Grade/ Unit Text Title Author Notes Page Numbers 9.1 Fahrenheit

Grade/
Unit
9.1
9.1
9.1
9.1
9.1
9.1
9.1
Text Title
Author
Notes
Fahrenheit 451
“Barter”
“Burning a Book”
“Learning to Read and Write”
Ray Bradbury
Sara Teasdale
William Stafford
Frederick Douglass
Not Included
“The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman
and Me”
Sherman Alexie
9.1
“The Great Imagination Heist”
“You Have Insulted Me: A Letter”
“The Country That Stopped Reading” from
The New York Times
Original Cover Art from Fahrenheit 451
9.1
“Reading Books is Fundamental”
9.1
9.1
9.1
“The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling
Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate
Our Brains”
“Video Games and the Future of
Storytelling”
Video: Book Burning
9.1
9.2
9.2
9.2
9.2
9.2
9.2
6
7–8
David Toscana
9 – 10
Joseph Mugnaini
Charles M. Blow (The
New York Times)
17 – 18
You Tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHzM1gXaiVo
Homer (Robert Fagles’
The Odyssey
Translation)
”Siren Song”
Margaret Atwood
“An Ancient Gesture”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
“A Worn Path”
Eudora Welty
“Ulysses”
Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Ithaka”
Constantine Cavafy
No Man’s Land: One Man’s Odyssey
Through The Odyssey (Excerpt)
Scott Huler
9.2
“The Truth About Being a Hero”
9.2
9.2
“Back from War, but Not Really Home”
The Iliad (Excerpt)
9.3
11 – 12
Salman Rushdie (Big
Think)
9.2
9.3
--
13 – 16
Naguib Mahfouz
9.3
9.3
Not Included
Leo Widrich
“Half a Day”
9.2
--
Reynolds Price
Kurt Vonnegut
9.2
9.2
Not Included
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Page
Numbers
-4
5
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Karl Marlantes (The Wall
Street Journal)
Caroline Alexander
Homer
Additional
Resource
--
Not Included
--
Not Included
Not Included
Link Does Not
Work
654 pages
Additional
The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell
Resource
http://billmoyers.com/spotlight/download-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-audio/
Additional
A Long and Difficult Journey – Crash Course
0:00 – 3:36
Resource
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4jk5kavy4
Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
Not Included
“A Poison Tree”
William Blake
“The Raven”
Edgar Allan Poe
Consider “Annabelle Lee” as a substitute
Metamorphoses, “The Story of Pyramus
Ovid
and Thisbe”
19
-20 – 25
26 – 27
--28 – 34
35 – 39
40 – 41
---
--42
43 - 45
46 - 49
Grade/
Unit
Text Title
Author
9.3
“Teenage Brains are Malleable and
Vulnerable, Researchers Say”
Jon Hamilton (NPR)
9.3
“Teenage Brains”
9.3
“The Teen Brain: Still Under Construction”
9.3
9.3
9.3
9.3
9.3
9.3
9.3
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.4
“Understanding the Mysterious Teenage
Brain”
“On Revenge”
“Did Shakespeare Really Write His Play? A
Few Theories Examined”
Notes
50
David Dobbs (National
Geographic)
National Institute of
Mental Health
Talk of the Nation (NPR)
Sir Francis Bacon
Paul Hechinger
BBC America
Crash Course
“Of Pentameter and Bear Baiting”
7:50 - End
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14kz-C7GryY
Clips (including Act III, Scene iii) from
Baz Luhrmann and Frank
Romeo + Juliet and Romeo and Juliet
Zefirelli
Where’s Romeo? (c. 1912) (Act III, Scene iii)
William Hatherell
The Reconciliation of the Montagues and
Capulets over the Dead Bodies of Romeo
Frederic Lord Leighton
and Juliet, 1853-55
“Hope, Despair and Memory”
Elie Wiesel
“The Lottery”
Shirley Jackson
Antigone
Sophocles
“Gettysburg Address”
Abraham Lincoln
“The Gettysburg Address – The Hay Draft”
Abraham Lincoln
“Chapter 5: Loving Your Enemies,” from
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Strength to Love
Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson
“I Have a Dream” (Text)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Internment”
Juliet S. Kono
“Theme for English B”
Langston Hughes
51 – 57
58 – 61
Non-Print
-62 – 63
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64 – 70
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Non-Print
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71 – 74
75 – 81
-82
82
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Not Included
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Resource
Grave of the Fireflies
Page
Numbers
83 – 85
86 – 88
-89 – 90
--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0s0ctauXcU
9.4
9.4
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
Additional
Resource
Additional
Hiroshima No Pika
Toshi Maruki
Resource
Additional
Hiroshima
John Hershey
Resource
http://archive.org/stream/hiroshima035082mbp/hiroshima035082mbp_djvu.txt
“How Laughter Works”
Marshal Brain
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
Mark Twain
Not Included
County”
“The Waltz”
Dorothy Parker
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act III, Scene
William Shakespeare
1)
“Charles”
Shirley Jackson
“An Uncomfortable Bed”
Guy de Maupassant
Faithful Elephants
Yukio Tsuchiaya
2
---91 – 95
-96 – 98
99 – 106
107 – 110
111 – 112
Grade/
Unit
Text Title
9.5
9.5
“The Approximate Size of My Favorite
Tumor”
Funny in Farsi, “Leffingwell Elementary
School”
Roughing It, (Prefatory and Chapter 42)
“How to Build a Joke”
“What Makes Us Laugh and Why?”
“On Creativity: Serious vs. Solemn”
(Transcript)
“Who’s On First” (Transcript)
“The Ransom of Red Chief”
9.5
“Me Talk Pretty One Day”
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
Author
Notes
Page
Numbers
Sherman Alexie
113 – 121
Firoozeh Dumas
122 – 124
Mark Twain
Demetri Martin
Vicki Haddock
125 – 129
130
131 – 133
John Cleese
134
Abbott and Costello
O. Henry
David Sedaris
Esquire Magazine
135 – 139
140 – 146
3
Additional
Resource
147 - 149
Barter
By Sara Teasdale
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that start the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
But it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
4
"Burning a Book,"
by William Stafford
Protecting each other, right in the center
a few pages glow a long time.
The cover goes first, then outer leaves
curling away, then spine and a scattering.
Truth, brittle and faint, burns easily,
its fire as hot as the fire lies make--flame doesn't care. You can usually find
a few charred words in the ashes.
And some books ought to burn, trying
for character
but just faking it. More disturbing
than book ashes are whole libraries that
no one
got around to writing----desolate
towns, miles of unthought in cities,
and the terrorized countryside where
wild dogs
own anything that moves. If a book
isn't written, no one needs to burn it---ignorance can dance in the absence of fire.
So I've burned books. And there are many
I haven't even written, and nobody has.
5
The Great Imagination Heist
by Reynolds Price
The statistics are famous and unnerving. Most high-school graduates have spent more time watching
television than they’ve spent in school. That blight has been overtaking us for fifty years, but it’s only in the
past two decades that I’ve begun to notice its greatest damage to us–the death of personal imagination.
In all the millennia before humans began to read, our imaginations were formed from first-hand
experiences of the wide external world and especially from the endless flow of stories passed down in
cultures founded on face-to-face narrative conversation. Most of those cultures were succeeded by
widespread literacy; and the ensuing torrent of printed information, recordings, and films grew large in
making our individual imaginations.
Among the blessings of my past, I’m especially grateful for that fact that I was twenty years old before my
parents brought television into our home. Till then, I’d only glimpsed it in store windows and had never
missed its brand of time-killing. Like millions in my generation, I was hardly unique in having spent
hundreds of childhood hours reading a mountain of books and seeing one or two movies in a public theatre
each week. Like our ancient ancestors, too, I had the big gift of a family who were steady sources of
gripping and delightful stories told at every encounter.
I, and my lucky contemporaries then, had our imaginations fed by an external world, yet a world of nuance
and suggestion that was intimately related to our early backgrounds of family and friends. That feeding left
us free to remake those stories in accordance with our growing secret needs and natures. Only the movies
offered us images and plots that tried to hypnotize us–to channel our fantasies in one direction only–but
two to four hours of movies per week were hardly tyrannical.
To say that is not to claim that people who matured before the triumph of TV possessed imaginations that
were inevitably free, rich, and healthy. It is to claim that an alarming number of younger Americans have
had the early shoots of a personal fantasy life blighted by a dictatorial daylong TV exposure. And not merely
blighted–many young Americans have had their native fantasy life removed and replaced by the
imaginations of the producers of American television and video games.
My gauge for measuring this massive imagination heist has been my experience with college students in the
composition classes I’ve taught through four decades. When I remove the lenses of nostalgia, I won’t claim
that the quality of most undergraduate narrative prose in the 1950s was brilliant, but I’m convinced that
the imaginations of my present students have suffered badly. When you asked a student of the fifties to
write a story, he or she was likely to give you an account that involved personal feeling–a scene from
Grandmother’s funeral, the death of a pet, the rupture of a marriage, and often family happiness.
Ask the same of students now, and you’re likely to get a story that amounts to an airless synopsis of a
made-for-TV movie–a stereotypical situation of violence or outlandish adventure that races superficially
along, then resolves in emotionless triumph for the student’s favorite character. Instead of a human
narration, you get a commercially controlled and commercially intended product. Sit still; buy this. How bad
is that? Awful–for our public and private safety as well as for most of the arts.
What can we do about it? Short of destroying all television sets, computer screens and video games, I’d
suggest at least one countervailing therapy: good reading, vast quantities of active or passive reading–and
reading which is, in part, guided by a child’s caretakers. No other available resource has such a record of
benign influence on maturation. Give every child you cherish good books–human stories–at every
conceivable opportunity. If they fail to read them, offer bribes–or whatever other legal means–to help
them grow their own imaginations in the slow solitude and silence that makes for general sanity.
6
“You Have Insulted Me: A Letter”
By Kurt Vonnegut
In October of 1973, Bruce Severy — a 26-year-old English teacher at Drake High School, North Dakota —
decided to use Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, as a teaching aid in his classroom. The next
month, on November 7th, the head of the school board, Charles McCarthy, demanded that all 32 copies be
burned in the school's furnace as a result of its "obscene language." Other books soon met with the same
fate.
On the 16th of November, Kurt Vonnegut sent McCarthy the following letter. He didn't receive a reply.
---------------------------------------November 16, 1973
Dear Mr. McCarthy:
I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American
writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.
Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to
me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am
writing this letter to let you know how real I am.
I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting
news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell
because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages,
have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this
letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private
letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of
their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show
this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?
I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers,
too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I
am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with
tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of
them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have
earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much
trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of
Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be
commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools
than those of any other living American fiction writer.
If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they
are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more
7
responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because
people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our
most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children
much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our
right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our
community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in
an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even
your own children are entitled to call you that.
I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about
what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your
fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn
from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against
nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely
in your community, not merely your own.
If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you
exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten
lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books–books you
hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information,
in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.
Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.
Kurt Vonnegut
8
The Country That Stopped Reading
By DAVID TOSCANA
EARLIER this week, I spotted, among the job listings in the newspaper Reforma, an ad from a restaurant in
Mexico City looking to hire dishwashers. The requirement: a secondary school diploma.
Years ago, school was not for everyone. Classrooms were places for discipline, study. Teachers were
respected figures. Parents actually gave them permission to punish their children by slapping them or
tugging their ears. But at least in those days, schools aimed to offer a more dignified life.
Nowadays more children attend school than ever before, but they learn much less. They learn almost
nothing. The proportion of the Mexican population that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers,
there are more illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago. Even if baseline literacy, the
ability to read a street sign or news bulletin, is rising, the practice of reading an actual book is not. Once a
reasonably well-educated country, Mexico took the penultimate spot, out of 108 countries, in a Unesco
assessment of reading habits a few years ago.
One cannot help but ask the Mexican educational system, “How is it possible that I hand over a child for six
hours every day, five days a week, and you give me back someone who is basically illiterate?”
Despite recent gains in industrial development and increasing numbers of engineering graduates, Mexico is
floundering socially, politically and economically because so many of its citizens do not read. Upon taking
office in December, our new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, immediately announced a program to improve
education. This is typical. All presidents do this upon taking office.
The first step in his plan to improve education? Put the leader of the teachers’ union, Elba Esther Gordillo,
in jail — which he did last week. Ms. Gordillo, who has led the 1.5 million-member union for 23 years, is
suspected of embezzling about $200 million.
She ought to be behind bars, but education reform with a focus on teachers instead of students is nothing
new. For many years now, the job of the education secretary has been not to educate Mexicans but to deal
with the teachers and their labor issues. Nobody in Mexico organizes as many strikes as the teachers’
union. And, sadly, many teachers, who often buy or inherit their jobs, are lacking in education themselves.
During a strike in 2008 in Oaxaca, I remember walking through the temporary campground in search of a
teacher reading a book. Among tens of thousands, I found not one. I did find people listening to discodecibel music, watching television, playing cards or dominoes, vegetating. I saw some gossip magazines,
too.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised by the response when I spoke at a recent event for promoting reading
for an audience of 300 or so 14- and 15-year-olds. “Who likes to read?” I asked. Only one hand went up in
the auditorium. I picked out five of the ignorant majority and asked them to tell me why they didn’t like
reading. The result was predictable: they stuttered, grumbled, grew impatient. None was able to articulate
a sentence, express an idea.
Frustrated, I told the audience to just leave the auditorium and go look for a book to read. One of their
teachers walked up to me, very concerned. “We still have 40 minutes left,” he said. He asked the kids to sit
down again, and began to tell them a fable about a plant that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a flower or
a head of cabbage.
“Sir,” I whispered, “that story is for kindergartners.”
In 2002, President Vicente Fox began a national reading plan; he chose as a spokesman Jorge Campos, a
popular soccer player, ordered millions of books printed and built an immense library. Unfortunately,
9
teachers were not properly trained and children were not given time for reading in school. The plan focused
on the book instead of the reader. I have seen warehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of forgotten
books, intended for schools and libraries, simply waiting for the dust and humidity to render them garbage.
A few years back, I spoke with the education secretary of my home state, Nuevo León, about reading in
schools. He looked at me, not understanding what I wanted. “In school, children are taught to read,” he
said. “Yes,” I replied, “but they don’t read.” I explained the difference between knowing how to read and
actually reading, between deciphering street signs and accessing the literary canon. He wondered what the
point of the students’ reading “Don Quixote” was. He said we needed to teach them to read the
newspaper.
When my daughter was 15, her literature teacher banished all fiction from her classroom. “We’re going to
read history and biology textbooks,” she said, “because that way you’ll read and learn at the same time.” In
our schools, children are being taught what is easy to teach rather than what they need to learn. It is for
this reason that in Mexico — and many other countries — the humanities have been pushed aside.
We have turned schools into factories that churn out employees. With no intellectual challenges, students
can advance from one level to the next as long as they attend class and surrender to their teachers. In this
light it is natural that in secondary school we are training chauffeurs, waiters and dishwashers.
This is not just about better funding. Mexico spends more than 5 percent of its gross domestic product on
education — about the same percentage as the United States. And it’s not about pedagogical theories and
new techniques that look for shortcuts. The educational machine does not need fine-tuning; it needs a
complete change of direction. It needs to make students read, read and read.
But perhaps the Mexican government is not ready for its people to be truly educated. We know that books
give people ambitions, expectations, a sense of dignity. If tomorrow we were to wake up as educated as the
Finnish people, the streets would be filled with indignant citizens and our frightened government would be
asking itself where these people got more than a dishwasher’s training.
David Toscana is the author of the novel “The Last Reader.” This essay was translated by Kristina Cordero
from the Spanish.
10
Reading Books Is Fundamental
JAN. 22, 2014
Charles M. Blow
The first thing I can remember buying for myself, aside from candy, of course, was not a toy. It was a book.
It was a religious picture book about Job from the Bible, bought at Kmart.
It was on one of the rare occasions when my mother had enough money to give my brothers and me each a
few dollars so that we could buy whatever we wanted.
We all made a beeline for the toy aisle, but that path led through the section of greeting cards and books. As I
raced past the children’s books, they stopped me. Books to me were things most special. Magical. Ideas
eternalized.
Books were the things my brothers brought home from school before I was old enough to attend, the things
that engrossed them late into the night as they did their homework. They were the things my mother brought
home from her evening classes, which she attended after work, to earn her degree and teaching certificate.
Books, to me, were powerful and transformational.
I read about girls who were brave, girls who sleuthed, Girls of the Limberlost… horses that raced like the
wind, Jane and Michael Banks, Little Women and Little Princes and Swiss Families, red ferns and yellow
dogs, Borrowers, Hobbits and Cheshire cats.
So there, in the greeting card section of the store, I flipped through children’s books until I found the one that
I wanted, the one about Job. I thought the book fascinating in part because it was a tale of hardship, to which
I could closely relate, and in part because it contained the first drawing I’d even seen of God, who in those
pages was a white man with a white beard and a long robe that looked like one of my mother’s nightgowns.
I picked up the book, held it close to my chest and walked proudly to the checkout. I never made it to the toy
aisle.
That was the beginning of a lifelong journey in which books would shape and change me, making me who I
was to become.
We couldn’t afford many books. We had a small collection. They were kept on a homemade, rough-hewn
bookcase about three feet tall with three shelves. One shelf held the encyclopedia, a gift from our uncle,
books that provided my brothers and me a chance to see the world without leaving home.
The other shelves held a hodgepodge of books, most of which were giveaways my mother picked when
school librarians thinned their collections at the end of the year. I read what we had and cherished the days
that our class at school was allowed to go to the library — a space I approached the way most people
approach religious buildings — and the days when the bookmobile came to our school from the regional
library.
It is no exaggeration to say that those books saved me: from a life of poverty, stress, depression and isolation.
James Baldwin, one of the authors who most spoke to my spirit, once put it this way:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It
was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me
with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
Hello, Thank you for sharing your personal experience! As a reading specialist and a woman who loves to
read, I deeply appreciate that you...
What a lovely article. Going to the library was a favorite childhood activity. To this day I enjoy going to our
library to collect books,...
11
When I was little, we got most of our books at the library. My own children got most of their books at the
library. The Phoenix public...
That is the inimitable power of literature, to give context and meaning to the trials and triumphs of living.
That is why it was particularly distressing that The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann pointed out Tuesday that:
“The Pew Research Center reported last week that nearly a quarter of American adults had not read a single
book in the past year. As in, they hadn’t cracked a paperback, fired up a Kindle, or even hit play on an audio
book while in the car. The number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978.”
The details of the Pew report are quite interesting and somewhat counterintuitive. Among American adults,
women were more likely to have read at least one book in the last 12 months than men. Blacks were more
likely to have read a book than whites or Hispanics. People aged 18-29 were more likely to have read a book
than those in any other age group. And there was little difference in readership among urban, suburban and
rural population.
I understand that we are now inundated with information, and people’s reading habits have become
fragmented to some degree by bite-size nuggets of text messages and social media, and that takes up much of
the time that could otherwise be devoted to long-form reading. I get it. And I don’t take a troglodytic view of
social media. I participate and enjoy it.
But reading texts is not the same as reading a text.
There is no intellectual equivalent to allowing oneself the time and space to get lost in another person’s mind,
because in so doing we find ourselves.
Take it from me, the little boy walking to the Kmart checkout with the picture book pressed to his chest.
12
“The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains”
By Leo Widrich
A good story can make or break a presentation, article, or conversation. But why is that? When Buffer cofounder Leo Widrich started to market his product through stories instead of benefits and bullet points, signups went through the roof. Here he shares the science of why storytelling is so uniquely powerful.
In 1748, the British politician and aristocrat John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, spent a lot of his free
time playing cards. He greatly enjoyed eating a snack while still keeping one hand free for the cards. So he
came up with the idea to eat beef between slices of toast, which would allow him to finally eat and play
cards at the same time. Eating his newly invented "sandwich," the name for two slices of bread with meat
in between, became one of the most popular meal inventions in the western world.
What's interesting about this is that you are very likely to never forget the story of who invented the
sandwich ever again. Or at least, much less likely to do so, if it would have been presented to us in bullet
points or other purely information-based form.
For over 27,000 years, since the first cave paintings were discovered, telling stories has been one of our
most fundamental communication methods.
Recently a good friend of mine gave me an introduction to the power of storytelling, and I wanted to learn
more.
Here is the science around storytelling and how we can use it to make better decisions every day:
Our brain on stories: How our brains become more active when we tell stories
We all enjoy a good story, whether it's a novel, a movie, or simply something one of our friends is
explaining to us. But why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events?
It's in fact quite simple. If we listen to a PowerPoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part in
the brain gets activated. Scientists call this Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Overall, it hits our language
processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that's it, nothing else happens.
When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in
our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of
the story are too.
If someone tells us about how delicious certain foods were, our sensory cortex lights up. If it's about
motion, our motor cortex gets active:
"Metaphors like "The singer had a velvet voice" and "He had leathery hands" roused the sensory cortex. […]
Then, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like "John grasped the object" and
13
"Pablo kicked the ball." The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body's
movements."
A story can put your whole brain to work. And yet, it gets better:
When we tell stories to others that have really helped us shape our thinking and way of life, we can have
the same effect on them too. The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it can synchronize,
says Uri Hasson from Princeton:
"When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized. When
she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up,
so did theirs. By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the
listeners' brains."
Anything you've experienced, you can get others to experience the same. Or at least, get their brain areas
that you've activated that way, active too:
Evolution has wired our brains for storytelling—how to make use of it
Now all this is interesting. We know that we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. The still
unanswered question is: Why is that? Why does the format of a story, where events unfold one after the
other, have such a profound impact on our learning?
The simple answer is this: We are wired that way. A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a
connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think. We think in narratives all day long, no
matter if it is about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. We make up
14
(short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation. In fact, Jeremy Hsu found [that] "personal
stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations."
Now, whenever we hear a story, we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences. That's why
metaphors work so well with us. While we are busy searching for a similar experience in our brains, we
activate a part called insula, which helps us relate to that same experience of pain, joy, or disgust.
The following graphic probably describes it best:
In a great experiment, John Bargh at Yale found the following:
"Volunteers would meet one of the experimenters, believing that they would be starting the experiment
shortly. In reality, the experiment began when the experimenter, seemingly struggling with an armful of
folders, asks the volunteer to briefly hold their coffee. As the key experimental manipulation, the coffee was
either hot or iced. Subjects then read a description of some individual, and those who had held the warmer
cup tended to rate the individual as having a warmer personality, with no change in ratings of other
attributes."
We link up metaphors and literal happenings automatically. Everything in our brain is looking for the cause
and effect relationship of something we've previously experienced.
Let's dig into some hands on tips to make use of it:
Exchange giving suggestions for telling stories
Do you know the feeling when a good friend tells you a story and then two weeks later, you mention the
same story to him, as if it was your idea? This is totally normal and at the same time, one of the most
powerful ways to get people on board with your ideas and thoughts. According to Uri Hasson from
Princeton, a story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their
own idea and experience.
15
The next time you struggle with getting people on board with your projects and ideas, simply tell them a
story, where the outcome is that doing what you had in mind is the best thing to do. According to Princeton
researcher Hasson, storytelling is the only way to plant ideas into other people's minds.
Write more persuasively—bring in stories from yourself or an expert
This is something that took me a long time to understand. If you start out writing, it's only natural to think
"I don't have a lot of experience with this, how can I make my post believable if I use personal stories?" The
best way to get around this is by simply exchanging stories with those of experts. When this blog used to be
a social media blog, I would ask for quotes from the top folks in the industry or simply find great passages
they had written online. It's a great way to add credibility and at the same time, tell a story.
The simple story is more successful than the complicated one
When we think of stories, it is often easy to convince ourselves that they have to be complex and detailed
to be interesting. The truth is however, that the simpler a story, the more likely it will stick. Using simple
language as well as low complexity is the best way to activate the brain regions that make us truly relate to
the happenings of a story. This is a similar reason why multitasking is so hard for us. Try for example to
reduce the number of adjectives or complicated nouns in a presentation or article and exchange them
with more simple, yet heartfelt language.
Quick last fact: Our brain learns to ignore certain overused words and phrases that used to make stories
awesome. Scientists, in the midst of researching the topic of storytelling have also discovered, that certain
words and phrases have lost all storytelling power:
"Some scientists have contended that figures of speech like "a rough day" are so familiar that they are
treated simply as words and no more."
This means, that the frontal cortex—the area of your brain responsible to experience emotions—can't be
activated with these phrases. It's something that might be worth remembering when crafting your next
story.
Leo Widrich is the co-founder of Buffer, a smarter way to share on Twitter and Facebook. Leo writes more
posts on efficiency and customer happiness over on the Buffer blog. Hit him up on Twitter @LeoWid
anytime; he is a super nice guy.
16
“Video Games and the Future of Storytelling”
By Salman Rushdie (Big Think)
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947, just months before the Partition of British India. His father
Ahmed was a businessman and his mother Negin was a teacher. He grew up loving the escape literature
and film offered, and he wrote his first story when he was ten years old. He encountered some of his
earliest influences at a young age, including The Wizard of Oz, Superman comics, and Bollywood movies.
He left India at the age of fourteen to attend Rugby School in England, while his family left India for
Pakistan. Of his time at Rugby, he says: “I had three things wrong, I was foreign, I was clever and I was bad
at games, and it seemed to me that I could have made any two of those mistakes and I’d have been alright.
. . . If I’d been any two of those things I’d have got away with it — three was unforgivable.” He then studied
history at King’s College, Cambridge, and after graduation, he earned a living working in advertising while
writing his first novel Grimus.
The positive reception his second novel, Midnight’s Children, received allowed Rushdie to become a fulltime writer, crafting vivid novels about life in and out of modern India and Pakistan. The success
of Midnight’s Children made Rushdie the voice of Indians writing in England, promoting fellow writers and
editing the volume Indian Writing in English.
With the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, Rushdie became the target of a fatwa, or a religious
edict, supported by Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Since the fatwa called for his death, Rushdie
went into hiding in February 1989. Many bookstores in the U.K. and the United States received threats
regarding his book. The Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was stabbed to death, and both the
Italian translator and the Norwegian publisher were attacked but survived. Protected by the Special Branch,
Rushdie moved from one secure house to another, communicating this his friends and family via secure
telephone line and fax. In 1999, the fatwa was finally lifted, and Rushdie was able to appear in public again.
In 2005, Salman Rushdie joined the faculty of Emory University as Distinguished Writer in Residence. He
also placed his archive at Emory’s Woodruff Library, which opened to the public in Spring 2010. His
memoir Joseph Anton: A Memoir came out in 2012.
-----------------------------------------------------------Question: How are video games influencing linear forms of storytelling?
Salman Rushdie: That's a very interesting question and I think the answer is we don’t yet know. But I do
think that I mean for instance the game that my 13 year-old boy Milan and his friends all seem to be playing
right now is this wild west game called "Red Dead Redemption" and one of the things looking over… I mean
I don’t even pretend to understand what is going on really, but one of the things that is interesting about it
to me is the much looser structure of the game and the much greater agency that the player has to choose
how he will explore and inhabit the world that is provided for you. He doesn’t... in fact, doesn’t really have
to follow the main narrative line of the game at all for long periods of time. There is all kinds of excursions
and digressions that you can choose to go on and find many stories to participate in instead of the big story,
17
the macro story. I think that really interests me as a storyteller because I've always thought that one of the
things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from
beginning to end—to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way,
choose between.
I've always thought of the Borges story, “The Garden of Forking Paths” as kind of model of this, that... “The
Garden of Forking Paths” is a story, is a book whose author has gone mad because what he has tried to do
is to offer every possible variation of every moment. So, boy meets girl. They fall in love/they don’t fall in
love. That is the first fork and he wants to tell both those stories and then every variation of every moment
down both those lines and of course it’s like nuclear fission. The possibilities explode into millions and
billions of possibilities and it’s impossible to write that book. But it seems to me that in some ways the
Internet is the garden of forking paths where you can have myriad variant possibilities offered and at the
same level of authority, if you like. So I mean I think that's one of the ways in which storytelling could move.
And these games, these more free-form games in which the player can make choices about what the game
is going to be, become a kind of gaming equivalent of that narrative possibility.
Question: Do you worry that video games are eroding people’s ability to read novels?
Salman Rushdie: I think there are legitimate concerns there and I worry also that there is a dumbing down
factor. These games... I mean they sometimes require lateral thinking. They sometimes require quite
skilled hand-eye coordination and so on. But they’re not in any sense intelligent in the way that you want
your children to develop intelligence to make the mind not just supple, but actually informed. And of
course if people spend too much time on this stuff then it militates against that.
One of the things about "Luka and the Fire of Life," which is basically pro... Rashid Luka’s father is basically
fond of the video game and defends video games to Luka’s mother, who is much more skeptical of their
value. But there is a bit of the book which also suggests that the problem may be that this way of inhabiting
the imagination may do something harmful to our relationship to story, to the way in which human beings
have always needed and responded to the art of the story and that is something to be worried about,
because I think that there is something about storytelling that is very intrinsic to who we are as human
beings. So one of the characters in the book refers to man as the storytelling animal—and so we are. We
are the only creatures on the earth who do this, so and we may even I think be hard-wired to do it in the
way that we have a language instinct. We may actually have a story instinct and so there is a legitimate
concern about a new form which may erode our attachment to the story. What will that do to us as human
beings?
Recorded November 12, 2010
Interviewed by Max Miller
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler
18
Siren Song
By Margaret Atwood
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in the squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
And if I do, will you get me
Out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.
19
A Worn Path
by Eudora Welty
.....
It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro
woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her name was Phoenix
Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from
side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.
She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in
front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping
of a solitary little bird.
She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar
sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her
shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age.
Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood
in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were
illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the
frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper.
Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, 'Out of my way, all you foxes, owls,
beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals! ... Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites ... Keep
the big wild hogs out of my path. Don't let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way.'
Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to
rouse up any hiding things.
On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at,
up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the hollow was the mourning
dove—it was not too late for him.
The path ran up a hill. 'Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far,' she said, in the voice of
argument old people keep to use with themselves. 'Something always take a hold of me on this hill—pleads
I should stay.'
After she got to the top, she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come. 'Up
through pines,' she said at length. 'Now down through oaks.'
Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. But before she got to the bottom of the hill a
bush caught her dress.
Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free
in one place they were caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. 'I in the thorny
bush,' she said. 'Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass—no, sir. Old eyes
thought you was a pretty little green bush.'
Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for her cane.
'Sun so high!' she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. 'The time
getting all gone here.'
At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek.
20
'Now comes the trial,' said Phoenix. Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes.
Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her like a festival figure in some parade, she began to
march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.
'I wasn't as old as I thought,' she said.
But she sat down to rest. She spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands over her
knees. Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to close her eyes, and when
a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to him. 'That would be
acceptable,' she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air.
So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl,
spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But she talked loudly to
herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm
or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was.
At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead trees, like black men with
one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There sat a buzzard.
'Who you watching?'
In the furrow she made her way along.
'Glad this not the season for bulls,' she said, looking sideways, 'and the good Lord made his snakes to curl
up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don't see no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it
come once. It took a while to get by him, back in the summer.'
She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook, and was
taller than her head. 'Through the maze now,' she said, for there was no path.
Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her.
At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened,
and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost.
'Ghost,' she said sharply, 'who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by.'
But there was no answer, only the ragged dancing in the wind.
She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat and inside that an
emptiness, cold as ice.
'You scarecrow,' she said. Her face lighted. 'I ought to be shut up for good,' she said with laughter. 'My
senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow,' she said, 'while I dancing
with you.'
She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawn down shook her head once or twice in a little
strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts.
Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the whispering field. At last she
came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts. The quail were walking
around like pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen.
'Walk pretty,' she said. 'This the easy place. This the easy going.' She followed the track, swaying through
the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from
weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. 'I walking
in their sleep,' she said, nodding her head vigorously.
21
In a ravine she went where a spring was silently flowing through a hollow log. Old Phoenix bent and drank.
