely sort of life, but if you could imagine all the—the affection and gentleness, and thoughtfulness that I’ve got stored up to pour out at her feet for the rest of our lives, you wouldn't be a bit afraid for her happiness. If a man spends his whole time and imagination thinking up ways to make a girl happy and occupied, he can think up a whole lot. . . . I’d like ever so much to show her to you.” He led the way to his bedroom, and stood in silent rapture before a large photograph that leaned against the wall over his dressing table. She didn’t look to me like the sort of girl a cable agent would happen to marry. She looked like a swell girl—the real thing— beautiful and simple and unaffected. “Yes,” he said, “isn’t she?” I hadn't spoken a word. Now I said: “The usual cable agent,’’ I said, “keeps from going mad by having a dog or a cat or some pet or other to talk to. But I can understand a photograph like this being all-sufficient to any man—even if he had never seen the original. Allow me to shake hands with you.” Then I got him away from the girl, because my time was short, and I wanted to find out about some things that were important to me. “You haven’t asked me my business in these parts,” I said, “but I’ll tell you. I’m collecting grasses for the Bronx Botanical Garden.” “Then, by Jove!” said Graves, “you have certainly come to the right place. There used to be a tree on this island, but the last man who saw it died in 1789—Grass! The place is all grass: there are fifty kinds right around my house here.” “I’ve noticed only eighteen,” I said, “but that isn’t the point. The point is: when do the Batengo Island grasses begin to go to seed ?” And I smiled. “You think you’ve got me stumped, don’t you?” he said. “That a mere cable agent wouldn’t notice such things. Well, that grass there,” and he pointed “—beach nut we call it —is the first to ripen seed, and, as far as I know, it does it just six weeks from now.” “Are you just making things up to impress me?” “No, sir, I am not. I know to the minute. You see, I’m a victim of hay fever.” “In that case,” I said, “expect me back about the time your nose begins to run.” “Really ?” And his whole face lighted up. “I’m delighted. Only six weeks. Why, then, if you’ll stay round for only five or six weeks more, you’ll be here for the wedding.” “I’ll make it if I possibly can,” I said. “I want to see if that girl’s really true.” “Anything I can do to help you while you’re gone? I’ve got loads of spare time—” “If you knew anything about grasses—” “I don’t. But I’ll blow back into the interior and look around. I've been meaning to right along, just for fun. But I can never get any of them to go with me.” “The natives?” “Yes. Poor lot. They’re hurting themselves as fast as they can. There are more wooden gods than people in Batengo village, and the superstition’s so thick you could cut it with a knife. All the manly virtues have perished. . . . Aloiu!” The boy who did Graves’s chores for him came lazily out of the house. “Aloiu,” said Graves, “just run back into the island to the top of that hill—see?— that one over there—and fetch a handful of grass for this gentleman. He’ll give you five dollars for it.” Aloiu grinned sheepishly, and shook his head. “Fifty dollars?” Aloiu shook his head with even more firmness, and I whistled. Fifty dollars would have made him the Rockefeller-Carnegie-Morgan of those parts. “All right, coward,” said Graves cheerfully. “Run away and play with the other children. . . . Now isn’t that curious? Neither love, money, nor insult will drag one of them a mile from the beach. They say that if you go ‘back there in the grass’ something awful will happen to you.” “As what?” I asked. “The last man to try it,” said Graves, “in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, was a woman. When they found her she was all black and swollen—at least that’s what they say. Something had bitten her just above the ankle.” “Nonsense,” I said, “there are no snakes in the whole Batengo group.” “They didn’t say it was a snake,” said Graves. “They said the marks of the bite were like those that would be made by the teeth of a very little—child.” Graves rose and stretched himself. “What’s the use of arguing with people that tell yarns like that! All the same, if you’re bent on making expeditions back into the grass, you’ll make ’em alone, unless the cable breaks and I’m free to make ’em with you.” Five weeks later I was once more coasting along the wavering hills of Batengo Island, with a sharp eye out for a first sight of the cable station and Graves. Five weeks with no company but Kanakas and a pointer dog makes one white man pretty keen for the society of another. Furthermore, at our one meeting I had taken a great shine to Graves, and to the charming young lady who was to brave a life in the South Seas for his sake. If I was eager to get ashore, Don was more so. I had a shotgun across my knees with which to salute the cable station, and the sight of that weapon, coupled with toothsome memories of a recent big hunt down on Forked Peak, had set the dog quivering from stem to stern, to crouching, wagging his tail till it disappeared, and beating sudden tattoos upon the deck with his forepaws. And when at last we rounded on the cable station and I let off both barrels, he began to bark and race about the schooner like a thing possessed. The salute brought Graves out of his house. He stood on the porch waving a handkerchief, and I called to him through a megaphone; hoped that he was well, said how glad I was to see him, and asked him to meet me in Batengo village. Even at that distance I detected a something irresolute in his manner; and a few minutes later when he had fetched a hat out of the house, locked the door, and headed toward the village, he looked more like a soldier marching to battle than a man walking half a mile to greet a friend. “That’s funny,” I said to Don. “He’s coming to meet us in spite of the fact that he’d much rather not. Oh, well!” I left the schooner while she was still under way, and reached the beach before Graves came up. There were too many strange brown men to suit Don, and he kept very close to my legs. When Graves arrived the natives fell away from him as if he had been a leper. He wore a sort of sickly smile, and when he spoke the dog stiffened his legs and growled menacingly. “Don!” I exclaimed sternly, and the dog cowered, but the spines along his back bristled and he kept a menacing eye upon Graves. The man’s face looked drawn and rather angry. The frank boyishness was clean out of it. He had been strained by something or other to the breaking point—so much was evident. “My dear fellow,” I said, “what the devil is the matter?" Graves looked to right and left, and the islanders shrank still further away from him. “You can see for yourself,” he said curtly. “I’m taboo.” And then, with a little break in his voice: “Even your dog feels it. Don, good boy! Come here, sir!” Don growled quietly. “You see!” “Don,” I said sharply, “this man is my friend and yours. Pat him, Graves.” Graves reached forward and patted Don's head, and talked to him soothingly. But although Don did not growl or menace, he shivered under the caress and was unhappy. “So you’re taboo!” I said cheerfully. “That’s the result of anything, from stringing pink and yellow shells on the same string to murdering your uncle’s grandmother-in-law. Which have you done?” “I’ve been back there in the grass,” he said, “and because—because nothing happened to me I’m taboo.” “Is that all?” “As far as they know—yes.” “Well!” said I, “my business will take me back there for days at a time, so I’ll be taboo, too. Then there'll be two of us. Did you find any curious grasses for me ?” “I don’t know about grasses,” he said, “but I found something very curious that I want to show you and ask your advice about. Are you going to share my house?” “I think I’ll keep headquarters on the schooner,” I said, “but if you’ll put me up now and then for a meal or for the night—” “I’ll put you up for lunch right now,” he said, “if you’ll come. I’m my own cook and bottle washer since the taboo, but I must say the change isn’t for the worse so far as food goes.” He was looking and speaking more cheerful. “May I bring Don?” He hesitated. “Why—yes—of course.” “If you’d rather not?” “No, bring him. I want to make friends again if I can.” So we started for Graves’s house, Don very close at my heels. “Graves,” I said, “surely a taboo by a lot of fool islanders hasn’t upset you. There’s something on your mind. Bad news ?” “Oh, no,” he said. “She’s coming. It’s other things. I’ll tell you by and by— everything. Don’t mind me. I’m all right. Listen to the wind in the grass. That sound day and night is enough to put a man off his feed.” “You say you found something very curious back there in the grass?” “I found, among other things, a stone monolith. It’s fallen down, but it’s almost as big as the Flatiron Building in New York. It’s ancient as days—all carved —it’s a sort of woman, I think. But we’ll go back one day and have a look at it. Then, of course, I saw all the different kinds of grasses in the world—they’d interest you more—but I’m such a punk botanist that I gave up trying to tell ’em apart. I liked the flowers best— there’s millions of ‘em—down among the grass. . . . I tell you, old man, this island is the greatest curiosity shop in the whole world.” He unlocked the door of his house and stood aside for me to go in first. “Shut up, Don!” The dog growled savagely, but I banged him with my open hand across the snout, and he quieted down and followed into the house, all tense and watchful. On the edge of Graves’s writing table, with its legs hanging over, was what I took to be an idol of some light brownish wood—say sandalwood, with a touch of pink. But it was the most lifelike and astounding piece of carving I ever saw in the islands or out of them. It was about a foot high, and represented a Polynesian woman in the prime of life, say, fifteen or sixteen years old, only the features were finer and cleaner carved. It was nearly nude with just the most essential of leather coverings, in an attitude of easy repose—the legs hanging, the toes dangling—the hands resting, palms downward, on the blotter, the trunk relaxed. The eyes, which were a kind of steely blue, seemed to have been made, depth upon depth, of some wonderful translucent enamel, and to make his work still more realistic the artist had planted the statuette’s eyebrows, eyelashes, and scalp with real hair, very soft and silky, brown on the head and black for the lashes and eyebrows. The thing was so lifelike that it frightened me. And when Don began to growl like distant thunder I didn’t blame him. But I leaned over and caught him by the collar, because it was evident that he wanted to get at that statuette and destroy it. When I looked up the statuette’s eyes had moved. They were turned downward upon the dog, with cool curiosity and indifference. A kind of shudder went through me. And then, lo and behold, the statuette’s tiny brown chest rose and fell slowly, and a long breath came out of its nostrils. I backed violently into Graves, dragging Don with me and half choking him. “Heaven Almighty!” I said. “It’s alive.” “Isn’t she!” said he. “I caught her back there in the grass—the little minx. And when I heard your signal I put her up on that table to keep her out of mischief. It’s too high for her to jump—and she’s very sore about it.” “You found her in the grass,” I said. “For heaven’s sake—are there more of them?” “Thick as quail,” said he, “but it’s hard to get a sight of ’em. But you were overcome by curiosity, weren’t you, old girl? You came out to have a look at the big white giant and he caught you with his thumb and forefinger by the scruff of the neck—so you couldn’t bite him—and here you are.” The womankin’s lips parted, and I saw a flash of white teeth. She looked up into Graves’s face and the steely eyes softened. It was evident that she was very fond of him. “Rum sort of a pet,” said Graves. “What?” “Rum?” I said. “It’s horrible—it isn’t decent—it—it ought to be taboo. Don’s got it sized up right. He—he wants to kill it.” 2562225245745“Please don’t keep calling her It,” said Graves. “She wouldn’t like it—if she understood.” Then he whispered words that were Greek to me, and the womankin laughed aloud. Her laugh was sweet and tinkly, like the upper notes of a spinet. “You can speak her language?” “A few words—Tog ma Lao?” “Na!” “Aba Ton sug ato.” “Nan Tane dom ud Ion anea!” It sounded like that—only all whispered and very soft. It sounded a little like the wind in the grass.“She says she isn’t afraid of the dog,” said Graves, “and that he’d better let her alone.” “I almost hope he won’t,” said I. “Come outside. I don’t like her. I think I’ve got a touch of the horrors.” Graves remained behind a moment to lift the womankin down from the table, and when he rejoined me I had made up my mind to talk to him like a father. “Graves,” I said, “although that creature in there is only a foot high, it isn’t a pig or a monkey, it’s a woman, and you’re guilty of what’s considered a pretty ugly crime at home—abduction. You’ve stolen this woman away from kith and kin, and the least you can do is to carry her back where you found her and turn her loose. Let me ask you one thing—what would Miss Chester think?” “Oh, that doesn’t worry me,” said Graves. “But I am worried—worried sick. It’s early—shall we talk now, or wait till after lunch?” “Now,” I said. “Well,” said he, “you left me pretty well enthused on the subject of botany—so I went back there twice to look up grasses for you. The second time I went I got to a deep sort of valley where the grass is waist high—that, by the way, is where the big monolith is—and that place was alive with things that were frightened and ran. I could see the directions they took by the way the grass tops acted. There were lots of loose stones about and I began to throw ’em to see if I could knock one of the things over. Suddenly all at once I saw a pair of bright little eyes peering out of a bunch of grass—I let fly at them, and something gave a sort of moan and thrashed about in the grass—and then lay still. I went to look, and found that I’d stunned—her. She came to and tried to bite me, but I had her by the scruff of the neck and she couldn’t. Further, she was sick with being hit in the chest with the stone, and first thing I knew she keeled over in the palm of my hand in a dead faint. I couldn’t find any water or anything—and I didn’t want her to die—so I brought her home. She was sick for a week—and I took care of her—as I would a sick pup— and she began to get well and want to play and romp and poke into everything. She’d get the lower drawer of my desk open and hide in it—or crawl into a rubber boot and play house. And she got to be right good company— same as any pet does—a cat or a dog—or a monkey—and naturally, she being so small, I couldn’t think of her as anything but a sort of little beast that I’d caught and tamed. . . . You see how it all happened, don’t you? Might have happened to anybody.” “Why, yes,” I said, “If she didn’t give a man the horrors right at the start—I can understand making a sort of pet of her— but, man, there’s only one thing to do. Be persuaded. Take her back where you found her, and turn her loose.” “Well and good,” said Graves. “I tried that, and next morning I found her at my door, sobbing—horrible dry sobs—no tears. . . . You’ve said one thing that’s full of sense: she isn’t a pig—or a monkey —she’s a woman.” “You don’t mean to say,” said I, “that that mite of a thing is in love with you?” “I don't know what else you’d call it.” “Graves,” I said, “Miss Chester arrives by the next steamer. In the mean while something has got to be done.” “What?” said he helplessly. “I don’t know,” I said. “Let me think.” The dog Don laid his head heavily on my knee, as if he wished to offer a solution of the difficulty. A week before Miss Chester’s steamer was due the situation had not changed. Graves’s pet was as much a fixture of Graves’s house as the front door. And a man was never confronted with a more serious problem. Twice be carried her back into the grass and deserted her, and each time she returned and was found sobbing— horrible dry sobs—on the porch. And a number of times we took her, or Graves did, in the pocket of his jacket, upon systematic searches for her people. Doubtless she could have helped us to find them, but she wouldn’t. She was very sullen on these expeditions and frightened. When Graves tried to put her down she would cling to him, and it took real force to pry her loose. In the open she could run like a rat; and in open country it would have been impossible to desert her; she would have followed at Graves’s heels as fast as he could move them. But forcing through the thick grass tired her after a few hundred yards, and she would gradually drop farther and farther behind—sobbing. There was a pathetic side to it. She hated me. And made no bones about it; but there was an armed truce between us. She feared my influence over Graves, and I feared her—well, just as some people fear rats or snakes. Things utterly out of the normal always do worry me. and Bo, which was the name Graves had learned for her, was, so far as I know, unique in human experience. In appearance she was like an unusually good-looking island girl observed through the wrong end of an opera glass, but in habit and action she was different. She would catch flies and little grasshoppers and eat them all alive and kicking, and if you teased her more than she liked her ears would flatten the way a cat’s do, and she would hiss like a snapping turtle, and show her teeth. But one got accustomed to her. Even poor Don learned that it was not his duty to punish her with one bound and a snap. But he would never let her touch him, believing that in her case discretion was the better part of valor. If she approached him he withdrew, always with dignity, but equally with determination. He knew in his heart that something about her was horribly wrong, and against nature. I knew it, too, and I think Graves began to suspect it. Well, a day came when Graves, who had been up since dawn, saw the smoke of a steamer along the horizon, and began to fire off his revolver so that I, too, might wake and participate in his joy. I made tea and went ashore. “It’s her steamer,” he said. “Yes,” said I, “and we’ve got to decide something.” “About Bo?” “Suppose I take her off your hands— for a week or so—till you and Miss Chester have settled down and put your house in order. Then Miss Chester—Mrs. Graves, that is —can decide what is to be done. I admit that I’d rather wash my hands of the business—but I’m the only white man available, and I propose to stand by my race. Don’t say a word to Bo—just bring her out to the schooner, and leave her.” In the upshot Graves accepted my offer, and while Bo. fairly bristling with excitement and curiosity, was exploring the farther corners of my cabin, we slipped out and locked the door on her. The minute she knew what had happened she began to tear around and raise Cain. It sounded a little like a cat having a fit. Graves was white and unhappy. “Let’s get away quick,” he said; “I feel like a skunk.” But Miss Chester was everything that her photograph said about her and more too, so that the trick he had played Bo was very soon a negligible weight on Graves’s mind. If the wedding was quick and businesslike, it was also jolly and romantic. The oldest passenger gave the bride away. All the crew came aft and sang “The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden That Earliest Wedding-Day”—to the tune called “Blairgowrie.” They had worked it up in secret for a surprise. And the bride’s dovebrown eyes got a little teary. I was best man. The captain read the service, and choked occasionally. As for Graves—I had never thought him handsome—well, with his brown face and white linen suit, he made me think, and I’m sure I don’t know why, of St. Michael—that time he overcame Lucifer. The captain blew us to breakfast with champagne and a cake, and then the happy pair went ashore in a boat full of the bride’s trousseau, and the crew manned the bulwarks and gave three cheers, and then something like twenty-seven more, and last thing of all the brass cannon was fired, and the little square flags that spell G-o-o d L-uc-k were run up on the signal halyards. As for me, I went back to my schooner, feeling blue and lonely. I knew little about women and less about love. It didn’t seem quite fair. For once I hated my profession—seed gatherer to a body of scientific gentlemen whom I had never seen. Well, there’s nothing so good for the blues as putting things in order. I cleaned my rifle and revolver. I wrote up my note-book. I developed some plates; I studied a brand-new book on South Sea grasses that had been sent out to me, and I found some mistakes. I went ashore with Don, and had a long walk on the beach —in the opposite direction from Graves’s house, of course—and I sent Don into the water after sticks, and he seemed to enjoy it, and so I stripped and went in with him. Then I dried in the sun, and had a match with my hands to see which could find the tiniest shell. Toward dusk we returned to the schooner and had dinner, and after that I went into my cabin to see how Bo was getting on. She flew at me like a cat, and if I hadn’t jerked my foot back she must have bitten me. As it was, her teeth tore a piece out of my trousers. I’m afraid I kicked her. Anyway I heard her land with a crash in a far corner. I struck a match and lighted candles—they are cooler than lamps—very warily—one eye on Bo. She had retreated under a chair, and looked out —very sullen and angry. I sat down and began to talk to her. “It’s no use,” I said, “you’re trying to bite and scratch; because you’re only as big as a minute. So come out here and make friends. I don't like you and you don’t like me; but we’re going to be thrown together for quite some time, so we’d better make the best of it. You come out here, and behave pretty and I’ll give you a bit of gingersnap.” The last word was intelligible to her, and she came a little way out from under the chair. I had a bit of gingersnap in my pocket, left over from treating Don, and I tossed it on the floor midway between us. She darted forward and ate it with quick bites. Well, then, she looked up, and her eyes asked—just as plain as day: “Why are things thus? Why have I come to live with you? I don’t like you. I want to go back to Graves.” I couldn’t explain very well, and just shook my head and then went on trying to make friends—it was no use. She hated me, and after a time I got bored. I threw a pillow on the floor for her to sleep on, and left her. Well, the minute the door was shut and locked she began to sob. You could hear her for quite a distance, and I couldn’t stand it. So I went back—and talked to her as nicely and soothingly as I could. But she wouldn’t even look at me —just lay face down— heaving and sobbing. Now I don’t like little creatures that snap—so when I picked her up it was by the scruff of the neck. She had to face me then, and I saw that in spite of all the sobbing her eyes were perfectly dry. That struck me as curious. I examined them through a pocket magnifying glass, and discovered that they had no tear-ducts. Of course she couldn’t cry. Perhaps I squeezed the back of her neck harder than I meant to—anyway her lips began to draw back and her teeth to show. It was exactly at that second that I recalled the legend Graves had told me about the island woman being found dead, and all black and swollen, back there in the grass, with teeth marks on her that looked as if they had been made by a very little child. I forced Bo’s mouth wide open, and looked in. Then I reached for a candle and held it steadily between her face and mine. She struggled furiously so that I had to put down the candle and catch her legs together in my free hand. But I had seen enough. I felt wet and cold all over. For if the swollen glands at the base of the deeply grooved canines meant anything, that which I held between my hands was not a woman—but a snake. I put her in a wooden box that had contained soap and nailed slats over the top. And, personally, I was quite willing to put scrap-iron in the box with her, and fling it overboard. But I did not feel quite justified without consulting Graves. As an extra precaution in case of accidents, I overhauled my medicine chest and made up a little package for the breast pocket—a lancet, a rubber bandage, and a pill-box full of permanganate crystals. I had still much collecting to do, “back there in the grass,” and I did not propose to step on any of Bo’s cousins or her sisters or her aunts—without having some of the elementary first-aids to the snake-bitten handy. It was a lovely starry night, and I determined to sleep on deck. Before turning in I went to have a look at Bo. Having nailed her in a box securely, as I thought, I must have left my cabin door ajar. Anyhow she was gone. She must have braced her back against one side of the box, her feet against the other, and burst it open. I had most certainly underestimated her strength and resources. The crew, warned of peril, searched the whole schooner over, slowly and methodically, lighted by lanterns. We could not find her. Well, swimming comes natural to snakes. I went ashore as quickly as I could get a boat manned and rowed. I took Don on a leash, a shotgun loaded, and both pockets of my jacket full of cartridges. We ran swiftly along the beach, Don and I, and then turned into the grass to make a short cut for Graves’s house. All of a sudden Don began to tremble with eagerness and nuzzle and sniff among the roots of the grass. He was “making game.” “Good Don,” I said, “good boy— hunt her up! Find her!” The moon had risen. I saw two figures standing in the porch of Graves’s house. I was about to call to them and warn Graves that Bo was loose and dangerous— when a scream—shrill and frightful—rang in my ears. I saw Graves turn to his bride and catch her in his arms. When I came up she had collected her senses and was behaving splendidly. While Graves fetched a lantern and water she sat down on the porch, her hack against the house, and undid her garter, so that I could pull the stocking off her bitten foot. Her instep, into which Bo’s venomous teeth had sunk, was already swollen and discolored. I slashed the teeth-marks this way and that with my lancet. And Mrs. Graves kept saying: “All right—all right— don’t mind me—do what’s best.” Don’s leash had wedged between two of the porch planks, and all the time we were working over Mrs. Graves he whined and struggled to get loose. “Graves,” I said, when we had done what we could, “if your wife begins to seem faint, give her brandy—just a very little— at a time—and—I think we were in time —and for heaven’s sake don’t ever let her know why she was bitten—or by what—” Then I turned and freed Don and took off his leash. The moonlight was now very white and brilliant. In the sandy path that led from Graves’s porch I saw the print of feet— shaped just like human feet—less than an inch long. I made Don smell them, and said: “Hunt close, boy! Hunt close!” Thus hunting, we moved slowly through the grass toward the interior of the island. The scent grew hotter—suddenly Don began to move more stiffly—as if he had the rheumatism—his eyes straight ahead saw something that I could not see—the tip of his tail vibrated furiously —he sank lower and lower—his legs worked more and more stiffly—his head was thrust forward to the full stretch of his neck toward a thick clump of grass. In the act of taking a wary step he came to a dead halt—his right forepaw just clear of the ground. The tip of his tail stopped vibrating. The tail itself stood straight out behind him and became rigid like a bar of iron. I never saw a stancher point. “Steady, boy!” I pushed forward the safety of my shotgun and stood at attention. “How is she?” “Seems to be pulling through. I heard you fire both barrels. Any luck?”Study QuestionsWhat are the narrator and his dog doing on the island? Who is Graves?For whom is Graves waiting to arrive?How do the islanders feel about the grass in the valley? According to Graves, what happened to the last person who went into the grass?How did Graves come to meet Bo?What does Bo do when Graves tries to send her back to her people?What does the narrator discover when he examines Bo?Explain what you think happens to Bo and Don at the end of the story.Literary Focus: SuspenseSuspense is a literary device that authors use to keep their readers’ interest alive throughout the work. It is a feeling of anticipation that something meaningful is about to happen. Authors advance their plots in a story, and keep readers interested, by creating suspense. It is generally a crucial part of what is sometimes called “rising action.”1533400Example 1: Romeo and Juliet (by William Shakespeare)In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare builds suspense by allowing the audience to know things that the characters don't. The audience knows that Juliet has faked her death, but Romeo does not know. The scene where he finds her in the tomb and plans to kill himself is suspenseful.Example 2: Harry Potter (by J.K. Rowling)J.K. Rowling builds suspense in several of the Harry Potter books by having Harry and his friends unravel the details of Voldemort's evil plans a little at a time. For example, Harry often overhears parts of conversations or is allowed by Dumbledore to know just enough to be helpful, but the reader typically doesn't know the entire story until the end.Example 3: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)Suspense is created in a variety of ways. One way is by having the characters face crises. For example, when Old Yeller contracts rabies, the reader feels anxiety or worry about how Travis will deal with the problem. This suspense builds until we know the final outcome.Question: What is the most suspenseful part of “Back There in the Grass”? How does the writer make it suspenseful?Sledby Thomas E. Adams19051190500Thomas E. Adams (1937-?) graduated from LaSalle College and received a higher degree in writing from the University of Florida. “Sled” was originally published in the Winter, 1961, edition of The Sewanee Review. It was included in the O. Henry Prize Stories 1962. It has been republished many times and was adapted into a play for broadcast by the Voice of America. As you read, try to focus on the connection between the boys’ actions and his feelings. All the adventure of the night and snow lay before him: if only he could get out of the house. "You can't go out," his mother said, "until you leam how to act like a gentleman. Now apologize to your sister." He stared across the table at his sister."Go on," his mother said.His sister was watching her plate. He could detect the trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth."I won't! She’s laughing at me!" He saw the smile grow more pronounced. "Beside, she is a liar!"His sister did not even bother to look up, and he felt from looking at her that he had said exactly what she had wanted him to say. He grew irritated at his stupidity."That settles it," his mother said calmly, without turning from the stove. "No outs for you."He stared at his hands, his mind in a panic. He could feel the smile on his sister, face. His hand fumbled with the fork on his plate. "No," he said meekly, prodding a piece of meat with the fork. "I'll apologize."His sister looked up at him innocently."Well?" said his mother. "Go on."He took a deep breath. "I'm ..." He met his sister's gaze. "I'm sorry!" But it came out too loudly, he knew."He is not," his sister said.He clenched his teeth and pinched his legs with his fingers. "I am too," he said. It sounded good, he knew; and it was half over. He had control now, and he relaxed a bit and even said further. "I'm sorry I called you a liar.""That’s better," his mother said. "You two should love each other. Not always be fighting."He paused strategically for a long moment."Can I go out now,"Yes," his mother said.He rose from the table, glaring at his sister with a broad grin, calling her a liar with his eyes.His hand plucked his jacket from the touch and swirled it around his back. The buttons refused to fit through the holes, so he let them go in despair. He sat down just long enough to pull on his shiny black rubbers. Finally he put on his gloves. Then with four proud strides he arrived at the door and reached for the knob."Put your hat on," his mother said without looking at him. His face, toward the door, screwed and tightened with disgust. "Aw Ma.""Put it on.""Aw, Ma, it’s not that cold out.""Put it on.""Honest Ma, it’s not that cold out.""Are you going to put your hat on, or are you going to stay and help with the dishes,"He sighed. "All right," he said. "I'll put it on." The door to the kitchen closed on his back and he was alone in the cold gloom of the shed. Pale light streamed through the frosted window and fell against the wall where the sled stood. The dark cold room was silent, and he was free. He moved into the shaft of light and stopped when from the kitchen he heard the muffled murmur of his mother’s voice, as if she were far away. He listened. The murmuring hushed and he was alone again.The sled. It was leaning against the wall, its varnished wood glistening in the moonlight. He moved closer to it and he saw his shadow block the light, and he heard the cold cracking of the loose linoleum beneath his feet.He picked it up. He felt the smooth wood slippery in his gloved hands. The thin steel runners shone blue in the light, as he moved one finger along the polished surface to erase any dust. He shifted the sled in his hands and stood getting the feel of its weight the way he had seen his brother hold a rifle. He gripped the sled tightly, aware of the strength in his arms; and he felt proud to be strong and alone and far away with the sled in the dark cold silent room.The sled was small and light. But strong. And when he ran with it, he ran very quickly, quicker than anyone, because it was very light and small and not bulky like other sleds. And when he ran with it, he carried it as if it were a part of him, as if he carried nothing in his arms. He set the rear end on the floor and let the sled lean against him, his hands on the steering bar. He pushed down on the bar and the thin runners curved gracefully because they were made of shiny blue flexible steel; and with them he could turn sharply in the snow, sharper than anyone. It was the best sled. It was his.He felt a slight chill in the cold room, and in the moonlight he saw his breath in vapor rising like smoke before his eyes. His body shivered with excitement as he moved hurriedly but noiselessly to the door. He flu, it open; and the snow blue and sparkling, and the shadows deep and mysterious, and the air silent and cold: all awaited him."Joey!" From the kitchen came his mother's voice. He turned toward the kitchen door and refused to answer. "Joseph!""What!" His tone was arrogant, and a chill of fear rushed through his mind.There was a long awful silence."Don’t you forget to be home by seven o'clock." She hadn't noticed, and his fear was gone."All right!" he answered, ashamed of his fear. He stepped across the threshold and closed the door. Then he removed the hat and dropped it in the snow beside the porch.He plodded down the alley, thrilling in the cold white silence —the snow was thick. The gate creaked as he pushed it open, holding and guiding the sled through the portal. The street was white, and shiny were the icy tracks of automobiles in the lamplight above. While between him and the light the black branches of trees ticked softly in the slight wind. In the gutters stood enormous heaps of snow, pale and dark in the shadows, stretching away from him like a string of mountains. He moved out of the shadows, between two piles of snow, and into the center of the street; where he stood for a moment gazing down the white road that gradually grew darker until it melted into the gloom at the far end.Then he started to trot slowly down the street. Slowly, slowly gaining speed without losing balance. Faster he went now, watching the snow glide beneath his shiny black rubber boots, Faster and faster, but stiffly, don't slip. Don't fall, don't fall: now! And his body plunged downward, and the sled whacked in the quiet and the white close to his eyes was flying beneath him as he felt the thrill of gliding alone along a shadowy street, with only the ski-sound of the sled in the packed snow. Then before his eyes the moving snow gradually slowed. And stopped. And he heard only the low sound of the wind and his breath.Up again and start the trot. He moved to the beating sound of his feet along the ground. His breath came heavily and quickly, and matched the rhythm of his pumping legs, straining to carry the weight of his body without the balance of his arms. He reached a wild dangerous breakneck speed, and his leg muscles swelled and ached from the tension, and the fear of falling too early filled his mind; and down he let his body go. The white road rushed to meet him; he was off again, guiding the sled obliquely across the street toward a huge pile of snow near a driveway.Squinting his eyes into the biting wind, he calculated when he would turn to avoid crashing. The pile, framed against the dark-ness of the sky, glistened white and shiny. It loomed larger and larger before him. He steered the sled sharply, bending the bar; and the snow flew as the sled churned sideways, and he heard suddenly a cold metallic snap. He and the sled went tumbling over in the hard wet snow. He rolled with it and the steering bar jarred his forehead. Then the dark sky and snow stopped turning, and all he felt was the .Id air stinging the bump on his forehead.The runner had snapped; the sled was broken. He stared at the shiny smooth runner and touched the jagged edge with his fingers. He sat in the middle of the driveway, the sled cradled in his lap, running his fingers up and down the thin runner until he came to the jagged edge where it had broken.1933575209550With his fingers he took the two broken edges and fitted them back into place. They stuck together with only a thin crooked line to indicate the split. But it was like putting a broken cup together. He stared at it, and wished it would be all right and felt like crying.He got up and walked slowly back down the street to his house. He sat down between the back bumper of a parked car and a pile of snow. Cradling the sled across his legs, he put the two edges together again and stared at them. He felt a thickness in his throat, and he swallowed hard to remove it, but it did not go away.He leaned back, resting his head against the snowpile. Through his wet eyelids he saw the lamplight shimmering brightly against the sky. He closed his eyes and saw again the shiny graceful curve of the runner. But it was broken now. He had bent it too far; too far. With his hand he rubbed his neck, then his eyes, then his neck again. And he felt the snow coming wet through his pants. As he shifted to a new position, he heard the creaking of a gate. He turned toward the sound.His sister was walking away from his house. He watched her move slowly across the street and into the grocery store. Through the plate-glass window he saw her talking with the storekeeper. He stared down at the runner. With his gloves off, he ran his fingers along the .Id smooth surface and felt the thin breakline. He got up, brushed the snow off the seat of his pants, and walked to the gate to wait for his sister.He saw her take a package from the man and come out of the store. She walked carefully on the smooth white, her figure dark in its own shadow as she passed beneath the streetlight, the package in her arm. When she reached the curb on his side, he rated his arms on the nose of the sled and exhaled a deep breath nervously. He pretended to be staring in the opposite direction. When he heard her feet crunching softly in the snow, he turned: "Hi," he said."Hi," she said, and she paused for a moment. "Good sledding?""Uhuh," he said. "Just right. Snow's packed nice and hard. Hardly any slush at all." He paused. "I'm just resting a bit now."She nodded. "I just went for some milk."His fingers moved slowly down the runner and touched the joined edges."Well . . ." she said, about to leave.His fingers trembled slightly, and he felt his heart begin to beat rapidly: "Do you want to take a flop?" In the still night air he heard with surprise the calm sound of his voice.Her face came suddenly alive. "Can I? I mean, will you let me? Rally?""Sure,” he said. "Go ahead." and he handed her the sled very carefully. She gave him the package.He put the bag under his arm and watched her move out of the shadows of the trees and into the light. She started to trot slowly, awkwardly, bearing the sled. She passed directly beneath the light and then she slipped and slowed to regain her balance. The sled looked large and heavy in her arms, and seeing her awkwardness, he realized she would be hurt badly in the fall. She was moving away again, out of the reach of the streetlight, and into the gray haze farther down the road.He moved to the curb, holding the bag tightly under his arm, hearing his heart pounding in his ears. He wanted to stop her, and he opened his mouth as if to all to her; but no sound came. It was too late: her dark figure was already starting the fall, putting the sled beneath her. Whack! And her head dipped with the front end jutting the ground, and the back of the sled and her legs rose like a seesaw and down they came with another muffled sound. The street was quiet, except for a low whimper that filled his ears.He saw her figure rise slowly and move toward him. He walked out to meet her beneath the light. She held the sled loosely in one hand, the broken runner dangling, reflecting light as she moved.She sobbed and looking up he saw bright tears falling down her cheek, and a thin line of blood trickling down her chin. In the corner of her mouth near the red swelling on her lip, a little bubble of spit shone with the blood in the light.He felt that he should say something but he did not speak. "I'm...I’m sorry," she said and the bubble broke. "I'm sorry I . . . your sled." She looked down at the sled. "It'll never be the same.""It'll be all right," he said. He felt that he ought to do something but he did not move. "I can get it soldered. Don’t worry about it." But he saw from her expression that she thought he was only trying to make her feel better."No," she said, shaking her head emphatically. "No it won't! It'll always have that weak spot now." She began to cry very hard. "I'm sorry."He made an awkward gesture of forgiveness with his hand. "Don't cry," he said.She kept crying."It wasn't your fault," he said."Yes it was," she said. "Oh, yes it was.""No!" he said. "No, it wasn't!" But she didn’t seem to hear him, and he felt his words were useless. He sighed wearily with defeat, not knowing what to say next. He saw her glance up at him as if to see whether he were still watching her, then she quickly lowered her gaze and said with despair and anguish: "Oh ... girls are so stupid!"There was no sound. She was no longer crying. She was looking at the ground: waiting. His cars heard nothing; they felt only the cold silent air."No they aren't," he said halfheartedly. And he heard her breathing again. He felt he had been forced to say that. In her shining eyes he saw an expression he did not understand. He wished she would go in the house. But seeing the tears on her cheeks and the blood on her chin, he immediately regretted the thought.She wiped her chin with her sleeve, and he winced, feeling rough cloth on an open cut. "Don't do that," his hand moved to his back pocket, "use my handkerchief."She waited.The pocket was empty. "I haven’t got one," he said. Staring directly at him, she patted gingerly the swollen part of her lip with the tips of her fingers.He moved closer to her. "Let me see," he said. With his hands he grasped her head and tilted it so that the light fell directly on the cut."It’s not too bad,” she said calmly. And as she said it she looked straight into his eyes, and he felt she was perfectly at ease; while standing that close to her, he felt clumsy and out of place. In his hands her hand was small and fragile, and her hair was soft and warm; he felt the rapid pulsing of the vein in her temple: his ears grew hot with shame."Maybe I better go inside and wash it off?" she asked.With his finger he wiped the blood from her chin. "Yes," he said, feeling relieved. "You go inside and wash it off." He took the sled and gave her the package.He stared at the ground as they walked to the gate in silence. When they reached the.. he became aware that she was watching him."You've got a nasty bump on your forehead," she said. "Yes," he said. "I fell.""Let me put some snow on it," she said, reaching to the ground. He caught her wrist and held it gently. "No," he said. He saw her about to object: "It’s all right. You go inside and take care of your lip." He said it softly but with his grip and his eyes he told her more firmly."All right," she said after a moment, and he released his hold. "But don't forget to put your hat on."He stared at her."I mean, before you go back in the house."They both smiled."Thanks for reminding me,” he said, and he dropped the sled in the snow and hurried to hold the gate open for her. She hesitated, then smiled proudly as he beckoned her into the alley.He watched her walk away from him down the dark alley in the gray snow. Her small figure swayed awkwardly as she stepped carefully in the deep snow, so as not to get her feet too wet. Her head was bowed and her shoulders hunched and he humbly felt her weakness. And he felt her cold. And he felt the snow running down her boots around her ankles. And though she wasn't crying now, he could still hear her low sobbing, and he saw her shining eyes and the tears falling and she trying to stop them and they falling even faster. And he wished he had never gone sledding. He wished that he had never even come out of the house tonight.The back door closed. He turned and moved about nervously kicking at the ground. At the edge of the curb he dug his hands deep into the cold wet snow. He came up with a handful and absently began shaping and smoothing it. He stopped abruptly and dropped it at his feet.He did not hear it fall. He was looking up at the dark sky but he did not see it. He put his cold hands in his back pockets but he did not feel them. He was wishing that he were some time a long time away from now and somewhere a long way away from here.In the corner of his eye something suddenly dimmed. Across the street in the grocery store the light was out: it was seven o'clock.Study QuestionsWhy is the boy made to apologize at the beginning of the story? Do you think his apology is sincere? Why or why not?Describe the relationship between the brother and his sister.How does the boy break the sled runner?What is his sister’s reaction when he offers to let her use it?What happens to the sister when she uses the sled?What does the boy do after his sister’s fall? How does she react to the fall?How do you think the brother and sister’s relationship might change as a result of the incident? Why do you think so?Literary Focus: Conflict1161925In literature, conflict is a literary element that involves a struggle between two opposing forces. Often this conflict is what drives the plot of a story: the reader wants to find out how the conflict will be resolved. A conflict may be internal or external.An internal conflict arises when a character experiences two opposite emotions or desires – usually virtue and vice, or good and evil – inside him. This disagreement causes the character to suffer tension or anxiety. External conflict, on the other hand, is where a character finds himself in struggle with outside forces that hamper his progress. The most common type of external conflict is where a protagonist (main character) fights back against an antagonist (a character who opposes the main character) that impedes his advancement. An external conflict could also occur when a character faces any outside force, such as nature or society.Example 1: Internal Conflict: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)Travis faces an internal conflict when he has to decide whether or not to shoot Old Yeller. One part of him says that he must kill the animal to keep his family members out of danger. Another part of him, however, loves Old Yeller, and doesn’t want to kill him. The reader is held in suspense until the conflict is resolved.Example 2: External Conflict: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)Old Yeller faces an external conflict when the bear tries to attack Little Arliss. Old Yeller fights off the bear to protect Little Arliss. This is a struggle between two outside forces. Question: Identify one external conflict in “Sled.” Identify one internal conflict.Contents of the Dead Man’s PocketsBy Jack Finney1209550Walter Braden Finney, ("Jack") (1911-1995), was the author of 10 novels as well as many short stories and plays, but his fame rests primarily on the novel The Body Snatchers (republished as Invasion of the Body Snatchers), about humans being replicated by alien seed pods. It was filmed three times“Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket” was originally published in the magazine Collier’s in 1956. It exhibits the author's concern with time and the struggle to escape from its grip. It can be regarded as a type of adventure story. “Adventure” is a word derived from Old French meaning “destiny,” “fate,” or “chance event.” Today, we define adventure as a remarkable or unexpected journey, experience, or event that a person participates in as a result of chance. Adventures usually include dangerous situations, narrow escapes, problems to be solved through intelligence and skill, exotic people and places, and brave deeds. As you read, see how many of these elements apply to “Contents…” and how many do not. At the little living-room desk Tom Benecke rolled two sheets of flimsy and a heavier top sheet, carbon paper sandwiched between them, into his portable. Interoffice Memo, the top sheet was headed, and he typed tomorrow's date just below this; then he glanced at a creased yellow sheet, covered with his own handwriting, beside the typewriter. "Hot in here," he muttered to himself. Then, from the short hallway at his back, he heard the muffled clang of wire coat hangers in the bedroom closet, and at this reminder of what his wife was doing he thought: Hot, no--guilty conscience.He got up, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his gray wash slacks, stepped to the living-room window beside the desk, and stood breathing on the glass, watching the expanding circlet of mist, staring down through the autumn night at Lexington Avenue, eleven stories below. He was a tall, lean, dark-haired young man in a pullover sweater, who looked as though he had played not football, probably, but basketball in college. Now he placed the heels of his hands against the top edge of the lower window frame and shoved upward. But as usual the window didn't budge, and he had to lower his hands and then shoot them hard upward to jolt the window open a few inches. He dusted his hands, muttering.But still he didn't begin his work. He crossed the room to the hallway entrance and, leaning against the doorjamb, hands shoved into his back pockets again, he called, "Clare?" When his wife answered, he said, "Sure you don't mind going alone?""No." Her voice was muffled, and he knew her head and shoulders were in the bedroom closet. Then the tap of her high heels sounded on the wood floor and she appeared at the end of the little hallway, wearing a slip, both hands raised to one ear, clipping on an earring. She smiled at him--a slender, very pretty girl with light brown, almost blonde, hair--her prettiness emphasized by the pleasant nature that showed in her face. "It's just that I hate you to miss this movie; you wanted to see it too.""Yeah, I know." