An Era of Protest€¦ · 14/06/1999 · — Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” PART 1 An Era of Protest Challenge America, 1964. Lois Mailou Jones. Photomechanical

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“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

— Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

PART 1

An Era of Protest

Challenge America, 1964. Lois Mailou Jones. Photomechanical reproduction, acrylic and paper on canvas, 391/8 x 301/8 in. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.

Hirshhorn Museum

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1144 UNIT 7

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Preview the ArticleIn “The Torchbearer,” former Poet Laureate Rita Dove describes how an act by Rosa Parks sparked the modern civil rights movement.

1. Think about what you already know about Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement. What else would you like to know?

2. Read the excerpt from the poem by Rita Dove on page 1144. How do you think the author feels about Rosa Parks? How might this affect the tone of the article?

Set a Purpose for ReadingRead to learn how a single act of protest defined the Civil Rights movement and changed a nation.

Reading StrategyAnalyzing Text Structure When you analyze text structure, or the organization of ideas in a text, you look at separate parts of a selection in order to understand the entire work. Chronological order, or the time order in which events take place, is one type of text structure. Identify chronological order through dates and key words such as first, then, and finally. As you read, use a chart like the one below to track chronological order in “The Torchbearer.”

The Torchbearer

ROSA PARKS’s simple act of protest galvanized America’s civil rights revolution

By RITA DOVE

How she sat there, the time right inside a placeso wrong it was ready. —From “Rosa,” in On the Bus with Rosa Parks by Rita DoveWe know the story. One December evening, a woman left work and boarded a bus for home. She was tired; her feet ached. But this was Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, and as the bus became crowded, the woman, a black woman, was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. When she remained seated, that simple decision eventually led to the disintegration of institutionalized segregation in the South and ushered in a new era of the Civil Rights movement.

This, anyway, was the story I had heard from the time I was curious enough to eavesdrop on adult conversations. I was three years old when a white bus driver warned Rosa Parks, “Well, I’m going to have you arrested,” and she replied, “You may go on and do so.” As a child, I didn’t understand how doing nothing had

caused so much activity, but I recognized the template: David slaying the giant Goliath, or the boy who saved his village by sticking his finger in the dike. Perhaps it is precisely the lure of fairy-tale retribution that colors the lens we look back through. Parks was 42 years old when she refused to give up her seat. She has insisted that her feet were not aching; she was, by her own testimony, no more tired than usual. She did not plan her fateful act: “I did not get on the bus to get arrested,” she has said. “I got on the bus to go home.”

Montgomery’s segregation laws were complex: Blacks were required to pay their fare to the driver and then get off and reboard through the back door. Sometimes the bus would drive off before the paid-up customers made it to the back entrance. If the white section was full and another white

Event 2

Event 1➧

Event 3

➧SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

OBJECTIVES• Analyze historical context.

• Analyze organizational patterns in informa-tional text, including chronological order.

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THE TORCHBEARER 1145

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customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seats and move farther to the back; a black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle from whites. These humiliations were compounded by the fact that two-thirds of the bus riders in Montgomery were black.

Parks was not the first to be detained for this offense. Eight months earlier, Claudette Colvin, 15, refused to give up her seat and was arrested. Black activists met with this girl to determine if she would make a good test case. As secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Parks attended the meeting, where it was finally decided that a more “upstanding” candidate than Colvin was necessary to withstand the scrutiny of the courts and the press. Then, in October, a young woman named Mary Louise Smith was arrested; NAACP leaders rejected her, too, as their vehicle, looking for someone more able to withstand media scrutiny. Smith paid the fine and was released.

Six weeks later, the time was ripe. The facts, rubbed shiny for retelling, are these: On December 1, 1955,

Mrs. Rosa Parks, seamstress for the Montgomery Fair department store, boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus. She took a seat in the fifth row—the first row of the “Colored Section.” The driver was the same one who had put her off a bus 12 years earlier for refusing to get off and reboard through the back door. (“He was still mean-looking,” she has said.) Did that make her stubborn? Or had her work in the NAACP sharpened her sensibilities so that she knew what to do—or more precisely, what not to do: Don’t frown, don’t struggle, don’t shout, don’t pay the fine?

At the news of the arrest, local civil rights leader E.D. Nixon exclaimed, “My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!” Parks was not only above moral reproach (securely married, reasonably employed), but she possessed a quiet fortitude as well as political savvy. In short, she was the ideal candidate for a test case.

She was arrested on a Thursday; bail was posted by Clifford Durr, the white lawyer whose wife had employed Parks as a seamstress. That evening, after talking it over with her mother and husband, Rosa Parks agreed to challenge the constitutionality of

Montgomery’s segregation laws. During a midnight meeting of the Women’s Political Council, 35,000 handbills were printed for distribution to all black schools the next morning. The message was simple:

“We are . . . asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial . . . You can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off the buses Monday.”

Monday came. Rain threatened, yet the black population of Montgomery stayed off the buses, either walking or catching one of the black cabs stopping at every municipal bus stop for 10 cents per customer—the standard bus fare. Meanwhile, Parks was scheduled to appear in court. She made her way through the throngs at the courthouse, a demure figure in a long-sleeved black dress with white collar and cuffs, a trim black velvet hat, gray coat, and white gloves. A girl in the crowd caught sight of her and cried out, “Oh, she’s so sweet. They’ve messed with the wrong one now!”

Yes, indeed. The trial lasted 30 minutes, with the expected con-viction and penalty. That afternoon, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed. So as not to ruffle any local activists’ feathers, the members elected as their president a relative newcomer to Montgomery, the young minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. That evening, addressing a crowd gathered at the Holt Street Baptist Church, King declared in that sonorous, ringing voice the world would soon thrill to: “There comes a time that people get tired.” When he was finished, Parks stood up so the audience could see her. She did not speak; there was no need to.

Here I am, her silence said, among you. And she has been with us ever since—a persistent symbol of human

Rosa getting fingerprinted

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dignity in the face of brutal authority. The famous UPI photo (actually taken more than a year later, on December 21, 1956, the day Montgomery’s public transportation system was legally integrated) is a study of calm strength. She is looking out the bus window, her hands resting

in the folds of her checked dress, while a white man sits, unperturbed, in the row behind her. That clear profile, the neat hat and eyeglasses and sensible coat—she could have been my mother or anybody’s favorite aunt.

History is often portrayed as a grand opera, full of great intrigues and

larger-than-life heroics. Some of the most tumultuous events, however, have been provoked by serendipity—the assassination of an unimportant archduke spawned World War I, a kicked-over lantern may have sparked the Great Chicago Fire. One cannot help wondering what role Martin Luther King Jr. would have played in the civil rights movement if the opportunity had not presented itself that first evening of the boycott. What if Rosa Parks had chosen a row farther back from the outset? Or what if she had missed the bus altogether?

At the beginning of this new millennium (and after a particularly noisy century), it is the modesty of Rosa Parks’s example that sustains us. It is no less than the belief in the power of the individual, that cornerstone of the American Dream, that she inspires. Her life offers the hope that when crunch time comes, all of us—even the least of us—could be that brave, that serenely human.

— Updated 2005,from TIME, June 14, 1999

Rosa alone

Respond1. Using Rosa Parks’s actions as an example, how

would you define heroism?

Recall and Interpret2. (a)What were the segregation laws for Montgomery’s

bus system? (b)Why were these laws especially humiliating to African American people?

3. (a)Why did the NAACP reject two other bus riders before meeting Parks? (b)What does this indicate about the organization?

4. (a)Who was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association? (b)Why is this important?

Analyze and Evaluate5. (a)Why were Parks’s appearance and social

standing important? (b)How might you have reacted if you were at Parks’s trial?

6. (a) How do you think the author feels about the Montgomery bus boycott? (b)What evidence supports your conclusion?

7. (a)Return to the graphic organizer you created. What is the chronological order of events presented in the article? (b)Why do you think Dove chose to organize the article in chronological order?

Connect8. In “The Torchbearer” Dove writes “What if Rosa

Parks had chosen a row farther back from the outset? Or what if she had missed the bus altogether?” In what ways do you think these changes would have affected the civil rights movement?

RESPONDING AND THINKING CRITICALLY

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MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 1147

BEFORE YOU READ

from Stride Toward Freedom

MEET MARTIN LUTHER KING JR .

Martin Luther King Jr. fundamentally altered the way people in the United States look at race. He showed that seg-

regation and forced inequality could be successfully combated without recourse to violence. King’s steady advocacy uplifted the despondent and chal-lenged the complacent. Combining high ideals with practicality, King inspired people from all races and backgrounds to demand the best from themselves and their country.

“Do your work so well that no one could do it better. Do it so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to say: Here lived a man who did his job as if God Almighty called him at this particular time in history to do it.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.

Historic Struggles Born the son of a minister in Atlanta, Georgia, King distinguished himself at school and entered Morehouse College at fifteen. After receiving his PhD in theology, King became a minister in Montgomery, Alabama.

Shortly after King moved to Montgomery, the first major nonviolent protest of the civil rights move-ment took place: the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott was an attempt to end the practice of segregation on public buses. For more than a year, Montgomery’s fifty thousand black citizens stayed off the buses. The boycott was successful, and King’s outstanding public speaking and leadership skills drew national attention. After the boycott, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded to confront all forms of segregation, and King became its president.

Commitment and Dedication When the center of the civil rights struggle shifted to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, King was there. He and other demonstrators were jailed, and violence exploded in the streets, but King’s stance on nonviolent resis-tance remained firm: “We will go on,” he told his supporters, “because we have started a fire in Bir-ming ham that water cannot put out. We are going on because we love Birmingham and we love democ-racy. And we are going to remain nonviolent.”

One of the best-known triumphs of the civil rights movement was the March on Washington in 1963. There King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to an audience of approximately 250,000 people. One year later, he became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Despite his commitment to nonviolence, King himself was the target of threats and violence. In 1968, at the age of thirty-nine, he fell victim to an assassin’s bullet. King’s funeral took place at the church where he had acted as pastor, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Over a thou-sand people, including political leaders and foreign dignitaries, crowded into the church for the ser-vice. Outside, almost one hundred thousand more paid tribute.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929 and died in 1968.

Author Search For more about Martin Luther King Jr., go to www.glencoe.com.

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LITERATURE PREVIEW READING PREVIEW

Connecting to the SelectionUnfair situations can be difficult to deal with, but Martin Luther King Jr. convinced many people that injustices can be remedied. He also argued that those who experience injustice have the responsibility to pre-vent themselves from feeling hatred and despair. As you read, think about the following questions:

• What is a situation in the United States today that you think is unjust and needs to be changed?

• What are your highest principles or ideals?

Building BackgroundKing based his theory of nonviolent resistance on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, and others. The movement was supported by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a group that promoted nonviolent direct action. James Lawson, a young African American pacifist who had learned about Gandhi’s nonviolent strategies during travels in India, also helped by teaching workshops on nonviolence. In the end, nonviolence succeeded in the civil rights movement because of the courage of those who practiced it.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestAs you read, think about the different groups of people that King sought to convince as he embarked upon his campaign of nonviolent resistance.

Literary Element StructureStructure is the order or pattern a writer uses to pres-ent ideas in a logical way. By focusing his argument on three main points and giving evidence for each point before moving to the next, King is able to express his position clearly and methodically. As you read, carefully examine the reasons and evidence he gives as he seeks to persuade his audience that nonviolence is the best way to fight injustice.

• See Literary Terms Handbook, p. R17.

Interactive Literary Elements Handbook To review or learn more about the literary elements, go to www.glencoe.com.

Reading Strategy ParaphrasingWhen you state in your own words the main point of a piece of writing, you are paraphrasing. Paraphrasing helps you better remember and understand what you read. As you read this selection, pause from time to time and ask yourself questions to help you para-phrase King’s arguments about nonviolence.

Reading Tip: Paraphrasing Use a chart to para-phrase important details.

Vocabulary

ordeal (�or del�) n. a circumstance or experience that is painful or difficult; a trial; p. 1149 The storm was a physical ordeal for people on the ship.

stature (stach� ər) n. a level attained; standing; status; p. 1150 Mayor Evans is a person of great stature in our community.

imperative (im per� ə tiv) n. something abso-lutely necessary; an essential; p. 1151 When you write a business letter, correct spelling is an imperative.

repudiate (ri pu� de at ) v. to refuse to accept as valid; to reject; to renounce; p. 1151 The mayor gave a speech to repudiate reports of a scandal.

Vocabulary Tip: Analogies An analogy is a compari-son made between two things to show how they relate to each other.

ParaphrasePeople who suffer from injustice believe there is no way out. They get so used to living with injustice that they come to accept it.

Detail“ . . . the oppressed resign themselves to their doom. They tacitly adjust themselves to oppression, and thereby become conditioned to it.”

In studying this selection, you will focus on the following:

• understanding the historical period• analyzing structure

• paraphrasing

OBJECTIVES

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. . . Oppressed people deal with their oppression in three characteristic ways. One way is acquiescence:1 the oppressed resign themselves to their doom. They tacitly2 adjust themselves to oppression, and thereby become conditioned to it. In every movement toward freedom some of the oppressed prefer to remain oppressed. Almost 2,800 years ago Moses set out to lead the children of Israel from the slavery of Egypt3 to the freedom of the promised land.4 He soon discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They become accustomed to being slaves. They would rather bear those ills they have, as Shakespeare pointed out, than flee to others

Martin Luther King Jr.

1. Acquiescence means “the act of consenting or agreeing silently, without objections.”

2. Tacitly means “silently.”3. [Moses . . . of Egypt] As Moses led the Israelites across the

wilderness, supplies brought from Egypt ran out. The Bible (Exodus 16:2–3) tells how the people complained and began to regret having left Egypt where, although they were in bondage, they had sufficient food.

4. In the Bible, the Promised Land is the land of Canaan, promised by God to Abraham’s descendants.

5. [Shakespeare . . . know not of] In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the title character says (act 3, scene 1, lines 80–81): “. . . And makes us rather bear those ills we have, / Than fly to others that we know not of.”

ordeal (or del) n. a circumstance or experience that is painful or difficult; a trial

VocabularyStructure What do the opening sentences suggest about the way King intends to organize his ideas?

Literary Element

Paraphrasing Rephrase this passage in your own words.

Reading Strategy

that they know not of.5 They prefer the “fleshpots of Egypt” to the ordeals of emancipation.

There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up. A few years ago in the slum areas of Atlanta, a Negro guitarist used to sing almost daily: “Ben down so long that down don’t bother me.” This is the type of negative freedom and resignation that often engulfs the life of the oppressed.

But this is not the way out. To accept pas-sively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the con-science of the oppressor to slumber. Religion

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reminds every man that he is his brother’s keeper. To accept injustice or segregation pas-sively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. It is a way of allowing his con-science to fall asleep. At this moment the oppressed fails to be his brother’s keeper. So acquiescence—while often the easier way—is not the moral way. It is the way of the coward. The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppres-sor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor’s arrogance and contempt. Acqui-escence is interpreted as proof of the Negro’s inferiority. The Negro cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or the peoples of the world if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety.

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical vio-lence and corroding hatred. Violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have fre-quently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. A voice echoes through time saying to every potential Peter, “Put up your sword.”6 History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow this command.

If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for freedom, future gen-erations will be the recipients of a desolate night

of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence is not the way.

The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way of nonviolent resistance. Like the synthesis in Hegelian philos-ophy, the principle of nonvio-lent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites—acquiescence and violence—while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the nonre-sistance of the former and the violent resistance of the lat-ter. With nonviolent resis-tance, no individual or group need submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong.

It seems to me that this is the method that must guide the actions of the Negro in the pres-ent crisis in race relations. Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system. The Negro must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as a citizen, but he must not use inferior methods to gain it. He must never come to terms with falsehood, malice, hate, or destruction.

Paraphrasing How does nonviolent resistance reconcile those who abhor injustice and those who abhor violence?

Reading Strategy

Structure Notice that King first addresses acquiescence to oppression, then violent resistance, and finally nonviolent resistance. Why does he choose this order for his argument?

Literary Element

6. [Peter . . . sword] In the New Testament (Matthew 26:52, John 18:11), when the soldiers and priests come to arrest Jesus, the disciple Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Jesus condemns this use of violence.

stature (stach ər) n. a level attained; standing; status

Vocabulary

Visual Vocabulary German philosopher Georg Hegel (ha gəl) (1770–1831) proposed the theory that for each idea or concept (thesis) there is an opposite (antithesis), and that these two eventually merge to form a new, unified idea or concept (synthesis).