'Sweet gum makes the water sweet,' she said, and drank more. 'Nobody know who made this well, for it
was here when I was born.'
The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from every limb. 'Sleep on,
alligators, and blow your bubbles.' Then the cypress trees went into the road. Deep, deep it went down
between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live oaks met, and it was as dark as a cave.
A big black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not
ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a
little puff of milkweed.
Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing
reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. 'Old woman,' she said to
herself, 'that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and now there he sitting on his fine tail,
smiling at you.'
A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a chain.
'Well, Granny!' he laughed. 'What are you doing there?'
'Lying on my back like a June bug waiting to be turned over, mister,' she said, reaching up her hand.
He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. 'Anything broken, Granny?'
'No sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough,' said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. 'I thank you for
your trouble.'
'Where do you live, Granny?' he asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other.
'Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can't even see it from here.'
'On your way home?'
'No sir, I going to town.'
'Why, that's too far! That's as far as I walk when I come out myself, and I get something for my trouble.' He
patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung down a little closed claw. It was one of the bobwhites,
with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was dead. 'Now you go on home, Granny!'
'I bound to go to town, mister,' said Phoenix. 'The time come around.'
He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. 'I know you old colored people! Wouldn't miss going to
town to see Santa Claus!'
But something held Old Phoenix very still. The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different
radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of the man's pocket
onto the ground.
'How old are you, Granny?' he was saying.
'There is no telling, mister,' she said, 'no telling.'
Then she gave a little cry and clapped her hands and said, 'Git on away from here, dog! Look! Look at that
dog!' She laughed as if in admiration. 'He ain't scared of nobody. He a big black dog.' She whispered, 'Sic
him!'
'Watch me get rid of that cur,' said the man. 'Sic him, Pete! Sic him!'
22
Phoenix heard the dogs fighting, and heard the man running and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot.
But she was slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over
her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. The yellow palm
of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the
piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen. Then
she slowly straightened up; she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips
moved. 'God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing.'
The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. 'Well, I scared him off that time,' he said, and
then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix.
She stood straight and faced him.
'Doesn't the gun scare you?' he said, still pointing it.
'No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done,' she said, holding utterly
still.
He smiled, and shouldered the gun. 'Well, Granny,' he said, 'you must be a hundred years old, and scared of
nothing. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice and stay home, and
nothing will happen to you.'
'I bound to go on my way, mister,' said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the red rag. Then they went in
different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the hill.
She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. Then she smelled wood
smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps. Dozens of little
black children whirled around her. There ahead was Natchez shining. Bells were ringing. She walked on.
In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung and crisscrossed
everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted
her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her.
She paused quietly on the sidewalk, where people were passing by. A lady came along in the crowd,
carrying an armful of red, green, and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off perfume like the red roses in hot
summer, and Phoenix stopped her.
'Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?' She held up her foot.
'What do you want, Grandma?'
'See my shoe,' said Phoenix. 'Do all right for out in the country, but wouldn't look right to go in a big
building.'
'Stand still then, Grandma,' said the lady. She put her packages down on the sidewalk beside her and laced
and tied both shoes tightly.
'Can't lace 'em with a cane,' said Phoenix. 'Thank you, missy. I doesn't mind asking a nice lady to tie up my
shoe, when I gets out on the street.'
Moving slowly and from side to side, she went into the big building, and into a tower of steps, where she
walked up and around and around until her feet knew to stop.
She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the
gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her head.
'Here I be,' she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body.
23
'A charity case, I suppose,' said an attendant who sat at the desk before her.
But Phoenix only looked above her head. There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a
bright net.
'Speak up, Grandma,' the woman said. 'What's your name? We must have your history, you know. Have you
been here before? What seems to be the trouble with you?'
Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were bothering her.
'Are you deaf?' cried the attendant.
But then the nurse came in.
'Oh, that's just old Aunt Phoenix,' she said. 'She doesn't come for herself—she has a little grandson. She
makes these trips just as regular as clockwork. She lives away back off the Old Natchez Trace.' She bent
down. 'Well, Aunt Phoenix, why don't you just take a seat? We won't keep you standing after your long
trip.' She pointed.
The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair.
'Now, how is the boy?' asked the nurse.
Old Phoenix did not speak.
'I said, how is the boy?'
But Phoenix only waited and stared straight ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity.
'Is his throat any better?' asked the nurse. 'Aunt Phoenix, don't you hear me? Is your grandson's throat any
better since the last time you came for the medicine?'
With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if she were in
armor.
'You mustn't take up our time this way, Aunt Phoenix,' the nurse said. 'Tell us quickly about your grandson,
and get it over. He isn't dead, is he?'
At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke.
'My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip.'
'Forgot?' The nurse frowned. 'After you came so far?'
Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. 'I
never did go to school—I was too old at the Surrender,' she said in a soft voice. 'I'm an old woman without
an education. It was my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the
coming.'
'Throat never heals, does it?' said the nurse, speaking in a loud, sure voice to Old Phoenix. By now she had a
card with something written on it, a little list. 'Yes. Swallowed lye. When was it?—January—two—three
years ago—'
Phoenix spoke unasked now. 'No, missy, he not dead, he just the same. Every little while his throat begin to
close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not get his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time
come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing-medicine.'
'All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it,' said the nurse. 'But it's an
obstinate case.'
24
'My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,' Phoenix went on. 'We
is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don't seem to put him back at all. He got a sweet look. He
going to last. He wear a little patch-quilt and peep out, holding his mouth open like a little bird. I
remembers so plain now. I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell him from
all the others in creation.'
'All right.' The nurse was trying to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of medicine. 'Charity,' she said,
making a check mark in a book.
Old Phoenix held the bottle close to her eyes, and then carefully put it into her pocket.
'I thank you,' she said.
'It's Christmas time, Grandma,' said the attendant. 'Could I give you a few pennies out of my purse?'
'Five pennies is a nickel,' said Phoenix stiffly.
'Here's a nickel,' said the attendant.
Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. She received the nickel and then fished the other nickel out
of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm closely, with her head on one side.
Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor. 'This is what come to me to do,' she said. 'I going to the
store and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. He going to find it hard to believe
there such a thing in the world. I'll march myself back where he waiting, holding it straight up in this hand.'
She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor's office. Then her
slow step began on the stairs, going down.
Copyright © 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. Reprinted with permission of Russell & Volkening, Inc. All
rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; February 1941; A Worn Path; Volume 167, No. 2; page 215-219.
25
ULYSSES
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all--And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle--Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
26
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me--That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
1842
27
No-Man’s Land: One Man’s Odyssey Through The Odyssey
by Scott Huler
EXCERPT
Introduction
A Long Story
Of that versatile man, O Muse, tell me the story, how he wandered both long and far after sacking the city
of holy Troy. Many were the towns he saw and many the men whose minds he knew, and many were the
woes his stout heart suffered at sea as he fought to return alive with living comrades. Them he could not
save, though much he longed to, for through their own thoughtless greed they died - blind fools who
slaughtered the Sun's own cattle, Hyperion's herd, for food, and so by him were kept from returning. Of all
these things, O goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning wherever you wish, tell even us.
Odyssey, Book I.
THINGS GO WRONG, PLANS FAIL, fate makes sport of our best intentions. We say one thing and do another;
nothing turns out as we expect. It's an unpredictable life, and we comfort ourselves by blaming greater
powers: "If you want to make God laugh," we say, "tell him your plans," and most modern westerners can
be grateful to at least have only the one God whose laughter concerns us. Think, though, of the ancient
Greeks. The Greeks had an entire pantheon of gods; the Greeks had gods like we have siblings, cousins, inlaws - and just as busy, just as nosy, too. So the ancient Greeks knew their plans could elicit laughter - and
expect trouble - from not just one source but a dozen. That was the gods' favorite thing, interfering with
people's plans. Or more accurately, helping people interfere with their own.
It still is, I think. So not long ago, when I briefly took to making plans, I should have been listening for that
laughter. You could say I went looking for it. It began after all with a public promise - which the gods made
sure I broke, almost instantly. Afterwards came a headlong journey, filled with discovery, wonder, and
adventure, which seems like their kind of joke too - at least, they've been using it for a while. In the end, of
course, it's a long story. You can start almost anywhere.
So start with James Joyce.
ON JUNE 15, 2001, I swore, out loud and on the radio, that I would never, ever read Ulysses.
Joyce's Ulyssesis regularly crowned the most important novel of the twentieth century. Nearly eight
hundred pages long, filled with thousand-word stream-of-consciousness run-on sentences, classical
references, and asides in various languages, Ulysses(the Romanized name, of course, of the Greek hero
Odysseus) is considered the birth of modern literature. A modern retelling of the ten years of adventure
described in the Odyssey of Homer, Ulysses takes place all on one day - June 16, 1904, in Dublin.
Advertising salesman Leopold Bloom stands in for Odysseus, and the book's episodes have their origins in
Homer: there's a Cyclops episode and a Sirens episode and much more, all complex and modern and hard
to follow. Friends and experts had been pressing Ulysses on me for decades, but despite countless
frustrating attempts I had never been able to get very far in it.
Then came the early summer of 2001, which seemed to bring an Odyssey onslaught. The movie "O Brother
Where Art Thou?," the Coen brothers' free retelling of the Odysseystory, came out on DVD. Cold Mountain,
the Charles Frazier novel of a reluctant soldier making his adventurous way home from a horrific war, sat
on every night table and was in development as a film. When my oldest friend asked me to read something
at his wedding, I was almost unsurprised when another friend recommended "Ithaca," a lovely
reconsideration of the wanderings of Odysseus by poet Constantine Cavafy.
28
And, most especially, Bloomsday approached. Among its devotees Ulysses has become less a book than
something of a cult, and the feast day for that cult is June 16, Bloomsday. All over the world on that day
people read Ulysses aloud, celebrate it in drama and song, and above all, get drunk. In Dublin, Mecca for
Ulyssescultists, thousands of people gather to enact scenes from the book, engage in panel discussions
about the book's opacities, and actually retrace the steps of the book's characters. This outpouring of
obsession towards a book I found unreadable drove me mad. After all, I'm a writer - I'm a literary guy. And I
believe this obsession makes literary guys look like pseudointellectual nitwits. I wanted to distance myself
from those nitwits. So in June 2001 I read a brief essay on the radio announcing that after decades of
attempts I was officially declaring Joyce's book not worth the trouble: I was using that year's Bloomsday
celebration to forever renounce Ulysses. The book ends with Molly Bloom's forever-quoted benedictory,
"yes I said yes I will Yes." So on the day its adherents worshipfully followed the footsteps of its fictional
characters, I pledged to finally consign the book to my shelf unread, echoing its conclusion: "no I said no I
won't No."
I CAN'T SWEAR IT WAS THE WORK OF THE GODS, but I was a liar inside a month.
Someone who heard my essay convinced Matthew, a bookstore manager well-read in Joyciana, to lead a
Ulyssesreading group. And because I had written the scornful essay that got the group started, they invited
me to join. I had just publicly sworn never to read Ulyssesas long as I lived; doing exactly the opposite made
for a pleasing irony. I joined up. Matthew led us through complex schema and thickets of commentary, and
over four months alternated between coaxing and dragging us through Ulysses. Occasionally with
Matthew's help I was thrilled by a pun in two languages, a sly classical reference; more often I complained.
Challenged and interested, I still rarely doubted the good sense of my original inclination to give the book
up.
And for me, most important was that the further we moved along, the less Joyce commanded my attention.
Instead, I thought more and more about the Homeric tales behind it all. I grew interested in the Odyssey
itself.
I couldn't help thinking: What gives? Everywhere you turn, the Odyssey - and it's not like it's something
new. For 3000 years, we've been telling each other the same story. Whether it's Joyce's book or Tennyson's
poems, a symphony by Max Bruch or heavy metal by Symphony X, pictures by Matisse or Chagall, we're still
finding new ways to tell each other the episodes from that old story. I wondered why.
These are some of the best known episodes in the world: Odysseus defeats the Cyclops; Odysseus agonizes
over the terrible decision between Scylla and Charybdis; Odysseus escapes the Sirens, who lured unwary
sailors onto the rocks. I noticed, though, that I couldn't quite remember, for example, how the Sirens lured
those unwary sailors. In fact, I couldn't remember a lot. I knew Odysseus poked out the eye of the Cyclops,
but I couldn't say how that fit into the larger picture. Scylla and Charybdis was a hard choice, but between
what, and regarding why, I was in the dark. I hadn't read the Odyssey for years, but even so I seemed to
have forgotten a great deal.
My wife noticed my increasing interest in the story, and she one day saw at a flea market a little book with
a jacket all of blue: a simply drawn sea, and on it, alone, a tiny yellow boat. The Odyssey of Homer, in a 1960
translation by one Ennis Rees, in a nice handbook size. It found a place on my night table, and once our
reading group was done with Ulysses, I opened the Odyssey to reread it.
I COULDN'T REREAD IT - which leads to a more embarrassing reversal, though on a more intimate scale.
After not very many pages and some honest consideration, I had to acknowledge that the reason I
29
remembered so few specifics about the Odyssey was that I had never read it at all. Unfortunately, I had
been brashly claiming to have done so my entire adult life.
I remember the little red version of the book I got in ninth-grade English, and I remember a color lithograph
it contained of a bearded guy on a raft in a stormy sea. Seeing it on my reading list, my mother had assured
me: "If you can get past the language, it really is just the greatest adventure story." The story of Odysseus,
hero of the Trojan War, making his ten-year journey home from the Greek victory at Troy, the Odyssey, by
the blind poet Homer, was one of the epic poems that constitute the foundation of Western Civilization.
Shipwrecks, storms, monsters, witches, pretty girls, gods and goddesses, archery, treasure, swordfights - all
this awaited if I could "get past the language."
No chance. Homer's classical rhythms resisted me in adolescence as fiercely as Joyce's tortured syntax did
in adulthood. All I remember now from that English class is a movie we saw of part of the Odyssey, in which
a man wanders among stone walls, orating the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops. Odysseus and his men,
trapped in a cave by the giant Cyclops, get the Cyclops drunk and blind him, then slip past him by hanging
onto the bellies of his sheep as they exit the cave. Describing it, the actor brayed like John Gielgud: "My
raaam," he moaned as the Cyclops, "my faaavorite raaam," and as he stood there swaying my momentary
flicker of interest - a monster! A big stick in his eye! A daring escape! - vanished beneath the tide of wellmeaning dramatization meant to impress ninth-graders.
We cheated on quizzes and dawdled through class, wrote themes and moved on to whatever was next, and
that was my junior high school Odyssey experience. A color lithograph, a tiresome movie, a book I didn't
read. And though one collegiate summer I filled a hole in my education and read the Iliad, Homer's other
masterpiece, I never returned to the Odyssey. It was checked off that giant list of books you are supposed
to have read, and I never went back.
Which is too bad, because from somewhere, elements of the Odyssey definitely did become part of my life.
Its content creeps into our minds through back channels, like the symphonies we learn by snatches as
background music in Bugs Bunny cartoons: half-understood college lectures; popular references to the
danger of "siren songs" or being "between Scylla and Charybdis"; hints of the Odyssey in poetry and
popular song. The Odyssey is a classic - it's one of those books whose stories we all sort of know, from
somewhere, but in most cases don't really know from anywhere.
That vague understanding can be dangerous. I told people I had read the Odyssey. I deeply believed I had
read the Odyssey. I have specific memories, in post-college years, of pontificating about the admiration I
had developed for Odysseus; about Athena, the goddess of wisdom who is his special protector, and how
one might please her; about traveling, about home, about challenge.
Some of what I said actually made sense. For example, I compared Odysseus to other protagonists in Greek
myths and plays. At least one terrible thing happens to almost all of them: Agamemnon kills his own
daughter and is killed by his faithless wife; Oedipus kills his father, sleeps with his mother, pokes his eyes
out; Hercules goes mad and kills his own wife and children. Theseus causes his father's suicide when he
forgets to signal his own safety; Perseus kills his grandfather with a discus; Atreus invites his brother
Thyestes to dinner - and feeds Thyestes his own children. That's hardly the worst of it - consider Medea: To
help her lover Jason, Medea kills and dismembers her own brother and boils Jason's uncle alive; when Jason
then decides - can you blame him? - to marry someone else, Medea kills Jason's bride, Jason's father, and
her and Jason's own two children.
Odysseus on the other hand manages to win the decade-long Trojan War (the famous Trojan Horse is his
idea). Then, overcoming unimaginable difficulties on his way home, he eventually returns to find his only
son healthy and grown, his wife faithful and safe, his father overjoyed. According to at least one version of
events, Odysseus lives happily ever after.
30
That Cyclops episode, probably his most well-known adventure, represents my conception of him perfectly.
He can't match the giant bad guy physically, so he outwits him - he calls himself "No-man," so when the
fighting starts and the Cyclops shouts that "No-man is killing me," his neighbors figure he doesn't need their
help. The Cyclops, like most of Odysseus's enemies, ends up claiming he was cheated. Odysseus wins, but
not because he's biggest; he's just the sneakiest.
Baseball fans might compare Achilles, the vain, arrogant hero of the Iliad, with someone like Ted Williams:
undeniably great, but not necessarily good for the team or pleasant to be around; Agamemnon might be Ty
Cobb, vicious and dangerous but hard to beat; and Menelaus something like Mickey Mantle: great and
useful but something of a blowhard. Odysseus would be Pete Rose: the sneaky little bastard who pulls off
some kind of trick that you think is beneath contempt, but carries the day. The guy you call a liar and a
cheat - unless he's on your team. Then he's just a guy who does what it takes to win. I began to think - and
more than once said out loud - that a good way to live your life was to live it as much like Odysseus as
possible. I said it often enough that I began to consider it one of my life's principles.
Thus as we plowed through Ulysses I was embarrassed to notice that I didn't have more than a vague
notion of exactly how Odysseus had lived his life. And then, on my night table, that gift from my wife: The
Odyssey, and the chance to really read it. Leave it to your wife to make you finally find out whether you
really believe what you always say you believe.
IT'S ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE IN THE GODS. Sure, the Odyssey is still a little long, still a little dense,
and the epic poetic language does take some getting used to. Nonetheless I read it - on my own - and by
the time I finished I felt the book had sought me out, that my need for the Odyssey had manifested itself
and brought the book to me - "with the help of some god," as characters in Homer commonly say of
remarkable occurrences. I had ignored it in the ninth grade and in my twenties blindly claimed to adopt its
hero as my model. But when in my 40s I finally actually read it, the Odyssey turned out to be everything I
had ignorantly imagined it might be.
First, as my mother promised all those years ago, it's a great story. But there's a lot more, too: those
famous stories we all half-know turn out to constitute rather a small portion of the whole - about four
chapter-length books out of 24 total. And the remainder, the parts of the Odyssey nobody talks much about
- the wanderings of Odysseus's son, Telemachus; the struggles of Odysseus's clever wife, Penelope; the
challenges that await Odysseus when he finally returns home - have a resonance I never imagined. A funny
thing about the difference between 14 years old and 44: This time the Odyssey spoke to me. This time I got
the language. This time I couldn't let it go.
Episodes to which I had been referring for decades suddenly made sense - and stories whose fatuous
morals I thought I knew (Rely on your wits, not brute strength! Choose carefully among difficult
alternatives! Don't seek to know more than is good for you!) turned out to have unexpected depth and
complexity. Moreover, Odysseus spends a lot of time - a lot of time - in this book sleeping with goddesses.
This book got my interest. This was a book worth more than a simple reading. This was a book, at long last,
worth the return. I read it again, then again. I came to see the passage of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca as a
metaphor, a series of adventures in which Odysseus demonstrates what he needs to learn - or unlearn - to
live his life. The Odyssey became the book I carried around, dipping into in spare moments - while the car
got an oil change; in the waiting room for the eye doctor; for a few minutes before sleep. I had a handbook:
The oldest lessons in the world were still the lessons I needed to learn - and they were still waiting for me in
the Odyssey. During those post-college years when I claimed Odysseus as my role model, I had been right. I
hadn't known what I was talking about, but I had been right.
31
So Joyce's impossible Ulysses had done me a favor: Homer wrote down the Odyssey nearly 3000 years ago,
and we've been constantly retelling it ever since, but I had still managed to miss it. Only by squaring off
opposite Ulysses did I stumble my way back to the original, central story. It was the Odyssey, not Ulysses,
that had something for me.
STILL, I DID PILFER ONE IMPORTANT IDEA from the Ulysses community: pilgrimage. Like opera buffs or "Star
Wars" fans at a premiere, members of an entire subculture find in Ulyssesa binding element for their lives.
Its stories become central to them, known by heart and repeated, studied, appreciated. Ulysses serves as a
lodestone text to which they return time and again for understanding.
And Ulysses fans return to more than just their book. Driven by obsession, they return, year after year, to
Dublin itself, approaching Dublin as pilgrims, visiting its sites as shrines - going where Bloom went to see
what Bloom saw, to learn what Bloom learned. Visiting the sites of the stories in Ulysses brings those
stories home, gives them life and substance beyond the book. Through their travel these pilgrims thus go
beyond merely reading Ulysses - in this small way they live it, and by connecting it physically to their world
make it somehow even more their own.
Thousands of them do this every year.
Somewhere deep inside my brain, this started a train of thought. I wondered: Why don't I do the same? As I
read and reread the Odyssey, as I returned to certain passages over and over, gleaning more each time, the
Odyssey began to genuinely occupy the central metaphorical position in my life I had once claimed it did. So
I thought: Why shouldn't I visit my sacred sites as the Joyceans do theirs? Whom would I meet? What
would I find? Why don't I go to Troy, where Odysseus finished the Trojan War, and make my way to Ithaca,
the western Greek island Odysseus called home?
I wanted to go where Odysseus went, to learn what Odysseus learned.
THE MORE I THOUGHT ABOUT IT THE MORE SENSE IT MADE. For one thing, the timing was right. Odysseus
leaves for the Trojan War when he's a young father. He stays at Troy for a decade fighting, and after the
war spends another decade making his way home, arriving presumably in his mid-forties. That's when the
Odyssey is set - Odysseus tells the adventure stories largely in flashback. That is, at the time of the action of
the Odyssey, Odysseus is my age.
Since we were the same age, I found comparison natural. Here's Odysseus at around 44: He has a grown
son. He has won the greatest war of all time. Then, overcoming unimaginable perils, he has traveled not
only the known world but the unknown, outfoxing monsters and bedding goddesses, makng his way home
to defeat a palace full of murderous rivals, reestablishing command of his island kingdom. Not bad. Okay,
here's me: I had paid off my student loans. I had been employed significantly more than I had not. I had a
failed marriage, though prospects for the second one looked pretty good. I knew that pouring gas in the
carburetor will sometimes get a balky lawnmower to start. I had nursed 14 years out of a pickup truck. I can
hang a ceiling fan, build closet shelves, throw darts well enough to win a wall plaque. Interesting, but
looking around me I saw no kingdom; in the rearview mirror I saw no enraged monsters, vanquished by my
hand, screaming for vengeance; in memory, depressingly few goddesses demanded my sexual favors.
Of course, I blame circumstances; my lack of heroic stature is not entirely my fault. After all, I lack heroic
milieu. Despite war, global warming, terrorism, and a host of other troubles, for American suburbanites
challenge is generally lacking. A big adventure means going camping and not bringing the cell phone; when
we talk about challenge we mean life without cable, a broken air conditioner, going out to get an ink
cartridge and having to drive to two stores.
So you can't blame me for wondering: Is that all there is? I mean, worship youth all you want, remain
youthful through diet, exercise, surgery, prayer. But whatever you do, by the time you hit your mid-40s,
32
you're slowing down, and you've got to start approaching your life differently, shortening your batting
stroke. Looking in the mirror at that guy hitting Odysseus's age and heading for decline, I had to figure: It's
now or never. You want adventure? Time is getting short.
So perhaps my most powerful motive as I considered the Odyssey was simple: existential fear. I wasn't
ready to be done adventuring, so the idea of retracing the route Odysseus took quickly began to feel
inevitable: One last heroic, Joseph Campbell-style adventure to mark the passing of my adventuring years.
In fact, Odysseus returns home so exhausted, so sick of war, so weary of travel and excitement that he
hopes to never leave home again - a state of mind I couldn't imagine, but that I deeply envied. Wouldn't it
be grand to feel so complete, so finished? I aspired to even a tiny piece of Odysseus's weariness, his
gladness to be through with adventure, to be home at last. All I needed was a trip all over the known world
and beyond.
OR A JOURNEY AROUND THE MEDITERRANEAN might work. For one thing, after several peripatetic years,
my wife, June, and I had returned to our home and were just getting our lives organized; a big trip-sized
lacuna could still probably find its way into my schedule. For another, I was no stranger to long journeys. A
year abroad in college had taught me the rudiments of unscheduled backpack travel: creativity in sleeping
arrangements, reliance on street-vendor food, and a willingness to try and make myself understood in a
language unknown to me. Perhaps as a result, a lifetime of semi-planned travel - backpack, floppy hat,
hiking boots, and all - has ensued. At 44 and married, I had to figure that kind of travel, too, was unlikely to
remain part of my world much longer.
So one more trip sounded like a grand last hurrah. I was owning my middle age. Instead of chasing
secretaries or sports cars, I had found a better rite of passage. My old hero Odysseus and I would have a
season together, and after that - well, after that I'd worry about what came next. Moreover, a trip is always
a trip: You can choose where to begin, but you can't choose where, when, or how it will end and what you
will find on the way. That's probably the moral of the Odyssey- as any competent ninth-grader could tell
you - but as I pieced together my trip I failed to see it. Maybe I shouldn't have cheated on all those quizzes.
I sketched it out: For several months I'd haunt libraries, finding what I could about the route Odysseus took.
In a considered, organized fashion I'd contact classicists, archaeologists, translators. I'd learn a few words of
a few languages, make reservations. I'd load up on maps and Euros and then, prepared, I'd set out in the
wake of Odysseus. I had a plan.
ANOTHER PLAN - only this wasn't a mere claim about a book, this was an entire campaign, so you know
what comes next. In this case it took less than a week.
One morning I mulled things over, lying in a pile of laundry on our bed. For how many months should I
explore the libraries? People had been speculating on the route of Odysseus for millennia, with no
consensus; from the arguments and suggestions, how ought I to choose my destinations? What experts
might be able to help me find my way? What time of year ought I to travel the Mediterranean? How much
time ought I to spend? What to bring?
Lost in thought, I cogitated until I became aware of a presence in the doorway. June stood there, a small
smile on her lips. In her hand a pink plastic stick about the length of a thermometer, held in a towel. A
pregnancy test.
"What do you think?" my wife asked me.
"Do both of those stripes look pink to you?"
33
WE MADE A BUNCH OF DECISIONS QUICK. June had supported the trip from the start, and she had no
interest in saddling our unborn child with the blame for a change in plans: we never even considered
canceling the trip. In fact, impending fatherhood made the journey feel even more important. Still - you
can't plan for surprise, and nobody wanted me out wandering the planet when June had our baby. The rank
of calendar pages for my adventure, stretching gracefully into the limitless future, suddenly accordianed
down. I could still retrace Odysseus's adventures of twenty years.
I just had six months to do it.
Reprinted from NO-MAN'S LANDS: One Man's Odyssey Through The Odyssey, copyright © 2008 by Scott
Huler. Published by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.
34
The Truth About Being a Hero
By Karl Marlantes
August 20, 2011
In 1968, at age 23, Karl Marlantes shipped off to Vietnam as a second lieutenant in charge of 40 Marines—
an experience he later drew on for his novel "Matterhorn." In this excerpt from his forthcoming memoir,
"What It Is Like to Go to War," he reflects on the motives and transcendent moments of heroism.
We all want to be special, to stand out; there's nothing wrong with this. The irony is that every human
being is special to start with, because we're unique to start with. But we then go through some sort of boot
camp from the age of zero to about 18 where we learn everything we can about how not to be unique.
This spawns an unconscious desire to prove yourself special, but now it's special in the eyes of your peers
and it comes out in the form of being better than or having power over someone else. In the military I could
exercise the power of being automatically respected because of the medals on my chest, not because I had
done anything right at the moment to earn that respect. This is pretty nice. It's also a psychological trap
that can stop one's growth and allow one to get away with just plain bad behavior.
Looking even deeper, I realize now that I also had very mixed feelings about some of the medals on my
chest. I knew many Marines had done brave deeds that no one saw and for which they got no medals at all.
I was having a very hard time carrying those medals and didn't have the insight or maturity to know what to
do with my combination of guilt and pride.
A young G.I. dashes across an open area under enemy fire in Vietnam in 1967. Associated Press
The best words I've ever heard on the subject of medals come from a fellow lieutenant who'd been my
company executive officer when I first arrived in Vietnam. The company came under mortar attack. Tom—
all names given here are pseudonyms—then a platoon commander, had found a relatively safe defensive
position for himself, but he stood up, exposed to the exploding shells, in order to get a compass bearing on
where the shells were being fired from. He then called in and adjusted counterbattery fire, which got the
company out of trouble. He was awarded the Bronze Star. When I heard the news and congratulated him,
he said, "A lot of people have done a lot more and gotten a lot less, and a lot of people have done a lot less
and gotten a lot more."
Medals are all mixed up with hierarchy, politics and even job descriptions. What is considered normal
activity for an infantry grunt, and therefore not worthy of a medal, is likely to be viewed as extraordinary
for someone who does the same thing but isn't a grunt, so he gets a medal and maybe an article in Stars
and Stripes.
35
I got my medals, in part, because I did brave acts, but also, in part, because the kids liked me and they spent
time writing better eyewitness accounts than they would have written if they hadn't liked me. Had I been
an unpopular officer and done exactly the same things, few would have bothered, if any. The accounts
would have been laconic, at best, and the medals probably of a lower order. The only people who will ever
know the value of the ribbons on their chests are the people wearing them—and even they can fool
themselves, in both directions.
***
I was eager for medals early on, but after a while I was no longer so anxious to get one of any kind. But the
same phenomenon of being taken over by something, or someone, still seemed to operate.
We had moved up in the dark and waited in the jungle, strung out on line as the jets roared in to bomb the
enemy defenses at first light. But because of a screw-up the jets dropped their bombs on the wrong hill. I
screamed bloody murder over the battalion Forward Air Control net but was told I was out of line and to
get off because I couldn't possibly see what was going on.
Going up against bunkers is hard enough, but doing it without any air prep was decidedly unnerving. A huge
value of the air prep is the boost to the morale of the attacking infantry. We came out of the jungle onto
the exposed earth below the bunkers and were instantly under fire from the untouched machine-gun
positions.
Everyone dived for logs and holes. The whole assault ground to a halt, except for one kid named Niemi,
who had sprinted forward when we came under the intense fire and disappeared up in front of us
somewhere. We figured he was down and dead. I actually don't know how long we all lay there getting
pulverized out in the open like that. I knew it would be only a few minutes before the enemy rockets and
mortars found us.
A Navy Cross
Again, I seemed to step aside. I remember surveying the whole scene from someplace in the air above it. I
saw the napalm smoke burning uselessly on the wrong hill. The machine guns had us pinned down with
well-planned interlocking fire. The North Vietnamese Army were pros. Everyone was strung out in a ragged
line hiding behind downed trees and in shell holes—even me, tiny and small, huddled down there below
with the rest.
I distinctly remember recalling the words of an instructor at the Basic School, a particularly colorful and
popular redheaded major who taught tactics, talking to a group of us about when it was a platoon leader
earned his pay. I knew, floating above that mess, that now that time had come. If I didn't get up and lead,
we'd get wiped.
36
I re-entered my body as the hero platoon leader, leaving the rest of everyday me up there in the clouds. It
was at this point I started screaming at the wounded machine gunner to crawl up to my log and start that
machine-gun duel, which would keep the crew of one of the interlocking machine guns busy. I then got an
M-79 man to move up next to me and had him start lobbing shells at the observation slit of an adjacent
bunker that was also giving us fits, directly up the hill from us. Then I stood up.