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Got to get this done though."She nodded, accepting this. Then, glancing at the desk across the living room, she said, "You work too much, though, Tom--and too hard."He smiled. "You won't mind though, will you, when the money comes rolling in and I'm known as the Boy Wizard of Wholesale Groceries?""I guess not." She smiled and turned back toward the bedroom.At his desk again, Tom lighted his tobacco pipe; then a few moments later as Clare appeared, dressed and ready to leave, he set it on the rim of the ash tray. "Just after seven," she said. "I can make the beginning of the first feature."He walked to the front-door closet to help her on with her coat. He kissed her then and, for an instant, holding her close, smelling the perfume she had used, he was tempted to go with her; it was not actually true that he had to work tonight, though he very much wanted to. This was his own project, unannounced as yet in his office, and it could be postponed. But then they won't see it till Monday, he thought once again, and if I give it to the boss tomorrow he might read it over the weekend. . . . "Have a good time," he said aloud. He gave his wife a little swat and opened the door for her, feeling the air from the building hallway, smelling faintly of floor wax, stream past his face.He watched her walk down the hall, flicked a hand in response as she waved, and then he started to close the door, but it resisted for a moment. As the door opening narrowed, the current of warm air from the hallway, channeled through this smaller opening now, suddenly rushed past him with accelerated force. Behind him he heard the slap of the window curtains against the wall and the sound of paper fluttering from his desk, and he had to push to close the door.Turning, he saw a sheet of white paper drifting to the floor in a series of arcs, and another sheet, yellow, moving toward the window, caught in the dying current flowing through the narrow opening. As he watched, the paper struck the bottom edge of the window and hung there for an instant, plastered against the glass and wood. Then as the moving air stilled completely, the curtains swinging back from the wall to hang free again, he saw the yellow sheet drop to the window ledge and slide over out of sight.He ran across the room, grasped the bottom edge of the window, and tugged, staring through the glass. He saw the yellow sheet, dimly now in the darkness outside, lying on the ornamental ledge a yard below the window. Even as he watched, it was moving, scraping slowly along the ledge, pushed by the breeze that pressed steadily against the building wall. He heaved on the window with all his strength and it shot open with a bang, the window weight rattling in the casing. But the paper was past his reach and, leaning out into the night, he watched it scud steadily along the ledge to the south, half-plastered against the building wall. Above the muffled sound of the street traffic far below, he could hear the dry scrape of its movement, like a leaf on the pavement.The living room of the next apartment to the south projected a yard or more farther out toward the street than this one; because of this the Beneckes paid seven and a half dollars less rent than their neighbors. And now the yellow sheet, sliding along the stone ledge, nearly invisible in the night, was stopped by the projecting blank wall of the next apartment. It lay motionless, then, in the corner formed by the two walls--a good five yards away, pressed firmly against the ornate corner ornament of the ledge, by the breeze that moved past Tom Benecke's face.He knelt at the window and stared at the yellow paper for a full minute or more, waiting for it to move, to slide off the ledge and fall, hoping he could follow its course to the street, and then hurry down in the elevator and retrieve it. But it didn't move, and then he saw that the paper was caught firmly between a projection of the convoluted corner ornament and the ledge. He thought about the poker from the fireplace, then the broom, then the mop--discarding each thought as it occurred to him. There was nothing in the apartment long enough to reach that paper.It was hard for him to understand that he actually had to abandon it--it was ridiculous--and he began to curse. Of all the papers on his desk, why did it have to be this one in particular! On four long Saturday afternoons he had stood in supermarkets counting the people who passed certain displays, and the results were scribbled on that yellow sheet. From stacks of trade publications, gone over page by page in snatched half-hours at work and during evenings at home, he had copied facts, quotations, and figures onto that sheet. And he had carried it with him to the Public Library on Fifth Avenue, where he'd spent a dozen lunch hours and early evenings adding more. All were needed to support and lend authority to his idea for a new grocery-store display method; without them his idea was a mere opinion. And there they all lay in his own improvised shorthand--countless hours of work--out there on the ledge.For many seconds he believed he was going to abandon the yellow sheet, that there was nothing else to do. The work could be duplicated. But it would take two months, and the time to present this idea was now, for use in the spring displays. He struck his fist on the window ledge. Then he shrugged. Even though his plan were adopted, he told himself, it wouldn't bring him a raise in pay--not immediately, anyway, or as a direct result. It won't bring me a promotion either, he argued--not of itself.But just the same, and he couldn't escape the thought, this and other independent projects, some already done and others planned for the future, would gradually mark him out from the score of other young men in his company. They were the way to change from a name on the payroll to a name in the minds of the company officials. They were the beginning of the long, long climb to where he was determined to be, at the very top. And he knew he was going out there in the darkness, after the yellow sheet fifteen feet beyond his reach.By a kind of instinct, he instantly began making his intention acceptable to himself by laughing at it. The mental picture of himself sidling along the ledge outside was absurd--it was actually comical--and he smiled. He imagined himself describing it; it would make a good story at the office and, it occurred to him, would add a special interest and importance to his memorandum, which would do it no harm at all.To simply go out and get his paper was an easy task--he could be back here with it in less than two minutes--and he knew he wasn't deceiving himself. The ledge, he saw, measuring it with his eye, was about as wide as the length of his shoe, and perfectly flat. And every fifth row of brick in the face of the building, he remembered--leaning out, he verified this--was indented half an inch, enough for the tips of his fingers, enough to maintain balance easily. It occurred to him that if this ledge and wall were only a yard above ground--as he knelt at the window staring out, this thought was the final confirmation of his intention--he could move along the ledge indefinitely.On a sudden impulse, he got to his feet, walked to the front closet, and took out an old tweed jacket; it would be cold outside. He put it on and buttoned it as he crossed the room rapidly toward the open window. In the back of his mind he knew he'd better hurry and get this over with before he thought too much, and at the window he didn't allow himself to hesitate.He swung a leg over the sill, then felt for and found the ledge a yard below the window with his foot. Gripping the bottom of the window frame very tightly and carefully, he slowly ducked his head under it, feeling on his face the sudden change from the warm air of the room to the chill outside. With infinite care he brought out his other leg, his mind concentrating on what he was doing. Then he slowly stood erect. Most of the putty, dried out and brittle, had dropped off the bottom edging of the window frame, he found, and the flat wooden edging provided a good gripping surface, a half-inch or more deep, for the tips of his fingers.Now, balanced easily and firmly, he stood on the ledge outside in the slight, chill breeze, eleven stories above the street, staring into his own lighted apartment, odd and different-seeming now.First his right hand, then his left, he carefully shifted his finger-tip grip from the puttyless window edging to an indented row of bricks directly to his right. It was hard to take the first shuffling sideways step then--to make himself move--and the fear stirred in his stomach, but he did it, again by not allowing himself time to think. And now--with his chest, stomach, and the left side of his face pressed against the rough cold brick--his lighted apartment was suddenly gone, and it was much darker out here than he had thought.Without pause he continued--right foot, left foot, right foot, left--his shoe soles shuffling and scraping along the rough stone, never lifting from it, fingers sliding along the exposed edging of brick. He moved on the balls of his feet, heels lifted slightly; the ledge was not quite as wide as he'd expected. But leaning slightly inward toward the face of the building and pressed against it, he could feel his balance firm and secure, and moving along the ledge was quite as easy as he had thought it would be. He could hear the buttons of his jacket scraping steadily along the rough bricks and feel them catch momentarily, tugging a little, at each mortared crack. He simply did not permit himself to look down, though the compulsion to do so never left him; nor did he allow himself actually to think. Mechanically--right foot, left foot, over and again--he shuffled along crabwise, watching the projecting wall ahead loom steadily closer. Then he reached it and, at the corner--he'd decided how he was going to pick up the paper--he lifted his right foot and placed it carefully on the ledge that ran along the projecting wall at a right angle to the ledge on which his other foot rested. And now, facing the building, he stood in the corner formed by the two walls, one foot on the ledging of each, a hand on the shoulder-high indentation of each wall. His forehead was pressed directly into the corner against the cold bricks, and now he carefully lowered first one hand, then the other, perhaps a foot farther down, to the next indentation in the rows of bricks.Very slowly, sliding his forehead down the trough of the brick corner and bending his knees, he lowered his body toward the paper lying between his outstretched feet. Again he lowered his fingerholds another foot and bent his knees still more, thigh muscles taut, his forehead sliding and bumping down the brick V. Half-squatting now, he dropped his left hand to the next indentation and then slowly reached with his right hand toward the paper between his feet.He couldn't quite touch it, and his knees now were pressed against the wall; he could bend them no farther. But by ducking his head another inch lower, the top of his head now pressed against the bricks, he lowered his right shoulder and his fingers had the paper by a corner, pulling it loose. At the same instant he saw, between his legs and far below, Lexington Avenue stretched out for miles ahead.He saw, in that instant, the Loew's theater sign, blocks ahead past Fiftieth Street; the miles of traffic signals, all green now; the lights of cars and street lamps; countless neon signs; and the moving black dots of people. And a violent instantaneous explosion of absolute terror roared through him. For a motionless instant he saw himself externally--bent practically double, balanced on this narrow ledge, nearly half his body projecting out above the street far below--and he began to tremble violently, panic flaring through his mind and muscles, and he felt the blood rush from the surface of his skin.In the fractional moment before horror paralyzed him, as he stared between his legs at that terrible length of street far beneath him, a fragment of his mind raised his body in a spasmodic jerk to an upright position again, but so violently that his head scraped hard against the wall, bouncing off it, and his body swayed outward to the knife edge of balance, and he very nearly plunged backward and fell. Then he was leaning far into the corner again, squeezing and pushing into it, not only his face but his chest and stomach, his back arching; and his finger tips clung with all the pressure of his pulling arms to the shoulder-high half-inch indentation in the bricks.He was more than trembling now; his whole body was racked with a violent shuddering beyond control, his eyes squeezed so tightly shut it was painful, though he was past awareness of that. His teeth were exposed in a frozen grimace, the strength draining like water from his knees and calves. It was extremely likely, he knew, that he would faint, slump down along the wall, his face scraping, and then drop backward, a limp weight, out into nothing. And to save his life he concentrated on holding on to consciousness, drawing deliberate deep breaths of cold air into his lungs, fighting to keep his senses aware.Then he knew that he would not faint, but he could not stop shaking nor open his eyes. He stood where he was, breathing deeply, trying to hold back the terror of the glimpse he had had of what lay below him; and he knew he had made a mistake in not making himself stare down at the street, getting used to it and accepting it, when he had first stepped out onto the ledge.It was impossible to walk back. He simply could not do it. He couldn't bring himself to make the slightest movement. The strength was gone from his legs; his shivering hands--numb, cold, and desperately rigid--had lost all deftness; his easy ability to move and balance was gone. Within a step or two, if he tried to move, he knew that he would stumble and fall.Seconds passed, with the chill faint wind pressing the side of his face, and he could hear the toned-down volume of the street traffic far beneath him. Again and again it slowed and then stopped, almost to silence; then presently, even this high, he would hear the click of the traffic signals and the subdued roar of the cars starting up again. During a lull in the street sounds, he called out. Then he was shouting "Help!" so loudly it rasped his throat. But he felt the steady pressure of the wind, moving between his face and the blank wall, snatch up his cries as he uttered them, and he knew they must sound directionless and distant. And he remembered how habitually, here in New York, he himself heard and ignored shouts in the night. If anyone heard him, there was no sign of it, and presently Tom Benecke knew he had to try moving; there was nothing else he could do.Eyes squeezed shut, he watched scenes in his mind like scraps of motion-picture film--he could not stop them. He saw himself stumbling suddenly sideways as he crept along the ledge and saw his upper body arc outward, arms flailing. He was a dangling shoestring caught between the ledge and the sole of his other shoe, saw a foot start to move, to be stopped with a jerk, and felt his balance leaving him. He saw himself falling with a terrible speed as his body revolved in the air, knees clutched tight to his chest, eyes squeezed shut, moaning softly.Out of utter necessity, knowing that any of these thoughts might be reality in the very next seconds, he was slowly able to shut his mind against every thought but what he now began to do. With fear-soaked slowness, he slid his left foot an inch or two toward his own impossibly distant window. Then he slid the fingers of his shivering left hand a corresponding distance. For a moment he could not bring himself to lift his right foot from one ledge to the other; then he did it, and became aware of the harsh exhalation of air from his throat and realized that he was panting. As his right hand, then, began to slide along the brick edging, he was astonished to feel the yellow paper pressed to the bricks underneath his stiff fingers, and he uttered a terrible, abrupt bark that might have been a laugh or a moan. He opened his mouth and took the paper in his teeth pulling it out from under his fingers.By a kind of trick--by concentrating his entire mind on first his left foot, then his left hand, then the other foot, then the other hand--he was able to move, almost imperceptibly, trembling steadily, very nearly without thought. But he could feel the terrible strength of the pent-up horror on just the other side of the flimsy barrier he had erected in his mind; and he knew that if it broke through he would lose this thin artificial control of his body.During one slow step he tried keeping his eyes closed; it made him feel safer shutting him off a little from the fearful reality of where he was. Then a sudden rush of giddiness swept over him and he had to open his eyes wide, staring sideways at the cold rough brick and angled lines of mortar, his cheek tight against the building. He kept his eyes open then knowing that if he once let them flick outward, to stare for an instant at the lighted windows across the street, he would be past help.He didn't know how many dozens of tiny sidling steps he had taken, his chest, belly, and face pressed to the wall; but he knew the slender hold he was keeping on his mind and body was going to break. He had a sudden mental picture of his apartment on just the other side of this wall--warm, cheerful, incredibly spacious. And he saw himself striding through it lying down on the floor on his back, arms spread wide, reveling in its unbelievable security. The impossible remoteness of this utter safety, the contrast between it and where he now stood, was more than he could bear. And the barrier broke then and the fear of the awful height he stood on coursed through his nerves and muscles.A fraction of his mind knew he was going to fall, and he began taking rapid blind steps with no feeling of what he was doing, sidling with a clumsy desperate swiftness, fingers scrabbling along the brick, almost hopelessly resigned to the sudden backward pull and swift motion outward and down. Then his moving left hand slid onto not brick but sheer emptiness, an impossible gap in the face of the wall, and he stumbled.His right foot smashed into his left anklebone; he staggered sideways, began falling, and the claw of his hand cracked against glass and wood, slid down it, and his finger tips were pressed hard on the puttyless edging of his window. His right hand smacked gropingly beside it as he fell to his knees; and, under the full weight and direct downward pull of his sagging body, the open window dropped shudderingly in its frame till it closed and his wrists struck the sill and were jarred off.For a single moment he knelt, knee bones against stone on the very edge of the ledge, body swaying and touching nowhere else, fighting for balance. Then he lost it, his shoulders plunging backward, and he flung his arms forward, his hands smashing against the window casing on either side; and--his body moving backward--his fingers clutched the narrow wood stripping of the upper pane.For an instant he hung suspended between balance and falling, his finger tips pressed onto the quarter-inch wood strips. Then, with utmost delicacy, with a focused concentration of all his senses, he increased even further the strain on his finger tips hooked to these slim edgings of wood. Elbows slowly bending, he began to draw the full weight of his upper body forward, knowing that the instant his fingers slipped off these quarter-inch strips he'd plunge backward and be falling. Elbows imperceptibly bending, body shaking with the strain, the sweat starting from his forehead in great sudden drops, he pulled, his entire being and thought concentrated in his finger tips. Then suddenly, the strain slackened and ended, his chest touching the window sill, and he was kneeling on the ledge, his forehead pressed to the glass of the closed window.3757613133350Dropping his palms to the sill, he stared into his living room--at the red-brown davenport across the room, and a magazine he had left there; at the pictures on the walls and the gray rug; the entrance to the hallway; and at his papers, typewriter, and desk, not two feet from his nose. A movement from his desk caught his eye and he saw that it was a thin curl of blue smoke; his pipe was still burning in the ash tray where he'd left it--this was past all belief--only a few minutes before.His head moved, and in faint reflection from the glass before him he saw the yellow paper clenched in his front teeth. Lifting a hand from the sill he took it from his mouth; the moistened corner parted from the paper, and he spat it out.For a moment, in the light from the living room, he stared wonderingly at the yellow sheet in his hand and then crushed it into the side pocket of his jacket.He couldn't open the window. It had been pulled not completely closed, but its lower edge was below the level of the outside sill; there was no room to get his fingers underneath it. Between the upper sash and the lower was a gap not wide enough--reaching up, he tried--to get his fingers into; he couldn't push it open. The upper window panel, he knew from long experience, was impossible to move, frozen tight with dried paint.Very carefully observing his balance, the finger tips of his left hand again hooked to the narrow stripping of the window casing, he drew back his right hand, palm facing the glass, and then struck the glass with the heel of his hand.His arm rebounded from the pane, his body tottering. He knew he didn't dare strike a harder blow.But in the security and relief of his new position, he simply smiled; with only a sheet of glass between him and the room just before him, it was not possible that there wasn't a way past it. Eyes narrowing, he thought for a few moments about what to do. Then his eyes widened, for nothing occurred to him. But still he felt calm: the trembling, he realized, had stopped. At the back of his mind there still lay the thought that once he was again in his home, he could give release to his feelings. He actually would lie on the floor, rolling, clenching tufts of the rug in his hands. He would literally run across the room, free to move as he liked, jumping on the floor, testing and reveling in its absolute security, letting the relief flood through him, draining the fear from his mind and body. His yearning for this was astonishingly intense, and somehow he understood that he had better keep this feeling at bay.He took a half dollar from his pocket and struck it against the pane, but without any hope that the glass would break and with very little disappointment when it did not. After a few moments of thought he drew his leg onto the ledge and picked loose the knot of his shoelace. He slipped off the shoe and, holding it across the instep, drew back his arm as far as he dared and struck the leather heel against the glass. The pane rattled, but he knew he'd been a long way from breaking it. His foot was cold and he slipped the shoe back on. He shouted again, experimentally, and then once more, but there was no answer.The realization suddenly struck him that he might have to wait here till Clare came home, and for a moment the thought was funny. He could see Clare opening the front door, withdrawing her key from the lock, closing the door behind her, and then glancing up to see him crouched on the other side of the window. He could see her rush across the room, face astounded and frightened, and hear himself shouting instructions: "Never mind how I got here! Just open the wind--" She couldn't open it, he remembered, she'd never been able to; she'd always had to call him. She'd have to get the building superintendent or a neighbor, and he pictured himself smiling, and answering their questions as he climbed in. "I just wanted to get a breath of fresh air, so--"He couldn't possibly wait here till Clare came home. It was the second feature she'd wanted to see, and she'd left in time to see the first. She'd be another three hours or--He glanced at his watch: Clare had been gone eight minutes. It wasn't possible, but only eight minutes ago he had kissed his wife good-by. She wasn't even at the theater yet!It would be four hours before she could possibly be home, and he tried to picture himself kneeling out here, finger tips hooked to these narrow strippings, while first one movie, preceded by a slow listing of credits, began, developed, reached its climax, and then finally ended. There'd be a newsreel next, maybe, and then an animated cartoon, and then interminable scenes from coming pictures. And then, once more, the beginning of a full-length picture--while all the time he hung out here in the night.He might possibly get to his feet, but he was afraid to try. Already his legs were cramped, his thigh muscles tired; his knees hurt, his feet felt numb, and his hands were stiff. He couldn't possibly stay out here for four hours, or anywhere near it. Long before that his legs and arms would give out; he would be forced to try changing his position often--stiffly, clumsily, his coordination and strength gone--and he would fall. Quite realistically, he knew that he would fall; no one could stay out here on this ledge for four hours.A dozen windows in the apartment building across the street were lighted. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the top of a man's head behind the newspaper he was reading; in another window he saw the blue-gray flicker of a television screen. No more than twenty-odd yards from his back were scores of people, and if just one of them would walk idly to his window and glance out. . . . For some moments he stared over his shoulder at the lighted rectangles, waiting. But no one appeared. The man reading his paper turned a page and then continued his reading. A figure passed another of the windows and was immediately gone.In the inside pocket of his jacket he found a little sheaf of papers, and he pulled one out and looked at it in the light from the living room. It was an old letter, an advertisement of some sort; his name and address, in purple ink, were on a label pasted to the envelope. Gripping one end of the envelope in his teeth, he twisted it into a tight curl. From his shirt pocket he brought out a book of matches. He didn't dare let go the casing with both hands but, with the twist of paper in his teeth, he opened the matchbook with his free hand; then he bent one of the matches in two without tearing it from the folder, its red tipped end now touching the striking surface. With his thumb, he rubbed the red tip across the striking area.He did it again, then again and still again, pressing harder each time, and the match suddenly flared, burning his thumb. But he kept it alight, cupping the matchbook in his hand and shielding it with his body. He held the flame to the paper in his mouth till it caught. Then he snuffed out the match flame with his thumb and forefinger, careless of the burn, and replaced the book in his pocket. Taking the paper twist in his hand, he held it flame down, watching the flame crawl up the paper, till it flared bright. Then he held it behind him over the street, moving it from side to side, watching it over his shoulder, the flame flickering and guttering in the wind.There were three letters in his pocket and he lighted each of them, holding each till the flame touched his hand and then dropping it to the street below. At one point, watching over his shoulder while the last of the letters burned, he saw the man across the street put down his paper and stand--even seeming to glance toward Tom's window. But when he moved, it was only to walk across the room and disappear from sight.There were a dozen coins in Tom Benecke's pocket and he dropped them, three or four at a time. But if they struck anyone, or if anyone noticed their falling, no one connected them with their source.His arms had begun to tremble from the steady strain of clinging to this narrow perch, and he did not know what to do now and was terribly frightened. Clinging to the window stripping with one hand, he again searched his pockets. But now--he had left his wallet on his dresser when he'd changed clothes--there was nothing left but the yellow sheet. It occurred to him irrelevantly that his death on the sidewalk below would be an eternal mystery; the window closed--why, how, and from where could he have fallen? No one would be able to identify his body for a time, either--the thought was somehow unbearable and increased his fear. All they'd find in his pockets would be the yellow sheet. Contents of the dead man's pockets, he thought, one sheet of paper bearing penciled notations--incomprehensible.He understood fully that he might actually be going to die; his arms, maintaining his balance on the ledge, were trembling steadily now. And it occurred to him then with all the force of a revelation that, if he fell, all he was ever going to have out of life he would then, abruptly, have had. Nothing, then, could ever be changed; and nothing more--no least experience or pleasure--could ever be added to his life. He wished, then, that he had not allowed his wife to go off by herself tonight--and on similar nights. He thought of all the evenings he had spent away from her, working; and he regretted them. He thought wonderingly of his fierce ambition and of the direction his life had taken; he thought of the hours he'd spent by himself, filling the yellow sheet that had brought him out here. Contents of the dead man's pockets, he thought with sudden fierce anger, a wasted life.He was simply not going to cling here till he slipped and fell; he told himself that now. There was one last thing he could try; he had been aware of it for some moments, refusing to think about it, but now he faced it. Kneeling here on the ledge, the finger tips of one hand pressed to the narrow strip of wood, he could, he knew, draw his other hand back a yard perhaps, fist clenched tight, doing it very slowly till he sensed the outer limit of balance, then, as hard as he was able from the distance, he could drive his fist forward against the glass. If it broke, his fist smashing through, he was safe; he might cut himself badly, and probably would, but with his arm inside the room, he would be secure. But if the glass did not break, the rebound, flinging his arm back, would topple him off the ledge. He was certain of that.He tested his plan. The fingers of his left hand clawlike on the little stripping, he drew back his other fist until his body began teetering backward. But he had no leverage now--he could feel that there would be no force to his swing--and he moved his fist slowly forward till he rocked forward on his knees again and could sense that this swing would carry its greatest force. Glancing down, however, measuring the distance from his fist to the glass, he saw it was less than two feet.It occurred to him that he could raise his arm over his head, to bring it down against the glass. But, experimenting in slow motion, he knew it would be an awkward girl-like blow without the force of a driving punch, and not nearly enough to break the glass.Facing the window, he had to drive a blow from the shoulder, he knew now, at a distance of less than two feet; and he did not know whether it would break through the heavy glass. It might; he could picture it happening, he could feel it in the nerves of his arm. And it might not; he could feel that too--feel his fist striking this glass and being instantaneously flung back by the unbreaking pane, feel the fingers of his other hand breaking loose, nails scraping along the casing as he fell.He waited, arm drawn back, fist balled, but in no hurry to strike; this pause, he knew, might be an extension of his life. And to live even a few seconds longer, he felt, even out here on this ledge in the night, was infinitely better than to die a moment earlier than he had to. His arm grew tired, and he brought it down.Then he knew that it was time to make the attempt. He could not kneel here hesitating indefinitely till he lost all courage to act, waiting till he slipped off the ledge. Again he drew back his arm, knowing this time that he would not bring it down till he struck. His elbow protruding over Lexington Avenue far below, the fingers of his other hand pressed down bloodlessly tight against the narrow stripping, he waited, feeling the sick tenseness and terrible excitement building. It grew and swelled toward the moment of action, his nerves tautening. He thought of Clare--just a wordless, yearning thought--and then drew his arm back just a bit more, fist so tight his fingers pained him, and knowing he was going to do it. Then with full power, with every last scrap of strength he could bring to bear, he shot his arm forward toward the glass, and he said, "Clare!"He heard the sound, felt the blow, felt himself falling forward, and his hand closed on the living-room curtains, the shards and fragments of glass showering onto the floor. And then, kneeling there on the ledge, an arm thrust into the room up to the shoulder, he began picking away the protruding slivers and great wedges of glass from the window frame, tossing them in onto the rug. And, as he grasped the edges of the empty window frame and climbed into his home, he was grinning in triumph.He did not lie down on the floor or run through the apartment, as he had promised himself; even in the first few moments it seemed to him natural and normal that he should be where he was. He simply turned to his desk, pulled the crumpled yellow sheet from his pocket, and laid it down where it had been, smoothing it out; then he absently laid a pencil across it to weight it down. He shook his head wonderingly, and turned to walk toward the closet.There he got out his topcoat and hat and, without waiting to put them on, opened the front door and stepped out, to go find his wife. He turned to pull the door closed and the warm air from the hall rushed through the narrow opening again. As he saw the yellow paper, the pencil flying, scooped off the desk and, unimpeded by the glassless window, sail out into the night and out of his life, Tom Benecke burst into laughter and then closed the door behind him.Study QuestionsWhat project has been preoccupying Tom?Where is his wife going on this night?What is on the yellow piece of paper? What happens to it?How does Tom decide to retrieve the paper? What causes him to panic?List three things Tom does to try to get someone’s attention.Why is breaking the glass with his fist such a dangerous decision?What does Tom shout as he breaks the glass?Where does Tom go at the end of the story?Literary Focus: Climax and ResolutionThe climax is the particular point in a story at which the conflict or tension hits the highest point. It is a decisive moment or a “turning point” in a storyline where the rising action or suspense turns around into a falling action. Thus, a climax is the point at which a conflict or crisis reaches its peak, then calls for a resolution or conclusion. -238124114300The resolution occurs at the end of a story, after the climax, when the loose ends are wrapped up. It presents the final outcome of a story.Example of Climax: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)The climax occurs when Travis is forced to shoot Old Yeller.Example of Resolution: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)The resolution is what happens after Travis shoots the dog. It involves, for example, the emotional turmoil that Travis goes through as a result of Old Yeller's death, a talk from Papa about not letting the bad and unfair things about life take over the good things, Travis riding his new horse, and the speckled puppy's antics making Travis both laugh and cry.Question: Identify the climax of “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets.” What happens in the story’s resolution?The Midnight SunBy Rod Serling1190500Rodman Edward Serling (1924-1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science-fiction anthology television series, The Twilight Zone.“The Midnight Sun” was originally written as a teleplay, then rewritten as a short story by Serling for his 1962 collection, New Stories from the Twilight Zone, a book that has been reprinted dozens of times. It is a work of science fiction -- often called “sci-fi,” -- which is a genre of fiction literature whose content is imaginative, but based in science. It relies heavily on scientific facts, theories, and principles as support for its settings, characters, themes, and plot-lines. Sometimes, as with Serling’s story, the science elements serve merely as background to explore character and human behavior."The secret of a successful artist," an old instructor had told her years ago, "is not just to put paint on canvas--it is to transfer emotion, using oils and brush as a kind of nerve conduit."Norma Smith looked out of the window at the giant sun and then back to the canvas on the easel she had set up close to the window. She had tried to paint the sun and she had captured some of it physically--the vast yellow-white orb which seemed to cover half the sky. And already its imperfect edges could be defined. It was rimmed by massive flames in motion. This motion was on her canvas, but the heat--the incredible, broiling heat that came in waves and baked the city outside--could not be painted, nor could it be described. It bore no relation to any known quantity. It simply had no precedent. It was a prolonged, increasing, and deadening fever that traveled the streets like an invisible fire.The girl put the paint brush down and went slowly across the room to a small refrigerator. She got out a milk bottle full of water and carefully measured some into a glass. She took one swallow and felt its coolness move through her. For the past week just the simple act of drinking carried with it very special reactions. She couldn't remember actually feeling water before. Before, it had simply been thirst and then alleviation; but now the mere swallow of anything cool was an experience by itself. She put the bottle back inside the refrigerator and looked briefly at the clock on the bookcase. It read "11:45." She heard footsteps coming down the stairs outside and she walked slowly over to the door, opened it, and went out into the hall.A little four-year-old girl stared up at her soberly, her eyes fixed on Norma's glass of water. Norma knelt down and put the glass to the child's lips."Susie!" a man's voice cut in. "Don't take the lady's water."Norma looked up at a tall, sweat-drenched man in an unbuttoned sport shirt. "That's all right, Mr. Schuster," Norma said, "I have plenty.""Nobody has plenty," the man said as he reached the bottom of the stairs and moved the little girl aside. "There's no such thing as 'plenty' any more." He took the little girl's hand and crossed the hall to knock on the opposite door. "Mrs. Bronson," he called, ''we're leaving now."Mrs. Bronson opened the door and stepped out. She was a middle-aged woman in a thin housecoat, her face gleaming with sweat. She looked frowsy and dumpy, although Norma could recollect that she had been a petite, rather pretty woman not too long ago--much younger-looking than her years. Now her face was tired, her hair stringy and unkempt."Did you get gas?" Mrs. Bronson inquired in a flat, tired voice.The tall man nodded. "I got twelve gallons. I figured that 'd take us at least to Buffalo.""Where are you going?" Norma asked.The tall man's wife came down the stairs. "We're trying to get to Toronto," she said. "Mr. Schuster has a cousin there."Mrs. Bronson reached down to stroke the little girl's hair, and then wiped some of the perspiration from the tiny flushed face. "I'm not sure it's wise--you trying to do this. The highways are packed. Bumper to bumper, the radio said. Even with the gas shortage and everything--"Schuster cut her off. "I know that," he said tersely, "but we gotta try anyway." He wet his lips. "We just wanted to say goodbye to you, Mrs. Bronson. We've enjoyed living here. You've been real kind." Then, somehow embarrassed, he turned quickly to his wife. "Let's go, honey." He picked up the single suitcase and, holding his little daughter's hand, started down the steps. His wife followed."Good luck," Mrs. Bronson called down to them. "Safe trip.""Goodbye, Mrs. Bronson," the woman's voice called back.The front door opened and closed. Mrs. Bronson stared down the steps for a long moment, then turned to Norma. “And now we are two," she said softly.“They were the last?" Norma asked, pointing to the steps.“The last. Building's empty now except for you and me.”A man, carrying a tool kit, came out of Mrs. Bronson's apartment. "She's runnin' again, Mrs. Bronson," he said. "I wouldn't sign no guarantee as to how long she'll run-but she shouldn't give yuh any trouble for a while." He looked briefly at Norma and fingered his tool kit nervously. "Was you gonna pay for this in cash?” he asked.