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Nonviolent resistance makes it possible for the Negro to remain in the South and struggle for his rights. The Negro’s problem will not be solved by running away. He cannot listen to the glib8 suggestion of those who would urge him to migrate en masse9 to other sections of the country. By grasping his great opportunity in the South he can make a lasting contribution to the moral strength of the nation and set a sublime example of courage for generations yet unborn.

By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality. The problem is not a purely racial one, with Negroes set against whites. In the end, it is not a struggle between people at all, but a ten-sion between justice and injustice. Nonviolent resistance is not aimed against oppressors but against oppression. Under its banner con-sciences, not racial groups, are enlisted.

If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integra-tion, he must organize himself into a militant and nonviolent mass movement. All three ele-ments are indispensable. The movement for

equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers to be overcome require both. Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.

A mass movement of a militant quality that is not at the same time committed to nonviolence tends to generate conflict, which in turn breeds anarchy. The support of the participants and the sympathy of the uncommitted are both inhibited by the threat that bloodshed will engulf the com-munity. This reaction in turn encourages the opposition to threaten and resort to force. When, however, the mass movement repudiates violence while moving resolutely toward its goal, its oppo-nents are revealed as the instigators and practi-tioners of violence if it occurs. Then public support is magnetically attracted to the advo-cates of nonviolence, while those who employ violence are literally disarmed by overwhelming sentiment against their stand.

An Era of Protest Why should African Americans remain in the South and struggle for their rights, according to King?

Big Idea

Structure According to King, how does their opponents’ violence tend to ultimately advance the goals of nonviolent resisters?

Literary Element

imperative (im per ə tiv) n. something absolutely nec-essary; an essentialrepudiate (ri pu de at´) v. to refuse to accept as valid; to reject; to renounce

Vocabulary

8. Glib means “offhanded” or “showing little thought or concern.”

9. The French expression en masse (an mas) means “in a group” or “all together.”

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What sudden insights did you gain as you read

King’s arguments? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)What does King think about violence as a means

for bringing about social change? (b)What does his opinion about violence tell you about King himself?

3. (a)What is nonviolent resistance? (b)How is it simi-lar to and different from both passive acceptance and violent resistance?

4. (a)Against whom or what should nonviolence be aimed, according to King? (b)Why do you suppose King took pains to make this target clear?

Analyze and Evaluate5. (a)What reasons and evidence does King give to

support his claim that “to accept passively an unjust

system is to cooperate with that system”? (b)Do you see any flaws with this claim? Explain why or why not.

6. (a)Booker T. Washington said, “I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.” How might King respond to this quote? (b)Do you agree with the quote? Why or why not?

7. This selection was first published in 1958. Do you think King’s ideas are still relevant today? Explain.

Connect8. Big Idea An Era of Protest (a)Considering

what you know about the era leading up to the civil rights movement, what would you say was distinc-tive about King’s method of protesting injustice? (b)What qualities would a protestor need to pos-sess in order to follow King’s directions?


Literary Element StructureThe structure of persuasive or expository writing may vary. Listing detailed information, using cause and effect, or describing a problem and its solution are some ways of presenting a topic. In this selection, King uses a list to present his points.

1. (a)What does King state in the first sentence? (b)Explain how this sentence helps set up the structure of the entire piece.

2. Would switching the order of King’s three points affect his argument? Why or why not?

Review: AllusionAs you learned in Unit 1, an allusion is a reference in a work of literature to a character, a place, or a situation from history, music, art, or another work of literature.

Partner Activity With a partner, go back and identify three allusions in the selection. Together, decide which allusion most effectively illustrates King’s points, sup-porting your responses with evidence from the selec-tion. Share your thoughts with the class.

Web Activities For eFlashcards, Selection Quick Checks, and other Web activities, go to www.glencoe.com.

Reading Strategy ParaphrasingWhen you paraphrase, you put details or ideas from a selection into your own words. Paraphrasing can help you better understand difficult passages.

1. What is the main point of this selection?

2. Which particular passages or details did paraphras-ing help you to better understand? Explain.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Analogies Choose the word that best completes each analogy below.

1. stature : standing :: background :

a. heritage b. education c. behavior

2. ordeal : survival :: epidemic :

a. disease b. celebration c. health

LITERARY ANALYSIS READING AND VOCABULARY

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BEFORE YOU READ

Author Search For more about Author Name, go to www.literature.glencoe.com.

MEET ALICE WALKER

“Writing permits me to be more than I am,” declares Alice Walker. Born into a poor, rural life in Eatonton,

Georgia, Walker had experienced being made to feel less than she was. She knew how it felt to bear the legacy of slavery, racism, and segregation. Her parents and grandparents worked on what had been a plantation, she recalled decades later, toiling “all their lives for barely enough food and shelter to sustain them. They were sharecroppers—landless peasants—the product of whose labor was routinely stolen from them.”

“We will be ourselves and free, or die in the attempt. Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing.”

—Alice Walker

Early Struggles in the South Awarded a schol-arship, Walker entered Spelman College in 1961, at the peak of the Civil Rights movement. There she first met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She con-tinued her education at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and after graduation she worked in the New York City Welfare Department. Returning to the South in 1966, Walker became a Head Start worker in Mississippi and helped organize voter registration in Georgia. Reflecting on the Civil Rights movement, she called it “a time of intense friendships, passions, and loves among the people who came south (or lived there), and who risked everything to change [the] system.” She remem-bers the movement’s many triumphs, but she also recalls that the cost “still bruises the heart.” In 1967 Walker married a fellow Civil Rights worker. She had to do so in the North, however, for she married a white man and interracial marriage was still illegal in the South.

The Rights of Women Interestingly, the Civil Rights leader whom Walker calls her “spiritual ancestor” is not Dr. King or another figure from the Civil Rights movement, but Sojourner Truth—a former slave who became an abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Walker says it gives her joy to realize she shares her name with Sojourner Truth. Walker and sojourner can have roughly the same meaning, and Alice means “truth” in ancient Greek. Aside from their names, their common bond, Walker says, is a concern not only for the rights of African Americans but also for the rights of women. In fact, much of Walker’s writing can be called wom-anist, a term Walker coined to describe work appre-ciating women’s culture, characters, and feelings.

Since the publication of her novel The Color Purple, which won both a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award and was adapted into a highly success-ful film, Walker has been a celebrity. Beside novels, she has written short stories, poems, essays, and children’s books. She also has won acclaim for her nonfiction work, including Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism.

Alice Walker was born in 1944.

Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Author Search For more about Alice Walker, go to www.glencoe.com.

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Connecting to the SpeechImagine having to leave a place you love, a place where your family and friends have lived for generations. This was the lot of many poor African Americans who were forced from their land in the rural South in order to find enough work to lead decent lives. As you read Walker’s speech, think about the following questions:

• What gives the places you love their special quality?

• Where are your family’s roots, and how important are they to you?

Building BackgroundIn her speech, Walker gives an abbreviated history of African Americans since the late nineteenth century. She refers to the period after the Civil War called Reconstruction (1865–1877), a time when African Americans enjoyed new rights. Reconstruction ended when Southern whites regained control of state gov-ernment. In the climate of oppression that followed, millions of African Americans left the South. Walker then shifts her discussion to 1960, when a federal court ordered the University of Georgia to admit African American students. Her final reference is to the desegregation of a Mississippi restaurant. Beginning in 1960, protestors held sit-in demonstrations in restau-rants, forcing them to comply with desegregation laws.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestAs you read Walker’s speech, try to understand the resentment that would naturally build up when a group of people are deprived of basic rights and the means of a decent livelihood over many generations.

Literary Element AnecdoteAn anecdote is a brief account of an interesting event. As you read, note any anecdotes Walker tells and con-sider why she uses them.


Reading Strategy Activating Prior Knowledge

As a reader, your prior knowledge and personal expe-riences help you understand a text. While reading Walker’s speech, draw upon what you already know to understand the topics she discusses.

Reading Tip: Applying What You Know Use a chart like the one below to help you make connections between Walker’s ideas and your prior knowledge.

Vocabulary

ancestral (an ses� trəl) adj. of or relating to those from whom one is descended; p. 1155 My family’s ancestral property was sold long ago.

colossal (kə los� əl) adj. extraordinary in size or degree; enormous; p. 1156 A colossal wave over-turned the ship.

continuity (kon� tə noo ə te) n. the state or quality of going on without interruption; p. 1156 If the President dies in office, the Vice President immediately takes over to ensure continuity.

ephemeral (i fem� rəl) adj. lasting for a very brief time; short-lived; p. 1156 A rainbow is brilliant but ephemeral.

Vocabulary Tip: Antonyms When two words have the opposite meaning, we say they are antonyms. The words complex and uncomplicated, for exam-ple, are antonyms. Note that antonyms are always the same part of speech. Interactive Literary Elements

Handbook To review or learn more about the literary elements, go to www.glencoe.com.


What I KnowThe ancestors of black Southerners were taken from their land in Africa and enslaved in America.

from “Choice”Yet the history of my family, like that of all black South-erners, is a history of dispossession.


• analyzing contemporary nonfiction• identifying anecdotes

• activating prior knowledge

OBJECTIVES

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This address was made in 1972 at a Jackson, Mississippi, restaurant that refused to serve people of color until forced to do so by the Civil Rights movement a few years before.

My great-great-great-grandmother walked as a slave from Virginia to Eatonton, Georgia—which passes for the Walker ancestral home—with two babies on her hips. She lived to be a hundred and twenty-five years old and my own father knew her as a boy. (It is in memory of this walk that I choose to keep and to embrace my “maiden” name, Walker.)

There is a cemetery near our family church where she is buried; but because her marker was made of wood and rotted years ago, it is impos-sible to tell exactly where her body lies. In the same cemetery are most of my mother’s people, who have lived in Georgia for so long nobody even remembers when they came. And all of my great-aunts and uncles are there, and my grand-father and grandmother, and, very recently, my own father.

If it is true that land does not belong to anyone until they have buried a body in it, then the land of my birthplace belongs to me, dozens of times over. Yet the history of my family, like that of all black Southerners, is a history of dispossession. We loved the land and worked the land, but we never owned it; and even if we bought land, as my great-grandfather did after the Civil War, it was always in danger of being taken away, as his was, during the period following Reconstruction.

My father inherited nothing of material value from his father, and when I came of age in the early sixties I awoke to the bitter knowledge that in order just to continue to love the land of my birth, I was expected to leave it. For black people —including my parents—had learned a long time ago that to stay willingly in a beloved but brutal place is to risk losing the love and being forced to acknowledge only the brutality.

It is a part of the black Southern sensibility that we treasure memories; for such a long time, that is all of our homeland those of us who at one time or another were forced away from it have been allowed to have.

I watched my brothers, one by one, leave our home and leave the South. I watched my sisters do the same. This was not unusual; abandonment,

ancestral (an ses� trəl) adj. of or relating to those from whom one is descended

VocabularyAn Era of Protest How does this irony

contribute to the frustration and anger of African American Southerners?

Big Idea

Activating Prior Knowledge Based on what you know about U.S. geography, about how many states did Walker’s ancestor walk through?

Reading Strategy

Alice Walker

ALICE WALKER 1155

Stewart’s Farm, 1995. Jonathan Green. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in. Collection of the artist.

Collection of the artist

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except for memories, was the common thing, except for those who “could not do any better,” or those whose strength or stubbornness was so colossal they took the risk that others could not bear.

In 1960, my mother bought a television set, and each day after school I watched Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter as they struggled to integrate—fair-skinned as they were—the University of Georgia. And then, one day, there appeared the face of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. What a funny name, I thought. At the moment I first saw him, he was being handcuffed and shoved into a police truck. He had dared to claim his rights as a native son, and had been arrested. He displayed no fear, but seemed calm and serene, unaware of his own extraordinary courage. His whole body, like his conscience, was at peace.

At the moment I saw his resistance I knew I would never be able to live in this country with-out resisting everything that sought to disinherit me, and I would never be forced away from the land of my birth without a fight.

He was The One, The Hero, The One Fear-less Person for whom we had waited. I hadn’t even realized before that we had been waiting for Martin Luther King Jr. but we had. And I knew it for sure when my mother added his name to the list of people she prayed for every night.

I sometimes think that it was literally the prayers of people like my mother and father, who had bowed down in the struggle for such a long time, that kept Dr. King alive until five years ago. For years we went to bed praying for his life, and awoke with the question “Is the ‘Lord’ still here?”

The public acts of Dr. King you know. They are visible all around you. His voice you would recognize sooner than any other voice you have heard in this century—this in spite of the fact that certain municipal libraries, like the one in downtown Jackson, do not carry recordings of his

speeches, and the librarians chuckle cruelly when asked why they do not.

You know, if you have read his books, that his is a complex and revolutionary philosophy that few people are capable of understanding fully or have the patience to embody in themselves. Which is our weakness, which is our loss.

And if you know anything about good Baptist preaching, you can imagine what you missed if you never had a chance to hear Martin Luther King Jr. preach at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

You know of the prizes and awards that he tended to think very little of. And you know of his concern for the disinherited: the American Indian, the Mexican American, and the poor American white—for whom he cared much.

You know that this very room, in this very restaurant, was closed to people of color not more than five years ago. And that we eat here together tonight largely through his efforts and his blood. We accept the common pleasures of life, assuredly, in his name.

But add to all of these things the one thing that seems to me second to none in importance: He gave us back our heritage. He gave us back our homeland; the bones and dust of our ances-tors, who may now sleep within our caring and our hearing. He gave us the blueness of the Georgia sky in autumn as in summer; the colors of the Southern winter as well as glimpses of the green of vacation-time spring. Those of our rela-tives we used to invite for a visit we now can ask to stay. . . . He gave us full-time use of our own woods, and restored our memories to those of us who were forced to run away, as realities we might each day enjoy and leave for our children.

He gave us continuity of place, without which community is ephemeral. He gave us home.

colossal (kə los əl) adj. extraordinary in size or degree; enormouscontinuity (kon tə noo ə te) n. the state or quality of going on without interruptionephemeral (i fem rəl) adj. lasting for a very brief time; short-lived

VocabularyAnecdote How does this observation

add to the interest of Walker’s anecdote?

Literary Element

Activating Prior Knowledge What “public acts” or other facts do you know about Dr. King, and how does that knowledge help you understand this speech better?

Reading Strategy

An Era of Protest How might a person’s concern for the disinherited help make that person a hero during this period?

Big Idea


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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What ideas in this speech will you remember? Why?

Recall and Interpret2. (a)Why did the author choose “to keep and to

embrace” the name Walker? (b)In what ways is this name more than just a name to her?

3. (a)What circumstances kept Walker’s family from owning land? (b)How did the circumstances affect her family history?

4. (a)According to Walker, what was the most impor-tant thing Dr. King did for African Americans? (b)From her description of this contribution, what can you infer about Walker and what she values?

Analyze and Evaluate5. (a)What is the connection between Walker’s story

about her brothers and sisters leaving the land and what she calls Dr. King’s great achievement? (b)If you had been in the audience the day Walker delivered this speech, how do you think this argu-ment would have affected you?

6. (a)How does Walker describe Dr. King to make him seem more than a human being? (b)In your opin-ion, does she prove that he lived up to this super-human introduction? Explain.

Connect7. Big Idea An Era of Protest On the basis of this

speech, how important would you say individual leadership was to the Civil Rights movement? Explain.


Literary Element AnecdoteTypically, writers use an anecdote to entertain, to explain an idea, or to reveal the personality of a char-acter. In this speech, Walker tells an anecdote about seeing Dr. King for the first time.

1. What does this anecdote tell you about Walker as a child?

2. What does it tell you about why Dr. King became a hero to African Americans?

Writing About LiteratureAnalyze Genre Elements Many speeches reference or celebrate the lives of famous men and women. Compose a speech about a person who has influenced your life. Identify your audience. Then focus on the most important aspects of your subject and grab your listen-ers’ attention with one or two interesting anecdotes.



Reading Strategy Activating Prior Knowledge

A reader typically brings two types of knowledge to a piece of writing: hard facts and personal experiences.

1. Identify a passage from Walker’s speech that inter-ests you. What factual or personal knowledge can you bring to it?

2. Walker’s anecdote begins with the purchase of a television set in 1960. List one factual and one per-sonal piece of information that helped you under-stand this part of the anecdote.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Antonyms Identify the antonym for each vocabulary word.

1. ancestral a. modern b. intelligent

2. colossal a. minuscule b. statuary

3. continuity a. lawlessness b. impermanence

4. ephemeral a. dull b. permanent

ALICE WALKER 1157

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Vocabulary Workshop

“He displayed no fear, but seemed calm and serene, unaware of his own extraor-dinary courage. His whole body, like his conscience, was at peace.”