I did a lot of things that day, many of which got written into the commendation, but the one I'm most proud
of is that I simply stood up, in the middle of all that flying metal, and started up the hill all by myself.
I'm proud of that act because I did it for the right reasons. I once watched a televised exchange about what
dramatists call "the hero's journey," between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. The camera had cut to a
boot camp scene with Mr. Campbell saying, "There are some heroic journeys into which you are thrown
and pitched." The camera then cut to scenes from Vietnam, helicopters, a young black man limping forward
in agony. Then, it cut to war protesters, and Mr. Moyers then asked Mr. Campbell, "Doesn't heroism have a
moral objective?"
Campbell replied, "The moral objective is that of saving a people, or person, or idea. He is sacrificing himself
for something. That is the morality of it. Now, you, from another position, might say that 'something' wasn't
worth it, or was downright wrong. That's a judgment from another side. But it doesn't destroy the heroism
of what was done. Absolutely not."
I was no more heroic this time than the time I won my first medal—when I went after an injured Marine
named Utter, jokingly asking another fellow Marine, "Is it worth a medal if I go get him?" Both times I faced
a lot of fire. In fact, both times my actions were an effort to save a person, Utter, or a people, my little tribe
exposed and dying on that scourged hillside. But my motives had changed. And because my motives had
changed, I feel a lot better about what I did.
I made no heroic gestures or wisecracks this time. I simply ran forward up the steep hill, zigzagging for the
bunker, all by myself, hoping the M-79 man wouldn't hit me in the back. It's hard to zigzag while running
uphill loaded down with ammunition and grenades. Every bit of my consciousness was focused on just two
things, the bunker above me and whether I could keep running and zigzagging with everything I had.
Another 400-meter sprint against Death. A long desperate weekend. A time out of time.
I was running in a long arc to get between the machine-gun bunker and the one I was heading for—and to
avoid the M-79 shells now exploding against the observation slit, which I hoped were blinding the
occupants. As I made that arc I was turned sideways to the hill and I caught movement in my peripheral
vision. I hit the deck, turning and rolling, coming up in a position to fire. It was a Marine! He was about 15
meters below me, zigzagging, falling, up and running again. Immediately behind him a long ragged line of
Marines came moving and weaving up the hill behind me. Behind the line were spots of crumpled bodies,
lying where they'd been hit.
They'd all come with me. I was actually alone only for a matter of seconds. We took the bunker, and the
next, and—together with Second Platoon joining up with us on our right flank—broke through the first line
of bunkers, only to come under fire from a second, interior line of fighting holes higher on the hill. At this
point I saw the missing kid, Niemi, pop his head up. He sprinted across the open top of the hill, all alone.
The NVA turned in their positions to fire on him. I watched him climb on top of a bunker and chuck two
grenades inside. When they went off I saw him fall to the ground. I assumed that this time he'd been killed
for sure.
Being hit from behind by Niemi both unnerved the NVA and encouraged us to hurry to reach him. All
semblance of platoon and squad order were gone by now. Everyone was intermingled, weaving, rushing
and covering, taking on each hole and bunker one at a time in groups.
37
It was just about that time I got knocked out and blinded by a hand grenade. I came to, groggy. I could hear
my radioman, who seemed very far away, telling the skipper I was down and that he didn't know if I was
dead or not. I grunted something to let him know I wasn't dead and tried to sit up, but then went back
down. I felt as though I couldn't get my breath.
Karl Marlantes receives the Navy Cross in the winter of 1969-70. 'I got my medals, in part, because I did
brave acts...in part, because the kids liked me.' USMC Photo
Then I panicked, because I knew I'd been hit in the eyes. I started rubbing them, desperate to get them
open, but they seemed glued shut. My radioman poured Kool-Aid from his canteen onto my face and into
my eyes, and I managed to get one eye to clear. The other eye was a bloody dirt-clogged mess and I
thought I'd lost it. (The blindness was temporary, but I later learned that several metal slivers were just
microns from my optic nerve.)
We kept scrambling for the top, trying to reach Niemi, trying to win, trying to get it all over with. I got held
up by two enemy soldiers in a hole and was attempting to get a shot or two off at them and quickly ducking
back down when a kid I knew from Second Platoon, mainly because of his bad reputation, threw himself
down beside me, half his clothes blown away. He was begging people for a rifle. His had been blown out of
his hands.
He was a black kid, all tangled up in black-power politics, almost always angry and sullen. A troublemaker.
Yet here he was, most of his body naked with only flapping rags left of his jungle utilities, begging for a rifle
when he had a perfect excuse to just bury his head in the clay and quit. I gave him mine. I still had a pistol.
He grabbed the rifle, stood up to his full height, fully exposing himself to all the fire, and simply blasted an
entire magazine at the two soldiers in front of us, killing both of them. He then went charging into the fight,
leaving me stunned for a moment. Why? Who was he doing this for? What is this thing in young men? We
were beyond ourselves, beyond politics, beyond good and evil. This was transcendence.
Many of us had by now worked our way almost to the top of the hill. Fighting was no longer them above
and us below. Marines and NVA intermingled. Crashing out of the clouds into this confusion came a
flaming, smoking twin-rotor CH-46 helicopter. It was making a much-needed ammunition run to the
company waiting in reserve and firing support for us from the hill we'd taken several days before. We think
that the bird got hit by a mortar round as it was coming in and, in the confusion and scudding cloud cover,
the pilot picked the wrong hill or he did it because he had no choice.
The result was the same. Down it came, right where we were assaulting, and the NVA just tore that bird to
pieces. Spinning out of control, it smashed right on the very top of the hill, breaking its rotor blades.
I saw Niemi pop into sight again. He sprinted to the downed chopper. Later we found out he'd spent his
time crawling behind holes and bunkers, shooting people from behind. He'd watched aghast as the chopper
38
came screaming out of the sky, nearly hitting him. Later, he told me that it looked as if the thing simply
started sprouting holes as the NVA turned their weapons on it.
When he saw the crew bail out and crawl for cover underneath the chopper (aircrews are armed only with
pistols, virtually useless in a fight like this), the only thing he could think to do was sprint across the open
hilltop to see if he could find a place from which he could lay down fire to protect them. He didn't debate
this. He just did it. It was an unconscious, generous and potentially sacrificial act.
Many of us coming up the hill saw Niemi sprint into the open. Knowing now that he was still alive and that
he and the chopper crew were dead for sure if we didn't break through to them, we all simply rushed
forward to reach them before the NVA killed them. No one gave an order. We, the group, just rushed
forward all at once. We couldn't be stopped. Just individuals among us were stopped. Many forever. But we
couldn't be. This, too, is a form of transcendence. I was we, no longer me.
Lance Corporal Steel, 19, who'd been acting platoon commander until I reorganized things and was now
acting platoon sergeant, got there first. The crewmen were so grateful and happy they gave their pistols
away. I got the pilot's .38 Smith & Wesson.
Niemi got a Navy Cross.
I got a Navy Cross.
The helicopter pilot got a front-page story in Stars and Stripes with the large headline, "Copter 'Crashes'
Enemy Party, Takes Hill."
The kid who borrowed my rifle didn't get anything.
—From "What It Is Like to Go to War" by Karl Marlantes, to be published Aug. 30 by Atlantic Monthly Press.
39
“Back From War, but Not Really Home”
by Caroline Alexander
Holderness, N.H.
WASHED onto the shores of his island home, after 10 years’ absence in a foreign war and 10 years of hard
travel in foreign lands, Odysseus, literature’s most famous veteran, stares around him: “But now brilliant
Odysseus awoke from sleep in his own fatherland, and he did not know it,/having been long away.”
Additionally, the goddess Athena has cast an obscuring mist over all the familiar landmarks, making
“everything look otherwise/than it was.” “Ah me,” groans Odysseus, “what are the people whose land I
have come to this time?”
That sense of dislocation has been shared by veterans returning from the field of war since Homer conjured
Odysseus’ inauspicious return some 2,800 years ago. Its vexing power was underscored on Thursday, when
a military psychiatrist who had been treating the mental scars of soldiers returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan went on a shooting rampage at an Army base in Texas.
Who is the veteran, and how does he stand in relation to his native land and people? This question remains
relevant to those marching in parades this week for Veterans Day in the United States and Armistice Day in
Europe, as well as to the ever-diminishing number of spectators who applaud them. In theory, Veterans
Day celebrates an event as starkly unambiguous as victory — survival. In practice, Nov. 11 is clouded with
ambiguous symbolism, and has become our most awkward holiday.
The great theme of “The Odyssey” — the return of the war veteran to his home — is the only surviving, and
undoubtedly the greatest, epic example of what was evidently a popular theme in ancient times. Another
poem, now lost, “Nostoi,” or “Returns,” was an epic of uncertain authorship that was said to have
encompassed five books and traced the homecomings of veterans of the Trojan War like the Greek
commander in chief, Agamemnon; his brother, Menelaus; the aged counselor Nestor, the priest Calchas,
the hero Diomedes and even Achilles’ son, Neoptolemos.
The Greek word nostos, meaning “return home,” is the root of our English “nostalgia” (along with algos —
“pain” or “sorrow”). The content and character of “Nostoi” is now impossible to gauge; all we know of it
comes from a late, possibly fifth-century A.D. summary and stray fragments. Some of the most famous of
these traditional veterans’ stories, however, have survived in later, non-epic works.
Aeschylus’ towering tragedy “Agamemnon,” staged in 458 B.C., centers on the king’s return from Troy to
his palace in Argos, where he is murdered in his bath by his wife, Clytemnestra. Virgil’s “Aeneid” famously
relates the travails of the heroic Trojan veteran Aeneas, who, following the destruction of his city by the
Greek victors, must make a new home in some other, foreign land.
But it is “The Odyssey” that most directly probes the theme of the war veteran’s return. Threaded through
this fairytale saga, amid its historic touchstones, are remarkable scenes addressing aspects of the war
veteran’s experience that are disconcertingly familiar to our own age. Odysseus returns home to a place he
does not recognize, and then finds his homestead overrun with young men who have no experience of war.
Throughout his long voyage back, he has reacted to each stranger with elaborate caginess, concocting
stories about who he is and what he has seen and done — the real war he keeps to himself.
Midway through the epic, Odysseus relates to a spellbound audience how, in order to obtain guidance for
the voyage ahead, it was necessary to descend to Hades. There, among the thronging souls of men and
women dead and past, he confronted his comrades of the war — Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus,
Antilochus and Ajax — robust heroes of epic tales now reduced to unhappy shades who haunt his story.
40
Similarly, while Odysseus is lost at sea, his son, Telemachus, embarks on a voyage of discovery, also seeking
out his father’s former comrades, but those who lived to return. First of these is old Nestor, a veteran of
many campaigns, now at home in sandy Pylos. No mortal man could “tell the whole of it,” says Nestor of
the years at Troy, where “all who were our best were killed.” In Sparta, Menelaus, whose wife, Helen, was
the cause of the war, is haunted by the losses: “I wish I lived in my house with only a third part of all/these
goods, and that the men were alive who died in those days/in wide Troy land.”
Odysseus’ own memories are more potent. Amongst the kindly Phaiakians, who give him hospitality toward
the end of his hard voyage, he listens to the court poet sing of the Trojan War’s “famous actions/of men on
that venture.” Odysseus, taking his mantle in his hands, “drew it over his head and veiled his fine
features/shamed for the tears running down his face.”
And most significantly, epic tradition hints at the dilemmas of military commemoration. In “The Iliad,”
Achilles must choose between kleos or nostos — glory or a safe return home. By dying at Troy, Achilles was
assured of undying fame as the greatest of all heroes. His choice reflects an uneasy awareness that it is far
easier to honor the dead soldier than the soldier who returns. Time-tested and time-honored, the
commemoration rites we observe each Memorial Day — the parades and speeches and graveside prayers
and offerings — represent a satisfying formula of remembrance by the living for the dead that was already
referred to as “ancient custom” by Thucydides in the fifth century B.C.
The commemoration of the veteran — the survivor who did not fall on the field of war — is less starkly
defined. The returned soldier, it is hoped, will grow old and die among us, like Nestor, in whose time “two
generations of mortal men had perished.” In our own times, the generation born in the optimistic
aftermath of World War II has already encountered veterans of both world wars, the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf war and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — and still has several decades of
martial possibilities in reserve. As the earlier of those wars recede into the past, their old soldiers fade
away; and thus, commemorative rites for the veteran — by definition, the survivor — also tend to end,
perversely, at graves.
How to commemorate the living veteran? Again, some guidance can be found in epic, the crucible of heroic
mores. Old Nestor, the iconographic veteran, is a teller of many tales of the many battles he once waged.
“In my time I have dealt with better men than/you are, and never once did they disregard me,” he tells the
entire Greek army in “The Iliad.” “I fought single-handed, yet against such men no one/could do battle.”
Although he is a somewhat comic figure, his speeches are deadly earnest; Old Nestor knows that his is the
only voice to keep memory of such past campaigns alive.
One suspects such lengthy recitations are rare today. Rarer still is the respectful audience enjoyed by
Nestor; impatience with such reminiscences began well before our age. “Menelaus bold/waxed garrulous,
and sacked a hundred Troys/’Twixt noon and supper,” wrote Rupert Brooke, cynically, during the years
leading up to a later Great War.
Today, veterans’ tales are more likely to be safeguarded in books and replicated in movies than selfnarrated to a respectful throng. Detailed knowledge of the experience in which a veteran’s memories were
forged is thus made common. To learn these stories is both civilian duty and commemoration. Death on the
field and the voyage home — both are epic.
Caroline Alexander is the author of “The Endurance,” “The Bounty” and, most recently, “The War That Killed
Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and the Trojan War.”
41
“A Poison Tree”
by William Blake
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
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“The Raven”
by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more.'
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is, and nothing more,'
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; 'Tis the wind and nothing more!'
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
43
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'
But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
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Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting `Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
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Metamorphoses
“The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe”
by Ovid
In Babylon, where first her queen, for state
Rais'd walls of brick magnificently great,
Liv'd Pyramus, and Thisbe, lovely pair!
He found no eastern youth his equal there,
And she beyond the fairest nymph was fair.
A closer neighbourhood was never known,
Tho' two the houses, yet the roof was one.
Acquaintance grew, th' acquaintance they improve
To friendship, friendship ripen'd into love:
Love had been crown'd, but impotently mad,
What parents could not hinder, they forbad.
For with fierce flames young Pyramus still burn'd,
And grateful Thisbe flames as fierce return'd.
Aloud in words their thoughts they dare not break,
But silent stand; and silent looks can speak.
The fire of love the more it is supprest,
The more it glows, and rages in the breast.
When the division-wall was built, a chink
Was left, the cement unobserv'd to shrink.
So slight the cranny, that it still had been
For centuries unclos'd, because unseen.
But oh! what thing so small, so secret lies,
Which scapes, if form'd for love, a lover's eyes?
Ev'n in this narrow chink they quickly found
A friendly passage for a trackless sound.
Safely they told their sorrows, and their joys,
In whisper'd murmurs, and a dying noise,
By turns to catch each other's breath they strove,
And suck'd in all the balmy breeze of love.
Oft as on diff'rent sides they stood, they cry'd,
Malicious wall, thus lovers to divide!
Suppose, thou should'st a-while to us give place
To lock, and fasten in a close embrace:
But if too much to grant so sweet a bliss,
Indulge at least the pleasure of a kiss.
We scorn ingratitude: to thee, we know,
This safe conveyance of our minds we owe.
Thus they their vain petition did renew
'Till night, and then they softly sigh'd adieu.
But first they strove to kiss, and that was all;
46
Their kisses dy'd untasted on the wall.
Soon as the morn had o'er the stars prevail'd,
And warm'd by Phoebus, flow'rs their dews exhal'd,
The lovers to their well-known place return,
Alike they suffer, and alike they mourn.
At last their parents they resolve to cheat
(If to deceive in love be call'd deceit),
To steal by night from home, and thence unknown
To seek the fields, and quit th' unfaithful town.
But, to prevent their wand'ring in the dark,
They both agree to fix upon a mark;
A mark, that could not their designs expose:
The tomb of Ninus was the mark they chose.
There they might rest secure beneath the shade,
Which boughs, with snowy fruit encumber'd, made:
A wide-spread mulberry its rise had took
Just on the margin of a gurgling brook.
Impatient for the friendly dusk they stay;
And chide the slowness of departing day;
In western seas down sunk at last the light,
From western seas up-rose the shades of night.
The loving Thisbe ev'n prevents the hour,
With cautious silence she unlocks the door,
And veils her face, and marching thro' the gloom
Swiftly arrives at th' assignation-tomb.
For still the fearful sex can fearless prove;
Boldly they act, if spirited by love.
When lo! a lioness rush'd o'er the plain,
Grimly besmear'd with blood of oxen slain:
And what to the dire sight new horrors brought,
To slake her thirst the neighb'ring spring she sought.
Which, by the moon, when trembling Thisbe spies,
Wing'd with her fear, swift, as the wind, she flies;
And in a cave recovers from her fright,
But drop'd her veil, confounded in her flight.
When sated with repeated draughts, again
The queen of beasts scour'd back along the plain,
She found the veil, and mouthing it all o'er,
With bloody jaws the lifeless prey she tore.
The youth, who could not cheat his guards so soon,
Late came, and noted by the glimm'ring moon
Some savage feet, new printed on the ground,
His cheeks turn'd pale, his limbs no vigour found;
But when, advancing on, the veil he spied
Distain'd with blood, and ghastly torn, he cried,
One night shall death to two young lovers give,
But she deserv'd unnumber'd years to live!
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'Tis I am guilty, I have thee betray'd,
Who came not early, as my charming maid.
Whatever slew thee, I the cause remain,
I nam'd, and fix'd the place where thou wast slain.
Ye lions from your neighb'ring dens repair,
Pity the wretch, this impious body tear!
But cowards thus for death can idly cry;
The brave still have it in their pow'r to die.
Then to th' appointed tree he hastes away,
The veil first gather'd, tho' all rent it lay:
The veil all rent yet still it self endears,
He kist, and kissing, wash'd it with his tears.
Tho' rich (he cry'd) with many a precious stain,
Still from my blood a deeper tincture gain.
Then in his breast his shining sword he drown'd,
And fell supine, extended on the ground.
As out again the blade lie dying drew,
Out spun the blood, and streaming upwards flew.
So if a conduit-pipe e'er burst you saw,
Swift spring the gushing waters thro' the flaw:
Then spouting in a bow, they rise on high,
And a new fountain plays amid the sky.
The berries, stain'd with blood, began to show
A dark complexion, and forgot their snow;
While fatten'd with the flowing gore, the root
Was doom'd for ever to a purple fruit.
Mean-time poor Thisbe fear'd, so long she stay'd,
Her lover might suspect a perjur'd maid.
Her fright scarce o'er, she strove the youth to find
With ardent eyes, which spoke an ardent mind.
Already in his arms, she hears him sigh
At her destruction, which was once so nigh.
The tomb, the tree, but not the fruit she knew,
The fruit she doubted for its alter'd hue.
Still as she doubts, her eyes a body found
Quiv'ring in death, and gasping on the ground.
She started back, the red her cheeks forsook,
And ev'ry nerve with thrilling horrors shook.
So trembles the smooth surface of the seas,
If brush'd o'er gently with a rising breeze.
But when her view her bleeding love confest,
She shriek'd, she tore her hair, she beat her breast.
She rais'd the body, and embrac'd it round,
And bath'd with tears unfeign'd the gaping wound.
Then her warm lips to the cold face apply'd,
And is it thus, ah! thus we meet, she cry'd!
My Pyramus! whence sprung thy cruel fate?
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My Pyramus!- ah! speak, ere 'tis too late.
I, thy own Thisbe, but one word implore,
One word thy Thisbe never ask'd before.
At Thisbe's name, awak'd, he open'd wide
His dying eyes; with dying eyes he try'd
On her to dwell, but clos'd them slow, and dy'd.
The fatal cause was now at last explor'd,
Her veil she knew, and saw his sheathless sword:
From thy own hand thy ruin thou hast found,
She said, but love first taught that hand to wound,
Ev'n I for thee as bold a hand can show,
And love, which shall as true direct the blow.
I will against the woman's weakness strive,
And never thee, lamented youth, survive.
The world may say, I caus'd, alas! thy death,
But saw thee breathless, and resign'd my breath.
Fate, tho' it conquers, shall no triumph gain,
Fate, that divides us, still divides in vain.
Now, both our cruel parents, hear my pray'r;
My pray'r to offer for us both I dare;
Oh! see our ashes in one urn confin'd,
Whom love at first, and fate at last has join'd.
The bliss, you envy'd, is not our request;
Lovers, when dead, may sure together rest.
Thou, tree, where now one lifeless lump is laid,
Ere-long o'er two shalt cast a friendly shade.
Still let our loves from thee be understood,
Still witness in thy purple fruit our blood.
She spoke, and in her bosom plung'd the sword,
All warm and reeking from its slaughter'd lord.
The pray'r, which dying Thisbe had preferr'd,
Both Gods, and parents, with compassion heard.
The whiteness of the mulberry soon fled,
And rip'ning, sadden'd in a dusky red:
While both their parents their lost children mourn,
And mix their ashes in one golden urn.
Thus did the melancholy tale conclude,
And a short, silent interval ensu'd.
The next in birth unloos'd her artful tongue,
And drew attentive all the sister-throng.
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“Teenage Brains Are Malleable and Vulnerable, Researchers Say”
by John Hamilton (NPR)
Adolescent brains have gotten a bad rap, according to neuroscientists.
It's true that teenage brains can be impulsive, scientists reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in
New Orleans. But adolescent brains are also vulnerable, dynamic and highly responsive to positive
feedback, they say.
"The teen brain isn't broken," says Jay Giedd, a child psychiatry researcher at the National Institute of
Mental Health. He says the rapid changes occurring in the brains of teenagers make these years "a time of
enormous opportunity."
Part of the bad rap has come from studies suggesting that adolescent brains are "wired" to engage in risky
behavior such as drug use or unsafe sex, says BJ Casey of Weill Cornell Medical College.
These studies have concluded that teens are prone to this sort of behavior because the so-called reward
systems in their brains are very sensitive while circuits involved in self-control are still not fully developed,
Casey says. The result has been a perception that "adolescents are driving around with no steering wheel
and no brake," she says.
Casey says a new study from her lab makes it clear that this isn't the case.
The study had teens and adults play a game where they got points for correctly answering questions about
the motions of dots on a screen. Meanwhile researchers measured activity in brain regions involved in
decisions and rewards.
When a lot of points were at stake, teens actually spent more time studying the dots than adults and brain
scans showed more activity in brain regions involved in making decisions.
"Instead of acting impulsively, the teens are making sure they get it right," Casey says. She says this shows
how teens' sensitivity to rewards can sometimes lead to better decisions.
Two other studies presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting showed that the adolescent brain is
literally shaped by experiences early in life.
One of the studies involved 113 men who were monitored for depression from age 10 and then had brain
scans at age 20. The scans showed that men who'd had an episode of depression had brains that were less
responsive to rewards.
"They can't respond naturally when something good happens," says Erika Forbes at the University of
Pittburgh. She says this shows why it's important to treat problems like depression in teens.
The other study looked at how the brain's outer layer of cortex, which plays a critical role in thinking and
memory, was affected by childhood experiences in 64 people. It found that this layer was thicker in children
who got a lot of cognitive stimulation and had nurturing parents, says Martha Farrah of the University of
Pennsylvania.
Finally, a study by researchers in the U.S. and U.K. showed how much the brain changes during adolescence
in regions involved in social interactions.
The study involved 288 people whose brains were scanned repeatedly starting at age 7. And the scans
revealed dramatic structural changes during adolescence in four regions that help us understand the
intentions, beliefs and desires of others, says Kathryn Mills of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in
London.
The results show that the tremendous social changes teenagers go through are reflected in their brains,
Mills says. They also show that these changes continue beyond the teen years she says.
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“Teenage Brains”
by David Dobbs (National Geographic)
Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to hear about
them.
One fine May morning not long ago my oldest son, 17 at the time, phoned to tell me that he had just
spent a couple hours at the state police barracks. Apparently he had been driving "a little fast."
What, I asked, was "a little fast"? Turns out this product of my genes and loving care, the boy-man I
had swaddled, coddled, cooed at, and then pushed and pulled to the brink of manhood, had been
flying down the highway at 113 miles an hour.
"That's more than a little fast," I said.
He agreed. In fact, he sounded somber and contrite. He did not object when I told him he'd have to
pay the fines and probably for a lawyer. He did not argue when I pointed out that if anything
happens at that speed—a dog in the road, a blown tire, a sneeze—he dies. He was in fact almost
irritatingly reasonable. He even proffered that the cop did the right thing in stopping him, for, as he
put it, "We can't all go around doing 113."
He did, however, object to one thing. He didn't like it that one of the several citations he received
was for reckless driving.
"Well," I huffed, sensing an opportunity to finally yell at him, "what would you call it?"
"It's just not accurate," he said calmly. " 'Reckless' sounds like you're not paying attention. But I
was. I made a deliberate point of doing this on an empty stretch of dry interstate, in broad daylight,
with good sight lines and no traffic. I mean, I wasn't just gunning the thing. I was driving.
"I guess that's what I want you to know. If it makes you feel any better, I was really focused."
Actually, it did make me feel better. That bothered me, for I didn't understand why. Now I do.
My son's high-speed adventure raised the question long asked by people who have pondered the
class of humans we call teenagers: What on Earth was he doing? Parents often phrase this question
more colorfully. Scientists put it more coolly. They ask, What can explain this behavior? But even
that is just another way of wondering, What is wrong with these kids? Why do they act this way?
The question passes judgment even as it inquires.
Through the ages, most answers have cited dark forces that uniquely affect the teen. Aristotle
concluded more than 2,300 years ago that "the young are heated by Nature as drunken men by
wine." A shepherd in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale wishes "there were no age between
ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the
between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting." His lament
colors most modern scientific inquiries as well. G. Stanley Hall, who formalized adolescent studies
with his 1904 Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology,
Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, believed this period of "storm and stress"
replicated earlier, less civilized stages of human development. Freud saw adolescence as an
expression of torturous psychosexual conflict; Erik Erikson, as the most tumultuous of life's several
identity crises. Adolescence: always a problem.
Such thinking carried into the late 20th century, when researchers developed brain-imaging
technology that enabled them to see the teen brain in enough detail to track both its physical
development and its patterns of activity. These imaging tools offered a new way to ask the same
question—What's wrong with these kids?—and revealed an answer that surprised almost everyone.
Our brains, it turned out, take much longer to develop than we had thought. This revelation
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suggested both a simplistic, unflattering explanation for teens' maddening behavior—and a more
complex, affirmative explanation as well.
The first full series of scans of the developing adolescent brain—a National Institutes of Health
(NIH) project that studied over a hundred young people as they grew up during the 1990s—showed
that our brains undergo a massive reorganization between our 12th and 25th years. The brain
doesn't actually grow very much during this period. It has already reached 90 percent of its full size
by the time a person is six, and a thickening skull accounts for most head growth afterward. But as
we move through adolescence, the brain undergoes extensive remodeling, resembling a network
and wiring upgrade.
For starters, the brain's axons—the long nerve fibers that neurons use to send signals to other
neurons—become gradually more insulated with a fatty substance called myelin (the brain's white
matter), eventually boosting the axons' transmission speed up to a hundred times. Meanwhile,
dendrites, the branchlike extensions that neurons use to receive signals from nearby axons, grow
twiggier, and the most heavily used synapses—the little chemical junctures across which axons and
dendrites pass notes—grow richer and stronger. At the same time, synapses that see little use begin
to wither. This synaptic pruning, as it is called, causes the brain's cortex—the outer layer of gray
matter where we do much of our conscious and complicated thinking—to become thinner but more
efficient. Taken together, these changes make the entire brain a much faster and more
sophisticated organ.
This process of maturation, once thought to be largely finished by elementary school, continues
throughout adolescence. Imaging work done since the 1990s shows that these physical changes
move in a slow wave from the brain's rear to its front, from areas close to the brain stem that look
after older and more behaviorally basic functions, such as vision, movement, and fundamental
processing, to the evolutionarily newer and more complicated thinking areas up front. The corpus
callosum, which connects the brain's left and right hemispheres and carries traffic essential to
many advanced brain functions, steadily thickens. Stronger links also develop between the
hippocampus, a sort of memory directory, and frontal areas that set goals and weigh different
agendas; as a result, we get better at integrating memory and experience into our decisions. At the
same time, the frontal areas develop greater speed and richer connections, allowing us to generate
and weigh far more variables and agendas than before.
When this development proceeds normally, we get better at balancing impulse, desire, goals, selfinterest, rules, ethics, and even altruism, generating behavior that is more complex and, sometimes
at least, more sensible. But at times, and especially at first, the brain does this work clumsily. It's
hard to get all those new cogs to mesh.
Beatriz Luna, a University of Pittsburgh professor of psychiatry who uses neuroimaging to study
the teen brain, used a simple test that illustrates this learning curve. Luna scanned the brains of
children, teens, and twentysomethings while they performed an antisaccade task, a sort of eyesonly video game where you have to stop yourself from looking at a suddenly appearing light. You
view a screen on which the red crosshairs at the center occasionally disappear just as a light flickers
elsewhere on the screen. Your instructions are to not look at the light and instead to look in the
opposite direction. A sensor detects any eye movement. It's a tough assignment, since flickering
lights naturally draw our attention. To succeed, you must override both a normal impulse to attend
to new information and curiosity about something forbidden. Brain geeks call this response
inhibition.
Ten-year-olds stink at it, failing about 45 percent of the time. Teens do much better. In fact, by age
15 they can score as well as adults if they're motivated, resisting temptation about 70 to 80 percent
of the time. What Luna found most interesting, however, was not those scores. It was the brain
scans she took while people took the test. Compared with adults, teens tended to make less use of
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brain regions that monitor performance, spot errors, plan, and stay focused—areas the adults
seemed to bring online automatically. This let the adults use a variety of brain resources and better
resist temptation, while the teens used those areas less often and more readily gave in to the
impulse to look at the flickering light—just as they're more likely to look away from the road to read
a text message.
If offered an extra reward, however, teens showed they could push those executive regions to work
harder, improving their scores. And by age 20, their brains respond to this task much as the adults'
do. Luna suspects the improvement comes as richer networks and faster connections make the
executive region more effective.
These studies help explain why teens behave with such vexing inconsistency: beguiling at breakfast,
disgusting at dinner; masterful on Monday, sleepwalking on Saturday. Along with lacking
experience generally, they're still learning to use their brain's new networks. Stress, fatigue, or
challenges can cause a misfire. Abigail Baird, a Vassar psychologist who studies teens, calls this
neural gawkiness—an equivalent to the physical awkwardness teens sometimes display while
mastering their growing bodies.
The slow and uneven developmental arc revealed by these imaging studies offers an alluringly pithy
explanation for why teens may do stupid things like drive at 113 miles an hour, aggrieve their
ancientry, and get people (or get gotten) with child: They act that way because their brains aren't
done! You can see it right there in the scans!
This view, as titles from the explosion of scientific papers and popular articles about the "teen
brain" put it, presents adolescents as "works in progress" whose "immature brains" lead some to
question whether they are in a state "akin to mental retardation."
The story you're reading right now, however, tells a different scientific tale about the teen brain.
Over the past five years or so, even as the work-in-progress story spread into our culture, the
discipline of adolescent brain studies learned to do some more-complex thinking of its own. A few
researchers began to view recent brain and genetic findings in a brighter, more flattering light, one
distinctly colored by evolutionary theory. The resulting account of the adolescent brain—call it the
adaptive-adolescent story—casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive,
highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into
the complicated world outside.
This view will likely sit better with teens. More important, it sits better with biology's most
fundamental principle, that of natural selection. Selection is hell on dysfunctional traits. If
adolescence is essentially a collection of them—angst, idiocy, and haste; impulsiveness, selfishness,
and reckless bumbling—then how did those traits survive selection? They couldn't—not if they were
the period's most fundamental or consequential features.