“I have a charge account,” Mrs. Bronson said.The repairman was ill at ease. "Boss said I should start collectin' in cash." He looked a little apologetically toward Norma. "We been workin' around the clock. Refrigerators breakin' down every minute and a half. Everybody and his brother tryin' to make ice--then with the current bein' cut off every coupla hours, it's tough on the machines." With obvious effort he looked back at Mrs. Bronson. "About that bill, Mrs. Bronson-""How much is it?”The repairman looked down at his tool kit; his voice was low. "I gotta charge yuh a hundred dollars." He just shook his head disconsolately.The quiet of Mrs. Bronson's voice did not cover her dismay. "A hundred dollars? For fifteen minutes' work?”The repairman nodded miserably. "For fifteen minutes' work. Most outfits are chargin ' double that, and even triple. It's been that way for a month. Ever since . . ." He looked out the hall window toward the street. "Ever since the thing happened."There was an embarrassing silence and finally Mrs. Bronson took off her wedding ring. "I don't have any money left," she said quietly, "but this is gold. It's worth a lot." She held the ring out to him.The repairman failed to meet her eyes. He made a jerky, spasmodic motion that was neither acceptance nor rejection. Then he looked at the ring and shook his head. “Go ahead and charge it," he said, keeping his face averted. "I ain't takin' a lady's weddin' ring." He went over to the stairs. "Goodbye, Mrs. Bronson. Good luck to you." He paused at the top of the stairs.The yellow-white sun was framed in the window above him. It was constant now, but somehow an evil thing that could no longer be ignored."I'm gonna try to get my family out tonight," the repairman said, staring out the window. "Drivin' north. Canada, if we can make it. They say it's cooler there. " He turned to look back toward the two women. "Not that it makes much difference-just kind of ... kind of prolonging it." He smiled, but it was a twisted smile. "Like everybody rushin' to fix their refrigerators and air conditioners . . ." He shook his head. "It's nuts. It's just prolonging it, that's all."He started slowly down the steps, his big shoulders slumped. "Oh, geez!” they heard him say as he turned at the landing and went down again. "Geez, it's hot!" His footsteps crossed the downstairs hall.Norma leaned against the side of the door. "What happens now?" she asked.Mrs. Bronson shrugged. "I don't know. I heard on the radio that they'd only turn the water on for an hour a day from now on. They said they'd announce what time." She suddenly stared at Norma. "Aren't you going to leave?" she blurted.Norma shook her head. "No, I'm not going to leave." She forced a smile, then turned and went back into her apartment, leaving the door open.Mrs. Bronson followed her. Norma walked over to the window. The sun bathed her with its heat and with its strange, almost malevolent light. It had changed the entire city. The streets, the buildings, the stores had taken on a sickly oyster color. The air was heavy and soggy.Norma felt perspiration rolling down her back and her legs. "I keep getting this crazy thought," she said, "this crazy thought that I'll wake up and none of this will have happened. I'll wake up in a cool bed and it'll be night outside and there'll be a wind and there'll be branches rustling -- shadows on the sidewalk, a moon."She turned her face to stare directly out of the window and it was like standing in front of an open oven. The waves of heat struck at her, pushed into her flesh, poured through her pores. "And traffic noises," she continued in a softer voice, "automobiles, garbage cans, milk bottles, voices." She raised her hand and pulled at the cord of the venetian blind. The slats closed and the room became shadowed but the heat remained. Norma closed her eyes. "Isn't it odd ..." she said, reflectively, "... isn't it odd, the things we took for granted ...." There was a pause. "... while we had them?"Mrs. Bronson's hands were like two nervous little birds fluttering. "There was a scientist on the radio," she said, forcing herself to be conversational. "I heard him this morning. He said that it would get a lot hotter. More each day. Now that we're moving so close to the sun. And that's why we're ... that's why we're …." Her voice trailed off. She couldn't bring herself to say the word. She didn't want to hear it aloud. The word was "doomed." But unspoken or not, it hung there in the still hot air.It had been just four and a half weeks ago that the earth had suddenly, inexplicably, changed its elliptical orbit, and had begun to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun. Midnight became almost as hot as noon, and almost as light. There was no more darkness, no more night. All of man's little luxuries--the air conditioners, the refrigerators, the electric fans that stirred up the air--they were no longer luxuries. They were pitiful and panicky keys to temporary survival. New York City was like a giant sick animal slowly mummifying, its juices boiling away. It had emptied itself of its inhabitants. They had trekked north toward Canada in a hopeless race against a sun which had already begun to overtake them. It was a world of heat. Each day the sun appeared larger and larger, and each day heat was added to heat until thermometers boiled over, and breathing, talking, moving, came with agony. It was a world of a perpetual high noon.It was the next afternoon, and Norma walked up the steps carrying a heavy bag of groceries. A can and some wilted carrots protruded from the top. She stopped on the landing between two floors and caught her breath. Her light cotton dress clung to her like a wet glove."Norma?" Mrs. Bronson's voice called out. "Is that you, honey?”Norma's voice was weak and breathless. "Yes, Mrs. Bronson."She started up the steps again as the landlady came out of her apartment and looked at the bag in Norma's arms. "The store was open?"Norma half smiled. ''Wide open. I think that's the first time in my life I've been sorry I was born a woman." She put the bag on the floor and pointed to it. “'That's all I was strong enough to carry. There weren't any clerks. Just a handful of people taking all they could grab." She smiled again and picked up the bag. "At least we won't starve--and there are three cans of fruit juice on the bottom."Mrs. Bronson followed her into her apartment. "Fruit juice! She clapped her hands together like a little child, her voice excited. "Oh, Norma ... could we open one now?'”Norma turned to her, smiled at her gently, and patted her cheek. “Of course we can."She started to empty the bag while Mrs. Bronson kept opening and closing drawers in the kitchen area.“Where is the can opener?"3848100200025Norma pointed to the far drawer on the left. "In there, Mrs. Bronson."The landlady's fingers trembled with excitement as she opened up the drawer, rummaged through its interior, and finally pulled out a can opener. She carried it over to Norma and abruptly grabbed a can out of the girl's hand. And then, hands shaking, she tried to get the point of the opener firmly into the can, breathing heavily and spasmodically as she did so. Can and opener fell from her fingers and landed on the floor. She dropped to her hands and knees emitting a childlike wail, and then suddenly bit her lip and closed her eyes."Oh," she whispered, "I'm acting like some kind of an animal. Oh, Norma -- I'm so sorry--"Norma knelt beside her and picked up the can and the opener. "You're acting like a frightened woman," she said quietly. You should have seen me in that store, Mrs. Bronson. Running down the aisles.I mean, running. This way and that way, knocking over things, grabbing and throwing away, then grabbing again,. She smiled and shook her head and then got to her feet." And at that," she continued, "I think I was the calmest person in the store. One woman just stood in the center of the room and cried. Just cried like a baby. Kept pleading for someone to help her.” Norma shook her head again, wanting to obliterate the scene from her mind.A small radio on the coffee table suddenly lit up and began to hum. After a while there came the voice of an announcer. It was deep and resonant, but somehow sounded strange."Ladies and gentlemen," the voice said, "this is station WYNG. We are remaining on the air for one hour to bring you traffic advisories and other essential news. First, a bulletin from the Office of Civil Defense. Traffic moving north and east out of New York City--motorists are advised to remain off the highways until further notice. Traffic on the Garden State Parkway, the Merritt Parkway, and the New York State Throughway heading north is reported bumper to bumper, stretching out in some places to upwards of fifty miles. Please . . . remain off the highways until further notice."There was a pause and the voice took on a different tone. "And now today's weather report from the Director of Meteorology. The temperature at eleven o'clock Eastern Standard Time was one hundred and seventeen degrees. Humidity ninety-seven per cent. Barometer steady. Forecast for tomorrow . . ." Another pause, and the tone changed again. "Forecast for tomorrow . . ." There was a long silence as Norma and Mrs. Bronson stared toward the radio. Then the announcer's voice came on once more. "Hot. More of the same, only hotter."The sound of whispered voices came from the radio. "I don't care," the announcer said clearly. "Who do they think they're kidding with this weather report crap? ... Ladies and gentlemen," he went on, a strange kind of laughter in his voice, "tomorrow you can fry eggs on sidewalks, heat up soup in the ocean, and get yourselves the sunburn of your lives just by standing in the shade!" This time the whispered voices were more urgent and intense, and the announcer was obviously reacting to them. "What do you mean, panic!" he blurted out. "Who is there left to panic?" There came the sound of grim laughter."Ladies and gentlemen," the voice continued, "I'm told that my departing from the script might panic you. It happens to be my contention that there aren't a dozen of you left in this city who are listening to me. I'm starting a special contest now. Anyone within sound of my voice can tear off the top of their thermometer and send it to me. I'll send them my own specially devised booklet on how to stay warm when the sun is out at midnight. Now maybe I can find a couple of real pizazz commercials for you. How about a nice cold soda? Wouldn't that taste just great?" The voice faded off slightly. "Lemme alone," it said, "do you hear me? Lemme alone! Let go of me!"More frantic whisperings followed, and then a dead silence, finally replaced by the sound of a needle scratching on a record and then the sound of dance music.Norma and Mrs. Bronson exchanged a look."You see?" Norma said, as she started to open up the can of grapefruit juice. "You're not the only frightened one."She unbuttoned the top buttons of her dress, then took two glasses down from a shelf and pouredthe juice into them. She handed one of the glasses to Mrs. Bronson, who looked at it but didn't drink."Go ahead, Mrs. Bronson," Norma said softly, "it's grapefruit juice."The older woman looked down at the floor, and very slowly put, the glass down on the counter. “I can't," she said. "I can't just live off you, Norma. You'll need this yourself."Norma moved over to her swiftly and held her tightly by her shoulders. "We're going to have to start living off of each other, Mrs. Bronson." She picked up the glass and handed it to the landlady, then winked at her and held up her own glass. "Here's looking at you."Mrs. Bronson made a valiant attempt at a smile and a wink of her own, but as she put the glass to her lips she had to stifle a sob, and almost gagged as she swallowed.The music on the radio went off abruptly, and a small electric fan at the end of the room stopped its desultory movement to left and right, the blades coming to a halt like some tired, aged airplane.''The current's off again," Norma said quietly.Mrs. Bronson nodded. "Every day it stays on for a shorter time. What if ..." she began and she turned away."What?" Norma asked softly."What if it shuts off and doesn't come back on again? It would be like an oven in here---as hot as it is now, as unbearable, it would be so much worse." She put her hands to her mouth. "Norma, it would be so much worse."Norma didn't answer her. Mrs. Bronson drank a little more of the grapefruit juice and put the glass down. She walked around the room aimlessly, looking at the paintings that lined the room. And there was something so hopeless in the round, perspiring face, the eyes so terribly frightened, that Norma wanted to take her into her arms."Norma," Mrs. Bronson said, staring at one of the paintings. Norma moved closer to her. "Paint something different today. Paint something like a scene with a waterfall and trees bending in the wind. Paint something ... paint something cool."Suddenly her tired face became a mask of anger. She seized the painting, lifted it up, and then threw it down on the floor. "Norma!" she screamed. "Don't paint the sun any more!" She knelt down and began to cry.Norma looked at the ripped canvas lying in front of her. It was the painting she'd been working on--a partially finished oil of the street outside, with the hot white sun hovering overhead. The jagged tear across the picture gave it a strangely surrealistic look--something Dali might have done. The old woman's sobs finally subsided but she stayed on her knees, her head down.Norma gently touched her shoulder. "Tomorrow," she said softly, "tomorrow I'll try to paint a waterfall."Mrs . Bronson reached up to take Norma's hand and held on to it tightly. She shook her head; her voice was a hoarse whisper. "Oh, Norma, I'm sorry. My dear child, I'm so sorry. It would be so much better if--""If what?""If I were to just die." She looked up into Norma's face. "So much better for you." Norma knelt down, cupping the old face in her hands."Don' t ever say that again to me, Mrs. Bronson. For heaven’s sake, don't ever say that again. We need each other now. We need each other desperately."Mrs. Bronson let her cheek rest on Norma's hand and then slowly got to her feet.A policeman came up the stairs and appeared at the open door. His shirt was unbuttoned. His sleeves had been cut off and were ragged and uneven at the elbows. He looked from Norma to Mrs. Bronson and wiped the sweat off his sunburned face. "You the only ones in the building?" he asked."Just me and Miss Smith," Mrs. Bronson answered."You had your radio on lately?" the policeman asked."It's on all the time," Mrs. Bronson said, and turned to Norma. "Norma, honey, what station did we--" The policeman interrupted. "It doesn't make any difference. There're only two or three on the air now and they figure by tomorrow there won' t be any. The point is--we've been trying to get a public announcement through for everyone left in the city." He looked from one face to the other and then around the room, obviously reluctant to go on. ''There isn't going to be a police force tomorrow. We're disbanding. Over half of us have gone already. A few volunteered to stay back and tell everyone we could that--"He saw the fear creep in to Mrs. Bronson's face and he tried to make his voice steady. "Best thing would be to keep your doors locked from now on. Every wild man, every crank and maniac around will be roaming the streets. It's not going to be safe, ladies, so keep your doors locked." He looked at them and made a mental note that Norma was the stronger of the two and the more reliable. "You got any weapons in here, Miss?" he asked, directing the question to her."No," Norma answered, "no, I haven't."The policeman looked thoughtful for a moment and then unbuckled his holster, removing a police .45. He handed it to Norma. "You better hang onto this. It's loaded." He forced a smile toward the landlady. "Good luck to you."He turned and started down the steps, Mrs. Bronson following him out. "Officer," she said, her voice shaking, "officer, what's going to happen to us?"The policeman turned to her from halfway down the steps. His face was tired. drained out. "Don't you know?" he asked quietly. "It's just going to get hotter and hotter, then maybe a couple of days from now"--he shrugged--"four or five at the most, it'll be too hot to stand it." He looked over Mrs. Bronson's shoulder at Norma standing in the door, still holding onto the gun. His mouth was a grim straight line. "Then you use your own judgment, ladies." He turned and continued down the steps.It was the following day or night. The current had gone off, and with it the clocks, so that the normal measurement of time was no longer operative. A sick white light bathed the streets and chronology had warped with the heat.Norma lay on the couch in her slip, feeling the waves of heat, like massive woolen blankets piled on top of her. It was as if someone were pushing her into a vat of boiling mud, forcing the stuff into her mouth, her nose, her eyes, gradually immersing her in it. Between the nightmare of sleep and the nightmare of reality, she groaned. After a moment she opened her eyes, feeling a dull, throbbing ache in her temples.She forced herself to rise from the couch, feeling the same ponderous heaviness as she walked across the room to the refrigerator. She opened the door, took out the milk bottle full of water, and poured herself a quarter of a glass. This she sipped slowly as she retraced her steps across the room to the window. She gasped as her hands touched the sill. It was like touching hot steel. Her fingers went to her mouth and she stood there licking them, and finally she poured a few drops of water from the glass onto them. She listened for sounds, but there was absolute stillness. At last she turned and crossed the room, opened the door, and went out into the hall. She knocked on the door of Mrs. Bronson's apartment."Mrs. Bronson?" she called. There was no answer. “Mrs. Bronson?"There were slow footsteps behind the door and then the sound of a door chain. The door opened a few inches and Mrs. Bronson peered out."Are you all right?" Norma asked.The landlady unhooked the chain and opened the door. Her face looked pinched and ill, her eyes watery and too bright. "I'm all right," she said. "It's been so quiet, I haven't heard a sound." She moved out into the hall and looked over the landing toward the steps. What time is it? "Norma glanced at her watch and shook her wrist. “It's stopped. I'm not sure what time it is. I'm not even sure whether it's morning or night.""I think it's about three o'clock in the afternoon," Mrs. Bronson said. "It feels about three in the afternoon." She shook her head. "I think that's what time it is."She closed her eyes very tightly. "I lay down for a while,” she went on. "I tried shutting the curtain to keep the light out, but it gets so stifling when the curtains are shut.” She smiled wanly. "I guess that's psychological, isn't it? I mean, I don't think there's much difference between out there and in here.”From up on the roof came the sound of glass breaking, and then a loud thump. Mrs. Bronson's hand shot out and grabbed Norma. 'What was that?" she whispered."Something . . . something fell.""Oh, no .. . it was someone."...Norma looked up the steps leading to the top floor. Didn't you lock the roof door?" she whispered, feeling a nightmare moving in on her."Yes," Mrs. Bronson said hurriedly, then clapped a hand to her mouth. "No," she corrected herself, and shook her head wildly. "I don't know. I don't remember. I thought I did."A door above them squeaked open and Norma didn't wait to hear any more. She took Mrs. Bronson by the arm and pulled her into her apartment, slamming the door and locking it. The two women barely breathed as the sound of footsteps came down the stairs. They stopped outside.Mrs. Bronson turned to Norma. Her mouth opened as if ready to say something, but Norma clamped her hand over it and warned her with her eyes to be silent.There was the sound of movement in the hall, and footsteps came to the door. "Hey!" a man's voice called out. "Who's in there? Somebody in there?"Norma felt all the muscles in her body constrict. Neither of them made a sound."Come on out," the voice said. "I know you're in there. Come on out and be friendly." The voice sounded impatient. "Come on--I ain't got all day. You come out or I'm gonna come in!"Norma, her hand still on Mrs. Bronson's mouth, looked desperately around the room. She saw the policeman's gun on the coffee table, moved over, and picked it up. She went to the door and held the gun close to the keyhole. She cocked it and then put her face against the door."Did you hear that?" she asked in a loud voice. "That was a gun. Now get out of here. Go down the steps and go out the front door. Leave us alone."Heavy breathing sounded on the other side of the door. Whoever was out there was thinking it over very carefully."Okay, honey," the voice finally said. "I never argue with a lady who has a gun."Shuffling footsteps started down the stairs and Norma moved quickly to the window, craning her neck so that she could see the front steps below. She waited, but no one came out of the building. "I don't think he went down the stairs-" she started to say, and then, hearing the click of a key, she whirled around to see Mrs. Bronson opening the door. "Mrs. Bronson!" she cried. "Wait a min--"The door was pushed open and a man stood there—a hulking, heavy-featured giant of a man in a torn undershirt, his face and body grimy. Mrs. Bronson screamed and started to rush past him. He caught her by the arm and threw her aside. Norma held up the gun, clawing at it, trying to find the trigger. The man lashed out, knocking the gun aside, and backhanded her across the face. Norma was stunned by the jolting pain. The man kicked the gun across the floor, then walked over and put his foot on it. He stood there breathing heavily, looking from one to the other."Crazy dames. It's too hot to play games. It's too hot!"He reached down and picked up the gun, then looked around the room. He saw the refrigerator and went over to it. One bottle of water was left in it and he smiled with relief as he took it out. He threw his head back and drank, the water running out the corners of his mouth and dripping down the front of him. When he had finished the bottle he threw it to one side, where it broke on the floor with incredible loudness.He walked slowly across the room, still holding the gun, and looked at the pictures, studying them carefully. He looked at Norma and pointed to one of the paintings. "You do this?" he asked.Norma nodded, not daring to speak. "You're good," the man said. "You paint real good. My wife used to paint."The terror overflowed from Mrs. Bronson. "Please," she moaned, "please leave us alone. We didn't do you any harm. Please--"The man just stared at her as if her voice came from far away. He turned, looked at the painting again and then down at the gun, as if he had suddenly become aware of it. Very slowly he lowered it until it hung loosely from his hand and then he dropped to the floor. His mouth twitched and his eyes kept blinking. He went over to the couch and sat down."My wife," he said, "my wife was having her baby. She was in the hospital. Then this "-- he motioned toward the window --” this thing happened. She was ... she was so fragile--just a little thing." He held out his hands again as if groping for the right words. "She couldn't take the heat. They tried to keep her cool but .. . but she couldn't take the heat. The baby didn't live more than an hour and then . .. then she followed him." His head went down, and when he looked up again his eyes were wet. "I'm not a--I'm not a housebreaker. I'm a decent man. I swear to you--I'm a decent man. It's just that . .. well, this heat. This terrible heat. And all morning long I've been walking around the streets trying to find some water."His eyes pleaded for understanding; and underneath the dirty sweat, his face suddenly looked young and frightened. "I didn't mean to do you any harm, honest. I wouldn't hurt you. Would you believe it?" He laughed. "I was scared of you. That's right-I was just as scared of you as you were of me."He rose from the couch and started across the room, his foot hitting a fragment of the broken glass from the bottle. He looked down at it. "I'm ... I'm sorry about that," he said. "I'm just off my rocker. I was just so thirsty." He moved toward the door past Mrs. Bronson. He held out a hand to her. It was a gesture that was almost supplication. "Please ... please forgive me, will you? Will you please forgive me?"He went to the door and leaned against the frame for a moment, the sweat pouring down his face. "Why doesn't it end?" he said in a low voice, almost unintelligible. "Why don't we just ... why don't we just burn up?" He turned to them. "I wish it would end. That's all that's left now-just to have it end." He went out.When Norma heard the front door close, she went over to Mrs. Bronson, helped her to her feet, and cradled her head in her arms, petting her like a mother."I've got a surprise for you," she said. "Mrs. Bronson, listen to me, I've got a surprise for you."She went across the room and pulled out a canvas from a group of others. She turned it around and held it in front of her. It was a hurriedly done waterfall scene, obviously rough work and painted with desperation.Mrs. Bronson looked at it for a long moment and slowly smiled. "It's beautiful, Norma. I've seen waterfalls like that. There's one near Ithaca, New York. It's the highest waterfall in this part of the country, and I love the sound of it." She went over to the canvas and touched it. "That clear water tumbling over the rocks--that wonderful clear water."Suddenly she stopped and looked up, her eyes wide. "Did you hear it?" she asked.Norma stared at her."Don't you hear it, Norma? Oh, it's a wonderful sound. It's so ... it's so cool. It's so clear." She kept listening as she walked across the room to the window. "Oh, Norma," she said, her smile now a vapid, dreamy thing, "it's lovely. It's just lovely. Why, we could take a swim right now.""Mrs. Bronson …," Norma said in a choked voice."Let's take a swim, Norma, at the bottom of the waterfall. I used to do that when I was a girl. Just sit there and let the water come down on you. Oh, the lovely water," she murmured, as she leaned her face against the burning-hot glass. "Oh, the beautiful water ... the cool nice water ... the lovely water."The white-hot rays of the sun clawed at her face, and slowly she began to slump to the floor, leaving a patch of burnt flesh on the window, and then she crumpled in a heap silently.Norma bent down over her. "Mrs. Bronson?" she said. "Mrs. Bronson?" Norma began to cry. "Oh, Mrs. Bronson."It happened rather quickly after that. The windows of the buildings began to crack and shatter. The sun was now the whole sky--a vast flaming ceiling that pressed down inexorably.Norma had tried to pick up the gun but the handle was too hot to touch. Now she knelt in the middle of the room and watched as the paint began to run down the canvases, slow rivulets of thick sluggish color like diminutive lava streams; after a moment, they burst into flames that licked up the canvases in jagged, hungry assaults.Norma didn't feel the pain when it finally came. She was not aware that her slip had caught fire or that liquid was running out from her eyes. She was a lifeless thing in the middle of an inferno, and there was nothing left inside her throat or mind to allow the scream to come out. Then the building exploded and the massive sun devoured the entire city.It was black and cold, and an icy frost lay thick on the corners of the window. A doctor with thin lips, his overcoat collar turned high, sat alongside the bed and reached over to touch Norma's forehead. He turned to look across the room at Mrs. Bronson, who stood by the door."She's coming out of it now," he said quietly. Then he turned back toward the bed. "Miss Smith?" There was a pause. "Miss Smith?"Norma opened her eyes and looked up at him. "Yes," she whispered."You've been running a very high fever, but I think it's broken now.""Fever?"Mrs. Bronson moved to the bed. "You gave us a start, child--you've been so ill. But you're going to be all right now." She smiled hopefully at the doctor. "Isn't she, doctor? Isn't she going to be all right?"The doctor didn't smile back. "Of course," he said quietly. Then he rose and motioned to Mrs. Bronson. He tucked the blankets tighter around the girl, picked up his bag, and moved out into the hall where Mrs. Bronson was waiting for him. A cold air whistled up through the landing, and through the window over the stairway, snow came down in heavy ice-laden gusts."I hope she'll be all right," the doctor said to Mrs. Bronson. "Just let her sleep as much as she can." He looked down at his bag. "I wish I had something left to give her," he said disconsolately, "but the medicine's pretty much all gone now." He looked toward the window over the landing. "I'm afraid I won't be able to come back. I'm going to try to move my family south tomorrow. A friend of mine has a private plane."Mrs. Bronson's voice was quiet and sad. "They say ... they say on the radio that Miami is a little warmer."The doctor just looked at her. "So they say." Then he stared at the ice-encrusted window. "Butwe're just prolonging it. That's all we're doing. Everybody running like scared rabbits to the south, and they say that within a week that'll be covered with snow down there, too."Through the partially opened door to Mrs. Bronson's apartment a radio announcer's voice could be heard. "This is a traffic advisory," the voice said, "from the Office of Civil Defense. Motorists are advised to stay off the highways on all those routes leading south and west out of New York City. We repeat this advisory: Stay off the highways!"The doctor picked up his bag and started toward the steps."There was a scientist on this morning," Mrs. Bronson said as she walked beside him. "He was trying to explain what happened. How the earth had changed its orbit and started to move away from the sun. He said that ..." Her voice became strained. "He said that within a week or two--three at the most-- there wouldn't be any more sun--that we'd all...." She gripped her hands together. "We'd all freeze."The doctor tried to smile at her, but nothing showed on his face. He looked haggard and old and his lips were blue as he tightened the scarf around his neck, put on a pair of heavy gloves, and started down the steps.Mrs. Bronson watched him for a moment until he disappeared around the corner of the landing, then she returned to Norma's room."I had such a terrible dream," Norma said, her eyes half closed. "Such an awful dream, Mrs. Bronson."The older woman pulled a chair up closer to the bed."There was daylight all the time. There was a ... a midnight sun and there wasn't any night at all. No night at all." Her eyes were fully open now and she smiled. "Isn't it wonderful, Mrs. Bronson, to have darkness and coolness?"Mrs. Bronson stared into the feverish face and nodded slowly. "Yes, my dear," she said softly, "it's wonderful."Outside the snow fell heavier and heavier and the glass on the thermometer cracked. The mercury had gone down to the very bottom, and there was no place left for it to go. And very slowly night and cold reached out with frozen fingers to feel the pulse of the city, and then to stop it. Study QuestionsWhat crisis is facing the earth?Where is everyone going?What does the police officer leave with Norma?What does the man who forces his way into the apartment do? What does he say happened to his family?What does Mrs. Bronson ask Norma to paint? What does Norma paint in response?What do we learn in the story’s resolution?Literary Focus: Irony19051190500Irony occurs when there is a difference between the way things seem to be and the way they actually are. In simple words, it is a difference between appearance and reality.There are two basic types of irony: (1) verbal irony, and (2) situational irony. Verbal irony occurs when what someone says is the opposite of what they mean. For example, when in response to a foolish idea, we say, “What a great idea!” this is verbal irony. Situational irony occurs when there is a difference between expectation and reality. In other words, something entirely different happens from what the audience may be expecting, or the final outcome is opposite to what the audience is expecting. Situational irony occurs when, for instance, a man is chuckling at the misfortune of another, even when the same misfortune is, unbeknownst to him, befalling him.Example 1: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)At the beginning of the book, Travis thinks Yeller is a worthless thief and he attempt to get rid of the dog. Later, Travis changes his mind about Old Yeller completely when the dog saves Little Arliss from a bear attack. The irony occurs because the appearance (Old Yeller is a useless cur) is different than the reality (Old Yeller is a loyal and courageous dog).Example 2: “The Gift of the Magi” (By O. Henry)This is an example of situational irony, in which the wife sells her most prized possession – her hair – to get her husband a chain for his pocket watch; and the husband sells his most dear possession – a gold pocket watch – to get his wife fancy combs for her hair. Question: Explain what makes the ending of “The MIdnight Sun” ironic.Jug of SilverBy Truman Capote19051190500Truman Garcia Capote (1924-1984) was an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". Capote spent six years writing the book, aided by his lifelong friend Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas.“Jug of Silver” was first published in 1949. The story is a masterpiece of suspense -- not the kind that will frighten you, but the kind that makes you want to keep reading to find out what will happen next. The story also showcases the artful use of setting, evoking the beautiful charm of a small Southern town at Christmas time. Finally, as you read the story, think about how the author brings each of the characters to life. After school I used to work in the Valhalla drugstore. It was owned by my uncle, Mr. Ed Marshall. I call him Mr. Marshall because everybody, including his wife, called him Mr. Marshall. Nevertheless he was a nice man. This drugstore was maybe old-fashioned, but it was large and dark and cool; during summer months there was no pleasanter place in town. At the left, as you entered, was a tobacco-magazine counter behind which, as a rule, sat Mr. Marshall: a squat, square-face, pink-fleshed man with looping, manly, white mustaches. Beyond this counter stood the beautiful soda fountain. It was very antique and made of fine, yellowed marble, smooth to the touch but without a trace of cheap glaze. Mr. Marshall bought it at an auction in New Orleans in 1910 and was plainly proud of it. When you sat on the high, delicate stools and looked across the fountain you could see yourself reflected softly, as though by candlelight, in a row of ancient, mahogany-framed mirrors. All general merchandise was displayed in glass-doored, curio-like cabinets that were locked with brass keys. There was always in the air the smell of syrup and nutmeg and other delicacies. The Valhalla was the gathering place of Wachata County till a certain Rufus McPherson came to town and opened a second drugstore directly across the courthouse square. This old Rufus McPherson was a villain; that is, he took away my uncle’s trade. He installed fancy equipment such as electric fans and colored lights; he provided curb service and made grilled-cheese sandwiches to order. Naturally, though some remained devoted to Mr. Marshall, most folks couldn’t resist Rufus McPherson. For a while, Mr. Marshall chose to ignore him: if you were to mention McPherson’s name he could sort of snort, finger his mustaches, and look the other way. But you could tell he was mad. And getting madder. Then one day toward the middle of October I strolled into the Valhalla to find him sitting at the fountain playing dominoes and drinking cider with Hamurabi. Hamurabi was an Egyptian and some kind of dentist, though he didn’t do much business as the people hereabouts have usually strong teeth, due to an element in the water. He spent a great deal of his time loafing around the Valhalla and was my uncle’s chief buddy. He was a handsome figure of a man, this Hamurabi, being dark-skinned and nearly seven feet tall; the matrons of the town kept their daughters under lock and key and gave him the eye themselves. He had no foreign accent whatsoever, and it was always my opinion that he wasn’t any more Egyptian than the man in the moon. Anyway, there they were swigging cider from a gallon jug. It was a troubling sight, for Mr. Marshall didn’t like cider. So naturally I thought: Oh, golly Rufus McPherson has finally got his goat. That was not the case however. “Here, son,” said Mr. Marshall, “come have a glass of cider.” “Sure,” said Hamurabi, “help us finish it up. It’s store-bought, so we can’t waste it.” Much later, when the jug was dry, Mr. Marshall picked it up and said, “Now we shall see!” And with that disappeared out into the afternoon. “Where’s he off to?” I asked. “Ah,” was all Hamurabi would say. He liked to devil me. A half-hour passed before my uncle returned. He was stooped and grunting under the load he carried. He set the jug atop the fountain and stepped back, smiling and rubbing his hands together. “Well, what do you think?” “Ah,” purred Hamurabi “Gee…” I said. It was the same cider jug, but there was a wonderful difference; for now it was crammed to the brim with nickels and dimes that shone dully through the thick glass. “Pretty, eh?” said my uncle. “Had it done over at the First National. Couldn’t get in anything bigger-sized than a nickel. Still, there’s lotsa money in there, let me tell you.” “But what’s the point, Mr. Marshall?” I said. “I mean, what’s the idea?” Mr. Marshall’s smile deepened to a grin. “This here’s a jug of silver, you might say…” “The pot at the end of the rainbow,” interrupted Hamurabi “…and the idea, as you call it, is for folks to guess how much money is in there. For instance, say you buy a quarter’s worth of stuff—well, then you get to take a chance. The more you buy, the more chances you get. And I’ll keep all guesses in a ledger till Christmas Eve, at which time whoever comes closest to the right amount will get the whole shebang.” Hamurabi nodded solemnly. “He’s playing Santa Claus—a mighty crafty Santa Claus,” he said. “I’m going home and write a book: The skillful Murder of Rufus McPherson.” To tell the truth, he sometimes did write stories and send them out to the magazines. They always came back. It was surprising, really like a miracle, how Wachata County took to the jug. Why, the Valhalla hadn’t done so much business since Station Master Tully, poor soul, went stark raving mad and claimed to have discovered oil back of the depot, causing the town to be overrun with wildcat prospectors. Even the poolhall bums who never spent a cent on anything not connected with whisky or women took to investing their spare cash in milk shakes. A few elderly ladies publicly disapproved of Mr. Marshall’s enterprise as a kind of gambling, but they didn’t start any trouble and some even found occasion to visit us and hazard a guess. The school kids were crazy about the whole thing, and I was very popular because they figured I knew the answer. “I’ll tell you why all this is,” said Hamurabi. “It’s not for the reason you may imagine; not, in other words, avidity. No. It’s the mystery that’s enchanting. Now you look at those nickels and dime and what do you think? ‘Ah, so much!’? No, no. You think: ‘Ah, how much?’ And that’s a profound question, indeed. It can mean different things to different people. Understand?” And, oh, was Rufus McPherson wild! When you’re in trade, you count on Christmas to make up a large share of your yearly profit, and he was hard pressed to find a customer. So he tried to imitate the jug; but being such a stingy man he filled his with pennies. He also wrote a letter to the editor of The Banner, our weekly paper, in which he said that Mr. Marshall ought to be “tarred and feathered and strung up for turning innocent little children into confirmed gamblers and sending them down the path to Hell!” You can imagine what kind of laughing stock he was. Nobody had anything for McPherson but scorn. And so by the middle of November he just stood on the sidewalk outside his store and gazed bitterly at the festivities across the square. At about this time Appleseed and sister made their first appearance. He was a stranger in town. At least no one could recall ever having seen him before. He said he lived on a farm a mile past Indian Branches; told us his mother weighed only seventy-four pounds and that he had an older brother who would play the fiddle at anybody’s wedding for fifty cents. He claimed that Appleseed was the only name he had and that he was twelve years old. But his sister, Middy, said he was eight. His hair was straight and dark yellow. He had a tight, weather-tanned little face with anxious green eyes that had a very wise and knowing look. He was small and puny and high-strung, and he wore always the same outfit: a red sweater, blue denim britches, and a pair of man-sized boots that went clop-clop with every step. It was raining that first time he came into the Valhalla; his hair was plastered around his head like a cap and his boots were caked with red mud from the country roads. Middy trailed behind as he swaggered like a cowboy up to the fountain where I was wiping some glasses. “I hear tell you folks got a bottle fulla money you fixin’ to give ‘way,” he said, looking me square in the eye. “Seein’ as you-all are giving’ it away, we’d be obliged iffen you’d give it to us. Name’s Appleseed, and this here’s my sister Middy.” Middy was a sad, sad-looking kid. She was a good bit taller and older-looking than her brother; a regular bean pole. She had tow-colored hair that was chopped short, and a pale, pitiful little face. She wore a faded cotton dress that came way up above her bony knees. There was something wrong with her teeth, and she tried to conceal this by keeping her lips primly pursed like an old lady. “Sorry,” I said, “but you’ll have to talk with Mr. Marshall.” So sure enough he did. I could hear my uncle explaining what he would have to do to win the jug. Appleseed listened attentively, nodding now and then. Presently he came back and stood in front of the jug and, touching it lightly with his hand, said, “Ain’t it a pretty thing, Middy?” Middy said, “Is they gonna give it to us?” “Naw. What you gotta do, you gotta guess how much money’s inside there. And you gotta buy two bits’ worth so’s even to get a chance.” “Huh, we ain’t got no two bits. Where you ‘spec we gonna get us two bits?” Appleseed frowned and rubbed his chin. “That’ll be the easy part, just leave it to me. The only worrisome thing is: I can’t just take a chance and guess. … I gotta know.” Well, a few days later they showed up again. Appleseed perched on a stool at the fountain and boldly asked for two glasses of water, one for him and one for Middy. It was on this occasion that he gave out the information about his family: “… then there’s Papa Daddy, that’s my mama’s papa, who’s a Cajun, an’ on accounta that he don’t speak English good. My brother, the one what plays the fiddle, he’s been in jail three times…. It’s on accounta him we had to pick up and leave Louisiana. He cut a fella bad in a razor fight over a woman ten years older’n him. She had yellow hair.” Middy, lingering in the background, said nervously, “You oughtn’t to be tellin’ our personal private fam’ly business thataway, Appleseed.” “Hush now, Middy,” he said, and she hushed. “She’s a good little gal,” he added, turning to pat her head, “but you can’t let her get away with much. You go look at the picture books, honey, and stop frettin’ with your teeth. Appleseed here’s got some figurin’ to do.” This figuring meant staring hard at the jug, as if his eyes were trying to eat it up. With his chin cupped in his hand, he studied it for a long period, not batting his eyelids once. “A lady in Louisiana told me I could see things other folks couldn’t see ‘cause I was born with a caul on my head.” “It’s a cinch you aren’t going to see how much there is,” I told him. “Why don’t you just let a number pop into your head, and maybe that’ll be the right one.” “Uh, uh,” he said, “too darn risky. Me, I can’t take no sucha chance. Now, the way I got it figured, there ain’t but one sure-fire thing and that’s to count every nickel and dime.” “Count!” “Count what?” asked Hamurabi, who had just moseyed inside and was settling himself at the fountain. “This kid says he’s going to count how much is in the jug,” I explained. Hamurabi looked at Appleseed with interest. “How do you plan to do that, son?” “Oh, by countin’,” said Appleseed matter-of-factly. Hamurabi laughed. “You better have X-ray eyes, son, that’s all I can say.” “Oh, no. All you gotta do is be born with a caul on your head. A lady in Louisiana told me so. She was a witch; she loved me and when my ma wouldn’t give me to her she put a hex on her and now my ma don’t weigh but seventy-four pounds.” “Ve-ry in-ter-esting,” was Hamurabi’s comment as he gave Appleseed a queer glance. Middy sauntered up, clutching a copy of Screen Secrets. She pointed out a certain photo to Appleseed and said: “Ain’t she the nicest-lookin’ lady? Now you see, Appleseed, you see how pretty her teeth are? Not a one outa joint.” “Well, don’t you fret none,” he said. After they left, Hamurabi ordered a bottle of orange Nehi and drank it slowly. “Do you think maybe that kid’s OK upstairs?” he asked presently in puzzled voice. Small towns are best for spending Christmas, I think. They catch the mood quicker and change and come alive under its spell. By the first week in December house doors were decorated with wreaths, and store windows were flashy with red paper bells and snowflakes of glittering isinglass. The kids hiked out into the woods and came back dragging spicy evergreen trees. Already the women were busy baking fruitcakes, unsealing jars of mincemeat, and opening bottles of blackberry and scuppernong wine. In the courthouse square a huge tree was trimmed with silver tinsel and colored electric bulbs that were lighted up at sunset. Late of an afternoon you could hear the choir in the Presbyterian church practicing carols for their annual pageant. All over town the japonicas were in full bloom. The only person who appeared not the least touched by this heartwarming atmosphere was Appleseed. He went about his declared business of counting the jug money with great, persistent care. Every day now he came to the Valhalla and concentrated on the jug, scowling and mumbling to himself. At first we were all fascinated, but after a while it got tiresome and nobody paid him any mind whatsoever. He never bought anything, apparently having never been able to raise the two bits. Sometimes he’d talk to Hamurabi, who had taken a tender interest in him and occasionally stood treat to a jawbreaker or a penny’s worth of licorice. “Do you still think he’s nuts?” I asked. “I’m not so sure,” said Hamurabi. “But I’ll let you know. He doesn’t eat enough. I’m going to take him over to the Rainbow Café and buy him a plate of barbecue.” “He’d appreciate it more if you’d give him a quarter. “No, A dish of barbecue is what he needs. Besides, it would be better if he never was to make a guess. A high-strung kid like that, so unusual, I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible if he lost. Say, it would be pitiful.” I’ll admit that at the time Appleseed struck me as being just funny. Mr. Marshall felt sorry for him, and the kids tried to tease him, but had to give it up when he refused to respond. There you could see him plain as day sitting at the fountain with his forehead puckered and his eyes fixed forever on that jug. Yet he was so withdrawn you sometimes had this awful creepy feeling that, well, maybe he didn’t exist. And when you were pretty much convinced of this he’d wake up and say something like, “you know, I hope a 1913 buffalo nickel’s in there. A fella was tellin’ me how he saw where a 1913 buffalo nickel’s worth fifty dollar.” Or, “Middy’s gonna be a big lady in the picture shows. They make lotsa money, the ladies in the pictures shows do, and then we ain’t gonna never eat another collard green as long as we live. Only Middy says she can’t be in the picture shows ‘less her teeth look good.” Middy didn’t always tag along with her brother. On those occasions when she didn’t come, Appleseed wasn’t himself; he acted shy and left soon. Hamurabi kept his promise and stood treat to a dish of barbecue at the café. “Mr. Hamurabi’s nice, all right,” said Appleseed afterward, “but he’s got peculiar notions: has a notion that if he lived in this place named Egypt he’d be a king or somethin’.” And Hamurabi said, “That kid has the most touching faith. It’s a beautiful thing to see. But I’m beginning to despise the whole business.” He gestured toward the jug. “Hope of this kind is a cruel thing to give anybody, and I’m sorry I was ever a party to it.” Around the Valhalla the most popular pastime was deciding what you would buy if you won the jug. Among those who participated were Solomon Katy, Phoebe Hones, Carl Kuhnhardt, Puly Simmons, Addie Foxcroft, Marvin Finkle, Trudy Edwards, and a colored man named Erskine Washington. And these were some of their answers: a trip to and a permanent wave in Birmingham, a secondhand piano, a Shetland pony, a gold bracelet, a set of Rover Boys books, and a life insurance policy. 