—Alice Walker, from “Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

Connecting to Literature This passage describes Martin Luther King Jr. when Alice Walker first saw him. It leaves no doubt that she admires Dr. King. The words and phrases she has chosen—calm, serene, “extraordinary courage”—all help her sing his praises. “Loaded words” such as these can make speech and writing powerful and persuasive. We encounter them at political rallies, on TV commer-cials, in the editorial pages of our newspapers, and in our own everyday conversa-tion. Loaded words are powerful weapons. It is important to know how to use them responsibly.

There are different kinds of loaded words.

• Language that expresses an author’s prejudice demonstrates bias. Try substituting bold for reckless in the statement below. Note how bold produces a positive bias, while reckless suggests disapproval.One particularly reckless young protestor scaled the White House fence.

• Exaggerated language used to make a point is referred to as hyperbole.All the police dogs in the world could not have stopped this demonstration.

• Language that may distort the truth in order to influence the public is known as propaganda.Communists and other anti-American elements infiltrated the Civil Rights Movement in order to betray our nation’s values.

Denotation and Connotation

ExerciseFrom the loaded words or phrases that follow the paragraph below, select those that best support the author’s opposition to a war.

This was no one’s idea of a just war. It was a war conceived by 1. politicians, who watched from their 2. as 3. of our finest young men marched to their deaths. It was a conflict that finally revealed the rulers of the “free world” to be little more than 4. .

1. a. brilliant b. cynical c. elected

2. a. workplaces b. homes c. ivory towers

3. a. a generation b. many c. several

4. a. war criminals b. ordinary people c. heroes

º Vocabulary Terms

Loaded words express strong opinions or emo-tions. Some reveal bias, or prejudice. Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration to make a point. Propaganda is language that may distort the truth to be persuasive.

º Test-Taking Tip

Ask yourself, “Why did the writer write this? What is his or her point of view?” Once you have established the author’s purpose for writing, look for words or phrases that support this stance.

º Reading Handbook

For more about loaded words, see Reading Handbook, p. R20.

Recognizing Loaded Words

1158 UNIT 7 INTO THE TWENTY-F IRST CENTURY

eFlashcards For eFlashcards and other vocabulary activities, go to www.glencoe.com.

OBJECT IVES

• Identify intended effects of persuasive vocabulary.

• Recognize influence of propaganda.

• Use words with precise connotations.

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Bettmann/CORBIS

BEFORE YOU READ

from WorkingRoberto Acuna, Farm Worker

MEET STUDS TERKEL

Would you report on the March on Washington and leave out Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”

speech? That’s what Studs Terkel did. Rather than focus on the typical center of attention, he depicted a group of people from Chicago as they rode to and from the famous 1963 civil rights gath-ering. While other reporters and newscasters del-uged the public with stories of heroes and big events, Terkel quietly explored the motivations, choices, dilemmas, and dreams of everyday people.

Born Louis Terkel in New York, Terkel spent most of his life in Chicago. He borrowed the nickname “Studs” from a fictional Chicago character, Studs Lonigan. Although he received a law degree, he took a job in radio. He moved from acting on radio soap operas to writing radio shows to eventu-ally having his own show.

Interviews and Oral Histories As a talk show host on Chicago radio, Terkel brought a natural talent to the job of interviewing. His skill, which

grew with practice, translated well to the work for which he has become most famous, collecting oral histories. His first book of oral his-tories, Division Street: America, was published in 1967. This collection of more than seventy interviews with Chicago residents focuses on the topic of the gap between rich and poor. As one critic noted, the experi-ence of reading the book is a lot like “eavesdrop-ping or reading people’s diaries.”

What Terkel did in Division Street was the same thing he would do again and again: interview “real people” about real-life events and lay the bits and pieces of their lives out before the American read-ing public. He reflected, through interviews, on the American dream. And, perhaps most famously of all, he collected a world of insight into how Americans felt about their working lives.

A Voice of Protest Terkel’s work is both history and commentary. Terkel spoke out early in the strug-gle against Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and economic inequality. His work also expresses great empathy for the “working man” and the working class.

“I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people. No matter how bewildering the times, . . . those we call ordinary are aware of a sense of personal worth—or more often a lack of it—in the work they do.”

—Studs Terkel

With his sympathetic ear for the voices of real peo-ple, Studs Terkel influenced a whole generation of radio talk show hosts and had a powerful effect on the interviewing style on popular public radio shows. In 1985, he won the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for The Good War: An Oral History of World War II. Terkel continues to work, interview, and listen.

Studs Terkel was born in 1912.

Author Search For more about Studs Terkel, go to www.glencoe.com.

STUDS TERKEL 1159

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Reading Strategy Analyzing Cause-and-Effect Relationships

When you analyze cause-and-effect relationships, you look for the causes or reasons why something happened and relate them to the effects or results. A single cause can have any number of effects. Sometimes, causes and effects are linked together in a chain: one effect causes the next, like a falling domino knocking over the next domino in a line.

Reading Tip: Taking Notes Use a chart to record cause-and-effect relationships as you read.

Vocabulary

civic (siv�ik) adj. related to citizenship; p. 1162 Voting is a civic responsibility.

degrading (di �ra�din�) adj. tending to drag down in character or social status; p. 1163 Having to ride in the back of the bus was degrading.

compensation (kom´pən sa�shən) n. payment; p. 1166 The compensation for babysitting depends on how long you work.

solidarity (sol´ə dar�ə te) n. unity of a group that produces a sense of community; p. 1166 Their sense of solidarity helped them work together for voting rights.

stipulate (stip�yə lat ) v. to require or demand as part of an agreement; p. 1167 The negotiators stipulate four requirements for a successful treaty.

Connecting to the InterviewAlmost everyone has to work, but not everyone feels good about his or her job. What factors can make a job satisfying or unbearable? As you read this account of life as a farm worker during the 1960s, think about the following questions:

• What do people hope to find in a job?

• What working conditions do you think should be guaranteed to all workers?

Building BackgroundThis interview comes from a collection called Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. It comprises several dozen interviews with people from all walks of life. Because Terkel regarded his interactions with workers as “conversations,” most selections, like the one you will read, do not have a traditional interview format. Rather they consist of excerpts and fragments. Changes in type (from roman, or “regular,” type to italics) show where one train of thought or part of the conversation leaves off and another begins.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestAs you read this excerpt from Working, focus on the aspects of life that Roberto Acuna found most difficult to accept and those that he found were most in need of change.

Literary Element Oral HistoryOral History is history that passes by word of mouth and begins with those who actually lived it. As you read the interview with Roberto Acuna, think about how the thoughts of an ordinary farm worker help you understand the events, as well as the hopes and frus-trations, of farm workers in the 1960s.



Effectswollen, callused handsforeman puts pressure

on worker

Causepicking lettucefalling behind at

work



• connecting to historical events• analyzing oral history

• analyzing cause-and-effect relationships

OBJECTIVES

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I walked out of the fields two years ago. I saw the need to change the California feudal system,1 to change the lives of farm workers, to make these huge corporations feel they’re not above anybody. I am thirty-four years old and I try to organize for the United Farm Workers of America.

His hands are calloused and each of his thumbnails is singularly2 cut. “If you’re picking lettuce, the thumb-nails fall off ’cause they’re banged on the box. Your hands get swollen. You can’t slow down because the foreman3 sees you’re so many boxes behind and you’d better get on. But people would help each other. If you’re feeling bad that day, somebody who’s feeling pretty good would help. Any people that are

suffering have to stick together, whether they like it or not, whether they be black, brown, or pink.”

According to Mom, I was born on a cotton sack out in the fields, ’cause she had no money to go to the hospital. When I was a child, we used to migrate from California to Arizona and back and forth. The things I saw shaped my life. I remember when we used to go out and pick carrots and onions, the whole family. We tried to scratch a livin’ out of the ground. I saw my par-ents cry out in despair, even though we had the whole family working. At the time, they were paying sixty-two and a half cents an hour. The average income must have been fifteen hundred dollars, maybe two thousand.4

STUDS TERKEL 1161

1. A California feudal system is a bitter metaphor comparing the use of serfs on feudal manors in the Middle Ages to the use of farm workers by growers in California.

2. Singularly means “oddly.”3. A foreman is any leader of a work crew.

Oral History In what ways is the speaker an ordinary person or “common man”?

Literary Element

4. Acuna adds: “Today, because of our struggles, the pay is up to two dollars an hour. Yet we know that is not enough.”

ghndfgfdgndc

Leonard Nadel/National Museum of American History/Handout/Reuters/CORBIS

1161-1167 U7P1SEL-845481.indd 1161 4/20/06 2:50:25 PM

This was supplemented5 by child labor. During those years, the growers used to have a Pick-Your-Harvest Week. They would get all the migrant kids out of school and have ’em out there pickin’ the crops at peak harvest time. A child was off that week and when he went back to school, he got a little gold star. They would make it seem like something civic to do.

We’d pick everything: lettuce, carrots, onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes—all the salads you could make out of vegetables, we picked ’em. Citrus fruits, watermelons—you name it. We’d be in Salinas about four months. From there we’d go down into the Imperial Valley. From there we’d go to picking citrus. It was like a cycle. We’d follow the seasons.

After my dad died, my mom would come home and she’d go into her tent and I would go into ours. We’d roughhouse and everything and then we’d go into the tent where Mom was sleeping and I’d see her crying. When I asked her why she was crying she never gave me an answer. All she said was things would get better. She retired a beaten old lady with a lot of dignity. That day she thought would be better never came for her.

“One time, my mom was in bad need of money, so she got a part-time evening job in a restaurant. I’d be help-ing her. All the growers would come in and they’d be laughing, making nasty remarks, and make passes at her. I used to go out there and kick ’em and my mom told me to leave ’em alone, she could handle ’em. But they would embarrass her and she would cry.

“My mom was a very proud woman. She brought us up without any help from nobody. She kept the family strong. They say that a family that prays together stays together. I say that a family that works together stays together—because of the suffering. My mom couldn’t speak English too good. Or much Spanish, for that matter. She wasn’t educated. But she knew some prayers and she used to make us say

them. That’s another thing: when I see the many things in this world and this country, I could tear the churches apart. I never saw a priest out in the fields trying to help people. Maybe in these later years they’re doing it. But it’s always the church taking from the people.

“We were once asked by the church to bring veg-etables to make it a successful bazaar. After we got the stuff there, the only people havin’ a good time were the rich people because they were the only ones that were buyin’ the stuff . . .”

I’d go barefoot to school. The bad thing was they used to laugh at us, the Anglo kids. They would laugh because we’d bring tortillas and frijo-les6 to lunch. They would have their nice little compact lunch boxes with cold milk in their thermos and they’d laugh at us because all we had was dried tortillas. Not only would they laugh at us, but the kids would pick fights. My older brother used to do most of the fighting for us and he’d come home with black eyes all the time.

What really hurt is when we had to go on wel-fare. Nobody knows the erosion of man’s dignity. They used to have a label of canned goods that said, “U.S. Commodities.7 Not to be sold or exchanged.” Nobody knows how proud it is to feel when you bought canned goods with your own money.

“I wanted to be accepted. It must have been in sixth grade. It was just before the Fourth of July. They were trying out students for this patriotic play. I wanted to do Abe Lincoln, so I learned the Gettysburg Address inside and out. I’d be out in the fields pickin’ the crops and I’d be memorizin’. I was the only one who didn’t have to read the part, ’cause I learned it. The part was given to a girl who was a grower’s daughter. She had to read it out of a book, but they said she had better diction.

An Era of Protest In addition to the work, what else strikes Roberto Acuna as unfair?

Big Idea

civic (siv ik) adj. related to citizenship

Vocabulary

Analyzing Cause-and-Effect Relationships What kept migrant workers on the move?

Reading Strategy


5. Supplemented means “added to.”

6. Tortillas are thin, flat, unleavened bread. Frijoles is the Spanish word for beans.

7. Commodities are goods.

Oral History How do both the mean-ing and the language of this comment reveal what type of person Acuna is?

Literary Element

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I was very disappointed. I quit about eighth grade.

“Any time anybody’d talk to me about politics, about civil rights, I would ignore it. It’s a very degrading thing because you can’t express yourself. They wanted us to speak English in the school classes. We’d put out a real effort. I would get into a lot of fights because I spoke Spanish and they couldn’t understand it. I was pun-ished. I was kept after school for not speaking English.”

We used to have our own tents on the truck. Most migrants would live in the tents that were already there in the fields, put up by the company. We got one for ourselves, secondhand, but it was ours. Anglos8 used to laugh at us. “Here comes the carnival,” they’d say. We couldn’t keep our clothes clean, we couldn’t keep nothing clean, because we’d go by the dirt roads and the dust. We’d stay outside the town.

I never did want to go to town because it was a very bad thing for me. We used to go to the small stores, even though we got clipped9 more. If we went to the other stores, they would laugh at us. They would always point at us with a finger. We’d go to town maybe every two weeks to get what we needed. Everybody would walk in a bunch. We were afraid. (Laughs.) We sang to keep our spirits up. We joked about our poverty. This one guy would say, “When I get to be rich, I’m gonna marry an Anglo woman, so I can be accepted into society.” The other guy would say, “When I get rich I’m gonna marry a Mexican woman, so I can go to that Anglo society of yours and see them hang you for marrying an Anglo.” Our world was around the fields.

I started picking crops when I was eight. I couldn’t do much, but every little bit counts. Every time I would get behind on my chores, I would get a carrot thrown at me by my parents. I would day-dream: If I were a millionaire, I would buy all these ranches and give them back to the people. I would picture my mom living in one area all the time and being admired by all the people in the com-munity. All of a sudden I’d be rudely awaken by a broken carrot in my back. That would bust your whole dream apart and you’d work for a while and come back to daydreaming.

We used to work early, about four o’clock in the morning. We’d pick the harvest until about six. Then we’d run home and get into our sup-posedly clean clothes and run all the way to school because we’d be late. By the time we got to school, we’d be all tuckered out.10 Around maybe eleven o’clock, we’d be dozing off. Our teachers would send notes to the house telling Mom that we were inattentive. The only thing I’d make fairly good grades on was spelling. I couldn’t do anything else. Many times we never did our homework, because we were out in the fields. The teachers couldn’t understand that. I would get whacked there also.

School would end maybe four o’clock. We’d rush home again, change clothes, go back to work until seven, seven thirty at night. That’s

Analyzing Cause-and-Effect Relationships What was one reason why Anglos made fun of migrant workers?

Reading Strategy

degrading (di ra´ din) adj. tending to drag down in character or social status

Vocabulary

8. Anglos refers to people who do not have a Hispanic or Latino heritage.

9. Here, clipped is an informal way of saying “cheated.”

10. Tuckered out means “exhausted.”

STUDS TERKEL 1163

Filipino migrant workers cut lettuce in a field of the Imperial Valley of California, 1939. Dorothea Lange.

Pet

er T

urnl

ey/C

OR

BIS

1161-1167 U7P1SEL-845481.indd 1163 4/17/06 4:12:32 PM

not counting the weekends. On Saturday and Sunday, we’d be there from four thirty in the morning until about seven thirty in the evening. This is where we made the money, those two days. We all worked.

I would carry boxes for my mom to pack the carrots in. I would pull the carrots out and she would sort them into different sizes. I would get water for her to drink. When you’re picking tomatoes, the boxes are heavy. They weigh about thirty pounds. They’re dropped very hard on the trucks so they have to be sturdy.

The hardest work would be thinning and hoe-ing with a short-handled hoe. The fields would be about a half a mile long. You would be bend-ing and stooping all day. Sometimes you would have hard ground and by the time you got home, your hands would be full of calluses. And you’d have a backache. Sometimes I wouldn’t have dinner or anything. I’d just go home and fall asleep and wake up just in time to go out to the fields again.

I remember when we just got into California from Arizona to pick up the carrot harvest. It was very cold and very windy out in the fields.

We just had a little old blanket for the four of us kids in the tent. We were freezin’ our tail off. So I stole two brand-new blankets that belonged to a grower. When we got under those blankets it was nice and comfortable. Somebody saw me. The next morning the grower told my mom he’d turn us in unless we gave him back his blankets—sterilized.11 So my mom and I and my kid brother went to the river and cut some wood and made a fire and boiled the water and she scrubbed the blankets. She hung them out to

dry, ironed them, and sent them back to the grower. We got a spanking for that.

I remember this labor camp that was run by the city. It was a POW12 camp for German soldiers. They put families in there and it would have barbed wire all around it. If you were out after ten o’clock at night, you couldn’t get back in until the next day at four in the morning. We didn’t know the rules. Nobody told us. We went to visit some relatives. We got back at about ten thirty and they wouldn’t let us in. So we slept in the pickup outside the gate. In the morning, they let us in, we had a fast breakfast and went back to work in the fields.13

The grower would keep the families apart, hop-ing they’d fight against each other. He’d have three or four camps and he’d have the people over here pitted against the people over there. For jobs. He’d give the best crops to the people he thought were the fastest workers. This way he kept us going harder and harder, competing.