The answer is that those troublesome traits don't really characterize adolescence; they're just what
we notice most because they annoy us or put our children in danger. As B. J. Casey, a neuroscientist
at Weill Cornell Medical College who has spent nearly a decade applying brain and genetic studies
to our understanding of adolescence, puts it, "We're so used to seeing adolescence as a problem.
But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to
seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It's exactly what you'd need to do the things
you have to do then."
To see past the distracting, dopey teenager and glimpse the adaptive adolescent within, we should
look not at specific, sometimes startling, behaviors, such as skateboarding down stairways or
dating fast company, but at the broader traits that underlie those acts.
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Let's start with the teen's love of the thrill. We all like new and exciting things, but we never value
them more highly than we do during adolescence. Here we hit a high in what behavioral scientists
call sensation seeking: the hunt for the neural buzz, the jolt of the unusual or unexpected.
Seeking sensation isn't necessarily impulsive. You might plan a sensation-seeking experience—a
skydive or a fast drive—quite deliberately, as my son did. Impulsivity generally drops throughout
life, starting at about age 10, but this love of the thrill peaks at around age 15. And although
sensation seeking can lead to dangerous behaviors, it can also generate positive ones: The urge to
meet more people, for instance, can create a wider circle of friends, which generally makes us
healthier, happier, safer, and more successful.
This upside probably explains why an openness to the new, though it can sometimes kill the cat,
remains a highlight of adolescent development. A love of novelty leads directly to useful experience.
More broadly, the hunt for sensation provides the inspiration needed to "get you out of the house"
and into new terrain, as Jay Giedd, a pioneering researcher in teen brain development at NIH, puts
it.
Also peaking during adolescence (and perhaps aggrieving the ancientry the most) is risk-taking. We
court risk more avidly as teens than at any other time. This shows reliably in the lab, where teens
take more chances in controlled experiments involving everything from card games to simulated
driving. And it shows in real life, where the period from roughly 15 to 25 brings peaks in all sorts of
risky ventures and ugly outcomes. This age group dies of accidents of almost every sort (other than
work accidents) at high rates. Most long-term drug or alcohol abuse starts during adolescence, and
even people who later drink responsibly often drink too much as teens. Especially in cultures where
teenage driving is common, this takes a gory toll: In the U.S., one in three teen deaths is from car
crashes, many involving alcohol.
Are these kids just being stupid? That's the conventional explanation: They're not thinking, or by
the work-in-progress model, their puny developing brains fail them.
Yet these explanations don't hold up. As Laurence Steinberg, a developmental psychologist
specializing in adolescence at Temple University, points out, even 14- to 17-year-olds—the biggest
risk takers—use the same basic cognitive strategies that adults do, and they usually reason their
way through problems just as well as adults. Contrary to popular belief, they also fully recognize
they're mortal. And, like adults, says Steinberg, "teens actually overestimate risk."
So if teens think as well as adults do and recognize risk just as well, why do they take more
chances? Here, as elsewhere, the problem lies less in what teens lack compared with adults than in
what they have more of. Teens take more risks not because they don't understand the dangers but
because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where risk can get them something
they want, they value the reward more heavily than adults do.
A video game Steinberg uses draws this out nicely. In the game, you try to drive across town in as
little time as possible. Along the way you encounter several traffic lights. As in real life, the traffic
lights sometimes turn from green to yellow as you approach them, forcing a quick go-or-stop
decision. You save time—and score more points—if you drive through before the light turns red.
But if you try to drive through the red and don't beat it, you lose even more time than you would
have if you had stopped for it. Thus the game rewards you for taking a certain amount of risk but
punishes you for taking too much.
When teens drive the course alone, in what Steinberg calls the emotionally "cool" situation of an
empty room, they take risks at about the same rates that adults do. Add stakes that the teen cares
about, however, and the situation changes. In this case Steinberg added friends: When he brought a
teen's friends into the room to watch, the teen would take twice as many risks, trying to gun it
through lights he'd stopped for before. The adults, meanwhile, drove no differently with a friend
watching.
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To Steinberg, this shows clearly that risk-taking rises not from puny thinking but from a higher
regard for reward.
"They didn't take more chances because they suddenly downgraded the risk," says Steinberg. "They
did so because they gave more weight to the payoff."
Researchers such as Steinberg and Casey believe this risk-friendly weighing of cost versus reward
has been selected for because, over the course of human evolution, the willingness to take risks
during this period of life has granted an adaptive edge. Succeeding often requires moving out of the
home and into less secure situations. "The more you seek novelty and take risks," says Baird, "the
better you do." This responsiveness to reward thus works like the desire for new sensation: It gets
you out of the house and into new turf.
As Steinberg's driving game suggests, teens respond strongly to social rewards. Physiology and
evolutionary theory alike offer explanations for this tendency. Physiologically, adolescence brings a
peak in the brain's sensitivity to dopamine, a neurotransmitter that appears to prime and fire
reward circuits and aids in learning patterns and making decisions. This helps explain the teen's
quickness of learning and extraordinary receptivity to reward—and his keen, sometimes
melodramatic reaction to success as well as defeat.
The teen brain is similarly attuned to oxytocin, another neural hormone, which (among other
things) makes social connections in particular more rewarding. The neural networks and dynamics
associated with general reward and social interactions overlap heavily. Engage one, and you often
engage the other. Engage them during adolescence, and you light a fire.
This helps explain another trait that marks adolescence: Teens prefer the company of those their
own age more than ever before or after. At one level, this passion for same-age peers merely
expresses in the social realm the teen's general attraction to novelty: Teens offer teens far more
novelty than familiar old family does.
Yet teens gravitate toward peers for another, more powerful reason: to invest in the future rather
than the past. We enter a world made by our parents. But we will live most of our lives, and prosper
(or not) in a world run and remade by our peers. Knowing, understanding, and building
relationships with them bears critically on success. Socially savvy rats or monkeys, for instance,
generally get the best nesting areas or territories, the most food and water, more allies, and more
sex with better and fitter mates. And no species is more intricately and deeply social than humans
are.
This supremely human characteristic makes peer relations not a sideshow but the main show.
Some brain-scan studies, in fact, suggest that our brains react to peer exclusion much as they
respond to threats to physical health or food supply. At a neural level, in other words, we perceive
social rejection as a threat to existence. Knowing this might make it easier to abide the hysteria of a
13-year-old deceived by a friend or the gloom of a 15-year-old not invited to a party. These people!
we lament. They react to social ups and downs as if their fates depended upon them! They're right.
They do.
Excitement, novelty, risk, the company of peers. These traits may seem to add up to nothing
more than doing foolish new stuff with friends. Look deeper, however, and you see that these traits
that define adolescence make us more adaptive, both as individuals and as a species. That's
doubtless why these traits, broadly defined, seem to show themselves in virtually all human
cultures, modern or tribal. They may concentrate and express themselves more starkly in modern
Western cultures, in which teens spend so much time with each other. But anthropologists have
found that virtually all the world's cultures recognize adolescence as a distinct period in which
55
adolescents prefer novelty, excitement, and peers. This near-universal recognition sinks the notion
that it's a cultural construct.
Culture clearly shapes adolescence. It influences its expression and possibly its length. It can
magnify its manifestations. Yet culture does not create adolescence. The period's uniqueness rises
from genes and developmental processes that have been selected for over thousands of generations
because they play an amplified role during this key transitional period: producing a creature
optimally primed to leave a safe home and move into unfamiliar territory.
The move outward from home is the most difficult thing that humans do, as well as the most
critical—not just for individuals but for a species that has shown an unmatched ability to master
challenging new environments. In scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain in the ass. But they are
quite possibly the most fully, crucially adaptive human beings around. Without them, humanity
might not have so readily spread across the globe.
This adaptive-adolescence view, however accurate, can be tricky to come to terms with—the
more so for parents dealing with teens in their most trying, contrary, or flat-out scary moments. It's
reassuring to recast worrisome aspects as signs of an organism learning how to negotiate its
surroundings. But natural selection swings a sharp edge, and the teen's sloppier moments can
bring unbearable consequences. We may not run the risk of being killed in ritualistic battles or
being eaten by leopards, but drugs, drinking, driving, and crime take a mighty toll. My son lives,
and thrives, sans car, at college. Some of his high school friends, however, died during their driving
experiments. Our children wield their adaptive plasticity amid small but horrific risks.
We parents, of course, often stumble too, as we try to walk the blurry line between helping and
hindering our kids as they adapt to adulthood. The United States spends about a billion dollars a
year on programs to counsel adolescents on violence, gangs, suicide, sex, substance abuse, and
other potential pitfalls. Few of them work.
Yet we can and do help. We can ward off some of the world's worst hazards and nudge adolescents
toward appropriate responses to the rest. Studies show that when parents engage and guide their
teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids
generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but not entirely, from their
friends. At some level and at some times (and it's the parent's job to spot when), the teen recognizes
that the parent can offer certain kernels of wisdom—knowledge valued not because it comes from
parental authority but because it comes from the parent's own struggles to learn how the world
turns. The teen rightly perceives that she must understand not just her parents' world but also the
one she is entering. Yet if allowed to, she can appreciate that her parents once faced the same
problems and may remember a few things worth knowing.
Meanwhile, in times of doubt, take inspiration in one last distinction of the teen brain—a final
key to both its clumsiness and its remarkable adaptability. This is the prolonged plasticity of those
late-developing frontal areas as they slowly mature. As noted earlier, these areas are the last to lay
down the fatty myelin insulation—the brain's white matter—that speeds transmission. And at first
glance this seems like bad news: If we need these areas for the complex task of entering the world,
why aren't they running at full speed when the challenges are most daunting?
The answer is that speed comes at the price of flexibility. While a myelin coating greatly accelerates
an axon's bandwidth, it also inhibits the growth of new branches from the axon. According to
Douglas Fields, an NIH neuroscientist who has spent years studying myelin, "This makes the
period when a brain area lays down myelin a sort of crucial period of learning—the wiring is getting
upgraded, but once that's done, it's harder to change."
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The window in which experience can best rewire those connections is highly specific to each brain
area. Thus the brain's language centers acquire their insulation most heavily in the first 13 years,
when a child is learning language. The completed insulation consolidates those gains—but makes
further gains, such as second languages, far harder to come by.
So it is with the forebrain's myelination during the late teens and early 20s. This delayed
completion—a withholding of readiness—heightens flexibility just as we confront and enter the
world that we will face as adults.
This long, slow, back-to-front developmental wave, completed only in the mid-20s, appears to be a
uniquely human adaptation. It may be one of our most consequential. It can seem a bit crazy that
we humans don't wise up a bit earlier in life. But if we smartened up sooner, we'd end up dumber.
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“The Teen Brain: Still Under Construction”
by National Institute of Mental Health
One of the ways that scientists have searched for the causes of mental illness is by studying the
development of the brain from birth to adulthood. Powerful new technologies have enabled them to track
the growth of the brain and to investigate the connections between brain function, development, and
behavior.
The research has turned up some surprises, among them the discovery of striking changes taking place
during the teen years. These findings have altered long-held assumptions about the timing of brain
maturation. In key ways, the brain doesn’t look like that of an adult until the early 20s.
An understanding of how the brain of an adolescent is changing may help explain a puzzling contradiction
of adolescence: young people at this age are close to a lifelong peak of physical health, strength, and
mental capacity, and yet, for some, this can be a hazardous age. Mortality rates jump between early and
late adolescence. Rates of death by injury between ages 15 to 19 are about six times that of the rate
between ages 10 and 14. Crime rates are highest among young males and rates of alcohol abuse are high
relative to other ages. Even though most adolescents come through this transitional age well, it’s important
to understand the risk factors for behavior that can have serious consequences. Genes, childhood
experience, and the environment in which a young person reaches adolescence all shape behavior. Adding
to this complex picture, research is revealing how all these factors act in the context of a brain that is
changing, with its own impact on behavior.
The more we learn, the better we may be able to understand the abilities and vulnerabilities of teens, and
the significance of this stage for life-long mental health.
The fact that so much change is taking place beneath the surface may be something for parents to keep in
mind during the ups and downs of adolescence.
The “Visible” Brain
A clue to the degree of change taking place in the teen brain came from studies in which scientists did brain
scans of children as they grew from early childhood through age 20. The scans revealed unexpectedly late
changes in the volume of gray matter, which forms the thin, folding outer layer or cortex of the brain. The
cortex is where the processes of thought and memory are based. Over the course of childhood, the volume
of gray matter in the cortex increases and then declines. A decline in volume is normal at this age and is in
fact a necessary part of maturation.
The assumption for many years had been that the volume of gray matter was highest in very early
childhood, and gradually fell as a child grew. The more recent scans, however, revealed that the high point
of the volume of gray matter occurs during early adolescence.
While the details behind the changes in volume on scans are not completely clear, the results push the
timeline of brain maturation into adolescence and young adulthood. In terms of the volume of gray matter
seen in brain images, the brain does not begin to resemble that of an adult until the early 20s.
The scans also suggest that different parts of the cortex mature at different rates. Areas involved in more
basic functions mature first: those involved, for example, in the processing of information from the senses,
and in control-ling movement. The parts of the brain responsible for more “top-down” control, controlling
impulses, and planning ahead—the hallmarks of adult behavior—are among the last to mature.
What’s Gray Matter?
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The details of what is behind the increase and decline in gray matter are still not completely clear. Gray
matter is made up of the cell bodies of neurons, the nerve fibers that project from them, and support cells.
One of the features of the brain’s growth in early life is that there is an early blooming of synapses—the
connections between brain cells or neurons—followed by pruning as the brain matures. Synapses are the
relays over which neurons communicate with each other and are the basis of the working circuitry of the
brain. Already more numerous than an adult’s at birth, synapses multiply rapidly in the first months of life.
A 2-year-old has about half again as many synapses as an adult. (For an idea of the complexity of the brain:
a cube of brain matter, 1 millimeter on each side, can contain between 35 and 70 million neurons and an
estimated 500 billion synapses.)
Scientists believe that the loss of synapses as a child matures is part of the process by which the brain
becomes more efficient. Although genes play a role in the decline in synapses, animal research has shown
that experience also shapes the decline. Synapses “exercised” by experience survive and are strengthened,
while others are pruned away. Scientists are working to determine to what extent the changes in gray
matter on brain scans during the teen years reflect growth and pruning of synapses.
A Spectrum of Change
Research using many different approaches is showing that more than gray matter is changing:
Connections between different parts of the brain increase throughout childhood and well into adult-hood.
As the brain develops, the fibers connecting nerve cells are wrapped in a protein that greatly increases the
speed with which they can transmit impulses from cell to cell. The resulting increase in connectivity—a little
like providing a growing city with a fast, integrated communication system—shapes how well different
parts of the brain work in tandem. Research is finding that the extent of connectivity is related to growth in
intellectual capacities such as memory and reading ability.
Several lines of evidence suggest that the brain circuitry involved in emotional responses is changing during
the teen years. Functional brain imaging studies, for example, suggest that the responses of teens to
emotionally loaded images and situations are heightened relative to younger children and adults. The brain
changes under-lying these patterns involve brain centers and signaling molecules that are part of the
reward system with which the brain motivates behavior. These age-related changes shape how much
different parts of the brain are activated in response to experience, and in terms of behavior, the urgency
and intensity of emotional reactions.
Enormous hormonal changes take place during adolescence. Reproductive hormones shape not only sexrelated growth and behavior, but overall social behavior. Hormone systems involved in the brain’s response
to stress are also changing during the teens. As with reproductive hormones, stress hormones can have
complex effects on the brain, and as a result, behavior.
In terms of sheer intellectual power, the brain of an adolescent is a match for an adult’s. The capacity of a
person to learn will never be greater than during adolescence. At the same time, behavioral tests, sometimes combined with functional brain imaging, suggest differences in how adolescents and adults carry out
mental tasks. Adolescents and adults seem to engage different parts of the brain to different extents during
tests requiring calculation and impulse control, or in reaction to emotional content.
Research suggests that adolescence brings with it brain-based changes in the regulation of sleep that may
contribute to teens’ tendency to stay up late at night. Along with the obvious effects of sleep deprivation,
such as fatigue and difficulty maintaining attention, inadequate sleep is a powerful contributor to irritability
and depression. Studies of children and adolescents have found that sleep deprivation can increase
impulsive behavior; some researchers report finding that it is a factor in delinquency. Adequate sleep is
central to physical and emotional health.
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The Changing Brain and Behavior in Teens
One interpretation of all these findings is that in teens, the parts of the brain involved in emotional
responses are fully online, or even more active than in adults, while the parts of the brain involved in
keeping emotional, impulsive responses in check are still reaching maturity. Such a changing balance might
provide clues to a youthful appetite for novelty, and a tendency to act on impulse— without regard for risk.
While much is being learned about the teen brain, it is not yet possible to know to what extent a particular
behavior or ability is the result of a feature of brain structure— or a change in brain structure. Changes in
the brain take place in the context of many other factors, among them, inborn traits, personal history,
family, friends, community, and culture.
Teens and the Brain: More Questions for Research
Scientists continue to investigate the development of the brain and the relationship between the changes
taking place, behavior, and health. The following questions are among the important ones that are targets
of research:
How do experience and environment interact with genetic preprogramming to shape the maturing brain,
and as a result, future abilities and behavior? In other words, to what extent does what a teen does and
learns shape his or her brain over the rest of a lifetime?
In what ways do features unique to the teen brain play a role in the high rates of illicit substance use and
alcohol abuse in the late teen to young adult years? Does the adolescent capacity for learning make this a
stage of particular vulnerability to addiction?
Why is it so often the case that, for many mental disorders, symptoms first emerge during adolescence and
young adulthood?
This last question has been the central reason to study brain development from infancy to adulthood.
Scientists increasingly view mental illnesses as developmental disorders that have their roots in the
processes involved in how the brain matures. By studying how the circuitry of the brain develops, scientists
hope to identify when and for what reasons development goes off track. Brain imaging studies have
revealed distinctive variations in growth patterns of brain tissue in youth who show signs of conditions
affecting mental health. Ongoing research is providing information on how genetic factors increase or
reduce vulnerability to mental illness; and how experiences during infancy, childhood, and adolescence can
increase the risk of mental illness or protect against it.
The Adolescent and Adult Brain
It is not surprising that the behavior of adolescents would be a study in change, since the brain itself is
changing in such striking ways. Scientists emphasize that the fact that the teen brain is in transition doesn’t
mean it is somehow not up to par. It is different from both a child’s and an adult’s in ways that may equip
youth to make the transition from dependence to independence. The capacity for learning at this age, an
expanding social life, and a taste for exploration and limit testing may all, to some extent, be reflections of
age-related biology.
Understanding the changes taking place in the brain at this age presents an opportunity to intervene early
in mental illnesses that have their onset at this age. Research findings on the brain may also serve to help
adults understand the importance of creating an environment in which teens can explore and experiment
while helping them avoid behavior that is destructive to themselves and others.
Alcohol and the Teen Brain
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Adults drink more frequently than teens, but when teens drink they tend to drink larger quantities than
adults. There is evidence to suggest that the adolescent brain responds to alcohol differently than the adult
brain, perhaps helping to explain the elevated risk of binge drinking in youth. Drinking in youth, and intense
drinking are both risk factors for later alcohol dependence. Findings on the developing brain should help
clarify the role of the changing brain in youthful drinking, and the relation-ship between youth drinking and
the risk of addiction later in life.
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“On Revenge”
by Sir Francis Bacon
1625
Bacon was an English philosopher and statesman, and a pioneer of modern scientific thought.
Francis Bacon was born on 22 January 1561 in London. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, keeper of the
great seal for Elizabeth I. Bacon studied at Cambridge University and at Gray's Inn and became a member of
parliament in 1584. However, he was unpopular with Elizabeth, and it was only on the accession of James I
in 1603 that Bacon's career began to prosper. Knighted that year, he was appointed to a succession of posts
culminating, like his father, with keeper of the great seal.
However, Bacon's real interests lay in science. Much of the science of the period was based on the work of
the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. While many Aristotelian ideas, such as the position of the earth at
the centre of the universe, had been overturned, his methodology was still being used. This held that
scientific truth could be reached by way of authoritative argument: if sufficiently clever men discussed a
subject long enough, the truth would eventually be discovered. Bacon challenged this, arguing that truth
required evidence from the real world. He published his ideas, initially in 'Novum Organum' (1620), an
account of the correct method of acquiring natural knowledge.
Bacon's political ascent also continued. In 1618 he was appointed lord chancellor, the most powerful
position in England, and in 1621 he was created viscount St Albans. Shortly afterwards, he was charged by
parliament with accepting bribes, which he admitted. He was fined and imprisoned and then banished from
court. Although the king later pardoned him, this was the end of Bacon's public life. He retired to his home
at Gorhambury in Hertfordshire, where he continued to write. He died in London on 9 April 1626.
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REVENGE is a kind of wild jusitce; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong pulleth the law out of
office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior;
for it is a prince's part to pardon. And Salomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man to pass by an
offence.
That which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do with things present and to
come: therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labour in past matters.
There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or
honour, or the like. There why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any
man should do wrong merely out of ill nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and
scratch, because they can do no other.
The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law or remedy; but then let a man
take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still beforehand, and it is
two for one.
Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh: this is the more
generous. For the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in making the party repent: but base
and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.
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Cosmus, Duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those
wrongs were unpardonable: You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our friends. But yet
the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God's hands, and not be content to take
evil also? And so of friends in a proportion.
This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal
and do well.
Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax(1);
for the death of Henry the Third of France (2); and many more. But in private revenges it is not so. Nay
rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who as they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate.
(1) Publius Helvius Pertinax became emperor of Rome in 193 and was assassinated three months after his
accession to the throne by a soldier in his praetorian Guard.
(2) King of France, 1574-1589, assassinated during the Siege of Paris.
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“Did Shakespeare Really Write His Plays? A Few Theories Examined”
By Paul Hechinger, BBC America
If the Kennedy assassination doesn’t interest you, and you’ve got a few extra years on your hands, you
might want to look into the debate over who wrote William Shakespeare’s plays.
Welcome to the morass.
Though the Shakespeare authorship question has been a topic of lively controversy for nearly two centuries
now, it’s likely to generate some renewed debate this week. That’s because of the release of the new
movie Anonymous (in theaters October 28), a period historical thriller, directed by Roland Emmerich (The
Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day) and based on the theory that someone else wrote the plays
normally attributed to Shakespeare.
In the case of the new movie, that someone is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford(played by Rhys Ifans), a
cultured aristocrat in the court of Queen Elizabeth I (played variously by Joely Richardson and Vanessa
Redgrave).
There are websites and even whole societies devoted to the proposition that the Earl of Oxford wrote
Shakespeare’s plays. And among those who believe that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays, de Vere
can be said to be the leading contender to unseat the Bard, but he’s far from the only one – there have
been dozens of candidates proposed and thousands of books and articles written on the so-called
Shakespeare authorship question.
As in the plays themselves, there are many warring factions and charges of dark conspiracies to suppress
the truth, so it’s with some trepidation that we enter these waters at all.
But let’s start with a little history.
Other than the plays themselves, we have precious little documentary evidence about Shakespeare. Among
the meager items: a few signatures, a record of his marriage toAnne Hathaway, a strange three-page will,
some papers detailing business transactions totally unrelated to writing, and just two portraits. No record
of his schooling. Not one single manuscript in his own hand of even a fragment of his amazing body of
work.
History abhors a vacuum, especially when it’s in the form of a lack of written evidence about one of the
world’s greatest writers. Although scholars desperately searched for documentation to flesh out
Shakespeare’s biography in the decades after his death, they found very little, and, to make matters more
confusing, much of what they found was fraudulent.
But it’s especially interesting to note that for a span of more than two centuries after his death, no one
even suggested that the Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of his own plays.
In fact, the first person to make the argument did it as a joke, as Shakespeare scholarJames Shapiro points
out in his book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? In 1848, a young Lutheran scholar from
Pennsylvania named Samuel Mosheim Schmucker, dismayed about the academic trend of using historical
and biographical evidence to doubt the existence of Christ, argued that the same approaches could be used
to argue that Shakespeare never existed. But he meant it all as a parody.
Shapiro says that Schmucker’s forgotten book, Historic Doubts Respecting Shakespeare: Illustrating Infidel
Objections Against the Bible, foreshadows all the major themes of the Shakespearean doubters: the lack of
documentary evidence, a distrust of disputed texts, the improbable success of an unlikely individual, and
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the notion that the “official” story can only be perpetuated by general ignorance and conspiracy by the
establishment.
“Schmucker has a great time of it,” writes Shapiro, “mostly because it never entered his head that his
readers could seriously imagine that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare.”
But, if anything, the joke was on Schmucker.
A mere few years later, the suggestion that Shakespeare’s biography just didn’t jibe with his amazing body
of work was all the rage. How could an untraveled, poorly-schooled commoner have written so widely on
topics about which he would have had no first-hand knowledge – court intrigue, the legal process, life in
other countries, even stories and information that had never been translated into English?
The great minds who have asked these questions are legion.
Mark Twain, one of the most famous doubters, author of the essay “Is Shakespeare Dead?” wrote: “So far
as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.”
“I am ‘sort of’ haunted by the conviction,” wrote novelist Henry James, “that the divine William is the
biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world.”
Sigmund Freud, whose own work is often equated with Shakespeare’s in its cultural impact and who drew
heavily on Hamlet for some of his own theories, also believed that someone other than the actor from
Stratford wrote the plays. “It is undeniably painful to all of us,” he said, “that even now we do not know
who was the author of the Comedies, Tragedies and Sonnets of Shakespeare.”
“I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy,” wrote Charlie Chaplin of the plays. “Whoever wrote them had
an aristocratic attitude.”
Such famous doubters have been joined by everyone from Orson Welles to Helen Keller.
Even Malcolm X became “intrigued over the Shakespearean dilemma,” as he referred to it in
his Autobiography. “If Shakespeare existed, he was then the top poet around,” the modern revolutionary
leader wondered, asking why he didn’t work on the King JamesBible. “If he existed, why didn’t King
James use him?”
Since the mid-nineteenth century, Shakespeare authorship theories have maintained an upward trajectory
in popular discourse, even if they’ve never gained even a foothold among establishment Shakespeareans.
Now, of course, authorship theories are going viral, with a host of websites dedicated to exploring the
question.
Take, for example, the Shakespearean Authorship Trust, a society that’s been around since 1922, whose
current chairman, actor Mark Rylance, along with fellow doubter Derek Jacobi, appears in Anonymous.
There’s the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, which, under the websiteDoubtAboutWill.org, sponsors
the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt about the Identity of William Shakespeare, a petition that has more
than 2000 signatories.
So there are lots of people who feel there are lots of reasons to think Shakespeare didn’t write his own
plays. But who do they think wrote them? Let’s take a look at the arguments for some of the most popular
authorship contenders, beginning with Sir Francis Bacon.
Sir Francis Bacon
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Sir Francis Bacon, Baron Varulam, Viscount of St. Albans (1561 – 1621) emerged as the first candidate to
replace Shakespeare. As a leading figure of the English Renaissance, he certainly had the biography for it:
educated at Cambridge, widely traveled, Bacon was a famous philosopher, one of the inventors of the
scientific method, who also led a literary society. He was also the ultimate royal insider – in addition to
holding other positions, he was a member of the Privy Council and held the title of Lord Chancellor.
The case for Bacon’s authorship was first made by an American author, Delia Bacon – no relation. While
people had questioned Shakespeare’s authorship, she was the first person to name an alternative, though
she believed that Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays in collaboration with other leading minds of the time,
like Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser.
The charge of literary collaboration is now, in fact, a relatively non-controversial one. Today, many of
Shakespeare’s plays are believed to have been written with other authors – just not the ones Delia Bacon
pointed to.
According to Delia Bacon, the reason that Sir Francis and his learned cabal wanted to conceal their own
identities was the so-called “stigma of print,” the notion that being a playwright would be an ignominious
career-ender for aristocratic politicians.
But Delia Bacon further suggested that the group needed to remain anonymous because they had a
subversive political agenda: they were, she wrote, “a little clique of disappointed and defeated politicians
who undertook to organize a popular opposition against the government.” According to her, drama was
politics by other means: “Driven from one field, they showed themselves in another,” she wrote. “Driven
from the open field, they fought in secret.”
Delia Bacon was admired by Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman,Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph
Waldo Emerson, though the latter two cooled on her authorship theories.
Miss Bacon and her like-minded contemporaries relied heavily on the arguments that the plays contained
“ciphers” or coded messages about politics and also about their true authors. (This was an idea that arose
after her friend, Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, told her that Sir Francis had himself created
secret codes.) Others have suggested that Bacon’s “signature” in the form of an elaborate code is
“embedded” in some of Shakespeare’s plays.
Orville Ward Owen's 'cipher wheel'
One scholar at the time went so far as to produce an enormous “cipher wheel” composed of a 1000-foot
piece of cloth that contained the texts of Shakespeare and others for easy comparison and decryption. He
claimed that by deciphering codes, he’d discovered the location of a box, buried under the Wye River, that
contained documents that would prove Sir Francis’s authorship. But a dredging of the area came up with
nothing.
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The argument for Sir Francis Bacon has largely been supplanted by other theories, but it still has vigorous
proponents, as represented by the Francis Bacon Society, founded in 1886, publishers of the
journal Baconiana.
Christopher Marlowe
Even more intrigue surrounds the candidacy of Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593) as the author of
Shakespeare’s plays. There’s no question he’s got the literary pedigree: with Tamburlaine the Great, he
virtually invented the blank verse play, and it was followed by such classics as The Jew of Malta and Edward
II.
Computer comparisons have apparently found word patterns and usage to be nearly identical in the work
of the two playwrights.
But it’s Marlowe’s biography, including the speculation that he was a spy for the Crown, that’s probably
fueled Marlowe’s Shakespeare authorship supporters.
Critics of the Marlowe theory point out that he died in a barroom brawl in 1593 – and that Shakespeare’s
plays continued to appear for another 21 years until 1614.
But “Marlovians” say that only strengthens their case. Marlowe was about to be arrested – and possibly
executed – and they say that he faked his own death, and lived on for years, possibly on the Continent,
where he continued to write the plays attributed to Shakespeare. (The two playwrights, Marlovians point
out, were born two months apart.)
The Marlowe theory was the subject of a PBS Frontline documentary, Much Ado About Something, in 2002:
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550 -1604) was a relatively late entrant into the Shakespeare
authorship wars, but for the past nine decades, Oxfordians, as they’ve come to be known, have presented
the dominant challenge to Stratfordians, that is, to those who believe William Shakespeare wrote his own
plays.
The candidacy of the Earl of Oxford was first proposed in 1920 by the unfortunately named J.T.
Looney (though it’s pronounced “loney”) in his bookShakespeare Identified. Since then, the case for de
Vere’s authorship has been bolstered by famous supporters such as Sigmund Freud, as well as by the
formation of Oxford societies on both sides of the Atlantic, including one formed by a descendent of de
Vere himself.
Now, with the movie Anonymous, the argument for the Earl of Oxford is getting the big screen treatment.
Actually, it’s not the first time the theory has been mentioned on the big screen. Although it’s just a few
lines, Oxfordians like to argue they received support from Shakespearean actor Leslie Howard in a movie he
made in 1941.
Oxfordians argue that de Vere was highly educated, trained as a lawyer (which they say explains the plays’
ease in dealing with legal matters), and well-connected to the theatrical world. They say that he was not
only well-traveled, but he made trips to exactly the locations that are used as settings in Shakespeare’s
plays.
For example, de Vere was famously kidnapped by pirates in the English Channel who then left him stripped
naked on Denmark’s shore. Oxfordians, who say there are many clues in Hamlet that point to de Vere’s
authorship, point out that Hamlet describes himself as “set naked” in the kingdom after he encounters
buccaneers. They further say that Hamlet’s tangle with pirates is nowhere to be found in any of the written
sources of the play.