3314700561975Once Mr. Marshall asked Appleseed what he would get. “It’s a secret,” was the reply, and no amount of prying could make him tell. We took it for granted that whatever it was, he wanted it real bad. Honest winter, as a rule, doesn’t settle on our part of the country till late January, and then it’s mild, lasting only a short time. But in the year of which I write we were blessed with a singular cold spell the week before Christmas. Some still talk of it, for it was so terrible: water pipes froze solid; many folks had to spend the days in bed snuggled under their quilts, having neglected to lay in enough kindling for the fireplace; the sky turned that strange dull gray that it does just before a storm, and the sun was pale as a waning moon. There was a sharp wind: the old dried-up leaves of last fall fell on the icy ground, and the evergreen tree in the courthouse square was twice stripped of its Christmas finery. When you breathed, your breath made smoky clouds. Down by the silk mill where the very poor people lived, the families huddled together in the dark at night and told tales to keep their minds off the cold. Out in the country the farmers covered their delicate plants with gunnysacks and prayed; some took advantage of the weather to slaughter their hogs and bring the fresh sausage to town. Mr. R.C. Judkins, our town drunk, outfitted himself in a red cheesecloth suit and played Santa Claus at the five ‘n’ dime. Mr. R.C. Judkins was the father of a big family, so everybody was happy to see him sober enough to earn a dollar. There were several church socials, at one of which Mr. Marshall came face to face with Rufus McPherson: bitter words were passed but not a blow was struck. Now, as has been mentioned, Appleseed lived on a farm a mile below Indian Branches; this would be approximately three miles from town; a mighty long and lonesome walk. Still, despite the cold, he came every day to the Valhalla and stayed till closing time which, as the days had grown short, was after nightfall. Once in a while he’d catch a ride part way home with the foreman from the silk mill, but not often. He looked tired, and there were worry lines about his mouth. He was always cold and shivered a lot. I don’t think he wore any warm drawers under his red sweater and blue britches. It was three days before Christmas when out of the clear sky, he announced: “Well, I’m finished. I mean I know how much is in the bottle.” He claimed this with such grave, solemn sureness it was hard to doubt him. “Why, say now, son, hold on,” said Hamurabi, who was present. “You can’t know anything of the sort. It’s wrong to think so: You’re just heading to get yourself hurt.” “You don’t need to preach to me, Mr. Hamurabi. I know what I’m up to. A lady in Louisiana, she told me…” “Yes yes yes—but you got to forget that. If it were me, I’d go home and stay put and forget about this…jug.” “My brother’s gonna play the fiddle at a wedding over in Cherokee City tonight and he’s gonna give me the two bits,” said Appleseed stubbornly. “Tomorrow I’ll take my chance.” So the next day I felt kind of excited when Appleseed and Middy arrived. Sure enough, he had his quarter: it was tied for safekeeping in the corner of a red bandanna. The two of them wandered hand in hand among the showcases, holding a whispery consultation as to what to purchase. They finally decided on a thimble-sized bottle of gardenia cologne which Middy promptly opened and partly emptied on her hair. “It smells like…Oh, darlin’ Mary, I ain’t never smelled nothin’ as sweet. Here, Appleseed, honey, let me douse some on your hair.” But he wouldn’t let her. Mr. Marshall got out the ledger in which he kept his records, while Appleseed strolled over to the fountain and cupped the jug between his hands, stroking it gently. His eyes were bright and his cheeks flushed from excitement. Several persons who were in the drugstore at that moment crowded close. Middy stood in the background quietly scratching her leg and smelling the cologne. Hamurabi wasn’t there. Mr. Marshall licked the point of his pencil and smiled. “OK, son, what do you say?” Appleseed took a deep breath. “Seventy-seven dollars and thirty-five cents,” he blurted. In picking such an uneven sum he showed originality, for the run-of-the-mill guess was a plain round figure. Mr. Marshall repeated the amount solemnly as he copied it down. “When’ll I know if I won?” “Christmas Eve,” someone said. “That’s tomorrow, huh?” “Why so it is,” said Mr. Marshall, not surprised. “Come at four o’clock.” During the night the thermometer dropped even lower, and toward dawn there was one of those swift, summerlike rainstorms, so that the following day was bright and frozen. The town was like a picture postcard of a Northern scene, what with icicles sparkling whitely on the trees and frost flowers coating all windowpanes. Mr. R.C. Judkins rose early and, for no clear reason, tramped the streets ringing a supper bell, stopping now and then to take a swig from a pint which he kept in his hip pocket. As the day was windless, smoke climbed lazily from various chimneys straightway to the still, frozen sky. By midmorning the Presbyterian choir was in full swing; and the town kids (wearing horror masks, as if Hallowe’en) were chasing one another round and round the square, kicking up an awful fuss. Hamurabi dropped by at noon to help us fix up the Valhalla. He brought along a fat sack of Satsumas, and together we ate every last one, tossing the hulls into a newly installed potbellied stove (a present from Mr. Marshall to himself) which stood in the middle of the room. Then my uncle took the jug off the fountain, polished and placed it on a prominently situated table. He was no help after that whatsoever, for he squatted in a chair and spent his time tying and retying a tacky green ribbon around the jug. So Hamurabi and I had the rest to do alone: we swept the floor and washed the mirrors and dusted the cabinets and strung streamers of red and green crepe paper from wall to wall. When we were finished it looked very fine and elegant. But Hamurabi gazed sadly at our work, and said: “Well, I think I better be getting along now.” “Aren’t you going to stay?” asked Mr. Marshall, shocked. “No, oh, no,” said Hamurabi, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t want to see that kid’s face. This is Christmas and I mean to have a rip-roaring time. And I couldn’t, not with something like that on my conscience. I wouldn’t sleep.” “Suit yourself,” said Mr. Marshall. And he shrugged, but you could see he was really hurt. “Life’s like that—and besides, who knows, he might win.” “Hamurabi sighed gloomily. “What’s his guess?” “Seventy-seven dollars and thirty-five cents,” I said. “Now I ask you, isn’t that fantastic?” said Hamurabi. He slumped in a chair next to Mr. Marshall and crossed his legs. “If you got any Baby Ruths I think I’d like one; my mouth tastes sour.” As the afternoon wore on, the three of us sat around the table feeling terribly blue. No one said hardly a word and, as the kids had deserted the square, the only sound was the clock tolling the hour on the courthouse steeple. The Valhalla was closed to business, but people kept passing by and peeking in the window. At three o’clock Mr. Marshall told me to unlock the door. Within twenty minutes, the place was jam full; everyone was wearing his Sunday best, and the air smelled sweet, for most of the little saw-mill girls had scented themselves with vanilla flavoring. They scrunched up against the walls, perched on the fountain, squeezed in wherever they could; soon the crowd had spread to the sidewalk and stretched into the road. The square was lined with team-drawn wagons and Model T Fords that had carted farmers and their families into town. There was much laughter and shouting and joking—several outraged ladies complained of the cursing and the rough, shoving ways of the younger men, but nobody left. At the side entrance a group of colored folks had formed and were having the most fun of all. Everybody was making the best of a good thing. It’s usually so quiet around here: nothing much ever happens. It’s safe to say that nearly all of Wachata County was present but invalids and Rufus McPherson. I looked around for Appleseed but didn’t see him anywhere. Mr. Marshall harrumphed, and clapped for attention. When things quieted down and the atmosphere was properly tense, he raised his voice like an auctioneer and called: “Now listen, everybody, in this here envelope you see in my hand”—he held a manila envelope above his head—“well, in it’s the answer --which nobody but God and the First National Bank knows up to now, ha, ha. And in this book”—he held up the ledger with his free hand—“I’ve got written down what you folks guessed. Are there any questions?” All was silence. “Fine. Now, if we could have a volunteer….” Not a living soul budged an inch: it was as if an awful shyness had overcome the crowd, and even those who were ordinarily natural-born show-offs shuffled their feet, ashamed. Then a voice, Appleseed’s, hollered, “Lemme by…Outa the way, please, ma’am.” Trotting along behind as he pushed forward were Middy and a lanky, sleepy-eyed fellow who was evidently the fiddling brother. Appleseed was dressed the same as usual, but his face was scrubbed rosy clean, his boots polished and his hair slicked back skintight with Stacomb. “Did we get here in time?” he panted. But Mr. Marshall said, “So you want to be our volunteer?” Appleseed looked bewildered, then nodded vigorously. “Does anybody have an objection to this young man?” Still there was dead quiet. Mr. Marshall handed the envelope to Appleseed who accepted it calmly. He chewed his under lip while studying it a moment before ripping the flap. In all that congregation there was no sound except an occasional cough and the soft tinkling of Mr. R.C. Judkins’ supper bell. Hamurabi was leaning against the fountain, staring up at the ceiling; Middy was gazing blankly over her brother’s shoulder, and when he started to tear open the envelope she let out a pained little gasp. Appleseed withdrew a slip of pink paper and, holding it as though it was very fragile, muttered to himself whatever was written there. Suddenly his face paled and tears glistened in his eyes. “Hey, speak up, boy,” someone hollered. Hamurabi stepped forward and all but snatched the slip away. He cleared his throat and commenced to read when his expression changed most comically. “Well…” he said. “Louder! Louder!” an angry chorus demanded. “Buncha crooks!” yelled Mr. R.C. Judkins, who had a snootful by that time. “I smell a rat and he smells to high heavens!” Whereupon a cyclone of catcalls and whistling rent the air. Appleseed’s brother whirled around and shook his fist. “Shuddup, shuddup ‘fore I bust every one a your…heads together so’s you got knots the size a muskmelons, hear me?” “Citizens,” cried Mayor Mawer, “citizens—I say, this is Christmas…I say….” And Mr. Marshall hopped up on a chair and clapped and stamped till a minimum of order was restored. It might as well be noted here that we later found out Rufus McPherson had paid Mr. R.C. Judkins to start the rumpus. Anyway, when the outbreak was quelled, who should be in possession of the slip but me…don’t ask how. Without thinking, I shouted, “Seventy-seven dollars and thirty-five cents.” Naturally, due to the excitement, I didn’t at first catch the meaning; it was just a number. Then Appleseed’s brother let forth with his whooping yell, and so I understood. The name of the winner spread quickly, and the awed, murmuring whispers were like a rainstorm. Oh, Appleseed himself was a sorry sight. He was crying as though he was mortally wounded, but when Hamurabi lifted him onto his shoulders so the crowd could get a gander, he dried his eyes with the cuffs of his sweater and began grinning. Mr. R.C. Judkins yelled, “Gyp! Lousy gyp!” but was drowned out by a deafening round of applause. Middy grabbed my arm. “My teeth,” she squealed. “Now I’m gonna get my teeth.” “Teeth?” said I, kind of dazed. “The false kind,” says she. “That’s what we’re gonna get us with the money—a lovely set of white false teeth.” But at that moment my sole interest was in how Appleseed had known. “Hey, tell me,” I said desperately, “tell me how in the world did he know there was just exactly seventy-seven dollars and thirty-five cents?” Middy gave me this look. “Why, I thought he told you,” she said, real serious. “He counted.” “Yes, but how—how?” “Gee, don’t you even know how to count?” “But is that all he did?” “Well,” she said, following a thoughtful pause, “he did do a little praying, too.” She started to dart off, then turned back and called, “Besides, he was born with a caul on his head.” And that’s the nearest anybody ever came to solving the mystery. Thereafter, if you were to ask Appleseed “How come?” he would smile strangely and change the subject. Many years later he and his family moved to somewhere in Florida and were never heard from again. But in our town his legend flourishes still; and till his death a year ago last April, Mr. Marshall was invited each Christmas Day to tell the story of Appleseed to the Baptist Bible class. Hamurabi once typed up an account and mailed it around to various magazines. It was never printed. One editor wrote back and said “If the little girl really turned out to be a movie star, then there might be something to your story.” But that’s not what happened, so why should you lie?Study QuestionsWho is Mr. Marshall? What is the Valhalla?What does Marshall propose to do to drive out his competitor?What are the rules for making a guess? What will the winner receive?Who is Appleseed? Who is Middy?What is Appleseed’s guess? What is the actual winning amount?What is the money going to be used for?What three explanations does Middy give for Appleseed knowing the amount?Literary Focus: Character and Characterization1171450A character is a person (or animal) involved in a story. Each character has certain qualities, or character traits that the reader discovers as the story unfolds. Major characters are the more important characters, and minor characters are less important.Characterization is the personality of a character and the method by which an author reveals that personality. The author may directly state opinions about the characters. Usually the author reveals the character’s personality indirectly, through the character’s own words and actions or through what other other characters say about him or her. Example: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)Travis is characterized by many traits, including his stubbornness. We can see this indirectly in the way he refuses to accept and befriend Old Yeller at first, and only does so after a long period of time. Old Yeller is characterized as loyal and courageous. We see this in the way he repeatedly risks his life to protect the family from danger. Question: Select a character from “Jug of Silver” and identify two of his or her character traits. How are these traits shown in the story? Come of AgeBy B.J. Chute1180975Beatrice J. Chute (1913-1987) worked for 10 years in her father's Minneapolis realty office until his death in 1930 prompted her to move to New York City. At 19 Chute established her pen name with a juvenile sports story. Readers assumed B. J. Chute, author of over 50 stories about young male athletes, was a man. Her sports stories were appearing regularly in Boy's Life and in her own collections. In 1944 she began writing more serious works of fiction. Her most successful novel was Greenwillow, a lyric pastoral fantasy.Her story “Come of Age” (1944) depicts the innocence of World War II-era America alongside devastating grief in the eyes of a child. It is a coming-of-age story. This is a genre of literature that focuses on the growth of a protagonist from youth to adulthood. Coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue or internal monologue over action, and are often set in the past.Timothy crossed the road at the exact place where the tar ended and the dirt began, paused on the sidewalk, squinted up at the sun and gave a heave of satisfaction. He was too warm with his sweater on. He had known he was going to be too warm, and he had made a firm announcement to this effect to his mother before he left the house in the morning. Thousands of layers of woolly stuff, he had pointed out darkly, intimating that a person might easily suffocate.Having barely survived this fate so far, he now decided to make a test case out of it. If an automobile passed him on the road before he had counted up to ten, that meant it was really spring and too warm for sweaters. His own internal workings were positive on the subject, but he was amiably willing to put the whole thing on a sporting basis.“One,” said Timothy. After a while he added, “Two.” He then suspended his counting while he made a neat pile of his schoolbooks and lunch box, putting them carefully on a bare patch of ground, away from the few greenly white sprigs of grass that were struggling up into the sunlight. If the car came by, he would have to put the books on the ground anyhow, in order to take off his sweater, so it seemed wiser to do it ahead of time.“Three,” said Timothy, looking up the road. There was nothing in sight, so he closed his eyes, waited, said “Four” and opened them again. This time it worked. There was a car coming. Timothy put his hands to his sweater and stood pantingly prepared to jerk it over his head.The car swished by with a friendly toot.“Five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten,” said Timothy rapidly, just to be perfectly fair about the whole thing, vanished momentarily into the sweater and reappeared with his hair standing on end and the expression of one who had been saved from total collapse in the nick of time.He turned the sweater virtuously right side to again, with his mother in mind, and tied its arms around his waist, allowing the rest of it to fall comfortably to the rear, where it could flap without giving him any sense of responsibility. Then he tucked his schoolbooks under one arm, picked up the lunchbox and peered hopefully inside it. There were three cake crumbs and some orange peel. He licked his finger, collected the crumbs on the end of it and disposed of them tidily, then extracted a piece of the peel and took a thoughtful nibble.It tasted vaguely like a Christmas tree, but rather leathery, so he put it back, felt a momentary dejection based on a sudden desperate need for a great deal of food, recovered rapidly, took another look at the sun and gave a pleased snort.It was certainly spring, and for once it was starting on a Friday afternoon, which meant he would have the whole weekend to get used to it in. Also, by some great and good accident, his sixth-grade English teacher had forgotten to assign the weekly composition. This was almost incredibly gratifying, especially since the rumor had got around that she had been going to give them the dismal topic of What My Country Means to Me.Timothy sighed with satisfaction over the narrow escape of the sixth-grade English class, knowing quite well the same topic would turn up again next week, but that next week was years away. Besides, she might change her mind and assign something else. One week she had told them to write what she referred to as a word portrait, called A Member of My Family. Timothy had enjoyed that richly. He had written, inevitably, about his brother Bricky, and it was the longest composition he had ever achieved in his life. He felt a great pity for his classmates, who didn’t have Bricky to write about, since Bricky was not only the most remarkable person in the world but he was at that moment engaged in being a hero in the South Pacific. He was a pilot with silver wings and a bomber, and Timothy basked luxuriously in the warmth of his glory.“Yoicks,” said Timothy, addressing the spring and life in general. “Yoicks” was Bricky’s favorite expression.“Yoicks,” he said again.He was, at the moment, five blocks from home. The first block he used up in not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk, which was not the mindless process it appeared to be. He was actually conducting an elaborate reconnaissance program, and the cracks were vital supply lines. By the second block, however, his attitude on supplies had taken a more personal turn, and he spent the distance reflecting that this was the day his mother baked cookies. His imagination carried him willingly up the back steps, through the unlatched screen door and to the cooky jar, but there it gave up for lack of specific information on the type of cookies involved.Besides, he was now at the third block, and the third block was important, consisting largely of a vacant lot with a run-down little shack lurching sideways in a corner of it. The old brown grass of last autumn and the matted tangle of vines and weeds were showing a faint stirring of greenness like a pale web.At the edge of the lot, Timothy paused and his whole manner changed. He became alert and his eyes narrowed, shifting from left to right. He was listening intently. The only sound was the peevish chirp of a sparrow; but Timothy was a world away from it. What he was listening for was the warning roar of revved-up motors.In a moment now, from behind that shack, from beyond those tangled vines, Japanese planes would swarm upward viciously, in squadron attack.Timothy put down the books and the lunch box, then he stepped back, holding himself steady. His hand moved, fingers curved knowingly, to control and throttle, and from his parted lips there suddenly burst a chattering roar.The Liberator surged forward gallantly to meet the attackers. Timothy’s face became tense, and he interrupted the engine’s explosive revolutions for a moment to warn himself grimly, “This is it. Watch yourselves, men.” He then nodded soberly. It was a grave responsibility for the pilot, knowing the crew trusted him to see them through.The pilot, of course, was Bricky. It was Bricky who was holding the plane steady on its course, nerving himself for the final instant of action. The deadly swarm of Zeros swept forward, but the pilot’s face remained impassive.Z-z-z-zoom, they spread across the sky, their evil advance punctuated by the hail of machine-gun fire. The Liberator climbed, settling back on her tail in instant response to the pilot’s sure hand. As she scaled the clouds, the bright silver of her name, painted along the side, shone defiantly — The Hornet. Bricky had at one time piloted a plane called The Hornet. It was the best name that Timothy knew.After that, it was short and sharp. A Jap fighter detached itself from the humming swarm. The Hornet rolled and the tail gunner squeezed the triggers. The plane exploded in midair, disintegrated and streamered to earth in flaming wreckage.“Right on the nose,” said the gunner with satisfaction.The Hornet had their range now. Zero after Zero fluttered helplessly down out of the sky, dissolving into the earth. The others turned and skittered for their home base, terrified before the invincibility of American man and machine.A faint smile flickered across the face of The Hornet’s pilot, and he permitted himself a nod of satisfaction. “Good show,” he said.Timothy sat down on the ground and drew a deep breath. Then he said “Gosh!” and scrambled back to his feet. At home, even now, there might be a letter waiting from Bricky, full of breathless and wonderful details that could be relayed to the fellows at school. A few of them, of course, had brothers of their own in the Air Force, but none of them had Bricky, and that made all the difference. He was quite sorry for them, but most willing to share and to expound.Gosh, he missed Bricky, but, gosh, it was worth it.A dream crept across his mind. Maybe the war would last for years. Maybe some one of these days, a new pilot would stand before his commanding officer somewhere in Pacific territory and make a firm salute. “Lieutenant Baker reporting for duty, sir.”His commanding officer would look up quickly from his notes. “Timothy!” Bricky would say, holding it all back. They would shake hands.For the entire next block toward home, Timothy shook hands with his brother, but on the last block spring got into his heels and he raced the distance like a lunatic, yelling his jubilee. The porch steps he took in two leaps, crashed happily into the front hall and smacked his books and his lunchbox down on the hall table. He then opened his mouth to shout for his mother, not because he wanted her for anything specific, but because he simply needed to know her exact location.His mouth, opened to “Hey, mom!” closed suddenly in surprise. His father’s hat was lying on the hall table. There was nothing to prepare him for his father’s hat on the hall table at three-thirty in the afternoon. His father’s hat kept regular hours. An unaccountable sense of formality descended on Timothy. He looked anxiously into the hall mirror and made a gesture toward flattening the top lock of his hair. It sprang up again under his hand, and he compromised on untying the sleeves of his sweater from around his waist and putting it firmly down on top of his books. None of this had anything to do with his father, who maintained strict neutrality on the subject of his son’s appearance. It was entirely a matter between Timothy, the time of day, and that unexpected gray felt hat on the hall table.There were a dozen reasons for dad’s having come home early. There was nothing to get excited about. Timothy turned his back on the hall table and the hat, opened the door and went through into the living room. There was no one there, but he could hear his father’s voice in the kitchen, and, because the kitchen was a reassuring place, he felt better. He went on into the kitchen, shoving the door only part open and easing himself through it.His mother was sitting on the kitchen chair beside the kitchen table. She was just sitting there, not doing anything. She never sat anywhere like that, doing nothing.The formal, pressed-down feeling returned to Timothy and stuck in his throat.He looked toward his father appealingly, but his father was leaning against the sink, with his hands behind him pressed against it, and staring down at the floor.“Mom — ” said Timothy.They both looked at him then, but it was his father who answered. He answered right away, as if it had to be said fast. “You’ll have to know, Tim,” he said, almost roughly. “It’s Bricky. He’s missing in action.” Missing in action. He had met the phrase so many times that it wasn’t frightening. There was no possible connection in his mind between “missing in action” and Bricky …Missing in action. It was a picture on a movie screen, nothing more. Bricky, the invincible, would have bailed out, perhaps somewhere in the jungle. Or he would have nursed his damaged crate down to earth in a fantastically cool exhibition of flying skill, his men trusting him to see them through.A hot, fierce pride surged up in Timothy. He wanted to tell his mother and father not to look that way; that Bricky, wherever he was, was safe. He wanted to reassure them, so that they would be smiling at him again and all the old cozy confidence would return to the kitchen.His father was dragging words out, one by one. “The plane didn’t come back,” he said. “They were on a bombing mission, and they didn’t come back. We just got the telegram.”An awful thing happened then. Timothy’s mother began to cry. He had never in his life seen her cry. It had never occurred to him that she was capable of it, and a monstrous chasm of insecurity yawned suddenly at his feet.His father went over to her and got down on his knees on the kitchen linoleum, and he stayed there with his arm around her shoulders, murmuring, with his cheek against her hair, “Don’t, Ellen. Don’t, dearest.”Timothy stood there in the middle of the floor with his hands jammed stiffly into his pockets and his eyes turned away from his father and mother. He was much more frightened by their sudden unfamiliarity than by what his father had told him. “Missing in action” was just words. His mother crying was a sheer impossibility, made visible before him.He realized that he had to get out of the kitchen right away, because it was the place he had always been safest, and now that made it unendurable. He couldn’t do anything, anyway. Later, when his mother wasn’t — when his mother felt better, he could explain to her about Bricky being safe. He slid out of the room like a ghost, and, linked in their fear, neither of them even looked up.In the front hall, he stopped for a moment. The spring sun outside was shining, bright and warm, on the street, and he knew exactly how the heat of it would feel slanting across his shoulders. But his mother had thought he ought to wear his sweater today. He wanted very badly to do something to make her feel better. He frowned and pulled the sweater on over his head, jamming his arms into the sleeves and resisting the temptation to push up the cuffs. It stretched them, his mother said.He went slowly down the front steps, worrying about his mother. The words “missing in action” still meant exactly nothing to him. They were only another installment in the exciting war serial that was Bricky’s Pacific adventures, and there was not the slightest shadow of doubt in his mind about Bricky’s safe return, though he was eager for details. He guessed none of the other fellows at school had members of their family gallantly missing in action.No, it wasn’t Bricky that made him feel funny in the pit of his stomach. The thing was he hadn’t known that grownups cried, and the discovery took a good deal of stability out of his world.His mother might go on being frightened for days ahead, until they heard that Bricky was all right, and he would be tiptoeing around her in his mind all the time to make things better for her, and what he would really be wanting would be for things to be again the way they had been before.He didn’t want to feel all unsettled inside. The way he felt now was the way he had felt the time they had been waiting to hear from his sister in California when the baby came. He had known quite well that Margaret would be fine and everything, but just the same, the baby’s coming had got into the house and filled it with uncertainties. Now it was the War Department. He was suddenly quite angry with the War Department. Bricky wasn’t going to like it, either, when he got back. He wouldn’t like mom worrying. Timothy wished now he had stayed a little longer in the kitchen and asked a few questions. He would have liked to know what that War Department had said, and, as he went down the street without any particular aim or direction, he turned it over and over in his mind.He had walked back, without meaning to, to the vacant lot with the old shack on it, and it occurred to him that, while he had been shooting down those Jap planes in Bricky’s Hornet, his mother and father had been there in the kitchen. Looking like that.He left the sidewalk and walked into the grassy tangle, scuffing his shoes through last autumn’s leaves. He would have liked some company, and he toyed for a moment with going over to Davy Peters’ house and telling him that the War Department had sent them a telegram about Bricky, but decided against it.He sat down on the grass with his back against the wall of the shack. He could feel the rough coolness of the brown boards even through his sweater, and the sun spilled warmth down his front. It was unthinkable that the shack should ever be more comforting than the kitchen at home, but this time it was.He wished he knew just what the telegram had said. There was something, he thought, that they always put in. Something about “We regret to inform you,” but maybe that was just for soldiers’ families when the soldier had got killed. He had seen a movie that had that in it once, and it had made quite an impression, because in the movie it was all tied up with not talking about the things you knew, and for days Timothy had gone around with a tightly shut mouth and the look of one who is giving no aid and comfort to the enemy. He had even torn the corners off all Bricky’s letters and burned them up with a fine secret feeling of citizenship, and then he had regretted it afterward, when he remembered it was only the United States APO address and no good to anyone. It was too bad, in a way, because they would have made a good collection. On the other hand, he already had eighteen separate and distinct collections, and the shelf in his room, the corner of the second drawer down in the living room desk, and the excellent location behind the laundry tub in the basement were all getting seriously overcrowded.He wondered if maybe later he could have the telegram. He could start a good collection with the telegram, he thought. He would print on a piece of paper, “Things Relating to My Brother Bricky,” and paste it onto a box. He even knew the box he would use. It held his father’s golf shoes, but some kind of arrangement could be worked out for putting the shoes somewhere else. His father was very good about that sort of thing, once he understood boxes were really needed, and, later on, this one could hold all the souvenirs and medals and things Bricky would bring home.The telegram, which maybe began “We regret to inform you,” would fit neatly into the box without having to be folded. It would go on with something about “your son, Lieutenant Ronald Baker,” and then there would be something more, not quite clear in his mind, about “He is reported missing in action over the South Pacific, having failed to return from an important bombing mission.”Timothy scowled at a sparrow. There was another part that went with the “missing in action” part. Missing, believed — Missing, believed killed.That was when it hit him. That was the moment when he suddenly realized what had happened — when the thing that the telegram stood for took shape clearly before him, not as something that had frightened his mother and made his father hold her very tight, but as something real about Bricky.Bricky, his brother. Bricky, with whom he had sat a hundred times in this exact place and talked and talked, Bricky who went fishing with him, who showed him how to tie a sheepshank, who was going to help him build a radio when he came back.“When he comes back,” said Timothy aloud, licking his lips because they had unaccountably gone dry. But suppose now that Bricky didn’t come back? Suppose that telegram was the end of everything?It was the vacant lot and the shack that weren’t safe anymore. In the kitchen, he had known, without questioning it, that Bricky was all right. It was here, out in the open, that fear had come crawling. Bricky was dead. He knew Bricky was dead, and he was dead thousands of miles from anywhere, and they wouldn’t see him again ever.Timothy sat there, and the pain in his stomach wasn’t anything like the pain you got from eating too much or being hungry. He rocked back and forth, not very much, but enough to cradle the sharpness of it, being careful not to breathe, because if he breathed it went down too far inside and hurt too much. If he could just sit there, maybe, not breathing...He couldn’t. There came a time when his lungs took a deep gulp of air without his having anything to do with it, and when that time came there was no way of holding out any longer.2324100152400Bricky was dead. He gave a great strangled sob and rolled over on his face, sprawling across the ground, and everything that was good and safe and beautiful quit the earth and left him with nothing to hold on to. He clung to the grass, shaking desperately with fear and pain and loss, and the immensity and the loneliness and the danger of being a human rolled over and over him in drowning waves.Behind him, the shack, which only a little while ago had been a shelter for the sneak attack of Zero planes, was immobile and solid in the sunshine. It was only a shack in a vacant lot. The tumbled weeds and vines above which The Hornet had swooped and soared were weeds and vines, not a battleground for airborne knights.It wasn’t that way. It wasn’t that way at all. It had nothing to do with a gallant plane, outnumbered but triumphant. It had nothing to do with the Bricky who had flown in his brother’s dreams, as safe and invincible as Saint George.A plane was a thing that could be shot down out of the safe sky by murderous gunfire. Bricky was a man whose body could be thrown from the cockpit and spin senselessly down into cold water. It was a cheat. The whole thing was a cheat.The war — this vague big thing that moved in shadowy headlines, in a glorious pageantry of medals and flags and brave men shaking hands — wasn’t that at all. He had thought it was something like the Holy Grail and King Arthur, that it shone with beauty and was very high and proud.And it wasn’t. It was fear and this hollowed panic inside him, and it was not seeing Bricky again. Not seeing him again ever. That was why his mother had cried.That was why his father’s voice had been so rough and quick. And it wasn’t to be endured. He breathed in shivering gasps, there with his face buried in cool-smelling grass and earth and the sun friendly and gentle on his shoulders that didn’t feel it anymore. It would go on like this, day after day and week after week. Bricky was dead, and the place where Bricky had been would never be filled in.That was what war was, and he knew about it now, and the knowledge was too awful and too immense to be borne. He wanted his mother. He wanted to run to her and to hold to her tightly and to cry his heart out with her arms around his shoulders and her reassuring voice in his ears.But his mother felt like this, too, and his father. There was no safety anywhere. No one could help him, except himself, and he was eleven years old. He didn’t want to know about all these things. He didn’t want to know what war really was. He wanted it to be a picture on a movie screen again, with excitement and glory and men being brave. Not this immense, unendurable fear and emptiness. He couldn’t even cry.He was eleven years old, and he lay there face down in the grass, and he couldn’t cry. He groped for anything to ease him, and he thought perhaps Bricky’s plane hadn’t been alone when it crashed to the flat blue water. He thought that other planes might have been blotted out with it — planes with big red suns painted on them.But even that didn’t do any good. There were men in those planes with the suns on them. Not men like men he knew, not Americans, but real people just the same. No one had told him that he would one day know that the enemy were real people, no one had warned him against finding it out.He pressed closer against the ground, trying to draw comfort up from it, but he kept shaking. “Now I lay me down to sleep,” said Timothy into the grass. “Now I lay me down to sleep. Now I lay me — ”It was a long, long time before the shaking stopped. He was surprised, at the end of it, to find that he was still there on the ground. He pushed away from it and sat up, his head swimming. The sun was much lower now, and a little wind had sprung up to move the vines around him so they swayed against the shack. The sweater felt good around his shoulders, and it was the sweater that made him realize suddenly that he couldn’t go on lying there waiting for the world to stop and end the pain.The world wasn’t going to stop. It was going right on, and Timothy Baker was still in it. He would go on being in it, and the thing inside him would go on being the thing inside him. He would have, somehow, to live with that too. He would have to go back to the house, to the kitchen, to his mother and father, to school, to coming home and knowing that Bricky wouldn’t be there.Timothy looked around. He felt weak and dizzy, the way he’d felt once after a fever. The shack was there, with no Jap Zeros behind it. The place where he had stood when he was being Bricky and The Hornet was just a piece of ground. His mouth drew in, with his teeth clipping his lower lip, while he stared. There wasn’t any escape. He would have to go back — along the sidewalk, up the path, through the front door, into the hallway, into the living room, into the kitchen. There wasn’t any escape from his mother’s eyes or his father’s voice. He knew all about it now, and he was stiff and sore from knowing about it.He saw what he had to do. He had to go home and face that telegram. He got to his feet. He brushed off the dry bits of grass that had clung to the blurred wool of his sweater, and he pulled the cuffs around straight, so they wouldn’t be stretched wrong. Then he walked across the grass, out of the lot and onto the sidewalk, holding himself very carefully against the pain.He held himself that way all the distance back, and when he got to his own front yard he was able to walk quite directly and quickly up the path and up the steps. He turned the doorknob and he went into the front hall. It was getting darker outdoors already, and the hall was dim. It was a moment before he realized that his father was standing in the hallway, waiting for him.He stopped where he was, getting the pieces of himself together. He wasn’t even shaking now, and some vague kind of pride stirred deep down inside him.He said, “Dad” dragging the monosyllable out.“Yes, Timmy.”“May I see the telegram, please?”His father reached into his pocket and took out the brown leather wallet that he carried papers around in. The telegram was on top of some letters and bills, and it was strange to see it already so much a part of their living that it was jostled by business things.Timothy took the yellow envelope and opened it carefully. There it was. “Lieutenant Ronald Baker, missing in action.” The stiff formality of the printed words made it seem so final that he felt the coldness and the fear spreading through him again, the way it had been at the shack. His mind wanted to drag away from the piece of paper, and he had to force it to think instead.With careful stubbornness, he read the telegram again. It wasn’t really very much that the War Department said — just that the plane had not returned and that the family would be advised of any further news. He read the last part once more. Any further news. That meant the War Department wasn’t sure what had happened. Bricky might have bailed out somewhere. There had been stories in the newspaper about fliers who bailed out and were picked up later. That was a hope. Timothy weighed it carefully in his mind, not letting himself clutch at it, and it was still a hope. It was a perfectly fair one that they were entitled to, he and his father and mother.He held his thoughts steady on that for a moment, and then he made them go on logically and precisely. Another thing that could have happened was that Bricky had gone down somewhere over land that was held by the Japanese. If that was it, Bricky might be a prisoner of war. Prisoners of war came back. That was another hope, and it was a perfectly fair one too.He had two hopes, then. They were reasonable hopes, and he had a right to hang on to them very tightly. The telegram didn’t say “believed killed.” Frowning, he went through it in his head again, adding up as if it were an arithmetic problem. There were three things that the telegram could mean. Two of them were on the side of Bricky’s safety, and one was against it. Two chances to one was almost a promise.Timothy drew a deep breath and handed the telegram back to his father. His father took it without saying anything, then he put his hand against the back of Timothy’s neck and rubbed his fingers up through the stubbly hair. For just a moment, Timothy turned his head, pressing close against the buttons of his father’s coat, then he pulled away.“Can I go outdoors for a little while?” he said.“Sure. I guess supper will be the usual time.”They nodded to each other, then Timothy turned and went out of the house. He went down the steps, his hands jammed in his pockets, and began to walk along the sidewalk, feeling still a little hollow, but perfectly steady.His heart fitted him again. It had stopped pounding against the cage of his ribs, and it didn’t hurt anymore. The old feeling of safety and comfort was beginning to come back, but now it wasn’t a part of his home or of the day. It was inside himself and solid, so that he couldn’t mislay it again ever. He pushed his hair away from his forehead, letting the wind get at it. The air was cooler now and felt good, and he had a vague moment of being hungry.Then he looked around him. He was back at the vacant shack, and the shack had been waiting there for him to come. He eyed it gravely. Behind the shack were the Jap Zeros. They had been waiting for him too. He knew they were there and that their force was overwhelming. Timothy’s fingers reached automatically for the controls of his plane. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to let out the roar of motors.And, suddenly, he stopped. His hand dropped down to his side and his mouth shut. He stood there quite quietly for a moment, as if he had lost something and were trying to remember what it was. Then he gave a sigh of relinquishment.His fingers curled firmly around air again and closed, but this time they didn’t close on the controls of a machine. They closed on dangling reins.