When I was sixteen, I had my first taste as a foreman. Handling braceros,14 aliens, that came from Mexico to work. They’d bring these people

11. Here, sterilized means “free from germs.” 12. POW stands for prisoner of war. 13. Acuna adds: “Since we started organizing, this camp has

been destroyed. They started building housing on it.” 14. A bracero is a Mexican citizen who comes to the U.S.

temporarily to do agricultural labor.

An Era of Protest What reasons for protest are implied in these facts and other facts on this page?

Big Idea


Oral History What does this oral his-tory tell you that a history of U.S. agriculture might not tell?

Literary Element

A migrant Mexican field worker’s home on the edge of a frozen pea field in California’s Imperial Valley, 1937. Dorothea Lange.

Oral History Why would it be unusual to hear this point of view in a traditional history?

Literary Element

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to work over here and then send them back to Mexico after the season was over. My job was to make sure they did a good job and pushin’ ’em even harder. I was a company man, yes. My parents needed money and I wanted to make sure they were proud of me. A foreman is recognized. I was very naïve. Even though I was pushing the workers, I knew their problems. They didn’t know how to write, so I would write letters home for them. I would take ’em to town, buy their clothes, out-side of the company stores. They had paid me $1.10 an hour. The farm workers’ wage was raised to eighty-two and a half cents. But even the braceros were making more money than me, because they were working piecework.15 I asked for more money. The manager said, “If you don’t like it you can quit.” I quit and joined the Marine Corps.

“I joined the Marine Corps at seventeen. I was very mixed up. I wanted to become a first-class citizen. I wanted to be accepted and I was very proud of my uniform. My mom didn’t want to sign the papers, but she knew I had to better myself and maybe I’d get an education in the services.

“I did many jobs. I took a civil service exam and was very proud when I passed. Most of the others were college kids. There were only three Chicanos in the group of sixty. I got a job as a correctional officer in a state prison. I quit after eight months because I couldn’t take the misery I saw. They wanted me to use a rubber hose on some of the prisoners—mostly Chicanos and blacks. I couldn’t do it. They called me chicken-livered because I didn’t want to hit nobody. They constantly harassed me after that. I didn’t quit because I was afraid of them but because they were trying to make me into a mean man. I couldn’t see it. This was Soledad State Prison.”

I began to see how everything was so wrong. When growers can have an intricate watering system to irrigate their crops but they can’t have running water inside the houses of workers. Veterinarians tend to the needs of domestic ani-mals but they can’t have medical care for the workers. They can have land subsidies16 for the growers but they can’t have adequate unemploy-ment compensation for the workers. They treat him like a farm implement. In fact, they treat their implements better and their domestic ani-mals better. They have heat and insulated barns for the animals but the workers live in beat-up shacks with no heat at all.

Illness in the fields is 120 percent higher than the average rate for industry. It’s mostly back trouble, rheumatism and arthritis, because the damp weather and the cold. Stoop labor is very hard on a person. Tuberculosis is high. And now because of the pesticides, we have many respira-tory diseases.

The University of California at Davis has gov-ernment experiments with pesticides and chemi-cals. To get a bigger crop each year. They haven’t any regard as to what safety precautions are needed. In 1964 or ’65, an airplane was spraying these chemicals on the fields. Spraying rigs

15. Piecework is work paid by the amount done, rather than by the hour.

STUDS TERKEL 1165

16. Subsidies are grants of money from the government to companies or private individuals for projects that serve the public interest.

Analyzing Cause-and-Effect Relationships Why do you think Acuna joined the Marine Corps?

Reading Strategy

An Era of Protest What does Acuna view as wrong?

Big Idea

A woman cooking in a camp for migrant agricultural workers. Imperial Valley, California, February-March 1937. Dorothea Lange.©

CO

RB

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they’re called. Flying low, the wheels got tangled on the fence wire. The pilot got up, dusted himself off, and got a drink of water. He died of convulsions. The ambulance attendants got violently sick because of the pesticides he had on his person. A little girl was playing around a sprayer. She stuck her tongue on it. She died instantly.

These pesticides affect the farm worker through the lungs. He breathes it in. He gets no compensation. All they do is say he’s sick. They don’t investigate the cause.

There were times when I felt I couldn’t take it any more. It was 105 in the shade and I’d see endless rows of lettuce and I felt my back hurting . . . I felt the frustration of not being able to get out of the fields. I was getting ready to jump any foreman who looked at me cross-eyed. But until two years ago, my world was still very small.

I would read all these things in the papers about Cesar Chavez17 and I would denounce18 him because I still had that thing about becoming a first-class patri-otic citizen. In Mexicali they would pass out leaf-lets and I would throw ’em away. I never participated. The grape boycott19 didn’t affect me much because I was in lettuce. It wasn’t until Chavez came to Salinas, where I was working in the fields, that I saw what a beautiful man he was. I went to this rally,20 I still intended to stay with the company. But something—I don’t know—I was close to the workers. They couldn’t speak English and wanted me to be their spokes-man in favor of going on strike. I don’t know—I

just got caught up with it all, the beautiful feel-ing of solidarity.

You’d see the people on the picket lines at four in the morning, at the camp fires, heating up beans and coffee and tortillas. It gave me a sense of belonging. These were my own people and they wanted change. I knew this is what I was looking for. I just didn’t know it before.

My mom had always wanted me to better myself. I wanted to better myself because of her. Now when the strikes started, I told her I was going to join the union and the whole move-ment. I told her I was going to work without pay. She said she was proud of me. (His eyes glisten. A long, long pause.) See, I told her I wanted to be with my people. If I were a company man,21 nobody would like me any more. I had to belong to somebody and this was it right here. She said,


17. Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) was an activist and community organizer who helped unionize farm workers.

18. Here, denounce means “criticize.” 19. The grape boycott was a successful national effort to

persuade citizens not to buy table grapes so that growers would give in to workers’ demands for better wages and conditions.

20. Here, a rally is a large meeting for the purpose of creating enthusiasm.

21. A company man is a worker who unquestioningly carries out the policies of an employer.

compensation (kom pən sa shən) n. payment

Vocabularysolidarity (sol ə dar ə te) n. unity of a group that pro-duces a sense of community

Vocabulary

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“I pushed you in your early years to try to better yourself and get a social position. But I see that’s not the answer. I know I’ll be proud of you.”

All kinds of people are farm workers, not just Chicanos. Filipinos started the strike. We have Puerto Ricans and Appalachians too, Arabs, some Japanese, some Chinese. At one time they used us against each other. But now they can’t and they’re scared, the growers. They can organize conglomerates.22 Yet when we try organization to better our lives, they are afraid. Suffering people never dreamed it could be different. Cesar Chavez tells them this and they grasp the idea—and this is what scares the growers.

Now the machines are coming in. It takes skill to operate them. But anybody can be taught. We feel migrant workers should be given the chance. They got one for grapes. They got one for lettuce. They have cotton machines that took jobs away from thousands of farm workers. The people wind up in the ghettos of the city, their culture, their families, their unity destroyed.

We’re trying to stipulate it in our contract that the company will not use any machinery without the consent of the farm workers. So we can make sure the people being replaced by the machines will know how to operate the machines.

Working in the fields is not in itself a degrad-ing job. It’s hard, but if you’re given regular hours, better pay, decent housing, unemployment and medical compensation, pension plans23—we have a very relaxed way of living. But the growers don’t recognize us as persons. That’s the worst thing, the way they treat you. Like we have no

brains. Now we see they have no brains. They have only a wallet in their head. The more you squeeze it, the more they cry out.

If we had proper compensation we wouldn’t have to be working seventeen hours a day and following the crops. We could stay in one area and it would give us roots. Being a migrant, it tears the family apart. You get in debt. You leave the area penniless. The children are the ones hurt the most. They go to school three months in one place and then on to another. No sooner do they make friends, they are uprooted again. Right here, your childhood is taken away. So when they grow up, they’re looking for this childhood they have lost.

If people could see—in the winter, ice on the fields. We’d be on our knees all day long. We’d build fires and warm up real fast and go back onto the ice. We’d be picking watermelons in 105 degrees all day long. When people have melons or cucumber or carrots or lettuce, they don’t know how they got on their table and the consequences to the people who picked it. If I had enough money, I would take busloads of people out to the fields and into the labor camps. Then they’d know how that fine salad got on their table.

stipulate (stip yə lat ) v. to require or demand as part of an agreement

Vocabulary

Oral History In what ways does this sound like the real voice of a real person?

Literary Element

STUDS TERKEL 1167

22. Conglomerates are large corporations made up of many different types of companies.

23. A pension is a fixed sum paid regularly to someone after retirement.

An unidentified Mexican shows his permit to cross the border and work in the fields of South Texas under the Brancero program. The federal government has now decided to keep the Mexican Brancero south of the border. August 1964.

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. Is Roberto Acuna like anyone you know, or is he

completely unlike anyone you’ve ever met? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)How old was Acuna when he became a farm

worker? (b)Why did he become a farm worker at such an early age?

3. (a)What did Acuna do as a foreman? (b)How did he feel about the work?

4. (a)How did Acuna react when people first talked to him about politics and civil rights? (b)Why didn’t Acuna get involved at first?

Analyze and Evaluate5. (a)In your opinion, what was the most difficult part

of Acuna’s life? Support your answer with details

from the story. (b)How does hearing about Acuna in his own voice help you understand the chal-lenges he faced?

6. (a)What was Acuna’s childhood like? (b)How well does the interview communicate the details and feelings of that time in his life? Use details from the selection in your answer.

7. Studs Terkel once said, “Poor people never lose hope. They can’t afford to.” How well does this opinion relate to the life of Roberto Acuna as recounted in Working?

Connect8. Big Idea An Era of Protest Do you regard this

selection more as a work of protest or as an ordi-nary narrative of a working life? Explain.


LITERARY ANALYSIS

Literary Element Oral HistoryThis oral history is brimming with details, large and small, told almost exclusively in the first person. The use of the pronouns I, we, me, my, and mine help create an intimate voice, a voice that may seem to be talking only to you, or from the pages of a diary.

1. How does the use of the first person help you hear Acuna’s voice and understand his history? Cite at least one example.

2. Name one or more other places in the narrative where you feel as if you are listening to a real per-son. Explain why.

Review: StructureStructure is the particular order or pattern a writer uses to present ideas. Fiction and nonfiction narratives are mainly chronological in structure. Other nonfiction works often use a combination of structures, including cause and effect, main idea and details, problem and solution, and other patterns.

1. In addition to cause-and-effect and chronological order, what other organizational methods do you find in this interview? Name one method and iden-tify the page and paragraph where you find it.

2. This selection is presented as a series of recollec-tions rather than one simple story told from begin-ning to end. What advantages and disadvantages do you see to this structure?

Partner Activity Choose one passage of three or more paragraphs and work with a classmate to analyze its structure.


Pattern or Order

chronological

Passage begins with . . .

One time, my mom . . .

My mom was a very . . .

We were once asked . . .

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Reading Strategy Analyzing Cause-and-Effect Relationships

Sometimes, events are related in a chain. In some ways, Roberto Acuna’s life is a chain of events rather than a series of unrelated causes and effects. Review the cause-and-effect chart you filled in as you read the selection and also reflect on the selection as a whole.

1. In the first paragraph, you learn that Acuna organizes for the United Farm Workers. Name at least three events in the chain of events that led to this work.

2. Write or sketch a cause-and-effect chain that shows how a person might make progress as a farm worker. Base your work on the text.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Context Clues Read the following sentences and then decide which of the choices is closest in meaning to the boldfaced word.

1. Many consider voting a civic duty. a. related to joy b. related to citizenship2. The company president faced the degrading

prospect of going to prison. a. humiliating b. unfair3. The compensation for that job is too low. a. payment b. entry level4. All the marchers at the rally felt a sense of

solidarity. a. fear b. unity5. The workers stipulate higher pay as a term of

their contract. a. reject b. require

Academic Vocabulary

Here are two words from the vocabulary list on page R86. These words will help you think, write, and talk about the selection.

recover (ri kuv ər) v. to get back

transport (trans port) v. to carry or transfer from one place to another

Practice and Apply1. How does Acuna recover his pride?2. Why was Acuna’s mother not transported to a

hospital when she was in labor with her son?

READING AND VOCABULARY

STUDS TERKEL 1169


Writing About Literature

Explore Author’s Purpose What was Studs Terkel’s purpose in presenting this interview? Does his method of presenting a somewhat free-form oral history serve this purpose best? If so, why? Do you think another method might work better? Present your answer in a persuasive essay.

Begin by identifying and stating your opinion in a clear thesis statement. Then gather evidence from the essay that supports your point of view.

After you complete your draft, have a peer read it and suggest revisions. Then proofread and edit your work for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Literary CriticismThe review of Working in Business Week magazine pro-claimed that “the people we meet [in Working] are not digits in a poll but real people with real names who share their anecdotes, adventures, and aspirations with us.” Why might portraying working people in an oral his-tory be a better medium than a poll or survey? What advantages might a survey have over an oral history for presenting information on jobs in the United States? Write a paragraph describing the advantages and disad-vantages of using oral histories to describe people’s jobs.

Introduce the topic and present a thesis with your opinion.

Present supporting evidence from the selection. Relate all your evidence to your thesis.

End by summarizing your position and adding a clincher statement or other insight.

Body

Introduction ▲

➧

▲▲

➧START

Conclusion

F INISH

WRITING AND EXTENDING

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Grammar Workshop

Avoiding Run-On Sentences“They didn’t know how to write, so I would write letters home for them.”

—Studs Terkel, “Roberto Acuna, Farm Worker”

Connecting to Literature Connecting ideas are presented in a compound sentence—a sentence with two or more main clauses. Carelessness with com-pound sentences, however, can lead to run-on sentences, which are two or more complete sentences written as though they were one sentence.

Note the following run-on sentence problems and their solutions.

Problem 1 Two main clauses are separated by only a comma.

Everybody would walk in a bunch, we were afraid.

Problem 2 Two main clauses do not have punctuation between them.

I knew this was what I was looking for I just did not know it before.

Solution A Break the sentence into two short sentences.

Everybody would walk in a bunch. We were afraid.

I knew this was what I was looking for. I just did not know it before.

Solution B Separate the clauses with a semicolon.

Everybody would walk in a bunch; we were afraid.

I knew this was what I was looking for; I just did not know it before.

Solution C Add a coordinating conjunction after the comma.

Everybody would walk in a bunch, for we were afraid.

I knew this was what I was looking for, but I just did not know it before.

Problem 3 Two main clauses do not have a comma before the coordinating conjunction.

He gets no compensation and all they do is say that he is sick.

Solution Add a comma before the coordinating conjunction.

He gets no compensation, and all they do is say that he is sick.

ExerciseRewrite these sentences, applying one of the solutions shown above.

1. When you are picking tomatoes, the boxes are heavy they weigh about thirty pounds.

2. I would pull the carrots out and she would sort them.

3. Sometimes you would have hard ground, by the time you got home, your hands would be full of calluses.

Sentence Structure

º Vocabulary Terms

A run-on sentence occurs when two or more com-plete sentences are writ-ten as through they were one sentence.

º Test-Taking Tip

When writing in a test-taking situation, return to any sentences that present more than one thought. Check carefully to be sure that each clause has proper punctuation and any necessary conjunctions.

º Language Handbook

For more about run-on sentences, see the Language Handbook, p. R51.

eWorkbooks To link to the Grammar and Language eWorkbook, go to www.glencoe.com.

OBJECTIVES

• Analyze and correct run-on sentences.

• Rearrange sentences to clarify meaning.

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Comparing Literature Across Time and Place

(t)Tim Page/CORBIS, (c)Francis Bailly/The Liaison Agency, (b)Tim Page/CORBIS

COMPARING LITERATURE 1171

Connecting to the Reading SelectionsWar has always been part of the human experience. What would your life be like if it were touched by war? The three writers compared here—Tim O’Brien, Tran Mong Tu, and Pin Yathay—explore how war affects individuals swept up in its complex events. In the following selections, they describe the horrors of war and its tragic consequences.

Tim O’Brien

Ambush ................................................................. short story .........................1174Haunted by a memory

Tran Mong Tu

The Gift in Wartime ..............................................poem .........................1177Tokens of love and loss

Pin Yathay

from Stay Alive, My Son ................................memoir .........................1178The cost of survival

COMPARING THE BIG IDEA An Era of ProtestPeople protest, or voice objections, in different ways. Some hold vigils; others march together, waving banners or placards. Still others create literature to change minds and stir hearts. Tim O’Brien, Tran Mong Tu, and Pin Yathay protest war by showing their readers its human cost.