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Or there’s this fascinating tidbit: de Vere’s brother-in-law once wrote a letter to de Vere mentioning a
banquet he attended with two courtiers named… Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Those letters, Oxfordians
contend, were private.
In fact, Hamlet is pretty much an ur-text for Oxfordians, with each of its characters standing in for a real-life
figure in Elizabeth’s court. According to this view, Polonius is in fact William Cecil, Lord Burghley, trusted
advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, who herself would be represented as Queen Gertrude, a none-too-flattering
comparison that would likely have condemned its high-born author to death.
This interpretation would also suggest that Polonius’s daughter Ophelia is Lord Burghley’s daughter Anne,
who married… wait for it… Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.
Which of course would mean that Hamlet was really a disguised Earl of Oxford and that the play would
have been both autobiographical and treasonous.
Hence the need to hide the identity of its true author.
“Once you understand Hamlet as an expose of Elizabeth’s court, with Shakespeare himself as the hero,”
says Charles Beauclerk, a leading Oxfordian who is also a direct descendant of de Vere, “you realize that it
would have been impossible for William of Stratford to have written such a satire and survived to tell the
tale.”
It also would mean that the entire play of Hamlet could perhaps be said to function just like its own famous
play-within-a-play. (A play-within-a-play-within-a-play?)
Oxfordians say de Vere was one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorites – and, some say, much more, which would
also explain the need to cover up his authorship. Some say de Vere and the Queen fathered an illegitimate
son; others go even further to argue that de Vere was Queen Elizabeth’s illegitimate son, who then had an
incestuous relationship with the so-called Virgin Queen, the result of which was another illegitimate son.
These theories, by conflating Shakespeare’s authorship with the problem of Tudor succession, raise the
political and historical stakes by turning the argument into a question of political conspiracy: according to
this twisted family history, both de Vere and his putative son had more of a claim to the throne than James
I, who succeeded Elizabeth.
William Shakespeare
Of course, the dominant view is still that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, with a few partial collaborators
along the way, especially for some of the later works. Among literature professors, academics, and
established mainstream scholars, it’s not merely the most popular theory, it’s the only theory – not even a
theory, really, but a closed question.
For Stratfordians, the appropriate non-literary comparison to the Shakespeare authorship question isn’t
really the Kennedy assassination. For them, the more likely comparison would be the so-called debate over
Darwin’s theory of evolution, in which Stratfordians would view themselves as Darwinians.
Stratfordians acknowledge that there is missing information and little contemporary biographical
documentation, but they emphasize that there is not a total absence of evidence and that what does exist
all points to William Shakespeare of Stratford, and not to someone else. There are the printed plays
themselves, the records of theater companies, and the comments of Shakespeare’s contemporaries,
including Ben Jonson.
Stratfordians may suffer from the disadvantage that their evidence tends to be of the more prosaic variety
and doesn’t boast hidden codes, shrouded mysteries, or powerful conspiracies – in short, elements similar
to those that draw us to the work itself.
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For example, Stratfordians concede that there’s not much documentation about the kind of schooling that
Shakespeare received as a youth in Stratford, but, they say, there’s not much documentation about the
kind of schooling that anyonereceived in Stratford at the time.
And while there are no extant written manuscripts, Columbia’s James Shapiropoints out that there were
printed versions of the plays at the time that incorporated changes that could only have been made by
Shakespeare himself, not by the Earl of Oxford or Christopher Marlowe, or others, from afar.
Shapiro also points to a rewritten epilogue for a special royal performance ofHenry IV, Part II, which is, he
says, “the closest we ever get in his plays to hearing Shakespeare speak for and as himself.” Shapiro says:
“It’s inconceivable that any of the rival candidates for the authorship of the plays associated with the court”
could have possibly stood on stage to deliver that epilogue.
Stratfordians are accused by the doubters of self-interestedly defending the status quo, on which, it is
alleged, everything from their livelihoods to the income generated from Shakespeare’s birthplace, relies.
Both sides feel beleaguered – the anti-Stratfordians because they feel that they’ve gotten a raw deal by the
establishment over the centuries and Stratfordians because they feel exhausted by what they see as a
series of never-ending time-wasting arguments.
In the 1970s, Shakespeare biographer Samuel Schoenbaum wrote that the “voluminousness” of “lunatic
rubbish” that questioned Shakespeare’s authorship was “matched only by its intrinsic worthlessness.”
But more recently, Shapiro, whose book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?has perhaps placed him
at the forefront of the Stratfordians, thought it might not be worthless to look into how and why those
authorship theories arose. He thinks it shows more about how we read than it does about Shakespeare. In
other words, the fault, to paraphrase Julius Caesar, is not in our Bard but in ourselves.
Shapiro ascribes the long-term interest in Shakespeare authorship theories in large part to the modern
penchant for hunting down biographical or autobiographical elements in art. He says it’s no coincidence
that fascination with Shakespeare authorship arose alongside the development of the modern murder
mystery.
And he says that current popular interest in the topic parallels our society’s obsession with conspiracy
theories.
Last year, while Anonymous was being filmed, Shapiro wrote in an Los Angeles Times op-ed piece that it
was “one more sign that conspiracy theories about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays have gone
mainstream.”
As an English professor, he’s imagining the flood of questions teachers will get from students.
“Sure, it’s only a movie,” he wrote, “but try explaining that to schoolteachers who will soon be confronted
by students arguing that the received histories of Elizabethan England and its greatest poet are lies — and
that their teachers, in suppressing the truth, are party to this conspiracy.”
Shapiro also says that the doubters’ outlook reflects an inability to grasp the greatness of the work itself.
“What I find most disheartening about the claim that Shakespeare of Stratford lacked the life experiences
to have written the plays is that it diminishes the very thing that makes him so exceptional: his
imagination,” he writes.
Harold Bloom, in some ways a sort of Falstaffian figure himself, says Shakespeare’s imagination was so
large that it actually changed our consciousness, changed the very way we think. The title of his landmark
reading of the plays says it all – Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. It’s just difficult to get our minds
around a genius so large.
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In other words, Shakespeare’s achievement is so enormous that it’s hard to believe that anybody wrote it
all, alone or in conjunction with others, openly or secretly. The resulting body of work has led critics to
point out the dilemma: if you think Shakespeare didn’t write his plays, you have to believe in vast arrays of
impossible plots, and, if you think he did, then you have to believe in an impossible talent.
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“Hope, Despair, and Memory”
by Elie Wiesel
A Hasidic legend tells us that the great Rabbi Baal-Shem-Tov, Master of the Good Name, also known as the
Besht, undertook an urgent and perilous mission: to hasten the coming of the Messiah. The Jewish people,
all humanity were suffering too much, beset by too many evils. They had to be saved, and swiftly. For
having tried to meddle with history, the Besht was punished; banished along with his faithful servant to a
distant island. In despair, the servant implored his master to exercise his mysterious powers in order to
bring them both home. "Impossible", the Besht replied. "My powers have been taken from me". "Then,
please, say a prayer, recite a litany, work a miracle". "Impossible", the Master replied, "I have forgotten
everything". They both fell to weeping.
Suddenly the Master turned to his servant and asked: "Remind me of a prayer - any prayer ." "If only I
could", said the servant. "I too have forgotten everything". "Everything - absolutely everything?" "Yes,
except - "Except what?" "Except the alphabet". At that the Besht cried out joyfully: "Then what are you
waiting for? Begin reciting the alphabet and I shall repeat after you...". And together the two exiled men
began to recite, at first in whispers, then more loudly: "Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth...". And over again, each
time more vigorously, more fervently; until, ultimately, the Besht regained his powers, having regained his
memory.
I love this story, for it illustrates the messianic expectation -which remains my own. And the importance of
friendship to man's ability to transcend his condition. I love it most of all because it emphasizes the mystical
power of memory. Without memory, our existence would be barren and opaque, like a prison cell into
which no light penetrates; like a tomb which rejects the living. Memory saved the Besht, and if anything
can, it is memory that will save humanity. For me, hope without memory is like memory without hope.
Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope
summons the future. Does this mean that our future can be built on a rejection of the past? Surely such a
choice is not necessary. The two are not incompatible. The opposite of the past is not the future but the
absence of future; the opposite of the future is not the past but the absence of past. The loss of one is
equivalent to the sacrifice of the other.
A recollection. The time: After the war. The place: Paris. A young man struggles to readjust to life. His
mother, his father, his small sister are gone. He is alone. On the verge of despair. And yet he does not give
up. On the contrary, he strives to find a place among the living. He acquires a new language. He makes a
few friends who, like himself, believe that the memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil; that the
memory of death will serve as a shield against death.
This he must believe in order to go on. For he has just returned from a universe where God, betrayed by His
creatures, covered His face in order not to see. Mankind, jewel of his creation, had succeeded in building an
inverted Tower of Babel, reaching not toward heaven but toward an anti-heaven, there to create a parallel
society, a new "creation" with its own princes and gods, laws and principles, jailers and prisoners. A world
where the past no longer counted - no longer meant anything.
Stripped of possessions, all human ties severed, the prisoners found themselves in a social and cultural
void. "Forget", they were told, "Forget where you came from; forget who you were. Only the present
matters". But the present was only a blink of the Lord's eye. The Almighty himself was a slaughterer: it was
He who decided who would live and who would die; who would be tortured, and who would be rewarded.
Night after night, seemingly endless processions vanished into the flames, lighting up the sky. Fear
dominated the universe. Indeed this was another universe; the very laws of nature had been transformed.
Children looked like old men, old men whimpered like children. Men and women from every corner of
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Europe were suddenly reduced to nameless and faceless creatures desperate for the same ration of bread
or soup, dreading the same end. Even their silence was the same for it resounded with the memory of
those who were gone. Life in this accursed universe was so distorted, so unnatural that a new species had
evolved. Waking among the dead, one wondered if one was still alive.
And yet real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to
search for meaning. All those doctors of law or medicine or theology, all those lovers of art and poetry, of
Bach and Goethe, who coldly, deliberately ordered the massacres and participated in them. What did their
metamorphosis signify? Could anything explain their loss of ethical, cultural and religious memory? How
could we ever understand the passivity of the onlookers and - yes - the silence of the Allies? And question
of questions: Where was God in all this? It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to
conceive of Auschwitz without God. Therefore, everything had to be reassessed because everything had
changed. With one stroke, mankind's achievements seemed to have been erased. Was Auschwitz a
consequence or an aberration of "civilization" ? All we know is that Auschwitz called that civilization into
question as it called into question everything that had preceded Auschwitz. Scientific abstraction, social and
economic contention, nationalism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, racism, mass hysteria. All found their
ultimate expression in Auschwitz.
The next question had to be, why go on? If memory continually brought us back to this, why build a home?
Why bring children into a world in which God and man betrayed their trust in one another?
Of course we could try to forget the past. Why not? Is it not natural for a human being to repress what
causes him pain, what causes him shame? Like the body, memory protects its wounds. When day breaks
after a sleepless night, one's ghosts must withdraw; the dead are ordered back to their graves. But for the
first time in history, we could not bury our dead. We bear their graves within ourselves.
For us, forgetting was never an option.
Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the
very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent
upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered. New Year's Day, Rosh
Hashana, is also called Yom Hazikaron, the day of memory. On that day, the day of universal judgment,
man appeals to God to remember: our salvation depends on it. If God wishes to remember our suffering, all
will be well; if He refuses, all will be lost. Thus, the rejection of memory becomes a divine curse, one that
would doom us to repeat past disasters, past wars.
Nothing provokes so much horror and opposition within the Jewish tradition as war. Our abhorrence of war
is reflected in the paucity of our literature of warfare. After all, God created the Torah to do away with
iniquity, to do away with war1.Warriors fare poorly in the Talmud: Judas Maccabeus is not even mentioned;
Bar-Kochba is cited, but negatively2. David, a great warrior and conqueror, is not permitted to build the
Temple; it is his son Solomon, a man of peace, who constructs God's dwelling place. Of course some wars
may have been necessary or inevitable, but none was ever regarded as holy. For us, a holy war is a
contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. The Talmud
says, "Talmidei hukhamim shemarbin shalom baolam" (It is the wise men who will bring about peace).
Perhaps, because wise men remember best.
And yet it is surely human to forget, even to want to forget. The Ancients saw it as a divine gift. Indeed if
memory helps us to survive, forgetting allows us to go on living. How could we go on with our daily lives, if
we remained constantly aware of the dangers and ghosts surrounding us? The Talmud tells us that without
the ability to forget, man would soon cease to learn. Without the ability to forget, man would live in a
permanent, paralyzing fear of death. Only God and God alone can and must remember everything.
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How are we to reconcile our supreme duty towards memory with the need to forget that is essential to life?
No generation has had to confront this paradox with such urgency. The survivors wanted to communicate
everything to the living: the victim's solitude and sorrow, the tears of mothers driven to madness, the
prayers of the doomed beneath a fiery sky.
They needed to tell the child who, in hiding with his mother, asked softly, very softly: "Can I cry now?" They
needed to tell of the sick beggar who, in a sealed cattle-car, began to sing as an offering to his companions.
And of the little girl who, hugging her grandmother, whispered: "Don't be afraid, don't be sorry to die... I'm
not". She was seven, that little girl who went to her death without fear, without regret.
Each one of us felt compelled to record every story, every encounter. Each one of us felt compelled to bear
witness, Such were the wishes of the dying, the testament of the dead. Since the so-called civilized world
had no use for their lives, then let it be inhabited by their deaths.
The great historian Shimon Dubnov served as our guide and inspiration. Until the moment of his death he
said over and over again to his companions in the Riga ghetto: "Yidden, shreibt un fershreibt" (Jews, write it
all down). His words were heeded. Overnight, countless victims become chroniclers and historians in the
ghettos, even in the death camps. Even members of the Sonderkommandos, those inmates forced to burn
their fellow inmates' corpses before being burned in turn, left behind extraordinary documents. To testify
became an obsession. They left us poems and letters, diaries and fragments of novels, some known
throughout the world, others still unpublished.
After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of
the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find
the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the
torturer from torturing ever again. We thought it would be enough to read the world a poem written by a
child in the Theresienstadt ghetto to ensure that no child anywhere would ever again have to endure
hunger or fear. It would be enough to describe a death-camp "Selection", to prevent the human right to
dignity from ever being violated again.
We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for
men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is "different" - whether
black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem - anyone whose orientation differs politically,
philosophically, sexually. A naive undertaking? Of course. But not without a certain logic.
We tried. It was not easy. At first, because of the language; language failed us. We would have to invent a
new vocabulary, for our own words were inadequate, anemic.
And then too, the people around us refused to listen; and even those who listened refused to believe; and
even those who believed could not comprehend. Of course they could not. Nobody could. The experience
of the camps defies comprehension.
Have we failed? I often think we have.
If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent,
that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that
racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it. Nor would we have
believed that there would be governments that would deprive a man like Lech Walesa of his freedom to
travel merely because he dares to dissent. And he is not alone. Governments of the Right and of the Left go
much further, subjecting those who dissent, writers, scientists, intellectuals, to torture and persecution.
How to explain this defeat of memory?
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How to explain any of it: the outrage of Apartheid which continues unabated. Racism itself is dreadful, but
when it pretends to be legal, and therefore just, when a man like Nelson Mandela is imprisoned, it becomes
even more repugnant. Without comparing Apartheid to Nazism and to its "final solution" - for that defies all
comparison - one cannot help but assign the two systems, in their supposed legality, to the same camp.
And the outrage of terrorism: of the hostages in Iran, the coldblooded massacre in the synagogue in
Istanbul, the senseless deaths in the streets of Paris. Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of
innocent people and helpless children. And the outrage of preventing men and women like Andrei
Sakharov, Vladimir and Masha Slepak, Ida Nudel, Josef Biegun, Victor Brailowski, Zakhar Zonshein, and all
the others known and unknown from leaving their country. And then there is Israel, which after two
thousand years of exile and thirty-eight years of sovereignty still does not have peace. I would like to see
this people, which is my own, able to establish the foundation for a constructive relationship with all its
Arab neighbors, as it has done with Egypt. We must exert pressure on all those in power to come to terms.
And here we come back to memory. We must remember the suffering of my people, as we must remember
that of the Ethiopians, the Cambodians, the boat people, Palestinians, the Mesquite Indians, the
Argentinian "desaparecidos" - the list seems endless.
Let us remember Job who, having lost everything - his children, his friends, his possessions, and even his
argument with God - still found the strength to begin again, to rebuild his life. Job was determined not to
repudiate the creation, however imperfect, that God had entrusted to him.
Job, our ancestor. Job, our contemporary. His ordeal concerns all humanity. Did he ever lose his faith? If so,
he rediscovered it within his rebellion. He demonstrated that faith is essential to rebellion, and that hope is
possible beyond despair. The source of his hope was memory, as it must be ours. Because I remember, I
despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the
victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we
fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world. We may be
powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by declaring our solidarity with one prisoner,
we indict all jailers. None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and
expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims. I began with the story of the Besht. And,
like the Besht, mankind needs to remember more than ever. Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our
entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can
provoke, only man can prevent. Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is
our gift to each other.
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“The Lottery”
by Shirley Jackson
The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers
were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in
the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many
people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. but in this village, where there
were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten
o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.
The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of
liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke
into boisterous play. and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands.
Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example,
selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix—the villagers
pronounced this name "Dellacroy"--eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and
guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over
their shoulders at rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.
Soon the men began to gather. surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and
taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they
smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after
their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands.
Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came
reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's grasping hand
and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took
his place between his father and his oldest brother.
The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program--by Mr.
Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he
ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him. because he had no children and his wife was a
scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of
conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called. "Little late today, folks." The postmaster, Mr.
Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and
Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between
themselves and the stool. and when Mr. Summers said, "Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?"
there was a hesitation before two men. Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter. came forward to hold the
box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.
The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the
stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr.
Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as
much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been
made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first
people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again
about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done. The
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black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one
side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.
Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had
stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or
discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood
that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued. had been all very well
when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on
growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box. The night before
the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was
then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers' coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it
to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes
another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the post office. And
sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.
There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were
the lists to make up--of heads of families. heads of households in each family. members of each
household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the
official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort,
performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory. tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each
year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it,
others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this p3rt of the
ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had
had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with
time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching. Mr. Summers
was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans. with one hand resting carelessly on the
black box. he seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came
hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the
back of the crowd. "Clean forgot what day it was," she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and
they both laughed softly. "Thought my old man was out back stacking wood," Mrs. Hutchinson went on.
"and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twentyseventh and came a-running." She dried her hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're in time,
though. They're still talking away up there."
Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her husband and children standing
near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and began to make her way through the
crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her through: two or three people said. in voices just
loud enough to be heard across the crowd, "Here comes your, Missus, Hutchinson," and "Bill, she made it
after all." Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully.
"Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie." Mrs. Hutchinson said. grinning, "Wouldn't
have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now, would you. Joe?," and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the
people stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival.
"Well, now." Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get started, get this over with, so's we can go
back to work. Anybody ain't here?"
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"Dunbar." several people said. "Dunbar. Dunbar."
Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar." he said. "That's right. He's broke his leg, hasn't he? Who's
drawing for him?"
"Me. I guess," a woman said. and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. "Wife draws for her husband." Mr.
Summers said. "Don't you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?" Although Mr. Summers and
everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the
lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with an expression of polite interest while
Mrs. Dunbar answered.
"Horace's not but sixteen vet." Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. "Guess I gotta fill in for the old man this
year."
"Right." Sr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding. Then he asked, "Watson boy
drawing this year?"
A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. "Here," he said. "I'm drawing for my mother and me." He blinked
his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices in the crowd said things like "Good fellow,
lad." and "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it."
"Well," Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone. Old Man Warner make it?"
"Here," a voice said. and Mr. Summers nodded.
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked at the list. "All ready?" he
called. "Now, I'll read the names--heads of families first--and the men come up and take a paper out of the
box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn.
Everything clear?"
The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions: most of them were
quiet. wetting their lips. not looking around. Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, "Adams."
A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. "Hi. Steve." Mr. Summers said. and Mr.
Adams said. "Hi. Joe." They grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached
into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and went
hastily back to his place in the crowd. where he stood a little apart from his family. not looking down at
his hand.
"Allen." Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."
"Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries any more." Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the
back row.
"Seems like we got through with the last one only last week."
"Time sure goes fast. -- Mrs. Graves said.
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"Clark.... Delacroix"
"There goes my old man." Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath while her husband went forward.
"Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while one of the women said.
"Go on. Janey," and another said, "There she goes."
"We're next." Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came around from the side of the box,
greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected a slip of paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd
there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hand. turning them over and over nervously
Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of paper.
"Harburt.... Hutchinson."
"Get up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said. and the people near her laughed.
"Jones."
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village
they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good
enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any
more, live hat way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing
you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added
petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody."
"Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools."
"Martin." And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. "Overdyke.... Percy."
"I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. "I wish they'd hurry."
"They're almost through," her son said.
"You get ready to run tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said.
Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and selected a slip from the box.
Then he called, "Warner."
"Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery," Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd.
"Seventy-seventh time."
"Watson" The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone said, "Don't be nervous, Jack," and
Mr. Summers said, "Take your time, son."
"Zanini."
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After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers. holding his slip of paper in the
air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened.
Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saving. "Who is it?," "Who's got it?," "Is it the
Dunbars?," "Is it the Watsons?" Then the voices began to say, "It's Hutchinson. It's Bill," "Bill Hutchinson's
got it."
"Go tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.
People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at
the paper in his hand. Suddenly. Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers. "You didn't give him time
enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!"
"Be a good sport, Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same chance."
"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.
"Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done pretty fast, and now we've got to be hurrying a little
more to get done in time." He consulted his next list. "Bill," he said, "you draw for the Hutchinson
family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?"
"There's Don and Eva," Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. "Make them take their chance!"
"Daughters draw with their husbands' families, Tessie," Mr. Summers said gently. "You know that as
well as anyone else."
"It wasn't fair," Tessie said.
"I guess not, Joe." Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. "My daughter draws with her husband's family; that's
only fair. And I've got no other family except the kids."
"Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's you," Mr. Summers said in explanation, "and as far
as drawing for households is concerned, that's you, too. Right?"
"Right," Bill Hutchinson said.
"How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked formally.
"Three," Bill Hutchinson said.
"There's Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me."
"All right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got their tickets back?"
Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. "Put them in the box, then," Mr. Summers directed.
"Take Bill's and put it in."
"I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. "I tell you it wasn't fair.
You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that."
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Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box. and he dropped all the papers but those
onto the ground. where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.
"Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her.
"Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked. and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance around at his wife and
children. nodded.
"Remember," Mr. Summers said. "take the slips and keep them folded until each person has taken one.
Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves took the hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him up
to the box. "Take a paper out of the box, Davy." Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box and
laughed. "Take just one paper." Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you hold it for him." Mr. Graves took the
child's hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist and held it while little Dave stood next to
him and looked up at him wonderingly.
"Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends breathed heavily as she went
forward switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily from the box "Bill, Jr.," Mr. Summers said, and Billy,
his face red and his feet overlarge, near knocked the box over as he got a paper out. "Tessie," Mr.
Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly. and then set her lips and went up to
the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.
"Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt around, bringing his hand
out at last with the slip of paper in it.
The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy," and the sound of the whisper reached the
edges of the crowd.
"It's not the way it used to be." Old Man Warner said clearly. "People ain't the way they used to be."
"All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave's."
Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and
everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill. Jr.. opened theirs at the same time. and both
beamed and laughed. turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and
Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.
"It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. "Show us her paper. Bill."
Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on
it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company
office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.
"All right, folks." Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish quickly."
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to
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use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with
the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to
pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. "Come on," she said. "Hurry up."
Mr. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said. gasping for breath. "I can't run at all. You'll
have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as
the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man
Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of
villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.
"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.
----------------------------------------------------------
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“The Gettysburg Address”
by Abraham Lincoln
Executive Mansion,
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal"
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all
propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this
ground-- The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget
what they did here.
It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we here be dedica-ted to the great task remaining before us -that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last
full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the
nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
“The Gettysburg Address – The Hay Draft”
by Abraham Lincoln
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in
Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate
a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow this ground. The
brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they
did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus
far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that
from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full
measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this
nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.
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Declaration of Independence
by Thomas Jefferson
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and
equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of
these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of
Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in
their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to
attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people
would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable
to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository
of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the
rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the
Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the
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State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions
within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for
Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the
conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary
powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and
payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and
eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and
unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the
Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary
government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for
introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of
our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all
cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
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He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death,
desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to
become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our
frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of
all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our
repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked
by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time
of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of
the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and
magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been
deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which
denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace
Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled,
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by
Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies
are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the
British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to
be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude
Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent
States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of
divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
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“I Have a Dream”
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for
freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation
Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who
had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of
their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still
sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later,
the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One
hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an
exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the
magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a
promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black
men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of
color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad
check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient
funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that
will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to
engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make
real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to
the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to
the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the
Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off
steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And
there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The
whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice
emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the
palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let
us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must
forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative
protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of
meeting physical force with soul force.
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The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all
white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to
realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is
inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be
satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be
satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the
highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a
smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a
Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no,
we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like
a mighty stream."
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have
come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for
freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You
have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is
redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go
back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this
situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply
rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former
slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,
sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips
dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black
boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
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I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low,
the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the
Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we
will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail
together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new
meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every
hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing
in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
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“Theme for English B”
by Langston Hughes
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you –
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me – we two – you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me – who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records – Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks who are other races.
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So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white –
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me –
although you’re older – and white –
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
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“How Laughter Works”
by Marshall Brain
Here's a joke:
Bill Gates and the president of General Motors have met for lunch, and Bill is going on and on about
computer technology. "If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past
few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000
miles per hour," says Gates. "Or, you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds and gets a
thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In either case, the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50. Why
haven't you guys kept up?" The president of GM smiles and says, "Because the federal government won't
let us build cars that crash four times a day."
Why is that funny (or not funny, as the case may be)? Human beings love to laugh, and the average adult
laughs 17 times a day. Humans love to laugh so much that there are actually industries built around
laughter. Jokes, sitcoms and comedians are all designed to get us laughing, because laughing feels good. For
us it seems so natural, but the funny thing is that humans are one of the only species that laughs. Laughter
is actually a complex response that involves many of the same skills used in solving problems.
Laughter is a great thing -- that's why we've all heard the saying, "Laughter is the best medicine." There is
strong evidence that laughter can actually improve health and help fight disease. In this article, we'll look at
laughter -- what it is, what happens in our brains when we laugh, what makes us laugh and how it can make
us healthier and happier. You'll also learn that there's a tremendous amount that no one understands yet.
What Is Laughter?
First of all, laughter is not the same as humor. Laughter is the physiological response to humor. Laughter
consists of two parts -- a set of gestures and the production of a sound. When we laugh, the brain pressures
us to conduct both those activities simultaneously. When we laugh heartily, changes occur in many parts of
the body, even the arm, leg and trunk muscles.
Under certain conditions, our bodies perform what the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "rhythmic,
vocalized, expiratory and involuntary actions" -- better known as laughter. Fifteen facial muscles contract
and stimulation of the zygomatic major muscle (the main lifting mechanism of your upper lip) occurs.
Meanwhile, the respiratory system is upset by the epiglottis half-closing the larynx, so that air intake
occurs irregularly, making you gasp. In extreme circumstances, the tear ducts are activated, so that while
the mouth is opening and closing and the struggle for oxygen intake continues, the face becomes moist and
often red (or purple). The noises that usually accompany this bizarre behavior range from sedate giggles to
boisterous guffaws.
Behavioral neurobiologist and pioneering laughter researcher Robert Provine jokes that he has
encountered one major problem in his study of laughter. The problem is that laughter disappears just when
he is ready to observe it -- especially in the laboratory. One of his studies looked at the sonic structure of
laughter. He discovered that all human laughter consists of variations on a basic form that consists of short,
vowel-like notes repeated every 210 milliseconds. Laughter can be of the "ha-ha-ha" variety or the "ho-hoho" type but not a mixture of both, he says. Provine also suggests that humans have a "detector" that
responds to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain, which, in turn, generates more
laughter. This explains why laughter is contagious.
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Humor researcher Peter Derks describes laughter response as "a really quick, automatic type of behavior."
"In fact, how quickly our brain recognizes the incongruity that lies at the heart of most humor and attaches
an abstract meaning to it determines whether we laugh," he says.
In the next section, we'll learn why we laugh.
Why Do We Laugh?
Philosopher John Morreall believes that the first human laughter may have begun as a gesture of shared
relief at the passing of danger. And since the relaxation that results from a bout of laughter inhibits the
biological fight-or-flight response, laughter may indicate trust in one's companions.
Many researchers believe that the purpose of laughter is related to making and strengthening human
connections. "Laughter occurs when people are comfortable with one another, when they feel open and
free. And the more laughter [there is], the more bonding [occurs] within the group," says cultural
anthropologist Mahadev Apte. This feedback "loop" of bonding-laughter-more bonding, combined with the
common desire not to be singled out from the group, may be another reason why laughter is often
contagious.
Studies have also found that dominant individuals -- the boss, the tribal chief or the family patriarch -- use
humor more than their subordinates. If you've often thought that everyone in the office laughs when the
boss laughs, you're very perceptive. In such cases, Morreall says, controlling the laughter of a group
becomes a way of exercising power by controlling the emotional climate of the group. So laughter, like
much human behavior, must have evolved to change the behavior of others, Provine says. For example, in
an embarrassing or threatening situation, laughter may serve as a conciliatory gesture or as a way to deflect
anger. If the threatening person joins the laughter, the risk of confrontation may lessen.
Provine is among only a few people who are studying laughter much as an animal behaviorist might study a
dog's bark or a bird's song. He believes that laughter, like the bird's song, functions as a kind of social
signal. Other studies have confirmed that theory by proving that people are 30 times more likely to laugh in
social settings than when they are alone (and without pseudo-social stimuli like television). Even nitrous
oxide, or laughing gas, loses much of its oomph when taken in solitude, according to German psychologist
Willibald Ruch.
Next, we'll learn how we laugh.
Laughter on the Brain
The physiological study of laughter has its own name -- gelotology. And we know that certain parts of the
brain are responsible for certain human functions. For example, emotional responses are the function of
the brain's largest region, the frontal lobe. But researchers have learned that the production of laughter is
involved with various regions of the brain. While the relationship between laughter and the brain is not
fully understood, researchers are making some progress.
For example, Derks traced the pattern of brainwave activity in subjects responding to humorous material.
Subjects were hooked up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) and their brain activity was measured when
they laughed. In each case, the brain produced a regular electrical pattern. Within four-tenths of a second
of exposure to something potentially funny, an electrical wave moved through the cerebral cortex, the
largest part of the brain. If the wave took a negative charge, laughter resulted. If it maintained a positive
charge, no response was given, researchers said.
During the experiment, researchers observed the following specific activities:
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The left side of the cortex (the layer of cells that covers the entire surface of the forebrain) analyzed the
words and structure of the joke.
The brain's large frontal lobe, which is involved in social emotional responses, became very active.
The right hemisphere of the cortex carried out the intellectual analysis required to "get" the joke.
Brainwave activity then spread to the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe (the area on the back of
the head that contains the cells that process visual signals).
Stimulation of the motor sections evoked physical responses to the joke.
This is different from what happens with emotional responses. Emotional responses appear to be confined
to specific areas of the brain, while laughter seems to be produced via a circuit that runs through many
regions of the brain. (This means that damage to any of these regions can impair one's sense of humor and
response to humor, experts say.)
Read on to learn more about how the brain and laughter are connected.
The Limbic System
When we look more closely at the areas of the brain involved with laughter, the limbic system seems to be
central. The limbic system is a network of structures located beneath the cerebral cortex. This system is
important because it controls some behaviors that are essential to the life of all mammals (finding food,
self-preservation).