“Come on, Silver, old boy,” said Timothy softly to the evening. “They’ve got the jump on us, but we can catch them yet.”He touched his spurs to his gallant pinto pony, and, wheeling, he loped away across the sunlit plain.Study QuestionsWhy does Timothy choose Bricky as the subject of his composition?What news does Timothy receive from his father? What is his first reaction?Why does Timothy think no one can help him?After he reads the telegram, what three possibilities does Timothy see for Bricky?At the end of the story, what does Timothy begin to play? What does he end up playing?Literary Focus: Round and Flat Characters1180975Characters in stories can be either round or flat.A round character has a complex personality. Like real people, they have depth in feelings and passions. A round character has many layers of personality. Writers define a round character fully, both physically and mentally. It is a character with whom the reader can sympathize, associate with, or relate to, as he seems very life-like.A flat character does not have much depth. A flat character is a simple character, having just one or two qualities, which generally remain the same throughout the story. The audience does not know much about these characters, because the writer does not provide detailed information about them.Example: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)Travis is a round character. We know a great deal about his personality, including his likes, dislikes, hopes, and fears. He is a very lifelike character.Bud Searcy is more of a flat character. We know he is lazy and manipulative, but beyond that, we know very little about him.Question: Is Timothy a round or flat character? What about his mother and father? Explain why.Initiation By Sylvia Plath19051190500Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is known primarily as a poet, with most of her work published after her death in 1963. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and studied at Smith College in Massachusetts and at Newnham College in Cambridge, England. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England with their two children. Her best-known works, such as the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-destruction closely tied to her personal experiences.“Initiation” was written when Plath was a teenager but was published in Seventeen magazine just before she entered college in 1950 when it won second prize in the magazine’s annual short-story contest. The idea for the story, which was originally titled "Heather-Birds' Eyebrows", came out of Plath's own experiences in high school.The basement room was dark and warm, like the inside of a sealed jar, Millicent thought, her eyes getting used to the strange dimness. The silence was soft with cobwebs, and from the small, rectangular window set high in the stone wall there sifted a faint bluish light that must be coming from the full October moon. She could see now that what she was sitting on was a woodpile next to the furnace.Millicent brushed back a strand of hair. It was stiff and sticky from the egg that they had broken on her head as she knelt blindfolded at the sorority altar a short while before. There had been a silence. a slight crunching sound, and then she had felt the cold, slimy egg-white flattening and spreading on her head and sliding down her neck. She had heard someone smothering a laugh. It was all part of the ceremony.Then the girls had led her here, blindfolded still, through the corridors of Betsy Johnson's house and shut her in the cellar. It would be an hour before they came to get her, but then Rat Court would be all over and she would say what she had to say and go home.For tonight was the grand finale, the trial by fire. There really was no doubt now that she would get in. She could not think of anyone who had ever been invited into the high school sorority and failed to get through initiation time. But even so, her case would be quite different. She would see to that. She could not exactly say what had decided her revolt, but it definitely had something to do with Tracy and something to do with the heather birds.What girl at Lansing High would not want to be in her place now? Millicent thought, amused. What girl would not want to be one of the elect, no matter if it did mean five days of initiation before and after school, ending in the climax of Rat Court on Friday night when they made the new girls members? Even Tracy had been wistful when she heard that Millicent had been one of the five girls to receive an invitation."It won't be any different with us, Tracy," Millicent had told her. "We'll still go around together like we always have, and next year you'll surely get in."" I know, but even so," Tracy had said quietly, "you'll change, whether you think you will or not. Nothing ever stays the same."And nothing does, Millicent had thought. How horrible it would be if one never changed, if she were condemned to be the plain, shy Millicent of a few years back for the rest of her life. Fortunately there was always the changing, the growing, the going on.lt would come to Tracy, too. She would tell Tracy the silly things the girls had said, and Tracy would change also, entering eventually into the magic circle. She would grow to know the special ritual as Millicent had started to last week."First of all," Betsy Johnson, the vivacious blonde secretary of the sorority, had told the five new candidates over sandwiches in the school cafeteria last Monday, "first of all, each of you has a big sister. She’s the one who bosses you around, and you just do what she tells you.""Remember the part about talking back and smiling," Louise Fullerton had put in, laughing. She was another celebrity in high school, pretty and dark and vice-president of the student council. "You can't say anything unless your big sister asks you something or tells you to talk to someone. And you can't smile, no matter how you're dying to." The girls had laughed a little nervously, and then the bell had rung for the beginning of afternoon classes.It would be rather fun for a change, Millicent mused, getting her books out of her locker in the hall, rather exciting to be part of a closely knit group, the exclusive set at Lansing High. Of course, it wasn't a school organization. In fact, the principal, Mr. Cranton, wanted to do away with initiation week altogether, because he thought it was undemocratic and disturbed the routine of school work. But there wasn't really anything he could do about it. Sure, the girls had to come to school for five days without any lipstick on and without curling their hair, and of course everybody noticed them, but what could the teachers do?Millicent sat down at her desk in the big study hall. Tomorrow she would come to school, proudly, laughingly, without lipstick, with her brown hair straight and shoulder length, and then everybody would know, even the boys would know, that she was one of the elect. Teachers would smile helplessly, thinking perhaps: So now they've picked Millicent Arnold. I never would have guessed it.A year or two ago, not many people would have guessed it. Millicent had waited a long time for acceptance, longer than most. It was as if she had been sitting for years in a pavilion outside a dance floor, looking in through the windows at the golden interior, with the lights clear and the air like honey, wistfully watching the couples waltzing to the never-ending music, laughing in pairs and groups together, no one alone.But now at last, amid a week of fanfare and merriment, she would answer her invitation to enter the ballroom through the main entrance marked "Initiation." She would gather up her velvet skirts, her silken train, or whatever the disinherited princesses wore in the story books, and come into her rightful kingdom.... The bell rang to end study hall."Millicent, wait up!" It was Louise Fullerton behind her, Louise who had always before been very nice, very polite, friendlier than the rest, even long ago, before the invitation had come."Listen," Louise walked down the hall with her to Latin, their next class, "are you busy right after school today? Because I'd like to talk to you about tomorrow.""Sure. I've got lots of time.""Well, meet me in the hall after homeroom then, and we'll go down to the drugstore or something." Walking beside Louise on the way to the drugstore, Millicent felt a surge of pride. For all anyone could see, she and Louise were the best of friends."You know, I was so glad when they voted you in," Louise said.Millicent smiled. "I was really thrilled to get the invitation," she said frankly, "but kind of sorry that Tracy didn't get in, too."Tracy, she thought. If there is such a thing as a best friend, Tracy has been just that this last year."Yes, Tracy,” Louise was saying, "she's a nice girl, and they put her up on the slate, but, well, she had three blackballs against her.”"Blackballs? What are they?""Well, we're not supposed to tell anybody outside the club, but seeing as you'll be in at the end of the week I don't suppose it hurts." They were at the drugstore now."You see," Louise began explaining in a low voice after they were seated in the privacy of the booth, "once a year the sorority puts up all the likely girls that are suggested for membership."Millicent sipped her cold, sweet drink slowly, saving the ice cream to spoon up last. She listened carefully to Louise who was going on, "And then there's a big meeting, and all the girls' names are read off and each girl is discussed.""Oh?" Millicent asked mechanically, her voice sounding strange."Oh, I know what you' re thinking," Louise laughed. "But it's really not as bad as all that. They keep it down to a minimum of catting. They just talk over each girl and why or why not they think she'd be good for the club. And then they vote. Three blackballs eliminate a girl.""Do you mind if I ask you what happened to Tracy?" Millicent said.Louise laughed a little uneasily. "Well, you know how girls are. They notice little things. I mean, some of them thought Tracy was justa bit too different. Maybe you could suggest a few things to her.""Like what?""Oh, like maybe not wearing knee socks to school, or carrying that old bookbag. I know it doesn't sound like much, but well, it's things like that which set someone apart. I mean, you know that no girl at Lansing would be seen dead wearing knee socks, no matter how cold it gets, and it's kiddish and kind of green to carry a bookbag.""I guess so," Millicent said. "About tomorrow," Louise went on. "You've drawn Beverly Mitchell for a big sister. I wanted to warn you that she's the toughest, but if you get through all right it'll be all the more credit for you.""Thanks, Lou," Millicent said gratefully, thinking, this is beginning to sound serious. Worse than a loyalty test, this grilling over the coals. What's it supposed to prove anyway? That I can take orders without flinching? Or does it just make them feel good to see us run around at their beck and call?“All you have to do really," Louise said, spooning up the last of her sundae, "is be very meek and obedient when you're with Bev and do just what she tells you. Don't laugh or talk back or try to be funny, or she'll just make it harder for you, and believe me, she's a great one for doing that. Be at her house at seven-thirty."And she was. She rang the bell and sat down on the steps to wait for Bev. After a few minutes the front door opened and Bev was standing there, her face serious."Get up, gopher," Bev ordered.There was something about her tone that annoyed Millicent. It was almost malicious. And there was an unpleasant anonymity about the label "gopher," even if that was what they always called the girls being initiated. It was degrading, like being given a number. It was a denial of individuality.Rebellion flooded through her.“I said get up. Are you deaf?"Millicent got up, standing there."Into the house, gopher. There's a bed to be made and a room to be cleaned at the top of the stairs."Millicent went up the stairs mutely. She found Bev's room and started making the bed. Smiling to herself, she was thinking: How absurdly funny, me taking orders from this girl like a servant.Bev was suddenly there in the doorway. "Wipe that smile off your face," she commanded.There seemed something about this relationship that was not all fun. In Bev's eyes, Millicent was sure of it, there was a hard, bright spark of exultation.On the way to school, Millicent had to walk behind Bev at a distance often paces, carrying her books. They came up to the drugstore where there already was a crowd of boys and girls from Lansing High waiting for the show.The other girls being initiated were there, so Millicent felt relieved. It would not be so bad now, being part of the group."What'll we have them do?" Betsy Johnson asked Bev. That morning Betsy had made her "gopher" carry an old colored parasol through the square and sing "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows.""I know," Herb Dalton, the good-looking basketball captain, said.A remarkable change came over Bev. She was all at once very soft and coquettish.“You can't tell them what to do," Bev said sweetly. "Men have nothing to say about this little deal." "All right, all right," Herb laughed, stepping back and pretending to fend off a blow."It's getting late," Louise had come up. "Almost eight-thirty. We'd better get them marching on to school."The “gophers" had to do a Charleston step all the way to school, and each one had her own song to sing, trying to drown out the other four. During school, of course, you couldn't fool around, but even then, there was a rule that you mustn't talk to boys outside of class or at lunchtime or any time at all after school. So the sorority girls would get the most popular boys to go up to the "gophers" and ask them out, or try to start them talking, and sometimes a "gopher" was taken by surprise and began to say something before she could catch herself. And then the boy reported her and she got a black mark.Herb Dalton approached Millicent as she was getting an ice cream at the lunch counter that noon. She saw him coming before he spoke to her, and looked down quickly, thinking: He is too princely, too dark and smiling. And I am much too vulnerable. Why must he be the one I have to be careful of?I won't say anything, she thought, I'll just smile very sweetly.She smiled up at Herb very sweetly and mutely. His return grin was rather miraculous. It was surely more than was called for in the line of duty. "I know you can't talk to me," he said, very low. “But you're doing fine, the girls say. I even like your hair straight and all."Bev was coming toward them, then, her red mouth set in a bright, calculating smile. She ignored Millicent and sailed up to Herb.“Why waste your time with gophers?” she caroled gaily. "Their tongues are tied, but completely." Herb managed a parting shot. "But that one keeps such an attractive silence."Millicent smiled as she ate her sundae at the counter with Tracy. Generally, the girls who were outsiders now, as Millicent had been, scoffed at the initiation antics as childish and absurd to hide their secret envy. But Tracy was understanding, as ever."Tonight's the worst, I guess, Tracy," Millicent told her. "I hear that the girls are taking us on a bus over to Lewiston and going to have us performing in the square.”"Just keep a poker face outside,” Tracy advised. "But keep laughing like mad inside."Millicent and Bev took a bus ahead of the rest of the girls; they had to stand up on the way to Lewiston Square. Bev seemed very cross about something. Finally she said, “You were talking with Herb Dalton at lunch today.""No," said Millicent honestly."Well, I saw you smile at him. That's practically as bad as talking. Remember not to do it again." Millicent kept silent."It's fifteen minutes before the bus gets into town,” Bev was saying then. "I want you to go up and down the bus asking people what they eat for breakfast. Remember, you can't tell them you're being initiated." Millicent looked down the aisle of the crowded bus and felt suddenly quite sick. She thought: How will I ever do it, going up to all those stony-faced people who are staring coldly out of the window...."You heard me, gopher.""Excuse me, madam," Millicent said politely to the lady in the first seat of the bus, "but I'm taking a survey. Could you please tell me what you eat for breakfast?""Why, just orange juice, toast, and coffee," she said."Thank you very much." Millicent went on to the next person, a young business man. He ate eggs sunny side up, toast and coffee.3248025304800By the time Millicent got to the back of the bus, most of the people were smiling at her. They obviously know, she thought, that I'm being initiated into something.Finally, there was only one man left in the corner of the back seat. He was small and jolly, with a ruddy, wrinkled face that spread into a beaming smile as Millicent approached. In his brown suit with the forest-green tie he looked something like a gnome or a cheerful leprechaun."Excuse me, sir," Millicent smiled, "but I'm taking a survey. What do you eat for breakfast?" "Heather birds' eyebrows on toast," the little man rattled off."What?" Millicent exclaimed."Heather birds' eyebrows," the little man explained. "Heather birds live on the mythological moors and fly about all day long, singing wild and sweet in the sun. They're bright purple and have very tasty eyebrows."Millicent broke out into spontaneous laughter. Why, this was wonderful, the way she felt a sudden comradeship with a stranger."Are you mythological, too?""Not exactly," he replied, "but I certainly hope to be someday. Being mythological does wonders for one's ego."The bus was swinging into the station now; Millicent hated to leave the little man. She wanted to ask him more about the birds.And from that time on, initiations didn't bother Millicent at all. She went gaily about Lewiston Square from store to store asking for broken crackers and mangoes, and she just laughed inside when people stared and then brightened, answering her crazy questions as if she were quite serious and really a person of consequence. So many people were shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them. And really, you didn't have to belong to a club to feel related to other human beings.One afternoon Millicent had started talking with Liane Morris, another of the girls being initiated, about what it would be like when they were finally in the sorority."Oh, I know pretty much what it'll be like," Liane had said. "My sister belonged before she graduated from high school two years ago.""Well, just what do they do as a club?" Millicent wanted to know."Why, they have a meeting once a week, and each girl takes turns entertaining at her house....""You mean it's just a sort of exclusive social group....""I guess so, though that's a funny way of putting it. But it sure gives a girl prestige value. My sister started going steady with the captain of the football team after she got in. Not bad, I’d say."No, it wasn't bad, Millicent had thought, lying in bed on the morning of Rat Court and listening to the sparrows chirping in the gutters. She thought of Herb. Would he ever have been so friendly if she were without the sorority label? Would he ask her out (if he ever did) just for herself, no strings attached?Then there was another thing that bothered her. Leaving Tracy on the outskirts. Because that is the way it would be; Millicent had seen it happen before.Outside, the sparrows were still chirping, and as she lay in bed Millicent visualized them, pale gray-brown birds in a flock, one like the other, all exactly alike.And then, for some reason, Millicent thought of the heather birds. Swooping carefree over the moors, they would go singing and crying out across the great spaces of air, dipping and darting, strong and proud in their freedom and their sometimes loneliness. It was then that she made her decision.Seated now on the woodpile in Betsy Johnson's cellar, Millicentknew that she had come triumphant through the trial of fire, the searing period of the ego which could end in two kinds of victory for her. The easiest of which would be her coronation as a princess, labeling her conclusively as one of the select flock.The other victory would be much harder, but she knew that it was what she wanted. It was not that she was being noble or anything. It was just that she had learned there were other ways of getting into the great hall, blazing with lights, of people and of life.It would be hard to explain to the girls tonight, of course, but she could tell Louise later just how it was. How she had proved something to herself by going through everything, even Rat Court, and then deciding not to join the sorority after all. And how she could still be friends with everybody. Sisters with everybody. Tracy, too.The door behind her opened and a ray of light sliced across the soft gloom of the basement room."Hey Millicent, come on out now. This is it." There were some of the girls outside."I'm coming," she said, getting up and moving out of the soft darkness into the glare of light, thinking: This is it, all right. The worst part, the hardest part, the part of initiation that I figured out myself.But just then, from somewhere far off, Millicent was sure of it, there came a melodic fluting, quite wild and sweet, and she knew that it must be the song of the heather birds as they went wheeling and gliding against wide blue horizons through vast spaces of air, their wings flashing quick and purple in the bright sun.Within Millicent another melody soared, strong and exuberant, a triumphant answer to the music of the darting heather birds that sang so clear and lilting over the far lands. And she knew that her own private initiation had just begun.Study QuestionsWhy does Millicent want to join the sorority?This story is an example of a “flashback,” where the time order is broken to show events that took place previously. In what way does the story do this?Why is Tracy blackballed from the sorority? How does she react to being left out?Identify three things Millicent must do as part of her initiation?Who is Herb Dalton? What does he say to Millicent?What question does Millicent have to ask the passengers on the bus? What answer does the man in the brown suit give? What is Millicent’s reaction?Why do you think Millicent thinks about the heather birds while she waits in darkness?Literary Focus: Static and Dynamic Characters1152400All characters in a story are either dynamic or static. A static character is one who doesn't undergo any significant change in character, personality or perspective over the course of a story. A dynamic character, in contrast, undergoes a major transition in one or more of these ways.Example 1: Sherlock Holmes (by Arthur ConanDoyle)Sherlock Holmes is one of the most prominent static characters in literature. He maintains his wit, confidence and quirky personality while dealing with adventures and compelling cases, and his personality does not change in any significant way.Example 2: A Christmas Carol (by Charles Dickens)A clear example of a dynamic character is Ebenezer Scrooge. His evolution was dramatic as he went from a miserly scrooge to a generous giver after encounters with three ghosts. Example 3: Harry Potter (by J.K. Rowling)In the famous "Harry Potter" fantasy book series, the title character undergoes a major transformation from being a regular kid to a powerful young wizard who must battle the evil Lord Voldemort. Therefore he is a dynamic character.Example 4: Old Yeller (by James Gipson)Travis is a dynamic character. He transforms from someone who does not like Old Yeller and refuses to accept him into the family to truly loving Old Yeller and feeling great remorse when he has to shoot him. Travis changes in other ways, growing from an uncertain youth to a much more mature young man capable of sustaining his family while his father is away.Question: Is Millicent a static or dynamic character? What about Tracy? Explain your answers.Blues Ain’t No Mockin BirdBy Toni Cade Bambara104776228600Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995) was a writer, civil-rights activist, and teacher who wrote about the concerns of the African-American community. She was reared by her mother in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Queens, NY. She was a frequent lecturer and teacher at universities and worked to raise black American consciousness and pride. In the 1970s she was active in both the black liberation and the women’s movements.Bambara’s fiction, which is set in the rural South as well as the urban North, is written in dialect and presents sharply drawn characters whom she portrayed with affection. "Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird" was first published in the collection Gorilla, My Love in 1971. The puddle had frozen over, and me and Cathy went stompin in it. The twins from next door, Tyrone and Terry, were swingin so high out of sight we forgot we were waitin our turn on the tire. Cathy jumped up and came down hard on her heels and started tapdancin. And the frozen patch splinterin every which way underneath kinda spooky. “Looks like a plastic spider web,” she said. “A sort of weird spider, I guess, with many mental problems.” But really it looked like the crystal paperweight Granny kept in the parlor. She was on the back porch, Granny was, making the cakes drunk. The old ladle drippin rum into the Christmas tins, like it used to drip maple syrup into the pails when we lived in the Judson’s woods, like it poured cider into the vats when we were on the Cooper place, like it used to scoop buttermilk and soft cheese when we lived at the dairy. “Go tell that man we ain’t a bunch of trees.” “Ma’am?” “I said to tell that man to get away from here with that camera.” Me and Cathy look over toward the meadow where the men with the station wagon’d been roamin around all mornin. The tall man with a huge camera lassoed to his shoulder was buzzin our way. “They’re makin movie pictures,” yelled Tyrone, stiffenin his legs and twistin so the tire’d come down slow so they could see. “They’re makin movie pictures,” sang out Terry. “That boy don’t never have anything original to say,” say Cathy grown-up. By the time the man with the camera had cut across our neighbor’s yard, the twins were out of the trees swingin low and Granny was onto the steps, the screen door bammin soft and scratchy against her palms. “We thought we’d get a shot or two of the house and everything and then—” “Good mornin,” Granny cut him off. And smiled that smile.“Good mornin,” he said, head all down the way Bingo does when you yell at him about the bones on the kitchen floor. “Nice place you got here, aunty. We thought we’d take a—” “Did you?” said Granny with her eyebrows. Cathy pulled up her socks and giggled. “Nice things here,” said the man, buzzin his camera over the yard. The pecan barrels, the sled, me and Cathy, the flowers, the printed stones along the driveway, the trees, the twins, the toolshed. “I don’t know about the thing, the it, and the stuff,” said Granny, still talkin with her eyebrows. “Just people here is what I tend to consider.” Camera man stopped buzzin. Cathy giggled into her collar. “Mornin, ladies,” a new man said. He had come up behind us when we weren’t lookin. “And gents,” discoverin the twins givin him a nasty look. “We’re filmin for the county,” he said with a smile. “Mind if we shoot a bit around here?” “I do indeed,” said Granny with no smile. Smilin man was smilin up a storm. So was Cathy. But he didn’t seem to have another word to say, so he and the camera man backed on out the yard, but you could hear the camera buzzin still. “Suppose you just shut that machine off,” said Granny real low through her teeth, and took a step down off the porch and then another. “Now, aunty,” Camera said, pointin the thing straight at her. “Your mama and I are not related.” Smilin man got his notebook out and a chewed-up pencil. “Listen,” he said movin back into our yard, “we’d like to have a statement from you . . . for the film. We’re filmin for the county, see. Part of the food stamp campaign. You know about the food stamps?” Granny said nuthin. “Maybe there’s somethin you want to say for the film. I see you grow your own vegetables,” he smiled real nice. “If more folks did that, see, there’d be no need—” Granny wasn’t sayin nuthin. So they backed on out, buzzin at our clothesline and the twins’ bicycles, then back on down to the meadow. The twins were danglin in the tire, lookin at Granny. Me and Cathy were waitin, too, cause Granny always got somethin to say. She teaches steady with no letup. “I was on this bridge one time,” she started off. “Was a crowd cause this man was goin to jump, you understand. And a minister was there and the police and some other folks. His woman was there, too.” “What was they doin?” asked Tyrone. “Tryin to talk him out of it was what they was doin. The minister talkin about how it was a mortal sin, suicide. His woman takin bites out of her own hand and not even knowin it, so nervous and cryin and talkin fast.” “So what happened?” asked Tyrone. “So here comes . . . this person . . . with a camera, takin pictures of the man and the minister and the woman. Takin pictures of the man in his misery about to jump, cause life so bad and people been messin with him so bad. This person takin up the whole roll of film practically. But savin a few, of course.” “Of course,” said Cathy, hatin the person. Me standin there wonderin how Cathy knew it was “of course” when I didn’t and it was my grandmother. After a while Tyrone say, “Did he jump?” “Yes, did he jump?” say Terry all eager. And Granny just stared at the twins till their faces swallow up the eager and they don’t even care any more about the man jumpin. Then she goes back onto the porch and lets the screen door go for itself. I’m lookin to Cathy to finish the story cause she knows Granny’s whole story before me even. Like she knew how come we move so much and Cathy ain’t but a third cousin we picked up on the way last Thanksgivin visitin. But she knew it was on account of people drivin Granny crazy till she’d get up in the night and start packin. Mumblin and packin and wakin everybody up sayin, “Let’s get on away from here before I kill me somebody.” Like people wouldn’t pay her for things like they said they would. Or Mr. Judson bringin us boxes of old clothes and raggedy magazines. Or Mrs. Cooper comin in our kitchen and touchin everything and sayin how clean it all was. Granny goin crazy, and Granddaddy Cain pullin her off the people, sayin, “Now, now, Cora.” But next day loadin up the truck, with rocks all in his jaw, madder than Granny in the first place.“I read a story once,” said Cathy soundin like Granny teacher. “About this lady Goldilocks who barged into a house that wasn’t even hers. And not invited, you understand. Messed over the people’s groceries and broke up the people’s furniture. Had the nerve to sleep in the folks’ bed.” “Then what happened?” asked Tyrone. “What they do, the folks, when they come in to all this mess?” “Did they make her pay for it?” asked Terry, makin a fist. “I’d’ve made her pay me.” I didn’t even ask. I could see Cathy actress was very likely to just walk away and leave us in mystery about this story which I heard was about some bears. “Did they throw her out?” asked Tyrone, like his father sounds when he’s bein extra nastyplus to the washinmachine man. “Woulda,” said Terry. “I woulda gone upside her head with my fist and—” “You woulda done whatcha always do—go cry to Mama, you big baby,” said Tyrone. So naturally Terry starts hittin on Tyrone, and next thing you know they tumblin out the tire and rollin on the ground. But Granny didn’t say a thing or send the twins home or step out on the steps to tell us about how we can’t afford to be fightin amongst ourselves. She didn’t say nuthin. So I get into the tire to take my turn. And I could see her leanin up against the pantry table, starin at the cakes she was puttin up for the Christmas sale, mumblin real low and grumpy and holdin her forehead like it wanted to fall off and mess up the rum cakes. 33289881209675Behind me I hear before I can see Granddaddy Cain comin through the woods in his field boots. Then I twist around to see the shiny black oilskin cuttin through what little left there was of yellows, reds, and oranges. His great white head not quite round cause of this bloody thing high on his shoulder, like he was wearin a cap on sideways. He takes the shortcut through the pecan grove, and the sound of twigs snappin overhead and underfoot travels clear and cold all the way up to us. And here comes Smilin and Camera up behind him like they was goin to do somethin. Folks like to go for him sometimes. Cathy say it’s because he’s so tall and quiet and like a king. And people just can’t stand it. But Smilin and Camera don’t hit him in the head or nuthin. They just buzz on him as he stalks by with the chicken hawk slung over his shoulder, squawkin, drippin red down the back of the oilskin. He passes the porch and stops a second for Granny to see he’s caught the hawk at last, but she’s just starin and mumblin, and not at the hawk. So he nails the bird to the toolshed door, the hammerin crackin through the eardrums. And the bird flappin himself to death and droolin down the door to paint the gravel in the driveway red, then brown, then black. And the two men movin up on tiptoe like they was invisible or we were blind, one. “Get them persons out of my flower bed, Mister Cain,” say Granny moanin real low like at a funeral. “How come your grandmother calls her husband ‘Mister Cain’ all the time?” Tyrone whispers all loud and noisy and from the city and don’t know no better. Like his mama, Miss Myrtle, tell us never mind the formality as if we had no better breeding than to call her Myrtle, plain. And then this awful thing—a giant hawk—come wailin up over the meadow, flyin low and tilted and screamin, zigzaggin through the pecan grove, breakin branches and hollerin, snappin past the clothesline, flyin every which way, flyin into things reckless with crazy. “He’s come to claim his mate,” say Cathy fast, and ducks down. We all fall quick and flat into the gravel driveway, stones scrapin my face. I squinch my eyes open again at the hawk on the door, tryin to fly up out of her death like it was just a sack flown into by mistake. Her body holdin her there on that nail, though. The mate beatin the air overhead and clutchin for hair, for heads, for landin space. The camera man duckin and bendin and runnin and fallin, jigglin the camera and scared. And Smilin jumpin up and down swipin at the huge bird, tryin to bring the hawk down with just his raggedy ole cap. Granddaddy Cain straight up and silent, watchin the circles of the hawk, then aimin the hammer off his wrist. The giant bird fallin, silent and slow. Then here comes Camera and Smilin all big and bad now that the awful screechin thing is on its back and broken, here they come. And Granddaddy Cain looks up at them like it was the first time noticin, but not payin them too much mind cause he’s listenin, we all listenin, to that low groanin music comin from the porch. And we figure any minute, somethin in my back tells me any minute now, Granny gonna bust through that screen with somethin in her hand and murder on her mind. So Granddaddy say above the buzzin, but quiet, “Good day, gentlemen.” Just like that. Like he’d invited them in to play cards and they’d stayed too long and all the sandwiches were gone and Reverend Webb was droppin by and it was time to go. They didn’t know what to do. But like Cathy say, folks can’t stand Granddaddy tall and silent and like a king. They can’t neither. The smile the men smilin is pullin the mouth back and showin the teeth. Lookin like the wolf man, both of them. Then Granddaddy holds his hand out—this huge hand I used to sit in when I was a baby and he’d carry me through the house to my mother like I was a gift on a tray. Like he used to on the trains. They called the other men just waiters. But they spoke of Granddaddy separate and said, The Waiter. And said he had engines in his feet and motors in his hands and couldn’t no train throw him off and couldn’t nobody turn him round. They were big enough for motors, his hands were. He held that one hand out all still and it gettin to be not at all a hand but a person in itself. “He wants you to hand him the camera,” Smilin whispers to Camera, tiltin his head to talk secret like they was in the jungle or somethin and come upon a native that don’t speak the language. The men start untyin the straps, and they put the camera into that great hand speckled with the hawk’s blood all black and crackly now. And the hand don’t even drop with the weight, just the fingers move, curl up around the machine. But Granddaddy lookin straight at the men. They lookin at each other and everywhere but at Granddaddy’s face. “We filmin for the county, see,” say Smilin. “We puttin together a movie for the food stamp program . . . filmin all around these parts. Uhh, filmin for the county.” “Can I have my camera back?” say the tall man with no machine on his shoulder, but still keepin it high like the camera was still there or needed to be. “Please, sir.” Then Granddaddy’s other hand flies up like a sudden and gentle bird, slaps down fast on top of the camera and lifts off half like it was a calabash cut for sharing. “Hey,” Camera jumps forward. He gathers up the parts into his chest and everything unrollin and fallin all over. “Whatcha tryin to do? You’ll ruin the film.” He looks down into his chest of metal reels and things like he’s protectin a kitten from the cold. “You standin in the misses’ flower bed,” say Granddaddy. “This is our own place.” The two men look at him, then at each other, then back at the mess in the camera man’s chest, and they just back off. One sayin over and over all the way down to the meadow, “Watch it, Bruno. Keep ya fingers off the film.” Then Granddaddy picks up the hammer and jams it into the oilskin pocket, scrapes his boots, and goes into the house. And you can hear the squish of his boots headin through the house. And you can see the funny shadow he throws from the parlor window onto the ground by the stringbean patch. The hammer draggin the pocket of the oilskin out so Granddaddy looked even wider. Granny was hummin now—high, not low and grumbly. And she was doin the cakes again, you could smell the molasses from the rum. “There’s this story I’m goin to write one day,” say Cathy dreamer. “About the proper use of the hammer.” “Can I be in it?” Tyrone say with his hand up like it was a matter of first come, first served. “Perhaps,” say Cathy, climbin onto the tire to pump us up. “If you there and ready.”Study QuestionsWhat details in the story explain why Granny has moved so often?Who are Tyrone and Terry? What are they doing throughout most of the story?Why do the two men want to film the family?How is Cathy related to the family? What story does she try to tell the others?Why does Granny resent the film crew?What actions does Granddaddy Cain finally take to resolve Granny’s conflict with the cameracrew?How does Granddaddy stop the low-flying hawk?What does the behavior of the suffering hawks suggest about the relationship between Granddaddy and Granny?Literary Focus: Motivation1171450In literature, “motivation” is defined as the reason behind a character’s specific action or behavior. A character’s motivation is what causes him to act in a certain way or do a certain thing. A character may be motivated to take a job he does not want because he will be unable to buy food otherwise. Batman was motivated to fight criminals because he witnessed his own parents become victims of crime and does not want other people to suffer as he and his parents did. Understanding a character’s motivation for doing something can reveal a great deal about the character’s personality and vice versa.Example: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)Travis’ motivation for shooting Old Yeller was to prevent the dog from transmitting hydrophobia/rabies to his family or other animals.Question: What motivated Granny to tell the camera men to leave? What motivated Granddady for taking apart the camera? What motivated the hawk to fly near the people?The Long RainBy Ray Bradbury1171450Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th century American writers, he was mainly known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 and his science fiction collections The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. The New York Times called him "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".“The Long Rain” is a science fiction adventure story. It was originally published in 1950 as "Death-by-Rain" in the magazine Planet Stories, and then in the collection The Illustrated Man under the title “The Long Rain.” As you read the story, notice that Bradbury uses the science fiction setting to showcase character.The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men’s hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.“How much farther, Lieutenant?”“I don’t know. A mile, ten miles, a thousand.”“Aren’t you sure?”“How can I be sure?”“I don’t like this rain. If we only knew how far it is to the Sun Dome, I’d feel better.”“Another hour or two from here.” “You really think so, Lieutenant?” “Of course.”“Or are you lying to keep us happy?” “I’m lying to keep you happy. Shut up!”The two men sat together in the rain. Behind them sat two other men who were wet and tired and slumped like clay that was melting. The lieutenant looked up. He had a face that once had been brown and now the rain had washed it pale, and the rain had washed the color from his eyes and they were white, as were his teeth, and as was his hair. He was all white. Even his uniform was beginning to turn white, and perhaps a little green with fungus.“Don’t be crazy,” said one of the two other men. “It never stops raining on Venus. It just goes on and on. I’ve lived here for ten years and I never saw a minute, or even a second, when it wasn’t pouring.”“It’s like living under water,” said the lieutenant, and rose up, shrugging his guns into place. “Well, we’d better get going. We’ll find that Sun Dome yet.”“Or we won’t find it,” said the cynic. “It’s an hour or so.”“Now you’re lying to me, Lieutenant.”“No, now I’m lying to myself. This is one of those times when you’ve got to lie. I can’t take much more of this.”They walked down the jungle trail, now and then looking at their compasses. There was no direction anywhere, only what the compass said. There was a gray sky and rain falling and jungle and a path, and, far back behind them somewhere, a rocket in which they had ridden and fallen. A rocket in which lay two of their friends, dead and dripping rain.They walked in single file, not speaking. They came to a river which lay wide and flat and brown, flowing down to the great Single Sea. The surface of it was stippled in a billion places by the rain.“All right, Simmons.”The lieutenant nodded and Simmons took a small packet from his back which, with a pressure of hidden chemical, inflated into a large boat. The lieutenant directed the cutting of wood and the quick making of paddles and they set out into the river, paddling swiftly across the smooth surface in the rain. The lieutenant felt the cold rain on his cheeks and on his neck and on his moving arms. The cold was beginning to seep into his lungs. He felt the rain on his ears, on his eyes, on his legs.“I didn’t sleep last night,” he said.“Who could? Who has? When? How many nights have we slept? Thirty nights, thirty days! Who can sleep with rain slamming their head, banging away. . . . I’d give anything for a hat. Anything at all, just so it wouldn’t hit my head any more. I get headaches. My head is sore; it hurts all the time.”2795588465704“I’m sorry I came to China,” said one of the others. “First time I ever heard Venus called China.”“Sure, China. Chinese water cure. Remember the old torture? Rope you against a wall. Drop one drop of water on your head every half-hour. You go crazy waiting for the next one. Well, that’s Venus, but on a big scale. We’re not made for water. You can’t sleep, you can’t breathe right, and you’re crazy from just being soggy. If we’d been ready for a crash, we’d have brought waterproofed uniforms and hats. It’s this beating rain on your head gets you, most of all. It’s so heavy. It’s like BB shot. I don’t know how long I can take it.”They crossed the river, and in crossing they thought of the Sun Dome, somewhere ahead of them, shining in the jungle rain. A yellow house, round and bright as the sun. A house fifteen feet high by one hundred feet in diameter, in which was warmth and quiet and hot food and freedom from rain. And in the center of the Sun Dome, of course, was a sun. A small floating free globe of yellow fire, drifting in space at the top of the building where you could look at it from where you sat, smoking or reading a book or drinking your hot chocolate crowned with marshmallow dollops. There it would be, the yellow sun, just the size of the Earth sun, and it was warm and continuous, and the rain world of Venus would be forgotten as long as they stayed in that house and idled their time.The lieutenant turned and looked back at the three men using their oars and gritting their teeth. They were as white as mushrooms, as white as lye was. Venus bleached everything away in a few months. Even the jungle was an immense cartoon nightmare, for how could the jungle be green with no sun, with always rain falling and always dusk? The white, white jungle with the pale cheese-colored leaves, and the earth carved of wet Camembert, and the tree boles like immense toadstools— everything black and white. And how often could you see the soil itself? Wasn’t it mostly a creek, a stream, a puddle, a pool, a lake, a river, and then, at last the sea?“Here we are!”They leaped out on the farthest shore, splashing and sending up showers. The boat was deflated and stored in a small packet. They walked on.“Wait just a moment,” said the lieutenant. “I thought I saw something ahead.” “The Sun Dome?”“I’m not sure. The rain closed in again.Simmons began to run. “The Sun Dome!”“Come back, Simmons!”“The Sun Dome!”Simmons vanished in the rain. The others ran after him.They found him in a little clearing, and they stopped and looked at him and what he had discovered. The rocket ship. It was lying where they had left it. Somehow they had circled back and were where they had started. In the ruin of the ship green fungus was growing up out of the mouths of the two dead men. As they watched, the fungus took flower, the petals broke away in the rain, and the fungus died.“An electrical storm must be nearby. Threw our compasses off. That explains it.”“You’re right.”“What’ll we do now?”“Start out again.”