COMPARING ThemesThe theme is the central message of a work of literature—an insight that readers can apply to their own lives. Each of these writers uses literary elements to convey a theme about war and its consequences.

COMPARING CulturesTim O’Brien, Tran Mong Tu, and Pin Yathay all belong to different cultures, each of which influ-ences the writer’s message significantly. Through their choice of words and details, the writers invite readers to enter their worlds, relive their experiences, and share their messages.

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BEFORE YOU READ

Ambush

MEET TIM O’BRIEN

Recognized as one of the major writers on the Vietnam War, Tim O’Brien has earned both critical and popular acclaim for his novels,

short stories, and nonfiction works. His writing often describes the experiences of ordinary soldiers in Vietnam and explores philosophical issues, such as the meaning of courage, duty, and honor.

As a political science major at Macalester College in Minnesota, O’Brien protested the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and supported a peace candidate, Senator Eugene McCarthy, for president. Then, shortly after his college graduation, O’Brien received a draft notice. For the rest of that summer, he struggled with his conscience trying to decide what to do. He considered escaping to Canada, where many other war protesters had fled. Finally, he decided to report for induction and enter the service, thereby honoring a family tradition.

“The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to perform miracles of the imagination.”

—Tim O’Brien

Soldier and Writer Beginning in 1968, O’Brien spent just over a year in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam, as an infantryman and as a clerk. He became a sergeant and earned several medals, including the Purple Heart, an award given to U.S. soldiers wounded or killed in battle. While stationed in Vietnam, O’Brien kept a journal, recording his observations and impressions. These journal entries later furnished material for his books. His first book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973), is a memoir of his tour of duty in Vietnam.

Writer of War Stories In 1978, O’Brien wrote a novel called Going After Cacciato (ka cha to), about a soldier who simply decides to walk away from the Vietnam War one day. O’Brien won the National Book Award for this novel in 1979. He was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his short-story collection, The Things They Carried (1990).

O’Brien’s fiction has been compared to that of Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, and others who have written about war. Like those authors, he builds a picture of soldiers’ daily lives by compiling masses of sensory details. Unlike Crane and Hemingway, he intertwines fantasy with reality in his war stories.

O’Brien has said that he probably will continue to write about the Vietnam War because he believes that the emotions in war and those in ordinary life are almost identical. Moreover, his own passions as a person and a writer intersect in Vietnam, which he envisions as a spiritual arena where values, or “the issues of Vietnam,” stand in sharp relief: “courage, rectitude, enlightenment, holiness, trying to do the right thing in the world.”

O’Brien has said that for him the source of a story is often an image, “a picture of a human being doing something.” This image elicits feelings, memories, and questions that guide his work. His recent novels include In the Lake of the Woods (1994) and Tomcat in Love (1999). Each of these novels alludes to events that occurred in Vietnam.

Tim O’Brien was born in 1946.

Author Search For more about Tim O’Brien, go to www.glencoe.com.


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TIM O’BRIEN 1173


Connecting to the StoryIn “Ambush,” the narrator recalls a combat experience that he cannot put behind him. As you read the story, think about the following questions:

• What situations do people usually react to without thinking?

• Why do some experiences continue to haunt one’s memory?

Building BackgroundThe story takes place in Vietnam, near the village of My Khe (me ka), around 1968. From 1965 to 1973, U.S. troops fought alongside the South Vietnamese in their struggle against a communist movement from the North. Human losses in the war were heavy; it is estimated that more than two million Vietnamese and 57,000 Americans died. The Vietcong were guer-rilla forces who supported communist North Vietnam. They sometimes disguised themselves as innocent civilians before ambushing South Vietnamese and U.S. troops.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestDuring the Vietnam War, student protests were com-mon in the United States; protests were also frequent in South Vietnam, especially among Buddhists and other religious groups. As you read, consider how this story expresses a protest against the Vietnam War.

Literary Element MoodThe mood of a story or poem is the feeling or atmo-sphere that a writer creates for the reader. Writers develop a mood with carefully chosen words and details that vividly describe the setting and the events of the story. As you read the story, look for words and details that help to create the mood.


Reading Strategy Analyzing Concrete Details

Concrete details are vivid sensory details, or evocative words and phrases that appeal to one or more of the five senses. For example, to give the reader an experi-ence of fear, a writer might include concrete details such as a clenched jaw, a dry mouth, or sweaty palms in his or her description. As you read this story, notice the concrete details and ask yourself these questions:

• What do the details emphasize?

• What does this emphasis imply?

Reading Tip: Noting Details Use a chart to record concrete details in the story and what they imply.

Implications

The narrator’s hiding place seems safe and well-hidden.

Details

“the dense brush along the trail”

Vocabulary

grope (�rop) v. to feel about uncertainly with the hands; to search blindly; p. 1174 I groped in the dark while searching for my keys.

stooped (st¯ ¯oopt) adj. bent forward and down-ward; p. 1175 Stooped with fatigue, he looked as though he carried a heavy load on his shoulders.

ponder (pon� dər) v. to think about thoroughly and carefully; p. 1175 In combat, soldiers have no time to reflect and ponder; instead, they must react quickly without thinking.

gape (�ap) v. to stare with the mouth open, as in wonder or surprise; p. 1175 Stunned and shaken, the soldier gaped at his fallen comrade.

dwell (dwel) v. to think about at length; p. 1175 Even if one tries not to dwell on painful memories, they sometimes refuse to go away. Interactive Literary Elements

Handbook To review or learn more about the literary elements, go to www.glencoe.com.


• analyzing literary periods• determining mood

• analyzing concrete details

OBJECTIVES

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When she was nine, my daughter Kathleen asked if I had ever killed anyone. She knew about the war; she knew I’d been a soldier. “You keep writing these war stories,” she said, “so I guess you must’ve killed somebody.” It was a difficult moment, but I did what seemed right, which was to say, “Of course not,” and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while. Someday, I hope, she’ll ask again. But here I want to pretend she’s a grown-up. I want to tell her exactly what happened, or what I remember happening, and then I want to say to her that as a little girl she was absolutely right. This is why I keep writing war stories:

He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him—afraid of something—and as he passed me on the trail I threw a gre-nade that exploded at his feet and killed him.

Or to go back:Shortly after midnight we moved into the

ambush site outside My Khe. The whole platoon1 was there, spread out in the dense brush

along the trail, and for five hours nothing at all happened. We were working in two-man teams—one man on guard while the other slept, switch ing off every two hours—and I remember it was still dark when Kiowa shook me awake for the final watch. The night was foggy and hot. For the first few moments I felt lost, not sure about directions, groping for my helmet and weapon. I reached out and found three grenades and lined them up in front of me; the pins had already been straightened for quick throwing. And then for maybe half an hour I kneeled there and waited. Very gradually, in tiny slivers, dawn began to break through the fog, and from my position in the brush I could see ten or fifteen meters up the trail. The mosquitoes were fierce.

1. A platoon is a military unit, usually commanded by a lieutenant, that forms part of a company.

Analyzing Concrete Details Why does the author include this detail?

Reading Strategy

grope (rop) v. to feel about uncertainly with the hands; to search blindly

Vocabulary

Tim O’Brien

S11-221-01C-635423 U7 Th11Stencil David Reed


Indiana Rangers: The Army Guard in Vietnam, 1984. Mort Künstler. Oil on canvas, 24 x 32 in. Collection National Guard Bureau, Pentagon, Washington, DC.

Collection National Guard Bureau, Pentagon, Washington, DC. From the original painting by Mort Künstler. ©1984 Mort Künstler, Inc.

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TIM O’BRIEN 1175

I remember slapping at them, wondering if I should wake up Kiowa and ask for some repel-lent, then thinking it was a bad idea, then look-ing up and seeing the young man come out of the fog. He wore black clothing and rubber san-dals and a gray ammunition belt. His shoulders were slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side as if listening for something. He seemed at ease. He carried his weapon in one hand, muzzle down, moving without any hurry up the center of the trail. There was no sound at all—none that I can remember. In a way, it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was hap-pening in my stomach. I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away—just evaporate—and I leaned back and felt my mind go empty and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. The brush was thick and I had to lob it high, not aiming, and I remember the grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth. The grenade bounced once and rolled across the trail. I did not hear it, but there must’ve been a sound, because the young man dropped his weapon and began to run, just two or three quick steps, then he hesitated, swiveling

to his right, and he glanced down at the grenade and tried to cover his head but never did. It occurred to me then that he was about to die. I wanted to warn him. The grenade made a pop-ping noise—not soft but not loud either—not what I’d expected—and there was a puff of dust and smoke—a small white puff—and the young man seemed to jerk upward as if pulled by invis-ible wires. He fell on his back. His rubber sandals had been blown off. There was no wind. He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole.

It was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will always be that way.

Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would’ve died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop star-ing and ask myself what the dead man would’ve done if things were reversed.

None of it mattered. The words seemed far too complicated. All I could do was gape at the fact of the young man’s body.

Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to dwell on it, but now and then, when I’m reading a news-paper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morn-ing fog. I’ll watch him walk toward me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and he’ll pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog.

Mood What feelings does this detail stir in you?

Literary Element

stooped (stoopt) adj. bent forward and downwardponder (pon dər) v. to think about thoroughly and carefully

Vocabulary

An Era of Protest What attitude toward war do these sentences reveal?

Big Idea

gape (ap) v. to stare with the mouth open, as in won-der or surprisedwell (dwel) v. to think about at length

Vocabulary

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. If you could speak with the narrator about his expe-

rience in Vietnam, what would you talk about?

Recall and Interpret2. (a)How does the narrator respond to his daughter’s

question? (b)In your opinion, why does he lie to her?

3. (a)What does the narrator do when he sees the young man? (b)What does this episode suggest about the role of a soldier in wartime?

4. (a)What does Kiowa tell the narrator, and how does the narrator feel about this advice? (b)What does this exchange suggest to you about the narrator’s values?

Analyze and Evaluate5. What do you think the story’s title signifies? Who,

besides the enemy soldier, might have been ambushed?

6. Do the narrator’s reactions to the killing of an enemy soldier seem convincing to you? Explain.

7. A frame story is a story that either surrounds or introduces a more important story. What effect does O’Brien achieve by using a frame story?

Connect8. Big Idea An Era of Protest In what ways does

this story protest the Vietnam War?


Literary Element MoodTo determine the mood of a literary work, look closely at scene-setting descriptions and the reactions of characters to events.

1. How would you describe the mood of “Ambush”? Give examples of details that contribute to the mood.

2. How does the mood of the story affect its overall impact on you? Explain.

Writing About LiteratureRespond to Conflict In the story, the narrator can-not resolve his internal conflict over killing an enemy soldier. Write a brief essay in which you state and sup-port your opinion about the narrator’s actions in com-bat. Support your opinion with details from the story.

Reading Strategy Analyzing Concrete Details

Review the concrete details that describe the young man’s appearance in the story.

1. What is the effect of reading about what the young man wore, carried, and did immediately before and after the narrator tosses the grenade?

2. How do the concrete details in the final paragraph enhance your understanding of the narrator?

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Context Clues Choose the vocab-ulary word from “Ambush” that fits the context of each sentence.

grope stooped ponder gape dwell

1. Sometimes it is better to forget unpleasant incidents than to � on them.

2. I had to � in the dark for my helmet.

3. Don’t just stand there and � —do something.

4. Her shoulders were bent, � with age.

5. I must � this question instead of giving it a quick answer.




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Tran Mong TuTranslated by Vann Phan

Building Background“War is a terrible thing,” says Tran Mong Tu (tran mong t ¯ ¯oo), who has had firsthand experience with the war in Vietnam. She was born in Hai Dong, North Vietnam. She and her family were forced to relocate to South Vietnam in 1954 during the French-Indochina War, in which communist forces battled and eventually drove out the French. Yet South Vietnam did not remain safe for long; a civil war soon raged between communist and non-communist sympathizers.

By the time the United States became heavily involved in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Tran worked for the Associated Press (a large U.S. news service) in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. When the United States pulled its troops out of South Vietnam in 1975, the Associated Press evacuated its Vietnamese employees because it feared communist reprisal against those working for U.S. interests. Tran’s immediate family and thousands of other Vietnamese also fled to the United States at that time.

Tran Mong Tu was born in 1943.

Author Search For more about Tran Mong Tu, go to www.glencoe.com.

I offer you roses Buried in your new grave I offer you my wedding gown To cover your tomb still green with grass

5 You give me medals Together with silver stars And the yellow pips1 on your badge Unused and still shining

I offer you my youth 10 The days we were still in love My youth died away When they told me the bad news

You give me the smell of blood From your war dress 15 Your blood and your enemy’s So that I may be moved

I offer you clouds That linger on my eyes on summer days I offer you cold winters 20 Amid my springtime of life

You give me your lips with no smile You give me your arms without tenderness You give me your eyes with no sight And your motionless body

25 Seriously, I apologize to you I promise to meet you in our next life I will hold this shrapnel2 as a token By which we will recognize each other

Much of the power of this poem comes from the writer’s use of contrasting images. In two or three paragraphs, discuss these contrasting images and comment on their overall impact.

Quickwrite

TRAN MONG TU 1177

BEFORE YOU READ

1. Pips are military badges of rank worn on the shoulder.2. Shrapnel are fragments scattered from an exploding shell

or bomb.

Francis Bailly/The Liaison Agency

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Building BackgroundPin Yathay (pin ya t ) was born in the village of Oudong, just north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital and largest city. An excellent high school student, he won the Cambodian national prize for mathematics and earned a scholarship to study abroad in Montreal, Canada. There he learned French and studied engineering. After completing his studies, he returned to his homeland and started a family.

When the Khmer Rouge, a communist political organi-zation, seized power in Cambodia in 1975, Pin Yathay knew he was in danger because of his position as an employee of the state. As the situation worsened, he

and his family joined the refugees who clogged the roads, seeking safety away from the cities. Eventually, most of Pin Yathay’s family died of malnutrition, disease, or murder. The Khmer Rouge, which controlled the government until 1979, executed an estimated one to three million citizens—anyone it felt was a threat. Pin Yathay survived this nightmare and lived to tell audi-ences throughout the world about his ordeal.

Pin Yathay was born in 1943.

Author Search For more about Pin Yathay, go to www.glencoe.com.

My first reaction was to give way to despair, to give up, to surrender to my fate. Everything was lost, I was going to die anyway, I knew that. There was no escape. We swelled up1 and died. It was the law of nature, unalterable. We all died one after another. There was nothing to be done. What did it matter? I would die, and the sooner the better, there in the house with my wife and son.

Then the true enormity of my situation struck me. There would be no such choice. Even that

tiny freedom would be taken from me. There would be no gentle, natural passing with my fam-ily beside me. They were going to slaughter me, like an animal, away in the forest.

At that thought, I felt another sensation, a surge of raw energy that drove out all other feel-ings. The instinct for self-preservation took over, and I suddenly, desperately, wanted to stay alive. I told myself: “Pull yourself together! Sharpen up! Get out of this! You’ve always succeeded before! This is your last chance! Do something!”

I began to think. What was to be done? Leave alone? But there was Nawath across the hut, lying prostrate,2 his limbs swollen. I could hardly

1. Their bodies swelled up, or became bloated, from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.

2. Prostrate means “flat on the ground,” in this case from exhaustion.

enormity (i nor mə te) n. outrageousness; state of being monstrous

Vocabulary

BEFORE YOU READ


Pin Yathaywith John Man

Christine Spengler/Sygma/Corbis

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bear the thought of leaving him and Any. But neither could I imagine escaping with them. Better they should have a chance to live here than die with me. Better that I should get away, and give myself a chance to live, or at least die on my own terms.

It was all very simple. My mind was made up. I had to tell Any of my decision, that very eve-ning.

After we had eaten, as we sat on the floor opposite each other, with Nawath sleeping behind his cloth partition across the hut, I pre-pared myself to speak. I was certain of my course, but that did not make me any less nervous. It was a terrible thing to do to us as a family, a ter-rible thing to impose on Any. But as I glanced up at her, and saw her sweet and wasted features lit dimly by the flickering flames of the cooking fire, I knew there was no other course. It was pur-poseless to stay on there merely to face death. They would be alone all too soon, anyway.

“Any, my dearest,” I said, “I have something to tell you.” She looked up, without surprise, and I realized she had been expecting a decision of some kind. She too must have known that I could not stay. Speaking softly in order not to wake Nawath—I could see his little bloated face round the edge of the partition—I began to explain. I was doomed, I said. All the former high officials had disappeared. I was trained in the West. I was irredeemable3 in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge. They would come for me in a week, and that would be that. “But you’re a woman, Any, if you were alone with Nawath I don’t think they would harm you.”