Interestingly, the same structures found in the human limbic system can also be found in the brains of
evolutionary ancient animals such as the alligator. In the alligator, the limbic system is heavily involved in
smell and plays an important role in defending territory, hunting and eating prey. In humans, the limbic
system is more involved in motivation and emotional behaviors.
While the structures in this highly developed part of the brain interconnect, research has shown that the
amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure deep inside the brain, and the hippocampus, a tiny, seahorseshaped structure, seem to be the main areas involved with emotions. The amygdala connects with the
hippocampus as well as the medial dorsal nucleus of the thalamus. These connections enable it to play an
important role in the mediation and control of major activities like friendship, love and affection and on the
expression of mood. The hypothalamus, particularly its median part, has been identified as a major
contributor to the production of loud, uncontrollable laughter.
In the next section, we'll discuss what makes us laugh.
What's Funny?
Laughter is triggered when we find something humorous. There are three traditional theories about what
we find humorous:
The incongruity theory suggests that humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that
don't normally go together. Researcher Thomas Veatch says a joke becomes funny when we expect one
outcome and another happens. When a joke begins, our minds and bodies are already anticipating what's
going to happen and how it's going to end. That anticipation takes the form of logical thought intertwined
with emotion and is influenced by our past experiences and our thought processes. When the joke goes in
an unexpected direction, our thoughts and emotions suddenly have to switch gears. We now have new
emotions, backing up a different line of thought. In other words, we experience two sets of incompatible
thoughts and emotions simultaneously. We experience this incongruity between the different parts of the
joke as humorous.
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The superiority theory comes into play when we laugh at jokes that focus on someone else's mistakes,
stupidity or misfortune. We feel superior to this person, experience a certain detachment from the
situation and so are able to laugh at it.
The relief theory is the basis for a device movie-makers have used effectively for a long time. In action films
or thrillers where tension is high, the director uses comic relief at just the right times. He builds up the
tension or suspense as much as possible and then breaks it down slightly with a side comment, enabling the
viewer to relieve himself of pent-up emotion, just so the movie can build it up again! Similarly, an actual
story or situation creates tension within us. As we try to cope with two sets of emotions and thoughts, we
need a release and laughter is the way of cleansing our system of the built-up tension and incongruity.
(According to Dr. Lisa Rosenberg, humor, especially dark humor, can help workers cope with stressful
situations. "The act of producing humor, of making a joke, gives us a mental break and increases our
objectivity in the face of overwhelming stress," she says.)
Next we'll learn why we don't all think that the same things are funny.
That's Not Funny
Experts say that several obvious differences in people affect what they find humorous. The most significant
seems to be age.
Infants and children are constantly discovering the world around them. A lot of what goes on seems
ridiculous and surprising, which strikes them as funny. What's funny to a toddler consists of short and
simple concepts, like an elephant joke. Along with the ridiculous and the surprising, children -- much to
their parents' dismay -- also appreciate jokes where cruelty is present (it boosts their self-assertiveness) and
what we refer to as "toilet humor." To children, a preoccupation with bodily functions is simply another
way of exploring their fascinating new environment.
The pre-teen and teenage years are, almost universally, awkward and tense. Lots of adolescents and teens
laugh at jokes that focus on sex, food, authority figures and -- in typical rebellious style -- any subject that
adults consider off-limits. It is an insecure time of life and young people often use humor as a tool to
protect themselves or to feel superior.
As we mature, both our physical bodies and mental outlooks grow and change. Since there is a certain
amount of intelligence involved in "getting" a joke, our senses of humor becomes more developed as we
learn more. By the time we're grown, we have experienced much of life, including tragedy and success. In
keeping with these experiences, our senses of humor are more mature. We laugh at other people and
ourselves in shared common predicaments and embarrassments. The adult sense of humor is usually
characterized as more subtle, more tolerant and less judgmental about the differences in people. The
things we find funny as a result of our age or developmental stage seem to be related to the stressors we
experience during this time. Basically, we laugh at the issues that stress us out.
Another factor that affects what we find funny is the culture or community from which we come. Have you
ever laughed at a joke and realized that if you were from anywhere else in the world, it just wouldn't be
funny? It's a fact of life that culture and community provide lots of fodder for jokes. There are economic,
political and social issues that are easy to laugh about, but only the people living in that culture may
understand it. For example, a joke from a small country might not have universal appeal because it would
be so little understood. The big, influential, much-observed United States might be the exception to this
rule. Thanks to media and movies, most people around the world know what is going on here. So jokes
about a situation in the United States can be enjoyed pretty much across the globe.
When people say "That's not funny," theorist Veatch says they mean either "It is offensive" or "So, what's
the point?" For someone to find a joke or situation offensive, he must have some attachment to the
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principle or person being demeaned or put down in the joke. So racist and sexist jokes are offensive to
many people who feel strongly about fighting bigotry and prejudice in the world. According to Veatch,
when someone says, "So, what's the point?" it indicates the absence of any moral or emotional attachment
or commitment to the joke's "victim."
Laughter and Health
We've long known that the ability to laugh is helpful to those coping with major illness and the stress of
life's problems. But researchers are now saying laughter can do a lot more -- it can basically bring balance
to all the components of the immune system, which helps us fight off diseases.
As we mentioned earlier, laughter reduces levels of certain stress hormones. In doing this, laughter
provides a safety valve that shuts off the flow of stress hormones and the fight-or-flight compounds that
swing into action in our bodies when we experience stress, anger or hostility. These stress hormones
suppress the immune system, increase the number of blood platelets (which can cause obstructions in
arteries) and raise blood pressure. When we're laughing, natural killer cells that destroy tumors and viruses
increase, as do Gamma-interferon (a disease-fighting protein), T-cells, which are a major part of the
immune response, and B-cells, which make disease-destroying antibodies.
Laughter may lead to hiccuping and coughing, which clears the respiratory tract by dislodging mucous
plugs. Laughter also increases the concentration of salivary immunoglobulin A, which defends against
infectious organisms entering through the respiratory tract.
What may surprise you even more is the fact that researchers estimate that laughing 100 times is equal to
10 minutes on the rowing machine or 15 minutes on an exercise bike. Laughing can be a total body
workout! Blood pressure is lowered, and there is an increase in vascular blood flow and in oxygenation of
the blood, which further assists healing. Laughter also gives your diaphragm and abdominal, respiratory,
facial, leg and back muscles a workout. That's why you often feel exhausted after a long bout of laughter -you've just had an aerobic workout!
The psychological benefits of humor are quite amazing, according to doctors and nurses who are members
of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor. People often store negative emotions, such as anger,
sadness and fear, rather than expressing them. Laughter provides a way for these emotions to be
harmlessly released. Laughter is cathartic. That's why some people who are upset or stressed out go to a
funny movie or a comedy club, so they can laugh the negative emotions away (these negative emotions,
when held inside, can cause biochemical changes that can affect our bodies).
Increasingly, mental health professionals are suggesting "laughter therapy," which teaches people how to
laugh -- openly -- at things that aren't usually funny and to cope in difficult situations by using humor.
Following the lead of real-life funny-doc Patch Adams (portrayed by Robin Williams in a movie by the same
name), doctors and psychiatrists are becoming more aware of the therapeutic benefits of laughter and
humor. This is due, in part, to the growing body of humor and laughter scholarship (500 academicians from
different disciplines belong to the International Society for Humor Studies).
Here are some tips to help you put more laughter in your life:
Figure out what makes you laugh and do it (or read it or watch it) more often.
Surround yourself with funny people -- be with them every chance you get.
Develop your own sense of humor. Maybe even take a class to learn how to be a better comic -- or at least
a better joke-teller at that next party. Be funny every chance you get -- as long as it's not at someone else's
expense!
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“The Waltz”
by Dorothy Parker
I don't want to dance with him. I don't want to dance with anybody. And even if I did, it wouldn't be him.
He'd be well down among the last ten. I've seen the way he dances; it looks like something you do on Saint
Walpurgis Night. Just think, not a quarter of an hour ago, here I was sitting, feeling so sorry for the poor girl
he was dancing with. And now I'm going to be the poor girl. Well, well. Isn't it a small world?
And a peach of a world, too. A true little corker. Its events are so fascinatingly unpredictable, are not they?
Here I was, minding my own business, not doing a stitch of harm to any living soul. And then he comes into
my life, all smiles and city manners, to sue me for the favor of one memorable mazurka. Why, he scarcely
knows my name, let alone what it stands for. It stands for Despair, Bewilderment,
Futility, Degradation, and Premeditated Murder, but little does he wot. I don't wot his name, either; I
haven't any idea what it is. Jukes, would be my guess from the look in his eyes. How do you do, Mr. Jukes?
And how is that dear little brother of yours, with the two heads?
Ah, now why did he have to come around me, with his low requests? Why can't he let me lead my own life?
I ask so little -- just to be left alone in my quiet corner of the table, to do my evening brooding over all my
sorrows. And he must come, with his bows and his scrapes and his may-l-have-this-ones. And I had to go
and tell him that I'd adore to dance with him. I cannot understand why I wasn't struck right
down dead. Yes, and being struck dead would look like a day in the country, compared to struggling out a
dance with this boy. But what could I do? Everyone else at the table had got up to dance, except him and
me. There was 1, trapped. Trapped like a trap in a trap.
What can you say, when a man asks you to dance with him? I most certainly will not dance with you, I'll see
you in hell first. Why, thank you, I'd like to awfully, but I'm having labor pains. Oh, yes, do let's dance
together -- it's so nice to meet a man who isn't a scaredy-cat about catching my beri-beri. No. There was
nothing for me to do, but say I'd adore to. Well, we might as well get it over with. All right,
Cannonball, let's run out on the field. You won the toss; you can lead.
Why, I think it's more of a waltz, really. Isn't it? We might just listen to the music a second. Shall we? Oh,
yes, it's a waltz. Mind? Why, I'm simply thrilled. I'd love to waltz with you.
I'd love to waltz with you. I'd love to waltz with you. I'd love to have my tonsils out, I'd love to be in a
midnight fire at sea. Well, it's too late now. We're getting under way. Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear.
Oh, this is even worse than I thought it would be. I suppose that's the one dependable law of life -everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be. Oh, if I had any real grasp of what this
dance would be like, I'd have held out for sitting it out. Well, it will probably amount to the same thing in
the end. We'll be sitting it out on the floor in a minute, if he keeps this up.
I'm so glad I brought it to his attention that this is a waltz they're playing. Heaven knows what might have
happened, if he had thought it was something fast; we'd have blown the sides right out of the building,
Why does he always want to be somewhere that he isn't? Why can't we stay in one place just long enough
to get acclimated? It's this constant rush, rush, rush, that's the curse of American life. That's the reason that
we're all of us so -- Ow! For God's sake, don't kick, you idiot; this is only second down. Oh, my shin. My
poor, poor shin, that I've had ever since I was a little girl!
Oh, no, no, no. Goodness, no. It didn't hurt the least little bit. And anyway it was my fault. Really it was.
Truly. Well, you're just being sweet, to say that. It really was all my fault.
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I wonder what I'd better do -- kill him this instant, with my naked hands, or wait and let him drop in his
traces. Maybe it's best not to make a scene. I guess I'll just lie low, and watch the pace get him. He can't
keep this up indefinitely -- he's only flesh and blood. Die he must, and die he shall, for what he did to me. I
don't want to be of the over-sensitive type, but you can't tell me that kick was unpremeditated. Freud says
there are no accidents. I've led no cloistered life, I've known dancing partners who have spoiled my slippers
and torn my dress; but when it comes to kicking, I am Outraged Womanhood. When you kick me in the
shin, smile.
Maybe he didn't do it maliciously. Maybe it's just his way of showing his high spirits. I suppose I ought to be
glad that one of us is having such a good time. I suppose I ought to think myself lucky if he brings me back
alive. Maybe it's captious to demand of a practically strange man that he leave your shins as he
found them. After all, the poor boy's doing the best he can. Probably he grew up in the hill country, and
never had no larnin'. I bet they had to throw him on his back to get shoes on him.
Yes, it's lovely, isn't it? It's simply lovely. It's the loveliest waltz. Isn't it? Oh, I think it's lovely, too.
Why, I'm getting positively drawn to the Triple Threat here. He's my hero. He has the heart of a lion, and
the sinews of a buffalo. Look at him -- never a thought of the consequences, never afraid of his face, hurling
himself into every scrimmage, eyes shining, cheeks ablaze. And shall it be said that I hung back? No, a
thousand times no. What's it to me if I have to spend the next couple of years in a plaster cast? Come on,
Butch, right through them! Who wants to live forever?
Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, he's all right, thank goodness. For a while I thought they'd have to carry him off the field.
Ah, I couldn't bear to have anything happen to him. I love him. I love him better than anybody in the world.
Look at the spirit he gets into a dreary, commonplace waltz; how effete the other dancers seem, beside
him. He is youth and vigor and courage, he is strength and gaiety and -- Ow! Get off my instep, you hulking
peasant! What do you think I am, anyway -- a gangplank? Ow!
No, of course it didn't hurt. Why, it didn't a bit. Honestly. And it was all my fault. You see, that little step of
yours -- well, it's perfectly lovely, but it's just a tiny bit tricky to follow at first. Oh, did you work it up
yourself? You really did? Well, aren't you amazing! Oh, now I think I've got it. Oh, I think it's lovely. I was
watching you do it when you were dancing before. It's awfully effective when you look at it.
It's awfully effective when you look at it. I bet I'm awfully effective when you look at me. My hair is hanging
along my cheeks, my skirt is swaddling about me, I can feel the cold damp of my brow. I must look like
something out of the "Fall of the House of Usher." This sort of thing takes a fearful toll of a woman my age.
And he worked up his little step himself, he with his degenerate cunning. And it was just a tiny bit tricky at
first, but now I think I've got it. Two stumbles, slip, and a twenty yard dash; yes. I've got it. I've got several
other things, too, including a split shin and a bitter heart. I hate this creature I'm chained to. I hated him the
moment I saw his leering, bestial face. And here I've been locked in his noxious embrace for the thirty-five
years this waltz has lasted. Is that orchestra never going to stop playing? Or must this obscene travesty of a
dance go on until hell burns out?
Oh, they're going to play another encore. Oh, goody. Oh, that's lovely. Tired? I should say I'm not tired. I'd
like to go on like this forever.
I should say I'm not tired. I'm dead, that's all I am. Dead, and in what a cause! And the music is never going
to stop playing, and we're going on like this, Double-Time Charlie and I, throughout eternity. I suppose I
won't care any more, after the first hundred thousand years. I suppose nothing will matter then, not heat
nor pain nor broken heart nor cruel, aching weariness. Well. It can't come too soon for me.
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I wonder why I didn't tell him I was tired. I wonder why I didn't suggest going back to the table. I could have
said let's just listen to the music. Yes, and if he would, that would be the first bit of attention he has given it
all evening. George Jean Nathan said that the lovely rhythms of the waltz should be listened to in stillness
and not be accompanied by strange gyrations of the human body. I think that's what he said. I think it was
George Jean Nathan. Anyhow, whatever he said and whoever he was and whatever he's doing now, he's
better off than I am. That's safe. Anybody who isn't waltzing with this Mrs. O'Leary's cow I've got here is
having a good time.
Still if we were back at the table, I'd probably have to talk to him. Look at him -- what could you say to a
thing like that! Did you go to the circus this year, what's your favorite kind of ice cream, how do you spell
cat? I guess I'm as well off here. As well off as if I were in a cement mixer in full action.
I'm past all feeling now. The only way I can tell when he steps on me is that I can hear the splintering of
bones. And all the events of my life are passing before my eyes. There was the time I was in a hurricane in
the West Indies, there was the day I got my head cut open in the taxi smash, there was the night the
drunken lady threw a bronze ashtray at her own true love and got me instead, there was that
summer that the sailboat kept capsizing. Ah, what an easy, peaceful time was mine, until I fell in with
Swifty, here. I didn't know what trouble was, before I got drawn into this danse macabre. I think my mind is
beginning to wander. It almost seems to me as if the orchestra were stopping. It couldn't be, of course; it
could never, never be. And yet in my ears there is a silence like the sound of angel voices. . . .
Oh they've stopped, the mean things. They're not going to play any more. Oh, darn. Oh, do you think they
would? Do you really think so, if you gave them twenty dollars? Oh, that would be lovely. And look, do tell
them to play this same thing. I'd simply adore to go on waltzing.
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by William Shakespeare
Act III, Scene 1
SCENE I. The wood. TITANIA lying asleep.
Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING
BOTTOM
Are we all met?
QUINCE
Pat, pat; and here's a marvellous convenient place
for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our
stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring-house; and we
will do it in action as we will do it before the duke.
BOTTOM
Peter Quince,-QUINCE
What sayest thou, bully Bottom?
BOTTOM
There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and
Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must
draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies
cannot abide. How answer you that?
SNOUT
By'r lakin, a parlous fear.
STARVELING
I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.
BOTTOM
Not a whit: I have a device to make all well.
Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to
say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that
Pyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the more
better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not
Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them
out of fear.
QUINCE
Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be
written in eight and six.
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BOTTOM
No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.
SNOUT
Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?
STARVELING
I fear it, I promise you.
BOTTOM
Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to
bring in--God shield us!--a lion among ladies, is a
most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful
wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to
look to 't.
SNOUT
Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.
BOTTOM
Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must
be seen through the lion's neck: and he himself
must speak through, saying thus, or to the same
defect,--'Ladies,'--or 'Fair-ladies--I would wish
You,'--or 'I would request you,'--or 'I would
entreat you,--not to fear, not to tremble: my life
for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it
were pity of my life: no I am no such thing; I am a
man as other men are;' and there indeed let him name
his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.
QUINCE
Well it shall be so. But there is two hard things;
that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for,
you know, Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight.
SNOUT
Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?
BOTTOM
A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find
out moonshine, find out moonshine.
QUINCE
Yes, it doth shine that night.
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BOTTOM
Why, then may you leave a casement of the great
chamber window, where we play, open, and the moon
may shine in at the casement.
QUINCE
Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns
and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to
present, the person of Moonshine. Then, there is
another thing: we must have a wall in the great
chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby says the story, did
talk through the chink of a wall.
SNOUT
You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?
BOTTOM
Some man or other must present Wall: and let him
have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast
about him, to signify wall; and let him hold his
fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus
and Thisby whisper.
QUINCE
If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down,
every mother's son, and rehearse your parts.
Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your
speech, enter into that brake: and so every one
according to his cue.
Enter PUCK behind
PUCK
What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy queen?
What, a play toward! I'll be an auditor;
An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause.
QUINCE
Speak, Pyramus. Thisby, stand forth.
BOTTOM
Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet,-QUINCE
Odours, odours.
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BOTTOM
--odours savours sweet:
So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear.
But hark, a voice! stay thou but here awhile,
And by and by I will to thee appear.
Exit
PUCK
A stranger Pyramus than e'er played here.
Exit
FLUTE
Must I speak now?
QUINCE
Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he goes
but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again.
FLUTE
Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,
Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier,
Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew,
As true as truest horse that yet would never tire,
I'll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny's tomb.
QUINCE
'Ninus' tomb,' man: why, you must not speak that
yet; that you answer to Pyramus: you speak all your
part at once, cues and all Pyramus enter: your cue
is past; it is, 'never tire.'
FLUTE
O,--As true as truest horse, that yet would
never tire.
Re-enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with an ass's head
BOTTOM
If I were fair, Thisby, I were only thine.
QUINCE
O monstrous! O strange! we are haunted. Pray,
masters! fly, masters! Help!
Exeunt QUINCE, SNUG, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING
102
PUCK
I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
Exit
BOTTOM
Why do they run away? this is a knavery of them to
make me afeard.
Re-enter SNOUT
SNOUT
O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?
BOTTOM
What do you see? you see an asshead of your own, do
you?
Exit SNOUT
Re-enter QUINCE
QUINCE
Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art
translated.
Exit
BOTTOM
I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me;
to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir
from this place, do what they can: I will walk up
and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear
I am not afraid.
Sings
The ousel cock so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill,
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill,--
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TITANIA
[Awaking] What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
BOTTOM
[Sings]
The finch, the sparrow and the lark,
The plain-song cuckoo gray,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay;-for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish
a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry
'cuckoo' never so?
TITANIA
I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.
BOTTOM
Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason
for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and
love keep little company together now-a-days; the
more the pity that some honest neighbours will not
make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.
TITANIA
Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.
BOTTOM
Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out
of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.
TITANIA
Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.
Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!
Enter PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, and MUSTARDSEED
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PEASEBLOSSOM
Ready.
COBWEB
And I.
MOTH
And I.
MUSTARDSEED
And I.
ALL
Where shall we go?
TITANIA
Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,
To have my love to bed and to arise;
And pluck the wings from Painted butterflies
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.
PEASEBLOSSOM
Hail, mortal!
COBWEB
Hail!
MOTH
Hail!
MUSTARDSEED
Hail!
BOTTOM
I cry your worship's mercy, heartily: I beseech your
worship's name.
COBWEB
Cobweb.
105
BOTTOM
I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master
Cobweb: if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with
you. Your name, honest gentleman?
PEASEBLOSSOM
Peaseblossom.
BOTTOM
I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your
mother, and to Master Peascod, your father. Good
Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more
acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you, sir?
MUSTARDSEED
Mustardseed.
BOTTOM
Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience well:
that same cowardly, giant-like ox-beef hath
devoured many a gentleman of your house: I promise
you your kindred had made my eyes water ere now. I
desire your more acquaintance, good Master
Mustardseed.
TITANIA
Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower.
The moon methinks looks with a watery eye;
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,
Lamenting some enforced chastity.
Tie up my love's tongue bring him silently.
Exeunt
106
“Charles”
by Shirley Jackson
The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began
wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the
older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot
replaced by a longtrousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner
and wave good-bye to me.
He came home the same way, the front door slamming open, his cap on the floor, and the voice
suddenly become raucous shouting, “ Isn’t anybody here?”
At lunch he spoke insolently to his father, spilled his baby sister’s milk, and remarked that his
teacher said we were not to take the name of the Lord in vain.
“How was school today?” I asked, elaborately casual.
“All right,” he said.
“Did you learn anything?” his father asked.
Laurie regarded his father coldly. “I didn’t learn nothing,” he said.
“Anything,” I said. “ Didn’t learn anything”
“The teacher spanked a boy, though,” Laurie said, addressing his bread and butter. “For being
fresh,” he added, with his mouth full.
“What did he do?” I asked. “Who was it?”
Laurie thought. “It was Charles,” he said. “He was fresh. The teacher spanked him and made him
stand in a corner. He was awfully fresh.”
“What did he do?” I asked again, but Laurie slid off his chair, took a cookie, and left, while his father
was still saying,
“See here, young man.”
The next day Laurie remarked at lunch, as soon as he sat down, “Well, Charles was bad again
today.” He grinned enormously and said, “Today Charles hit the teacher.”
“Good heavens,” I said, mindful of the Lord’s name, “I suppose he got spanked again?”
“He sure did,” Laurie said. “Look up,” he said to his father.
“What?” his father said, looking up.
“Look down,” Laurie said. “Look at my thumb. Gee, you’re dumb.” He began to laugh insanely.
“Why did Charles hit the teacher?” I asked quickly.
“Because she tried to make him color with red crayons, “Laurie said. “Charles wanted to color with
green crayons so he hit the teacher and she spanked him and said nobody play with Charles but everybody
did.”
The third day— it was Wednesday of the first week— Charles bounced a see-saw on to the head of
a little girl and made her bleed, and the teacher made him stay inside all during recess. Thursday Charles
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had to stand in a corner during storytime because he kept pounding his feet on the floor. Friday Charles
was deprived of blackboard privileges because he threw chalk.
On Saturday I remarked to my husband, “Do you think kindergarten is too unsettling for Laurie? All
this toughness, and bad grammar, and this Charles boy sounds like such a bad
influence.”
“It’ll be all right,” my husband said reassuringly. “Bound to be people like Charles in the world.
Might as well meet them now as later.”
On Monday Laurie came home late, full of news. “Charles,” he shouted as he came up the hill; I was
waiting anxiously on the front steps. “Charles,” Laurie yelled all the way up the hill,
“Charles was bad again.”
“Come right in,” I said, as soon as he came close enough.
“Lunch is waiting.”
“You know what Charles did?” he demanded, following me through the door. “Charles yelled so in
school they sent a boy in from first grade to tell the teacher she had to make Charles keep quiet, and so
Charles had to stay after school. And so all the children stayed to watch him.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He just sat there,” Laurie said, climbing into his chair at the table. “Hi, Pop, y’old dust mop.”
“Charles had to stay after school today,” I told my husband.
“Everyone stayed with him.”
“What does this Charles look like?” my husband asked Laurie. “What’s his other name?”
“He’s bigger than me,” Laurie said. “And he doesn’t have any rubbers and he doesn’t ever wear a
jacket.”
Monday night was the first Parent-Teachers meeting, and only the fact that the baby had a cold
kept me from going; I wanted passionately to meet Charles’s mother. On Tuesday Laurie remarked
suddenly, “Our teacher had a friend come to see her in school today.”
“Charles’s mother?”my husband and I asked simultaneously.
“Naaah,” Laurie said scornfully. “It was a man who came and made us do exercises, we had to
touch our toes. Look.” He climbed down from his chair and squatted down and touched his toes. “Like this,”
he said. He got solemnly back into his chair and said, picking up his fork, “Charles didn’t even do exercises.”
“That’s fine,” I said heartily. “ Didn’t Charles want to do exercises?”
“Naaah,” Laurie said. “Charles was so fresh to the teacher’s friend he wasn’t let do exercises.”
“Fresh again?” I said.
“He kicked the teacher’s friend,” Laurie said. “The teacher’s friend told Charles to touch his toes like
I just did and Charles kicked him.”
“What are they going to do about Charles, do you suppose?”
Laurie’s father asked him. Laurie shrugged elaborately. “Throw him out of school, I
guess,” he said.
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Wednesday and Thursday were routine; Charles yelled during story hour and hit a boy in the
stomach and made him cry. On Friday Charles stayed after school again and so did all the
other children.
With the third week of kindergarten Charles was an institution in our family; the baby was being a
Charles when she cried all afternoon; Laurie did a Charles when he filled his wagon full of mud and pulled it
through the kitchen; even my husband, when he caught his elbow in the telephone cord and
pulled telephone, ashtray, and a bowl of flowers off the table, said, after the first minute, “Looks like
Charles.”
During the third and fourth weeks it looked like a reformation in Charles; Laurie reported grimly at
lunch on Thursday of the third week, “Charles was so good today the teacher gave
him an apple.”
“What?” I said, and my husband added warily, “You mean Charles?”
“Charles,” Laurie said. “He gave the crayons around and he picked up the books afterward and the
teacher said he was her helper.”
“What happened?” I asked incredulously.
“He was her helper, that’s all,” Laurie said, and shrugged.
“Can this be true, about Charles?” I asked my husband that night. “Can something like this
happen?”
“Wait and see,” my husband said cynically. “When you’ve got a Charles to deal with, this may mean
he’s only plotting.”
He seemed to be wrong. For over a week Charles was the teacher’s helper; each day he handed
things out and he picked things up; no one had to stay after school.
“The P.T.A. meeting’s next week again,” I told my husband one evening. “I’m going to find Charles’s
mother there.”
“Ask her what happened to Charles,” my husband said. “I’d like to know.”
“I’d like to know myself,” I said.
On Friday of that week things were back to normal. “You know what Charles did today?” Laurie
demanded at the lunch table, in a voice slightly awed. “He told a little girl to say a word and she said it and
the teacher washed her mouth out with soap and Charles laughed.”
“What word?” his father asked unwisely, and Laurie said,
“I’ll have to whisper it to you, it’s so bad.” He got down off his chair and went around to his father.
His father bent his head down and Laurie whispered joyfully. His father’s eyes widened.
“Did Charles tell the little girl to say that?” he asked respectfully.
“She said it twice,” Laurie said. “Charles told her to say it twice.”
“What happened to Charles?” my husband asked.
“Nothing,” Laurie said. “He was passing out the crayons.”
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Monday morning Charles abandoned the little girl and said the evil word himself three or four
times, getting his mouth washed out with soap each time. He also threw chalk.
My husband came to the door with me that evening as I set out for the P.T.A. meeting. “Invite her
over for a cup of tea after the meeting,” he said. “I want to get a look at her.”
“If only she’s there,” I said prayerfully.
“She’ll be there,” my husband said. “I don’t see how they could hold a P.T.A. meeting without
Charles’s mother.”
At the meeting I sat restlessly, scanning each comfortable matronly face, trying to determine which
one hid the secret of Charles. None of them looked to me haggard enough. No one stood up in the meeting
and apologized for the way her son had been acting. No one mentioned Charles.
After the meeting I identified and sought out Laurie’s kindergarten teacher. She had a plate with a
cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake; I had a plate with a cup of tea and a piece of marshmallow cake.
We maneuvered up to one an - other cautiously, and smiled.
“I’ve been so anxious to meet you,” I said. “I’m Laurie’s mother.”
“We’re all so interested in Laurie,” she said.
“Well, he certainly likes kindergarten,” I said. “He talks about it all the time.”
“We had a little trouble adjusting, the first week or so,” she said primly, “but now he’s a fine little
helper. With occasional lapses, of course.”
“Laurie usually adjusts very quickly,” I said. “I suppose this time it’s Charles’s influence.”
“Charles?”
“Yes,” I said, laughing, “you must have your hands full in that kindergarten, with Charles.”
“Charles?” she said. “We don’t have any Charles in the kindergarten.”
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“An Uncomfortable Bed”
by Guy de Maupassant
One autumn I went to stay for the hunting season with some friends in a chateau in Picardy.
My friends were fond of practical joking, as all my friends are. I do not care to know any other sort of
people.
When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once aroused distrust in my breast. We had
some capital shooting. They embraced me, they cajoled me, as if they expected to have great fun at my
expense.
I said to myself:
"Look out, old ferret! They have something in preparation for you."
During the dinner, the mirth was excessive, far too great, in fact. I thought: "Here are people who take a
double share of amusement, and apparently without reason. They must be looking out in their own minds
for some good bit of fun. Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke. Attention!"
During the entire evening, everyone laughed in an exaggerated fashion. I smelled a practical joke in the
air, as a dog smells game. But what was it? I was watchful, restless. I did not let a word or a meaning or a
gesture escape me. Everyone seemed to me an object of suspicion, and I even looked distrustfully at the
faces of the servants.
The hour rang for going to bed, and the whole household came to escort me to my room. Why? They
called to me: "Good night." I entered the apartment, shut the door, and remained standing, without
moving a single step, holding the wax candle in my hand.
I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they were spying on me. I cast a glance
around the walls, the furniture, the ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify suspicion. I heard
persons moving about outside my door. I had no doubt they were looking through the keyhole.
An idea came into my head: "My candle may suddenly go out, and leave me in darkness."
< 2 >
Then I went across to the mantelpiece, and lighted all the wax candles that were on it. After that, I cast
another glance around me without discovering anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining
the apartment. Nothing. I inspected every article one after the other. Still nothing. I went over to the
window. The shutters, large wooden shutters, were open. I shut them with great care, and then drew the
curtains, enormous velvet curtains, and I placed a chair in front of them, so as to have nothing to fear from
without.
Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture to get into the bed. However, time
was flying; and I ended by coming to the conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as I
supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they had been preparing for me, have been
laughing enormously at my terror. So I made up my mind to go to bed. But the bed was particularly
suspicious-looking. I pulled at the curtains. They seemed to be secure. All the same, there was danger. I was
going perhaps to receive a cold shower-bath from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I stretched myself
out, to find myself sinking under the floor with my mattress. I searched in my memory for all the practical
jokes of which I ever had experience. And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly not! certainly not! Then
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I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution which I consider one of extreme efficacy: I caught hold of the
side of the mattress gingerly, and very slowly drew it toward me. It came away, followed by the sheet and
the rest of the bedclothes. I dragged all these objects into the very middle of the room, facing the entrance
door. I made my bed over again as best I could at some distance from the suspected bedstead and the
corner which had filled me with such anxiety. Then, I extinguished all the candles, and, groping my way, I
slipped under the bedclothes.