“Good grief, we’re not any closer to anywhere!” “Let’s try to keep calm about it, Simmons.” “Calm, calm! This rain’s driving me wild!”“We’ve enough food for another two days if we’re careful.”The rain danced on their skin, on their wet uniforms; the rain streamed from their noses and ears, from their fingers and knees. They looked like stone fountains frozen in the jungle, issuing forth water from every pore. And, as they stood, from a distance they heard a roar. And the monster came out of the rain.The monster was supported upon a thousand electric blue legs. It walked swiftly and terribly. It struck down a leg with a driving blow. Everywhere a leg struck a tree fell and burned. Great whiffs of ozone filled the rainy air, and smoke blew away and was broken up by the rain. The monster was a half mile wide and a mile high and it felt of the ground like a great blind thing. Sometimes, for a moment, it had no legs at all. And then, in an instant, a thousand whips would fall out of its belly, white-blue whips, to sting the jungle.“There’s the electrical storm,” said one of the men. “There’s the thing ruined our compasses. And it’s coming this way.”“Lie down, everyone,” said the lieutenant. “Run!” cried Simmons.“Don’t be a fool. Lie down. It hits the highest points. We may get through unhurt. Lie down about fifty feet from the rocket. It may very well spend its force there and leave us be. Get down!”The men flopped.“Is it coming?” they asked each other, after a moment.“Coming.”“Is it nearer?” “Is it nearer?” “Nearer?”“Here she is!”The monster came and stood over them. It dropped down ten blue bolts of lightning which struck the rocket. The rocket flashed like a beaten gong and gave off a metal ringing. The monster let down fifteen more bolts which danced about in a ridiculous pantomime, feeling of the jungle and the watery soil.“No, no!” One of the men jumped up. “Get down, yon fool!” said the lieutenant. “No!”The lightning struck the rocket another dozen times. The lieutenant turned his head on his arm and saw the blue blazing flashes. He saw trees split and crumple into ruin. He saw the monstrous dark cloud turn like a black disk overhead and hurl down a hundred other poles of electricity.The man who had leaped up was now running, like someone in a great hall of pillars. He ran and dodged between the pillars and then at last a dozen of the pillars slammed down and there was the sound a fly makes when landing upon the grill wires of an exterminator. The lieutenant remembered this from his childhood on a farm. And there was a smell of a man burned to a cinder.The lieutenant lowered his head. “Don’t look up,” he told the others. He was afraid that he too might run at any moment.The storm above them flashed down another series of bolts and then moved on away. Once again there was only the rain, which rapidly cleared the air of the charred smell, and in a moment the three remaining men were sitting and waiting for the beat of their hearts to subside into quiet once more.They walked over to the body, thinking that perhaps they could still save the man’s life. They couldn’t believe that there wasn’t some way to help the man. It was the natural act of men who have not accepted death until they have touched it and turned it over and made plans to bury it or leave it there for the jungle to bury in an hour of quick growth.The body was twisted steel, wrapped in burned leather. It looked like a wax dummy that had been thrown into an incinerator and pulled out after the wax had sunk to the charcoal skeleton. Only the teeth were white, and they shone like a strange white bracelet dropped half through a clenched black fist.“He shouldn’t have jumped up.” They said it almost at the same time.Even as they stood over the body it began to vanish, for the vegetation was edging in upon it, little vines and ivy and creepers, and even flowers for the dead.At a distance the storm walked off on blue bolts of lightning and was gone.They crossed a river and a creek and a stream and a dozen other rivers and creeks and streams. Before their eyes rivers appeared, rushing, new rivers, while old rivers changed their courses—rivers the color of mercury, rivers the color of silver and milk.The Single Sea. There was only one continent on Venus. This land was three thousand miles long by a thousand miles wide, and about this island was the Single Sea, which covered the entire raining planet.The Single Sea, which lay upon the pallid shore with little motion . . . “This way.” The lieutenant nodded south. “I’m sure there are two Sun Domes down that way. “While they were at it, why didn’t they build a hundred more?” “There’re a hundred and twenty of them now, aren’t there?”“One hundred and twenty-six, as of last month. They tried to push a bill through Congress back on Earth a year ago to provide for a couple dozen more, but oh no, you know how that is. They’d rather a few men went crazy with the rain.”They started south. The lieutenant and Simmons and the third man, Pickard, walked in the rain, in the rain that fell heavily and lightly, heavily and lightly; in the rain that poured and hammered and did not stop falling upon the land and the sea and the walking people.Simmons saw it first. “There it is!” “There’s what?”“The Sun Dome!”The lieutenant blinked the water from his eyes and raised his hands to ward off the stinging blows of the rain. At a distance there was a yellow glow on the edge of the jungle, by the sea. It was, indeed, the Sun Dome.The men smiled at each other.“Looks like you were right, Lieutenant.”“Luck.”1971675133350“Brother, that puts muscle in me, just seeing it. Come on! Last one there’s a son-of-a-gun!” Simmons began to trot. The others automatically fell in with this, gasping, tired, but keeping pace.“A big pot of coffee for me,” panted Simmons, smiling. “And a pan of cinnamon buns! And just lie there and let the old sun hit you. The guy that invented the Sun Domes, he should have got a medal!”They ran faster. The yellow glow grew brighter.“Guess a lot of men went crazy before they figured out the cure. Think it’d be obvious! Right off.”Simmons panted the words in cadence to his running. “Rain, rain! Years ago. Found a friend. Of min. Out in the jungle. Wandering around. In the rain. Saying over and over, ‘Don’t know enough to come in outta the rain. Don’t know enough, to come in, outta the rain. Don’t know enough –‘ on and on. Like that. Poor crazy guy.”“Save your breath!”They ran.They all laughed. They reached the door of the Sun Dome, laughing.Simmons yanked the door wide. “Hey!” he yelled. “Bring on the coffee and buns!” There was no reply.They stepped through the door.The Sun Dome was empty and dark. There was no synthetic yellow sun floating in a high gaseous whisper at the center of the blue ceiling. There was no food waiting. It was cold as a vault. And through a thousand holes which had been newly punctured in the ceiling water streamed, the rain fell down, soaking into the thick rugs and the heavy modern furniture and splashing on the glass tables. The jungle was growing up like a moss in the room, on top of the bookcases and the divans. The rain slashed through the holes and fell upon the three men’s faces.Pickard began to laugh quietly. “Shut up, Pickard!”“Look what’s here for us—no food, no sun, nothing. The Venusians—they did it! Of course!”Simmons nodded, with the rain funneling down on his face. The water ran in his silvered hair and on his white eyebrows. “Every once in a while the Venusians come up out of the sea and attack a Sun Dome. They know if they ruin the Sun Domes they can ruin us.”“But aren’t the Sun Domes protected with guns?”“Sure.” Simmons stepped aside to a place that was relatively dry. “But it’s been five years since the Venusians tried anything. Defense relaxes. They caught this Dome unaware.”“Where are the bodies?”“The Venusians took them all down into the sea. I hear they have a delightful way of drowning you. It takes about eight hours to drown the way they work it. Really delightful.”“I bet there isn’t any food here at all.” Pickard laughed.The lieutenant frowned at him, nodded at him so Simmons could see. Simmons shook his head and went back to a room at one side of the oval chamber. The kitchen was strewn with soggy loaves of bread, and meat that had grown a faint green fur. Rain came through a hundred holes in the kitchen roof.“Without food, sir?” Simmons snorted. “I notice the sun machine’s torn apart. Our best bet is to make our way to the next Sun Dome. How far is that from here?”“Not far. As I recall, they built two rather close together here. Perhaps if we waited here, a rescue mission from the other might——”“It’s probably been here and gone already, some days ago. They’ll send a crew to repair this place in about six months, when they get the money from Congress. I don’t think we’d better wait.”“All right then, we’ll eat what’s left of our rations and get on to the next Dome.”Pickard said, “If only the rain wouldn’t hit my head, just for a few minutes. If I could only remember what it’s like not to be bothered.” He put his hands on his skull and held it tight. “I remember when I was in school a bully used to sit in back of me and pinch me and pinch me and pinch me every five minutes, all day long. He did that for weeks and months. My arms were sore and black and blue all the time. And I thought I’d go crazy from being pinched. One day I must have gone a little mad from being hurt and hurt, and I turned around and took a metal trisquare I used in mechanical drawing and I almost killed that bastard. I almost cut his lousy head off. I almost took his eye out before they dragged me out of the room, and I kept yelling, ‘Why don’t he leave me alone? why don’t he leave me alone?’ Brother!” His hands clenched the bone of his head, shaking, tightening, his eyes shut. “But what do I do now? Who do I hit, who do I tell to lay off, stop bothering me, this cursed rain, like the pinching, always on you, that’s all you hear, that’s all you feel!”“We’ll be at the other Sun Dome by four this afternoon.”“Sun Dome? Look at this one! What if all the Sun Domes on Venus are gone? What then? What if there are holes in all the ceilings, and the rain coming in!”“We’ll have to chance it.”“I’m tired of chancing it. All I want is a roof and some quiet. I want to be alone.” “That’s only eight hours off, if you hold on.”“Let’s eat,” said Simmons, watching him.They set off down the coast, southward again. After four hours they had to cut inland to go around a river that was a mile wide and so swift it was not navigable by boat. They had to walk inland six miles to a place where the river boiled out of the earth, suddenly, like a mortal wound. In the rain, they walked on solid ground and returned to the sea.“I’ve got to sleep,” said Pickard at last. He slumped. “Haven’t slept in four weeks. Tried, but couldn’t. Sleep here.”They lay out full, propping their heads up so the water wouldn’t come to their mouths, and they closed their eyes.The lieutenant twitched. He did not sleep.There were things that crawled on his skin. Things grew upon him in layers. Drops fell and touched other drops and they became streams that trickled over his body, and while these moved down his flesh, the small growths of the forest took root in his clothing. He felt the ivy cling and make a second garment over him; he felt the small flowers bud and open and petal away, and still the rain pattered on his body and on his head. In the luminous night—for the vegetation glowed in the darkness—he could see the other two men outlined, like logs that had fallen and taken upon themselves velvet coverings of grass and flowers. The rain hit his face. He covered his face with his hands. The rain hit his neck. He turned over on his stomach in the mud, on the rubbery plants, and the rain hit his back and hit his legs.Suddenly he leaped up and began to brush the water from himself. A thousand hands were touching him and he no longer wanted to be touched. He no longer could stand being touched. He floundered and struck something else and knew that it was Simmons, standing up in the rain, sneezing moisture, coughing and choking. And then Pickard was up, shouting, running about.“Wait a minute, Pickard!”“Stop it, stop it!” Pickard screamed. He fired off his gun six times at the night sky. In the flashes of powdery illumination they could see armies of raindrops, suspended as in a vast motionless amber, for an instant, hesitating as if shocked by the explosion, fifteen billion droplets, fifteen billion tears, fifteen billion ornaments, jewels standing out against a white velvet viewing board. And then, with the light gone, the drops which had waited to have their pictures taken, which had suspended their downward rush, fell upon them, stinging, in an insect cloud of coldness and pain.“Stop it! Stop it!” “Pickard!”3381375257175But Pickard was only standing now, alone. When the lieutenant switched on a small hand lamp and played it over Pickard’s wet face, the eyes of the man were dilated, and his mouth was open, his face turned up, so the water hit and splashed on his tongue, and hit and drowned the wide eyes, and bubbled in a whispering froth on the nostrils.“Pickard!”The man would not reply. He simply stood there for a long while with the bubbles of rain breaking out in his whitened hair and manacles of rain jewels dripping from his wrists and his neck.“Pickard! We’re leaving. We’re going on. Follow us.” The rain dripped from Pickard’s ears.“Do you hear me, Pickard!”It was like shouting down a well.“Pickard!”“Leave him alone,” said Simmons.“We can’t go on without him.”“What’ll we do, carry him?” Simmons spat. “He’s no good to us or himself. You know what he’ll do? He’ll just stand here and drown.” “What?”“You ought to know that by now. Don’t you know the story? He’ll just stand here with his head up and let the rain come in his nostrils and his mouth. He’ll breathe the water.”“That’s how they found General Mendt that time. Sitting on a rock with his head back, breathing the rain. His lungs were full of water.”The lieutenant turned the light back to the unblinking face. Pickard’s nostrils gave off a tiny whispering wet sound.“Pickard!” The lieutenant slapped the face.“He can’t even feel you,” said Simmons. “A few days in this rain and you don’t have any face or any legs or hands.”The lieutenant looked at his own hand in horror. He could no longer feel it. “But we can’t leave Pickard here.”“I’ll show you what we can do.” Simmons fired his gun.Pickard fell into the raining earth.Simmons said, “Don’t move, Lieutenant. I’ve got my gun ready for you too. Think it over; he would only have stood or sat there and drowned. It’s quicker this way.”The lieutenant blinked at the body. “But you killed him.”“Yes, because he’d have killed us by being a burden. You saw his face. Insane.” After a moment the lieutenant nodded. “All right.”They walked off into the rain. It was dark and their hand lamps threw a beam that pierced the rain for only a few feet. After a half hour they had to stop and sit through the rest of the night, aching with hunger, waiting for the dawn to come; when it did come it was gray and continually raining as before, and they began to walk again.“We’ve miscalculated,” said Simmons. “No. Another hour.”“Speak louder. I can’t hear you.” Simmons stopped and smiled. “By heavens,” he said, and touched his ears. “My ears. They’ve gone out on me. All the rain pouring finally numbed me right down to the bone.” “Can’t you hear anything?” said the lieutenant. “What?” Simmons’s eyes were puzzled. “Nothing. Come on.”“I think I’ll wait here. You go on ahead.” “You can’t do that.”“I can’t hear you. You go on. I’m tired. I don’t think the Sun Dome is down this way. And, if it is, it’s probably got holes in the roof, like the last one. I think I’ll just sit here.”“Get up from there!”“So long, Lieutenant.” “You can’t give up now.”“I’ve got a gun here that says I’m staying. I just don’t care anymore. I’m not crazy yet, but I’m the next thing to it. I don’t want to go out that way. As soon as you get out of sight I’m going to use this gun on myself.”“Simmons!”“You said my name. I can read that much off your lips.” “Simmons.”“Look, it’s a matter of time. Either I die now or in a few hours. Wait’ll you get to that next Dome, if you ever get there, and find rain coming in through the roof. Won’t that be nice?”The lieutenant waited and then splashed off in the rain. He turned and called back once, but Simmons was only sitting there with the gun in his hands, waiting for him to get out of sight. He shook his head and waved the lieutenant on.The lieutenant didn’t even hear the sound of the gun.He began to eat the flowers as he walked. They stayed down for a time, and weren’t poisonous; neither were they particularly sustaining, and he vomited them up, sickly, a minute or so later.“Another five minutes,” he told himself. “Another five minutes and then I’ll walk into the sea and keep walking. We weren’t made for this; no Earthman was or ever will be able to take it. Your nerves, your nerves.He floundered his way through a sea of slush and foliage and came to a small hill. At a distance there was a faint yellow smudge in the cold veils of water.The next Sun Dome.Through the trees, a long round yellow building, far away. For a moment he only stood, swaying, looking at it.He began to run and then he slowed down, for he was afraid. He didn’t call out. What if it’s the same one? What if it’s the dead Sun Dome, with no sun in it? he thought.He slipped and fell. Lie here, he thought; it’s the wrong one. Lie here. It’s no use. Drink all you want.But he managed to climb to his feet again and crossed several creeks, and the yellow light grew very bright, and he began to run again, his feet crashing into mirrors and glass, his arms flailing at diamonds and precious stones.He stood before the yellow door. The printed letters over it said THE SUN DOME. He put his numb hand up to feel it. Then he twisted the doorknob and stumbled in.He stood for a moment looking about. Behind him the rain whirled at the door. Ahead of him, upon a low table, stood a silver pot of hot chocolate, steaming, and a cup, full, with a marshmallow in it. And beside that, on another tray, stood thick sandwiches of rich chicken meat and fresh-cut tomatoes and green onions. And on a rod just before his eyes was a great thick green Turkish towel, and a bin in which to throw wet clothes, and, to his right, a small cubicle in which heat rays might dry you instantly. And upon a chair, a fresh change of uniform, waiting for anyone—himself, or any lost one—to make use of it. And farther over, coffee in steaming copper urns, and a phonograph from which music was playing quietly, and books bound in red and brown leather. And near the books a cot, a soft deep cot upon which one might lie, exposed and bare, to drink in the rays of the one great bright thing which dominated the long room.He put his hands to his eyes. He saw other men moving toward him, but said nothing to them. He waited, and opened his eyes, and looked. The water from his uniform pooled at his feet and he felt it drying from his hair and his face and his chest and his arms and his legs.He was looking at the sun.It hung in the center of the room, large and yellow and warm. It made not a sound, and there was no sound in the room. The door was shut and the rain was only a memory to his tingling body. The sun hung high in the blue sky of the room, warm, hot, yellow, and very fine.He walked forward, tearing off his clothes as he went.Study QuestionsWhat planet are the men on? Describe it.What happened to the men? Why are they searching for a Sun Dome?What is a Sun Dome? Describe it.What effect does the rain have on the men?What are the Venusians like?Why was one man killed in the lightning storm?Why did Simmons shoot one of the men?What happens to Simmons?What happens to the Lieutenant?Literary Focus: Setting1161925Setting is an environment or surrounding in which an event or story takes place. It may provide particular information about placement and timing, such as New York, America, in the year 1820. Setting could be simply descriptive, like a lonely cottage on a mountain. Social conditions, historical time, geographical locations, weather, immediate surroundings, and timing are all different aspects of setting.Example: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)The novel’s setting is in the late 1860’s in the fictional town of Salt Licks, Texas, on the Coates’ family ranch. Question: How many important settings are there in “The Long Rain”? Why is the setting of the planet important to the story?Night in FunlandBy William Peden1180975William Harwood Peden (1913-1999) was a professor of English at the University of Missouri from 1946 to 1979. Besides being the editor of Story magazine as well as the author of numerous short stories, essays, and books, Peden was an early advocate and literary critic of the short story as a genre of literature.“Night in Funland” was first published in New Mexico Quarterly in 1959. It was later reprinted in Literary Cavalcade, a journal of literature for high school students. It is a mysterious story that leaves many readers baffled as to its meaning. Read it carefully and note any details that may offer a possible explanation for the story’s events and the main character’s actions.They drove slowly down the highway that cut cleanly through the desert, past the glittering motels with their swimming pools of pale blue water, past the shops of pink or green or azure adobe. In the humming light of the mercury-vapour lamps, the child was a gnome in a pool of color, the shadows beneath her eyes sooty in the darkness that had overrun the mesa. The father reached over and patted her hand. She squeezed his and edged closer towards him."Are you sure this is the way, Daddy?""Of course it is, Amanda, don't you remember?""Well, yes, sort of, but I thought maybe it was the other way.""The other way is east, goosie," he said; "We go west. Look, in a minute, at the next stop light, we will see the wheel, and then, you will remember."At the intersection he slowed down as the traffic light clicked from green to amber and then to red."Look," he pointed at the rosy sky; "over there; can't you see the top of the Ferris wheel?"She squealed with delight; then the light changed and they left the shining highway, and in darkness that was like a sudden plunge into unknown waters turned onto a bumpy dirt road."Can we get there this way?" Amanda asked. "Does this road go through?""Don't worry; sure it does, honey. You just wait."Then they were pulling into the tumbleweed-speckled parking lot. He switched off the motor, and turned off the lights, and went around and opened her door. Amanda came out slowly, and she smiled up at her spare, slightly stooped father."This is fun," she said. She reached for his hand and they walked beneath the arch that spelled out F-UN-L-A-N-D in winking colored lights. It was a clean bright place, no leg shows, no wheels of fortune, no freak tents with greenish two-headed babies in discolored alcohol-filled jars; a clean bright place on the mesa, bounded by a miniature railroad with puffing steam engine and train of cars. They could hear the whistle now at the far dark end of the park, faraway and thin and clear, and Amanda tugged at his hand again. He wanted to pull her close to him and kiss her and pat her thin hair and tell her how glad he was that she was so much better and they could go on a spree together as they had in the old days, and he patted her hand and buttoned the top button of her sweater."Let's sit down a little," he said. His heart was thumping and the palms of his hands were damp."Oh Daddy," she said, "not now.""You must rest a minute," he insisted; "you must remember this is the first time. . . ."They sat down on the bench by the small depot, and the train with its bell clanging and its whistle shrilling and its headlight stabbing at the night swung around the turn, and stopped quietly almost in front of them. The engineer, a teen-aged boy crouching precariously on the tender, got up to stretch his legs while the young passengers spilled from the coaches."What shall we do first?" the father asked. "Do you want to ride the train?""I'd like a snowball first," she said; children were climbing on and off the train like monkeys and he thought there were too many of them and one of them might cough on her or something it wouldn't help her, god knows, to catch a cold Or something just now. She walked ahead of him slowly, a trace of her old jauntiness in the blue toreadors with the white bows tied neatly just below her knees and the white-trimmed cap on her dark head, past the pool with its boats floating in the oil-dark water, and the enclosure where the ponies awaited their riders, and the clanking fury of the scenic railway."This is the nicest park ever," he said, and squeezed her hand. "I have never been in a nicer park, have you, Amanda?" "No," she said; "it is the nicest ever."At the refreshment booth he ordered two snowballs, with grape flavoring. The efficient girl in her starched white uniform pushed a button and there was a whirling sound, and the ice as white and fine as snow poured through a vent, and the girl scooped it up and expertly without touching it by hand transferred it into paper cups, and then she squirted thick dark purple fluid onto the ice, and it was suddenly magically like a sunset transformed into a violet delight, and she smiled and passed the cups over the counter."Keep your fingers out of it," he said to Amanda.They rested on a bench, and tilted the cups to their lips, and the sweet ice gushed into their mouths."Isn't it good?" Amanda said. "It gets sweeter as it goes down.""Yes," he said, and thought how few things were sweeter as they got down, and he squeezed his cup and the fluid was bright and clean in his mouth."This is the nicest park there is," he said again."Yes," she said, and drained at her snowball with a sucking bubbling sound. She thrust her thin fingers into the cup to extract the last sweet dregs. Roughly he snatched out her hand and slapped her hard, and cried by heavens he had told her to keep her fingers out of it and did she want to get sick all over again. She flushed and he felt as if he had kicked her, and he pulled her close to him and kissed her and stroked her hair; her thinness was like a blow."I am so sorry, honey," he said, "but I have been worried about you. You must not mind when I act like this. It is only because I love you so much, and I do not want you to get sick again, ever."She slowly turned her head towards him, and tried to smile, and he took out his monogrammed handkerchief and brushed at the corners of her eyes."Now how do you feel?" he asked, and when she said she felt fine he wanted to shout and dance and sing. He held her hand as they walked away from the refreshment booth while the starched girl squinted at him, and they walked slowly over the hard-packed grayish dirt. There was very little dust, he thought with satisfaction; he had never known a place like Funland to be so clean and orderly.Amanda suddenly broke from his grasp."Oh," she cried, and ran towards a large brightly lighted cage near an open place where baby tanks puffed and grunted."Look," she called; "oh Daddy, look."In the bright clean cage, littered with scooter, tricycle, rubber balls, trapeze, and a punching bag, a young chimpanzee sat in a baby's high --chair, munching at a banana."Rollo," the sign atop the cage read, "Just Recently Arrived from the Belgian Congo Region of West Africa. A two-year old chimpanzee . . . just four and a half months in captivity."Daintily Rollo nibbled, breaking off small chunks with his long-haired, tinynailed hands and placing the fruit meticulously in a mouth like the furnace door of the small train that was again circling the far dark end of the grounds, emerging from its tunnel with a triumphant toot and jangle. The chimpanzee finished his treat, placed the parachute of limp skin on the tray of his chair, and wiped his hands on scarlet trousers. Amanda screamed with delight and Rollo swung with dedicated grace to land noiselessly on the floor with flat tennis-shoe clad feet. With strong, pink-palmed, beautiful hands he grasped the bars of his cage, and gazed at the child with stonedark eyes, like small pools of night in his clean tan face, and he opened his great lips, and smiled.Amanda clapped her hands and Rollo whirled and leaped to the rope which spanned the cage; hand over hand, he swung from one end of the cage to the other. By ones and twos people approached, laughing and chatting, and Rollo again dropped like a sunbeam to the floor. His trainer, a gentle, patient man with a limp and a face too much like Rollo's to be a coincidence, reached for the roller skates hanging on the wall and attached them to the chimpanzee's hightopped tennis shoes. He held his hand, and Rollo glided noiselessly on his well-oiled skates, skating surely and competently and enjoying himself.When the man climbed clumsily over the low iron railing in front of the cage, and tossed a few pieces. of popcorn between the bars, Rollo stumbled and almost fell. The attendant reached quickly for the chimpanzee's hand, and frowned at the intruder. Amanda turned upon the popcorn thrower, a fat man whose hairy chest stared blankly beneath a bilge-colored nylon sport shirt."You've frightened him," she said in sudden fury. "You've frightened him."In anger the fat man threw another handful of popcorn between the bars, and the trainer sadly shook his head. Still holding Rollo by the hand, he led him to the high chair and swung him up to the seat, and removed the skates. Then he pulled a switch, and all the light in the cage went out. Rollo sat alone, his yellow shirt and scarlet trousers and sneakered feet now gray in the darkness."Geez," the fat man said. "Who does that guy think he is, anyways? Geez, it's only a monkey."He grabbed his fat child, a child with a face like a rutabaga, and disappeared."What a horrid, nasty man," Amanda said. "Can't we see Rollo again? Won't he come out again?""Maybe later," the father said; "maybe later.""Besides," she said, "he's not a monkey. He's a chimpanzee, an anth- anthropoid, isn't he daddy?""That's right," he said. "He's not a monkey, he's an anthropoid, and maybe he'll come out later anyhow."Amanda walked away, but soon stopped at the foot of the Ferris wheel. She gazed upwards at its swift smoothness, sparkling, a small circle of lights winking near the hub, and a larger circle glowing in the middle, and the whole great machine alive with an outline of red and blue and green neon tubing, flashing as the twelve carriages, one red then one black then another red and another black, swam miraculously into the cool dry blackness of the starless night, some carriages swinging empty, in another two teen-aged girls singing "Oklahoma," in others a father and a white-faced, pop-eyed infant; a young man and a girl their arms locked around each other as they soared from the light to the darkness, and two boys clowning and roaring. The operator squeezed the grip-handle of the lever and pushed it and the engine slowed down, and the wheel came to a silent stop. There was a sudden, almost reverent hush, and a squeal of terrified delight from the occupants of the carriage at the very top of the wheel swinging coldly in the dark, and then the voices of the girls singing "Oklahoma" clear and far away and miles and miles away in the thin cold air at the top of the wheel, and miles and miles away from the hard gray ground and the prancing merry-go-round horses with their flaring orange nostrils and white champing cannibal teeth and the refreshment stand with the efficient girl in her starched white uniform. The operator stepped on a pedal, and a landing platform slid close to the carriage; the attendant lifted the bar and the occupants stepped gingerly down, the father glad to deposit the child into the mother's arms."Must we ride this now, Amanda?" the father asked. "Oh yes," she said and edged her way towards the entrance. "Can I," she said, and squeezed his hand, and her dark eyes glistened, "oh can I go all alone like you promised when I was sick?""Let me go with you," he said."Don't be a meanie," she said. "Please, Daddy, remember you promised.""All right," he said "All right, but you must be very, very careful. You must promise to sit right in the middle of the seat, and you must keep your hands tight on the bar all the time. Do you promise?""Brownie's honor," she said and held up her hand, palm outwards and three fingers aloft in a half sahite. She hugged him, and he lowered his head and she brushed his cheek with a' quick kiss.3381375179070The wheel stopped again, and he gave her her money and said loudly give it to the man. He looked at the operator like a fellow-conspirator suddenly catching in a great crowd the long-anticipated signal, and again he said loudly if you do not sit right in the middle and hold the bar tightly I shall ask the attendant to stop the wheel."Oh Daddy," she said. The operator smiled when she gave him the money, and placed her firmly in the very middle of the carriage, clicking the protective bar into place with special emphasis as though to say I understand the way you feel; do not worry.Amanda sat very straight in her seat and gripped the iron bar. The operator pushed the lever slowly forward, and the wheel rose noiselessly. Amanda smiled from her perch as the operator again pulled back the lever, and the wheel stopped and an aged man and wife emerged from their carriage as though from the floor of the ocean.Again the operator pushed the lever, and the wheel began to turn. The father ran back a few feet; he could see Amanda tiny, disappearing into the darkness. He hoped the operator would not halt the wheel with Amanda's carriage at the summit. His insides tightened, as he thought of her, up there alone in the dark. He saw the crouching mountains, a ragged darkness palpable against the blueblack of the night, and the city swimming in a blob of red and pink and green and orange and white lights, while to the west naked and blue the desert scattered its bones to the ends of the vanished watershed. Then Amanda in a black carriage outlined with green neon swept past him, and smiled and was gone. He started to wave, but checked his arm, not wanting her to take her hands from the iron bar to reply. Then, in what seemed an instant, she came by him again, and he winked at her reassuringly before her carriage swam upwards into the darkness. He looked at the sturdy iron wheel and the concrete foundation. This was no fly-by-night carnival, but a permanent operation, thank heavens, he thought; thousands of people rode the safe, sturdy wheel each season. Again Amanda was smiling when her carriage flashed by, and he smiled conspiratorially at the operator in his white coveralls, a sensible roan with one foot resting nonchalantly near the flywheel of the generator.He counted the carriages as they glided before his line of vision, one red then one black, then another red and another black. He awaited the passage of Amanda's carriage which he must have missed while looking at the lights. Suddenly, painfully, a hard ball of fear exploded in his throat.This is absurd, he thought. He forced himself to stand still and look with studied calm at the swiftly turning wheel. What had been the color of the tubing which outlined Amanda's carriage. Green? No, red. Surely not red on a red, or was it a black, carriage?The wheel made several more swift, noiseless circuits, and still he could not see the pale smiling face of Amanda. His hands shook, and sweat drenched his back and upper legs. With an effort as conscious and deliberate as holding his breath under water he controlled himself. This is ridiculous, he thought. This is an optical illusion. He said to himself, I will count each carriage very carefully as it goes past, and then I will see her, and soon the wheel will stop, and she will get out, and we will have a very good laugh about this.He counted the carriages as they glided swiftly before his eyes. First a red with an old man, then two empties, then a black with two grinning nobheaded boys, then a red with the girls now singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," then an empty, then another red, and his heart suddenly soared like a geyser only to sink hideously; it was not Amanda but a much older child. Then a man and a child and two more empties, then a red with a mother and a baby followed by a black with a soldier and a girl, then another red with an old man, the same hideous old man he'd begun counting with, and with a cry like an animal's he leaped over the low steel railing and clutched at the attendant's arm."Stop it," he said; "please, stop the wheel."The attendant frowned, then smiled, and squeezed the handle of the lever, and pulled back the lever, and an empty black carriage swung like a dry leaf above his head."My daughter," he gasped, "the little one with the black hair," but two snottynosed boys pushed their way between him and the operator, poking out their hands with the money in them, and climbed into the carriage snickering and guffawing and wolfing popcorn."Where is she?" he cried, and the popcorn-eaters looked at him as though he were an ape in a straw hat. "Where is my daughter? I think it is time you let the little girl off. The one with the black hair. She has on a blue suit and a cap. You remember.""Yes sir," the attendant said, and smiled. Relief flowed through him; he slapped the operator heartily on the back."I lost sight of her for a moment," he said. "In the dark. My eyes. It gave me a turn, for a moment."The operator nodded, and pushed the lever, and the next carriage empty, swung past, and he stopped the wheel at the next to let the mother and baby out. The baby had wet its diaper and a dark stain overspread the mother's chest like a wound. Then there was the carriage with the soldier and the girl, and they leaned out and yelled whatsthematterwhyduhyuhkeepstoppinthewheel? Then another empty and one in red with the old man, and he lost count. Amanda, he screamed; his voice was like a ship sinking darkly."Amanda," he screamed again, and the attendant stopped the wheel and came towards him and he was no longer smiling. People converged upon him, he was the center of a whirling funnel of blank paper faces."Oh no, oh no," he cried. "Where are you, baby?"The children in the toy train again making its sliding halt before the depot leaned over the edges of the coaches and looked questioningly at the Ferris wheel glowing in the distance. Amanda, the father cried, and the sound tore and twisted its way above the clanking of the scenic railway and the put-put-put of the miniature tractors and the wheezing of the merry-go-round. Noiselessly the curtains of the clean cage parted, and the lights flowed on, and Rollo climbed quietly down from his high chair. He listened intently to the wild broken cries in the night.. Then he pressed his tan face against the bars and gazed with comprehending eyes at the dark figure with uplifted head outlined like a corpse against the spokes of the great wheel blazing in the night.Study QuestionsWhere are Amanda and her father driving to at the beginning of the story?Contrast Amanda’s attitude toward the part with her father’s.What does Amanda want to do first?Why does the father slap Amanda?Who is Rollo? What does he do at the end of the story?Why does the fat man get angry?What ride does Amanda go on? Why does her father panic?Literary Focus: Atmosphere1190500Atmosphere is a type of feeling that readers get from a story based on details such as setting. Atmosphere refers to emotions or feelings an author conveys to readers through description of objects and settings, such as in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter tales, in which she spins a whimsical and enthralling atmosphere. Atmosphere may vary throughout a story. Some people refer to atmosphere as the story’s “mood.”Example: “The Raven” (by Edgar Allan Poe)At the beginning of the poem, the narrator is sitting alone reading weird books and thinking of his dead lover in a dark room at midnight when a mysterious knocking happens at his door. Immediately an atmosphere of dread, mystery, gloom, and horror is established by these details.Question: What is the overall atmosphere of “Night in Funland”? Identify three details that help to establish it.The Tell-Tale HeartBy Edgar Allan Poe1219075Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was born in Boston, but his father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. He married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836, but she died of tuberculosis in 1847. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success. He died in Baltimore at age 40. The cause of his death is unknown.“The Tell-Tale Heart” was first published in The Pioneer in January 1843. Poe received ten dollars for it. The story is considered a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and is one of Poe's best known short stories. It is a work of horror, a genre of fiction whose purpose is to create feelings of fear, dread, repulsion, and terror in the audience. The term’s definition emphasizes the reaction caused by horror, stemming from the Old French word “orror,” meaning “to shudder or to bristle.”True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back --but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?"I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.3324225514350Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the presence of my head within the room.When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it --you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! --do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once --once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even his --could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all --ha! ha!When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, --for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search --search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: --It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness --until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"Study QuestionsThe narrator begins the story by insisting he is not insane. List three items of evidence the narrator presents early in the story to try to prove his sanity.Explain why the narrator decides to kill the old man.Why doesn’t the narrator decide not to kill the old man on the first seven nights?What happens on the eighth night to change the narrator’s behavior? How does he murder the old man?How do the police respond after investigating the narrator’s house?Why does the narrator confess to the murder?Literary Focus: First-Person Point of View1161925“Point of view” refers to the perspective that the narrator holds in relation to the events of the story (the narrator is who is telling the story). The three primary points of view are first person, in which the narrator tells a story from their own perspective ("I went to the store"); second person, in which the narrator tells a story about you, the reader or viewer ("You went to the store"); and third person, in which the narrator tells a story about other people ("He went to the store"). Each point of view creates a different experience for the reader, because, in each point of view, different types and amounts of information are available to the reader about the story's events and characters.In first-person point of view, the narrator is actually a character in the story and tells the story from his or her own perspective. You can easily recognize first person by its use of the pronouns "I" or "We." First person offers the author a great way to give the reader direct access to a particular character's thoughts, emotions, voice, and way of seeing the world—their point of view about the main events of the story. The choice of which character gets to have first person point of view can dramatically change a story, as shown in this simple scenario of a thief snatching a lady's purseThief's point of view: "I was desperate for something to eat. Judging by her expensive-looking shoes, I figured she could afford to part with her purse."Victim's point of view: "He came out of nowhere! Too bad for him, though: I only had five dollars in my bag."Example 1: The Sun Also Rises (by Ernest Hemingway)In this book, the author employs the first person point of view by telling the story through the perspective of a character in the novel. Here’s an example: “I could picture it. I have a habit of imagining the conversations between my friends. We went out to the Cafe Napolitain to watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard.” The use of two first person pronouns, “I” and “we,” gives these lines the quality of having a first person point of view. The reader can feel like he or she is hearing the dialogue directly from the character.Example 2: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)This book is told from the first-person point of view of Travis. Here is an example: "He made me so mad at first that I wanted to kill him. Then, later, when I had to kill him, it was like having to shoot some of my own folks. That's how much I'd come to think of the big yeller dog." Question: Who is the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart”? Is this a first or third person narrator? How do you know? Is the narrator a man or a woman? The narrator of this story is an example of an “unreliable narrator”: what do you think that term means and why?SalesmanshipBy Mary Ellen Chase19051190500Mary Ellen Chase (1887-1973) was an American educator, teacher, scholar, and author. She is regarded as one of the most important regional literary figures of the early twentieth century. Her novels are largely concerned with the Maine seacoast and its inhabitants.Her short stories tend to offer penetration into human feeling. "Salesmanship" is just such a story. It was selected over eleven thousand manuscript entries for the Pictorial Review prize of $2500 in 1931. Mr. Henry Staples felt a new spring in his knees as he descended the apartment-house steps and started downtown. Something of the sprightliness of his dreams the preceding night seemed to have gotten into his feet as well as into his mind. Funny how things worked out, he told himself, if you just gave yourself a chance. And fifteen dollars was little enough to pay for such a chance as he had given himself.To be sure, the full prophecy of his new course on salesmanship had yet to be realized. He had still to be called within the glass doors of the manager's office, to be met with a firm handclasp and the genial proffer of a doubled salary. But with his Saturday's advance from boys' underwear and stockings to suits, things were well on their way. He took a new and delighted interest in the sounds that issued from nearly every opened window. In their tight little living-room Nora was at last listening to the morning's radio talk on housekeeping hints and recipes for the day. Extremely satisfying to him was the knowledge that she might enjoy this outward and visible sign of his new discovery of powers latent within himself.He smiled as he recalled Charley's hurried and unwilling exit to school, his earlier participation with his father in the morning exercises which were to make them both "more manly, more fit for this game of living and of life."Once in the store, his benevolence diffused itself among his fellow employees. He beamed upon floor-walkers, floor-polishers, and stenographers. He commented on the weather to Mrs. Nesbit, still in the underwear; to Mrs. Sims, who had sold belts and suspenders for years. It seemed impossible, now that he was gloriously ready, to wait for his first customers.These he saw before the white coverings were fully removed from the counters, and with that peculiar divination which his course had promised, he marked them as his own. They stood outside the entrance-doors waiting for nine o'clock. There was a difference in their attitudes which Mr. Staples, now that such telling things had been called to his attention, noted at once.The woman, small and inconspicuously dressed, stood close to the window, staring with a rapt expression the boys' apparel displayed there, summer things—blazers, flannels, shirts—interspersed with tennis-rackets and golf-sticks. The man stood nearer the outer doorway, his hands in his pockets, and stared, sulkily, Mr. Staples declared to himself, into the street.Obviously the woman was to be the purchaser, a conclusion immensely reassuring to Mr. Staples, since from the careful analysis of temperament provided by his course the truth had been borne in upon him that he had been expressly fashioned to deal with women rather than with men.He was not at all surprised when five minutes later they came down the aisle, the man several paces behind.And Mr. Staples' cordiality knew no reserves. He gave it full swing; partly because he felt cordial, partly because he sensed an air of determination in the somewhat set face of his customer, a determination which he must combat with all the forces of persuasion and gallantry at his command."In selling there is no asset like extreme politeness," he quoted to himself. "Keep your reservoir filled to the brim."Seemingly unimpressed by his welcome, the woman came to the point at once."I am looking for a blue suit—for a boy--twelve years old.""Certainly," said Mr. Staples. "Our stock, I may say, is excellent. Were you thinking of serge or cheviot?""I hadn't thought very much of—the material." “I see. It’s color you want. But material’s important; take my word for that. There’s a lot to be said for both. Serge may be dressier, but cheviot won’t take a shine or show spots like serge. And it’s newer. It’s sure to be worn now by boys and men for two seasons straight.”