She said nothing, but I saw her gaze turn to one of horror.

“You can live on here with Nawath,” I went on. “It’s the only answer. I’ll take my chances in the forest. If I succeed, we’ll meet again. But I have to go soon. In one week, it’ll be too late.”

“You’ll leave?” she said. “Leave me here with Nawath?” And suddenly she began to sob as if she were being torn apart.

“Yes, my dearest. It’s the only way,” I said, des-perately. For the first time, I began to realize that

she had not come to the same conclusion as me. “What did you think?”

“Not that. Not that.”I said nothing, for there was only one other

course open, the one that was impossible to con-template. She would see that in a few minutes, I thought, and accept my decision.

But no. With hesitations and bitter sobs, she went on, “It’s impossible, my dearest Thay . . . I don’t want to be separated from you . . . I prefer to die with you rather than to stay here . . .” As I listened to her in silence, unable to say anything to stem the slow, whispered outpouring of words and sobs and tears, I couldn’t believe that she understood what she was saying. Soon, soon, she would see, and know why I had to go alone. “I cannot live without you!” she sobbed. “I prefer to die quickly and cleanly, with you.”

She paused, wracked by sobs. I waited for her to say: But if you think it is for the best, of course that is how it must be.

Silence.To my astonishment, I began to realize she

meant what she said. For the first time in our lives, she was refusing to accept my judgment of what was best.

The silence dragged on, broken only by her gasps. She was looking at me. I could see the highlights cast by the fire on her cheeks and in her eyes. Still she said nothing further. I knew then she had understood all along what she was saying.

I felt the strength of her, as well. Once, she had asked my opinion even before buying a dress. Now she had been hardened by experience. She knew what she was doing, knew that in any event she and Nawath would die, knew that we were in the process not of choosing life over death, but of choosing different ways of dying.

And she knew that, having chosen, there was one more fearful choice still to make. There seemed nothing I could do or say to help her through it. It was too awful for me to put into words. If I spoke the words, it would turn some-thing that was merely a nightmarish fear into dreadful reality. I could not say them.

“But,” she said at last. “But what shall we do with Nawath?”

Yes: those were the words I had refused to utter.“Tell me, Thay dearest. What shall we do with

Nawath?” She broke down again as she struggled 3. Irredeemable here refers to being unable to be changed or

reformed to accept the new government.

PIN YATHAY 1179

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to express the thought. “He can’t come with us. We can’t carry him, and he can’t walk far. They would catch us and kill us before . . .” She paused, her face working to control her emotion. “We . . . we have to leave him behind. But . . . what are we going to do with him if we leave him?” She broke off again, overcome by sobs.

Could she really contem-plate leaving Nawath? It seemed an extraordinary thing for a mother to do. I realize now that she had made a mother’s supreme sacrifice. People say that for a mother the supreme sacri-fice is to die with her child. No—if death is inevitable, the mother’s supreme sacri-fice is to abandon her child, if thereby she can prolong her own life.

I did not understand all that right then and there. But I felt her resolve, and knew there was nothing I could say to make her change her mind. After what we had been through, after being made one body with her by what we had endured together, it never even occurred to me to argue her out of her decision. I don’t think I could have done so. I simply had to accept that things were different now.

Any was still sobbing. “What do we do with Nawath?” she asked again, and fell silent. I knew from her tone of voice, and the silence, that she already knew the answer, for there was only one. Knowing it, again neither of us could bring our-selves to express it. Again, expressing it would make it irrevocable.

I glanced at Nawath, still asleep. I felt I wanted to go to him, stroke his head, provide some comfort for him, or myself. But I did not move. I couldn’t risk waking him. I glanced back at Any. Her eyes were lowered, as if waiting for me to pronounce sentence.

After another eternal minute, the burden of silence became intolerable. I felt it as an accusation against me for evading responsibility.

“You know there is only one thing to do,” I whis-pered. “We must take him to the hospital.”

The hospital, where peo-ple went only to die.

I looked into the shadows of her eyes. “We must,” I said.

She knew that this time I was right. Nawath’s chances were better in that morgue of a place than in the forest, while ours were better in the forest than there in the vil-lage. We would all die anyway; but to ensure we all lived as long as possible we had to leave him. While we would at least die together, he would die alone, abandoned by the only ones who cared for him.

Meet with a small group to discuss whether Pin Yathay and Any made the only reasonable choice in their situation or not. Consider whether they acted according to their values or whether they were simply trying to save themselves. Summarize your discussion for the rest of your class.

Discussion Starter


inevitable (i nev ə tə bəl) adj. incapable of being avoided or evaded

Vocabulary

irrevocable (i rev ə kə bəl) adj. not possible to undoensure (en shoor ) v. to make certain; guarantee

Vocabulary

But I felt her resolve, and

knew there was nothing I could say to make her

change her mind.

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Wrap-Up: Comparing Literature Across Time and Place

Steve Starr/CORBIS

COMPARING LITERATURE 1181

• The Gift in Wartimeby Tran Mong Tu

• Ambushby Tim O’Brien

• from Stay Alive, My Sonby Pin Yathay

COMPARING THE Big Idea An Era of ProtestPartner Activity With a partner, read each of the following quotations. Then discuss how each quotation reveals the human cost of war. Cite additional evidence from each selection to support your interpretation.

“[H]e’ll pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog.”

—Tim O’Brien, Ambush

“I will hold this shrapnel as a tokenBy which we will recognize each other”

—Tran Mong Tu, The Gift in Wartime

“She knew what she was doing, . . . knew that we were in the process not of choosing life over death, but of choosing different ways of dying.”

—Pin Yathay, from Stay Alive, My Son

COMPARING ThemesGroup Activity Though Tim O’Brien, Tran Mong Tu, and Pin Yathay all write about the tragedy of war, each conveys a distinct theme, or message, about this subject. With a small group, discuss the following questions:

1. What message about war does each writer share with the reader?2. What literary elements does each writer use to convey his or her message?3. Which of the selections, in your opinion, makes the most effective protest against war?

Support your answer.

COMPARING CulturesVisual Display A writer’s culture influences his or her ideas and choice of subject, words, and images. Tim O’Brien grew up in the United States; Tran Mong Tu, in Vietnam; and Pin Yathay, in Cambodia. Create a visual display to accompany one of the three selections. In your display, include images that reflect the writer’s culture, such as a collage of photographs or works of art. Share your display with your classmates.

Marker at the extermination camp of Choeung Ek.

• Compare and contrast author’s messages.

• Compare works associated with social protest.• Analyze cultural context.

OBJECTIVES

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Christopher Felver/CORBIS

BEFORE YOU READ

The Asians Dying, Separation,and When You Go Away

MEET W. S. MERWIN

“It makes me angry to feel that the natural world is taken to have so little importance,” American poet W. S. Merwin once said. It

is no wonder then that the pervading themes of Merwin’s poetry revolve around our self-imposed separation from nature and the terrible conse-quences that come from humanity’s irresponsible treatment of the natural world.

“Poetry . . . tries to convey the sense of what one has seen to those to whom it may matter, including, if possible, one’s self.”

—W. S. Merwin

William Stanley Merwin was born in New York City, but grew up in Pennsylvania. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and at the age of five, Merwin was writing hymns for his father’s church services. When Merwin was a teenager, he met Ezra Pound, who advised him to write seventy-five lines of poetry a day and to learn languages. He told Merwin that poetry “arises out of disci-pline and continual devotion.” Merwin took this advice to heart. In 1947, at age twenty, Merwin graduated from Princeton University with a degree in English. In 1952, he published his first poetry collection, A Mask for Janus.

Style and Substance Merwin’s early poetry was inspired by Biblical stories and classical myths. These early poems adhered to traditional narrative forms and regular meter patterns. By the 1960s, Merwin had become a pacifist, environmentalist, and an anti-Vietnam War activist. His poetry became more personal as he delved deeper into the failures of humanity. His language became more relaxed and colloquial. He abandoned punctuation and traditional narrative forms in favor of free

verse. In 1967, the protest move-ment against the Vietnam War had grown in the United States as the war itself had escalated and the numbers of casu-alties had increased. That year, Merwin published The Lice, a collection of angry poems in which he lashed out against soci-ety’s lack of moral responsibility. Included in this collection was “The Asians Dying,” considered Merwin’s most overt anti-Vietnam War poem. The poems in his next collection, The Carrier of Ladders, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1971, begin to show signs of hope for the human condition.

Beyond Anger Merwin’s later poetry moved beyond the angry, “searing, dumb vision” that guided him in The Lice. “One can’t live only in despair and anger,” he said, “without eventually destroying the thing one is angry in defense of.”

In his long and illustrious career, Merwin has pub-lished more than 30 volumes of poetry, contributed to a variety of magazines and anthologies, written three plays, and translated the works of classical writers such as Dante and contemporary poets such as Pablo Neruda. In reviewing one of Merwin’s recent poems, a critic commented that the poem “will not recompense the lives lost to history. It will not stop wars or stay death. Merwin, for all his acute awareness of loss, writes not to alter the world but to honor it.”

W. S. Merwin was born in 1927.

Author Search For more about W. S. Merwin, go to www.glencoe.com.


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W. S. MERWIN 1183

Connecting to the PoemsLove and war represent two extremes of human expe-rience. As you read the poems, think about the follow-ing questions:

• How much responsibility do we as individuals bear for the effects of war?

• Why is it hard to bear the absence of someone we love?

Building BackgroundAmerican poetry became more political and radical during the turbulent 1960s. It abandoned the formal tone and rigid meter of previous eras and became more open and free, reflecting the same desire for change and the same anger over repression that fueled the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War Movements. Many poets spoke out against social injustice. Merwin’s poetry changed during this time period. He eliminated punctuation from his work in an attempt to “transmit [poetry] more directly in words and do it in a way that carried more of the cadences of pure language, of speech.”

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestAs you read the poems, notice how Merwin protests the Vietnam War and the absence of a loved one.

Literary Element Figurative LanguageFigurative language is descriptive language that goes beyond its literal meaning to convey ideas and emo-tions. For example, the phrase, “my words are the gar-ment” is a metaphor that is not literally true. As you read, examine how Merwin uses figurative language to create vivid, haunting images of war and feelings of loss.


Reading Strategy Clarifying MeaningFree verse often does not always use conventional punctuation or sentence patterns. As a result, poems written in this form can be challenging. As you read Merwin’s poems, take time to reread lines that are confusing to clarify meaning. Be sure to read the footnotes for further help. If you still cannot figure out what something means, ask questions to clarify.

Reading Tip: Ask Questions Use the chart to jot down questions that you have after rereading.

Vocabulary

possessor (pə zes� ər) n. one who has or takes control of something; owner; p. 1184 As the possessor of all the land in the region, she deter-mined how the area was to be developed.

pointless (point� lis) n. making no sense; p. 1184 They can’t hear you; it’s pointless to speak.

garment (gär� mənt) n. a piece of clothing; p. 1185 The fabric of his outer garment had been worn thin.

Vocabulary Tip: Analogies Analogies are compari-sons that are based on the relationships between things or ideas. For example, the relationship between “movement” and “symphony” is the same as the relationship between “chapter” and “book”: movements and chapters are both sections of symphonies and books, respectively.


QuestionsWhat does “Over the watercourses / Like ducks in the time of the ducks” mean?

Poem“The Asians Dying”

Answer

In studying this selection, you will:

• analyze figures of speech and other stylistic devices

• learn to understand stylistic devices and appreciate their effects• reread and devise questions to further comprehension and

clarify meaning

OBJECTIVES

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When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remains The ash the great walker follows the possessors Forever Nothing they will come to is real 5 Nor for long Over the watercourses1

Like ducks in the time of the ducks2

The ghosts of the villages trail in the sky Making a new twilight

10 Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead Again again with its pointless sound When the moon finds them they are the color of everything

The nights disappear like bruises but nothing is healed The dead go away like bruises 15 The blood vanishes into the poisoned farmlands Pain the horizon Remains Overhead the seasons rock They are paper bells 20 Calling to nothing living

The possessors move everywhere under Death their star Like columns of smoke they advance into the shadows Like thin flames with no light They with no past 25 And fire their only future

1. Watercourses are streams of water, such as a river or a brook.2. The phrase ducks in the time of ducks recalls the Asian belief that the year of

one’s birth is influenced by the traits of particular animals.

possessor (pə zes ər) n. one who has or takes control of something; ownerpointless (point lis) n. making no sense

Vocabulary

An Era of Protest Who are the possessors? What does Merwin think is going to happen to them?

Big Idea

Figurative Language What are the similes in these lines comparing? What ideas about war do these comparisons suggest?

Literary Element

W. S. Merwin

Untitled, 2000. Brenda Chrystie.

Brenda Chrystie/CORBIS

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W. S. MERWIN 1185

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls Showing the black walls The clock goes back to striking the same hour 5 That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes In one breath I wake It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth I remember that I am falling 10 That I am the reason And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

W. S. Merwin

Clarifying Meaning What does the simile in line 12 mean?Reading Strategy

Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

W. S. Merwin

garment (armənt) n. a piece of clothing

Vocabulary

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AFTER YOU READ


Respond1. Which of these three poems did you like best? Why?

Recall and Interpret2. (a)In “The Asians Dying,“ what happens to the

forests, and, subsequently, what happens to the villages? (b)How does this connect to what happens to the farmlands?

3. (a)Summarize lines 10–12 of “The Asians Dying.” (b)What do you think the speaker is trying to tell you about the dead in these lines?

4. (a)In “When You Go Away,” what happens to the painters’ work and to the clocks? (b)What do these events mean?

Analyze and Evaluate5. In “The Asians Dying,” Merwin employs a series of

paradoxes—the forests have been destroyed, yet their

darkness remains; bruises disappear, but nothing is healed; and there are flames, but no light. What do these paradoxes suggest about the effects of war?

6. (a)Both speakers in “The Asians Dying” and “When You Go Away” reflect on their feelings at “twilight” or “sundown.” What might this time of day symbolize? (b)How does this setting reflect the meaning and tone of these poems?

7. (a)Whom is the speaker of “Separation” addressing? (b)Through the use of figurative language, what feeling is Merwin attempting to convey?

Connect8. Big Idea An Era of Protest (a)What effect do

you think the images in “The Asians Dying” would have had on those who were protesting the Vietnam War? (b)How could the poems be used to strengthen their protests?


Literary Element Figurative LanguageFigurative language is often found in poetry, which relies on imagery to convey ideas. Figurative language includes similes, metaphors, personification, hyper-bole, and symbolism. A poet can use each of these literary devices to emphasize an idea, create an effect, or establish a particular mood. For example, when the speaker of “The Asians Dying” says, “The ash the great walker follows the possessors,” he is using per-sonification to say that the ash, which is all that remains of the war-ravaged forests, has the human ability to follow around those who caused the destruc-tion.

1. When the speaker of “Separation” says, “Everything I do is stitched with its color,” what kind of figura-tive language is he using?

2. Find two other examples of figurative language in the poems and explain how each helps you to understand an idea.

Review: Free VerseAs you learned in Unit 3, free verse is poetry that has no fixed pattern of meter, rhyme, line length, or stanza arrangement. Poets who use free verse often do not follow the traditional rules of grammar and punctuation.

Partner Activity Pair up with a partner and discuss the use of free verse in “The Asians Dying,” “Separa tion,” and “When You Go Away.” Working with your partner, create a chart like the one below. Then fill it with exam-ples of the poetic techniques that Merwin uses in his free verse. Working with your partner, create a chart like the one shown below for each poem.

LITERARY ANALYSIS

“The Asians Dying”Repetition

Alliteration

Assonance

Consonance

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Reading Strategy Clarifying MeaningThe main concepts of Merwin’s poems may be diffi-cult to understand because of the irregular sentence patterns and a lack of punctuation. Look back at the questions you wrote in your chart from page 1183. Reread the lines that caused you problems and try to put them in your own words.

1. What is the main message of “The Asians Dying”?

2. In “When You Go Away,” how does the speaker feel about the absent person?

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Analogies Choose the word pair that best completes the analogy.

1. possessor : owner :: a. army : soldier b. supplier : consumer c. manager : supervisor2. pointless : signifi cant :: a. remote : distant b. responsible : trustworthy c. meaningful : irrelevant

3. garment : shirt :: a. tool : pliers b. hat : head c. rain : snow

Academic Vocabulary

Here are two words from the vocabulary list on page R86.

target (tär gət) n. someone or something affected by an action

objective (əb jek tiv) n. end result; aim; goal

Practice and Apply1. Who is the target of most political poetry?2. (a)What do you think Merwin’s objective is in

“The Asians Dying”? (b)Do you think that he achieved this objective?