For at least another hour, I remained awake, starting at the slightest sound. Everything seemed quiet in
the chateau. I fell asleep.
< 3 >
I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden, I was awakened with a start by the
fall of a heavy body tumbling right on top of my own body, and, at the same time, I received on my face, on
my neck, and on my chest a burning liquid which made me utter a howl of pain. And a dreadful noise, as if a
sideboard laden with plates and dishes had fallen down, penetrated my ears.
I felt myself suffocating under the weight that was crushing me and preventing me from moving. I
stretched out my hand to find out what was the nature of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers.
Then with all my strength I launched out a blow over this face. But I immediately received a hail of cuffings
which made me jump straight out of the soaked sheets, and rush in my nightshirt into the corridor, the
door of which I found open.
O stupor! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying into the apartment, and we
found, sprawling over my improvised bed, the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of
tea, had tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor, and fallen on his stomach, spilling, in spite of
himself, my breakfast over my face.
The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep in the middle of the room had only
brought about the interlude I had been striving to avoid.
Ah! how they all laughed that day!
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“The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor”
by Sherman Alexie
After the argument that I had lost but pretended to win, I stormed out of the HUD house, jumped
into the car, and prepared to drive off in victory, which was also known as defeat. But I realized that I
hadn't grabbed my keys. At that kind of moment, a person begins to realize how he can be fooled by his
own games. And at that kind of moment, a person begins to formulate a new game to compensate for the
failure of the first.
"Honey, I'm home," I yelled as I walked back into the house.
My wife ignored me, gave me a momentary stoic look that impressed me with its resemblance to
generations of television Indians.
"Oh, what is that?" I asked. "Your Tonto face?"
She flipped me off, shook her head, and disappeared into the bedroom.
"Honey," I called after her. "Didn't you miss me? I've been gone so long and it's good to be back
home. Where I belong."
I could hear dresser drawers open and close.
"And look at the kids," I said as I patted the heads of imagined children. "They've grown so much.
And they have your eyes."
She walked out of the bedroom in her favorite ribbon shirt, hair wrapped in her best ties, and
wearing a pair of come-here boots. You know, the kind with the curled toe that looks like a finger gesturing
Come here, cowboy, come on over here. But those boots weren't meant for me: I'm an Indian.
"Honey," I asked. "I just get back from the war and you're leaving already? No kiss for the returning
hero?"
She pretended to ignore me, which I enjoyed. But then she pulled out her car keys, checked herself
in the mirror, and headed for the door. I jumped in front of her, knowing she meant to begin her own war.
That scared me.
"Hey," I said. "I was just kidding, honey. I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything. I'll do whatever you want
me to."
She pushed me aside, adjusted her dreams, pulled on her braids for a jumpstart, and walked out
the door. I followed her and stood on the porch as she jumped into the car and started it up.
"I'm going dancing," she said and drove off into the sunset, or at least she drove down the tribal
highway toward the Powwow Tavern.
"But what am I going to feed the kids?" I asked and walked back into the house to feed myself and
my illusions.
After a dinner of macaroni and commodity cheese, I put on my best shirt, a new pair of blue jeans,
and set out to hitchhike down the tribal highway. The sun had gone down already so I decided that I was
riding off toward the great unknown, which was actually the same Powwow Tavern where my love had
escaped to an hour earlier.
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As I stood on the highway with my big, brown, and beautiful thumb showing me the way, Simon
pulled up in his pickup, stopped, opened the passenger door, and whooped.
"If it ain't little Jimmy One-Horse! Where you going, cousin, and how fast do you need to get
there?"
I hesitated at the offer of a ride. Simon was world famous, at least famous on the Spokane Indian
Reservation, for driving backward. He always obeyed posted speed limits, traffic signals and signs, even
minute suggestions. But he drove in reverse, using the rearview mirror as his guide. But what could I do? I
trusted the man, and when you trust a man you also have to trust his horse.
"I'm headed for the Powwow Tavern," I said and climbed into Simon's rig. "And I need to be there
before my wife finds herself a dance partner."
"Why didn't you say something sooner? We'll be there before she hears the first note of the first
song."
Simon jammed the car into his only gear, reverse, and 156 roared down the highway. I wanted to
hang my head out the window like a dog, let my braids flap like a tongue in the wind, but good manners
prevented me from taking the liberty. Still, it was so tempting. Always was.
"So, little Jimmy Sixteen-and-One-Half-Horses," Simon asked me after a bit. "What did you do to
make your wife take off this time?"
"Well," I said. "I told her the truth, Simon. I told her I got cancer everywhere inside me."
Simon slammed on the brakes and brought the pickup sliding to a quick but decidedly cinematic stop.
"That ain't nothing to joke about," he yelled.
"Ain't joking about the cancer," I said. "But I started joking about dying and that pissed her off."
"What'd you say?"
"Well, I told her the doctor showed me my X-rays and my favorite tumor was just about the size of
a baseball, shaped like one, too. Even had stitch marks."
"You're full of it."
"No, really. I told her to call me Babe Ruth. Or Roger Maris. Maybe even Hank Aaron 'cause there
must have been about 755 tumors inside me. Then, I told her I was going to Cooperstown and sit right
down in the lobby of the Hall of Fame. Make myself a new exhibit, you know? Pin my X-rays to my chest
and point out the tumors. What a dedicated baseball fan! What a sacrifice for the national pastime!"
"You're an idiot, little Jimmy Zero-Horses."
"I know, I know," I said as Simon got the pickup rolling again, down the highway toward an
uncertain future, which was, as usual, simply called the Powwow Tavern.
We rode the rest of the way in silence. That is to say that neither of us had anything at all to say.
But I could hear Simon breathing and I'm sure he could hear me, too. And once, he coughed.
"There you go, cousin," he said finally as he stopped his pickup in front of the Powwow Tavern. "I
hope it all works out, you know?"
I shook his hand, offered him a few exaggerated gifts, made a couple promises that he knew were
just promises, and waved wildly as he drove off, backwards, and away from the rest of my life. Then I
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walked into the tavern, shook my body like a dog shaking off water. I've always wanted to walk into a bar
that way.
"Where is Suzy Boyd?" I asked.
"Right here," Suzy answered quickly and succinctly.
"Okay, Suzy," I asked. "Where is my wife?"
"Right here," my wife answered quickly and succinctly. Then she paused a second before she
added, "And quit calling me your wife. It makes me sound like I'm a bowling ball or something."
"Okay, okay, Norma," I said and sat down beside her. I ordered a Diet Pepsi for me and a pitcher of
beer for the next table. There was no one sitting at the next table. It was just something I always did.
Someone would come along and drink it.
"Norma," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I have cancer and I'm sorry I'm dying."
She took a long drink of her Diet Pepsi, stared at me for a long time. Stared hard.
"Are you going to make any more jokes about it?" she asked.
"Just one or two more, maybe," I said and smiled. It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Norma
slapped me in anger, had a look of concern for a moment as she wondered what a slap could do to a person
with terminal cancer, and then looked angry again.
"If you say anything funny ever again, I'm going to leave you," Norma said. "And I'm serious about
that."
I lost my smile briefly, reached across the table to hold her hand, and said something incredibly
funny. It was maybe the best one-liner I had ever uttered. Maybe the moment that would have made me a
star anywhere else. But in the Powwow Tavern, which was just a front for reality, Norma heard what I had
to say, stood up, and left me.
Because Norma left me, it's even more important to know how she arrived in my life.
I was sitting in the Powwow Tavern on a Saturday night with my Diet Pepsi and my second-favorite cousin,
Raymond.
"Look it, look it," he said as Norma walked into the tavern. Norma was over six feet tall. Well,
maybe not six feet tall but she was taller than me, taller than everyone in the bar except the basketball
players.
"What tribe you think she is?" Raymond asked me.
"Amazon," I said.
"Their reservation down by Santa Fe, enit?" Raymond asked, and I laughed so hard that Norma
came over to find out about the commotion.
"Hello, little brothers," she said. "Somebody want to buy me a drink?"
"What you having?" I asked.
"Diet Pepsi," she said and I knew we would fall in love.
"Listen," I told her. "If I stole 1,000 horses, I'd give you 501 of them."
"And what other women would get the other 499?" she asked.
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And we laughed. Then we laughed harder when Raymond leaned in closer to the table and said, "I
don't get it."
Later, after the tavern closed, Norma and I sat outside on my car and shared a cigarette. I should
say that we pretended to share a cigarette since neither of us smoked. But we both thought the other did
and wanted to have all that much more in common.
After an hour or two of coughing, talking stories, and laughter, we ended up at my HUD house,
watching latenight television. Raymond was passed out in the backseat of my car.
"Hey," she said. "That cousin of yours ain't too smart."
"Yeah," I said. "But he's cool, you know?"
"Must be. Because you're so good to him."
"He's my cousin, you know? That's how it is."
She kissed me then. Soft at first. Then harder. Our teeth clicked together like it was a junior high
kiss. Still, we sat on the couch and kissed until the television signed off and broke into white noise. It was
the end of another broadcast day.
"Listen," I said then. "I should take you home."
"Home?" she asked. "I thought I was at home."
"Well, my tipi is your tipi," I said, and she lived there until the day I told her that I had terminal
cancer.
***
I have to mention the wedding, though. It was at the Spokane Tribal Longhouse and all my cousins
and her cousins were there. Nearly two hundred people. Everything went smoothly until my secondfavorite cousin, Raymond, drunk as a skunk, stood up in the middle of the ceremony, obviously confused.
"I remember Jimmy real good," Raymond said and started into his eulogy for me as I stood not two
feet from him. "Jimmy was always quick with a joke. Make you laugh all the time. I remember once at my
grandmother's wake, he was standing by the coffin. Now, you got to remember he was only seven or eight
years old. Anyway, he starts jumping up and down, yelling, She moved, she moved."
Everyone at the wedding laughed because it was pretty much the same crowd that was at the
funeral. Raymond smiled at his newly discovered public speaking ability and continued.
"Jimmy was always the one to make people feel better, too," he said. "I remember once when he
and I were drinking at the Powwow Tavern when all of a sudden Lester Falls Apart comes running in and
says that ten Indians just got killed in a car wreck on Ford Canyon Road. Ten Skins? I asked Lester, and he
said, Yeah, ten. And then Jimmy starts up singing, One little, two little, three little Indians, four little, five
little, six little Indians, seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, ten little Indian boys."
Everyone in the wedding laughed some more, but also looked a little tense after that story, so I
grabbed Raymond and led him back to his seat. He stared incredulously at me, tried to reconcile his recent
eulogy with my sudden appearance. He justsat there until the preacher asked that most rhetorical of
questions:
"And if there is anyone here who has objections to this union, speak now or forever hold your
peace."
Raymond staggered and stumbled to his feet, then staggered and stumbled up to the preacher.
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"Reverend," Raymond said. "I hate to interrupt, but my cousin is dead, you know? I think that might
be a problem."
Raymond passed out at that moment, and Norma and I were married with his body draped
unceremoniously over our feet.
Three months after Norma left me, I lay in my hospital bed in Spokane, just back from another
stupid and useless radiation treatment.
"Jesus," I said to my attending physician. "A few more zaps and I'll be Superman."
"Really?" the doctor said. "I never realized that Clark Kent was a Spokane Indian."
And we laughed, you know, because sometimes that's all two people have in common.
"So," I asked her. "What's my latest prognosis?"
"Well," she said. "It comes down to this. You're dying."
"Not again," I said.
"Yup, Jimmy, you're still dying."
And we laughed, you know, because sometimes you'd rather cry.
"Well," the doctor said. "I've got other patients to see."
As she walked out, I wanted to call her back and make an urgent confession, to ask forgiveness, to
offer truth in return for salvation. But she was only a doctor. A good doctor, but still just a doctor.
"Hey, Dr. Adams," I said.
"What?"
"Nothing," I said. "Just wanted to hear your name. It sounds like drums to these heavily medicated
Indian ears of mine. "
And she laughed and I laughed, too. That's what happened.
Norma was the world champion fry bread maker. Her fry bread was perfect, like one of those
dreams you wake up from and say, I didn't want to wake up.
"I think this is your best fry bread ever," I told Norma one day. In fact, it was January 22.
"Thank you," she said. "Now you get to wash the dishes. "
So I was washing the dishes when the phone rang. Norma answered it and I could hear her half of
the conversation.
"Hello."
"Yes, this is Norma Many Horses."
"No."
"No!"
"No!" Norma yelled as she threw the phone down and ran outside. I picked the receiver up
carefully, afraid of what it might say to me.
"Hello," I said.
"Who am I speaking to?" the voice on the other end asked.
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"Jimmy Many Horses. I'm Norma's husband."
"Oh, Mr. Many Horses. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, uh, as I just told your wife, your
mother-in-law, uh, passed away this morning."
"Thank you," I said, hung up the phone, and saw that Norma had returned.
"Oh, Jimmy," she said, talking through tears.
"I can't believe I just said thank you to that guy," I said. "What does that mean? Thank you that my
mother-in-law is dead? Thank you that you told me that my mother-in-law is dead? Thank you that you told
me that my mother-in-law is dead and made my wife cry?"
"Jimmy," Norma said. "Stop. It's not funny."
But I didn't stop. Then or now.
Still, you have to realize that laughter saved Norma and me from pain, too. Humor was an
antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds. Once, a Washington State patrolman stopped
Norma and me as we drove to Spokane to see a movie, get some dinner, a Big Gulp at 7-11.
"Excuse me, officer," I asked. "What did I do wrong?"
"You failed to make proper signal for a turn a few blocks back," he said.
That was interesting because I had been driving down a straight highway for over five miles. The
only turns possible 164 were down dirt roads toward houses where no one I ever knew had lived. But I
knew to play along with his game. All you can hope for in these little wars is to minimize the amount of
damage.
"I'm sorry about that, officer," I said. "But you know how it is. I was listening to the radio, tapping
my foot. It's those drums, you know?"
"Whatever," the trooper said. "Now, I need your driver's license, registration, and proof of
insurance." I handed him the stuff and he barely looked at it. He leaned down into the window of the car.
"Hey, chief," he asked. "Have you been drinking?"
"I don't drink," I said.
"How about your woman there?"
"Ask her yourself," I said.
The trooper looked at me, blinked a few seconds, paused for dramatic effect, and said, "Don't you
even think about telling me what I should do."
"I don't drink, either," Norma said quickly, hoping to avoid any further confrontation. "And I wasn't
driving anyway."
"That don't make any difference," the trooper said. "Washington State has a new law against riding
as a passenger in an Indian car."
"Officer," I said. "That ain't new. We've known about that one for a couple hundred years."
The trooper smiled a little, but it was a hard smile. You know the kind.
"However," he said. "I think we can make some kind of arrangement so none of this has to go on
your record."
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"How much is it going to cost me?" I asked.
"How much do you have?"
"About a hundred bucks."
"Well," the trooper said. "I don't want to leave you with nothing. Let's say the fine is ninety-nine
dollars."
I gave him all the money, though, four twenties, a ten, eight dollar bills, and two hundred pennies
in a sandwich bag.
"Hey," I said. "Take it all. That extra dollar is a tip, you know? Your service has been excellent."
Norma wanted to laugh then. She covered her mouth and pretended to cough. His face turned red.
I mean redder than it already was.
"In fact," I said as I looked at the trooper's badge. "I might just send a letter to your commanding
officer. I'll just write that Washington State Patrolman D. Nolan, badge number 13746, was polite,
courteous, and above all, legal as an eagle."
Norma laughed out loud now.
"Listen," the trooper said. "I can just take you both in right now. For reckless driving, resisting
arrest, threatening an officer with physical violence."
"If you do," Norma said and jumped into the fun, "I'll just tell everyone how respectful you were of
our Native traditions, how much you understood about the social conditions that lead to the criminal acts
of so many Indians. I'll say you were sympathetic, concerned, and intelligent."
"Indians," the trooper said as he threw the sandwich bag of pennies back into our car, sending
them flying all over the interior. "And keep your change."
We watched him walk back to his cruiser, climb in, and drive off, breaking four or five laws as he
flipped a U-turn, left 166 rubber, crossed the center line, broke the speed limit, and ran through a stop sign
without lights and siren.
We laughed as we picked up the scattered pennies from the floor of the car. It was a good thing
that the trooper threw that change back at us because we found just enough gas money to get us home.
After Norma left me, I'd occasionally get postcards from powwows all over the country. She missed
me in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and California. I just stayed on the
Spokane Indian Reservation and missed her from the doorway of my HUD house, from the living room
window, waiting for the day that she would come back.
But that's how Norma operated. She told me once that she would leave me whenever the love
started to go bad.
"I ain't going to watch the whole thing collapse," she said. "I'll get out when the getting is good."
"You wouldn't even try to save us?" I asked.
"It wouldn't be worth saving at that point."
"That's' pretty cold."
"That's not cold," she said. "It's practical."
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But don't get me wrong, either. Norma was a warrior in every sense of the word. She would drive a
hundred miles round-trip to visit tribal elders in the nursing homes in Spokane. When one of those elders
died, Norma wouldweep violently, throw books and furniture.
"Everyone of our elders who dies takes a piece of our past away," she said. "And that hurts more
because I don't know how much of a future we have."
And once, when we drove up on a really horrible car wreck, she held a dying man's head in her lap
and sang to him until he passed away. He was a white guy, too. Remember that. She kept that memory so
close to her that she had nightmares for a year.
"I always dream that it's you who's dying," she told me and didn't let me drive the car for almost a
year. Norma, she was always afraid; she wasn't afraid.
One thing that I noticed in the hospital as I coughed myself up and down the bed: A clock, at least
one of those old-style clocks with hands and a face, looks just like somebody laughing if you stare at it long
enough.
The hospital released me because they decided that I would be much more comfortable at home.
And there I was, at home, writing letters to my loved ones on special reservation stationery that read:
FROM THE DEATH BED OF JAMES MANY HORSES, III.
But in reality, I sat at my kitchen table to write, and DEATH TABLE just doesn't have the necessary
music. I'm also the only James Many Horses, but there is a certain dignity to any kind of artificial tradition.
Anyway, I sat there at the death table, writing letters from my death bed, when there was a knock
on the door.
"Come in," I yelled, knowing the door was locked, and smiled when it rattled against the frame.
"It's locked," a female voice said and it was a female voice I recognized.
"Norma?" I asked as I unlocked and opened the door.
She was beautiful. She had either gained or lost twenty pounds, one braid hung down a little longer
than the other, and she had ironed her shirt until the creases were sharp.
"Honey," she said. "I'm home."
I was silent. That was a rare event.
"Honey," she said. "I've been gone so long and I missed you so much. But now I'm back. Where I
belong."
I had to smile.
"Where are the kids?" she asked.
"They're asleep," I said, recovered just in time to continue the joke. "Poor little guys tried to stay
awake, you know? They wanted to be up when you got home. But, one by one, they dropped off, fell
asleep, and I had to carry them off into their little beds."
"Well," Norma said. "I'll just go in and kiss them quietly. Tell them how much I love them. Fix the
sheets and blankets so they'll be warm all night."
She smiled.
"Jimmy," she said. "You look awful."
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"Yeah, I know."
"I'm sorry I left."
"Where've you been?" I asked, though I didn't really want to know.
"In Arlee. Lived with a Flathead cousin of mine."
"Cousin as in cousin? Or cousin as in l-was-sleeping-with-him-but-don’t-want-to-tell-you-becauseyou’re-dying?"
She smiled even though she didn't want to.
"Well," she said. "I guess you'd call him more of that second kind of cousin."
Believe me: nothing ever hurt more. Not even my tumors which are the approximate size of
baseballs.
"Why'd you come back?" I asked her.
She looked at me, tried to suppress a giggle, then broke out into full-fledged laughter. I joined her.
"Well," I asked her again after a while. "Why'd you come back?"
She turned stoic, gave me that beautiful Tonto face, and said, "Because he was so serious about
everything."
We laughed a little more and then I asked her one more time, "Really, why'd you come back?"
"Because someone needs to help you die the right way," she said. "And we both know that dying
ain't something you ever done before."
I had to agree with that.
"And maybe," she said, "because making fry bread and helping people die are the last two things
Indians are good at."
"Well," I said. "At least you're good at one of them."
And we laughed.
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Funny in Farsi
“Leffingwell Elementary School”
by Firoozeh Dumas
Chapter 1
Leffingwell Elementary School
When I was seven, my parents, my fourteen-year-old brother, Farshid, and I moved from Abadan, Iran, to
Whittier, California. Farid, the older of my two brothers, had been sent to Philadelphia the year before to
attend high school. Like most Iranian youths, he had always dreamed of attending college abroad and,
despite my mother's tears, had left us to live with my uncle and his American wife. I, too, had been sad at
Farid's departure, but my sorrow soon faded-not coincidentally, with the receipt of a package from him.
Suddenly, having my brother on a different continent seemed like a small price to pay for owning a Barbie
complete with a carrying case and four outfits, including the rain gear and mini umbrella.
Our move to Whittier was temporary. My father, Kazem, an engineer with the National Iranian Oil
Company, had been assigned to consult for an American firm for about two years. Having spent several
years in Texas and California as a graduate student, my father often spoke about America with the
eloquence and wonder normally reserved for a first love. To him, America was a place where anyone, no
matter how humble his background, could become an important person. It was a kind and orderly nation
full of clean bathrooms, a land where traffic laws were obeyed and where whales jumped through hoops. It
was the Promised Land. For me, it was where I could buy more outfits for Barbie.
We arrived in Whittier shortly after the start of second grade; my father enrolled me in Leffingwell
Elementary School. To facilitate my adjustment, the principal arranged for us to meet my new teacher, Mrs.
Sandberg, a few days before I started school. Since my mother and I did not speak English, the meeting
consisted of a dialogue between my father and Mrs. Sandberg. My father carefully explained that I had
attended a prestigious kindergarten where all the children were taught English. Eager to impress Mrs.
Sandberg, he asked me to demonstrate my knowledge of the English language. I stood up straight and
proudly recited all that I knew: "White, yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green."
The following Monday, my father drove my mother and me to school. He had decided that it would be a
good idea for my mother to attend school with me for a few weeks. I could not understand why two people
not speaking English would be better than one, but I was seven, and my opinion didn't matter much.
Until my first day at Leffingwell Elementary School, I had never thought of my mother as an
embarrassment, but the sight of all the kids in the school staring at us before the bell rang was enough to
make me pretend I didn't know her. The bell finally rang and Mrs. Sandberg came and escorted us to class.
Fortunately, she had figured out that we were precisely the kind of people who would need help finding the
right classroom.
My mother and I sat in the back while all the children took their assigned seats. Everyone continued to
stare at us. Mrs. Sandberg wrote my name on the board: F-I-R-O-O-Z-E-H. Under my name, she wrote "I-RA-N." She then pulled down a map of the world and said something to my mom. My mom looked at me and
asked me what she had said. I told her that the teacher probably wanted her to find Iran on the map.
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The problem was that my mother, like most women of her generation, had been only briefly educated. In
her era, a girl's sole purpose in life was to find a husband. Having an education ranked far below more
desirable attributes such as the ability to serve tea or prepare baklava. Before her marriage, my mother,
Nazireh, had dreamed of becoming a midwife. Her father, a fairly progressive man, had even refused the
two earlier suitors who had come for her so that his daughter could pursue her dream. My mother planned
to obtain her diploma, then go to Tabriz to learn midwifery from a teacher whom my grandfather knew.
Sadly, the teacher died unexpectedly, and my mother's dreams had to be buried as well.
Bachelor No. 3 was my father. Like the other suitors, he had never spoken to my mother, but one of his
cousins knew someone who knew my mother's sister, so that was enough. More important, my mother fit
my father's physical requirements for a wife. Like most Iranians, my father preferred a fair-skinned woman
with straight, light-colored hair. Having spent a year in America as a Fulbright scholar, he had returned with
a photo of a woman he found attractive and asked his older sister, Sedigeh, to find someone who
resembled her. Sedigeh had asked around, and that is how at age seventeen my mother officially gave up
her dreams, married my father, and had a child by the end of the year.
As the students continued staring at us, Mrs. Sandberg gestured to my mother to come up to the board. My
mother reluctantly obeyed. I cringed. Mrs. Sandberg, using a combination of hand gestures, started
pointing to the map and saying, "Iran? Iran? Iran?" Clearly, Mrs. Sandberg had planned on incorporating us
into the day's lesson. I only wished she had told us that earlier so we could have stayed home.
After a few awkward attempts by my mother to find Iran on the map, Mrs. Sandberg finally understood that
it wasn't my mother's lack of English that was causing a problem, but rather her lack of world geography.
Smiling graciously, she pointed my mother back to her seat. Mrs. Sandberg then showed everyone,
including my mother and me, where Iran was on the map. My mother nodded her head, acting as if she had
known the location all along, but had preferred to keep it a secret. Now all the students stared at us, not
just because I had come to school with my mother, not because we couldn't speak their language, but
because we were stupid. I was especially mad at my mother, because she had negated the positive
impression I had made previously by reciting the color wheel. I decided that starting the next day, she
would have to stay home.
The bell finally rang and it was time for us to leave. Leffingwell Elementary was just a few blocks from our
house and my father, grossly underestimating our ability to get lost, had assumed that my mother and I
would be able to find our way home. She and I wandered aimlessly, perhaps hoping for a shooting star or a
talking animal to help guide us back. None of the streets or houses looked familiar. As we stood pondering
our predicament, an enthusiastic young girl came leaping out of her house and said something. Unable to
understand her, we did what we had done all day: we smiled. The girl's mother joined us, then gestured for
us to follow her inside. I assumed that the girl, who appeared to be the same age as I, was a student at
Leffingwell Elementary; having us inside her house was probably akin to having the circus make a personal
visit.
Her mother handed us a telephone, and my mother, who had, thankfully, memorized my father's work
number, called him and explained our situation. My father then spoke to the American woman and gave
her our address. This kind stranger agreed to take us back to our house.
Perhaps fearing that we might show up at their doorstep again, the woman and her daughter walked us all
the way to our front porch and even helped my mother unlock the unfamiliar door. After making one last
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futile attempt at communication, they waved good-bye. Unable to thank them in words, we smiled even
more broadly.
After spending an entire day in America, surrounded by Americans, I realized that my father's description of
America had been correct. The bathrooms were clean and the people were very, very kind.
Hot Dogs and Wild Geese
Moving to America was both exciting and frightening, but we found great comfort in knowing that my
father spoke English. Having spent years regaling us with stories about his graduate years in America, he
had left us with the distinct impression that America was his second home. My mother and I planned to
stick close to him, letting him guide us through the exotic American landscape that he knew so well. We
counted on him not only to translate the language but also to translate the culture, to be a link to this most
foreign of lands. He was to be our own private Rosetta stone.
Once we reached America, we wondered whether perhaps my father had confused his life in America with
someone else's. Judging from the bewildered looks of store cashiers, gas station attendants, and waiters,
my father spoke a version of English not yet shared with the rest of America. His attempts to find a "vater
closet" in a department store would usually lead us to the drinking fountain or the home furnishings
section. Asking my father to ask the waitress the definition of "sloppy Joe" or "Tater Tots" was no problem.
His translations, however, were highly suspect. Waitresses would spend several minutes responding to my
father's questions, and these responses, in turn, would be translated as "She doesn't know." Thanks to my
father's translations, we stayed away from hot dogs, catfish, and hush puppies, and no amount of caviar in
the sea would have convinced us to try mud pie.
We wondered how my father had managed to spend several years attending school in America, yet remain
so utterly befuddled by Americans. We soon discovered that his college years had been spent mainly in the
library, where he had managed to avoid contact with all Americans except his engineering professors. As
long as the conversation was limited to vectors, surface tension, and fluid mechanics, my father was Fred
Astaire with words. But one step outside the scintillating world of petroleum engineering and he had two
left tongues.
My father's only other regular contact in college had been his roommate, a Pakistani who spent his days
preparing curry. Since neither spoke English, but both liked curries, they got along splendidly. The person
who had assigned them together had probably hoped they would either learn English or invent a common
language for the occasion. Neither happened.
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Roughing It
Prefatory and Chapter 42
by Mark Twain
PREFATORY.
THIS book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a
record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while
away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in
the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West,
about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the
happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination
of the silver-mining fever in Nevada—a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind,
that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it.
Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but
really it could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of
roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts;
but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom.
Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification.
THE AUTHOR.
Chapter 42
WHAT to do next?
It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for myself, at the age of
thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends; and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his
fine Virginian stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not live on that alone without
occasional bread to wash it down with). I had gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled
anybody with my successes; still the list was before me, and the amplest liberty in the matter of choosing,
provided I wanted to work -- which I did not, after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for
one day, but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved from further duty by the
proprietor; said he wanted me outside, so that he could have my custom. I had studied law an entire week,
and then given it up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in the study of
blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellows so that it would blow itself, that the
master turned me adrift in disgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller's clerk
for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read with any comfort, and so the
proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer,
but my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps than soda water. So I
had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin
some day, but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open in the
Esmeralda Union, and besides I had always been such a slow compositor that I looked with envy upon the
achievements of apprentices of two years' standing; and when I took a "take," foremen were in the habit of
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suggesting that it would be wanted "some time during the year."
ONE OF MY FAILURES.
I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no means ashamed of my abilities in that line;
wages were two hundred and fifty dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a
wheel again and never roam any more – but I had been making such an ass of myself lately in grandiloquent
letters home about my blind lead and my European excursion that I did what many and many a poor
disappointed miner had done before; said “It is all over with me now, and I will never go back home to be
pities – and snubbed.” I had been a private secretary, a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and
amounted to less than nothing in each, and now --
What to do next?
I yielded to Higbie's appeals and consented to try the mining once more. We climbed far up on the
mountain side and went to work on a little rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep.
Higbie descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened up a deal of rock and dirt and
then I went down with a long-handled shovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it
out. You must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till it is full, and then, with a skilful toss,
throw it backward over your left shoulder. I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of the shaft
and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck. I never said a word, but climbed out and
walked home. I inwardly resolved that I would starve before I would make a target of myself and shoot
rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel.
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TARGET SHOOTING.
I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery -- so to speak. Now in pleasanter days I had
amused myself with writing letters to the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial
Enterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print. My good opinion of the editors had
steadily declined; for it seemed to me that they might have found something better to fill up with than my
literature. I had found a letter in the post office as I came home from the hill side, and finally I opened it.
Eureka! [I never did know what Eureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any when
no other that sounds pretty offers.] It was a deliberate offer to me of Twenty-Five Dollars a week to come
up to Virginia and be city editor of the Enterprise.
I would have challenged the publisher in the "blind lead" days -- I wanted to fall down and worship
him, now. Twenty-Five Dollars a week -- it looked like bloated luxury -- a fortune a sinful and lavish waste of
money. But my transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequent unfitness for the
position -- and straightway, on top of this, my long array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this
place I must presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thing necessarily distasteful to a
man who had never experienced such a humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to be proud
of, since it is so common -- but then it was all I had to be proud of. So I was scared into being a city editor. I
would have declined, otherwise. Necessity is the mother of "taking chances." I do not doubt that if, at that
time, I had been offered a salary to translate the Talmud from the original Hebrew, I would have accepted - albeit with diffidence and some misgivings -- and thrown as much variety into it as I could for the money.
I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty looking city editor, I am free
to confess -- coatless, slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down
to the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I secured a more Christian costume and
discarded the revolver.
AS CITY EDITOR.
I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to do so, but had worn the thing in
deference to popular sentiment, and in order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous,
and a subject of remark. But the other editors, and all the printers, carried revolvers. I asked the chief
editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman, I will call him, since it describes him as well as any name could do) for
some instructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all over town and ask all sorts of people
all sorts of questions, make notes of the information gained, and write them out for publication. And he
added:
"Never say `We learn' so-and-so, or `It is reported, or `It is rumored,' or `We understand' so-and-so,
but go to headquarters and get the absolute facts, and then speak out and say `It is so-and-so." Otherwise,
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people will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainly is the thing that gives a newspaper the
firmest and most valuable reputation."