“I see,” said the woman.Mr. Staples felt vaguely troubled as he turned toward the cases. He always liked interest in customers. It made things go better even if they were fussy and hard to suit. He groped about in his mind for something to liven it up a bit.“You said twelve years old? Now, that’s an age to keep you guessing, isn’t it? I’ve a boy twelve myself. They’re alive to everything at twelve.”The woman did not answer. Mr. Staples did not resent her neglect of his allusion to Charley, but he had thought his last remark original. Queer how some folks expect the salesman to do it all, and yet he had been forewarned by his course of just such an attitude. Undaunted, he started on another and more direct course."How big a boy is he? Large for his age or small?""I think you'd say average," said the woman."It's always more satisfactory," said Mr. Staples, "to bring them along. But, of course, there's school." "Yes," replied the woman.Funny, thought Mr. Staples, as he spread out suits for her inspection, funny how little help her husband offered. He stood at the extreme end of the counter, fumbling with the buckles and straps of some knickers piled there. Perhaps he was a professor from the college on the hill. They always behave in that absent-minded fashion, their heads deep in some crazy notion or another."You wouldn't want me to lay these aside now, and bring him in, say, at four to try them on?"No," she said. "I think not. I'll choose myself.""I know just how 'tis," remarked Mr. Staples genially. "Try to catch a twelve-year-old after school and there's something doing. Funny how when they get older---""This looks about right to me," interrupted the woman, "this cheviot one.""You can't go wrong on that," assured Mr. Staples, "no matter what. That's genuine Scotch cheviot, all wool to a thread. My Word on it, Madam, and the store’s guarantee. That suit'll wear the toughest youngster in this town a good two years—one year for Sunday-school and the like of that, and one for common. And being cheviot, it's not going to show every spot on earth or take the shine that serge is bound to.”He lifted the suit from the counter, hoping thereby to attract the attention of the man; but he still fumbled at the buckles and straps. The woman fingered the cloth, and then with a sudden, impulsive gesture put her hand in one of the pockets of the coat.Mr. Staples laughed aloud."I see," he said knowingly. "A boy does always raise Ned with pockets. But these are tough ones and lined with the best. He won't sag these, no matter what he fills them with!"For a long time, it seemed to Mr. Staples, she kept her hand in that pocket. He began to feel foolish standing there holding the suit up on its hanger."It's good and roomy, too," he said at last, a little loudly so that she withdrew her hand. "But there's one drawback. There's only one pair of pants to this suit. Most have knickers and longs, but this has only the longs. Most of the kids now, though, wear longs. You see in a sort of dressy suit like this they don't----"He stopped, surprised at the sudden movement of the man, who walked quickly from the knickers toward the door. But he paused after a moment and, to Mr. Staples' relief, came nearer his wife. She put her arm in his and drew him closer.2819400495300"I believe," she said to Mr. Staples, and as she raised her eyes he was surprised again by the brightness of them, "I believe I'll take this very suit. He's always wanted long trousers, but I've thought them rather silly for small boys.""They're all the rage, Madam," said Mr. Staples, relieved alike by her decision and by her increased interest, though withal puzzled a bit in that she did not seem to be speaking to him at all. “And once he wears them through, you can just combine the coat with sports knickers or flannels, and presto! he's fixed as good as new.”He was not prepared for the silence which greeted his words. A customer might at least acquiesce, he thought, in such an economical suggestion. For just a fraction of a minute he envied men of lesser estate, Mr. Nesbit in the underwear and Mr. Sims in belts and suspenders, the sale of whose wares required less tact."Successful salesmen," he quoted to himself, "learn to create the atmosphere in which their customers move."Vaguely conscious though he was, that he himself was moving, however blindly, in an atmosphere not of his own creating, he strove to readjust himself to be "master of the situation.""He'll be some surprised this noon when he comes home and finds his longs," he said with what his book would have termed an attractive chuckle."We're in somewhat of a hurry," said the man brusquely, startling Mr. Staples by the first and unexpected sound of his voice. "If you'll do the suit up, please.""Certainly."Again he made an attempt at livening matters, at disseminating that quality called "homelike," by his course-book."Well, we sure must trust each other. Here, I entirely forgot to tell you the price or you to ask!""It doesn't matter," said the man, taking out his purse. "Cash or charge?" asked Mr. Staples, seemingly unconscious of the pocketbook."I'll pay for it," said the man.Mr. Staples consulted the price-tag."Twenty-nine fifty," he announced. "And I know that seems a bit steep for a growing boy. But I'll guarantee your money's worth, and if he outgrows it quick, send him in. Alteration's free. And here's my card."From his inner pocket he secured, and extended a bit of new, fresh pasteboard. The man ignored it, but the woman took it."Thank you," she said, and smiled suddenly at him, a strange smile which Mr. Staples was at a loss to interpret. "You've been very kind, I'm sure.""Not at all," said Mr. Staples, now secure in her thanks and in the consciousness of a good sale. "Not at all. We aim to please. I'll tell you what, Madam. With a sale like this we like to throw in a bit of a gift. This Spring it's a baseball, a good league number, none of your twine-and-sawdust balls. If you'll just show your slip in the sports and my card they'll give you one. Present it to the young man with my compliments."He felt magnanimous as he began to secure the box with stout twine and wrap it in brown paper.For a moment only the crackling of the paper broke the silence."We're late, Margaret," the man said then, his voice high and tense, his hand pulling at her arm. "Come, darling."Mr. Staples stared. The word of endearment seemed to him so at variance with the tone and gesture. Little as he was given to calling Nora such loving names, he rarely spoke to her in that tone or treated her to such roughness.Perhaps the woman had not heard his offer of the baseball. He started to repeat it, and then decided not to. If these queer customers did not want something for nothing—why, the store was but the gainer.He looked after them as they walked hurriedly arm in arm toward the door. It had been a good enough sale, but a queer one, one hard to dominate by his own personality.Then he suddenly recalled an omission which must be rectified, and he hurried after them, book in hand. As he reached them the man was speaking, still in a tense, almost angry voice."I told you, Margaret, 'twas crazy to do it yourself.""Don't worry, dear," said the woman. "I wanted to. And I'm pleased about the long trousers. He's always wanted them.""I beg your pardon," said Mr. Staples to her as he intercepted them at the door. "Even with cash sales like this the store asks for names and addresses so we can keep track of our patrons. I hope I may have the pleasure of fitting out that youngster again."He colored a bit under the resentful gaze of the man, but recovered himself when the woman smiled again at him. The course-book was right. His temperament was made for dealing with women."Of course," she said, laying her hand upon her husband's arm quite as though she were curbing a restless child. "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Seymour, 100 Forest Avenue. And thank you again."That evening Mr. Staples stretched out luxuriously upon the green davenport with his paper under the bridge-lamp. He had had a good day, had earned his relaxation.Charley was fussing with the dial of the radio. Nora was washing the dishes in the kitchenette. Mr. Staples was a thorough reader of his paper. Immersed in sports, in the society columns, where he often found the names of his patrons, he was oblivious of Charley's impatience."Say, Dad, I wish you'd help a fellow. I keep gettin' this fancy English stuff when I want the baseball game. Don't I get enough English in school? I'll say I do!""Henry!" called Nora from the sink. "Henry! What's the use of the new radio if you can't help Charley get what he wants?"But Mr. Staples' eyes were all at once concentrated on one spot, in the last column, on the next to the last page.SEYMOUR—On Sunday, Charles, aged twelve, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Seymour, 100 Forest Avenue. Funeral Tuesday at two o'clock."Dad," called Charley again. "This radio’s funny. I can't do nothin' with it.""Henry!" supplemented Nora, appearing now from the kitchenette and snatching the paper from his hands. "My word! You're reading even the deaths. Don't you hear Charley?""Yes," said Mr. Staples.He got up from the davenport and began fussing with the dial of the radio. Queer, he thought, how you couldn't tell some folks some things even after you'd lived years with them. "You don't seem to be doing much better, Dad," complained Charley. "It's funny how we can't get what we want, ain't it?" "Yes, Charley," said Mr. Staples, passing his left hand in a dazed fashion across his forehead.He glanced about the room, at its tight security, at the fat pink sofa-cushions, at Nora in her beflowered rubber apron, at Charley in his blue suit, at his coursebook on the center-table, awaiting his half-hour of study.“Yes,” he repeated, neither to Nora nor Charley, “yes, ‘tis funny. Most things are kind of--funny, I guess.”Study QuestionsWhat is Mr. Staples job?Why is he feeling extra confident about his sales abilities on this day?Describe the couple who want to buy a suit: how does the wife act? What about the husband?Identify two specific sales techniques Mr. Staples tries to use on the wife.Why does Mr. Staples want the couple’s names and address? Where does he see this information later that night?Are there any indications are in the story that the experience has deeply affected Mr. Staples? If so, what?What is ironic about the story regarding Mr. Staples’ use of effective sales techniques?Literary Focus: Third-Person Point of View1209550In third-person point of view, the narrator is someone (or some entity) who is not a character in the story being told. Some even say that the narrator is the author himself or herself, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Third-person point of view uses the pronouns "he," "she," and "they," to refer to all the characters. It is the most common point of view in writing, as it gives the writer a considerable amount of freedom to focus on different people, events, and places without being limited within the consciousness of a single character.There are two key types of third-person point of view: 1. Omniscient, in which the narrator knows all of the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters in the story.2. Limited, in which the narrator does not have an omniscient, unlimited perspective, but may have access to the thoughts and feelings of one character, or none at all.Example 1: Pride and Prejudice (by Jane Austen)Like many classic novels, it is told from the third-person point of view. Here's a passage from the book: "When Jane and Elizabeth were alone, the former, who had been cautious in her praise of Mr. Bingley before, expressed to her sister how very much she admired him. 'He is just what a young man ought to be,' said she, 'sensible, good-humored, lively; and I never saw such happy manners! So much ease, with such perfect good breeding!'"Example 2: Harry Potter (by J.K. Rowling)J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is written with Harry as the focus but from the point of view of someone observing him and those around him.Question: What point of view did the author of “Salesmanship” use? If third person, is it limited or omniscient? How do you know? If it was the other, what difference would it have made to the story?The Osage Orange TreeBy William Stafford19051190500William Edgar Stafford, (1914-1993) was an American poet whose work often explored man’s relationship with nature. He formed the habit of rising early to write every day, often musing on the small details of life. He attended the University of Kansas and the State University of Iowa, where he received a doctorate in 1955. A conscientious objector, he participated in outdoor work camps during World War II. Stafford was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress and poet laureate of Oregon. The morning of his death he wrote a poem containing the lines, "’You don't have to / prove anything,' my mother said. 'Just be ready / for what God sends.'"“The Osage Orange Tree” is about young love complicated by misunderstanding and the insecurity of adolescence, set against the backdrop of poverty brought on by the Great Depression. It was published posthumously in 2014.On that first day of high school in the prairie town where the tree was, I stood in the sun by the flagpole and watched, but pretended not to watch, the others. They stood in groups and talked and knew each other, all except one - a girl though - in a faded blue dress, carrying a sack lunch and standing near the corner looking everywhere but at the crowd. I might talk to her, I thought. But of course it was out of the question. That first day was easier when the classes started. Some of the teachers were kind; some were frightening. Some of the students didn't care, but I listened and waited; and at the end of the day I was relieved, less conspicuous from then on. But that day was not really over. As I hurried to carry my new paper route, I was thinking about how in a strange town, if you are quiet, no one notices, and some may like you, later. I was thinking about this when I reached the north edge of town where the scattering houses dwindle. Beyond them to the north lay just openness, the plains, a big swoop of nothing. There, at the last house, just as I cut across a lot and threw to the last customer, I saw the girl in the blue dress coming along the street, heading on out of town, carrying books. And she saw me. "Hello." "Hello." And because we stopped we were friends. I didn't know how I could stop, but I didn't hurry on. I stood. There was nothing to do but to act as if I were walking on out too. I had three papers left in the bag, and I frantically began to fold them - box them, as we called it - for throwing. We had begun to walk and talk. The girl was timid; I became more bold. Not much, but a little. "Have you gone to school here before?" I asked. "Yes, I went here last year." A long pause. A meadowlark sitting on a fencepost hunched his wings and flew. I kicked through the dust of the road. I began to look ahead. Where could we possibly be walking to? I couldn't be walking just because I wanted to be with her. Fortunately, there was one more house, a gray house by a sagging barn, set two hundred yards from the road. "I thought I'd see if I could get a customer here," I said, waving toward the house. "That's where I live." "Oh." We were at the dusty car tracks that turned off the road to the house. The girl stopped. There was a tree at that corner, a straight but little tree with slim branches and shiny dark leaves. "I could take a paper tonight to see if my father wants to buy it." A great relief, this. What could I have said to her parents? I held out a paper, dropped it, picked it up, brushing off the dust. "No, here's a new one" - a great action, putting the dusty paper in the bag over my shoulder and pulling out a fresh one. When she took the paper we stood there a minute. The wind was coming in over the grass. She looked out with a tranquil expression. She walked away past the tree, and I hurried quickly back toward town. Could anyone in the houses have been watching? I looked back once. The girl was standing on the small bridge halfway in to her house. I hurried on. The next day at school I didn't ask her whether her father wanted to take the paper. When the others were there I wouldn't say anything. I stood with the boys. In American history the students could choose their seats, and I saw that she was too quiet and plainly dressed for many to notice her. But I crowded in with the boys, pushing one aside, scrambling for a seat by the window. 3657600352425That night I came to the edge of town. Two papers were left, and I walked on out. The meadowlark was there. By some reeds in a ditch by the road a dragonfly - snake feeders, we called them - glinted. The sun was going down, and the plains were stretched out and lifted, some way, to the horizon. Could I go on up to the house? I didn't think so, but I walked on. Then, by the tree where her road turned off, she was standing. She was holding her books. More confused than ever, I stopped. "My father will take the paper," she said. She told me always to leave the paper at the foot of the tree. She insisted on that, saying their house was too far; and it is true that I was far off my route, a long way, a half-mile out of my territory. But I didn't think of that. And so we were acquainted. What I remember best in that town is those evening walks to the tree. Every night - or almost every night - the girl was there. Evangeline was her name. We didn't say much. On Friday night of the first week she gave me a dime, the cost of the paper. It was a poor newspaper, by the way, cheap, sensational, unreliable. I never went up to her house. We never talked together at school. But all the time we knew each other; we just happened to meet. Every evening. There was a low place in the meadow by that corner. The fall rains made a pond there, and in the evenings sometimes ducks would be coming in - a long line with set wings down the wind, and then a turn, and a skimming glide to the water. The wind would be blowing and the grass bent down. The evenings got colder and colder. The wind was cold. As winter came on the time at the tree was dimmer, but not dark. In the winter there was snow. The pond was frozen over; all the plains were white. I had to walk down the ruts of the road and leave the paper in the crotch of the tree, sometimes, when it was cold. The wind made a sound through the black branches. But usually, even on cold evenings, Evangeline was there. At school we played ball at noon - the boys did. And I got acquainted. I learned that Evangeline's brother was janitor at the school. A big dark boy he was - a man, middle-aged I thought at the time. He didn't ever let on that he knew me. I would see him sweeping the halls, bent down, slow. I would see him and Evangeline take their sack lunches over to the south side of the building. Once I slipped away from the ball game and went over there, but he looked at me so steadily, without moving, that I pretended to be looking for a book, and quickly went back, and got in the game and struck out. You don't know about those winters, and especially that winter. Those were the dust years. Wheat was away down in price. Everyone was poor - poor in a way that you can't understand. I made two dollars a week, or something like that, on my paper route. I could tell about working for ten cents an hour - and then not getting paid; about families that ate wheat, boiled, for their main food, and burned wheat for fuel. You don't know how it would be. All through that hard winter I carried a paper to the tree by the pond, in the evening, and gave it to Evangeline. In the cold weather Evangeline wore a heavier dress, a dark, straight, heavy dress, under a thick black coat. Outdoors she wore a knitted cap that fastened under her chin. She was dressed this way when we met and she took the paper. The reeds were broken now. The meadowlark was gone. And then came the spring. I have forgotten to tell just how Evangeline looked. She was of medium height, and slim. Her face was pale, her forehead high, her eyes blue. Her tranquil face I remember well. I remember her watching the wind come in over the grass. Her dress was long, her feet small. I can remember her by the tree, with her books, or walking on up the road toward her house and stopping on the bridge halfway up there, but she didn't wave, and I couldn't tell whether she was watching me or not. I always looked back as I went over the rise toward town. And I can remember her in the room at school. She came into American history one spring day, the first really warm day. She had changed from the dark heavy dress to the dull blue one of the last fall; and she had on a new belt, a gray belt, with blue stitching along the edges. As she passed in front of Jane Wright, a girl who sat on the front row, I heard Jane say to the girl beside her, "Why look at Evangeline - that old dress of hers has a new belt!" "Stop a minute, Evangeline," Jane said, "let me see your new dress." Evangeline stopped and looked uncertainly at Jane and blushed. "It's just made over," she said, "it's just. . . ." "It's cute, Dear," Jane said; and as Evangeline went on Jane nudged her friend in the ribs and the friend smothered a giggle. Well, that was a good year. Commencement time came, and - along with the newspaper job - I had the task of preparing for finals and all. One thing, I wasn't a student who took part in the class play or anything like that. I was just one of the boys – twenty-fourth in line to get my diploma. And graduation was bringing an end to my paper-carrying. My father covered a big territory in our part of the state, selling farm equipment; and we were going to move at once to a town seventy miles south. Only because of my finishing the school year had we stayed till graduation. I had taught another boy my route, always leaving him at the end and walking on out, by myself, to the tree. I didn't really have to go around with him that last day, the day of graduation, but I was going anyway. At the graduation exercises, held that May afternoon, I wore my brown Sunday suit. My mother was in the audience. It was a heavy day. The girls had on new dresses. But I didn't see her. I suppose that I did deserve old man Sutton's "Shhh!" as we lined up to march across the stage, but I for the first time in the year forgot my caution, and asked Jane where Evangeline was. She shrugged, and I could see for myself that she was not there. We marched across the stage; our diplomas were ours; our parents filed out; to the strains of a march on the school organ we trailed to the hall. I unbuttoned my brown suit coat, stuffed the diploma in my pocket, and sidled out of the group and upstairs. Evangeline's brother was emptying wastebaskets at the far end of the hall. I sauntered toward him and stopped. I didn't know what I wanted to say. Unexpectedly, he solved my problem. Stopping in his work, holding a partly empty wastebasket over the canvas sack he wore over his shoulder, he stared at me, as if almost to say something. "I noticed that your sister wasn't here," I said. The noise below was dwindling. The hall was quiet, an echoey place; my voice sounded terribly loud. He emptied the rest of the wastebasket and shifted easily. He was a man, in big overalls. He stared at me. "Evangeline couldn't come," he said. He stopped, looked at me again, and said, "She stole." "Stole?" I said. "Stole what?" He shrugged and went toward the next wastebasket, but I followed him. "She stole the money from her bank - the money she was to use for her graduation dress," he said. He walked stolidly on, and I stopped. He deliberately turned away as he picked up the next wastebasket. But he said something else, half to himself. "You knew her. You talked to her. . . I know." He walked away. I hurried downstairs and outside. The new carrier would have the papers almost delivered by now; so I ran up the street toward the north. I took a paper from him at the end of the street and told him to go back. I didn't pay any more attention to him. No one was at the tree, and I turned, for the first time, up the road to the house. I walked over the bridge and on up the narrow, rutty tracks. The house was gray and lopsided. The ground of the yard was packed; nothing grew there. By the back door, the door to which the road led, there was a grayish - white place on the ground where the dishwater had been thrown. A gaunt shepherd dog trotted out growling. And the door opened suddenly, as if someone had been watching me come up the track. A woman came out - a woman stern - faced, with a shawl over her head and a dark lumpy dress on - came out on the back porch and shouted, "Go 'way, go 'way! We don't want no papers!" She waved violently with one hand, holding the other on her shawl, at her throat. She coughed so hard that she leaned over and put her hand against one of the uprights of the porch. Her face was red. She glanced toward the barn and leaned toward me. "Go 'way!" Behind me a meadowlark sang. Over all the plains swooped the sky. The land was drawn up somehow toward the horizon. I stood there, half-defiant, half-ashamed. The dog continued to growl and to pace around me, stiff - legged, his tail down. The windows of the house were all blank, with blinds drawn. I couldn't say anything. I stood a long time and then, lowering the newspaper I had held out, I stood longer, waiting, without thinking of what to do. The meadowlark bubbled over again, but I turned and walked away, looking back once or twice. The old woman continued to stand, leaning forward, her head out. She glanced at the barn, but didn't call out any more. My heels dug into the grayish place where the dishwater had been thrown; the dog skulked along behind. At the bridge, halfway to the road, I stopped and looked back. The dog was lying down again; the porch was empty; and the door was closed. Turning the other way, I looked toward town. Near me stood our ragged little tree - an Osage orange tree it was. It was feebly coming into leaf, green all over the branches, among the sharp thorns. I hadn't wondered before how it grew there, all alone, in the plains country, neglected. Over our pond some ducks came slicing in. Standing there on the bridge, still holding the folded–boxed-newspaper, that worthless paper, I could see everything. I looked out along the road to town. From the bridge you would see the road going away, to where it went over the rise. Glancing around, I flipped that last newspaper under the bridge and then bent far over and looked where it had gone. There they were - a pile of boxed newspapers, thrown in a heap, some new, some worn and weathered, by rain, by snow. Study QuestionsAccording to paragraph one, what is the boy doing when he first sees Evangeline? What is Evangeline doing?Where does Evangeline live? Why does the boy walk there every day?According to her brother, why does Evangeline miss graduation?What happens when the boy goes to Evengeline’s house after graduation? What does he find under the bridge? Who do you think threw them there? Why?Why do you think the narrator wanted to be Evangeline’s friend?What do you think Evengeline does with her graduation-dress money? Why?Literary focus: Theme1180975A story’s theme is its underlying truth or message about life. It is important not to confuse the theme of a literary work with its subject (or topic). The subject acts as a foundation for a literary work, while a theme is an opinion expressed on the subject. For example, a writer may choose a subject of war for his story, and the theme may be his view that war is a curse for humanity. Usually, it is up to the readers to explore the theme of a literary work by analyzing characters, plot, and other literary devices.Theme can be stated or implied. When stated, the lesson about life is written out in the story, like at the end of the fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” when the author, Aesop, writes, “Plodding wins the race.” Usually, however, the theme is only implied, which means it is only suggested by the story, not directly stated. In this case, it is up to the reader to determine the story’s theme.A story may have only one theme, but frequently multiple themes can be inferred, which tends to enrich the reader’s experience even further.Because the theme is a message about life, it cannot be articulated with only a word or phrase. It must be written as a complete sentence. For example, “friendship” is not a theme (it is a subject or topic). “True friendship means staying loyal to your friends,” however, might be the theme of a story.A story’s theme is expressed as a generalization. This means that it can apply to most anyone, no matter who they are. For example, the theme “True love can overcome many obstacles” is true of most, if not all, people. The statement, “Naval commanders have to make difficult decisions,” however, only applies to a very small number of people -- naval commanders -- and therefore would not be a story’s theme. Example: Old Yeller (by Fred Gipson)In this book, the reader can infer a number of themes, but one that is revealed by examining the character of Travis and his response to shooting Old Yeller might be, “Making difficult choices helps people to grow and mature.”Question: What is the theme of “The Osage Orange Tree”? Is it stated or implied? How do you know?Flowers for AlgnernonBy Daniel Keyes19051190500Daniel Keyes (1927-2014) was an American author best known for his Hugo award-winning short story and Nebula award-winning novel Flowers for Algernon. Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, at age 17, he joined the U.S. Maritime Service. He obtained a degree in psychology from Brooklyn College, and after a stint in fashion photography, he earned a Master's Degree in Literature at night while teaching English in New York City public schools during the day and writing on weekends. He went on to teach writing at the college level.The short story and subsequent novel, “Flowers for Algernon”, was initially published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The expanded novel was published in 1966 and has been adapted several times for other media, most prominently as the 1968 film Charly. Both the novel and the short story are written in an epistolary style, meaning they are presented as a series of documents (in this case “progress reports”). The usual form of an epistolary story is through letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings, blogs, and other documents are sometimes used. The version presented here is Keye’s original short story. progris riport 1-martch 5, 1965 Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on, I dont know why but he says its importint so they will see if they will use me. I hope they use me. Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charlie Gordon. I am 37 years old. I have nuthing more to rite now so I will close for today. progris riport 2-martch 6 I had a test today. I think I faled it. And I think maybe now they wont use me. What happind is a nice young man was in the room and he had some white cards and ink spillled all over them. He sed Charlie what do vo see on this card. I was very skared even tho I had my rabits foot in my pockit because when I was a kid I always faled tests in school and I spillled ink to. I told him I saw a inkblot. He said yes and it made me feel good. I thot that was all but when I got up to go he said Charlie we are not thrn yet. Then I dont remember so good but he wantid me to say what was in the ink. I dint see nuthing in the ink but he said there was picturs there other pepul saw some picturs. I couldnt see any picturs. I reely tryed. I held the card close up and then far away. Then I said if I had my glases I coud see better I usally only ware my glases in the movies or TV but I said they are in the closit in the hall. I got them. Then I said let me see that card agen I bet Ill find it Now. I tryed hard but I only saw the ink. I told him maybe I need new glases. He rote something down on a paper and I got skared of faling the test. I told him it was a very nice inkblot with littel points all around the edges. He looked very sad so that wasnt it. I said please let me try agen. Ill get it in a few minits becaus Im not so fast sometimes. Im a slow reeder too in Miss Kinnians class for slow adtilts but I'm trying very hard. He gave me a chance with another card that had 2 kinds of ink spilled on it red and blue. He was very nice and talked slow like Miss Kinnian does and he explaned it to me that it was a raw shok. He said pepul see things in the ink. I said show me where. He said think. I told him I think a inkblot but that wasn't rite eather. He said what does it remind you-pretend something. I closed mv eves for a long time to pretend. I told him I pretend a fowutan pen with ink leeking all over a table cloth.I don't think I passed the raw shok test progris riport 3-martch 7 Dr Strauss and Dr Nemur say it dont matter about the inkblots. They said that maybe they will still use me. I said Miss Kinnian never gave me tests like that one only spelling and reading. They said Miss Kinnian told that I was her bestist pupil in the adult nite school becaus I tryed the hardist and I reely wantid to lern. They said how come you went to the adult nite scool all by yourself Charlie. How did you find it. I said I asked pepul and sum body told me where I shud go to lern to read and spell good. They said why did you want to. I told them becaus all my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb. But its very hard to be smart. They said you know it will probly be tempirery. I said yes. Miss Kinnian told me. I dont care if it herts. Later I had more crazy tests today. The nice lady who gave it to me told me the name and I asked her how do you spell it so I can rite it my progris riport. THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST. I dont know the frist 2 words but I know what test means. You got to pass it or you get bad marks. This test lookd easy becaus I could see the picturs. Only this time she dint want me to tell her the picturs. That mixd me up. She said make up storys about the pepul in the picturs. I told her how can you tell storys about pepul you never met. I said why shud I make up lies. I never tell lies any more becaus I always get caut. She told me this test and the other one the raw-shok was for getting personality. I laffed so hard. I said how can you get that thing from inkblots and fotos. She got sore and put her picturs away. I don't care. It was sily. I gess I faled that test too. Later some men in white coats took me to a difernt part of the hospitil and gave me a game to play. It was like a race with a white mouse. They called the mouse Algernon. Algernon was in a box with a lot of twists and turns like all kinds of walls and they gave me a pencil and a paper with lines and lots of boxes. On one side it said START and on the other end it said FINISH. They said it was amazed and that Algernon and me had the same amazed to do. I dint see how we could have the same amazed if Algernon had a box and I had a paper but I dint say' nothing. Anyway there wasnt time because the race started. One of the men had a watch he was trying to hide so I wouldnt see it so I tryed not to look and that made me nervus. Anyway that test made me feel worser than all the others because they' did it over 10 times with different amazeds and Algernon won every time. I dint know that mice were so smart, Maybe thats because Algernon is a white mouse. Maybe white mice are smarter than other mice. progris riport 4-Mar 8 Their going to use me! Im so excited I can hardly write. Dr Nemur and Dr Strauss had a argament about it first. Dr Nemur was in the office when Dr Strauss brot me in. Dr Nemur was worryed about using me but Dr Strauss told him Miss Kinnian rekemmended me the best from all the people who she was teaching. I like Miss Kinnian becaus shes a very smart teacher. And she said Charlie your going to have a second chance. If you volunteer for this experament you mite get smart. They dont know if it will be perminint but theirs a chance. Thats why I said ok even when I was scared because she said it was an operashun. She said dont be scared Charlie you done so much with so little I think you deserv it most of all. So I got scaird when Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss argud about it. Dr. Strauss said I had something that was very good. He said I had a good motor-vation. I never even knew I had that. I felt proud when he said that not every body with an eye-q of 68 had that thing. I dant know what it is or where I got it but he said Algernon had it too. Algernons motor-vation is the cheese they put in his box. But it cant be that because I didn't eat any cheese this week. Then he told Dr Nemur something I dint understand so while they were talking I wrote down some of the words. He said Dr. Nemur I know Charlie is not what you had in mind as the first of your new brede of intelek** (couldnt get the word) superman. But most people of his low ment** are host** and uncoop** they are usually dull apath** and hard to reach. He has a good natcher hes intristed and eager to please. Dr Nemur said remember he will be the first human beeng ever to have his intelijence tripled by surgicle meens. Dr. Strauss said exakly. Look at how well hes lerned to read and write for his low mentel age its as grate an acheve** as you and I lerning einstines therey of **vity without help. That shows the inteness motor-vation. Its comparat** a tremen** achev** I say we use Charlie. I dint get all the words but it sounded like Dr Strauss was on my side and like the other one wasnt. Then Dr Nemur nodded he said all right maybe your right. We will use Charlie. When he said that I got so exited I jumped up and shook his hand for being so good to me. I told him thank you doc you wont be sorry for giving me a second chance. And I mean it like I told him. After the operashun Im gonna try to be smart. Im gonna try awful hard. progris riport 5-Mar 10 Im skared. Lots of the nurses and the people who gave me the tests came to bring me candy and wish me luck. I hope I have luck. I got my rabits foot and my lucky penny. Only a black cat crossed me when I was comming to the hospitil. Dr Strauss says dont be supersitis Charlie this is science. Anyway Im keeping my rabits foot with me. I asked Dr Strauss if Ill beat Algernon in the race after the operashun and he said maybe. If the operashun works Ill show that mouse I can be as smart as he is. Maybe smarter. Then Ill be abel to read better and spell the words good and know lots of things and be like other people. I want to be smart like other people. If it works perminint they will make everybody smart all over the wurld. They dint give me anything to eat this morning. I dont know what that eating has to do with getting smart. Im very hungry and Dr. Nemur took away my box of candy. That Dr Nemur is a grouch. Dr Strauss says I can have it back after the operashun. You cant eat befor a operashun.... progress report 6-Mar 15 The operashun dint hurt. He did it while I was sleeping. They took off the bandijis from my head today so I can make a PROG- RESS REPORT. Dr. Nemur who looked at some of my other ones says I spell PROGRESS wrong and told me how to spell it and REPORT too. I got to try and remember that. I have a very bad memary for spelling. Dr Strauss says its ok to tell about all the things that happin to me but he says I should tell more about what I feel and what I think. When I told him I dont know how to think he said try. All the time when the bandijis were on my eyes I tryed to think. Nothing happened. I dont know what to think about. Maybe if I ask him he will tell me how I can think now that Im supposed to get smart. What do smart people think about. Fancy things I suppose. I wish I knew some fancy things alredy. progress report 7-mar 19 Nothing is happining. I had lots of tests and different kinds of races with Algernon. I hate that mouse. He always beats me. Dr. Strauss said I got to play those games. And he said some time I got to take those tests over again. Those inkblots are stupid. And those pictures are stupid too. I like to draw a picture of a man and a woman but I wont make up lies about people. I got a headache from trying to think so much. I thot Dr Strauss was my frend but he dont help me. He dont tell me what to think or when Ill get smart. Miss Kinnian dint come to see me. I think writing these progress reports are stupid too. progress report 8-Mar 23 Im going back to work at the factory. They said it was better I shud go back to work but I cant tell anyone what the operashun was for and I have to come to the hospitil for an hour evry night after work. They are gonna pay me mony every month for learning to be Smart. Im glad Im going back to work because I miss my job and all my frends and all the fun we have there. Dr Strauss say's I shud keep writing things down but I dont have to do it every day just when I think of something or something speshul happins. He says dont get discoridged because it takes time and it happins slow. He say's it took a long time with Algernon before he got 3 times smarter than he was before. Thats why Algernon beats me all the time because he had that operashun too. That makes me feel better. I coud probly do that amazed faster than a reglar mouse. Maybe some day Ill beat him. That would be something. So far Algernon looks smart perminent. Mar 25 (I dont have to write PROGRESS REPORT on top any more just when I hand it in once a week for Dr Nemur. I just have to put the date on. That saves time) We had a lot of fun at the factory today. Joe Carp said hey look where Charlie had his operashun what did they do Charlie put some brains in. I was going to tell him but I remembered Dr Strauss said no. Then Frank Reilly said what did you do Charlie forget your key and open your door the hard way. That made me laff. Their really my friends and they like me. Sometimes somebody will say hey look at Joe or Frank or George he really pulled a Charlie Gordon. I dont know why they say that but they always laff. This morning Amos Borg who is the 4 man at Donnegans used my name when he shouted at Ernie the office boy. Ernie lost a packige. He said Ernie for pete sake what are you trying to be a Charlie Gordon. I dont understand why he said that. Mar 28 Dr Strauss came to my room tonight to see why I dint come in like I was suppose to. I told him I dont like to race with Algernon any more. He said I dont have to for a while but I shud come in. He had a present for me. I thot it was a little television but it wasnt. He said I got to turn it on when I go to sleep. I said your kidding why shud I turn it on when Im going to sleep. Who ever herd of a thing like that. But he said if I want to get smart I got to do what he says. I told him I dint think I was going to get smart and he puts his hand on my sholder and said Charlie you dont know it yet but your getting smarter all the time. You wont notice for a while. I think he was just being nice to make me feel good because I dont look any Smarter. Oh yes I almost forgot. I asked him when I can go back to the class at Miss Kinnians school. He said I wont go their. He said that soon Miss Kinnian will come to the hospitil to start and teach me speshul. Mar 29 That crazy TV kept up all night. How can I sleep with something yelling crazy things all night in my ears. And the nutty pictures. Wow. I don't know what it says when Im up so how am I going to know when Im sleeping. Dr Strauss says its ok. He says my brains are lerning when I sleep and that will help me when Miss Kinnian starts my lessons in the hospitl (only I found out it isn't a hospitil its a labatory.) I think its all crazy. If you can get smart when your sleeping why do people go to school. That thing I don't think will work. I use to watch the late show and the late late show on TV all the time and it never made me smart. Maybe you have to sleep while you watch it. progress report 9-April 3 Dr Strauss showed me how to keep the TV turned low so now I can sleep. I