Writing About LiteratureRespond to Theme and Craft If you could interview Merwin, what questions would you ask him? Think about the themes that he develops in his poetry and note the distinctive ways in which he chooses to express those themes. With a partner, create a list of questions for Merwin and then write answers from his point of view.

As you begin to brainstorm ideas with your partner, reread Merwin’s poems and take notes on their themes and poetic techniques. These notes will help you write your questions and responses. Also, refer to your chart from page 1183 and see if it contains any unanswered questions that you would like to include in your interview. Keep in mind that good interview questions elicit thoughtful responses that lead to a meaningful dialogue between the interviewer and interviewee. Make sure to review your questions and reword any of them that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” These kinds of questions can discourage conversation. Proofread and edit your questions and answers for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You and your partner may wish to role-play your interview for your classmates.

Literature GroupsPoetry and Politics W. S. Merwin has suggested that the poet takes a tremendous chance when he writes political poetry; by doing so, the poet’s voice, which is naturally private and integral to his own life, “may be deformed into a mere loudspeaker” in danger of losing its individuality and surprising nature. What other conse-quences might a successful poet face as the result of writing political poetry? Why would Merwin or any other poet take these risks? Share your ideas with the class.

READING AND VOCABULARY WRITING AND EXTENDING


W. S. MERWIN 1187

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BEFORE YOU READ

MEET DENISE LEVERTOV

Denise Levertov was extraordinary for the depth of commitment she brought to every area of her life. In her work, she conducted

a thorough exploration of both the intricacies of language and the responsibilities of the individual in a chaotic, sometimes violent world.

Born and raised in England, Levertov came from a family of Welsh intellectuals on her mother’s side and Hasidic Jewish scholars on her father’s side. She was homeschooled, and, as a child, spent free time taking lessons in ballet, French, music, and art. After World War II, Levertov married and immigrated to the United States. She embarked on a career as a university professor, became involved with the Black Mountain school of poets, and established herself as one of the most important writers of her generation. Colleagues from the Black Mountain school, such as Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan, helped shape Levertov’s ideas about poetry and influenced her burgeoning American sensibility.

An Anti-War Voice Levertov’s was an early and sustained voice in the protest against the war in Vietnam. She joined the War Resisters League and both lectured and wrote in protest of the war. In 1972, she traveled to North Vietnam with Muriel Rukeyser and Jane Hart (to whom the poem “In Thai Binh (Peace) Province” is dedicated). The experience of witnessing the suffering of war-torn Vietnam firsthand strengthened Levertov’s convic-tion that U.S. policy in the region had been disas-trous for the Vietnamese people. Levertov saw no other choice but to explore the issue in her poetry. She did so in ways that went beyond the ideologi-cal or doctrinaire. Levertov’s poems probed her own culpability as well as the culpability of her government. Nevertheless, her choice of subject matter created controversy among the poets of the Black Mountain school.

Consummate Poet Levertov may have written about political themes, but she was also an artist

who gave careful thought to the technical aspects of poetry. In lectures and interviews, Levertov praised precise line breaks, lambasted sentimental-ity, and expounded on the need for a “good ear”—an ear capable of distinguishing rough or thick sounds from light and airy ones.

Levertov explicitly rejected traditional forms of poetry, which, according to her, belonged to eras that were less chaotic and uncertain than the pres-ent. “I think that we should acknowledge the chaos we live in and deal with it; open forms can allow one to explore chaos and see what can be discovered there,” she said. Her abandonment of traditional forms did not translate into indifference to standards or technique. She remarked, “For a poet, the thinking-feeling process is not merely immediately transposed into language. Rather, it takes place in language. For example, the way that a poem is written on the page is a score for the way it should be read aloud, and the way that it will be experienced . . . I believe strongly that the line itself is expressive of patterns of seeing.”

As a working mother and wife, Levertov taught, wrote, and served as poetry editor for several mag-azines. She worked as a professor at the University of Washington and at Stanford University before retiring to live in Seattle. Though her last years were ailing ones, Levertov maintained a lively cor-respondence and engagement with the world until the end.

Denise Levertov was born in 1923 and died in 1997.

In Thai Binh (Peace) Province


Author Search For more about Denise Levertov, go to www.glencoe.com.

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Connecting to the PoemWhy might someone support or protest a war? As you read the poem, think about the following questions:

• What most disturbs you about war?

• What circumstances or events would cause you to protest a war?

Building BackgroundThai Binh is a province in Vietnam. It is located north-east of Hanoi in what was once North Vietnam. Bordered by the ocean and home to the Red River Delta, the province is a green place where rice grows in paddies and water buffalo graze. It is home both to pagodas, buildings which frequently house Buddhist temples, as well as churches. (The French and other missionaries brought Christianity to Vietnam.) Thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers from this peaceful-looking province died during the Vietnam War. Bombing of the province by the U.S. and South Vietnamese, along with the effects of the American-made chemical Agent Orange, affected the lives of thousands of others. Ironically, su thai binh means “peace” in Vietnamese.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestAs you read “In Thai Binh (Peace) Province,” think about what Levertov may be suggesting about the true cost of the Vietnam War, for the United States as well as for Vietnam.

Literary Element SettingSetting is the time and place in which the events of a literary work occur. Setting includes not only the physi-cal surroundings, but also the ideas, customs, values, and beliefs of a particular time and place. In a poem, the setting may play an important role, or it may be only incidental. As you read, determine the role of setting in “In Thai Binh.”


Reading Strategy VisualizingWhen you visualize, you picture the writer’s ideas or descriptions in your mind’s eye. Visualizing as you read can help to strengthen your engagement with a poem.

Reading Tip: Taking Notes Use a chart to record what you picture as you read.

Vocabulary

bewildered (bi wil� dərd) adj. confused; p. 1190 The bewildered man could not find the bus stop.

fabled (fa� bəld) adj. famous, well-known; told about in stories; p. 1190 Many explorers had searched for the fabled city of gold.

persistent (pər sis� tənt) adj. continuing or going forward, despite problems or obstacles; p. 1190 Although other students gave up, Derek was persistent.

Vocabulary Tip: Synonyms Synonyms are words that have the same or similar meanings. Synonyms are always the same part of speech.


DENISE LEVERTOV 1189

What I Picturebuffalo in a large, empty, green field on a sunny day

Detail“quietly grazing buffalo”


• connecting to historical events • analyzing setting

• visualizing

OBJECTIVES

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For Muriel and Jane

I’ve used up all my film on bombed hospitals, bombed village schools, the scattered lemon-yellow cocoons at the bombed silk-factory,

and for the moment all my tears too are used up, having seen today yet another child with its feet blown off, a girl, this one, eleven years old, patient and bewildered in her home, a fragile small house of mud bricks among rice fields.

So I’ll use my dry burning eyes to photograph within me dark sails of the river boats, warm slant of afternoon light apricot on the brown, swift, wide river, village towers— church and pagoda1— on the far shore,

and a boy and small bird both perched, relaxed, on a quietly grazing buffalo. Peace within the long war.

It is that life, unhurried, sure, persistent, I must bring home when I try to bring the war home. Child, river, light.

Here the future, fabled bird that has migrated away from America, nests, and breeds, and sings,

common as any sparrow.


Denise Levertov

Setting Why does Levertov include these details in a poem about war?

Literary Element

Visualizing What do you picture as you read these lines?

Reading Strategy

bewildered (bi wil dərd) adj. confusedpersistent (pər sis tənt) adj. continuing or going forward, despite problems or obstaclesfabled (fa bəld) adj. famous, well-known; told about in stories

Vocabulary

1. A pagoda is a building with an upward curved roof, or a series of upward carved roofs, built as a temple or memorial.

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What do you think is the most powerful image in

this poem? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)What does the speaker photograph with a

camera? (b)What do these images reveal about Thai Binh?

3. (a)What does the speaker “photograph” with her eyes? (b)What do these images tell you about Thai Binh?

4. (a)What is the “fabled bird” doing in Thai Binh? (b)What does the speaker mean by “fabled bird”?

Analyze and Evaluate5. (a)Why might this be called an antiwar poem?

(b)How well does the poem demonstrate the neg-ative consequences of war? Support your answers.

6. Explain the contrast Levertov develops between violent or disturbing occurrences and images that evoke peace, hope, or health. Why do you think Levertov suggests that it is the latter type of image she must “bring home” with her?

7. (a)What is the “future, fabled bird” mentioned in line 24? (b)Why does the poet suggest that the bird has “migrated away from America”?

Connect8. Big Idea An Era of Protest (a)What exactly

might reading the speaker’s personal reactions have helped Americans to understand about the Vietnam War? (b)Do you think this poem is effec-tive as a means of protest? Explain.


Literary Element SettingDetails about setting can help to create a poem’s atmosphere, or mood. A powerful visual detail can be disturbing or evoke feelings of joy.

1. How does the setting the speaker imagines differ from the one she sees?

2. What role does setting play in the development of the poem’s theme?

Listening and SpeakingLevertov wrote many other poems about her experi-ences in Vietnam. With a group, locate and read three of these poems. Then write and deliver an informa-tional speech about them. In your speech, summarize the poems and explain what themes you think are conveyed by them. Also discuss particularly striking examples of poetic technique. End with a conclusion about the purpose and meaning of Levertov’s Vietnam poetry.

Reading Strategy VisualizingIn her poem, Levertov vividly contrasts war and peace.

1. What do war and peace look like to the speaker?

2. What images or details of the poem did visualizing best help you to appreciate? Explain.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Synonyms Find the synonym for each vocabulary word listed in the first column. Use a dictionary or thesaurus if you need help.

1. bewildered a. confused b. amused

2. fabled a. famous b. fake

3. persistent a. unknown b. continuous

DENISE LEVERTOV 1191



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National Design Award WinnerMaya Lin

ARTISTIC PERSPECTIVE on the Vietnam WarInformational Text

Building BackgroundArchitect Maya Lin was only twenty-one years old when she submitted this design proposal for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Unlike most prior war memorials, it features no statues of soldiers in heroic, determined stances. Instead, it is a seemingly endless black granite wall that first rises from and then falls to the earth. On its surface are the names of the American men and women who were killed during the Vietnam War. “I thought about what death is, what a loss is,” Lin explains. “A sharp pain that lessens with time but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass will heal it.”

Set a Purpose for ReadingRead to find out how Lin hopes that her memorial will inspire visitors.

Reading Strategy

Analyzing Political AssumptionsAnalyzing political assumptions involves carefully examining political beliefs that have shaped an author’s argument or proposal. An author may state each opin-ion or assumption directly or may merely imply it.

Walking through this park-like area, the memorial appears as a rift1 in the earth—a long, polished black stone

wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site con-tained by the walls of this memorial we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial’s walls. These names, seemingly infi-nite in number, convey the sense of overwhelm-ing numbers, while unifying those individuals into a whole. For this memorial is meant not as a monument to the individual, but rather as a memorial to the men and women who died during this war, as a whole.

The memorial is composed not as an unchanging monument, but as a moving com-position, to be understood as we move into and out of it; the passage itself is gradual, the descent to the origin slow, but it is at the ori-gin that the meaning of this memorial is to be

1. A rift is a deep crack or slash.

1192 UNIT 7 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURYJacob Halaska/IndexStock

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MAYA LIN 1193

Informational Text

The two panels of Maya Lin’s Competition architectural drawing, including her textual description.

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Informational Text

fully understood.2 At the intersection of these walls, on the right side, at this wall’s top is carved the date of the first death. It is followed by the names of those who have died in the war, in chronological order. These names continue on this wall, appearing to recede into the earth at the wall’s end. The names resume on the left wall, as the wall emerges from the earth, con-tinuing back to the origin, where the date of the last death is carved, at the bottom of this wall. Thus the war’s beginning and end meet; the war is “complete,” coming full circle, yet broken by

the earth that bounds the angle’s open side, and contained within the earth itself. As we turn to leave, we see these walls stretching into the dis-tance, directing us to the Washington Monu-ment to the left and the Lincoln Memorial to the right, thus bringing the Vietnam Memorial into historical context. We, the living, are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths.

Brought to a sharp awareness of such a loss, it is up to each individual to resolve or come to terms with this loss. For death is in the end a personal and private matter, and the area contained within this memorial is a quiet place meant for personal reflection and private reckoning.3 The black granite walls, each 200 feet long, and 10 feet

3. Private reckoning suggests deep, personal thoughts about the magnitude of the war dead.

The Vietnam Memorial at night, with the Washington Monument in the distance.Viewing the Photograph What aspects of the Vietnam Memorial are captured in this photograph?

2. The monument stands in a long, grassy park in Washington, D.C. Visitors standing at the monument can look to the left and right and see the faraway ends of the park. At one end stands a tall white obelisk, the Washington Monument, and at the other end stands the Lincoln Memorial, with its famous statue of the seated Abraham Lincoln.


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MAYA LIN 1195

Informational Text


Respond1. Imagine being a visitor at the Vietnam Veterans

Memorial. How do you think you would respond to the memorial? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)Describe the appearance of the memorial.

(b)Why may Lin have wanted the names to convey “the sense of overwhelming numbers”?

3. (a)In what order are the names arranged on the monument? (b)Why may Lin have chosen this type of order instead of alphabetical order?

4. How does Lin conclude her proposal? Why do you think she ends with this idea?

Analyze and Evaluate5. At first, many people were shocked and disap-

pointed with Maya Lin’s design. They expected a more traditional monument, such as a statue con-veying the bravery of U.S. soldiers. Do you agree, with the critics, that such a monument would have been more appropriate than Lin’s memorial, or do you favor Lin’s design? Explain.

6. Lin envisioned the memorial “not as an unchanging monument, but as a moving composition, to be understood as we moved into and out of it.” From her description of the memorial and the pictures accompanying the proposal, do you believe that she accomplished that vision? Explain.

Connect7. Big Idea An Era of Protest Do you think that

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial refl ects an “era of protest”? Why or why not?

below ground at their lowest point (gradually ascending towards ground level) effectively act as a sound barrier, yet are of such a height and length so as not to appear threatening or enclos-ing. The actual area is wide and shallow, allow-ing for a sense of privacy, and the sunlight from the memorial’s southern exposure along with the grassy park surrounding and within its wall con-tribute to the serenity of the area. Thus this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them.

The memorial’s origin is located approxi-mately at the center of this site; its legs each extending 200 feet towards the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The walls, contained on one side by the earth, are 10 feet below ground at their point of origin,

gradually lessening in height, until they finally recede totally into the earth at their ends. The walls are to be made of a hard, polished black granite, with the names to be carved in a simple Trajan4 letter, 3/4 inch high, allowing for nine inches in length for each name. The memorial’s construction involves recontouring the area within the wall’s boundaries so as to provide for an easily accessible descent, but as much of the site as possible should be left untouched (includ-ing trees).5 The area should be made into a park for all the public to enjoy.

4. Trajan is the name of the font that Lin has chosen for the letters in the names.

5. Lin specifies here that some recontouring, or excavating, of the land will be necessary in order to accommodate the downward slope of the granite walls.

OBJECTIVES

• Analyze political assumptions.

• Determine author’s purpose and its effect on the text.

• Respond to informational and aesthetic elements in texts and graphic displays.

• Use strategies to understand words and text, including inter-preting illustrations.

• Critique functional documents for information and visual appeal.

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© Jerry Schatzberg/CORBIS


BEFORE YOU READ

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

MEET BOB DYLAN

Born Robert Zimmerman and raised in the small mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota, Bob Dylan received his first guitar at the age of fourteen. Throughout his teens, he listened to the music of Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard.

“I see my light come shining From the west unto the east. Any day now, any day now, I shall be released.”

—Bob Dylan, “I Shall Be Released”

Protest Singer In 1959, the summer before Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota he first heard the records of Woody Guthrie, the folk singer who would become his idol. In Minneapolis, he first encountered the era’s beatnik, folk-inflected counterculture. Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his freshman year and headed for New York City in search of Guthrie, who had vanished from the public eye due to illness.

When he arrived in New York City in 1961, Dylan had already changed his name and was developing his distinct musical sound. While playing in small clubs throughout Greenwich Village, the center of bohemian New York, he regularly visited Guthrie, who was suffering from Hun tington’s chorea, a nervous system disorder.

In September 1961, the New York Times gave one of Dylan’s live performances a positive review, prompting John Hammond, Columbia Records’ premier talent scout, to take notice. In less than a year, Dylan recorded and released his first album, which received mixed reviews. However, his next album, The Free wheelin’ Bob Dylan, earned widespread acclaim.