It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find a reporter commencing his article
with "We understand," I gather a suspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as he
ought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practise well when I was a city editor; I let fancy
get the upper hand of fact too often when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day's
experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody, boring everybody, and finding out
that nobody knew anything. At the end of five hours my notebook was still barren. I spoke to Mr.
Goodman. He said:
"Dan used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time when there were no fires or
inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from the Truckee? If there are, you might speak of the renewed
activity and all that sort of thing, in the hay business, you know.
THE ENTIRE MARKET.
It isn't sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks business like."
I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck dragging in from the country. But I
made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by sixteen, brought it into town from sixteen different directions,
made sixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hay as Virginia City had never
seen in the world before.
This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columns had to be filled, and I was getting along. Presently,
when things began to look dismal again, a desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I
never was so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to the murderer:
"Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this day which I can never forget. If
whole years of gratitude can be to you any slight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and
you have relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count me your friend from this
time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor."
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A FRIEND INDEED.
If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching desire to do it. I wrote up the murder
with a hungry attention to details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret -- namely, that they
had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work him up too.
Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and found that they had
lately come through the hostile Indian country and had fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item
that the circumstances permitted, and felt that if I were not confined within rigid limits by the presence of
the reporters of the other papers I could add particulars that would make the article much more
interesting. However, I found one wagon that was going on to California, and made some judicious inquiries
of the proprietor. When I learned, through his short and surly answers to my cross-questioning, that he was
certainly going on and would not be in the city next day to make trouble, I got ahead of the other papers,
for I took down his list of names and added his party to the killed and wounded. Having more scope here, I
put this wagon through an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in history.
My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt that I had found my
legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned within myself that news, and stirring news, too, was what a paper
needed, and I felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. Mr. Goodman said that I was
as good a reporter as Dan. I desired no higher commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I
could take my pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be and the interests of the paper
demanded it.
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“How to Build a Joke”
by Demetri Martin
The journey from an idea, to a joke, to a new funnier version of the joke.
“I bought a cactus. A week later it died . . . ”
Demetri Martin is a New York–based comedian. Here, he dissects a one-liner:
Sometimes a joke will just float into my head, fully formed, as though someone’s whispered it in my ear
(note: not in a creepy way). For example: “I think the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of
charades. Especially if your teammates are bad guessers.”
Often, however, I get an idea about something that I feel is funny, but I don’t quite know how to articulate
it. That’s what happened with this joke. I wrote down the basic idea, something like “My plants often die,”
and then turned it over in my mind to see where the exact joke lies.
To do this, I’ll identify the elements of the joke and wonder about how those elements go together. It
means taking nothing for granted, which makes the world much more interesting to me. So, “My plants
often die” led me to think about the idea of keeping things alive, which made me wonder, Are some things
easier to keep alive than others? Then, What’s the easiest plant to keep alive? This made me think of a
cactus.
I thought, How can you kill a cactus? By giving it too much water. But I couldn’t really find a joke there. You
can kill a lot of plants by giving them too much water. So I stopped worrying about the watering part and
concentrated more on the idea of life and death. After a bit of thought, I arrived at a joke I liked: “I bought a
cactus. A week later it died. And I got depressed, because I thought, Damn. I am less nurturing than a
desert.”
Now, when I perform this joke, sometimes I add drawings, which gives it another layer. I say, “I bought a
cactus,” then show a drawing of a cactus. “A week later it died”—and I flip the page to show a drawing of a
tombstone that says HERE LIES BRIAN, BELOVED PLANT AND FRIEND.
“And I got depressed, because I thought, Damn, I am less nurturing than a desert.” Here, I flip the page, and
underneath it says LADIES, THAT’S NOT TRUE.
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“What Makes Us Laugh and Why?”
by Vicki Haddock
What does it take to be funny?
The question is simple, but the answer is not, as attested to by legions of scientists trying to pinpoint the
brain's "laugh zone" and decipher how wit works.
Consider this snippet from recent Stanford research: "Our analysis showed extroversion to positively
correlate with humor-drive blood oxygenation level-dependent signal in discrete regions of the right orbital
frontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and bilateral temporal cortices. Introversion correlated with
increased activation in several regions, most prominently the bilateral amygdala ..."
On second thought, perhaps E.B. White was onto something when he once noted that analyzing humor is
like dissecting a frog. The procedure kills the essence of both the frog and the funny -- and then what's
the point?
But humor research remains a fast-growing area of inquiry, with neurologists mapping areas of the brain
that oxygenate to register and respond to puns, slapstick and other forms of wit. The solution potentially
carries a big payoff: Social scientists and surveyors have long documented that people who are perceived as
witty, clever and funny are destined for popularity and greater success in work and relationships.
A sense of humor may indeed be the most necessary ingredient to transform a romantic attraction into a
flourishing long-term relationship, but research published last year in the journal Evolution and Human
Behavior found a distinction. Women say they want someone who makes them laugh. Men say they want
someone whom they can make laugh.
Just a few weeks ago, a survey released by the Menlo Park temp agency Robert Half International found
that 91 percent of top executives surveyed consider humor important to career advancement.
What's more, scientists report that a robust sense of humor speeds healing and reduces the risk of suicide,
depression and heart disease. It is humanity's ultimate coping mechanism, the lubricant that smooths the
abrasive frictions of modern life.
A thriving International Society for Humor Studies, which holds its 19th conference this month in Newport,
R.I., defines itself as a "scholarly and professional organization dedicated to the advancement of humor
research," and routinely solicits proposals for studies and papers on what prompts the teeth-revealing
curvature of the naso-labial furrows (what we call a smile) and the way neural-path action triggers the
involuntary expulsion of air and sound (otherwise known as a laugh).
For anyone who had trouble following all that neurological nomenclature, fear not. You can purchase
humor how-to for lay people from the late TV host Steve Allen and the late science fiction writer Isaac
Asimov, as well as creators of "Saturday Night Live" sketches. The market overflows with books, tapes and
seminars purporting to teach everyday people how to be funny.
But is such a thing really possible? Can people "learn" humor? Can it be reduced to its essence and bottled
for mass consumption? Is humor really a science, or something more ephemeral?
Perhaps you can no more teach yourself to be witty than you can teach yourself to fall in love. Maybe a
sense of humor is akin to a sense of rhythm: You either got it or you ain't. The task of harnessing humor is
daunting, calling to mind the classic Bob Monkhouseline: "They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a
comedian. They're not laughing now ..."
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But there is hope for the seemingly witless, insists Malcolm Kushner of Santa Cruz, a humor consultant,
Webmaster of an online humor museum and author of "Public Speaking for Dummies."
"This is the most common question I get, and I've always hedged by saying that everyone can learn to
better communicate the sense of humor they already have," he said. "Actually, I've never met anyone who
didn't think they had a sense of humor. Most people have had the experience of writing off someone they
know as completely humorless -- unfortunately this is usually their boss -- and then one day they'll say
something funny or laugh, and everyone around them immediately re-evaluates the whole situation.
"Not everybody is born hilarious. There's Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters and then there's the rest of
us. But we all can learn some specific techniques to make the most of the sense of humor we have."
As the human brain develops into adulthood, studies suggest, it comes to appreciate different kinds of
jokes, which are processed in different parts of the brain.
Using a functional MRI -- a brain scan that takes rapid-fire images of the brain to reflect activity -researchers at York University in Toronto and the Institute of Neurology in London observed reactions to
two kinds of jokes. Half were "semantic," such as "Why don't sharks bite lawyers? Professional courtesy."
The other half were puns, such as "Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants? He had a hole in one."
The unexpected results, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, were that semantic jokes activated a
bilateral network in the temporal lobes, whereas the puns used areas only on the left side, around the
brain's headquarters for speech-production.
But either way, if people found the joke funny, it invariably activated the same "funny zone" in the brain:
the medial ventral prefrontal cortex. The funnier they found the joke, the more that area of the brain lit up
like a pinball machine.
So scientists are refining their understanding of how humor works -- the importance of incongruity (Dave
Barry: "Never take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night."), shifting point of view (Paul Klee: "A
line is a dot that went for a walk."), revelations of unspoken truth (George Carlin: "Why is it that anyone
who drives slower than you is an idiot and anyone who drives faster is a maniac?" ) and the defusing of
anxiety (Rita Rudner: "Those oxygen masks on airplanes? I don't think there's really any oxygen. I think
they're just to muffle the screams.").
But science is nowhere near distilling the formula for funny. For that, we are left with humor consultants,
who offer these tips:
One: Share funny stories from your own life experience. We all have a few weird relatives, haywire
vacations and other wacky experiences along life's trajectory.
A long-suffering mother of three, for example, might share how she agreed to let her toddler use her
ChapStick as long as he replaced it every time. Weeks later, she was mortified to discover him meticulously
rubbing her ChapStick to the family cat's butt. Pointing, he declared, "Chapped." Nothing left for her to do
but decide whether to ask if this was the first time her ChapStick had been applied to the cat's butt ... or
the hundredth.
Two: Use your wry tales to make a larger point. Kushner tells of a previously humor-challenged computer
programmer who learned to deliver speeches that opened with a tale of his weird uncle daring tipsy
relatives at family gatherings to insert large objects into their mouths. After describing in detail how a
family member had to be rushed to the ER with a sawed-off bedpost stuck in his mouth, the programmer
could make a serious point, such as "Don't bite off more than you can chew."
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Three: Follow the "rule of threes." For some reason, there's something magic about triples. Comedy
Professor and author Melvin Helitzer characterizes them as firecrackers on the way to a big blast. His
example: "My wife's an angel: She's constantly up in the air, continually harping on something and never
has anything to wear."
Four: Humor requires a target. If you make a bulls-eye out of someone weaker, particularly if you initiate
the attack, you come off like a bully. Far better to take aim at the powerful and mighty -- and better still for
someone else to make you a target first. "Then it is lunge-and-riposte," Asimov observed, "and at the
riposte we can laugh with a clear conscience."
But the best strategy of all is to make yourself a target. As all successful politicians know, the most effective
way to disarm a potential weapon against you is to use it first. One such turnaround was executed by
former President Ronald Reagan's wife, Nancy, who decided to neutralize caustic criticism about her
extravagant spending after being photographed on a trip to England wearing 15 couture outfits. After she
appeared at a press dinner dressed in rags and belted out a parody of "Second Hand Rose," her approval
ratings rebounded.
Five: Know your audience. Crude, stereotypical, sexist jokes can be oh so unfunny. Just ask Chevron Corp.,
which was ordered to pay $2.2 million in damages after four female workers sued over male co-workers'
circulation of an e-mail joke that begin "25 reasons why beer is better than women ..."
Six: If you regularly find yourself in an awkward conversation, have a funny response prepared. Waiters
who know they will occasionally screw up orders, single people who are routinely interrogated about
whether they're ever going to get married, defense attorneys who are asked how they can possibly defend
a guilty client -- all could save themselves trouble with a ready-to-go retort. As old comedians advise, the
best ad libs are written down in advance.
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“On Creativity: Serious vs. Solemn” (transcript)
by John Cleese
I think we all know that laughter brings relaxation, and that humor makes us playful, yet how many
times important discussions been held where really original and creative ideas were desperately
needed to solve important problems, but where humor was taboo because the subject being
discussed was {air quotes} "so serious"?
This attitude seems to me to stem from a very basic misunderstanding of the difference between
'serious' and 'solemn'.
Now I suggest to you that a group of us could be sitting around after dinner, discussing matters
that were extremely serious like the education of our children, or our marriages, or the meaning of
life (and I'm not talking about the film), and we could be laughing, and that would not make what
we were discussing one bit less serious.
Solemnity, on the other hand… I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? The two
most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor, and it somehow
freed us all, and made the services inspiring and cathartic.
But solemnity? It serves pomposity, and the self-important always know with some level of their
consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor -- that's why they see it as a
threat. And so {they} dishonestly pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial,
when it only makes them feel bigger.
{John blows "raspberries" with his tongue.}
No, humor is an essential part of spontaneity, an essential part of playfulness, an essential part of
the creativity that we need to solve problems, no matter how 'serious' they may be.
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“Who’s On First?” (transcript)
by Abbott and Costello
Abbott: Well Costello, I'm going to New York with you. You know Bucky Harris, the Yankee's manager, gave
me a job as coach for as long as you're on the team.
Costello: Look Abbott, if you're the coach, you must know all the players.
Abbott: I certainly do.
Costello: Well you know I've never met the guys. So you'll have to tell me their names, and then I'll know
who's playing on the team.
Abbott: Oh, I'll tell you their names, but you know it seems to me they give these ball players now-a-days
very peculiar names.
Costello: You mean funny names?
Abbott: Strange names, pet names...like Dizzy Dean...
Costello: His brother Daffy.
Abbott: Daffy Dean...
Costello: And their French cousin.
Abbott: French?
Costello: Goofè.
Abbott: Goofè Dean. Well, let's see, we have on the bags, Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is
on third...
Costello: That's what I want to find out.
Abbott: I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.
Costello: Are you the manager?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: You gonna be the coach too?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names?
Abbott: Well I should.
Costello: Well then who's on first?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: I mean the fellow's name.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy on first.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The first baseman.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy playing...
Abbott: Who is on first!
Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.
Abbott: That's the man's name.
Costello: That's who's name?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: Well go ahead and tell me.
Abbott: That's it.
Costello: That's who?
Abbott: Yes.
PAUSE
135
Costello: Look, you gotta first baseman?
Abbott: Certainly.
Costello: Who's playing first?
Abbott: That's right.
Costello: When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?
Abbott: Every dollar of it.
Costello: All I'm trying to find out is the fellow's name on first base.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy that gets...
Abbott: That's it.
Costello: Who gets the money...
Abbott: He does, every dollar. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.
Costello: Who's wife?
Abbott: Yes.
PAUSE
Abbott: What's wrong with that?
Costello: Look, all I wanna know is when you sign up the first baseman, how does he sign his name?
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: How does he sign...
Abbott: That's how he signs it.
Costello: Who?
Abbott: Yes.
PAUSE
Costello: All I'm trying to find out is what's the guy's name on first base.
Abbott: No. What is on second base.
Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.
Abbott: Who's on first.
Costello: One base at a time!
Abbott: Well, don't change the players around.
Costello: I'm not changing nobody!
Abbott: Take it easy, buddy.
Costello: I'm only asking you, who's the guy on first base?
Abbott: That's right.
Costello: Ok.
Abbott: All right.
PAUSE
Costello: What's the guy's name on first base?
Abbott: No. What is on second.
Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.
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Abbott: Who's on first.
Costello: I don't know.
Abbott: He's on third, we're not talking about him.
Costello: Now how did I get on third base?
Abbott: Why you mentioned his name.
Costello: If I mentioned the third baseman's name, who did I say is playing third?
Abbott: No. Who's playing first.
Costello: What's on first?
Abbott: What's on second.
Costello: I don't know.
Abbott: He's on third.
Costello: There I go, back on third again!
PAUSE
Costello: Would you just stay on third base and don't go off it.
Abbott: All right, what do you want to know?
Costello: Now who's playing third base?
Abbott: Why do you insist on putting Who on third base?
Costello: What am I putting on third.
Abbott: No. What is on second.
Costello: You don't want who on second?
Abbott: Who is on first.
Costello: I don't know.
Abbott & Costello Together: Third base!
PAUSE
Costello: Look, you gotta outfield?
Abbott: Sure.
Costello: The left fielder's name?
Abbott: Why.
Costello: I just thought I'd ask you.
Abbott: Well, I just thought I'd tell ya.
Costello: Then tell me who's playing left field.
Abbott: Who's playing first.
Costello: I'm not... stay out of the infield! I want to know what's the guy's name in left field?
Abbott: No, What is on second.
Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.
Abbott: Who's on first!
Costello: I don't know.
Abbott & Costello Together: Third base!
PAUSE
Costello: The left fielder's name?
Abbott: Why.
Costello: Because!
137
Abbott: Oh, he's centerfield.
PAUSE
Costello: Look, You gotta pitcher on this team?
Abbott: Sure.
Costello: The pitcher's name?
Abbott: Tomorrow.
Costello: You don't want to tell me today?
Abbott: I'm telling you now.
Costello: Then go ahead.
Abbott: Tomorrow!
Costello: What time?
Abbott: What time what?
Costello: What time tomorrow are you gonna tell me who's pitching?
Abbott: Now listen. Who is not pitching.
Costello: I'll break your arm, you say who's on first! I want to know what's the pitcher's name?
Abbott: What's on second.
Costello: I don't know.
Abbott & Costello Together: Third base!
PAUSE
Costello: Gotta a catcher?
Abbott: Certainly.
Costello: The catcher's name?
Abbott: Today.
Costello: Today, and tomorrow's pitching.
Abbott: Now you've got it.
Costello: All we got is a couple of days on the team.
PAUSE
Costello: You know I'm a catcher too.
Abbott: So they tell me.
Costello: I get behind the plate to do some fancy catching, Tomorrow's pitching on my team and a heavy
hitter gets up. Now the heavy hitter bunts the ball. When he bunts the ball, me, being a good catcher, I'm
gonna throw the guy out at first base. So I pick up the ball and throw it to who?
Abbott: Now that's the first thing you've said right.
Costello: I don't even know what I'm talking about!
PAUSE
Abbott: That's all you have to do.
Costello: Is to throw the ball to first base.
Abbott: Yes!
Costello: Now who's got it?
Abbott: Naturally.
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PAUSE
Costello: Look, if I throw the ball to first base, somebody's gotta get it. Now who has it?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Who?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Naturally?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: So I pick up the ball and I throw it to Naturally.
Abbott: No you don't, you throw the ball to Who.
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: That's different.
Costello: That's what I said.
Abbott: You're not saying it...
Costello: I throw the ball to Naturally.
Abbott: You throw it to Who.
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: That's it.
Costello: That's what I said!
Abbott: You ask me.
Costello: I throw the ball to who?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Now you ask me.
Abbott: You throw the ball to Who?
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: That's it.
Costello: Same as you! Same as YOU! I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs
to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know
throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I
don't know! He's on third and I don't give a darn!
Abbott: What?
Costello: I said I don't give a darn!
Abbott: Oh, that's our shortstop.
139
“The Ransom of Red Chief”
by O. Henry
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama--Bill Driscoll and myselfwhen this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, 'during a moment of temporary
mental apparition'; but we didn't find that out till later.
There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained
inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.
Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more
to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the
hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities therefore, and for other reasons, a
kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in
plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything
stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly
Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good.
We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was
respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The
kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at
the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a
ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.
About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear
elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions.
One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid was in the street,
throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.
'Hey, little boy!' says Bill, 'would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?'
The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.
'That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,' says Bill, climbing over the wheel.
That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of
the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After
dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the
mountain.
Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a fire burning
behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two
buzzard tailfeathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says:
'Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?'
'He's all right now,' says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. 'We're playing
Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old
Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's captive, and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick
hard.'
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Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him
forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced
that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.
Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made
a during-dinner speech something like this:
'I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate
to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians
in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five
puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed
Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any
noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A
parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make twelve?'
Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to
the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a
warwhoop that made Old Hank the Trapper, shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.
'Red Chief,' says I to the kid, 'would you like to go home?'
'Aw, what for?' says he. 'I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't
take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?'
'Not right away,' says I. 'We'll stay here in the cave a while.'
'All right!' says he. 'That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life.'
We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief
between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching
for his rifle and screeching: 'Hist! pard,' in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle
of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a
troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red
hair.
Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or
shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs--they were simply
indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an
awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.
I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's
hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and
realistically trying to take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the
evening before.
I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was
broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy
was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to
be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and
leaned against a rock.
'What you getting up so soon for, Sam?' asked Bill.
'Me?' says I. 'Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it.'
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'You're a liar!' says Bill. 'You're afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And
he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get
a little imp like that back home?'
'Sure,' said I. 'A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and
cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre.'
I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward
Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the
countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man
ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing
tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading
that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. 'Perhaps,' says I to
myself, 'it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold.
Heaven help the wolves!' says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.
When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening
to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.
'He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,' explained Bill, 'and then mashed it with his foot; and I
boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?'
I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. 'I'll fix you,' says the kid to Bill. 'No
man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!'
After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes
outside the cave unwinding it.
'What's he up to now?' says Bill, anxiously. 'You don't think he'll run away, do you, Sam?'
'No fear of it,' says I. 'He don't seem to be much of a home body. But we've got to fix up some plan about
the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but
maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane
or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he'll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father
demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.'
Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the
champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around
his head.
I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his
saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself
all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and
poured cold water on his head for half an hour.
By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: 'Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical
character is?'
'Take it easy,' says I. 'You'll come to your senses presently.'
'King Herod,' says he. 'You won't go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?'
I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.
'If you don't behave,' says I, 'I'll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?'
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'I was only funning,' says he sullenly. 'I didn't mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave,
Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day.'
'I don't know the game,' says I. 'That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm
going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for
hurting him, or home you go, at once.'
I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little
village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in
Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the
ransom and dictating how it should be paid.
'You know, Sam,' says Bill, 'I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood--in poker
games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we
kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will
you, Sam?'
'I'll be back some time this afternoon,' says I. 'You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And
now we'll write the letter to old Dorset.'
Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around
him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom
fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. 'I ain't attempting,' says he, 'to decry the celebrated moral
aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two
thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen
hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.'
So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:
Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:
We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives
to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these:
We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at
the same spot and in the same box as your reply--as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms,
send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl
Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the
fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree,
will be found a small pasteboard box.
The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.
If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.
If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These
terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.
TWO DESPERATE MEN.
I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me
and says:
'Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone.'
'Play it, of course,' says I. 'Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?'
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'I'm the Black Scout,' says Red Chief, 'and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians
are coming. I 'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.'
'All right,' says I. 'It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages.'
'What am I to do?' asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.
'You are the hoss,' says Black Scout. 'Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade
without a hoss?'
'You'd better keep him interested,' said I, 'till we get the scheme going. Loosen up.'
Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap.
' How far is it to the stockade, kid? ' he asks, in a husky manner of voice.
'Ninety miles,' says the Black Scout. 'And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!'
The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his side.
'For Heaven's sake,' says Bill, 'hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more
than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I '11 get up and warm you good.'
I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the postoffice and store, talking with the chawbacons that
came in to trade. One whiskerand says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer
Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco,
referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The
postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.
When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and
risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.
So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.
In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out into the little glade in front of the cave.
Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his
hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.
'Sam,' says Bill, 'I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with
masculine proclivities and habits of self-defence, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and
predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times,' goes
on Bill, 'that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was
subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation;
but there came a limit.'
'What's the trouble, Bill?' I asks him.
'I was rode,' says Bill, 'the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was
rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to
him why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell
you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the
mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got two or three bites
on my thumb and hand cauterized.
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'But he's gone'--continues Bill--'gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight
feet nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the
madhouse.'
Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink
features.
'Bill,' says I, 'there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there?'
'No,' says Bill, 'nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?'
'Then you might turn around,' says I, 'and have a look behind you.'
Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to
pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my
scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it
by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of
a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him as soon as he felt a little better.
I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to
commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left--and the money
later on--was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be
watching for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the
road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the
messenger to arrive.
Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of
the fencepost, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.
I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along
the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got
near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance
of it was this:
Two Desperate Men.
Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I
think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am
inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in
cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is
lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back.
Very respectfully,
EBENEZER DORSET.
'Great pirates of Penzance!' says I; 'of all the impudent--'
But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a
dumb or a talking brute.
'Sam,' says he, 'what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the money. One more night of this
kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift
for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?'
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'Tell you the truth, Bill,' says I, 'this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take him
home, pay the ransom and make our get-away.'
We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted
rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's front door. Just at the moment when I should
have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original
proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's hand.
When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and
fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
'How long can you hold him?' asks Bill.
'I'm not as strong as I used to be,' says old Dorset, 'but I think I can promise you ten minutes.'
'Enough,' says Bill. 'In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be
legging it trippingly for the Canadian border.'
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out
of summit before I could catch up with him.
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“Me Talk Pretty One Day”
By David Sedaris
At the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and having to think of myself as what my French textbook
calls "a true debutant." After paying my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted
entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with
billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich.
I've moved to Paris in order to learn the language. My school is the Alliance Française, and on the first day
of class, I arrived early, watching as the returning students greeted one another in the school lobby.
Vacations were recounted, and questions were raised concerning mutual friends with names like Kang and
Vlatnya. Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to me like excellent French. Some
accents were better than others, but the students exhibited an ease and confidence I found intimidating. As
an added discomfort, they were all young, attractive, and well dressed, causing me to feel not unlike Pa
Kettle trapped backstage after a fashion show.
I remind myself that I am now a full-grown man. No one will ever again card me for a drink or demand that I
weave a floor mat out of newspapers. At my age, a reasonable person should have completed his sentence
in the prison of the nervous and the insecure--isn't that the great promise of adulthood? I can't help but
think that, somewhere along the way, I made a wrong turn. My fears have not vanished. Rather, they have
seasoned and multiplied with age. I am now twice as frightened as I was when, at the age of twenty, I
allowed a failed nursing student to inject me with a horse tranquilizer, and eight times more anxious than I
was the day my kindergarten teacher pried my fingers off my mother's ankle and led me screaming toward
my desk. "You'll get used to it," the woman had said.
I'm still waiting.
The first day of class was nerve-racking, because I knew I'd be expected to perform. That's the way they do
it here--everyone into the language pool, sink or swim. The teacher marched in, deeply tanned from a
recent vacation, and rattled off a series of administrative announcements. I've spent some time in
Normandy, and I took a month-long French class last summer in New York. I'm not completely in the dark,
yet I understood only half of what this teacher was saying.
"If you have not meismslsxp by this time, you should not be in this room. Has everybody apzkiubjxow?
Everyone? Good, we shall proceed." She spread out her lesson plan and sighed, saying, "All right, then, who
knows the alphabet?"
It was startling, because a) I hadn't been asked that question in a while, and b) I realized, while laughing,
that I myself did not know the alphabet. They're the same letters, but they're pronounced differently.
"Ahh." The teacher went to the board and sketched the letter a. "Do we have anyone in the room whose
first name commences with an ahh?"
Two Polish Annas raised their hands, and the teacher instructed them to present themselves, giving their
names, nationalities, occupations, and a list of things they liked and disliked in this world. The first Anna
hailed from an industrial town outside of Warsaw and had front teeth the size of tombstones. She worked
as a seamstress, enjoyed quiet times with friends, and hated the mosquito.
"Oh, really," the teacher said. "How very interesting. I thought that everyone loved the mosquito, but here,
in front of all the world, you claim to detest him. How is it that we've been blessed with someone as unique
and original as you? Tell us, please."
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The seamstress did not understand what was being said, but she knew that this was an occasion for shame.
Her rabbity mouth huffed for breath, and she stared down at her lap as though the appropriate comeback
were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper of her slacks.
The second Anna learned from the first and claimed to love sunshine and detest lies. It sounded like a
translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets, the answers always written in the same
loopy handwriting: "Turn-ons: Mom's famous five-alarm chili! Turnoffs: Insincerity and guys who come on
too strong!!!"
The two Polish women surely had clear notions of what they liked and disliked, but, like the rest of us, they
were limited in terms of vocabulary, and this made them appear less than sophisticated. The teacher forged
on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine bandonion player, loved wine, music, and, in his words,
"Making sex with the women of the world." Next came a beautiful young Yugoslavian who identified herself
as an optimist, saying that she loved everything life had to offer.
The teacher licked her lips, revealing a hint of the sadist we would later come to know. She crouched low
for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman's desk, and said, "Oh, yeah? And do you love your
little war?"
While the optimist struggled to defend herself, I scrambled to think of an answer to what had obviously
become a trick question. How often are you asked what you love in this world? More important, how often
are you asked and then publicly ridiculed for your answer? I recalled my mother, flushed with wine,
pounding the table late one night, saying, "Love? I love a good steak cooked rare. I love my cat, and I love . .
." My sisters and I leaned forward, waiting to hear our names. "Tums," our mother said. "I love Tums."
The teacher killed some time accusing the Yugoslavian girl of masterminding a program of genocide, and I
jotted frantic notes in the margins of my pad. While I can honestly say that I love leafing through medical
textbooks devoted to severe dermatological conditions, it is beyond the reach of my French vocabulary,
and acting it out would only have invited unwanted attention.
When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things I detest: blood sausage, intestinal, brain pudding.
I'd learned these words the hard way. Having given it some thought, I then declared my love for IBM
typewriters, the French word for "bruise," and my electric floor waxer. It was a short list, but still I managed
to mispronounce IBM and afford the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the typewriter. Her reaction
led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France.
"Were you always this palicmkrexjs?" she asked. "Even a fiuscrzsws tociwegixp knows that a typewriter is
feminine."
I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking, but not saying, that I find it ridiculous to
assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why
refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never deliver in the sack?
The teacher proceeded to belittle everyone from German Eva, who hated laziness, to Japanese Yukari, who
loved paintbrushes and soap. Italian, Thai, Dutch, Korean, Chinese--we all left class foolishly believing that
the worst was over. We didn't know it then, but the coming months would teach us what it is like to spend
time in the presence of a wild animal. We soon learned to dodge chalk and to cover our heads and
stomachs whenever she approached us with a question. She hadn't yet punched anyone, but it seemed
wise to prepare ourselves against the inevitable.
Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would occasionally use us to practice
any of her five fluent languages.
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"I hate you," she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless. "I really, really hate you." Call me
sensitive, but I couldn't help taking it personally.
Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a long and intensive period of hazing. And it
wasn't just my teacher; the entire population seemed to be in on it. Following brutal encounters with my
local butcher and the concierge of my building, I'd head off to class, where the teacher would hold my
corrected paperwork high above her head, shouting, "Here's proof that David is an ignorant and uninspired
ensigiejsokhjx."
Refusing to stand convicted on the teacher's charges of laziness, I'd spend four hours a night on my
homework, working even longer whenever we were assigned an essay. I suppose I could have gotten by
with less, but I was determined to create some sort of an identity for myself. We'd have one of those
"complete the sentence" exercises, and I'd fool with the thing for hours, invariably settling on something
like, "A quick run around the lake? I'd love to. Just give me a minute to strap on my wooden leg." The
teacher, through word and action, conveyed the message that, if this was my idea of an identity, she
wanted nothing to do with it.
My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of my classroom and accompanied me out onto the wide
boulevards, where, no matter how hard I tried, there was no escaping the feeling of terror I felt whenever
anyone asked me a question. I was safe in any kind of a store, as, at least in my neighborhood, one can
stand beside the cash register for hours on end without being asked something so trivial as, "May I help
you?" or "How would you like to pay for that?"
My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the smoky hallways and making the
most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly
overheard in refugee camps.
"Sometimes me cry alone at night."
"That is common for me also, but be more strong, you. Much work, and someday you talk pretty. People
stop hate you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay?"
Unlike other classes I have taken, here there was no sense of competition. When the teacher poked a shy
Korean woman in the eyelid with a freshly sharpened pencil, we took no comfort in the fact that, unlike
Hyeyoon Cho, we all knew the irregular past tense of the verb "to defeat." In all fairness, the teacher hadn't
meant to hurt the woman, but neither did she spend much time apologizing, saying only, "Well, you should
have been paying more attention."
Over time, it became impossible to believe that any of us would ever improve. Fall arrived, and it rained
every day. It was mid-October when the teacher singled me out, saying, "Every day spent with you is like
having a cesarean section." And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could
understand every word that someone was saying.
Understanding doesn't mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It's a small step,
nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe, and I
settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult.
"You exhaust me with your foolishness and reward my efforts with nothing but pain, do you understand
me?"
The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, "I know the thing what you speak exact
now. Talk me more, plus, please, plus."
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