don't hear a thing. And I still dont understand what it says. A few times I play it over in the morning to find out what I lerned when I was sleeping and I don't think so. Miss Kinnian says Maybe its another langwidge. But most times it sound american. It talks faster then even Miss Gold who was my teacher in 6 grade. I told Dr. Strauss what good is it to get smart in my sleep. I want to be smart when Im awake. He says its the same thing and I have two minds. Theres the subconscious and the conscious (thats how you spell it). And one dont tell the other one what its doing. They dont even talk to each other. Thats why I dream. And boy have I been having crazy dreams. Wow. Ever since that night TV. The late late late show. I forgot to ask him if it was only me or if everybody had those two minds. (I just looked up the word in the dictionary Dr Strauss gave me. The word is subconscious. adj. Of the nature of mental operations yet not present in consciousness; as, subconscious conflict of de- sires.) There's more but I still dont know what it means. This isnt a very good dictionary for dumb people like me. Anyway the headache is from the party. My friends from the factery Joe Carp and Frank Reilly invited me to go to Muggsys Saloon for some drinks. I don't like to drink but they said we will have lots of fun. I had a good time. Joe Carp said I shoud show the girls how I mop out the toilet in the factory and he got me a mop. I showed them and everyone laffed when I told that Mr. Donnegan said I was the best janiter he ever had because I like my job and do it good and never miss a day except for my operashun. I said Miss Kinnian always said Charlie be proud of your job because you do it good. Everybody laffed and we had a good time and they gave me lots of drinks and Joe said Charlie is a card when hes potted. I dont know what that means but everybody likes me and we have fun. I cant wait to be smart like my best friends Joe Carp and Frank Reilly. I dont remember how the party was over but I think I went out to buy a newspaper and coffe for Joe and Frank and when I came back there was no one their. I looked for them all over till late. Then I dont remember so good but I think I got sleepy or sick. A nice cop brot me back home Thats what my landlady Mrs Flynn says. But I got a headache and a big lump on my head. I think maybe I fell but Joe Carp says it was the cop they beat up drunks some times. I don't think so. Miss Kinnian says cops are to help people. Anyway I got a bad headache and Im sick and hurt all over. I dont think Ill drink anymore. April 6 I beat Algernon! I dint even know I beat him until Burt the tester told me. Then the second time I lost because I got so exited I fell off the chair before I finished. But after that I beat him 8 more times. I must be getting smart to beat a smart mouse like Algernon. But I dont feel smarter. I wanted to race Algernon some more but Burt said thats enough for one day. They let me hold him for a minit. Hes not so bad. Hes soft like a ball of cotton. He blinks and when he opens his eyes their black and pink on the eges. I said can I feed him because I felt bad to beat him and I wanted to be nice and make friends. Burt said no Algernon is a very specshul mouse with an operashun like mine, and he was the first of all the animals to stay smart so long. He told me Algernon is so smart that every day he has to solve a test to get his food. Its a thing like a lock on a door that changes every time Algernon goes in to eat so he has to lern something new to get his food. That made me sad because if he couldnt lern he woud be hungry. I don't think its right to make you pass a test to eat. How woud Dr Nemur like it to have to pass a test every time he wants to eat. I think Ill be friends with Algernon. April 9 Tonight after work Miss Kinnian was at the laboratory. She looked like she was glad to see me but scared. I told her dont worry Miss Kinnian Im not smart yet and she laffed. She said I have confidence in you Charlie the way you struggled so hard to read and right better than all the others. At werst you will have it for a littel wile and your doing something for science. We are reading a very hard book. Its called Robinson Crusoe about a man who gets merooned on a dessert Iland. Hes smart and figers out all kinds of things so he can have a house and food and hes a good swimmer. Only I feel sorry because hes all alone and has no frends. But I think their must be somebody else on the iland because theres a picture with his funny umbrella looking at footprints. I hope he gets a frend and not be lonly. April 10 Miss Kinnian teaches me to spell better. She says look at a word and close your eyes and say it over and over until you remember. I have lots of truble with through that you say threw and enough and tough that you dont say enew and tew. You got to say enuff and tuff. Thats how I use to write it before I started to get smart. Im confused but Miss Kinnian says theres no reason in spelling. Apr 14 Finished Robinson Crusoe. I want to find out more about what happens to him but Miss Kinnian says thats all there is. Why. Apr 15 Miss Kinnian says Im lerning fast. She read some of the Progress Reports and she looked at me kind of funny. She says Im a fine person and Ill show them all. I asked her why. She said never mind but I shouldnt feel bad if I find out everybody isnt nice like I think. She said for a person who god gave so little to you done more then a lot of people with brains they never even used. I said all my friends are smart people but there good. They like me and they never did anything that wasnt nice. Then she got something in her eye and she had to run out to the ladys room. Apr 16 Today, I lerned, the comma, this is a comma (,) a period, with a tail, Miss Kinnian, says its importent, because, it makes writing, better, she said, somebody, coud lose, a lot of money, if a comma, isnt, in the, right place, I dont have, any money, and I dont see, how a comma, keeps you, from losing it. Apr 17 I used the comma wrong. Its punctuation. Miss Kinnian told me to look up long words in the dictionary to lern to spell them. I said whats the difference if you can read it anyway. She said its part of your education so now on Ill look up all the words Im not sure how to spell. It takes a long time to write that way but I only have to look up once and after that I get it right. You got to mix them up, she showed? me" how to mix! them (and now; I can! mix up all kinds" of punctuation, in! my writing? There, are lots! of rules? to lern; but Im gettin'g them in my head. One thing I like about, Dear Miss Kinnian: (thats the way it goes in a business letter if I ever go into business) is she, always gives me' a reason" when--I ask. She's a gen'ius! I wish I cou'd be smart" like, her; (Punctuation, is; fun!) Apr 18 What a dope I am! I didn't even understand what she was talking about. I read the grammar book last night and it explanes the whole thing. Then I saw it was the same way as Miss Kinnian was trying to tell me, but I didn't get it. Miss Kinnian said that the TV working in my sleep helped out. She and I reached a plateau. Thats a flat hill. After I figured out how punctuation worked, I read over all my old Progress Reports from the beginning. Boy, did I have crazy spelling and punctuation! I told Miss Kinnian I ought to go over the pages and fix all the mistakes but she said, "No, Charlie, Dr. Nemur wants them just as they are. That's why he let you keep them after they were photostated, to see your own progress. You're coming along fast, Charlie." That made me feel good. After the lesson I went down and played with Algernon. We don't race any more. April 20 I feel sick inside. Not sick like for a doctor, but inside my chest it feels empty like getting punched and a heartburn at the same time. I wasn't going to write about it, but I guess I got to, because its important. Today was the first time I ever stayed home from work. Last night Joe Carp and Frank Reilly invited me to a party. There were lots of girls and some men from the factory. I remem- bered how sick I got last time I drank too much, so I told Joe I didn't want anything to drink. He gave me a plain coke instead. We had a lot of fun for a while. Joe said I should dance with Ellen and she would teach me the steps. I fell a few times and I couldn't understand why because no one else was dancing besides Ellen and me. And all the time I was tripping because somebody's foot was always sticking out. Then when I got up I saw the look on Joe's face and it gave me a funny feeling in my stomack. "He's a scream," one of the girls said. Everybody was laughing. "Look at him. He's blushing. Charlie is blushing." "Hey, Ellen, what'd you do to Charlie? I never saw him act like that before." I didn't know what to do or where to turn. Everyone was looking at me and laughing and I felt naked. I wanted to hide. I ran outside and I threw up. Then I walked home. It's a funny thing I never knew that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me. Now I know what it means when they say "to pull a Charlie Gordon." I'm ashamed. progress report 11 April 21 Still didn't go into the factory. I told Mrs. Flynn my landlady to call and tell Mr. Donnegan I was sick. Mrs. Flynn looks at me very funny lately like she's scared. I think it's a good thing about finding out how everybody laughs at me. I thought about it a lot. It's because I'm so dumb and I don't even know when I'm doing something dumb. People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can. Anyway, now I know I'm getting smarter every day. I know punctuation and I can spell good. I like to look up all the hard words in the dictionary and I remember them. I'm reading a lot now, and Miss Kinnian says I read very fast. Sometimes I even understand what I'm reading about, and it stays in my mind. There are times when I can close my eyes and think of a page and it all comes back like a picture. Besides history, geography and arithmetic, Miss Kinnian said I should start to learn foreign languages. Dr. Strauss gave me some more tapes to play while I sleep. I still don't understand how that conscious and unconscious mind works, but Dr. Strauss says not to worry yet. He asked me to promise that when I start learning college subjects next week I wouldn't read any books on psychology-that is, until he gives me permission. I feel a lot better today, but I guess I'm still a little angry that all the time people were laughing and making fun of me because I wasn't so smart. When I become intelligent like Dr. Strauss says, with three times my I.Q. of 68, then maybe I'll be like everyone else and people will like me. I'm not sure what an I.Q. is, Dr. Nemur said it was something that measured how intelligent you were--like a scale in the drug- store weighs pounds. But Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an I.Q. didn't weigh intelligence at all. He said an I.Q. showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup up with Stuff. Then when I asked Burt, who gives me my intelligence tests and works with Algernon, he said that both of them were wrong (only I had to promise not to tell them he said so). Burt says that the I.Q. measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already, and it really isn't any good at all. So I still don't know what I.Q. is except that mine is going to be over 200 soon. I didn't want to say anything, but I don't see how if they don't know what it is, or where it is--I don't see how they know how much of it you've got. Dr. Nemur says I have to take a Rorshach Test tomorrow. I wonder what that is. April 22 I found out what a Rorshach is. It's the test I took before the operation--the one with the inkblots on the pieces of cardboard. I was scared to death of those inkblots. I knew the man was going to ask me to find the pictures and I knew I couldn't. I was thinking to myself, if only there was some way of knowing what kind of pictures were hidden there. Maybe there weren't any pictures at all. Maybe it was just a trick to see if I was dumb enough to look for something that wasn't there. Just thinking about that made me sore at him. "All right, Charlie," he said, "you've seen these cards before. Remember?" "Of course I remember." The way I said it, he knew I was angry, and he looked surprised. "Yes, of course. Now I want you to look at this. What might this be? What do you see on this card? People see all sorts of things in these inkblots. Tell me what it might be for you-what it makes you think of." I was shocked. That wasn't what I had expected him to say. "You mean there are no pictures hidden in those inkblots?" He frowned and took off his glasses. "What?" "Pictures. Hidden in the inkblots. Last time you told me everyone could see them and you wanted me to find them too." He explained to me that the last time he had used almost the exact same words he was using now. I didn't believe it, and I still have the suspicion that he misled me at the time just for the fun of it. Unless--I don't know any more--could I have been that feeble- minded? We went through the cards slowly. One looked like a pair of bats tugging at something. Another one looked like two men fencing with swords. I imagined all sorts of things. I guess I got carried away. But I didn't trust him any more, and I kept turning them around, even looking on the back to see if there was anything there I was supposed to catch. While he was making his notes, I peeked out of the corner of my eye to read it. But it was all in code that looked like this: WF+A DdF-Ad orig. WF-A SF + obj The test still doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that anyone could make up lies about things that they didn't really imagine? Maybe I'll understand it when Dr. Strauss lets me read up on psychology. April 25 I figured out a new way to line up the machines in the factory, and Mr. Donnegan says it will save him ten thousand dollars a year in labor and increased production. He gave me a $25 bonus. I wanted to take Joe Carp and Frank Reilly out to lunch to celebrate, but Joe said he had to buy some things for his wife, and Frank said he was meeting his cousin for lunch. I guess it'll take a little time for them to get used to the changes in me. Everybody seems to be frightened of me. When I went over to Amos Borg and tapped him, he jumped up in the air. People don't talk to me much any more or kid around the way they used to. It makes the job kind of lonely. April 27 I got up the nerve today to ask Miss Kinnian to have dinner with me tomorrow night to celebrate my bonus. At first she wasn't sure it was right, but I asked Dr. Strauss and he said it was okay. Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur don't seem to be getting along so well. They're arguing all the time. This evening I heard them shouting. Dr. Nemur was saying that it was his experi- ment and his research, and Dr. Strauss shouted back that he contributed just as much, because he found me through Miss Kinnian and he performed the operation. Dr. Strauss said that someday thousands of neurosurgeons might be using his technique all over the world. Dr. Nemur wanted to publish the results of the experiment at the end of the month. Dr. Strauss wanted to wait a while to be sure. Dr. Strauss said Dr. Nemur was more interested in the Chair of Psychology at Princeton than he was in the experiment. Dr. Nemur said Dr. Strauss was nothing but an opportunist trying to ride to glory on his coattails. When I left afterwards, I found myself trembling. I don't know why for sure, but it was as if I'd seen both men clearly for the first time. I remember hearing Burt say Dr. Nemur had a shrew of a wife who was pushing him all the time to get things published so he could become famous. Burt said that the dream of her life was to have a big shot husband. April 28 I don't understand why I never noticed how beautiful Miss Kinnian really is. She has brown eyes and feathery brown hair that comes to the top of her neck. She's only thirty-four! I think from the beginning I had the feeling that she was an unreachable genius--and very, very old. Now, every time I see her she grows younger and more lovely. We had dinner and a long talk. When she said I was coming along so fast I'd be leaving her behind, I laughed. "It's true, Charlie. You're already a better reader than I am. You can read a whole page at a glance while I can take in only a few lines at a time. And you remember every single thing you read. I'm lucky if I can recall the main thoughts and the general meaning." "I don't feel intelligent. There are so many things I don't Understand." She took a sip of water and I refilled her glass. "You've got to be a little patient. You're accomplishing in days and weeks what it takes normal people to do in a lifetime. That's what makes it so amazing. You're like a giant sponge now, soaking things in. Facts, figures, general knowledge. And soon you'll begin to connect them, too. You'll see how different branches of learning are related. There are many levels, Charlie, like steps on a giant ladder that take you tip higher and higher to see more and more of the world around yoti. "I can see only a little bit of that, Charlie, and I won't go much higher than I am now, but you'll keep climbing up and up, and see more and more, and each step will open new worlds that you never even knew existed." She frowned. "I hope . . . I just hope--" "What?" "Never mind, Charles. I just hope I wasn't wrong to advise you to go into this in the first place." I laughed. "How could that be? It worked, didn't it? Even Algernon is still smart." We sat there silently for a while and I knew what she was thinking about as she watched me toying with the chain of my rabbit's foot and my keys. I didn't want to think of that possibility any more than elderly people want to think of death. I knew that this was only the beginning. I knew what she meant about levels because I'd seen some of them already. The thought of leaving her behind made me sad. I'm in love with Miss Kinnian. progress report 12 April 30 I've quit my job with Donnegan's Plastic Box Company. Mr. Donnegan insisted it would be better for all concerned if I left. What did I do to make them hate me so? The first I knew of it was when Mr. Donnegan showed me the petition. Eight hundred names, everyone in the factory, except Fanny Girden. Scanning the list quickly, I saw at once that hers was the only missing name. All the rest demanded that I be fired. Joe Carp and Frank Reilly wouldn't talk to me about it. No one else would either, except Fanny. She was one of the few people I'd known who set her mind to something and believed it no matter what the rest of the world proved, said or did-and Fanny did not believe that I should have been fired. She had been against the petition on principle and despite the pressure and threats she'd held out. "Which don't mean to say," she remarked, "that I don't think there's something mighty strange about you, Charlie. Them chang- es. I don't know. You used to be a good, dependable, ordinary man--not too bright maybe, but honest. Who knows what you done to yourself to get so smart all of a sudden. Like everybody around here's been saying, Charlie, it's not right." "But how can you say that, Fanny? What's wrong with a man becoming intelligent and wanting to acquire knowledge and under- standing of the world around him?" She stared down at her work and I turned to leave. Without looking at me, she said: "It was evil when Eve listened to the snake and ate from the tree of knowledge. It was evil when she saw that she was naked. If not for that none of us would ever have to grow old and sick, and die." Once again, now, I have the feeling of shame burning inside me. This intelligence has driven a wedge between me and all the people I once knew and loved. Before, they laughed at me and despised me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hate me for my knowledge and understanding. What in heaven’s name do they want of me? They've driven me out of the factory. Now I'm more alone than ever before. May 15 Dr. Strauss is very angry at me for not having written any progress reports in two weeks. He's justified because the lab is now paying me a regular salary. I told him I was too busy thinking and reading. When I pointed out that writing was such a slow process that it makes me impatient with my poor handwriting, he suggested I learn to type. It's much easier to write now because I can type seventy-five words a minute. Dr. Strauss continually reminds me of the need to speak and write simply so people will be able to understand me. I'll try to review all the things that happened to me during the last two weeks. Algernon and I were presented to the American Psychological Association sitting in convention with the World Psychological Association. We created quite a sensation. Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss were proud of us. I suspect that Dr. Nemur, who is sixty--ten years older than Dr. Strauss--finds it necessary to see tangible results of his work. Undoubtedly the result of pressure by Mrs. Nemur. Contrary to my earlier impressions of him, I realize that Dr. Nemur is not at all a genius. He has a very good mind, but it struggles tinder the spectre of self-doubt. He wants people to take him for a genius. Therefore, it is important for him to feel that his work is accepted by the world. I believe that Dr. Nemur was afraid of further delay because he worried that someone else might make a discovery along these lines and take the credit from him. Dr. Strauss on the other hand might be called a genius, although I feel that his areas of knowledge are too limited. He was educated in the tradition of narrow specialization; the broader aspects of background were neglected far more than necessary-even for a Neurosurgeon. I was shocked to learn that the only ancient languages he could read were Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and that he knows almost nothing of mathematics beyond the elementary levels of the calcu- lus of variations. When he admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending--as do many people I've discovered--to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface. Dr. Nemur appears to be uncomfortable around me. Sometimes when I try to talk to him, he just looks at me strangely and turns away. I was angry at first when Dr. Strauss told me I was giving Dr. Nemur an inferiority complex. I thought he was mocking me and I'm oversensitive at being made fun of. How was I to know that a highly respected psychoexperimen- talist like Nemur was unacquainted with Hindustani and Chinese? It's absurd when you consider the work that is being done in India and China today in the very field of his study. I asked Dr. Strauss how Nemur could refute Rahajamati's attack on his method and results if Nemur couldn't even read them in the first place. That strange look on Dr. Strauss' face can mean only one of two things. Either he doesn't want to tell Nemur what they're saying in India, or else--and this worries me--Dr. Strauss doesn't know either. I must be careful to speak and write clearly and simply so that people won't laugh. May 18 I am very disturbed. I saw Miss Kinn ian last night for the first time in over a week. I tried to avoid all discussions of intellectual concepts and to keep the conversation on a simple, everyday level, but she just stared at me blankly and asked me what I meant about the mathematical variance equivalent in Dorber- mann s Fifth Concerto. When I tried to explain she stopped me and laughed. I guess I got angry, but I suspect I'm approaching her on the wrong level. No matter what I try to discuss with her, I am unable to communicate. I must review Vrostadt's equations on Levels of Semantic Progres- sion. I find that I don't communicate with people much any more. I’m thankful for books and music and things I can think about. I am alone in my apartment at Mrs. Flynn's boardinghouse most of the time and seldom speak to anyone. May 20 I would not have noticed the new dishwasher, a boy. of about sixteen, at the corner diner where I take my evening meals if not for the incident of the broken dishes. They crashed to the floor, shattering and sending bits of white china under the tables. The boy stood there, dazed and frightened, holding the empty tray in his hand. The whistles and catcalls from the customers (the cries of "hey, there go the profits!" ... "Mazel Tov!". . . and "well, he didn't work here very long which invariably seem to follow the breaking of glass or dishware in a public restaurant) all seemed to confuse him. When the owner came to see what the excitement was about, the boy cowered as if he expected to be struck and threw up his arms as if to ward off the blow. "All right! All right, you dope," shouted the owner, "don't just stand there! Get the broom and sweep that mess up. A broom . . . a broom, you idiot! It's in the kitchen. Sweep up all the pieces." The boy saw that he was not going to be punished. His frightened expression disappeared and he smiled and hummed as he came back with the broom to sweep the floor. A few of the rowdier customers kept up the remarks, amusing themselves at his expense. "Here, sonny, over here there's a nice piece behind you...." "C'mon, do it again." "He's not so dumb. It's easier to break'em than to wash'em. . ." As his vacant eyes moved across the crowd of amused onlook- ers, he slowly mirrored their smiles and finally broke into an uncertain grin at the joke which he obviously did not understand. I felt sick inside as I looked at his dull, vacuous smile, the wide, bright eyes of a child, uncertain but eager to please. They were laughing at him because he was mentally retarded. And I had been laughing at him too. Suddenly, I was furious at myself and all those who were smirking at him. I jumped up and shouted, "Shut up! Leave him alone! It's not his fault he can't understand. He can't help what lie is! But for heaven’s sake . . . he's still a human being!" The room grew silent. I cursed myself for losing control and creating a scene. I tried not to look at the boy as I paid my check and walked out without touching my food. I felt ashamed for both of us. How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes--how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence. It infuriated me to think that not too long ago, I like this boy, had foolishly played the clown. And I had almost forgotten. I'd hidden the picture of the old Charlie Gordon from myself because now that I was intelligent it was something that had to be pushed out of my mind. But today in looking at that boy, for the first time I saw what I had been. I was just like him! Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined with them in laughing at myself. That hurts most of all. I have often reread my progress reports and seen the illiteracy, the childish naivete, the mind of low intelligence peering from a dark room, through the keyhole, at the dazzling light outside. I see that even in my dullness I knew that I was inferior, and that other people had something I lacked-something denied me. In my mental blindness, I thought that it was somehow connected with the ability to read and write, and I was sure that if I could get those skills I would automatically have intelligence too. Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men. A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows of hunger. This then is what I was like, I never knew. Even with my gift of intellectual awareness, I never really knew. This day was good for me. Seeing the past more clearly, I have decided to use my knowledge and skills to work in the field of increasing human intelligence levels. Who is better equipped for this work? Who else has lived in both worlds? These are my people. Let me use my gift to do something for them. Tomorrow, I will discuss with Dr. Strauss the manner in which I can work in this area. I may be able to help him work out the problems of widespread use of the technique which was used on me. I have several good ideas of my own. There is so much that might be done with this technique. If I could be made into a genius, what about thousands of others like myself? What fantastic levels might be achieved by using this technique on normal people? Or geniuses? There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin. progress report 13 May 23 It happened today. Algernon bit me. I visited the lab to see him as I do occasionally, and when I took him out of his cage, he snapped at my hand. I put him back and watched him for a while. He was unusually disturbed and vicious. May 24 Burt, who is in charge of the experimental animals, tells me that Algernon is changing. He is less co-operative; he refuses to run the maze any more; general motivation has decreased. And he hasn't been eating. Everyone is upset about what this may mean. May 25 They've been feeding Algernon, who now refuses to work the shifting-lock problem. Everyone identifies me with Algernon. in a way we're both the first of our kind. They're all pretending that Algernon's behavior is not necessarily significant for me. But it's hard to hide the fact that some of the other animals who were used in this experiment are showing strange behavior. Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur have asked me not to come to the lab any more. I know what they're thinking but I can't accept it. I am going ahead with my plans to carry their research forward. With all due respect to both of these fine scientists, l am well aware of their limitations. If there is an answer, I'll have to find it out for myself. Suddenly, time has become very important to me. May 29 I have been given a lab of my own and permission to go ahead with the research. I'm on to something. Working day and night. I've had a cot moved into the lab. Most of my writing time is spent on the notes which I keep in a separate folder, but from time to time I feel it necessary to put down my moods and my thoughts out of sheer habit. I find the calculus of intelligence to be a fascinating study. Here is the place for the application of all the knowledge I have acquired. In a sense it's the problem I've been concerned with all my life. May 31 Dr. Strauss thinks I'm working too hard. Dr. Nemur says I'm trying to cram a lifetime of research and thought into a few weeks. I know I should rest, but I'm driven on by something inside that won't let me stop. I've got to find the reason for the sharp regression in Algernon. I've got to know if and when it will happen to me.June 4LETTER TO DR. STRAUSS (copy) Dear Dr. Strauss: Under separate cover I am sending you a copy of my report entitled, "The Algernon-Gordon Effect: A Study of Structure and Function of Increased Intelligence," which I would like to have you read and have published. As you see, my experiments are completed. I have included in my report all of my formulae, as well as mathematical analysis in the appendix. Of course, these should be verified. Because of its importance to both you and Dr. Nemur (and need I say to myself, too?) I have checked and rechecked my results a dozen times in the hope of finding an error. I am sorry to say the results must stand. Yet for the sake of science, I am grateful for the little bit that I here add to the knowledge of the function of the human mind and of the laws governing the artificial increase of human intelligence. I recall your once saying to me that an experimental failure or the disproving of a theory was as important to the advance- ment of learning as a success would be. I know now that this is true. I am sorry, however, that my own contribution to the field must rest upon the ashes of the work of two men I regard so highly. Yours truly, Charles Gordon encl.:rept. June 5 I must not become emotional. The facts and the results of my experiments are clear, and the more sensational aspects of my own rapid climb cannot obscure the fact that the tripling of intelligence by the surgical technique developed by Drs. Strauss and Nemur must be viewed as having little or no practical applica- bility (at the present time) to the increase of human intelligence. As I review the records and data on Algernon, I see that although he is still in his physical infancy, he has regressed mentally. Motor activity is impaired; there is a general reduction of glandular activity; there is an accelerated loss of coordination. There are also strong indications of progressive amnesia. As will be seen by my report, these and other physical and mental deterioration syndromes can be predicted with statistically significant results by the application of my formula. The surgical stimulus to which we were both subjected has resulted in an intensification and acceleration of all mental pro- cesses. The unforeseen development, which I have taken the liberty of calling the Algernon-Gordon Effect, is the logical extension of the entire intelligence speed-up. The hypothesis here proven may be described simply in the following terms: Artificially increased intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase. I feel that this, in itself, is an important discovery. As long as I am able to write, I will continue to record my thoughts in these progress reports. It is one of my few pleasures. However, by all indications, my own mental deterioration will be very rapid. I have already begun to notice signs of emotional instability and forgetfulness, the first symptoms of the burnout. June 10 Deterioration progressing. I have become absentminded. Algernon died two days ago. Dissection shows my predictions were right. His brain had decreased in weight and there was a general smoothing out of cerebral convolutions as well as a deepening and broadening of brain fissures. I guess the same thing is or will soon be happening to me. Now that it's definite, I don't want it to happen. I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the back yard. I cried. June 15 Dr. Strauss came to see me again. I wouldn't open the door and I told him to go away. I want to be left to myself. I have become touchy and irritable. I feel the darkness closing in. It's hard to throw off thoughts of suicide. I keep telling myself how important this introspective journal will be. It's a strange sensation to pick up a book that you've read and enjoyed just a few months ago and discover that you don't remember it. I remembered how great I thought John Milton was, but when I picked up Paradise Lost I couldn't understand it at all. I got so angry I threw the book across the room. I've got to try to hold on to some of it. Some of the things I've learned. Oh, God, please don't take it all away. June 19 Sometimes, at night, I go out for a walk. Last night I couldn't remember where I lived. A policeman took me home. I have the strange feeling that this has all happened to me before--a long time ago. I keep telling myself I'm the only person in the world who can describe what's happening to me. June 21 Why can't I remember? I've got to fight. I lie in bed for days and I don't know who or where I am. Then it all comes back to me in a flash. Fugues of amnesia. Symptoms of senility--second childhood. I can watch them coming on. It's so cruelly logical. I learned so much and so fast. Now my mind is deteriorating rapidly. I won't let it happen. I'll fight it. I can't help thinking of the boy in the restaurant, the blank expression, the silly smile, the people laughing at him. No--please--not that again. . . June 22 I'm forgetting things that I learned recently. It seems to be following the classic pattern--the last things learned are the first things forgotten. Or is that the pattern? I'd better look it up Again.... I reread my paper on the Algemon-Gordon Effect and I get the strange feeling that it was written by someone else. There are parts I don't even understand. Motor activity impaired. I keep tripping over things, and it becomes increasingly difficult to type. June 23 I've given up using the typewriter completely. My co- ordination is bad. I feel that I'm moving slower and slower. Had a terrible shock today. I picked up a copy of an article I used in my research, Krueger's Uber Psychische Ganzheit, to see if it would help me understand what I had done. First I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. Then I realized I could no longer read German. I tested myself in other languages. All gone. June 30 A week since I dared to write again. It's slipping away like sand through my fingers. Most of the books I have are too hard for me now. I get angry with them because I know that I read and understood them just a few weeks ago. I keep telling myself I must keep writing these reports so that somebody will know what is happening to me. But it gets harder to form the words and remember spellings. I have to look up even simple words in the dictionary now and it makes me impatient with myself. Dr. Strauss comes around almost every day, but I told him I wouldn't see or speak to anybody. He feels guilty. They all do. But I don't blame anyone. I knew what might happen. But how it hurts. July 7 I don't know where the week went. Todays Sunday I know because I can see through my window people going to church. I think I stayed in bed all week but I remember Mrs. Flynn bringing food to me a few times. I keep saying over and over Ive got to do something but then I forget or maybe its just easier not to do what I say Im going to do. I think of my mother and father a lot these days. I found a picture of them with me taken at a beach. My father has a big ball under his arm and my mother is holding me by the hand. I dont remember them the way they are in the picture. All I remember is my father drunk most of the time and arguing with mom about Money. He never shaved much and he used to scratch my face when he hugged me. My mother said he died but Cousin Miltie said he heard his mom and dad say that my father ran away with another woman. When I asked my mother she slapped my face and said my father was dead. I don't think I ever found out which was true but I don't care much. (He said he was going to take me to see cows on a farm once but he never did. He never kept his promises. . .) July 10 My landlady Mrs Flynn is very worried about me. She says the way I lay around all day and dont do anything I remind her of her son before she threw him out of the house. She said she doesnt like loafers. If Im sick its one thing, but if Im a loafer thats another thing and she wont have it. I told her I think Im sick. I try to read a little bit every day, mostly stories, but sometimes I have to read the same thing over and over again because I dont know what it means. And its hard to write. I know I should look up all the words in the dictionary but its so hard and Im so tired all the time. Then I got the idea that I would only use the easy words instead of the long hard ones. That saves time. I put flowers on Algernons grave about once a week. Mrs Flynn thinks I'm crazy to put flowers on a mouses grave but I told her that Algernon was special. July 14 Its sunday again. I dont have anything to do to keep me busy now because my television set is broke and I dont have any money to get it fixed. (I think I lost this months check from the lab. I dont remember) I get awful headaches and asperin doesnt help me much. Mrs Flynn knows Im really sick and she feels very sorry for me. Shes a wonderful woman whenever someone is sick. July 22 Mrs Flynn called a strange doctor to see me. She was afraid I was going to die. I told the doctor I wasnt too sick and that I only forget sometimes. He asked me did I have any friends or relatives and I said no I dont have any. I told him I had a friend called Algernon once but he was a mouse and we used to run races together. He looked at me kind of funny like he thought I was crazy. He smiled when I told him I used to be a genius. He talked to me like I was a baby and he winked at Mrs Flynn. I got mad and chased him out because he was making fun of me the way they all used to. July 24 I have no more money and Mrs. Flynn says I got to go to work somewhere and pay the rent because I havent paid for over two months. I dont know any work but the job I used to have at Donnegans Plastic Box Company. I dont want to go back there because they all knew me when I was smart and maybe theyll laugh at me. But I dont know what else to do to get money. July 25 I was looking at some of my old progress reports and its very funny but I cant read what I wrote. I can make out some of the words but they dont make sense. Miss Kinnian came to the door but I said go away I dont want to see you. She cried and I cried too but I wouldn't let her in because I didn't want her to laugh at me. I told her I didn't like her any more. I told her I didn't want to be smart any more. Thats not true. I still love her and I still want to be smart but I had to say that so shed go away. She gave Mrs Flynn money to pay the rent. I dont want that. I got to get a job. Please . . . please let me not forget how to read and write. . July 27 Mr Donnegan was very nice when I came back and asked him for my old job of janitor. First he was very suspicious but I told him what happened to me then he looked very sad and put his hand on my shoulder and said Charlie Gordon you got guts. Everybody looked at me when I came downstairs and started working in the toilet sweeping it out like I used to. I told myself Charlie if they make fun of you dont get sore because you remember their not so smart as you once thot they were. And besides they were once your friends and if they laughed at you that doesnt mean anything because they liked you too. One of the new men who came to work there after I went away made a nasty crack he said hey Charlie I hear your a very smart fella a real quiz kid. Say something intelligent. I felt bad but Joe Carp came over and grabbed him by the shirt and said leave him alone you lousy cracker or Ill break your neck. I didnt expect Joe to take my part so I guess hes really my friend. Later Frank Reilly came over and said Charlie if anybody bothers you or trys to take advantage you call me or Joe and we will set em straight. I said thanks Frank and I got choked up so I had to turn around and go into the supply room so he wouldnt see me cry. Its good to have friends. July 28 I did a dumb thing today I forgot I wasnt in Miss Kinnians class at the adult center any more like I used to be. I went in and sat down in my old seat in the back of the room and she looked at me funny and she said Charles. I dint remember she ever called me that before only Charlie so I said hello Miss Kinnian Im redy for my lesin today only I lost my reader that we was using. She startid to cry and run out of the room and everybody looked at me and I saw they wasnt the same pepul who used to be in my class. Then all of a sudden I remembered some things about the operashun and me getting smart and I said holy smoke I reely pulled a Charlie Gordon that time. I went away before she come back to the Room. Thats why Im going away from New York for good. I dont want to do nothing like that agen. I dont want Miss Kinnian to feel sorry for me. Evry body feels sorry at the factery and I dont want that eather so Im going someplace where nobody knows that Charlie Gordon was once a genus and now he cant even reed a book or rite good. Im taking a cuple of books along and even if I cant reed them Ill practise hard and maybe I wont forget every thing I lerned. If I try reel hard maybe Ill be a littel bit smarter than I was before the operashun. I got my rabits foot and my luky penny and may'be they will help me. If you ever reed this Miss Kinnian dont be sorry for me Im glad I got a second chanse to be smart becaus I lerned a lot of things that I never even new were in this world and Im grateful that I saw it all for a little bit. I dont know why Im dumb agen or what I did wrong maybe its becaus I dint try hard enuff. But if I try and practis very hard maybe Ill get a little smarter and know what all the words are. I remember a littel bit how nice I had a feeling with the blue book that has the torn cover when I red it. Thats why Im gonna keep trying to get smart so I can have that feeling agen. Its a good feeling to know things and be smart. I wish I had it rite now if I did I would sit down and reed all the time. Anyway I bet Im the first dumb person in the world who ever found out something importent for sience. I remember I did something but I dont remember what. So I gess its like I did it for all the dumb pepul like me. Good-by Miss Kinnian and Dr Strauss and evreybody. And P.S. please tell Dr Nemur not to be such a grouch when pepul laff at him and he would have more frends. Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you. Im going to have lots of frends where I go. P.P.S. Please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.... Study QuestionsWho is Miss Kinnian? Why does she tell the doctors about Charlie?According to progress report four, what is the experiment and operation that Charlie will undergo? What does Miss Kinnian warn Charlie about it?Why does Charlie say he hates Algernon? Why is Algernon not a normal mouse?Give two examples of how the factory workers treat Charlie. What does Charlie realize about them on April 20?Why does Charlie quit his job?What happens at the diner? As a result, what does Charlie realize about “the old Charlie”?According to his report on May 20, in what way does Charlie decide to use his new intelligence?On June 5 what happens to Algernon? What does this mean for Charlie?When Charlie returns to his job, in what way do the other workers treat him?At the end of the story, what does Charlie decide to keep trying? Why?Why do you think the factory workers sign the petition against Charlie? Why do they change at the end of the story?Why do you think Charlie cries after burying Algernon?Which of Charlie’s personality traits remain the same during the story? Which traits change?Literary Focus: The Total EffectWhen we read a good story, we are caught up in the world that it creates. We want to find out what will happen in the plot. We begin to think of the characters as people whom we know. We step into the setting in which the story occurs. We try to understand the theme.1114300The more we enter into a story, the more we enjoy it. We can enter into a story more fully if we become aware of each element in it. If we are active, alert readers, we will notice each twist in the plot. We will pick up more information about the characters, setting, and theme. We will also see how these elements all work together to create a total effect, the story’s overall impact.Different people will notice different things in any story. However, an active reader will always think about the individual elements and their total effect.Question: How would you describe the total effect of “Flowers for Algernon”? Take into account all five elements of a short story (plot, character, setting, point of view, and theme). ................
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