In 1963, Dylan played at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. His performance at that festival firmly established Dylan as the new voice of folk music. This phase in Dylan’s career crested with the release of his next album, The Times They Are A-Changin’. Dylan now personified the folk “protest song” movement, which influenced the Civil Rights, free speech, and anti-war movements of that period.

Going Electric Dylan, however, was on the cusp of a significant artistic change. The album Bringing It All Back Home, released in 1965, featured electric instru-ments, shocking his purist folk fans. Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan’s next album, included surreal lyrics and a heavy electric sound—but no protest songs. Blonde on Blonde, the critically acclaimed following album, followed suit. The tours promoting these albums became legendary: feeling betrayed, angry fans booed and jeered Dylan to show their displeasure.

In 1966, Dylan was involved in a motorcycle acci-dent, forcing him into a period of seclusion. When he emerged, his musical style changed again. His next two albums—John Wesley Harding, released in 1968, and the country infused Nashville Skyline, released in 1969—again defied expectations.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Dylan toured and recorded with decidedly mixed results. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he earned multiple Grammies, including Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind in 1998. Recently, Dylan released Chronicles, the first volume of his memoirs, to overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Bob Dylan was born in 1941.

Author Search For more about Bob Dylan, go to www.glencoe.com.

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BOB DYLAN 1197

Connecting to the SongHave you ever felt frightened by what tomorrow might bring? In this protest song, Dylan voices a prophetic warning about the future. As you read the song, think about the following questions:

• Do you think life will be better or worse ten years from now?

• What alarming trends in today’s world would you like to see changed?

Building BackgroundDylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war. This crisis began when the United States discovered that the Soviet Union was installing ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba, approximately ninety miles from the U.S. mainland. These missiles were capable of destroying millions of lives within minutes. In response to this threat, President Kennedy set up a naval block-ade around Cuba, thereby further escalating tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The world feared that nuclear war was imminent and unavoidable. The crisis ended when the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the United States’ promise not to invade Cuba. Though nuclear war was averted, the crisis left a gnawing anxiety in the minds of most people. They were forced to recog-nize that the threat of nuclear disaster was a grim reality.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestAs you read, consider how this song responds to issues raised by historical events.

Literary Element Rhythm Rhythm refers to the pattern of beats created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables, especially in poetry. Rhythm gives poetry a musical quality, can add emphasis to certain words, and may help convey the poem’s meaning. As you read the protest song aloud, listen to the rhythm and consider how it might support the meaning.


Reading Strategy Analyzing Rhetorical Devices

In “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Dylan uses several rhetorical devices, including juxtaposition, parallelism, and repetition. Juxtaposition refers to the placing of two or more distinct things next to each other in order to compare or contrast them. Parallelism is the use of a series of words, phrases, or sentences that have sim-ilar grammatical form. Repetition is the recurrence of sounds, words, phrases, or lines. These devices call attention to particular ideas and evoke emotional responses in the reader. As you read, notice these devices and consider their effects.

Reading Tip: Taking Notes Use a chart to record rhetorical devices and their effects.


EffectRhetorical DeviceJuxtaposition: “I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it” (line 13)

In studying this selection, you will focus on the following:• analyzing literary periods• analyzing rhythm • analyzing rhetorical devices

OBJECTIVES

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Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways, 5 I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

10 Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’, 15 I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’, I saw a white ladder all covered with water, I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken, I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children, And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, 20 And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

An Era of Protest Who do you think these men might represent?Big Idea

Bob Dylan

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And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’, Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world, 25 Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’, Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’, Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’, Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter, Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley, 30 And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony, 35 I met a white man who walked a black dog, I met a young woman whose body was burning, I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow, I met one man who was wounded in love, I met another man who was wounded with hatred, 40 And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one? I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’, 45 I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden, 50 Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’, 55 But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’, And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Analyzing Rhetorical Devices What rhetorical device is found in this line? What effect does it create?

Reading Strategy

Rhythm How would you describe the rhythm of these lines?Literary Element

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. What image did you find most powerful in this

song? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)Who are the speakers in this song? (b)What

effect does the poet create by using questions and responses?

3. (a)Who is on the “highway of diamonds” in line 13?(b)What do you think this image represents in rela-tion to the song’s historical context?

4. (a)What is unusual about the “executioner’s face” in line 52? (b)What might this detail suggest?

Analyze and Evaluate5. This protest song mostly concerns the past but

ends while describing the future. How does the shift in time affect the poet’s message?

6. (a)Why did Dylan give his song the title “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”? (b)Do you think the title is effective? Explain.

Connect7. Big Idea An Era of Protest What do you think

Dylan hoped to accomplish with this protest song? Explain.


Literary Element RhythmRhythm can be regular or irregular. For example in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the rhythm is regular:

˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ Whose woods these are I think I know˘ ˘ ˘ ˘

His house is in the village though

Even if the rhythm is irregular, you can still get a sense of it by paying attention to the number and position of stressed syllables, or beats, in each line.

1. About how many beats does each line of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” usually contain?

2. How does the rhythm of the song influence its meaning?

3. Why do you think Dylan chose irregular rhythm and rhyme? Explain.

Review: MoodAs you learned on page 823, mood is the feeling or atmosphere that an author creates in a literary work.

Partner Activity Meet with another classmate to determine the mood of this song and discuss the liter-ary elements Dylan uses to create it. Working with your partner, create a web diagram like the one below. Then fill it in with examples of the elements that con-tribute to the mood of the song.

LITERARY ANALYSIS

rhythm imagery

Mood

diction

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Bettmann/CORBIS

BOB DYLAN 1201

WRITING AND EXTENDING

Reading Strategy Analyzing Rhetorical Devices

Though most often found in persuasive essays or speeches, rhetorical devices sometimes support an implied argument in poetry and fiction. Review the chart you created on page 1197 listing rhetorical devices in this protest song.

1. What argument is implied in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”?

2. List three rhetorical devices and explain how each one helps advance that argument.

Academic Vocabulary

Here are two words from the vocabulary list on page R86.

specific (spi si fik) v. exact or definite

emphasis (em fə sis) n. a special stress, accent, or importance given to something

Practice and Apply1. Identify a specific line in “A Hard Rain’s A-

Gonna Fall” that contains juxtaposition. 2. Which parts of each stanza receive greater

emphasis because of the use of repetition?

Writing About Literature Evaluate Author’s Craft How well do the images in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” reinforce the mood and theme of this protest song? Write a brief essay in which you evaluate the author’s craft. Use examples from the protest song to support your position.

As you draft, write from start to finish. Follow the writ-ing plan shown here to keep on track.

Begin with a general statement about protest songs and move toward your thesis, or specific statement of your position.

Provide evidence showing how the images support the theme and mood.

Briefly summarize your position and leave the reader with a final insight about protest songs.

Body

Conclusion

➧

▲▲

▲

Introduction

➧

After you complete your draft, meet with a peer reviewer to evaluate each other’s work and to suggest revisions. Then proofread and edit your draft for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Listening and SpeakingPartner Activity Listen to Bob Dylan’s recording of this protest song. Then with a partner discuss how listening to the recording affects your response to the song and your interpretation of it. Be sure to pay close attention to the song’s rhythm. How would you describe Dylan’s delivery and singing style? Is the work more powerful when sung than when read silently?

READING AND VOCABULARY


Bob Dylan in 1968-1969.

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BEFORE YOU READ

MEET ANNE SEXTON

Is it possible to understand poetry without understanding the poet? The work of some poets is so intimately bound to the poet’s expe-

riences that the poetry is almost never discussed without references to his or her life. Such is the case with Anne Sexton, whose troubled life was not only reflected in her poetry but also actually led to her becoming a successful poet in the first place.

Poetry as Therapy Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Anne Sexton was the youngest of three daughters in a middle class family. Beautiful and rebellious, Sexton eloped at the age of nine-teen, marrying Alfred Muller Sexton II, whom she had known only briefly. Sexton gave birth to her first daughter in 1953, and her second daughter in 1955. It was after the births of her children that she began to suffer from severe postpartum depres-sion and attempted suicide several times. During this time, her therapist encouraged her to try writ-ing poetry to explore her feelings.

“Poetry should be a shock to the senses. It should almost hurt.”

—Anne Sexton

Sexton approached writing poetry with fervor. In 1960, Sexton published her first collection of poems titled To Bedlam and Part Way Back, which chroni-cled her early struggles with mental illness. This was followed, in 1962, by the publication of All My Pretty Ones. These first collections received mixed reviews. Some critics praised Sexton’s work as “remarkable,” “full of the exact flavors of places and peoples remembered,” and “an honest and impres-sive achievement.” Others saw her work as flawed and nothing more than a “determinedly outspoken soap-opera.”

Fame and Pain Sexton, meanwhile, was becoming firmly established as a member of the “Confessional School,” a group of poets who wrote during the late 1950s and 1960s and were categorized by their intensely introspective writing styles. At first, Sexton railed against being labeled a “confessional.” Later she said, “I decided I was the only confessional poet.”

While much of her work over the following years remained “confessional” and decidedly feminist, Sexton did occasionally go outside of herself for material. Transformations, published in 1971, is a retelling of the popular fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Reviewers delighted in the “colorful imag-ery” and sharp wit that Sexton exhibited in this collection.

During her career, Anne Sexton published ten books of poetry, as well a play, essays, and several children’s books. Sexton received the Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for her collection Live or Die. As her fame grew, Sexton took on other responsibilities. She taught poetry workshops and creative writing, and she became a popular figure at poetry readings on college cam-puses. All the while, Sexton continued to struggle with mental illness. On October 4, 1974, she met with close friend Maxine Kumin to review the page galleys for her latest collection, The Awful Rowing Toward God. Later that day, Anne Sexton took her own life.

Anne Sexton was born in 1928 and died in 1974.

Courage


Author Search For more about Anne Sexton, go to www.glencoe.com.

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Connecting to the EssayWe often associate courage with great acts of bravery. Sexton, however, sees courage in seemingly ordinary acts. As you read the poem, think about the following questions:

• Would you call yourself courageous?

• Do you think that people who express pain and show vulnerability lack courage?

Building BackgroundThe Awful Rowing Toward God, in which “Courage” appears, was Sexton’s last collection of poetry. When Sexton wrote these poems, she was battling severe mental illness and was frequently an inpatient at men-tal hospitals. Many reviewers, including some of her close friends, criticized the poems in this collection as being too personal, disjointed, and lacking the strength of her earlier and best poems. Sexton herself called the poems “raw” and “unworked.” The Awful Rowing Toward God was published in 1975. By that time, Anne Sexton was dead, and the poems had become prophetic.

Setting Purposes for Reading Big Idea An Era of ProtestAs you read the poem, notice how the poet focuses on the individual’s conflicts with society.

Literary Element Verse ParagraphA verse paragraph is a group of lines in a poem that form a unit. While stanzas traditionally have a fixed number of lines and are typical of poems written before the twentieth century, verse paragraphs are not uniform in length and reflect the open, freer form of contemporary verse. As you read the poem, examine how Sexton has used each verse paragraph to orga-nize her ideas about courage and life.


Reading Strategy Examining Connotation and Denotation

The denotation of a word is its literal, or dictionary, meaning. The connotation of a word is the meaning or association that the word has beyond its literal meaning. As you read, consider the positive or nega-tive feelings that the connotations of specific words evoke.

Reading Tip: List Words Use a chart to list words with positive and negative connotations in the poem.

Negative Connotationfatty

Positive Connotationawesome

Vocabulary

wallowing (wol� o in�) v. moving in a clumsy manner or with difficulty; p. 1204 After the heavy rain, we found ourselves wallowing through muddy ditches to get home.

fondle (fond� əl) v. to handle gently; p. 1204 The puppy squirmed as the children tried to pet and fondle it.

transfusion (trans fu� zhən) n. the act of pass-ing life-saving fluids from one to another; p. 1205 He received a blood transfusion during the operation.

transformed (trans f�orməd�) adj. changed in a dramatic way; p. 1205 The messy vacant lot had been transformed into a lush flower garden.

Vocabulary Tip: Context Clues Context clues for unfamiliar words are often found in words and sen-tences surrounding the word. Look for a synonym or an antonym nearby to provide a clue to the word.

ANNE SEXTON 1203



• understanding literary forms and terms, such as verse paragraph• examining connotation and denotation

• using context clues to understand unfamiliar words

OBJECTIVES

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It is in the small things we see it. The child’s first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone. When they called you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made you into an alien,1

you drank their acid and concealed it.

Later, if you faced the death of bombs and bullets you did not do it with a banner, you did it with only a hat to cover your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing, then his courage was not courage, it was love, love as simple as shaving soap.


Anne Sexton

Verse Paragraph How do the lines that follow develop this idea?

Literary Element

wallowing (wol o in) v. moving in a clumsy manner or with difficultyfondle (fond əl) v. to handle gently

Vocabulary

An Era of Protest According to the speaker, how does the person addressed in this verse paragraph face death?

Big Idea

1. Alien here means “someone who feels like an outsider.”

The Deluge, 1920. Winifred Knights. Oil on canvas, 59¹⁄³ x 71¹⁄³ in. Tate Gallery, London, UK.

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Later, if you have endured a great despair, then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire, picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock. Next, my kinsman,2 you powdered your sorrow, you gave it a back rub and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed.3

Later, when you face old age and its natural conclusion4

your courage will still be shown in the little ways, each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen, those you love will live in a fever of love, and you’ll bargain with the calendar and at the last moment when death opens the back door you’ll put on your carpet slippers and stride out.

Examining Denotation and Connotation Why do you think the poet chose to use the word powdered instead of some other phrase?

Reading Strategy

2. Kinsman is a relative. Here the speaker aligns herself with those who suffer the pain of loneliness and despair.

3. The poet may be making an illusion to the Phoenix, a mythical bird that burns itself to ashes and then rises anew from the ashes to live again.

4. The natural conclusion of life is death.

transfusion (trans fu zhən) n. the act of passing life-saving fluids from one to anothertransformed (trans forməd) adj. changed in a dramatic way

Vocabulary

ANNE SEXTON 1205

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AFTER YOU READ

Respond1. How do Sexton’s ideas of courage compare with

your own? Do you agree that it takes a certain amount of courage to experience life? Explain.

Recall and Interpret2. (a)According to the speaker, how does the child

respond when bullied or abused? (b)What does this suggest about the speaker’s attitude towards childhood?

3. (a)What image is used in the second verse paragraph to suggest that a great act of courage can be very simple and even common? (b)How does this image relate to the main idea of the first verse paragraph?

4. (a)How does the speaker let the audience know that she shares their suffering and pain? (b)What does this suggest to you about the speaker’s life?

Analyze and Evaluate5. (a)What images does Sexton use to describe how

people can recover from the emotional pain that life inflicts? (b)What role does Sexton see for other people in this process?

6. (a)What does the speaker envision in the last verse paragraph? (b)Why does Sexton, at the end of the poem, describe the encounter with death as she does?

Connect7. Big Idea An Era of Protest The 1970s saw the

emergence of the women’s movement and the cri-sis of the Vietnam War. How might this poem be viewed as an expression of discontent and an argument for change?


Literary Element Verse ParagraphPoets use verse paragraphs to organize a poem into thoughts in much the same way that writers use para-graphs to organize ideas in prose. For example, in “Courage,” Anne Sexton uses each verse paragraph to describe a different stage of a person’s life.

1. How does Sexton show chronological order both between and within the verse paragraphs?

2. How does the poet view courage at each stage in a person’s life?

Interdisciplinary Activity: ArtCreate a Mural As a class, plan and create a four-section mural based on the four verse paragraphs in “Courage.” Decide on the mediums you will use to cre-ate the mural. Then separate into groups and have each group choose a verse paragraph to discuss and design. Display your mural accompanied by a copy of the poem.


Reading Strategy Examining Connotation and Denotation

Poets choose words for their sound and for their meaning. The denotation of a word is its literal mean-ing. Words that have different connotations, or shades of meaning, have an added impact on the meaning and effect of the poem. In “Courage,” Sexton uses words that have very negative connotations, like “crybaby,” “alien,” and “acid.” Identify words that have negative connotations in the third verse paragraph. Explain the connotation of each.

Vocabulary PracticePractice with Context Clues For each of the fol-lowing vocabulary words, construct a sentence that uses context clues to give the meaning of the word.

1. wallowing

2. fondle

3. transfusion

4. transformed Web Activities For eFlashcards,

Selection Quick Checks, and other Web activities, go to www.glencoe.com.


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Documents

An Era of Protest€¦ · 14/06/1999 · — Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” PART 1 An Era of Protest Challenge America, 1964. Lois Mailou Jones. Photomechanical